Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Land Surface Temperature Over Iberian Peninsula

11 Abstract: Land surface temperature (LST) is a key variable in surface-atmosphere energy and water 12 exchanges. The main goals of this study are to (i) evaluate the LST of the European Centre for 13 Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA-Interim and ERA5 reanalyses over Iberian 14 Peninsula using the Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA-SAF) product and 15 to (ii) understand the main drivers of the LST errors in the reanalysis. Simulations with the ECMWF 16 land-surface model in offline mode (uncoupled) were carried out over the Iberian Peninsula and 17 compared with the reanalysis data. Several sensitivity simulations were performed in a confined 18 domain centered in Southern Portugal to investigate potential sources of the LST errors. The 19 Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS) fraction of green vegetation cover (FCover) and the 20 European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI) Land Cover dataset were explored. 21 We found a general underestimation of daytime LST and slightly overestimation at night-time. The 22 results indicate that there is still room for improvement in the simulation of LST in ECMWF 23 products. Still, ERA5 presents an overall higher quality product in relation to ERA-Interim. Our 24 analysis suggested a relation between the large daytime cold bias and vegetation cover differences 25 between (ERA5 and CGLS FCocver) with a correlation of -0.45. The replacement of the low and high 26 vegetation cover by those of ESA-CCI provided an overall reduction of the large Tmax biases during 27 summer. The increased vertical resolution of the soil at the surface, has a positive impact, but much 28 smaller when compared with the vegetation changes. The sensitivity of the vegetation density 29 parameter, that currently depends on the vegetation type, provided further proof for a needed 30 revision of the vegetation in the model, as there is a reasonable correlation between this parameter 31 and the Tmax mean errors when using the ESA-CCI vegetation cover (while the same correlation 32 cannot be reproduced with the original model vegetation). Our results support the hypothesis that 33 vegetation cover is one of the main drivers of the LST summertime cold bias in ERA5 over Iberian 34 Peninsula. 35
Importance of Social Competence at the Start of Elementary School for Adjustment Indicators a Year Later.

The present research investigated the importance of learning-related and interpersonal aspects of social competence as well as parent education in the first grade for school adjustment indicators These included self-reported involvement in bullying, teacher-reported student-teacher relationships, and academic achievement - a year later. Social competence of children was assessed using the Elementary School Social Competence Scale (short version) completed by teachers. The sample consisted of 403 children attending 14 elementary schools in Lithuania. Results indicated that the learning-related aspect of social competence measured in the first grade was significantly related to all indicators measured in the second grade, while the interpersonal aspect of social competence was significantly related to student-teacher relationship quality. Taken together, both aspects of social competence assessed in the first grade explained some 34% of the variance in student-teacher conflict a year later. Interpersonal social competence explained 24% of the variance in student-teacher closeness. Furthermore, learning-related social competence and parent education significantly predicted academic achievement, accounting for 26% of the variance. Results of the present study highlight the lasting links of learning-related social competence and school adjustment indicators in elementary school.
vJHST tcny Explaining Variations in Client Extra Costs Between Software Projects Offshored to India 1

Gaining economic benefits from substantially lower labor costs has been reported as a major reason for offshoring labor-intensive information systems services to low-wage countries. However, if wage differences are so high, why is there such a high level of variation in the economic success between offshored IS projects? This study argues that offshore outsourcing involves a number of extra costs for the ^his paper was recommended for acceptance by Associate Guest Editor Erran Carmel. client organization that account for the economic failure of offshore projects. The objective is to disaggregate these extra costs into their constituent parts and to explain why they differ between offshored software projects. The focus is on software development and maintenance projects that are offshored to Indian vendors. A theoretical framework is developed a priori based on transaction cost economics (TCE) and the knowledge-based view of the firm, comple mented by factors that acknowledge the specific offshore context The framework is empirically explored using a multiple case study design including six offshored software projects in a large German financial service institution. The results of our analysis indicate that the client incurs post contractual extra costs for four types of activities: (1) re quirements specification and design, (2) knowledge transfer, (3) control, and (4) coordination. In projects that require a high level of client-specific knowledge about idiosyncratic business processes and software systems, these extra costs were found to be substantially higher than in projects where more general knowledge was needed. Notably, these costs most often arose independently from the threat of oppor tunistic behavior, challenging the predominant TCE logic of market failure. Rather, the client extra costs were parti cularly high in client-specific projects because the effort for managing the consequences of the knowledge asymmetries between client and vendor was particularly high in these projects. Prior experiences of the vendor with related client projects were found to reduce the level of extra costs but could not fully offset the increase in extra costs in highly client-specific projects. Moreover, cultural and geographic distance between client and vendor as well as personnel turnover were found to increase client extra costs. Slight evidence was found, however, that the cost-increasing impact of these factors was also leveraged in projects with a high level of required client-specific knowledge (moderator effect). MIS Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 333-366/June 2008 333 This content downloaded from 130.92. 9.58 on Mon, 28 Apr 2014 04:33:41 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Dibbern et al./Variations in Client Extra Costs
Study of the self-care agency in patients with heart failure

