Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distribution , population status and trends of grey-faced petrel ( Pterodroma macroptera gouldi ) in the northern North Island , New Zealand

The distribution, status and trends of grey-faced petrel (Pterodroma macroptera gouldi) populations are summarised from historical records from as early as the 1800’s, but predominantly over a 40 year period from the 1970’s and 1980’s to the present day. We tallied the most recent of 104 island population estimates to give a total range of 72,398286,268 burrows over a minimum area of 37,967 ha. On predator-free islands (n = 9) during winter, the mean burrow occupancy rate was 60% (± 18 % SD). Fewer than 1000 burrows were detected from 20 mainland sites over an unspecified area. Implications for the conservation of this species are discussed. Greene, B.S.; Taylor, G.A. ; Earl, R. 2015. Distribution, population status and trends of grey faced petrel (Pterodroma macroptera gouldi) in northern North Island, New Zealand. Notornis 62 (3): 143-161.
Manipulation of flowering for seed production of shallot ( Allium cepa L . var . ascalonicum Backer )

Shallot (Alliaceae: Allium cepa var. ascalonicum Backer) is the most important subgroup of the Aggregatum group and the only one grown commercially. However, it is mainly propagated vegetatively by bulbs which requires a large quantity (1.2 ton ha) of mother bulbs. Bulbs have poor keeping quality and also harbor diseases through generations. Thus, they are less preferable as planting material. Alternatively, reproduction through seeds was believed to overcome the aforementioned problems and enables genetic improvement of the crop through hybridization. Production of seeds requires high bolting resulting from optimum environmental and plant variables suitable for vernalization. The objectives of the present study were, therefore, to find out the optimum temperature and photoperiod, to compare the bolting capacities of intact bulbs and growing plants regenerated either from seeds or bulbs, and to identify the right age of the plants for vernalization treatment that gives high bolting. The influence of temperature and photoperiod, and the duration of these stimuli on vegetative growth, inflorescence initiation and bolting of shallot were studied using four shallot varieties: Ambition F1, Matador F1, Bonila F1 and Creation F1. Plants raised from seeds were treated at factorial combinations of 4, 8, 12 and 18C under 12 and 16 h photoperiods for 30, 60 and 90 days. An increase in bulbing was observed with increase in temperature especially under 16 h photoperiod; plants treated at 18C for 90 days produced mature bulbs before the end of the treatment. Initiation of inflorescences was observed in plants of Bonila F1 at 8 and 12C and of Creation F1 at 8C, but they did not develop further. The highest temperature (18C) did not cause initiation of inflorescences in any of the varieties. The proportion of bolting obtained in Ambition F1 treated under 8C and 16 h for 60 days was more than 0.6, but Matador F1 required an additional 30 days of the same treatment to attain a similar magnitude of bolting. An attempt was also made to investigate the relative performance of three different types of shallot planting materials: plants regenerated from seeds (PS), plants regenerated from bulbs (PB) and intact bulbs (B). The planting materials were treated at 8 and 12C for 60 days. The proportion of bolting plants of PS and PB was found to be significantly higher than of B. PS
Host-Virus Interactions in Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Christopher McCrae

Christopher McCrae Christopher McCrae is a Team Leader and Principal Scientist in the Bioscience Department, IMED Respiratory Inflammation and Autoimmunity (RIA), AstraZeneca Gothenburg, Sweden. Since graduating in 1999 with a BSc (Hons) in Molecular and Cellular Pathology from the University of Glasgow, UK, he has worked in various roles in drug discovery and early clinical phase drug development in the respiratory field at AstraZeneca in the UK and Sweden. He is an experienced translational science and biology lead on drug discovery and development programs. In addition, throughout his time at AstraZeneca he has conducted research to identify and validate novel targets and mechanisms involved lung host defense in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and has led several industry-academic collaborations in this area. He has recently accepted a position in MedImmune, Gaithersburg, USA as Principal Scientist in Translational Medicine, RIA, starting in late 2018.
An Improved Weighted Centroid Location Algorithm

