Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The field of the equatorial electrojet from CHAMP data

Abstract. We apply a simple linear transform, the along-track second derivative, to four years of scalar and vectorial data from the CHAMP satellite. This transform, reminiscent of techniques used in the interpretation of aeromagnetic surveys, is applied either to the geocentric spherical components of the field or to its intensity. After averaging in time and space, we first produce a map of the crustal field, then maps of the equatorial electrojet field at all local times and all universal times. The seasonal variation of the electrojet, its evolution with the solar cycle, and the effect of geomagnetic activity are discussed. The variation of the electrojet with longitude, an intriguing feature revealed by satellite data, is described in some detail, and it is shown that this longitude dependance is stable in time. The existence of a counterelectrojet in the morning, everywhere except over the Pacific Ocean, is established. The signatures of closure electric currents and of interhemispheric currents are also evidenced.
Secondary Students' Accounts of Carbon-Transforming Processes Before and After Instruction *

The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which more targeted instruction is helpful in eliciting students’ scientific explanations of six selected carbon-transforming processes of combustion, cross processes, decomposition, growth, photosynthesis and respiration. We also examined these students’ accounts regarding the corresponding principles of energy and matter. Students’ accounts came from four secondary school teachers, two of whom used designed instructional materials and two did not. We first used grounded theory to analyze students’ responses to pre-posttests regarding the six carbon-transforming processes. Then, we used matched-pair t-test to analyze these responses. We found overall significant pre-post gains in students’ accounts in processes and principles among teachers who used more targeted instruction than those who did not. This was true even among teachers whose students’ pretests were roughly similar. We also found no significant pre-post gains in high school students’ accounts in the process of growth irrespective of form of instruction. Implications for research, science teaching and learning are discussed.
3-D osteoblast culture for biomaterials testing

Micromass cell cultures, osteomicrospheres, were formed by aggregation of primary osteoblasts. Cell differentiation during sphere formation and the integrity of the osteomicrospheres was evaluated by analyzing the immunohistochemical expression of osteonectin, osteocalcin, and collagen type I. Transmission electron microscopy facilitated the proof of the tissue-like microstructure inside the osteomicrospheres and the arrangement of collagen fibers similar to early stages of natural bone formation. The in vivo situation of osteomicrospheres transferred to host tissue was simulated by embedding mature osteomicrospheres in a fibrin matrix. Additionally, cell spreading out of the compartments was investigated by electron microscopy of microspheres cultivated on the surface of three-dimensional fiber-like scaffolds. Concluding, the properties of the osteomicrospheres represented in this work demonstrate the potential as a tissue-specific in vitro test method to replace early small animal tests in the future. Key words: Biomaterials testing, micromass culture, osteoblast, osteomicrospheres, ultrastructure.
A Systems Thinking Approach for Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Insect Production for Organic Waste Nutrient Recycling

Insect rearing on organic waste has been proposed as a means for addressing interconnected global environmental, food security, and waste management issues. The process utilizes the natural ability of many insect species for consuming different types of organic waste, which is transformed into nutrient rich insect biomass. In this manner, organic waste nutrients are recycled back into the food chain, environmental impacts of organic waste disposal are reduced, and food resources are free for human consumption or as animal feed. However, there are multiple factors and context specific determinants that can influence the environmental impacts of insect production. This literature review explores the scientific evidence and arguments supporting environmental sustainability claims of insect production on organic waste using a systems thinking approach. In addition, the environmental potential of insect production technologies (IPTs) within low income countries and high income countries (LMICs) are discussed. Overall, the environmental impacts of insect production are supported by life cycle assessment literature in terms of land use, but resource utilization impacts may vary according to context specific factors. Nevertheless, the ability and versatility of many insect species for consuming multiple and diverse sources of organic waste offer a promising and viable mechanism for recycling organic waste nutrients, especially in low income countries (LCIs) with low financial and infrastructure resources.
Evidence for the increase in the incidence of type 1 diabetes in children aged 0-14 years in the Republika Srpska, 2001-2016

Objective − The purpose of the study was to estimate the changes in the incidence trends of type 1 diabetes mellitus in children for the territory of the Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina) during the period from 2001 to 2016. Methods − A retrospective technique was used to register all newly diagnosed cases of type 1 diabetes mellitus in children aged 0 to 14 years during the 2001 – 2016 period. The determination was based on the capture-recapture method, and was estimated to be 99%. Results − The average incidence of type 1 diabetes mellitus was estimated to be 11.0 cases per 100,000 during the 2001-2016 period. The annual increase in incidence was 14.2%. The highest incidence rates were recorded in 2015 (21.3 cases /100,000) and lowest in 2002 (4.7 cases /100,000). The largest incidence rate of 13.6% /100,000 was found in the oldest age group examined, from 10-14 years. Conclusion − The incidence rate of type 1 diabetes mellitus in children in the Republika Srpska was found to have a rising trend over the last 16 years. Considering the incidence rate of 11.0 cases /100,000, the Republika Srpska is in the group of regions with a medium risk for diagnoses of diabetes. Unfortunately, this trend seems to be even more pronounced in recent years.
Choice of Major and Clarity of Purpose among College Seniors as a Function of Gender, Type of Major, and Sex-Role Identification.

