Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
INPUT FOR A BLOWING SNOW NUMERICAL MODEL: IN SITU MEASUREMENTS ARE STILL NEEDED

The NEMO numerical model of drifting snow, whose general outlines are presented in this paper, is based on a physical model for saltation and turbulent diffusion. The model needs a set of input parameters including fall velocity, threshold shear velocity, shear velocity, mass concentration and roughness, which are obtained from empirical formulae and wind speed measured at a given height. To better determine the required field data in an alpine context, our experimental site, Col du Lac Blanc (2700 m) in the French Alps, was first equipped with blowing snow acoustic sensors, which proved not to be accurate enough for research purposes in the current state of development even though a new calibration curve was used. We therefore returned to the traditional, robust mechanical traps and a 10-m mast with six anemometers, two temperature sensors and a depth sensor to better determine friction velocity and aerodynamic roughness. For the drifting snow events studied, (i) the proportionality of the aerodynamic roughness to the square of the friction velocity was confirmed but with a proportionality ratio depending on the snow drift event, (ii) values or F s U σ were relatively well approximated by empirical formulae obtained from Antarctica data, and (iii) snowdrift concentration profiles obtained by Pomeroy's semi-empirical formulae for saltation layer coupled with theoretical approach for the diffusion layer overestimated the concentration profiles for the studied blowing snow event.
Triglyceride Response to Oral Glucose Load: Is it Exaggerated in Metabolic Syndrome?

Objective: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a cluster of cardiometabolic risk factors related to insulin resistance. Data show that triglyceride (TG) levels following an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) are higher among obese and insulin-resistant cases associated with metabolic risk factors. In this study, we aimed to assess whether an exaggerated TG response was present in cases with MetS who had undergone OGTT. Methods: In total, 88 cases (70 females, 18 males) without diabetes who were aged older than 18 years were recruited. All the cases underwent 75-gram OGTT. Fifty-one cases (42 females, 9 males; mean age: 48.69±10.13 years) with MetS according to the International Diabetes Foundation formed the MetS group, while 37 cases without MetS (28 females, 9 males; mean age: 48.78±9.18 years) formed the control group. Results: OGTT 0-, 1-, and 2-hour TG levels were 170.96±81.10 mg/dL, 166.94±72.82 mg/dL, and 157.76±74.29 mg/dL in the MetS group and 116.46±47.60 mg/dL, 115.35±46.01 mg/dL, and 108.51±49.33 mg/dL in the control group, respectively. The 2-hour TG levels were significantly decreased in both groups compared with the 0and 1-hour levels (p=0.001 for both). In both the groups, glucose and insulin levels significantly increased in the 1st hour compared with the 0th hour and significantly decreased in the 2nd hour compared with the 1st hour (p=0.001 for both). Conclusion: In this study, the presence of MetS did not have an effect on TG response to OGTT. The decrease in TG levels in both groups may be associated with the acute decreasing effect of early-phase insulin on TG.
Impact of plot size and model selection on forest biomass estimation using airborne LiDAR: A case study of pine plantations in southern Spain

Navarro-Cerrillo R.M. , González-Ferreiro E. , García-Gutiérrez J., Ceacero Ruiz C.J., Hernández-Clemente R. (2017): Impact of plot size and model selection on forest biomass estimation using airborne LiDAR: A case study of pine plantations in southern Spain. J. For. Sci., 63: 88–97. We explored the usefulness of LiDAR for modelling and mapping the stand biomass of two conifer species in southern Spain. We used three different plot sizes and two statistical approaches (i.e. stepwise selection and genetic algorithm selection) in combination with multiple linear regression models to estimate biomass. 43 predictor variables derived from discrete-return LiDAR data (4 pulses per m2) were used for estimating the forest biomass of Pinus sylvestris Linnaeus and Pinus nigra Arnold forests. Twelve circular plots – six for each species – and three different fixed-radius designs (i.e. 7, 15, and 30 m) were established within the range of the airborne LiDAR. The Bayesian information criterion and R2 were used to select the best models. As expected, the models that included the largest plots (30 m) yielded the highest R2 value (0.91) for Pinus sp. using genetic algorithm models. Considering P. sylvestris and P. nigra models separately, the genetic algorithm approach also yielded the highest R2 values for the 30-m plots (P. nigra: R2 = 0.99, P. sylvestris: R2 = 0.97). The results we obtained with two species and different plot sizes revealed that increasing the size of plots from 15 to 30 m had a low effect on modelling attempts.
Revisiting the Growth–Inflation Nexus: A Wavelet Analysis

