Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Internal Waves in the Strait of Messina Studied by a Numerical Model and Synthetic Aperture Radar Images from the ERS 1/2 Satellites

A new numerical two-layer model is presented, which describes the generation of internal tidal bores and their disintegration into internal solitary waves in the Strait of Messina. This model is used to explain observations made by the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) from the European Remote Sensing satellites ERS 1 and ERS 2. The analysis of available ERS 1/2 SAR data of the Strait of Messina and adjacent sea areas show that 1) northward as well as southward propagating internal waves are generated in the Strait of Messina, 2) southward propagating internal waves are observed more frequently than northward propagating internal waves, 3) sea surface manifestations of southward as well as northward propagating internal waves are stronger during periods where a strong seasonal thermocline is known to be present, 4) southward propagating internal bores are released from the sill between 1 and 5 hours after maximum northward tidal flow and northward propagating internal bores are released between 2 and 6 hours after maximum southward tidal flow, and 5) the spatial separation between the first two internal solitary waves of southward propagating wave trains is smaller in the period from July to September than in the period from October to June. The numerical two-layer model is a composite of two models consisting of 1) a hydrostatic “generation model,” which describes the dynamics of the water masses in the region close to the strait’s sill, where internal bores are generated, and 2) a weakly nonhydrostatic “propagation model,” which describes the dynamics of the water masses outside of the sill region where internal bores may disintegrate into internal solitary waves. Due to a technique for movable lateral boundaries, the generation model is capable of simulating the dynamics of a lower layer that may intersect the bottom topography. The proposed generation–propagation model depends on one space variable only, but it retains several features of a fully three-dimensional model by including a realistic channel depth and a realistic channel width. It is driven by semidiurnal tidal oscillations of the sea level at the two open boundaries of the model domain. Numerical simulations elucidate several observed characteristics of the internal wave field in the Strait of Messina, such as north–south asymmetry, times of release of the internal bores from the strait’s sill, propagation speeds, and spatial separations between the first two solitary waves of internal wave trains.
Shocking features in the merging galaxy cluster RXJ0334.2−0111

© 2016 The Authors. We present a 66 ks Chandra X-ray observation of the galaxy cluster RXJ0334.2-0111. This deep observation revealed a unique bow shock system associated with a wide angle tail (WAT) radio galaxy and several intriguing substructures. The temperature across the bow shock jumps by a factor of ~1.5 (from 4.1 to 6.2 keV), and is consistent with the Mach numberM= 1.6+ 0.5 -0.3. A second inner surface brightness edge is a cold front that marks the border between infalling subcluster cool core and the intracluster medium of the main cluster. The temperature across the cold front increases from 1.3 +0.3 -0.8 to 6.2 +0.6 -0.6 keV. We find an overpressurized region ~250 kpc east of the cold front that is named 'the eastern extension (EE)'. The EE may be a part of the third subcluster in the ongoing merger. We also find a tail shaped feature that originates near the bow shock and may extend up to a distance of ~1 Mpc. This feature is also likely overpressurized. The luminous FR-I radio galaxy, 3C89, appears to be the cD galaxy of the infalling subcluster. We estimated 3C89's jet power from jet bending and the possible interaction between the X-ray gas and the radio lobes. A comparison between the shock standoff distance and the Mach number for all known shock front/cold front combinations suggests that the core is continuously shrinking in size by stripping.
Evaluation of Irrigation Levels and its Impact on Quality and Quantity Performance of Wheat

Heat stress and consequently drought stress conditions are the main causes of reduced wheat yield in most regions of Iran. On the other hand, reduction of water sources demands more logical management for greater productivity of land and water. For this purpose, in order to determine the effect of different levels of irrigation and to evaluate responses of six genotypes of bread wheat, an experiment was conducted in the Research Farm of University. Under-study wheat genotypes were cultivated as a split plot based on randomized complete blocks with three replications. Main factor included irrigation levels (1- normal irrigation, 2– drought stress) and sub-factor included wheat genotypes. Qualitative and quantitative traits were measured such as onethousand grain weight, biological yield, harvest index, grain yield, protein and gluten. According to results of variance analysis, there were meaningful differences between under-study genotypes except biological yield for total traits. Also, for irrigation levels, it was seen meaningful differences for biological yield, grain yield, protein and gluten. Only about harvest index there was meaningful difference in interaction between genotype × irrigation levels. Under drought stress conditions in the grain filling stage, number of grain per spike and grain yield had been decreased. Also, drought stress caused an increase in protein and gluten content in understudy genotypes. The results showed that genotypes 4057, Sabalan and Ruzi-84 had higher yield and protein than other genotypes.
Effect of Age on 11- to 18-Year-Olds’ Discrimination of Nuances in Instrumental and Speech Phrase Interpretations

