Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Relationship between Ombudsman, Government, and Citizens: A Survey Analysis

textabstractSince the 1960s, ombudsmanship has become increasingly popular. Although there is a great deal of literature on ombudsmen, existing research rarely focuses on the people who actually use the ombudsman’s services. This article examines those who seek the help of ombudsmen in Belgium, and asks whether ombudsmen’s intervention has a noticeable effect on citizens’ confidence in government and public administration. Based on three surveys of 626 complainants, our analysis suggests that we should not see the ombudsman in Belgium as merely an instrument to help citizens but that they can also function as “change agents” and provide early warnings of problems in public administration. The role of ombudsmen in directly strengthening trust in government is limited at best. Furthermore, it seems that the profile of ombudsman complainants is skewed; our findings indicate that the socially disadvantaged are less likely to use the institution.
Arctic and Antarctic Oscillation signatures in tropical coral proxies over the South China Sea

Abstract. Arctic Oscillation (AO) and Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) are the leading modes of atmospheric circulation in mid-high latitudes. Previous studies have revealed that the climatic influences of the two modes are dominant in extra-tropical regions. This study finds that AO and AAO signals are also well recorded in coral proxies in the tropical South China Sea. There are significant interannual signals of AO and AAO in the strontium (Sr) content, which represents the sea surface temperature (SST). Among all the seasons, the most significant correlation occurs during winter in both hemispheres: the strongest AO-Sr and AAO-Sr coral correlations occur in January and August, respectively. This study also determined that the Sr content lags behind AO and AAO by 1–3 months. Large-scale anomalies in sea level pressure and horizontal wind at 850 hPa level support the strength of AO/AAO-coral teleconnections. In addition, a comparison with oxygen isotope records from two coral sites in neighboring oceans yields significant AO and AAO signatures with similar time lags. These results help to better understand monsoon climates and their teleconnection to high-latitude climate changes.
Inherited Cardiomyopathies: From Genotype to Phenotype

The heart undergoes extensive morphological, metabolic, and energetic remodeling in response to inherited, or familial, hypertrophic cardiomyopathies (FHC). Myocyte contractile perturbations downstream of Ca 2+ , the so-called sarcomere-controlled mechanisms, may represent the earliest indicators of this remodeling. We can now state that the dynamics of cardiac contraction and relaxation during the progression of FHC are governed by downstream mechanisms, particularly the kinetics and energetics of actin and myosin interaction to drive the trajectory of pathological cardiac remodeling. This notion is unambiguously supported by elegant studies above linking inheritable FHC-causing mutations to cardiomyopathies, known to disturb contractile function and alter the energy landscape of the heart. Although studies examining the biophysical properties of cardiac myocytes with FHC-causing mutations have yielded a cellular and molecular understanding of myofilament function, this knowledge has had limited translational success. This is driven by a critical failure in elucidating an integrated and sequential link among the changing energy landscape, myofilament function, and initiated signaling pathways in response to FHC. Similarly, there continues to be a major gap in understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms contributing to sex differences in FHC development and progression. The primary reason for this gap is a lack of a “unifying” or “central” hypothesis that integrates signaling cascades, energetics, sex and FHC.
ISOLATION, IDENTIFICATION, AND MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF BRUCELLA MELITENSIS FROM RETROPHARYNGEAL LYMPH NODE OF SHEEP IN ALMONOFIYAH, EGYPT

Brucellosis is economically important infection in Egypt, and the brucellosis causative agent has not been genetically characterized in detail. In this study Brucella melitensis bv.3 was isolated and characterized from retropharyngeal lymph node and other lymphoid organs of sheep and goats from Almonofiyah Governorate & Albehera Governorate, Egypt, and to characterize one of the Br. melitensis isolates by 16S rRNA gene sequencing and Polymerase Chain Reaction-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR_RFLP) of outer membrane protein (omp2a) gene. Br. melitensis was isolated and identified from 17 out of 47 (36.2%) samples from lymphoid organs of sheep& goats. The 16S rRNA gene of one of the Br. melitensis isolate was sequenced and identical as Br. melitensis bv.3 strain (Gene Bank accession No. KF177277.1). The genetic characterization of Br. melitensis in this study can be used for epidemiological studies, control of ovine brucellosis. In our knowhow this is the first report of the16S rRNA gene sequence of Brucella in Egypt.
Effectiveness of combined treatment using Spirulina and vitamin A against chronic arsenicosis in rats

1 Department of Dairy and Poultry Science, Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Science, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet-3100, Bangladesh. 2 Department of Medicine and Surgery, Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Science, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet-3100, Bangladesh. 3 Upazila Livestock Officer, Patuakhali Sadar, Directorate of Livestock Services, Bangladesh. 4 Department of Production Animal Studies, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
The Effects of Geographic Affiliation on Students' Perceptions, Awareness, and Responses to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