Motivated by the concern that the recent surge in inflation could retard growth, the paper revisits the nexus between inflation and growth from the perspective of an emerging economy, India. Examining this relationship using a wavelet multi resolution analysis with varying time scale decomposition suggests a strong and persistent negative relationship between growth and inflation for a short time scale, while it is not significant for a longer time scale.
Thermal diffusivity determination of liquid trough thermal diffusion length measurement

A new Optical Fiber Thermal Wave Resonance Cavity (OF-TWRC) technique was used to determine thermal diffusivity of liquids from the thermal diffusion length obtained from the curve of pyroelectric amplitude exponential decay with respect to cavity length and compared with the linear fitting of pyroelectric phase signal. The average thermal diffusivity of water obtained by this calculated method gives the value for water as 1.472 32 10 cm s − × . The thermal parameters for water and for other liquids agree with reported values in the literature.
CARDIORESPIRATORY FITNESS IS ASSOCIATED WITH INDICES OF NEUROCOGNITIVE FUNCTION IN ADULTS

Koehler RJ, Martens DM, Henderson JK. Cardiorespiratory Fitness is Associated With Indices of Neurocognitive Function in Adults. Journal of Undergraduate Kinesiology Research 2007;3(1):62-71. Purpose: Much is known of the relationship between physical fitness and health in aging adults. However, less is known about the relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and cognitive functioning as the human body ages. The purpose of our study was to see how cardiorespiratory fitness correlates with cognitive functioning across a large age range. Methods: Our study consisted of 6 men and 7 women ranging from ages 20 to 60. Peak VO2 levels were gathered using Viasys and MedGraphics equipment. Cognitive functioning was measured using ImPACT software. Statistical analysis was done using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Version 14.0 (SPSS, Inc, Chicago, IL) Pearson r was calculated to determine the correlation between cardiorespiratory fitness and composite neurocognitive scores (verbal memory, visual memory, visual motor speed, and reaction time) from the ImPACT testing software. Results: The correlation between cardiorespiratory fitness and composite neurocognitive scores were significant (p < 0.05) at 0.7039, 0.7954, 0.8276, and -0.9218 for verbal memory, visual memory, visual motor speed, and reaction time, respectively. However, a significant correlation was also observed between cardiorespiratory fitness and age (-0.9507). Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrate that neurocognitive function is associated with aerobic fitness. However, this association was shown to be agedependent, suggesting age rather than cardiorespiratory fitness level as a predictor of neurocognitive ability.
Design of a Rotating Permanent Magnet System for 5-DOF Control of Micro-robots

Recent work in magnetically-actuated micro-scale robots for biomedical and microfluidic applications has resulted in magnetic actuation systems which can remotely command precise five-degree-of-freedom control of magnetic devices. The objective of this work is to evaluate the capabilities and limitations of these existing systems and to provide a more complete understanding regarding the limits of field generation. As part of this study, a novel actuation system composed of an array of rotating permanent magnets with the potential for increased field and gradient strength, and minimal heat generation is presented. The nonlinear control inputoutput relationship is modeled, a technique to determine the control inputs is developed, and an optimization framework for designing system configurations for targeted applications is shown. A proof-of-concept prototype system is used to demonstrate the feasibility of this type of actuation by performing three standard microrobotic locomotion methods requiring independent control over the applied magnetic fields and forces in three dimensions.
Behavioural Assessment Perspective on Reward System Management and Performance: An Empirical Finding on Indonesian Lecturer