A weighted centroid location algorithm is proposed to improve location precision by using received signal strength indication(RSSI)ratio(RR-WCL). In the RR-WCL algorithm,the anchor nodes send their own information periodically,and the unknown nodes only record the RSSI mean values sent from the same anchor node.When the number of beacon messages that an unknown node received is larger than the threshold,the unknown node will establish a collection of anchor nodes,a collection of signal strength and a collection of anchor nodes'locations.Then the RSSI ratios received from anchor nodes are used as weights to determine the position of an unknown node.The results obtained from simulation and real-system experiments show that the environment has little impact on the performance of locating.Moreover,there is an improvement of 6.4% to 37.25% in location precision compared with the centroid location algorithm and 5.12% to 11.23% in location precision compared with the weighted centroid location algorithm when the number of anchor nodes increases.
An Interactive Haptic System for Experiencing Traditional Archery 

In the last decades, more and more virtual systems are used for various activities: training, explanation, simulation, or verifying different concepts. This paper presents a first attempt to create a CogInfoCom channel through which a Virtual Reality (VR) system communicates with a natural cognitive system (prototype and physical experimental system) in a way that improves human cognitive abilities to understand the way an ancient bow works and the sensations it exerts on the human body. This study proposes an immersive VR simulator for recreating the experience of shooting with 3 types of old bows, based on a customized haptic interface. The research focuses on optimizing the shooting experience by using the force characteristic measured from real replicas, as well as handling other important archery features such as the length of the draw or the weight of the bow. The results are mostly positive and the data collected demonstrates the adaptability and replicability of the developed solution, as the system is able to reproduce in VR any type of bow.
Object Feature xxoooooooooooo Object Score GAP Scene Features XXllllssoo Scene Scores OO Scene Score �OO GAP PlacesNet Scene Feature xxssoooossoo Scene Score �OO Scene Features XXllllssoo GAP Convolution Layers

Scene recognition is an image recognition problem aimed at predicting the category of the place at which the image is taken. In this paper, a new scene recognition method using the convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed. The proposed method is based on the fusion of the object and the scene information in the given image and the CNN framework is named as FOS (fusion of object and scene) Net. In addition, a new loss named scene coherence loss (SCL) is developed to train the FOSNet and to improve the scene recognition performance. The proposed SCL is based on the unique traits of the scene that the ‘sceneness’ spreads and the scene class does not change all over the image. The proposed FOSNet was experimented with three most popular scene recognition datasets, and their state-ofthe-art performance is obtained in two sets: 60.14% on Places 2 and 90.37% on MIT indoor 67. The second highest performance of 77.28% is obtained on SUN 397.
When do peers influence adolescent males' risk taking? Examining decision making under conditions of risk and ambiguity

Risk-taking is highly prevalent among adolescent males, and a range of studies have shown that decisions become riskier if a peer is present. However, previous studies have typically provided participants with explicit probabilities of risk in each situation. This does not accurately reflect adolescents' real-world risk taking, where decisions are made in ambiguous situations alongside their peers. Aiming for a more ecologically valid design, the present experiment manipulated situational ambiguity and examined its interplay with group decision-making and developmental factors. Adolescent males (N = 202) aged 12-15 completed a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ task and then self-reported their score, presenting an opportunity to cheat as a measure of antisocial risk-taking. As predicted, adolescents were more likely to take risks when probabilities were ambiguous rather than explicit. Further, higher levels of gambling choices were made by groups in ambiguous, but not risk situations. Age significantly predicted gambling in ambiguous conditions, while developmental dispositions (risk perception, reward sensitivity, and inhibitory control) did not play a role. Findings provide an insight into the social and situational conditions under which adolescent males engage in reckless behavior.
Video motion estimation with temporal coherence

