Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phase–velocity dispersion curves and small-scale geophysics using noise correlation slantstack technique

SUMMARY It has been demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally that the Green’s function between two receivers can be retrieved from the cross-correlation of isotropic noise records. Since surface waves dominate noise records in geophysics, tomographic inversion using noise correlation techniques have been performed from Rayleigh waves so far. However, very few numerical studies implying surface waves have been conducted to confirm the extraction of the true dispersion curves from noise correlation in a complicated soil structure. In this paper, synthetic noise has been generated in a small-scale (<1 km) numerical realistic environment and classical processing techniques are applied to retrieve the phase velocity dispersion curves, first step toward an inversion. We compare results obtained from spatial autocorrelation method (SPAC), high-resolution frequency-wavenumber method (HRFK) and noise correlation slantstack techniques on a 10-sensor array. Two cases are presented in the (1‐20 Hz) frequency band that corresponds to an isotropic or a directional noise wavefield. Results show that noise correlation slantstack provides very accurate phase velocity estimates of Rayleigh waves within a wider frequency band than classical techniques and is also suitable for accurately retrieving Love waves dispersion curves.
Novae II. Model, multi-band outburst, bipolar ejecta, accretion disk, relativistic electrons, etc

The study of novae is continued and a self-consistent updated physical model for classical/recurrent novae derived from multi-wavelength observations is presented. In particular, observations of novae support the origin of the optical continuous emission in the outburst ejecta, mass-based segregation and clump formation in the ejecta, origin of the Orion, diffuse enhanced lines and dust in the clumps, prompt Fe II line formation in swept-up material, energising of electrons to relativistic velocities by the explosion and the existence of a large cool envelope around the accreting white dwarf in quiescence. The rapid transfer of thermonuclear energy should be adiabatic which energises and ejects all the particles in the overlying layers. Our study results in the following conclusions which are relevant for novae and other astrophysical systems: (1) Electrons are instantaneously energised to relativistic velocities in the explosion alongside the heavier atoms and ions. No post-ejection shock acceleration needs to be invoked. (2) Rotation of an incompressible spherical accreting object leads to a latitude-dependent potential such that the accretion rate is maximum at the poles and minimum at the equator. This will form a prolate-shaped envelope. Energetic expulsion of this envelope will result in a bipolar ejecta/outflow. Such outflows cannot be ejected from non-rotating spherical objects. (3) The latitude-dependent accretion rates in a rotating accreting object will also lead to accumulation of the infalling matter outside the object in the non-polar regions thus forming an accretion disk. The angular momentum of the incoming matter plays no role in the formation of an accretion disk. Accretion disks cannot form around a non-rotating object.
Pre-dispersal Seed Predation by Tephritidae Is Common among Species of Australian Alpine Asteraceae

Abstract This study examined levels of predation (% flower heads with insects and/or damage) and number of Tephritidae (seed-fly) in flower heads of 29 species of Australian alpine Asteraceae. Pre-dispersal seed predation was common among the Asteraceae, with all but four species with some flower heads containing Tephritidae. Levels of predation within species were also high, with most flower heads damaged in just under half of the species, and >90% of flower heads damaged in five species. Three species had flower heads containing Tephritis bushi (Diptera: Tephritidae, sp. nov.) while 23 species had flower heads containing Tephritis poenia (Diptera: Tephritidae (Walter)). Among species levels of all predation and number of Tephritidae per flower head were positively correlated with the diameter of the flower head, but not the color or type of flower head. The expected positive association between pre-dispersal seed predation and altitude and the negative association between predation and flowering time were uncommon among populations of 10 species tested. These results indicate that pre-dispersal seed predation is likely to be an important factor in the reproductive ecology of alpine Asteraceae, with species with larger diameter flower heads having higher levels of predation and more Tephritidae per flower head.
Determinants of Recovery Rates on Defaulted Bonds and Loans for North American Corporate Issuers

The determinants of recovery rates on defaulted loans and bonds for North American corporate issuers over a period of 21 years include seniority, security, type of initial default event, and a wide variety of firm-specific, industry-specific, and macroeconomic factors. Results of univariate analysis and multivariate regressions corroborate results elsewhere on the effect of seniority, security, and macroeconomic factors. Recovery rates are also strongly affected by the type of event precipitating default, the amount of debt an issuer has outstanding that is subordinate to the defaulted security, the tangibility of issuer assets, the prevailing credit spreads at the time of default, and the market-to-book ratio of the firm and its industry prior to default. Seniority and security are the two most important influences, followed by debt cushion, leverage, and asset tangibility. Industry and macroeconomic factors are sometimes very strongly correlated with recovery rates.
Reconciling CMB and structure growth measurements with dark energy interactions

