Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Mesh Grids on the Turbulent Mixing Layer of an Axisymmetric Jet

This article focuses on the effect that two different mesh grids have on the structure of the mixing layer of an axisymmetric jet. Detailed measurements of mean velocity and turbulent velocity fluctuations are made with an X hot-wire probe in the range 0.5 ≤ x/d ≤ 10, where x is the longitudinal distance from the nozzle exit plane and d is the nozzle diameter. The grids are introduced at two locations—one location just downstream of the nozzle exit plane and the other location upstream of the nozzle exit plane in order to perturb the nozzle exit boundary layer. One mesh completely covers the nozzle (full mesh or FM) and the other mesh covers the central, high-speed zone (disk mesh or DM). With reference to the undisturbed jet, FM yields a significant reduction in the turbulence intensity and width of the shear layer, whereas DM enhances the turbulence intensity and increases the width of the shear layer. Both grids suppress the formation of the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability in the mixing layer. Results are presented, mainly at x/d = 5 and 6 in both the spectral domain and physical space. In the latter context, second- and third-order structure functions associated with u (the longitudinal velocity fluctuation) and v (the lateral or radial velocity fluctuation) are presented only for the flow perturbed by placing the mesh outside the nozzle. All mesh geometries have a more significant effect on the second-order structure function of u than on that of v. The third-order energy transfer term is affected in such a way that, relative to the undisturbed jet, its peak location is shifted to a smaller scale when FM is used and to a larger scale with DM. This is consistent with our observations that FM reduces the turbulence in the shear layer while DM enhances it. It is suggested that the large-scale vortices that are formed at the edge of the grids play a significant role in the transfer of energy.
Emphasis on emotions in student learning: Analyzing relationships between overexcitabilities and the learning approach using Bayesian MIMIC modeling

AbstractThe aim of this study is to investigate interrelationships between overexcitability and learning patterns from the perspective of personality development according to Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. To this end, Bayesian structural equation modeling (BSEM) is applied which allows for the simultaneous inclusion in the measurement model of all, approximate zero cross-loadings and residual covariances based on zero-mean, small-variance priors, and represents substantive theory better. Our BSEM analysis with a sample of 516 students in higher education yields positive results regarding the validity of the model, in contrast to a frequentist approach to validation, and reveals that overexcitability – the degree and nature of which is characteristic of the potential for advanced personality development, according to Dabrowski’s theory – is substantially related to the way in which information is processed, as well as to the regulation strategies that are used for this purpose and to study.
Proximate Composition, Minerals and Vitamins Content of Selected Vegetables Grown in Peshawar

Summary: Ten vegetables namely Pot purslane, Spinach, Turnip, Garlic, Mustard (Sarson), Radish, Bitter gourd, Lady finger, Bath sponge and Brinjal were analyzed for their proximate composition, vitamin and mineral contents to evaluate their importance in human nutrition. The results showed that almost all vegetables contain appreciable amount of essential nutrients. The maximum content of moisture, carbohydrate, crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, and ash recorded in these vegetables was (92.50 %, 26.88 %, 5.0%, 0.40%, 1.4% and 1.9%), respectively, with a minimum content (66.80 %, 3.91 %, 0.7%, 0.08%, 0.4% and 0.38%), respectively. Maximum concentration of macro minerals K, Ca, Mg, and Na, observed was (400, 210, 109, and 55) mg/100 g, respectively, with a minimum concentration (26, 15, 17, and 10) mg/100 g, respectively. Maximum concentration of micro minerals Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn and Cr observed was (29, 0.33, 3.05, 1.70, and 0.36) mg/100 g with a minimum concentration (2, 0.05, 0.43, 0.21, and 0.06) mg/100 g, respectively. Maximum concentration of water soluble vitamins i.e. thiamine, riboflavin, niacin and ascorbic acid recorded was (0.280, 0.190, 0.69, and 65) mg/100 g with a minimum concentration (0.011, 0.015, 0.23, and 4.00) mg/100 g, respectively. From this study it can be concluded that consumption of vegetables in different combinations could provide a reasonable daily recommended amount of essential nutrients for the maintenance of healthy life and normal body functioning.
Predicting Intercultural Sensitivity Using Demographic Variables Among College of Agriculture Undergraduate Students