ABSTRACT The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill greatly affected the Gulf Coast, and the news media reported information to wide audiences. Students enrolled in an online Environmental Geoscience course in fall 2010 voluntarily participated in a Gulf oil spill survey. More than 92% of the students (N = 77; 83 total enrollment), who were primarily in-service teachers, participated. The 24-question survey probed students' demographics, current geographic locations, affinity with the Gulf, oil spill knowledge, and emotions resulting from the incident. We sought to determine whether students with Gulf Coast geographic affinity (one aspect of Gulf sense of place) would have stronger reactions, have greater knowledge, and exhibit more behavioral changes than their noncoast peers. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed students with a geographic association with the Gulf Coast had stronger interest and emotional responses than did noncoast students. However, students with a Gulf affiliation did not score statistically higher on their knowledge of the spill, exhibit significantly different behavioral changes, or have stronger plans to incorporate the spill within their K–12 classrooms. Student age had no significant effect on any category. We concluded that current events that tap into students' affiliations and senses of place may offer affective portals through which instruction can be optimized, but more research is needed to elucidate media effects and competing variables.
COMPARATIVE PHARMACOGNOSTICAL, PHYTOCHEMICAL AND HPTLC STUDY OF SOME COMMON MEDICINAL PIPER SPECIES

Piper species are reported to have great medicinal values in Indian system medicines. The present study was therefore carried out to provide the requisite pharmacognostic, phytochemical and HPTLC study of the four piper species namely Piper longum, Piper nigrum, Piper cubeba and Piper retrofractum. The marker compound present in all these four species is Piperine, an alkaloid found naturally in plants belonging to the pyridine group of Piperaceae family. This study will be the ready reference for the correct identification of the four crude drugs.
Real-Time Taxi–Passenger Matching Using a Differential Evolutionary Fuzzy Controller

Real-time taxi–passenger matching plays a critical role in modern taxi dispatch systems. Currently, the greedy strategy is widely adopted, which limits the quality of the service (QoS) and the profit of the entire system. There are two crucial tasks in this system: 1) the pairwise prioritization and 2) the matching of taxi–passenger pairs. In this paper, we develop a two-stage taxi–passenger matching system to deal with these two tasks. In the first stage, we design a fuzzy controller to assign a priority score to each taxi–passenger pair in real time. To ensure its performance on providing good QoS and profit, the fuzzy controller is optimized by an offline differential evolution algorithm. New individual representation is designed to optimize the membership functions and fuzzy rule base simultaneously. To accelerate the optimization process, the algorithm is implemented in a parallel way. Then, in the second stage, considering the priority scores as weights in the bipartite graph of taxi and passenger sets, we further apply a polynomial Kuhn–Munkres algorithm to find the maximum weight perfect matching in the bipartite graph. Simulated results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, which is able to enhance the QoS provided by the taxi system and improve the profit gained by the taxi service company.
Brief communication: Wind speed independent actuator disk control for faster AEP calculations of wind farms using CFD

Abstract. A simple wind speed independent actuator disk control method is proposed that can be applied to speed up annual energy production calculations of wind farms using Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulations. The new control method allows the user to simulate the effect of different wind speeds in one simulation by scaling a calibrated thrust coefficient curve, while keeping the inflow constant. Since the global flow is not changed, only the local flow around the actuator disks needs be recalculated from a previous converged result, which reduces the number of required iterations and computational effort by a factor of about 2–3.
Prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance test and diabetes in overweight, obese and apparently healthy school going adolescents

Background: Adolescence is a period of transition from childhood to adulthood. It occupies a crucial position in the life of human beings characterized by an exceptionally rapid rate of growth in physical, mental, sexual, and psychological behavior etc. The present study was planned to study the prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance amongst overweight, obese and apparently healthy school going adolescents in the city of Jaipur, Rajasthan . Methods: The study has been conducted in the Department of Pediatrics of Mahatma Gandhi Medical College of Mahatma Gandhi University of Medical Sciences and Technology, Jaipur. The study was a cross sectional analytical study conducted in schools of Jaipur. This study was done from August 2011 to November 2011 and 180 patients of aged between 10 to 18 years of age were enrolled. Results: In this study, it was found that the prevalence of overweight to be 32.65 percent in males and 34.15 percent in females. It was seen that 33.67 percent males and 32.93 percent females belonged to the obese category. Out of 180 adolescents, 25 (13.89 percent) were found to have IGT and only 1 was found to have type 2 diabetes (0.5 percent). Out of 25 students with IGT, 15 were boys and 10 were girls. Among these 25 students with IGT, 9 were overweight and 16 were obese. 15 percent of overweight student and approximately 26 percent of obese students had IGT. The association of IGT and increased BMI was found to be highly significant . Conclusions: The present study highlights the fact that type 2 diabetes in children occurs in developing counties and there is an increase need to look for type 2 diabetes in overweight and obese children and adolescents in India. Therefore, it is recommended that all obese and overweight adolescents should be screened at least yearly for type 2 diabetes mellitus using OGTT so that timely intervention can be done.
Cooperative Control of Multiple High-Order Agents With Nonidentical Unknown Control Directions Under Fixed and Time-Varying Topologies

