Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Habitat preference for fire scars by feral cats in Cape York Peninsula, Australia

Abstract Context. Feral cats are implicated in the decline of terrestrial native mammals across northern Australia. Research in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia found feral cats strongly selected for fire scars when hunting, suggesting that intensifying fire regimes will have severe consequences for declining prey species. Aims. We tested the generality of cat–fire interaction beyond the Kimberley, by measuring habitat selection of feral cats in relation to fire scars and habitat types in north-eastern Australia. Methods. Our study was conducted at Piccaninny Plains Wildlife Sanctuary, Cape York Peninsula. We live-captured feral cats during the dry season of 2015, released them with GPS collars set to record fixes at 15-min intervals, and recaptured cats 4 months later. We created dynamic habitat maps of vegetation types, fire and wetlands, and compared cat habitat selection using discrete choice modelling. We also measured cat density from arrays of camera traps and examined cat diet by analysis of stomach contents. Key results. We obtained GPS movement data from 15 feral cats. Feral cats selected strongly for recent fire scars (1 or 2 months old), but avoided fire scars 3 months old or older. Three long-distance movements were recorded, all directed towards recent fire scars. Cats also selected for open wetlands, and avoided rainforests. Density of cats at Piccaninny Plains was higher than recorded elsewhere in northern Australia. All major vertebrate groups were represented in cat diet. Conclusions. We showed that feral cats in north-eastern Australia strongly select for recent fire scars and open wetlands. These results are consistent with those from the Kimberley. Together, these studies have shown that amplified predation facilitated by loss of cover is likely to be a fundamental factor driving mammal decline across northern Australia. Implications. Reducing the frequency of intense fires may indirectly reduce the impact of feral cats at a landscape scale in northern Australia. We also suggest that managers target direct cat control towards open wetlands and recently burnt areas, which cats are known to favour.
Severe preeclampsia: differences in the management according to gestational age

Severe preeclampsia is one of the serious complications of pregnancy. In literature occurs two different attitudes to severe preeclampsia depend on gestational age. We present our experience in diagnostic, monitoring and management, and try to evaluate perinatal results in two separate women groups with early and late onset severe preeclampsia.
El análisis de video como alternativa para la integración de teoría y práctica en los cursos introductorios de Física

espanolEl analisis de video es una tecnica que permite –mediante un programa computacional–, obtener los datos de posicion y tiempo de un objeto en movimiento, a partir de un archivo de video digital. El programa permite trazar graficas de posicion-tiempo, asi como de otros parametros obtenidos en terminos de estos (y de la masa del objeto), tales como velocidad, aceleracion, cantidad de movimiento, energia cinetica, etc. Describimos nuestra experiencia y resultados al evaluar el aprovechamiento de los alumnos, al utilizar el Test of understanding Graphs –Kinematics (TUG-K), despues de utilizar los recursos que desarrollamos -utilizando esta tecnica- en el contexto de un curso de laboratorio de mecanica, para estudiantes que inician carreras de ingenieria en la Universidad de Guadalajara. Ademas, puesto que algunas versiones de prueba de los programas que permiten aplicar esta tecnica estan disponibles en la web, mostramos (brevemente) como utilizar uno de ellos, para analizar el movimiento a partir de videos disponibles en la red. Tambien de videos que pueden realizarse a partir de experiencias en el laboratorio de fisica, en el hogar, en instalaciones deportivas, etc. Finalmente, argumentamos en favor de la utilizacion de esta tecnica para desarrollar materiales educativos para cursos introductorios de fisica (cinematica, dinamica, electrostatica, etc.), tanto para el aula, tareas y proyectos a realizar por los estudiantes. EnglishVideo analysis is a technique that allows –through a computer program– get the position and time data of an object in motion from a digital video file. The program draws graphs of position-time, as well as other parameters obtained in terms of these (and the mass of the object), such as velocity, acceleration, momentum, kinetic energy, etc. In brief, we describe our experience and results, when evaluating student achievement using the Test of Understanding GraphsKinematics (TUG-K), after using the resources that we have developed –using this technique– in the context of a course of mechanical laboratory for students who start engineering at the University of Guadalajara. Also, since some versions of test of them programs that allow apply this technical, are available in the web, we show (briefly) how use one of them to analyze the movement starting from videos available in the network. Also of videos that can make is starting from experiences in the laboratory of physical, in the home, in facilities sports, etc. Finally, argue in favor of the use of this technique to develop educational materials for introductory physics courses (kinematics, dynamics, electrostatics, etc.), both for the classroom, home works and projects to be carried out by the students.
The Effect of Riparian Zones on Species Diversity of Frogs in Amazonian Forests