Employers seek interculturally sensitive professionals who can successfully navigate among a variety of cultures and serve as ambassadors to promote commerce internationally. To facilitate the development of interculturally sensitive citizens, universities offer students a variety of opportunities, such as studying abroad and internationally designated courses (I-courses), with the assumption that by experiencing another culture, participants will deepen their levels of interculturally sensitivity. These assumptions are rarely tested empirically. The purpose of the study was to determine if agriculture students’ level of intercultural sensitivity differed in terms of the type of intercultural experience selected (studying abroad experience or I-course) and various demographic variables. The findings indicated that 98.01% of the students were operating at the lowest levels of intercultural sensitivity (ethnocentric stage), as measured by a standardized and validated instrument. In conclusion, agriculture undergraduate college students’ level of intercultural sensitivity did not differ in terms of the type of intercultural experience selected (studying abroad vs. I-course) or various demographic variables including college year. Implications suggest that neither the time spent in college (from freshman to senior years) nor experiences (studying abroad or I-courses) increased levels of intercultural sensitivity among population studied. Due to the importance of developing intercultural sensitivity among the student body, it is recommended that colleges of agriculture implement a multi-pronged approach to developing intercultural sensitivity among undergraduates, including empirically tested experiences that are known to increase cultural competency. Future research should focus on identifying variables that predict changes in intercultural sensitivity, so that program planners can achieve their goal of developing intercultural competence among the student body.
Connections between Floer-type invariants and Morse-type invariants of Legendrian knots

We define an algebraic/combinatorial object on the front projection Σ of a Legendrian knot, called a Morse complex sequence, abbreviated MCS. This object is motivated by the theory of generating families and provides new connections between generating families, normal rulings, and augmentations of the Chekanov-Eliashberg DGA. In particular, we place an equivalence relation on the set of MCSs on Σ and construct a surjective map from the equivalence classes to the set of chain homotopy classes of augmentations of L Σ , where L Σ is the Ng resolution of Σ. In the case of Legendrian knot classes admitting representatives with two-bridge front projections, this map is bijective. We also exhibit two standard forms for MCSs and give explicit algorithms for finding these forms. The definition of an MCS, the equivalence relation, and the statements of some of the results originate from unpublished work of Petya Pushkar.
The Determinants and Effects of Training at Work: Bringing the Workplace Back in

This paper brings together two research fields: on work-related training and high performance work practices (HPWP), respectively. We estimate models of both the determinants and the impact of training using the NCPP/ESRI Changing Workplace Survey. Our models of the determinants of training confirm previous research: age, education, contract, tenure, and firm size all influence training. Several components of HPWP are associated with a higher probability of training, specifically, general (non-firm-specific) training. Participation in general training is associated with higher earnings, as is involvement in highly participative and consultative working arrangements, and performance reward systems. These patterns of training, and returns to training, are broadly consistent with HPWP approaches and represent a challenge to human capital theory.
THE UTCI INDEX IN LESKO AND LUBLIN AND ITS CIRCULATION DETERMINANTS

In Lesko and Lublin, Poland, from 1981 to 2005, the UTCI values were calculated for 8 observation terms a day. The frequency of the UTCI classes determined as ‘cold stress’ was dominant in Lesko and in Lublin (65-66%). The frequency of classes determined as ‘heat stress’ was observed in 3% of all situations. On the other hand, restricted to the 12 UTC July and August term, the frequency of heat stress classes exceeded 40% in Lublin. Correlation between the UTCI in Lesko and Lublin (Poland) was stronger in spring and autumn than in summer and winter. Correlation between the UTCI and the meridional circulation index was more significant than between the UTCI and zonal circulation index in the period from April to November in both stations. The opposite situation occurred in February.
The Effect of In-Store Travel Distance on Unplanned Spending: Applications to Mobile Promotion Strategies

