Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reducing CO 2 from shipping – do non-CO 2 effects matter?

Abstract. Shipping is a growing sector in the global economy, and it contributions to global CO 2 emissions are expected to increase. CO 2 emissions from the world shipping fleet will likely be regulated in the near future, and studies have shown that significant emission reductions can be achieved at low cost. Regulations are being discussed for both existing ships as well as for future additions to the fleet. In this study a plausible CO 2 emission reduction inventory is constructed for the cargo fleet existing in 2010, as well as for container ships, bulk ships and tankers separately. In the reduction inventories, CO 2 emissions are reduced by 25–32% relative to baseline by applying 15 technical and operational emission reduction measures in accordance with a ship-type-specific cost-effectiveness criterion, and 9 other emission compounds are changed as a technical implication of reducing CO 2 . The overall climate and environmental effects of the changes to all 10 emission components in the reduction inventory are assessed using a chemical transport model, radiative forcing (RF) models and a simple climate model. We find substantial environmental and health benefits with up to 5% reduction in surface ozone levels, 15% reductions in surface sulfate and 10% reductions in wet deposition of sulfate in certain regions exposed to heavy ship traffic. The major ship types show distinctly different contributions in specific locations. For instance, the container fleet contributes 50% of the sulfate decline on the west coast of North America. The global radiative forcing from a 1 yr emission equal to the difference between baseline and reduction inventory shows an initial strong positive forcing from non-CO 2 compounds. This warming effect is due to reduced cooling by aerosols and methane. After approximately 25 yr, the non-CO 2 forcing is balanced by the CO 2 forcing. For the global mean temperature change, we find a shift from warming to cooling after approximately 60 yr. The major ship types show significant differences in the short-term radiative forcing. For instance, the direct SO 4 forcing from tankers is 30% higher than for container and bulk. The net long-term effects on RF are similar due to similar CO 2 forcing. We assess an emission scenario where the reduction inventory is sustained on the fleet as it steadily diminishes over time due to scrapping and disappears in 2040. We find a net temperature increase lasting until approximately 2080. We conclude that changes in non-CO 2 emission does matter significantly if reductions of CO 2 emissions are made on the year 2010 cargo shipping fleet. In sum, we find that emission changes motivated by CO 2 reductions in shipping will be beneficial from a long-term climate perspective, and that there are positive environmental and health effects identified as concentrations of key short-lived pollutants are reduced.
Matrix metalloproteinases 2 and 9 expression in canine normal prostate and with proliferative disorders

In this study the expression of metalloproteinases 2 (MMP-2) and 9 (MMP-9) in canine normal prostates and with proliferative disorders was evaluated to verify the role of these enzymes in extracellular matrix remodeling (ECM) and in the tissue invasion process. A total of 355 prostatic samples were obtained, from which 36 (10.1%) were normal prostates, 46 (13.0%) with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), 128 (36.1%) with proliferative inflammatory atrophy (PIA), 74 (20.8%) with prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN), and 71 (20.0%) with prostatic carcinoma (PC). Difference in cytoplasmic immunohistochemical staining of MMP-2 and MMP-9 between acinar epithelium and periacinar stroma was found regarding the different diagnosis. The correlation between MMP-2 and MMP-9 expression in relation to the number of labeled cells in acinar epithelium and periacinar stroma, as well as to the staining intensity in the periacinar stromal cells was evidenced in canine prostates with PIA. In conclusion, MMP-2 and MMP-9 expression has a variation in canine prostate according to the lesion, with lower expression in normal tissue and with BPH, and higher expression in those with PIA, PIN and PC. Moreover, the inflammatory microenvironment of the PIA has influence in the activity of both enzymes.
Curriculum Materials as a Professional Development Tool: How a Mathematics Textbook Affected Two Teachers' Learning

This study reports on 2 upper-elementary teachers' learning through their use of potentially educative mathematics curriculum materials without additional professional development. 41 observations of the teachers' mathematics lessons and 28 interviews of the teachers were collected from October to May of an academic year. The case study analyses indicated that curriculum materials can be an effective professional development tool, but perhaps not for all teachers. 1 teacher's instructional focus and rationale for instructional practices remained stable throughout the school year, whereas the other's changed dramatically. The cases illustrated the teachers' dynamic and divergent nature of opportunities to learn through reading materials and enacting lessons. Findings also indicated that consideration of the interaction between beliefs integral to teachers' identity and those that are targets for change may illuminate responses to potentially educative curriculum materials.
Impact of CO 2 and climate on the Last Glacial Maximum vegetation: results from the ORCHIDEE/IPSL models