Existing results for cooperative control of high-order agents mainly employ the Nussbaum-type function to cope with unknown control directions and mostly require an assumption that the control directions are identical and unknown. This paper proposes a class of algorithms with nonlinear PI functions to relax such an assumption and make them suitable for nonidentical unknown control directions. It is proven that if the distributed nonlinear PI functions are suitably selected, the proposed algorithms can achieve consensus for high-order agents under strongly connected topologies and switching topologies with a jointly strongly connected basis (JSCB). Furthermore, we extend the consensus results to the case of time-varying topologies described by $\delta $ -connected, continuous graphs. As a special case, the consensus of high-order agents under the directed graph having a spanning tree is also investigated. Finally, illustrative simulations are presented to indicate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.
The influence of market orientation on the commitment, trust and relational norms in the education context

Organisations are forming partnerships to enhance their capabilities to improve product quality, innovation, and market research. Researchers and managers have recognized the potential synergy in a partnership regardless of the types of relationship. The main objective of this paper is to determine the influence of market orientation on the trust-commitment-relational norms model of relationship marketing in the higher education context. Specifically, the researchers are interested in determining whether the private colleges own market orientation and perception of its partner's market orientation have a positive influence on the trust, commitment and relational norms Respondents were chosen from 65 private colleges in Malaysia. Questionnaires were distributed by enumerators hired by the researcher. Completed questionnaires were then collected by the enumerators and mailed to the researcher within three month after it was distributed. Results from this study indicate that there were significant correlations between the private colleges own market orientation with its trust, commitment and relational norms toward its partner university. In addition, organisation trust does have significant and strong influence on commitment and commitment in turn has a strong and positive relationship with relational norms. The results highlighted the importance of organisations to have a strong market orientation in order to enhance its level of trust, commitment and relational norms towards its partner. This will help increase the length and strength of the partnership. Key words: Market orientation, private colleges, trust, commitment, higher education.
Organizational Learning Capacity And Organizational Effectiveness: The Moderating role of Absorptive Capacity

A few studies have recognised the significant positive influence of organizational learning capacity in enhancing organization effectiveness. Also, it is well documented in the management literature that in order to be innovative, an organization should develop its absorptive capacity. Therefore, this paper makes a significant contribution to theory by introducing absorptive capacity as a moderator to moderate the relationship between organizational learning capacity and organization effectiveness. A total number 85 employees working in the automobile sector of Nigeria provided responses for this survey. Data was analysed using SPSS, version 16.0. The result shows that although organizational learning capacity has a significant positive influence on organization effectiveness, its influence is considerably higher with absorptive capacity introduced as a moderator.
Influence of NSP-degrading enzymes on pH, ammonia and volatile fatty acids concentration in the stomach and small intestine of growing pigs

Thirty-six male castrated pigs (German Landrace; body weight: 26-40 kg) received a diet consisting of (%): barley, 31; rye, 30; wheat bran, 18; soyabean meal, 15.5 and premixes 5.5, during a 3-week period. The diet contained 18.9% non-starch-polysaccharides (NSP) with 4.5% (3-glucan, 9.4%) arabinoxylan and 2.9% cellulose and was fed to another 18 pigs. This diet was supplemented with a commercially available enzyme premix (600 FXU xylanase and 56 FBG 1.4-p-glucanase per kg feed) and was fed to another 18 pigs. At the end of the feeding period the animals were killed at three different times after feeding (1,3 and 6 h postprandial). pH, ammonia concentration and volatile fatty acids (VFA) were determined in the digesta of the stomach and of the small intestine, which was divided into two sections of equal length. The pH in the upper digestive tract was not significantly influenced by enzyme supplementation. The concentration of N H 3 in these sections was slightly lower compared with the unsupplemented control (P>0.05). Propionate was the most important volatile fatty acid in the stomach (44.7 molar percentage of VFA) and in the small intestine (76.6 and 75.3 molar percentage in the first and second section). It was found that the VFA concentration tended to be lower in the stomach (acetate: P<0.05) and higher in the small intestine (particularly propionate, P>0.05) i f NSP degrading enzymes were added.
Model Experiments to Determine Ice Forces on Conical Structures