In this paper, we propose a new method to estimate the optical flow fields of a sequence of images. With the assumption that the velocity is constant from frame to frame along with the flow vectors, which is very common in real scene, we develop a new constraints on the flow field. We formalize the estimation of flow fields as an energy minimization problem and adapt the iterative reweighted least square (IRLS) to solve it. To make the penalties robust to outliers, we mainly consider the Charbonnier penalty. We follow the modern optimization procedure including coarse-to-fine schema, graduated non-convex (GNC) schema to get the final result. The effectiveness of our method is borne out by experiments on both synthetic and real scene.
Strategy to Build a Transshipment Port as a Catalyst to Achieving Critical Mass for Sabah’s Economic Growth

Digital transformation has led to a new era of port development at an unprecedented pace. China represents a large percentage of total global trades, navigating the maritime silk-road to various global and regional ports. In Malaysia, the lack of concrete justifications for the issue of transhipment port strategy leads to a debatable framework. Hence, the aim of the paper is to critically discuss the strategy to build a transhipment port as a catalyst to achieving critical mass for economic growth in Sabah. The study draws heavily on existing literature on the theoretical evidence and the possible factors that shape strategy to build transshipment port in Sabah. Based on reviewed literature, various resultant strategies adopted to stand for their interest are discussed. In this way, this paper provides not only theoretical insights, but also strategically guides managers of organisations in Sabah, government, and businesses values towards building a transshipment port in Sabah to effectively retire cabotage policy to reduce cost, enhance port throughput, develop hinterland for critical mass, enhance ports-economic clusters connectivity, eliminate capacity bottleneck, unlock natural resources export potential, align port service towards regional port users’ needs and to give regional port powers a run for their money.
Addition of aprepitant prevents chemotherapy-induced vomiting and nausea moderately when 5-Hydroxytryptamine-3 receptor antagonists and dexamethasone failed

Aprepitant is one of the effective antiemetic drugs that usually used for prevention of Capecitabine and oxaliplatin (XELOX) chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV). We aimed to evaluate the effect of aprepitant on the control of CINV when conventional antiemetics failed. Patients with gastric and colon cancer scheduled to receive XELOX regimens were enrolled in this study, initially receiving 5-Hydroxytryptamine-3 (5-HT3) receptor antagonists and dexamethasone as anti-emetics. After patients experienced vomiting of grade ≥2 and required rescue anti-emetic drugs in the first cycle, oral aprepitant was added in second cycle. Acute (day 1) and delayed (days 2-5) CINV and occurrence of adverse reactions were investigated after the start of chemotherapy. Thirty patients (19.7%) were administered aprepitant for rescue project against CINV during the second cycle of chemotherapy. Delayed CINV were 100% during the first cycle but became lower in the second cycle, which revealed significant effectiveness of the addition of aprepitant on the control of delayed CINV when 5-HT3 receptor antagonists and dexamethasone failed. The incidences of acute and delayed nausea and vomiting in the first cycle of chemotherapy were significantly higher than the second cycle added aprepitant as rescue antiemetic (P<0.05). The incidences of nausea and vomiting were significantly lower after taken the rescue medication aprepitant. Addition of aprepitant to 5-HT3 antagonists and dexamethasone resulted in significantly better prevention of nausea and vomiting than the first cycle for gastric and colon cancer patients receiving XELOX chemotherapy.
The American University in Cairo Cairo, Egypt Master of Science in Finance “Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries”

This paper considers two important questions about FDI determinants: 1) what were the most important determinants that attracted FDI to developing countries in the top 20 FDI host countries between the years over the past three decades and 2) to evaluate whether FDI is more attracted to investment incentives or to the country’s economic environment. Using a panel data with fixed effects model, we conclude that a country’s economic environment is more important for FDI and that tax and tariff incentives are not significant factors for foreign investors when we control for macroeconomic variables.
Microbiological Assessment of Gram Negative Bacterial Isolates from Ear, Eye, Nose and Throat among Patients Attending Aresho Advanced Medical Laboratory, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