The role of this research is to get a clearer picture of how remuneration system influence lecturer and employee performance moderates by motivation, specifically in the state universities. This study commenced in 3 major state universities in Central Java Indonesia in order to have Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) method was applied to examine and analyse the relationships between determinants. The results of this study show that ‘performance feedback’ has negative effect on ‘competence’; the relationship between ‘competence’ and ‘motivation’ is negative;‘remuneration’ positively affects ‘motivation’; the greater the level of remuneration, the greater the level of working performance intention in the institutions’;and there is positive and significant relationship between ‘motivation’ and ‘performance intention’. The study provides the importance of how the remuneration system can be applicated as one focal scheme to enhance instituions performance in general, especially applied to college.
Latex glove sensitivity amongst diagnostic imaging healthcare personnel: a study in Southeastern Nigeria.

The paper reports a cross-sectional study to determine the prevalence and type of symptoms, causal agents and awareness of latex glove reactions amongst four professional groups. The study was done at diagnostic imaging departments within ten major hospitals in Southeastern Nigeria. Radiologists/resident radiologists, radiographers, radiology nurses and darkroom technicians who were occupationally exposed to latex gloves were investigated between June and September 2006 to determine the level of latex hypersensitivity. The results show that prevalence is similar to that demonstrated elsewhere with 12.4% of individuals expressing latex associated symptoms. Symptoms included itching and redness of hands, dry cracked skin, soreness of eyes, and upper respiratory tract complaints. There are strong relationships between number of gloves used per day, duration of glove use and expression of symptoms. About 62.8% (n=76) of the respondents had previous knowledge of hypersensitivity reaction to latex gloves prior to this investigation. The paper concludes that latex hypersensitivity is a real problem amongst diagnostic imaging healthcare personnel in our locality. This preliminary work, therefore, provides the basis of a much larger controlled study in the future. African Journal of Health Sciences Vol. 15 (1&2) 2008: pp. 28-33
Histological Study on Double Line of Intravenous Tacrolimus Infusion in Sla Defined Pig Model

The immunosuppressive therapy still remains the only therapeutic strategy to control excessive immune activation following renal transplantation, but remain the problems related to excessive immunosuppression and in particular the toxicity due to high doses of immunosuppressive drugs such as calcineurin inhibitors. The present study has the aim of documenting, in a porcine animal model, the histological damage from calcineurin inhibitors using incremental doses of Tacrolimus, achieved in a limited amount of time, until it reaches toxic blood concentrations. We perform the study under different condition, like oral administration, intravenous infusion and with or without kidney transplant. It is noted that the damage is early, predominantly vascular and that affects different organs in addition to the kidneys. We also observe that the functional damage underestimates the structural damage. The search for non-invasive methods for the identification of biomarkers of nephrotoxicity and rejection, and to better characterize the inflammation status, led us to conduct analysis of the exosomal content, allowing us to observe the presence of serum cytokines which, although in low amounts, suggest a possible role of these in the inflammatory process mediated by exosomal vesicles. Finally, following the genetic SLA typing for the determination of the donors and the recipients, in an accessory project, we got a controlled and stable colony of pigs with SLA defined in homozygosis through the coupling of specific pathogen free pigs (SPF) for DQB-1 and SLA-1 genes.
Factors Associated with Treatment Failure among Smear Positive TB Patients in Khorasan-e-Razavi and Sistan-Baluchistan Provinces, Iran

Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) treatment failure is one of the major problems of the health sector in developing countries. Poor treatment of patients leads to drug resistance, relapse, death, and ultimately prevents TB control programs. This study was conducted to determine the factors affecting tuberculosis treatment failure in Khorasan and SistanBalochistan regions which have a high prevalence of TB. Methods: In this case control study 270 patients with tuberculosis (90 cases, 180 controls) were analyzed. New TB patients registered with failure to treatment according to the national protocol between March 2008 March 2012 were chosen as cases and new TB patients with negative sputum smear in the same time frame were enrolled as control group. Demographic data and clinical treatment outcomes were collected through interviews and file records. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine the predictors of treatment failure in SPSS 19. Results: Independent factors and predictors of failure treatment included illiteracy, a three plus positive sputum smear, positive sputum smear at end of the second month, non-implementation of the Directly Observed Treatment Short strategy by healthcare staff, history of addiction and history of diabetes. Conclusion: Intervention programs for early detection and control of diabetes, drug control programs, giving priority to providing DOTS by health care workers, more individual care and attention to patients with initial smear p + 3 or those that remain sputum positive at the end of the second month or those who are less educated is necessary. J Microbiol Infect Dis 2016;6(4): 172-178
Gradient elasticity: a transformative stress analysis tool to design notched components against uniaxial/multiaxial high‐cycle fatigue

This paper investigates the accuracy of gradient elasticity in estimating high-cycle fatigue strength of notched components subjected to both uniaxial and multiaxial fatigue loading. A novel design methodology is formulated by combining Ru and Aifantis’ gradient elasticity with the Theory of Critical Distances and the Modified Wohler Curve Method. The keyfeature of this innovative design methodology is that, via the Theory of Critical Distances, gradient elasticity’s length scale parameter is directly estimated from conventional material fatigue properties (i.e., the plain fatigue limit and the threshold value of the stress intensity factor). From a stress analysis point of view, the proposed approach directly post-processes the gradient-enriched stress states determined, at the hot-spots, on the surface of the component under investigation (and independently of the sharpness of the stress concentrator being assessed). The accuracy and reliability of this design method was checked by using a large number of experimental results taken from the literature and generated by testing notched metallic samples under uniaxial as well as under multiaxial fatigue loading. This comprehensive validation exercise demonstrates that the systematic usage of this transformative design approach leads to the same level of accuracy as the one which is obtained by applying the classic Theory of Critical Distances. This result is certainly remarkable since the proposed approach is not only very efficient from a computational point of view, but it also allows high-cycle fatigue damage to be assessed by directly postprocessing gradient-enriched stress states determined on the surface of the component being assessed.
A long-term observational analysis of aerosol-cloud-rainfall associations over Indian Summer Monsoon region

Monsoonal rainfall is the primary source of surface water in India. Using 12 years of in-situ and satellite observations, we examined association of aerosol loading with cloud fraction, cloud top pressure, cloud top temperature, and daily surface rainfall over Indian summer 20 monsoon region (ISMR). The analyses showed positive correlations between aerosol loading and cloud properties as well as rainfall. A decrease in outgoing longwave radiation and increase in reflected shortwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere with an increase in aerosol loading further supported a seminal role of aerosols on cloud systems. Significant perturbation in liquidand ice-phase microphysics was also evident over ISMR. For the 25 polluted cases, delay in the onset of collision-coalescence processes and enhancement in the condensation efficiency, allows for more condensate mass to be lifted up to the mixed-colder phases. This results in the higher mass concentration of bigger sized ice-phase hydrometeors and, therefore, implies that the delayed rain processes eventually lead to more surface rainfall. Numerical simulation of a typical rainfall event case over ISMR using spectral bin 30 microphysical scheme coupled with Weather Research Forecasting (WRF-SBM) model was also performed. Simulated microphysics also illustrated the initial suppression of warm rain coupled with increase in updraft velocity under high aerosol loading leads to enhanced supercooled liquid droplets above freezing level and ice-phase hydrometeors, resulting in increased accumulated surface rainfall. Thus, both observational and numerical analysis suggest that 35 high aerosol loading may induce cloud invigoration and thereby increasing surface rainfall over the ISMR. While the meteorological variability influence the strength of the observed positive associations, our results suggest that the persistent aerosol-associated deepening of cloud systems and intensification of surface rain amounts was applicable to all the meteorological sub-regimes over the ISMR. Hence, we believe that these results provide a 40 step forward in our ability to address aerosol-cloud-rainfall associations based on satellite observations over ISMR
Sentiment-Induced Institutional Trading Behavior and Asset Pricing in Securitized Real Estate Markets