This study examines relationships among several factors involved in choosing a major: gender, sex-role identification, clarity of purpose, and type of major (male-dominated or female-dominated). Study participants were 396 college seniors in the male-dominated College of Engineering and the female-dominated College of Education and Family and Consumer Sciences of an unspecified institution. Instruments used included the Student Development Task and Lifestyle Inventory Revised and the BEM Sex Role Inventory. Fewer than half of the students identified with traditional sex roles; yet most chose majors traditionally dominated by their gender. Choice of a traditional major was more likely to occur among women (72.4 percent) than among men (67.3 percent), even among androgynous individuals who psychologically identified with characteristics of both gender groups (androgynous women 76.8 percent, androgynous men 54.8 percent). Women in male-dominated majors viewed themselves as less feminine than women in feLale-dominated majors. A clearer sense of purpose was observed in women versus men in students in female-dominated majors versus those in male-dominated majors and in androgynous students versus those who were masculine-identified, feminine-identified, or undifferentiated. It is suggested that psychosocial and societal influences, not examined in this study, may also greatly impact the choice of a college major. (Contains 16 references.) (Author/NAV) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *1. ,************1,************************i*******************************
Using Data Mining with Time Series Data in Short-Term Stocks Prediction: A Literature Review

Data Mining (DM) methods are being increasingly used in prediction with time series data, in addition to traditional statistical approaches. This paper presents a literature review of the use of DM with time series data, focusing on shorttime stocks prediction. This is an area that has been attracting a great deal of attention from researchers in the field. The main contribution of this paper is to provide an outline of the use of DM with time series data, using mainly examples related with short-term stocks prediction. This is important to a better understanding of the field. Some of the main trends and open issues will also be introduced.
The Cost of Institutional Equity Trades

Presented are an overview of the findings from the recent literature on the cost of U.S. equity trades for institutional investors and new evidence on trading costs from a large sample of institutional trades. The findings discussed have important implications for policymakers and investors: Implicit trading costs are economically significant; equity trading costs vary considerably and vary systematically with trade difficulty and orderplacement strategy; and whether a trade price represents “best execution” depends on detailed data for the trade’s entire order-submission process, especially information on pretrade decision variables, such as the trading horizon.
Skilled Immigration and Wages in Australia

This paper investigates the impact of the relative growth of skilled migration on the structure of Australian wages. Unlike conventional approaches, the present study uses macro data to examine the response of wages to immigration flows. We use instrumental variable (IV) techniques to deal with the potential endogeneity of immigration. Results from alternative estimation strategies support the many prevailing empirical findings. There is no robust evidence that a relative increase in skilled immigrants exerts discernible adverse consequences on the wage structure in Australia.
Hybrid modeling of heterogeneous geochemical reactions in fractured porous media

Quantitative modeling of geochemical reactions at the Darcy scale is challenging due to their dependence on pore‐scale characteristics that often cannot be averaged out. We propose a hybrid pore‐scale/continuum‐scale algorithm to bridge the gap between the pore‐scale mechanisms of reactive transport and the Darcy‐scale observations of their impact. These two scales are coupled by introducing extra nodes at the pore/continuum interfaces, in which the continuity of both concentrations and mass fluxes is enforced. Our algorithm is applicable to highly localized transport phenomena that can be adequately described by Darcy‐scale equations in most of a computational domain except for small regions (e.g., reaction fronts) wherein pore‐scale simulations are necessary. We employ the proposed hybrid algorithm to model transient reactive solute transport involving fracture cementation.
Introduction: Independent Children and their Fields of Relatedness

"The idea of this Special Focus first came to us while we were carrying out fundamental research about children in two different countries and contexts in Southeast Asia. While Silvia Vignato was enquiring about children’s rescue after the 2004 tsunami and the end of a 30-year long conflict in Aceh, Giuseppe Bolotta was in the slums of Bangkok, doing research with children connected to NGOs. In both cases, the young people we met were growing up outside their families, however these are defined, and raised in different institutions committed to leading children towards developing specific ideals of adulthood. For different reasons, these children had to acquire various degrees of independence from parental figures".
Management Accounting and Organizational Change: An Exploratory Study in Malaysian Manufacturing Firms