We study a coupled quintessence model with pure momentum exchange and present the effects of such an interaction on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and matter power spectrum. For a wide range of negative values of the coupling parameter β structure growth is suppressed and the model can reconcile the tension between cosmic microwave background observations and structure growth inferred from cluster counts. We find that this model is as good as ΛCDM for CMB and baryon acoustic oscillation data, while the addition of cluster data makes the model strongly preferred, improving the best-fit χ2 value by more than 16.
Ethical leadership and staff retention in Uganda’s health care sector: The mediating effect of job resources

Abstract This paper examined the mediating effect of job resources on the relationship between ethical leadership and staff retention in Uganda. Utilising a sample of 214 health care workers, a cross-sectional research design was adopted. SPSS v. 21 and Analysis of Moment Structure v. 21 were used in the data analysis. Job resources as a whole was established to be a partial mediator in the relationship between ethical leadership and staff retention. Ethical leadership and job resources individually predicted staff retention. Overall, 66% of the variance in staff retention is explained. As a limitation, data were collected in a cross-sectional survey, which might have confounded the causality among the studied variables. Future researchers could conduct longitudinal studies to address this limitation. The findings suggest that leaders need to be ethical in their dealings if they are to enhance the retention function of their staff in their respective organisations. Health care managers should endeavour to provide job resources in order to mitigate the effects of job overload so as to improve on staff retention in their organisations. This study finds support for job resources as a mediator in the relationship between ethical leadership and staff retention in Uganda’s health care sector. This is consistent with the requirements for the examination of process variables in relationships so as to make concrete inferences.
Classifying Aerosols Based on Fuzzy Clustering and Their Optical and Microphysical Properties Study in Beijing, China

Classification of Beijing aerosol is carried out based on clustering optical properties obtained from three Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) sites. The fuzzy -mean (FCM) clustering algorithm is used to classify fourteen-year (2001–2014) observations, totally of 6,732 records, into six aerosol types. They are identified as fine particle nonabsorbing, two kinds of fine particle moderately absorbing (fine-MA1 and fine-MA2), fine particle highly absorbing, polluted dust, and desert dust aerosol. These aerosol types exhibit obvious optical characteristics difference. While five of them show similarities with aerosol types identified elsewhere, the polluted dust aerosol has no comparable prototype. Then the membership degree, a significant parameter provided by fuzzy clustering, is used to analyze internal variation of optical properties of each aerosol type. Finally, temporal variations of aerosol types are investigated. The dominant aerosol types are polluted dust and desert dust in spring, fine particle nonabsorbing aerosol in summer, and fine particle highly absorbing aerosol in winter. The fine particle moderately absorbing aerosol occurs during the whole year. Optical properties of the six types can also be used for radiative forcing estimation and satellite aerosol retrieval. Additionally, methodology of this study can be applied to identify aerosol types on a global scale.
Vicariance Events, not Areas, Should be Used in Biogeographical Analysis

Phylogenetic computer programs work by examining sequences of tree topologies, searching for those trees which yield minimal length. Rather than optimizing each tree from scratch, programs can use computational shortcuts to reduce the work required to compute each new tree's length; however, at least some of the techniques currently in use are approximate, and can miscalculate tree lengths. I describe a new incremental character optimization algorithm which is exact, correct, and comparable in speed to current methods.
THE EFFECT OF CHANGING SLAB THICKNESS ON FRACTURE PROPAGATION

Many avalanches are triggered from shallower parts of a slope. Past research demonstrates that initiating fractures in such areas is easier than in deeper places where the applied stresses must penetrate through more overlying snow before affecting the weak layer. However, to our knowledge there is no work on whether fractures more effectively propagate from deeper to shallower areas, or from shallower to deeper areas. During the 2006/07 and 2007/08 winters, we looked at fracture propagation using standard Extended Column Tests, modified Extended Column Tests with column widths of 200 and 300 cm, and Propagation Saw Tests. We tested fracture propagation on slopes with highly variable weak layer depth and with reshaped slab thickness. Our results suggest that fractures are more likely to propagate further when traveling from under thin to thick slabs than in the opposite direction. We support our test results with four case studies. In these cases, slopes only partially released with big explosives applied where the weak layer was deeper, but then avalanched entirely a few days later when tested with small loads where the weak layer was shallower. Thus, shallower areas of the slab may be both the easiest place to initiate a fracture and also the best place from which to propagate a fracture. These results have broad implications for backcountry travel, avalanche avoidance, and avalanche control work.
Auto-control of pumping operations in sewerage systems by rule-based fuzzy neural networks