Institutional investors such as pension funds or insurance companies commonly invest in the unsecuritized and securitized real estate market. We investigate how institutional investor sentiment in the inefficient commercial real estate market affects institutional trading behavior in the REIT market and subsequently asset pricing. In particular, we test two alternative theories flight to liquidity and style investing theory to explain the sentimentinduced trading behavior of institutional investors in the REIT market for the pre-crisis (2002-2006), crisis (2007-2009) and post-crisis (2010-2012) period. We find that the applicability of either theory depends on economic conditions. In the pre-crisis period institutional investors switched capital in and out of REITs based on their sentiment in the private market (style investing). However, in the crisis period institutional investors switched capital from the illiquid private market to the more liquid REIT market (flight to liquidity). The flight to liquid REITs continues into the post-crisis to a lesser extent and suggests that the financial crisis has changed institutional investment behavior. Our findings hold across different groups of REITs (e.g. high and low institutional ownership, S&P and non-S&P REITs) and property types. We also find that institutional real estate investor sentiment introduces a non-fundamental component into REIT pricing.
Added masses computation for unconventional airships and aerostats through geometric shape evaluation and meshing

The modern development in design of airships and aerostats has led to unconventional configurations quite different from the classical ellipsoidal and spherical ones. This new class of air-vehicles presents a mass-to-volume ratio that can be considered very similar to the density of the fluid displaced by the vehicle itself, and as a consequence, modeling and simulation should consider the added masses in the equations of motion. The concept of added masses deals with the inertia added to a system, since an accelerating or decelerating body moving into a fluid displaces a volume of the neighboring fluid. The aim of this paper is to provide designers with the added masses matrix for more than twenty Lighter Than Air vehicles with unconventional shapes. Starting from a CAD model of a given shape, by applying a panel-like method, its external surface is properly meshed, using triangular elements. The methodology has been validated by comparing results obtained with data available in literature for a known benchmark shape, and the inaccuracies of predictions agree with the typical precision required in conceptual design. For each configuration, a CAD model and a related added masses matrix are provided, with the purpose of assisting the practitioner in the design and flight simulation of modern airships and scientific balloons.
RSK bases and Kazhdan-Lusztig cells

From the combinatorial characterizations of the right, left, and two-sided Kazhdan-Lusztig cells of the symmetric group, 'RSK bases' are constructed for certain quotients by two-sided ideals of the group ring and the Hecke algebra. Applications to invariant theory, over various base rings, of the general linear group and representation theory of the symmetric group are discussed.
Species- and nestmate brood discrimination in the sibling wood ant species Formica paralugubris and Formica lugubris

Formica lugubris and F. paralugubris are sympatric sibling species of wood ants, both of which are widely distributed in Switzerland. Until 1996 they were considered the same species, F. lugubris. To investigate whether the two species can be distinguished based on discrimination cues used by the workers we used the pupa-carrying test first introduced by Rainer Rosengren. In this test workers of discriminator colonies are faced with two kinds of pupae and their preferences for one of the types are recorded based on differential retrieval. Interspecific comparisons showed that ants preferred conspecific worker pupae to those of the sibling species regardless whether the pupae were con-colonial or hetero-colonial. Hence, this test can be used as a taxonomic tool to identify wood ants hardly distinguishable by morphological characters. In intraspe-cific comparisons the highly polygynous (many queens per colony) F. paralugubris, the polygynous form of F. lugubris and the monogynous (single queen per nest) to weakly polygynous form of F. lugubris expressed different trends in their preference behaviour (with nestmate recognition in 14%, 20% and 31% of replicates, respectively). Only F. paralugubris presented no significant nestmate recognition.