Abstract. Vegetation reconstructions from pollen data for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), 21 ky ago, reveal lanscapes radically different from the modern ones, with, in particular, a massive regression of forested areas in both hemispheres. Two main factors have to be taken into account to explain these changes in comparison to today's potential vegetation: a generally cooler and drier climate and a lower level of atmospheric CO2. In order to assess the relative impact of climate and atmospheric CO2 changes on the global vegetation, we simulate the potential modern vegetation and the glacial vegetation with the dynamical global vegetation model ORCHIDEE, driven by outputs from the IPSL_CM4_v1 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, under modern or glacial CO2 levels for photosynthesis. ORCHIDEE correctly reproduces the broad features of the glacial vegetation. Our modelling results support the view that the physiological effect of glacial CO2 is a key factor to explain vegetation changes during glacial times. In our simulations, the low atmospheric CO2 is the only driver of the tropical forests regression, and explains half of the response of temperate and boreal forests to glacial conditions. Our study shows that the sensitivity to CO2 changes depends on the background climate over a region, and also depends on the vegetation type, needleleaf trees being much more sensitive than broadleaf trees in our model. This difference of sensitivity leads to a dominance of broadleaf types in the remaining simulated forests, which is not supported by pollen data, but nonetheless suggests a potential impact of CO2 on the glacial vegetation assemblages. It also modifies the competitivity between the trees and makes the amplitude of the response to CO2 dependent on the initial vegetation state.
Exploring Posttraumatic Growth in Japanese Youth

Despite a growing body of literature examining posttraumatic growth (PTG; positive change resulting from the struggle with trauma) in adult populations from various cultures, the emerging research base involving youth includes few studies exploring the construct in youth from Eastern cultures. This study examined PTG and perceived growth in the absence of trauma among Japanese youth. A total of 408 youth (215 boys, 193 girls), with a mean age of 13.38 years (SD .93), from one public junior high school in the suburbs of Tokyo were recruited. They reported whether they had experienced any trauma in the past year and completed measures assessing psychological growth using the Revised Posttraumatic Growth Inventory for Children, subjective severity, and cognitive processing using the adapted Rumination Scale. Results using one-way ANOVA showed that greater growth was reported by those who experienced trauma, and the objective severity of the adversity was reliably related to perceived growth. Chi-square tests revealed that those who did not experience adversity had more difficulty identifying growth. These results suggest that the youth-reported growth does not simply reflect normative maturation. Multiple regression analysis, using participants who reported at least one traumatic event, indicated that deliberate cognitive processing appears to play an important role in PTG. Cultural and developmental aspects of these findings, as well as implications for research and applied work are discussed.
*Fighting for Talent: Risk-Taking, Corporate Volatility and Organisation Change

During the nineties, talented workers began to spurn secure jobs in large organizations, which were formerly considered prestigious. They developed more positive attitudes towards jobs in small, innovative startups, although these involved less job security. We build a model that identifies some of the economic forces behind the shift in the supply for talent from large to small firms. Small firms with little capital at stake take excessive risk. They realize more of their workers' risky ideas, which allows to poach creative workers from better capitalized firms. We show that small firms' advantage in attracting creative workers emerges if ideas have ex ante positive net present value and increases if workers can smooth consumption through financial markets. As small firms take excessive risk, average enterprise profitability in the affected sectors decreases, while bankruptcy increases. Moreover, large firms react through inefficient organizational changes. We also provide some empirical evidence consistent with the implications of our theory.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Recent Work Title Scheme dependence and transverse momentum distribution interpretation of Collins-Soper-Sterman

Following an earlier derivation by Catani-de Florian-Grazzini (2000) on the scheme dependence in the Collins-SoperSterman (CSS) resummation formalism in hard scattering processes, we investigate the scheme dependence of the Transverse Momentum Distributions (TMDs) and their applications. By adopting a universal C-coefficient function associated with the integrated parton distributions, the difference between various TMD schemes can be attributed to a perturbative calculable function depending on the hard momentum scale. We further apply several TMD schemes to the Drell-Yan process of lepton pair production in hadronic collisions, and find that the constrained non-perturbative form factors in different schemes are consistent with each other and with that of the standard CSS formalism.
Analysis of commercial grape raisins: phenolic content, antioxidant capacity and radical scavenger activity