ENT samples from patients who referred to Arsho Advanced Medical laboratory were isolated for further microbiological assessment. Ninetyone (91) from both male and female patients comprising 42 ear, 21nasal, 1eye and 27 throat swabs respectively were screened between April -2017 to July-2017 and the samples were analyzed using culture technique, direct microscopy and identification of bacteria (Vtek 2 compact). Finding from the study identified twelve species of bacteria i.e Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Proteus mirabilis, Kelebsiella oxytoca, Entrobacter cloacae, Citrobacter koseri, Citrobacter pauclus, Pseudomonas fulorescens, Klebsiella, pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumanii, E.coli, Lecletciaa decarboxylate and Proteus vulgaris. Proteus mirabilis recorded the highest rates (30%) followed by Klebsiella pneumoniae (20%) which was isolated in ear, and nose swabs, while the least were recorded on Citrobacter koseri Citrobacter pauclus, Pseudomonas fulorescens, Proteus vulgaris, Acinetobacter baumanii E.coli, Lecletciaa decarboxylate, Klebsiella pneumonia (3.3%).
Distribution and fractionation of yttrium and rare earth elements in halophyte plants

Salt marshes are characterized as being natural deposits of metals in the estuarine system. Several works showed the important role of salt marsh vegetation as preferential retention areas for some metals. However, until now no study has evaluated the role of halophyte plants on the retention of rare earth elements and yttrium (YREE). The Rosario salt marsh, one of the marshes in the Tagus estuary (Portugal), which has an historical contamination from different sources, was chosen as a study area. In order to evaluate the role of two halophytes (Spartina maritima and Sarcocornia fruticosa) on the retention of YREE in their roots, sheets, stems and sediments, in the fractionation and partition between the organs. sediment cores were sampled, as well the aerial parts of plants. From the sectioning of these cores, 163 sediment samples and 101 plant samples were obtained. The concentrations of the YREE in the samples were determined by the technique of ICP-MS. The results indicate that the main capture of the YREE in the marsh occurred in the sediments and that roots were the target organ of the plant. The comparison of YREE concentrations in the plants organs pointed to a weak translocation of these elements to the aerial part. They also suggest a weak influence of the interspecific differences in the retention of the YREE and the plant activity in increasing the bioavailability of the YREE. These results suggest that these plants don ́t have the ability to phytotoremediation the YREE in the sediments and roots.
Effect of safflower yellow pigment sodium chloride injection on hemorheology and blood coagulation function in patients with hip replacement surgery

Effect of safflower yellow pigment sodium chloride injection on hemorheology and blood coagulation function in patients with hip replacement surgery Zhi Wang, Wei-Xin Yang, Xiu-Hua Zhang, Xian Jiang Department of Rehabilitation, Wuxi Tongren International Rehabilitation Hospital, Jiangsu, Wuxi 214151, China Department of Rehabilitation, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Jiangsu, Suzhou 215000, China Journal of Hainan Medical University
Title : PAM 50 and risk of recurrence scores for interval breast cancers

1 Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 2 Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 3 Section of Genetic Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 4 Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 5 Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 6 Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Jobs, FDI and Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Firm-Level Data∗

In this paper, we use firm-level data to study the differences in the quantity and quality of jobs between foreign-owned and domestic firms in Sub-Saharan Africa, and identify how country-level institutional factors determine these differences. After controlling for numerous firm-level characteristics in regressions, we find that foreign-owned firms employ more permanent full-time workers than domestic firms. They are also less likely to offer temporary work and employ a smaller number of temporary workers. However, differences between foreign-owned and domestic firms are smaller in countries with higher firing costs, which are likely to induce domestic firms to offer more stable and secure jobs than in other countries. Also, foreign-owned firms invest more in training, in particular for managers, and pay higher wages to non-production and managerial workers. Higher wages for production workers are only paid by firms whose owner is from a high-income country. Finally, we find better governance and social policy standards to decrease wage differences between foreign-owned and domestic firms, which suggests that domestic firms pay wages which are closer to the level of wages paid by foreign-owned firms.
Need for analyzing spatiotemporal patterns of river-corridor habitat structure in sediment management