We investigated the effects of riparian zones, and associated environmental variables, on the composition and number of species of frogs per sample unit in an Amazonian forest. Sample plots in riparian (up to 10 m from water bodies) and non-riparian areas were distributed over a 25 km2 sampling grid to obtain a representative sample of habitats in each category. Each plot was sampled three times, over two rainy seasons. The riparian plots harbored more and different species than the non-riparian plots. In riparian areas near streams, the species composition changed along the gradient associated with stream width. The higher number of individuals and species in riparian plots highlights the importance of water courses and associated riparian areas for the conservation of anuran diversity in Amazon rainforests.
Athletes' satisfaction, intrinsic motivation and performance of archers in Malaysia

Performance in sports activities serves as a crucial indicator for ranking position among athletes. Today in Malaysia, improving athletes’ performance and ensuring continuity of athletes is pertinent for the national sport development in realizing the potential among citizens who have passion for sports. This study examines relationships between athletes’ satisfaction and intrinsic motivation as contributor to athletes’ performance. A total of 139 questionnaires were administered among participants in the National Open Competition in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). Data were analyzing using SPSS version 19.0. The results revealed that, majority of the participants have low performance of 57.5 percent. Also, some athletes have moderate performance of 43.2 percent; while athletes with high performance were only 2.30 percent. The Pearson correlation analysis shows there is no significant relationship on athletes’ satisfaction and intrinsic motivation with performance (p>0.001). The study further recommend among others, there should be more support for the athletes that are involving in archery games in order to bring the best out of them which will trigger high performance in them both at the national and international level.
Nanostructured Titanium Dioxide for Functional Coatings

Synthesis routes to nanostructured titanium dioxides (spherical nanoparticles, nanotubes, mesostructure) have been studied. Their potential applications in various fields based on coating technology have been explored, i.e., dye-sensitized solar cells (using ruthenium sensitizer and some results of natural dyes), photocatalysts for self-cleaning films (TiO 2 on textiles), antibacterial coating for multifunctional textiles (TiO 2 -SiO 2 on cotton), and recent result on antifouling coating on wood. The synthesis/preparation procedures were developed to obtain green protocols based on combined techniques of hydroor solvo-thermal (templated, seeded, deposition), sol–gel (templated, room temperature, dip coating), and solvent-casting techniques. Discussion on the properties and synthesis mechanism is presented. It will be shown that sonication has important role to shorten the preparation of nanotube titania and has been proposed as one green synthesis route. The changing of morphology of titanium dioxide has presented unexpected results to the shifting of photoactivity into visible irradiation.
Exploring Data Compression for a Distributed Aerial Relay Application by

Beamforming systems typically involve arrays of antenna elements with controllable spacing and little or no motion. However, a distributed beamforming system could leave array geometry and motion largely unconstrained. This work considers an airborne relay communication concept with multiple balloons in which the individual array elements act as relays to a receiver on the ground at a base station. The beamforming operation is performed at the receiver. The link between the relays and receiver suffers from a high bandwidth requirement. This thesis explores ways to reduce this bandwidth requirement by compressing the signals across the relays. A distributed compression algorithm is proposed and applied to both simulated and collected data. We conclude that a compression algorithm across the relays offers a substantial decrease in bit rate requirement, and that a preprocessing step can make the compression performance robust against differential delay and Doppler shifts across the array.
Bank lending behavior and economy financing in CEMAC countries: Should we grease the wheel?

For the proponents of the “greasing the wheel” position, in the context of market imperfections, corruption helps in alleviating distortions in the credit market, facilitates access to bank credit and promotes the financing of the economy. The aim of this paper was to interrogate the impact of corruption on bank lending behavior in CEMAC countries, not only ranked among the most corrupt economies in the world by international institutions, but also confronted with problem of difficult access to banking services for most economic operators. To achieve this goal, an explanatory model of bank lending behavior in which corruption appears as an argument beside a set of control variables, was built. The model estimation on CEMAC countries’ data shows that corruption has a significant negative effect on commercial bank credit behavior. Given the importance of bank credit in financing development, such a finding is an additional argument for integrating governance considerations into any policy targeting the emergence in community countries. Key words: Corruption, bank, financial development, Africa.
A method for defining monsoon onset and demise in the southwestern USA

The southwestern USA is subject annually to an inflow of atmospheric moisture in association with the North American monsoon, which is a summertime shift in the atmospheric circulation stretching from the Caribbean Sea, to Mexico, and into the southwestern USA. There are currently no regional criteria used to define the temporal aspect of the annual monsoon season in the southwestern USA, and only a single local definition. A regionalized definition of the annual timing of the monsoon season would seem to be a greater representation of the synoptic‐scale effects of the monsoon rather than individual definitions at point locations across the region. The research presented here outlines a method for defining the annual onset and demise of the regional monsoon season of the southwestern USA, and assesses the results through comparisons with a method currently used at one location within the region and with atmospheric composites from historic data.
A new misfit function for multimodal inversion of surface waves