Aims: patients who take self-care responsibility have been reported to be in less or no need of drug interventions. In this line, the present study was implemented to determine the self-care ability among patients with heart failure. Methods: The present descriptive cross-sectional study has been carried out on 72 patients with heart failure and at least 18 years of age admitted to Imam Khomeini hospital of Ardebil within the time interval of late May to late July, 2010. Data were collected by the European questionnaire of self-care behaviors and were analyzed by SPSS 17 statistical software and descriptive-statistical tests. Results: Self-care ability with the average of 41.18 (±6.26) was found to be in a mild level. Statistical analysis showed significant relationship between heart failure, age, marital status, education, history of training, monthly income, development of other chronic disorders and profession with self-care agency (p 0.05). Conclusion: The results indicated mild self-care ability among the study participants which is affected by basic influential factors including the level of patients' health. Therefore, nurses are required to identify help-seekers' need while performing nursing interventions and investigating self-care behaviors and design and implement planned training to promote self-care ability among patients.
Beta-3 Receptor Agonists

Beta-3 adrenergic receptors (β3-AR) have a more widespread tissue distribution in the human body as compared to beta1- and beta2 (β1/2)-adrenergic receptors, including in the bladder, brain, adipose tissue and cardiovascular system. Thus, β3- AR are potential drug targets for a wide range of therapeutic areas, both cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular including overactive bladder (OAB), depression, metabolic syndrome, obesity and heart failure (HF). β3-AR agonists that are selective to the β3-AR include CL 316,243, amibegron (SR58611A), mirabegron (YM-178) and vibegron (RVT-901). However, in HF, study results regarding a possible inotropic effect of β3-AR agonists remain equivocal and some authors report a negative inotropic effect in HF and β3-AR antagonists are also under study.
Collocation in English: Comprehension and Use by MA Students at Arab Universities

An intricate area in communication and translation for Arab learners of English is collocation. This paper attempts to assess Arab MA students’ comprehension and use of collocation at four Arab universities. Testing these two factors relied on three questionnaires. The first consisted of 20 collocations in Arabic for the 96 respondents to translate into English; the second had 20 English collocations to be translated into Arabic. The third had 9 English collocations with four choices for each along with their Arabic translation equivalents, and the respondents were requested to choose the best collocator for each base. The respondents had no access to any references. The findings revealed that the errors in Questionnaire 1 were 1478 out of 1920 (76.979%), 1218 out of 1920 (63.437%) in Questionnaire 2, and 2712 out of 3456 (78.472%) in the choices of Questionnaire 3. The reasons for such weaknesses were analyzed and suggestions were made.
“We can help ourselves”: does community resilience buffer against the negative impact of flooding on mental health?

Abstract. Empirical evidence of the relationship between social support and post-disaster mental health provides support for a general beneficial effect of social support (main-effect model; Wheaton, 1985). From a theoretical perspective, a buffering effect of social support on the negative relationship between disaster-related stress and mental health also seems plausible (stress-buffering model; Wheaton, 1985). Previous studies, however, (a) have paid less attention to the buffering effect of social support and (b) have mainly relied on interpersonal support (but not collective-level support such as community resilience) when investigating this issue. This previous work might have underestimated the effect of support on post-disaster mental health. Building on a sample of residents in Germany recently affected by flooding (N=118), we show that community resilience to flooding (but not general interpersonal social support) buffered against the negative effects of flooding on post-disaster mental health. The results support the stress-buffering model and call for a more detailed look at the relationship between support and resilience and post-disaster adjustment, including collective-level variables.
Circular RNAs Hsa_circ_0002715 and Hsa_circ_0035197 in Peripheral Blood Are Novel Potential Biomarkers for New-Onset Rheumatoid Arthritis