Abstract. Pumping stations play an important role in flood mitigation in metropolitan areas. The existing sewerage systems, however, are facing a great challenge of fast rising peak flow resulting from urbanization and climate change. It is imperative to construct an efficient and accurate operating prediction model for pumping stations to simulate the drainage mechanism for discharging the rainwater in advance. In this study, we propose two rule-based fuzzy neural networks, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and counterpropagation fuzzy neural network for on-line predicting of the number of open and closed pumps of a pivotal pumping station in Taipei city up to a lead time of 20 min. The performance of ANFIS outperforms that of CFNN in terms of model efficiency, accuracy, and correctness. Furthermore, the results not only show the predictive water levels do contribute to the successfully operating pumping stations but also demonstrate the applicability and reliability of ANFIS in automatically controlling the urban sewerage systems.
On the Impact of Style Investing over Institutional Herding: Evidence from a Highly Concentrated Market

Fund managers have been found to herd significantly in major international markets, with evidence suggesting that style investing reinforces their herding. However, research to date has not explored the herding-style relationship in highly concentrated markets, despite the impact that market concentration can confer over this relationship. This study investigates this issue in the context of Portugal using monthly funds’ portfolio-holdings and documents evidence suggesting the significant temporal dependence of monthly institutional demand which is for the most part due to herding. The significance of this dependence remains robust when controlling for several styles, as well as accounting for the entry of Portugal into the EURONEXT and the outbreak of the ongoing global crisis. Combining the above with the limited evidence of significance in the presence of the styles controlled for, the authors conclude that Portuguese fund managers herd significantly without style affecting their herding.
Searching Trajectories by Regions of Interest

We propose and investigate a novel query type named trajectory search by regions of interest (TSR query). Given an argument set of trajectories, a TSR query takes a set of regions of interest as a parameter and returns the trajectory in the argument set with the highest spatial-density correlation to the query regions. This type of query is useful in applications such as trip planning and recommendation. To process the TSR query, a set of new metrics are defined to model spatial-density correlations. An efficient trajectory search algorithm is developed that exploits upper and lower bounds to prune the search space and that adopts a query-source selection strategy, as well as integrates a heuristic search strategy based on priority ranking to schedule multiple query sources. The performance of TSR query processing is studied in extensive experiments based on real and synthetic spatial data.
Observations on trees of Scots pine (Pinus silvestris L.) and lichens around a HF and SO₂ emission source

The influence of air pollutants from an iron sintering plant in the northern part of Sweden on Scots pine trees and lichens has been studied. The emission has been around 175 ton HF and 2000 ton SO₂ yearly. The total fluorine and sulphur contents of Scots pine needles from different sample plots around the factory have been analysed. Three years old needles, which had the highest concentrations of fluorine, were used in the analyses. An increased fluorine content was evident within an area of 5 km radius from the emission source. The corresponding sulphur analyses did not show an equal clear relationship to the distance from the factory. The accelerated needle drop of Scots pine trees has been quantitatively recorded. A shorter lifespan of needles coincided with the proximity to the emission source. Together with the observations of the occurrence of the lichens Hypogymnia physodes (L.) W. Wats. , Alectoria spp. and Nephroma arcticum (L.) Torss. their photosynthetic and nitrogen fixation activity was measured under laboratory conditions. The photosynthesis, measured by 14C-technique, was inhibited in samples of Hypogymnia physodes taken within the influence area mentioned above. Also the nitrogen fixation activity in excised cephalodia of Nephroma arcticum sampled near the emission source was significantly inhibited. The results presented are discussed in relation to the techniques used and the ecological consequences of the emission and imission in the area.
Final results from a trial to test the effect of plot size on Eucalyptus hybrid clonal ranking in coastal Zululand, South Africa