This study explores the changes as well as potential association among environmental factors, management accounting practices and organisational factors in Malaysian manufacturing companies in the Klang Valley. Results of the study showed that the majority of the responding companies have reacted positively to changes in competitive business environment and advanced manufacturing technology. Increased changes are also reported in management accounting practices and organisational factors (namely structure, strategy and performance). A positive significant association is found among all of the variables except for competitive environment and advanced manufacturing technologies with performance. This research provides useful insights into management accounting practises and organisational change in Malaysia.
Strong comovements of exchange rates: Theoretical and empirical cases when currencies become the same asset

The aim of this paper is to detect periods in which two currencies can be classified as being the'same' asset. Two currencies can be treated as the same asset if their exchange rates vis-a-vis the same base currency are cointegrated with a cointegration vector that is consistent with the triangular arbitrage condition. In a first step, it is theoretically derived under which conditions,with respect to the process of the fundamentals, the exchange rates are cointegrated. The empirical results yield that periods of strong comovements of the US dollar and Pound sterling based upon the Euro prevail during the 1990s and periods of comovements of Euro and Pound sterling denominated in US dollar prevail since the introduction of the Euro. Furthermore, no long-run relationships canbe discovered. This paper gives four major innovations to the literature. It first shows under which conditions exchange rates can be bivariately cointegrated. Secondly, it uses the cross-rate identity to test forcointegration, i.e. deducing recursively. Thirdly, it applies the cointegration methodology within atriangular framework by detecting cointegration between exchange rates that are not only denominated in U.S. dollars. And lastly, it shows that comovements between two exchange rates exist ina narrower sense but only in short periods, whereas the economic variables which have caused therelationship are explored.
Can models robustly represent aerosol–convection interactions if their cloud microphysics is uncertain?

This study investigates the hydrometeor development and response to cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC) perturbations in convection-permitting model configurations. We present results from a real-data simulation of deep convection in the Congo basin, an idealised supercell case, and a warm-rain large-eddy simulation (LES). In each case we compare two frequently used double-moment bulk microphysics schemes and investigate the response to CDNC perturbations. In the Congo basin simulations both microphysics schemes have large positive biases in surface precipitation, frequency of high radar reflectivities and frequency of cold cloud compared to observations. In all cases, differences in the simulated cloud morphology and precipitation are found to be significantly greater between the microphysics schemes than due to CDNC perturbations within each scheme. Further, we show that the response of the hydrometeors to CDNC perturbations strongly differs not just between microphysics schemes but also between different cases of convection. Sensitivity tests show that the representation of autoconversion is the dominant factor that drives differences in rain production between the microphysics schemes in the idealised precipitating shallow cumulus case and in a sub-region of the Congo basin simulations dominated by liquid-phase processes. In this region, rain mass is also shown to be relatively insensitive to the radiative effects of an overlying layer of ice-phase cloud. In the idealised supercell case, thermodynamic impacts on the storm system using different microphysics parameterisations can equal those due to aerosol effects. These results highlight the large uncertainty in cloud and precipitation responses to aerosol in convection-permitting simulations and have important implications not just for modelling studies of aerosol-convection interaction. These results indicate the continuing need for tighter observational constraints of cloud processes and response to aerosol in a range of meteorological regimes.
Quantifying the evidence for the current speed-up of the Universe with low and intermediate-redshift data. A more model-independent approach

We reconstruct in this paper the deceleration and jerk parameters as functions of the cosmological redshift from data on cosmic chronometers (CCH), baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs), and the Pantheon+MCT compilation of supernovae of Type Ia (SnIa). The reconstruction is carried out with the Weighted Function Regression method, previously introduced by G'omez-Valent & Amendola (2018). It improves the usual cosmographic approach by automatically implementing Occam's razor criterion. This makes our procedure to be more free of model and parametrization dependencies than many other analyses in the literature. The reconstructed functions are fully compatible with the predictions for the concordance model. In addition, we also discuss the confidence level at which we can claim that the Universe (assumed to be flat, homogeneous and isotropic) is currently accelerating. According to Jeffreys' scale and jargon, we find moderate evidence in favor of such speed-up using the data on SnIa+CCH, and very strong one when we also use data on BAOs. The measured current value of the deceleration parameter in the latter case reads q0∼ −0.60± 0.10, and for the deceleration-acceleration transition redshift we find zt∼ 0.80± 0.10. The former is ∼ 6σ away from 0. This is in stark contrast, for instance, with the ∼ 17σ that are found in the context of the flat ΛCDM even without including the BAOs data. This indicates that cosmography and Occam's razor criterion play a crucial role in this discussion, and that estimating the evidence for positive acceleration only in the framework of a particular cosmological model or parametrization is clearly insufficient.
Chromosomal Polymorphism in the Gray Shrew Crocidura attenuata (Mammalia: Insectivora)