This study is aimed at exploring the levels of peripheral blood circular RNAs (circRNAs) as biomarker candidates for the diagnosis of new-onset rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The selected twenty-two circRNAs in peripheral blood from new-onset RA patients and healthy controls (HC) were determined by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The levels of hsa_circ_0002715, hsa_circ_0001947, hsa_circ_0000367, and hsa_circ_0035197 were significantly increased in the peripheral blood of new-onset RA patients than in the peripheral blood of HC. And, there were obvious differences in the above four peripheral blood circRNAs between new-onset RA patients and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients. Moreover, there were obvious differences in hsa_circ_0001947 and hsa_circ_0035197 between new-onset RA patients and patients with undiagnosed arthritis (UA). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis suggested that the levels of hsa_circ_0002715 and hsa_circ_0000367 in peripheral blood could distinguish new-onset RA patients from the HC, AS patients, and SLE patients, and the levels of hsa_circ_0001947 and hsa_circ_0035197 in peripheral blood could distinguish new-onset RA patients from the HC, AS patients, SLE patients, and UA patients. The logistic regression model showed that the combination of hsa_circ_0002715 and hsa_circ_0035197 could provide the best diagnostic accuracy with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.758 (sensitivity: 72.9%, specificity: 71.4%). Moreover, the levels of peripheral blood hsa_circ_0002715 were correlated with swollen joint count (SJC), tender joint count (TJC), disease duration, rheumatoid factor (RF), anticitrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA), and hematologic disorder. And, the levels of peripheral blood hsa_circ_0035197 were correlated with hematologic disorder. This study suggests that the combination of hsa_circ_0002715 and hsa_circ_0035197 in peripheral blood may be a potential biomarker of patients with new-onset RA and may be associated with disease activity.
A hyprid technique for human footprint recognition

Biometrics has concerned a great care recently due to its important in the life that starts from civil applications to security and recently terrorism. A Footprint recognition is one of the personal identifications based on biometric measurements. The aim of this research is to design a proper and reliable biometric system for human footprint recognition named (FRBS) that stands for Footprint Recognition Biometric System. In addition, to construct a human footprint database which it is very helpful for various use in scientific application e.g. for authentication. There exist many biometrics databases for other identity but very rare for footprint. As well as the existing one are very limited. This paper presents a robust hyprid techniques which merges between Image Processing with Artificial Intelligent technique via Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) to recognize human footprint. (ACO) plays the essential role that rise the performance and the quality of the results in the biometric system via feature selection. The set of the selected features was treated as exploratory information, and selects the optimum feature set in standings of feature set size. Life RGB footprint images from nine persons with ten images per person constructed from life visual dataset. At first, the visual dataset was pre-processed operations. Each resultant image detects footprint that is cropped to portions represented by three blocks. The first block is for fingers, the second block refers to the center of the foot and the last one determines the heel. Then features were extracted from each image and stored in Excel file to be entered to Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm. The experimental outcomes of the system show that the proposed algorithm evaluates optimal results with smaller feature set comparing with other algorithms. Experimental outcomes show that our algorithm obtains an efficient and accurate result about 100% accuracy in comparison with other researches on the same field.
A Case Study of Job Satisfaction in an Offshore Office: Is Software Engineers’ Motivation at Risk?

Nowadays many software development companies have become global and employ people in different sites around the world. It is common that long-term maintenance software development projects at their later stages migrate to the cheaper sites, while product management and control is performed at a distance. This, however, has one important implication offshoring of old projects might significantly influence job satisfaction and lead to high turnover of the employees in offshore sites. In this case study we investigate job satisfaction through surveying software engineers in a Russian offshore site of a Swedish company and interviewing an employee who decided to quit. Our study shows that the nature of maintenance projects and crosssite collaboration may negatively impact software engineers’ motivation, which is believed to be a key factor for project success in terms of productivity and conformance quality. The aim of this case study is to acknowledge motivational risks in order to mitigate them, and thus prevent attrition of experienced employees in the future.
Conceptualizing Locational Uncertainty in Geographic Objects: Towards a More Balanced Approach

A particular aspect relevant to GIScience is exploring the behavior of models subject to uncertainty associated with the spatial position of geographic objects. This work presents a way forward to address shortcomings in the way uncertainty in objects is conceptualized in spatial models by introducing a mixed probabilistic-fuzzy conceptual model of uncertainty that balances conceptual simplicity with flexibility. By taking a balanced approach, adoption of the new approach in practical applications will be encouraged. Due to the different kinds of uncertainty that may be present in spatial models, it is envisioned that this conceptual model will serve as a foundation in analyzing mixed uncertainties in GIS applications. In order to forge a path towards this goal, challenges in systematic uncertainty and sensitivity analysis methodologies under mixed uncertainties are briefly presented.
Factors associated with common mental disorders in a hospital cleaning staff