Typically, shoppers’ paths only cover less than half of the areas in a grocery store. Given that shoppers often use physical products in the store as external memory cues, encouraging shoppers to travel more of the store may increase unplanned spending. Estimating the direct effect of in-store travel distance on unplanned spending, however, is complicated by the difficulty of collecting in-store path data and the endogeneity of in-store travel distance. To address both issues, the authors collect a novel data set using in-store radio frequency identification tracking and develop an instrumental variable approach to account for endogeneity. Their analysis reveals that the elasticity of unplanned spending on travel distance is 57% higher than the uncorrected ordinary least squares estimate. Simulations based on the authors’ estimates suggest that strategically promoting three product categories through mobile promotion could increase unplanned spending by 16.1%, compared with the estimated effect of a benchmark strategy based on relocating three destination categories (7.2%). Furthermore, the authors conduct a field experiment to assess the effectiveness of mobile promotions and find that a coupon that required shoppers to travel farther from their planned path resulted in a substantial increase in unplanned spending ($21.29) over a coupon for an unplanned category near their planned path ($13.83). The results suggest that targeted mobile promotions aimed at increasing in-store path length can increase unplanned spending.
Isolation of Coprophilous Mycoflora from Different Dung Types in Some Local Government Areas of Niger State, Nigeria

This study investigated coprophilous mycoflora on different dung types in some Area of Niger State. Dung samples of four herbivorous animals (Camel, Cow, Donkey and Horse) were collected from three areas (Enagi, Lapai and New Bussa) in Niger State, Nigeria. The dungs were dried in the Department of Biological Sciences Laboratory, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Lapai. A total of six (6) species of macro fungi (Agaricus campestris, Panaeolus papilionaceus, Agaricus bisphorus, Protostropharia semiglobata, Deconica coprophila, Copelandia cyanescens) and six (6) species of micro fungi (Aspergilous. niger, A flavus, A. fumigates, Alternaria sp, Pencillium sp, and Rhizopus stolonifer) were isolated. A. campestris has the highest percentage (40%) of macro fungi (from cow dung), while the least was A. bisphorus with (0.02%). Alternaria sp has the highest (33.26%) among the micro fungi isolated. From horse dung, A. fumigates was isolated with the least percentage of occurrence of 0.10% among the micro fungi. On this note, the animal dung investigated consists of both edible and poisonous fungi. Public enlightenment is therefore recommended on the good and bad effects these fungi. They may also be harnessed for industrial use.
Evapotranspiration and Crop-Water Relations in a Peach Orchard

Transpiration and several water stress indicators were followed in a Prunus persica orchard in central Portugal, with the aim of (i) quantifying the water consumption of the orchard and (ii) analysing the usefulness of the variables observed, for irrigation scheduling purposes. The experiments were conducted at Águas de Moura (50 Km east from Lisbon) during June and July 1994. A 4 ha orchard was used and the planting was organised in rows, in a sandy soil. Three treatments were considered: A (well irrigated control, 2.88 ha), B (drought + normal ambient atmosphere, 0.5 ha), C (drought + elevated air humidity, 0.02 ha). The large dimensions of plot A allowed micrometeorological measurements. Drought treatments (B, C) consisted in two successive periods of complete water shortage. Evapotranspiration was measured with eddy correlation method in plot A and the results are compared with the sum of transpiration and soil evaporation measured by means of a sap-flow method and micro-lysimeters, respectively. Since both methods seem to agree reasonably well, their results were took as equivalent. Sensible (H) and latent heat (LE) fluxes represented 33.4% and 38.5%, respectively, of net radiation, during day-time periods; the remaining 28% were heat flux to the soil (G). The relative average contributions of transpiration and soil evaporation to total evapotranspiration are respectively 82 and 18%. The crop coefficient (Kc) slightly decreased between 0.6 and 0.5 along the two months. The adequation of water stress indicators for irrigation scheduling is discussed using the relationships between stomatal conductance and predawn leaf water potential, as well as, between relative transpiration and predawn leaf water potential or daily shrinkage, as these variables seem to be good tools for irrigation scheduling, in this crop. The relationship between relative transpiration and the total transpiration since last irrigation or the available water in soil, are also discussed.
Attitudinal and Behavioral Loyalty Amongst Casino Players in Macau