Abstract Conventional and G-banded karyotypes of Crocidura attenuata Milne-Edwards, 1872 from Guangdong, southern China, are reported. The diploid chromosome number (2n) varied from 35 to 38 among specimens, while the fundamental arm number (FN) consistently was 54. Of the autosomes, 14 pairs including four meta- or submetacentric, three subtelocentric, and seven acrocentric pairs showed no variation in all specimens, whereas the remaining pairs showed Robertsonian polymorphism. The X and Y chromosomes were medium sized submetacentric and small acrocentric chromosomes, respectively. These karyotypes differ from that of C. attenuata from Taiwan, which has 40 chromosomes with 56 arms. Such differences are largely attributable to a non-Robertsonian rearrangement, where both 2n and FN values are different from each other. The largest metacentric pair observed in karyotypes from Guangdong may have resulted from the centromere-telomere translocation between an acrocentric and a subtelocentric pairs of karyotype homologous to that from Taiwan. Both morphometric difference and sequence divergence in mitochondrial cytochrome b gene between samples from Guangdong and Taiwan was relatively small. However, the nonRobertsonian rearrangement assumed between karyotypes of the shrews from Guangdong and Taiwan suggest that they are reproductively isolated from each other. The eastern continental and Taiwanese populations therefore may represent different species under the names, C. attenuata (sensu stricto), and C. tanakae Kuroda, 1938, respectively.
GABA and Glutamate: Their Transmitter Role in the CNS and Pancreatic Islets

Glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) are the major neurotransmitters in the mammalian brain. Inhibitory GABA and excitatory glutamate work together to control many processes, including the brain ’ s overall level of excitation. The contributions of GABA and glutamate in extra-neuronal signaling are by far less widely recognized. In this chapter, we first discuss the role of both neurotransmitters during development, emphasizing the importance of the shift from excitatory to inhibitory GABAergic neurotransmission. The second part summarizes the biosynthesis and role of GABA and glutamate in neurotransmission in the mature brain, and major neurological disorders associated with glutamate and GABA receptors and GABA release mechanisms. The final part focuses on extra-neuronal glutamatergic and GABAergic signaling in pancreatic islets of Langerhans, and possible associations with type 1 diabetes mellitus.
Weather packages: finding the right scale and composition of climate in ecology

Summary 1. Animals are affected by local weather variables such as temperature, rainfall and snow. However, large-scale climate indices such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) often outperform local weather variables when it comes to explain climate-related variation in life history traits or animal numbers. 2. In a recent paper, Hallet et al . (2004, Nature , 430 , 71‐75) document convincingly why this may happen. In this perspective, we identify from the literature three mechanisms why this is so: (1) the time window; (2) the spatial window; and (3) the weather composition component of climate. 3. Such an understanding may be used to derive even better ‘weather packages’ than the NAO.
The Relationship between Transparency, Consumer Trust and Willingness to Share Data - A Vignette Survey

A new era of technology and connected living is introduced by the Internet of Things industry. Although it is one of the most promising domains of the future, security issues and privacy concerns have kept it from revolutionizing business sectors of any kind. Since collecting and analyzing data is what the Internet of Things is based on, knowing what makes people share sensitive information is crucial to every company wanting to establish itself in this new industry. Therefore, the goal of this study is to identify factors positively influencing people’s willingness to share their data. Derived from driving factors of willingness to share data online, consumer trust and transparency of data were investigated as influencing factors on sharing data for Internet of Things devices. To explore the relationship between consumer trust, transparency of data and willingness to share, empirical research was conducted. A vignette survey was used to avoid bias and ensure respondents apply their answers to an Internet of Things device. Four scenarios were presented to the respondent, to which he had to react to by stating if, given the corresponding scenario, he would share his data. 78 responses were collected over a period of seven days. The results show a significant relationship for both consumer trust and transparency of data with willingness to share. Furthermore transparency of data shows to have a stronger effect on willingness to share than consumer trust. This study provides first insights into the antecedents of people’s willingness to share private information for Internet of Things devices and creates a basis for further research of successful data collection methods in this industry.