Objective: to analyze the prevalence and factors associated with common mental disorders in a hospital cleaning staff. Methods: cross-sectional research with 78 cleaners. To identify the common mental disorders, data were collected through a questionnaire with sociodemographic variables and health and work conditions, from the Self Reporting Questionnaire-20. For the analysis, the chi-square test and the Pearson or Spearmann correlation were performed. Results: most participants were female, between 36 and 50 years, brown or black, and lived with a partner. There was a mental disorder prevalence of 25.6% and an association with hearing problems, dizziness, low back pain, negative health perception, and work satisfaction. The depressive mood stood out among the dimensions of the Self Reporting Questionnaire-20. Conclusion: the factors associated with the common mental disorder were: hearing problems, dizziness, low back pain, negative health perception, and work satisfaction.
Aflibercept

Each month, subscribers to The Formulary Monograph Service receive 5 to 6 well-documented monographs on drugs that are newly released or are in late phase 3 trials. The monographs are targeted to Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committees. Subscribers also receive monthly 1-page summary monographs on agents that are useful for agendas and pharmacy/nursing in-services. A comprehensive target drug utilization evaluation/medication use evaluation (DUE/MUE) is also provided each month. With a subscription, the monographs are sent in print and are also available on-line. Monographs can be customized to meet the needs of a facility. Subscribers to The Formulary Monograph Service also receive access to a pharmacy bulletin board, The Formulary Information Exchange (The F.I.X.). All topics pertinent to clinical and hospital pharmacy are discussed on The F.I. X. A drug class review is now published monthly with The Formulary Monograph Service. Through the cooperation of The Formulary, Hospital Pharmacy publishes selected reviews in this column. For more information about The Formulary Monograph Service or The F.I. X. , call The Formulary at 800-322-4349. The May 2012 monograph topics are on exenatide extended-release injection, ingenol mebutate gel, tafluprost, ivermectin 0.5% topical lotion, and carfilzomib. The DUE/MUE is on exenatide.
The heterogenous cyclicality of income and wages among income groups

We investigate the cyclicality of real wages and income using individual data for the UK over the 1991-2008 period. By paying special attention to heterogeneity among different income groups, we document that top incomes and wages are more cyclical than lower ones. Moreover, the estimated cyclicality is considerably higher in recessions than in expansions for top-incomes. We also show that real wages and income are acyclical for low income workers. Instead, their adjustment to the cycle takes place through transitions to and from unemployment. JEL Classification: E24, E32, J31.
Thermal Performance of Vacuum Insulated Window Shutter Systems

Windows are a major area of heat loss in buildings losing up to 10 times more energy compared to other building elements. Thermal shutters are used to improve the energy performance of windows in both hot and cold climatic conditions. The performance of thermal shutters however greatly depends on the thermal insulation and construction detailing, specifically cold-bridging, through the shutter, as well as between the shutter and window frames. This study evaluates the effects of cold-bridging, trickle ventilation and the size of the air cavity, between the vacuum insulated shutter and the window, on the performance of window thermal shutters. Thermal simulations are conducted in VOLTRA (Thermal analysis software) to assess the conditions. The results indicate that although thermal shutters reduce heat-loss through windows, their performance could be significantly affected by cold-bridging by up to 90%. The additional thermal resistance due to the air cavity and the ventilation through the trickle vent appeared to be much less significant compared to the effects of thermal bridging.
ePubWU Institutional Repository

This paper examines the possible contribution of evolutionary economics to macro-economic modelling of flood impacts to provide guidance for future economic risk modelling. Most macroeconomic models start from a neoclassical economic perspective and focus on equilibrium outcomes, either in a static or dynamic way, and describe economic processes at a high level of aggregation. As a consequence, they typically fail to account for the complexity of social interactions and other behavioural responses of consumers and producers to disasters, which may affect the macroeconomic impacts of floods. Employing evolutionary principles and methods, such as agent-based modelling, may help to address some of the shortcomings of current macro-economic models. We explore and discuss the implications of applying consumer and producer heterogeneity, bounded rationality, network effects, social and technological learning, co-evolution and adaptive policy-making concepts into existing economic frameworks for the assessment of macro-economic impacts of floods.