Seven different commercial grape raisins from the Spanish market were evaluated for total phenolic composition, antioxidant potential and scavenger activity. Commercial red raisins (from the Cardinal grape variety) generally had the significantly highest content of total phenolic compounds (406.9 mg/100 g raisin) and antioxidant capacity (27.88 mM Fe(II) and 10.73 mM trolox, respectively by applying FRAP and ABTS methods) while commercial white raisins had the lowest content for the parameters analyzed, especially for commercial Moscatel of Alexandria and Sultana raisins (ranging from 110.8 to 284.4 mg/100 g raisin for total phenolic compounds and ranging from 6.0 to 17.04 mM Fe(II) and from 2.43 to 8.94 mM trolox, respectively for antioxidant capacity by applying FRAP and ABTS methods). Finally, the Pearson test shows a very high correlation (0.95 and 0.97, α<0.05) between total phenolic content and antioxidant capacity. Results prove that all commercial raisin samples studied constitute a natural source of polyphenols and antioxidants, especially raisin samples obtained from the red grape variety.
ECOLOGICAL WEED MANAGEMENT FOR ORGANIC FARMING SYSTEMS

OF THESIS ECOLOGICAL WEED MANAGEMENT FOR ORGANIC FARMING SYSTEMS Two field studies examining direct ecological weed control practices were conducted in Lexington, Kentucky. The first evaluated weed control efficacy and influence on yields of several mulches in two organically-managed bell pepper (Capsicum annum) production systems for two years. Peppers were planted in double rows in flat, bare ground or on black polyethylene-covered raised beds with drip irrigation, and four mulches (straw, compost, wood chips, and undersown white dutch clover (Trifolium repens L.) “living mulch”) were applied to the two production systems. In both years, polyethylene-covered raised beds produced higher yields than the flat, bare ground system. In the second year, the polyethylene-covered bed system coupled with mulching in-between beds with compost or wood chips after cultivation provided excellent weed control and yields. The second field study evaluated the efficacy of soil solarization and shallow cultivation on the invasive and noxious weed johnsongrass over two years (Sorghum halapense). A soil solarization treatment, using clear plastic stretched over soil for eight weeks, and a cultivated bare fallow treatment, utilizing a tractor pulled cultivator implement equipped with sweep blades, were randomly applied during the summers of 2003 and 2004 to a field infested with johnsongrass. Solarized and cultivated plots in both years were lightly tilled 8 months after completion of the initial treatment period. At the conclusion of the experiment the johnsongrass population was significantly reduced in all treatments and in the control plots compared to the original infestation. These two experiments testing direct weed control practices (mulching, cultivation, solarization) were undertaken in the context of an ecological weed management plan that includes long term strategies to reduce weed infestations such as crop rotation, cover cropping, and fertility management that are essential for organic farmers.
Migration, Remittances and Forests: Disentangling the Impact of Population and Economic Growth on Forests

International migration has increased rapidly in recent decades and this has been accompanied by a remarkable increase in transfers made by migrants to their home countries. This paper investigates the effect of the rural economic growth brought about by migration and remittances on Nepal's Himalayan forests. The authors assemble a unique village-panel dataset combining remote sensing data on land use and forest cover change with data from the census and multiple rounds of living standards surveys to test various inter-relationships between population, economic growth and forests. The results suggest that rural economic growth spurred by remittances has had an overall positive impact on forests. The paper also finds that remittances caused an increase in rural wages and an increase in income, but a decrease in land prices. Considered together, however, the relationship between forests and remittances is driven largely through the income channel, indicating that the demand for amenities provided by forests in the rural Nepali setting may have been more important than factor prices in influencing land use changes for the period of the study.
A Bivariate Linear and Nonlinear Causality between Stock Prices and Exchange Rates

The present study examines dynamic relation between stock index and exchange rate by using the daily data for India. The study uses the unit root and cointegration tests to test for the long run relationship between the two variables. The study also uses linear and nonlinear granger causality tests after removing the volatility dependence from the series to examine the dynamic relationship between the two variables. Following Hristu-Varsakelis and Kyrtsou (2008), the nonlinear granger causality between stock index and exchange rate is investigated by using bivariate noisy Mackey Glass model. The empirical evidence suggests that there is no long-run relationship; however, there is bidirectional linear and nonlinear granger causality between stock index and exchange rates. The findings of the study strongly support the micro and macroeconomic approach on the relationship between exchange rates and stock prices.
The exact feasibility of randomized solutions of robust convex programs

Robust optimization programs are hard to solve even when the constraints are convex. In previous contributions, it has been shown that approximately robust solutions (i.e. solutions feasible for all constraints but a small fraction of them) to convex programs can be obtained at low computational cost through constraints randomization. In this paper, we establish new feasibility results for randomized algorithms. Specifically, the exact feasibility for the class of the so-called fully-supported problems is obtained. It turns out that all fully-supported problems shares the same feasibility properties, revealing a deep kinship among problems of this class. It is further proven that the feasibility of the randomized solutions for all other convex programs can be bounded based on the feasibility for the prototype class of fully-supported problems. The feasibility result of this paper outperforms previous bounds, and is not improvable because it is exact for fully-supported problems. Dipartimento di Elettronica per l’Automazione Universita di Brescia, via Branze 38, 25123 Brescia, Italia. E-mail: marco.campi@ing.unibs.it, web-site: http://bsing.ing.unibs.it/∼campi/ Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informatica Politecnico di Milano, P.zza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italia. E-mail: sgaratti@elet.polimi.it, web-site: http://www.elet.polimi.it/upload/sgaratti/
Study of the microphysical properties associated with the Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillation as seen from the TRMM observations