Hybrid clones with Eucalyptus grandis as one parent and, generally, E. urophylla as the other parent, are deployed commercially as monoclonal blocks by Sappi in the subtropical region of coastal Zululand, South Africa. In monoclonal blocks genotypes are grown in self-competition. Performance under this scenario may not necessarily correlate well with performance where genotypes are competing for resources with a number of genetically dissimilar genotypes. There is an uncertainty whether plot configuration or size influences clonal ranking and therefore selection of clones for commercialisation. Final results at age eight years of a trial testing eight selected Eucalyptus hybrid clones in single-tree, eight-tree line, and eight x eight tree square plots are reported in this paper. Ranking of the eight clones between the half rotation (44 months) and full rotation (94 months) measurement have remained stable in the single-tree and line plots, but there have been some changes in the square plots. At 94 months, clonal ranking between the single-tree and line plots was consistent (rp = 0.98) with only two clones changing ranks. When comparing the clonal ranking of the single-tree plots to the large square plots rank changes have been significant (rp = 0.65). The overall means for the three different plot types are very similar. The range of the clonal means for tree volume in the single-tree plots (0.4042 m3) is more than five times the range for the square plots (0.0709 m3). Gain predictions using data from the single-tree plots overestimated the realised gains measured in the square plots. The top-performing clone in the single-tree plots had a predicted gain of 74% over the trial mean, but only yielded 7% more in the square plots. Similarly, the worst-ranked clone in the single-tree plots did not perform as poorly as what was predicted (−59%) and produced only 13% less than the trial mean on the square plots.
PROSPECTS FOR MEASURING THE MASS OF BLACK HOLES AT HIGH REDSHIFTS WITH RESOLVED KINEMATICS USING GRAVITATIONAL LENSING

Application of the most robust method of measuring black hole masses, spatially resolved kinematics of gas and stars, is presently limited to nearby galaxies. The Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) and 30m class telescopes (the Thirty Meter Telescope, the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the European Extremely Large Telescope) with milli-arcsecond resolution are expected to extend such measurements to larger distances. Here, we study the possibility of exploiting the angular magnification provided by strong gravitational lensing to measure black hole masses at high redshifts (z ∼ 1–6), using resolved gas kinematics with these instruments. We show that in ∼15% and ∼20% of strongly lensed galaxies, the inner 25 and 50 pc could be resolved, allowing the mass of ≳ 108 M☉ black holes to be dynamically measured with ALMA, if moderately bright molecular gas is present at these small radii. Given the large number of strong lenses discovered in current millimeter surveys and future optical surveys, this fraction could constitute a statistically significant population for studying the evolution of the M–σ relation at high redshifts.
Risk Averse Insiders with Specific Objective Function and Capital Structure Choice in European Emerging Economies

I provide new insights in capital structure choice in European emerging economies by extending the logic beyond the scope of modern capital structure theory, which is based on the assumption that firms are governed by shareholders and follow the goal of maximizing their wealth. I empirically investigate capital structure choice in these countries assuming an alternative corporate governance paradigm that puts risk averse insiders with specific objective function in the firm’s governance structures. I found that firms that are owned by insiders operate with significantly lower leverage, as well as that the probability that a firm uses debt at all drops if insiders are the largest shareholders.
Health behaviour changes and onset of chronic health problems in later life

Objectives: To assess five-year changes in health behaviours in later life and associations with onset of chronic health problems. The results may inform policy and interventions to promote healthy life years in ageing populations. Methods: Data are derived from the Norwegian study on Life-course, Ageing and Generation (NorLAG), a five-year (2002-2007) panel survey comprising a nation wide community sample. The present analyses include a sample of 1,019 respondents aged 60 years and older. Five-year changes in smoking, alcohol use, physical exercise and Body Mass Index (BMI) are assessed according to prevalent and incident chronic health problems. Multivariate logistic analyses of “healthy” behavioural changes are conducted. Results: A total of 453 respondents (45%) reported at least one chronic condition and 13% (N=133) reported onset of chronic conditions in the course of the past five years. Over a five-year period, there was an overall reduction in smoking rates and a decrease in regular physical activity. Alcohol consumption in older people slightly increased over time, but the incidence of chronic health problems tended to reduce alcohol intake. Older persons experiencing chronic health problems were less likely to initiate physical activity. Conclusions: The results provide limited support for the assumption that the onset of a chronic health condition triggers improved health behaviours. This suggests that the health care system could do more in targeting a potential “window of opportunity” for individuals to adopt new healthy behaviours in later life.
The Effect of Corporate Governance on Firms’ Capital Structure of Listed Companies in Sri Lanka

There is a great awareness among the researchers to carry out researches on corporate governance and it contributes to the firms’ competitive advantage and business success. In today’s turbulent economic environment, competitiveness has become more important than ever for a firm’s survival and success. However, there is a gap in studies focusing on corporate governance and capital structure in the context of Sri Lanka. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate whether attributes of corporate governance affect decisions on capital structure of listed companies in Sri Lanka. The sample of the study consisted of 138 non-financial listed companies for five-year period from 2009 to 2013. Board size, board composition, leadership structure, board committees, and managerial ownership were used as corporate governance variables whereas debt ratio as the measure of capital structure and return on assets (ROA) and firm size as control variables. The variables were empirically tested by multiple regression analysis. The findings revealed that there is no significant effect of corporate governance attributes except board composition & board committee on capital structure. The variable of board composition has a significant positive effect and board committee has a negative effect on capital structure.