The current investigation is undertaken in Macau casinos and explores the relationship between casino service quality and gambler attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. Gamblers are segmented on the basis of low, medium, or high visiting frequency. Service quality is measured by a newly developed scale. The results indicate that service quality explains significant variance in gambler loyalty, which service environment and service delivery make substantial contributions. However, when analyzing the relationship separately for VIP and non-VIP players, service quality has minimal influence on the behavioral loyalty of the latter group. Implications of these findings are provided for practitioners and researchers.
Anatomical and Molecular Responses Triggered in the Retina by Axonal Injury

After receiving their visual input from photoreceptors via the intermediate neurons (bipolar, horizontal and amacrine cells), retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) relay this intraretinally preprocessed visual information to the centres in the brain for further processing. Thus, RGCs are the only projecting neurons in the retina, and their axons form the optic nerve. These central nerve axons originate at the RGC bodies located in the neural retina, travel along the nerve fibre layer converging to the optic disk and finally exit the eye through the optic nerve head (ONH). Glaucomatous optic neuropathy is a complex, multifactorial and heterogeneous human chronic neurodegenerative disease that characteristically affects the RGC population and their axons. It is a slowly progressive form of optic nerve damage and blindness that begins with loss of peripheral vision and is followed by gradual narrowing of the remaining central vision. Glaucoma currently affects over 70 million people (Quigley, 1996). Second only to cataract is the leading cause of irreparable blindness. This disease affects all age groups, but is more frequent in the elderly (Quigley & Vitale, 1997). Glaucoma is broadly classified into three main groups, i) primary open glaucoma (POAG); ii) primary acute closed angle glaucoma; and iii) primary congenital glaucoma. Among these, the most frequent is POAG (Shields et al., 1996). In this type of glaucoma the main risk factors are age and an elevated intraocular pressure (IOP). In most cases, lowering the IOP has a beneficial effect on RGC survival. However, some individuals with low or even normal IOP develop this disease with associated RGC loss, yet others with high IOP do not develop glaucoma or lose these neurons. Because of this, it has been proposed that there are genetic variants in humans that affect the relative susceptibility or resilience of RGCs to the same insult. This hypothesis is based on recent works showing that RGCs from different mice strains have an intrinsically different resistance to optic nerve injury. Li et al (2007) analyzed the survival of RGCs in 15 mice strains after optic nerve crush, and found that RGCs from the DAB/2J strain were the most resistant, while the ones from BALB/cByJ were the most susceptible. Interestingly, this
Difference-in-Differences with Multiple Time Periods

Difference-in-Differences (DID) is one of the most important and popular designs for evaluating causal effects of policy changes. In its standard format, there are two time periods and two groups: in the first period no one is treated, and in the second period a "treatment group" becomes treated, whereas a "control group" remains untreated. However, many em- pirical applications of the DID design have more than two periods and variation in treatment timing. In this article, we consider identification and estimation of treatment effect parameters using DID with (i) multiple time periods, (ii) variation in treatment timing, and (iii) when the "parallel trends assumption" holds potentially only after conditioning on observed covariates. We propose a simple two-step estimation strategy, establish the asymptotic prop- erties of the proposed estimators, and prove the validity of a computationally convenient bootstrap procedure. Furthermore we propose a semiparametric data-driven testing procedure to assess the credibility of the DID design in our context. Finally, we analyze the effect of the minimum wage on teen employment from 2001-2007. By using our proposed methods we confront the challenges related to variation in the timing of the state-level minimum wage policy changes. Open-source software is available for implementing the proposed methods.
Evaluation of Treatment Characteristics and Sludge Properties in a UASB Reactor Treating Municipal Sewage at Ambient Temperature