Spatiotemporal patterns of river-corridor habitat are determined by flow and morphological regimes and they should be integrated in the ecological evaluation. Existing habitat evaluation tools, however, lack this perspective. Even though some recent studies highlighted spatiotemporal patterns, e.g., shifting habitat mosaic steady state concept and habitat age, they do not address processes of changing patterns of each habitat unit, e.g., riffles, side pools, and back waters. We propose a habitat diversity hypothesis, defined as: spatiotemporal patterns of habitat structure determine biological diversity, which can be characterized by a function of intensity and frequency of disturbances and age of each habitat unit from its disturbances. In order to prove our hypothesis, we started a case study in a middle reach of the Tenryu River Japan. Data collected by several interval recording cameras enable to transform into 2D and 3D data and to quantify spatiotemporal patterns. spatial distributions. These tools are useful when comparing several options to determine most appropriate one (s) that can avoid negative consequences to the ecology of rivers and thus often used in decision making processes, e.g., exploring mitigation measures. Recently, the shifting habitat mosaic steady state concept appeared and it was known as: “Location of aquatic habitats in floodplains changed considerably (turnover), whereas habitat configuration and composition remained relatively stable. These results support the applicability of the shifting mosaic steady-state model to riverine floodplains environments (Arscott et al. 2002)”. Further, it is shown that there is a need to address habitat diversity in relation to biological diversity (i.e., species abundance and richness) and there is implication that habitat diversity maximizes biological diversity (Takemon 1997). Further, importance of temporal patterns, i.e., habitat age, was also highlighted (Arscott et al. 2002). From a different perspective, other studies on analyzing material cycle efficiency showed that habitat structure is considered important for particulate organic material (Ock et al. 2010 and Ock & Takemon 2011), and habitat conditions change in spatial and temporal distributions and thus implicated that temporal patterns are also the key to addressing habitat structure (Takemon et al. 2008). These results explain the importance of considering dynamic state of changing habitat. Nevertheless, existing habitat evaluation tools lack this perspective: changing habitat in its
Management Forecasts and Information Asymmetry : An Examination of Adverse Selection Cost around Earnings Announcements

We investigate the effect of management earnings forecasts on the level of information asymmetry around subsequent earnings announcement. Employing the adverse selection cost method suggested by George, Kaul and Nimalendran (GKN, 1991), we compare for each sample firm the adverse selection cost around earnings announcement in forecasting years with that in non-forecasting years. Consistent with Diamond and Verrecchia (1991) is our finding that the earnings announcement in non-forecasting years decreases information asymmetry during a three-day announcement period and increases in a post–announcement period up to seven days. We find no significant change in information asymmetry between preand post-announcement periods when firms released ‘good’ news forecast. The firms that previously released ‘bad’ news forecast experience a significantly lower information asymmetry than those that did not forecast during announcement or post-announcement days, and experience a decrease in information asymmetry in a five to seven-day post-announcement period.
Strategic Agility as a Competitive Advantage in Airlines – Case Study : Egypt Air

Strategic agility has become one of the important tools that help airlines survival, increasing competitiveness, and achieving excellence in a changing and volatile labor market, that achieve a competitive advantage. The prime objective of this research is to illustrate the importance of strategic agility in achieving competitive advantage through studying its impact on innovation, service quality, delivery reliability, process flexibility, and cost leadership. 300 questionnaires were distributed on a random sample of employees in Egypt air, while 256 questionnaires were found usable for analysis. The results showed that Egypt air is characterized as an agile company. Results also indicated that strategic agility affects greatly the competitive advantage in Egypt air, where it affects greatly delivery reliability, followed by innovation, then process flexibility, service quality and finally cost leadership.