Higher-modecontributionisimportantinsurface-waveinversion because it allows more information to be exploited, increases investigation depth, and improves model resolution. A new misfit function for multimodal inversion of surface waves, based on the Haskell-Thomson matrix method, allows higher modes to be taken into account without the needtoassociateexperimentaldatapointstoaspecificmode, thus avoiding mode-misidentification errors in the retrieved velocity profiles. Computing cost is reduced by avoiding the need for calculating synthetic apparent or modal dispersion curves.Basedonseveralsyntheticandrealexampleswithinversion results from the classical and the proposed methods, wefind that correct velocity models can be retrieved through the multimodal inversion when higher modes are superimposedintheapparentdispersion-curveorwhenitisnottrivial todetermineaprioritowhichmodeeachdatapointoftheexperimental dispersion curve belongs. The main drawback of the method is related to the presence of several local minima inthemisfitfunction.Thisfeaturemakesthechoiceofaconsistentinitialmodelveryimportant.
Efficient, Accurate and Scalable Reflectarray Phase-Only Synthesis Based on the Levenberg-Marquardt Algorithm

─ The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is used to perform an efficient phase-only synthesis for shapedbeam reflectarray antennas. A thorough analysis of the problem and algorithm allows to improve greatly its performance and its results with regard to those in the literature. Specifically, several optimizations in the Jacobian matrix computation are detailed, including its fully parallelization thanks to the fact that each column of the Jacobian can be independently computed. A Cholesky factorization based solver is used to obtain the updating vector at each iteration of the algorithm, which is the fastest exact solver for linear equation systems. Finally, some guidelines to choose proper values for the algorithm parameters are presented. Due to the high dimensionality of the problem, a good control in the algorithm evolution is important to guarantee good convergence and avoid non-desired local minima. The synthesis of a LMDS shaped beam for a dual-polarized reflectarray is proposed to test the developed algorithm and the results are compared with others in the literature, showing improvements in accuracy and time efficiency. The framework established for the phase-only synthesis can be used in a broader problem to directly optimize the geometry of the reflectarray through full wave analysis of the unit cell. Index Terms ─ Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm, local multipoint distribution system, parallelization, phaseonly synthesis, reflectarray antennas.
The Impact of Deregulation of the Economy on Nigerian Commercial Banks; A Case Study of Some Selected Commercial Banks in Ilesa, Osun State

The study looks at the impact of deregulation of the economy on Nigerian commercial banks; A case study of some selected commercial banks in Ilesa, Osun State. The economy policies pursued prior to 1985 made the Nigeria economy price distortions created by a highly over-valued currency and inappropriate pricing of agricultural and other local products. The control measure introduced prior to deregulation of the economy were unable to improve the economy positively. Instead, that period was characterized by short-supply of industrial inputs, plant closure, large retrenchment of workers, and shortage of goods and price inflation coupled with unfavourable balance of payment. Data were gathered from some selected commercial banks in Ilesa, Osun State Nigeria through issuing of questionnaires and from some secondary sources such as CBN statistical bulletin, Publications and other relevant materials. The major deregulation policies were deregulation of interest rates structure, introduction of second tier foreign exchange market. Since the Federal Government is contemplating deregulation as the only paramount solution to distorted economic structure. The study therefore recommends that banking industry [commercial banks] needs to reposition itself to take full advantage of the gains which might arise from such deregulation. Commercial banks should equally anticipate and sensitize themselves with the challenges of a deregulated economy.
Cross-country evidence on human capital and the level of economic development

The use of imperfect proxies for human capital introduces severe measurement errors in the empirical growth literature. This paper tries to improve on the measurement of human capital by allowing rates of return to education to differ between education levels and by weighing standard quantitative measures of education (years of schooling) by an indicator of the quality of education (student performance on cognitive achievement tests). With this improved measurement of education, 45 percent of the world-wide dispersion in levels of economic development (as measured by per-capita income) can be accounted for by differences in human capital. Leaving countries with imputed human-capital data, which may be further contaminated by classical measurement error, out of the sample, human-capital differences account for as much as 60 percent of the income dispersion. In the sample of OECD countries, virtually the whole income dispersion can be accounted for by differences in quality-adjusted human capital. The quality adjustment of the human-capital measure seems to be much more crucial for the development-accounting results than recent attempts to improve on the data recording of the quantity of education. The results suggest that the humancapital-augmented neoclassical growth model is a useful framework for understanding international development differences, while an effect of human capital on technical differentiation across countries cannot be substantiated. * Address all communications to Ludger Woessmann, Kiel Institute for World Economics, 24100 Kiel, Germany, Phone: (+49) 431 8814-497, E-mail: woessmann@ifw.uni-kiel.de
Closing in on the large-scale CMB power asymmetry

Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies have revealed a dipolar asymmetry in power at the largest scales, in apparent contradiction with the statistical isotropy of standard cosmological models. The significance of the effect is not very high, and is dependent on a posteriori choices. Nevertheless, a number of models have been proposed that produce a scale-dependent asymmetry. We confront several such models for a physical, position-space modulation with CMB temperature observations. We find that, while some models that maintain the standard isotropic power spectrum are allowed, others, such as those with modulated tensor or uncorrelated isocurvature modes, can be ruled out on the basis of the overproduction of isotropic power. This remains the case even when an extra isocurvature mode fully anti-correlated with the adiabatic perturbations is added to suppress power on large scales.
Labour Supply and Saving Under Uncertainty

This article examines how variations in labour supply can be used to self-insure against wage uncertainty and the impact of such self-insurance on precautionary saving. The analytical framework is a two-period model with saving and labour-supply decisions, where preferences are consistent with balanced growth. The main findings are that (i) labour-supply flexibility raises precautionary saving when future wages are uncertain, and (ii) uncertainty about future wages raises current labour supply and reduces future labour supply.
A Generalized Approach to Model the Spectra and Radiation Dose Rate of Solar Particle Events on the Surface of Mars

For future human missions to Mars, it is important to study the surface radiation environment during extreme and elevated conditions. In the long term, it is mainly galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) modulated by solar activity that contribute to the radiation on the surface of Mars, but intense solar energetic particle (SEP) events may induce acute health effects. Such events may enhance the radiation level significantly and should be detected as immediately as possible to prevent severe damage to humans and equipment. However, the energetic particle environment on the Martian surface is significantly different from that in deep space due to the influence of the Martian atmosphere. Depending on the intensity and shape of the original solar particle spectra, as well as particle types, the surface spectra may induce entirely different radiation effects. In order to give immediate and accurate alerts while avoiding unnecessary ones, it is important to model and well understand the atmospheric effect on the incoming SEPs, including both protons and helium ions. In this paper, we have developed a generalized approach to quickly model the surface response of any given incoming proton/helium ion spectra and have applied it to a set of historical large solar events, thus providing insights into the possible variety of surface radiation environments that may be induced during SEP events. Based on the statistical study of more than 30 significant solar events, we have obtained an empirical model for estimating the surface dose rate directly from the intensities of a power-law SEP spectra.
The Effect of Irrigation by Magnetically Water on Chlorophyll and Macroelements uptake of Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.).

Magnetic field is known to induce biochemical changes and could be used as a stimulator for growth related reactions. Pepper plants were irrigated with water passed through magnetic device with its magnetic field in the range of 3.5-136 mT for magnetic treatment of irrigation water. Results indicated that, irrigation with magnetic water induce positive effect on all studied parameters such as chlorophyll content, carbohydrate and tissue content of protein especially in the third week of harvest. On the other hand, the essential elements (N, P, K) uptake was significantly increased as compared with plants irrigated with tap water. Thus, the present results have shown that irrigation with magnetic water can be considered as one of the valuable modern technologies that can assist in saving irrigation water, enhance growth, and nutrient uptake of pepper under green house conditions
Composition and temporal dynamics of a temperate rocky cryptobenthic fish assemblage

Temporal variation in a temperate cryptobenthic fish assemblage at the Arrábida Marine Park (Portugal) was assessed by visual surveys during 2002 and 2003. A total of 9596 fish from 11 families and 30 species was recorded. There were no changes in structure or density at the assemblage level between years, whereas diversity changed significantly due to a higher number of abundant species in the second year. A similar seasonal trend was found between years, with a significant overall density increase in autumn. This is partially explained by the arrival of new recruits of some of the most abundant species in the assemblage. Assemblage diversity and structure also changed across seasons. A group of species encompassing Gobius xanthocephalus, Tripterygion delaisi, Parablennius pilicornis, Gobius paganellus, Lepadogaster candollii and Lepadogaster spp. were analysed in detail. The temporal patterns of two of the most abundant species, G. xanthocephalus and T. delaisi, mimicked the overall temporal patterns of the assemblage. We suggest that the inter-annual stability in density of this subtidal fish assemblage may be similar to what has been reported for the intertidal and that strong post-settlement processes are probably shaping this assemblage.