The evaluation of treatment characteristics and sludge properties of an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) process was investigated using a pilot-scale 1.15 m 3 reactor. The UASB, inoculated with digester sludge, was operated at a hydraulic retention time of 8 h at sewage temperatures ranging from 10.6 to 27.7 °C for more than 1100 days. The stable removal efficiencies for total COD Cr and SS were 63 ± 13% and 66 ± 20%, respectively. The average concentration of the retained sludge increased to more than 24.5 gSS/L of the column volume after two years of operation. In summer, the water temperature increased above 20 °C, and biodegradation of solid organic matter was enhanced. The solid retention time was evaluated to be as long as 293 ± 114 days; this is sufficient for mineralisation of solid organic matter, as indicted by a low sludge conversion of 0.029 gVSS/gCOD removed and a growth yield of 0.132 gVSS/gCOD, determined by seasonal sludge profiling. The bacterial communities, based on bacterial 16S rRNA genes in the retained sludge, were significantly diverse. Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes were the dominant phyla of the decomposers of solid organic matter in the library. A Ruminococcus-related clone detected in the Firmicutes phylum acted as a cellulose decomposer. Key word: Anaerobic, UASB, Municipal sewage, Ambient temperature,Sludge
A New Method to Improve Round Robin Scheduling Algorithm with Quantum Time Based on Harmonic-Arithmetic Mean (HARM)

One of the most important concepts in multi programming Operating Systems is scheduling. It helps in choosing the processes for execution. Round robin method is one of the most important algorithms in scheduling. It is the most popular algorithm due to its fairness and starvation free nature towards the processes, which is achieved by using proper quantum time. The main challenge in this algorithm is selection of quantum time. This parameter affects on average Waiting Time and average Turnaround Time in execution queue. As the quantum time is static, it causes less context switching in case of high quantum time and high context switching in case of less quantum time. Increasing context switch leads to high average waiting time, high average turnaround time which is an overhead and degrades the system performance. With respect to these points, the algorithms should calculate proper value for the quantum time. Two main classes of algorithms that are proposed to calculate the quantum time include static and dynamic methods. In static methods quantum time is fixed during the scheduling. Dynamic algorithms are one of these methods that change the value of quantum time in each cycle. For example in one method the value of quantum time in each cycle is equal to the median of burst times of processes in ready queue and for another method this value is equal to arithmetic mean of burst times of ready processes. In this paper we proposed a new method to obtaining quantum time in each cycle based on arithmetic- harmonic mean (HARM). Harmonic mean is calculated by dividing the number of observations by the reciprocal of each number in the series. With examples we show that in some cases it can provides better scheduling criteria and improves the average Turnaround Time and average Waiting Time.
Tourism and Economic Growth in Jordan: Evidence from Linear and Nonlinear Frameworks

This study investigates cointegration and causal effects between tourism and economic growth (EG) in Jordan. We use quarterly data from 1998Q1 to 2015Q4 on real gross domestic product and real international tourism receipts. Two empirical approaches are employed; Engle and Granger (1987) linear cointegration framework, and the nonlinear framework of Enders and Siklos (2001) cointegration test, in addition to Diks and Panchenko (2006) causality test. Empirical findings reveal the presence of a positive long-run relationship between tourism and EG. According to the linear approach there is a unidirectional causality from tourism to growth, thus, supporting the tourism-led growth hypothesis. Whereas, the nonlinear method, which seems to give more appropriate results, suggests a bidirectional causality, hence, confirming the feedback hypothesis that EG and tourism reinforce each other.
Making space for shellfish farming along the Adriatic coast

Making space for shellfish farming along the Adriatic coast Daniele Brigolin*, Erika Maria Diletta Porporato, Giuseppe Prioli, and Roberto Pastres Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Universit a Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Via Torino 155, Venice Mestre 30170, Italy Bluefarm S.r.l, Via delle Industrie 15, Venezia Marghera 30175, Italy M.A.R.E. S.c. a r.l. – 47841, via Enrico Toti 2, Cattolica (RN), Italy *Corresponding author: tel: þ39 042348528; fax: þ39 0412348594; e-mail: brigo@unive.it