S.S. R. ) ABSTRACT. Experimental and theoretical investigations have made it p:::>ssible to define more exactly some features of ice formation on solid surfaces. The metastable state of water extends to -39°C. Icing on solid surfaces does not need such supercooling of water. The necessary water supercooling depends mainly on the material of the solid body and the roughness of its surface. The presence of a large number of micro roughnesses of various form and size causes the simultaneous appearance of many crystals the growth of which leads to the formation of the primary ice layer. The shape and orientation of crystals of the primary ice layer on a solid surface are determined by the material and structure of the solid and by the surface roughness. The number of crystals on the unit surface N = A X IOk! '. 1', where A and k are coefficients determined by solid material and surface roughness and 6. T is the water boundary supercooling. The growth of the primary ice layer is followed by an increase of cross-section of some crystals at the expense of the contraction and disappearance of the other ones. The greater the supercooling of the water and the higher the temperature gradient of the ice layer the greater the growth rate of crystals. U nder high temperature gradients most of the crystals have their axes directed parallel to the freezing surface. With low temperature gradients and lower supercooling the crystals have a fabric with c-axes directed perpendicular to the surface of freezing. Knowledge of these features of ice formation processes makes it possible to solve the problem of ice formation with a planned structure and strength and to forecast the structure and strength of ice on structures. ABSTRACT. R educed-scale
Peer heterogeneity, school tracking and students’ performances: evidence from PISA 2006

This paper analyses the interaction between school-tracking policies and peer effects in OECD countries. Using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 data set, we show that linear peer effects are slightly concave-shaped in both early-tracking and comprehensive educational systems, but generally stronger in the early-tracking one. Second, and more interestingly, the effect of peer heterogeneity goes in opposite directions in the two systems. In both student- and school-level estimates, peer heterogeneity reduces students’ achievements in the comprehensive system while it has a positive impact in the early-tracking one. This reversal effect is robust to different definitions of early-tracking system, to the inclusion of pseudo-school fixed effects and to the exclusion of outlier countries. Finally, peer effects are stronger for low-ability students in both groups of countries.
A model for the fragility of metallic glass forming liquids

An expression for the temperature dependence of the viscosity and fragility is derived based on a simple model of the melt. According to the model, the fragility is determined by the relaxation of structural units that form the melt, and is described in terms of the bond strength, coordination number, and their fluctuations of the structural units. It is shown that the fragility of some metallic glass forming liquids such as Pd40Ni40P20 ,L a 55Al25Ni20 and Zr65Al10Ni10Cu15 are quite well reproduced by the model. The application of the theory to La55Al25Ni20 has revealed that the fluctuation in the bond strength between the structural units is about 6% and that the viscous flow occurs when the bonds in about 8 adjoining structural units are broken. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.MJ200737]
Fire performance of concrete beams reinforced with FRP bars

The fire resistance of concrete members reinforced with fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) rebars is extremely crucial area that needs to be investigated prior to implementing FRP composite materials in buildings. This work analyses the structural behaviour of concrete beams reinforced with hybrid FRP and steel reinforcements at elevated temperatures. The slice approach model was used and validated against experimental data for reinforced concrete beams with FRP available in the literature. Good agreement with experimental results has been obtained at room temperature as well as at elevated temperatures.
Accepting the Limits of Tax Law and Economics

This Article explores the limits of tax law and economics, attributing them to the unique complexity of the tax optimization problem. Designers of the optimal tax system must account for the impossibility of deterring socially undesirable behavior, provide for redistribution, and minimize social costs on the basis of assumptions that are laden with deeply contested value judgments, pervasive empirical uncertainty, or both. Given these challenges, it is hardly surprising that economic theory has a much weaker connection to the content of our tax laws and their enforcement than it does to the content and enforcement of many other legal regimes. This weakness has a profound effect on the debates about the fundamental features of our tax system. It shapes the meaning of the foundational tax concepts. It affects many familiar arguments about anti-avoidance rules and sanctions. And it extends to evaluating outright tax evasion. In sum, the limits of tax law and economics shape every aspect of tax law and tax administration. At the same time, accepting these limits shifts focus to several research agendas where tax law and economics will continue to make valuable contributions to the project of improving our tax system.
PARENT PARTNERS' PERCEPTIONS OF REUNIFICATION CELEBRATION AND THE IMPACT ON REUNIFIED PARENTS

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 Problem Statement . 1 Practice Context . 2 Purpose of the Study . 3 Significance of the Project for Social Work . 5 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW . 8 Introduction . 8 Family Reunification Process . 8 Implication of Family Reunification . 9 Collaboration and the Family Reunification Process . 12 Services and Extend Support related to the Family Reunification Process . 14 Importance of Celebrating in Child Welfare . 16 Theories Guiding Conceptualization . 16 Summary . 19 CHAPTER THREE: METHODS . 20 Introduction . 20 Study Design . 20 Sampling . 21 Data Collection and Instruments . 22 Procedures . 23