Abstract. The spatio-temporal variability of Indian Summer Monsoon is well studied based on different types of rainfall data. However, very few attempts have been made to study the underlying role of clouds and its hydrometeors on Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations. The northward propagating Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations and its characteristics remain a challenge for the numerical modelers even today. In view of this, we have set out to analyze the role of cloud hydrometeors and their linkage with northward propagating Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations. The science question that we intend to address here is whether the different phases of the cloud hydrometeors show similar propagation characteristics as that of rainfall, and what are the relations of their phases with the convection centre using Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission data. In answering the question, we have analyzed ten years of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 2A12 hydrometeor data over Indian region. Our analyses show that the cloud water and cloud ice do show a large scale organization during the Indian Summer Monsoon regime of June–September, and systematically progress northward getting initiated over equatorial Indian Ocean. On further analyses, we found that cloud water actually leads the rainfall and cloud ice lags the rainfall. We have further demonstrated the process by analyzing dynamical parameters from Modern Era-Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications. The presence of cloud water in the lower troposphere in the leading edge of rainfall indicates the lower level moistening and preconditioning of the convective instability due to enhanced moisture convergence. Subsequently, deep convection is triggered, which generates hydrometeor above freezing level and cloud ice in the upper troposphere. To quantify objectively the relation among cloud liquid water, cloud ice and rainfall, the lag correlation is computed with respect to convection center, where the above hypothesis is established that cloud liquid water leads the rainfall and cloud ice lag. This relation among hydrometeors may help the numerical modelers to incorporate such processes for capturing the characteristics of Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations.
Effects of flow events and nutrient addition on stream periphyton and macroinvertebrates: an experimental study using flumes

We used flume experiments to study the effects of a temporary increase in stream flow on macroinvertebrates, leaf litter breakdown and soft-bodied benthic algae; both as a single stressor and eventually in combination with an increase in nutrient supply. In order to understand how well the flumes reflected the nearby stream ecosystem, we compared species composition of macroinvertebrates and benthic algae between the flumes and the nearby stream from which the flumes were supplied with water. As single stressors, nutrient addition and an increased flow velocity from 1.3 to 2.8 cm s−1 lead to an increase in the biomass of benthic algae, likely reflecting an improved transfer of nutrients into algal patches. However, the combined effect of flow and nutrient addition was smaller than the sum of both individual effects, likely because an increased biomass also was more susceptible to scouring. We found differences in macroinvertebrate and benthic algal taxon identity and abundance between stream and flumes. Since biodiversity is assumed to stabilize ecological functioning in response to disturbances and variation, we conclude that care should be taken in applying results from small scale experiments to stream ecosystems.
Young Females Perception of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services and Factor Affecting Utilization of Services in High Schools of Ambo town Oromia Region, Ethiopia

Background: Encouraging sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people still leftovers as public health challenge. Young people are facing different sexual and reproductive health problems including unwanted pregnancy, which leads them to unsafe abortion, sexually transmitted disease including HIV/AIDS. The aim of this study was to look at perceptions of young females and assess factors associate with utilization of SRH services in Ambo town. Method: Both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection was applied. The qualitative method was used to explore the perception about the sexual and reproductive health service utilization. Sample size was determined by using single population proportion formula for quantitative method and purposive sampling for qualitative. Multivariable logistic regression model was done using SPSS version 21.0. Thematic analysis was done for qualitative. P-value of less than 0.05 was the cut off point for statistical significances at 95% CI. Result: Only 26.63% of study participants had utilized sexual and reproductive health services in the last twelve months. The three main reasons of not utilizing the service mentioned by participants were 209 (77.41%) fear of parents, 184 (68.15%) feeling ashamed when they get any person they know and 167 (61.85%) lack of confidentiality on health providers. This was supported by qualitative findings. In final model of logistic regression variables which had shown significant association with utilization of SRH service were age of young female, discussion with family, exposure to sexual intercourse and having reproductive health problems. Conclusion: According to this study young females are facing different challenges to use SRH services. Intense commitment of government and stakeholder involvement in sexual and reproductive health education is required to meet the uptake of sexual and reproductive health services and to increase the utilization of service and awareness of young females.