This dissertation was a continuation of study on a theory of a learning window for the perception of expressive qualities in music and speech. The proposed theory suggested that a practice window must overlap a learning window before it closes around the age of 10. This dissertation sought to determine whether children older than the proposed learning window continued to improve in speech and musical discrimination skill, or leveled off in this ability. It also examined the impact of gender and private lesson experience on discrimination ability. Instrumental music students (n = 292) attending a public magnet school for visual and performing arts in North Carolina between the ages of 11 and 18 participated in the study. Each student was administered a forty-item listening test containing 20 speech items and 20 instrumental music items. Each test item consisted of three short speech or musical phrases. All three phrases in each item were the same written words or notated music, but one phrase was different in interpretation or expression from the other two phrases. Two of the phrases were intended by the performers to be the same in interpretation or expression and one was intended to be different in interpretation or
Parental Involvement in Improving Independence in Early Childhood

The purpose of this study is to see the involvement of parents of early childhood in familiarizing children to take care of themselves during at home. The method used in this research is explorative study with descriptive analysis. The research was conducted in February of 2016. The research place was in South Tangerang, Indonesia. The research subjects were 30 mothers of children with 5-6 years old who joined in Pos PAUD. The results show that in general parental involvement in improving children’s independence is good enough but still needs to be improved in terms of training children to eat without feeding, making simple food and drink, and clean up the cutlery. Therefore the Pos PAUD as non-formal institution of early childhood education needs to think about the appropriate engagement strategy for parental involvement during at home is more optimal. Keywords—parental involvement; independence; early childhood
Robust Adaptive Beamforming against Signal Steering Vector Mismatch and Jammer Motion

Since adaptive beamformer suffers from output performance degradation in the presence of interference nonstationarity and signal steering vector mismatch, a novel robust null broadening adaptive beamforming is proposed. The proposed method is realized by the combination of projection transform and diagonal loading techniques. First, a new projection matrix with null broadening ability is constructed and then projects the array received data onto the projection matrix. With the diagonal loading technique, a new sample covariance matrix is obtained. The theoretical analysis shows that the projection transform operation can expand the incident direction of the interference and improve orthogonality between the signal-plus-interference and the noise subspaces; thus the proposed beamformer can effectively broaden the jammer null and enhance the null depth. The analytical expressions of the proposed algorithm are also provided, which are efficient and easily solved. Simulation results are presented and demonstrated that the proposed beamformer can provide strong robustness against signal steering vector mismatch and jammer motion.
Post-operative neuromuscular function of patients receiving non-depolarising muscle relaxants at Universitas Hospital, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Abstract Objectives: To determine the number of patients whose non-depolarising muscle relaxation is adequately reversed. To define factors that contribute to reversal Design: A cross sectional study. Setting: Universitas Hospital recovery room over a 2 month period. Subjects: Patients that received non-depolarising muscle relaxants and who gave informed consent. Outcome measures: A quantitative train-of-four (TOF) ratio was determined within 5 to 15 minutes after arrival in the recovery room. Results: Recovery to TOF >0.9: 57.1% [95% CI 44.8%; 68.9%] patients. Recovery to TOF >0.8:82.9% [95% CI 72.0%; 90.8%] patients. More patients who received vecuronium recovered to a TOF <0.8 compared with atracurium and cis-atracurium (Fisher's exact test, p=0.0151). Conclusions: The muscle relaxation of many patients is not fully reversed in the recovery room, despite a long time lapse since the last drug administration, as well as the administration of neostigmine.
Perceptions of Trust and National Perspectives in Multinational Crisis Management: An Examination of the European Union Military Strategic Level

This thesis is motivated by an increasing degree of unfamiliarity and prominence of national dimensions in multinational crisis management. The research rationale rests on the argument that trust is important but may erode when roles conflict, which in turn may result when stakeholder interests diverge. The thesis describes trust and national perspectives in terms of role conflict in an EU Operations Headquarters (OHQ) as part of the developing EU crisis management apparatus. The results show that trust is generally important and relies primarily on a shared history. A starting capital of trust for unfamiliar others may be derived from depersonalised sources, mainly in terms of the trustee’s organisational affiliation and role occupancy. When situational interpretations diverge a trustor may employ coping strategies, which include efforts to make sense of the trustee’s behaviour. National perspectives are likely to be evident in an OHQ. However, national perspectives do not necessarily lead to role conflicts and detrimental effects on trust. National perspectives may be motivated by operational concerns as well as by patriotism or self-serving interests.
Development and Validation of UV Spectrophotometric Method for Simultaneous Estimation of Acyclovir and Silymarin in Niosome Formulation

A UV-spectrophotometric method for simultaneous estimation of Acyclovir and Silymarin in niosome formulation has been developed. Methanol is used as solvent for preparation of stock solution and further dilutions are prepared in distilled water. Acyclovir and Silymarin exhibit absorption maxima at 251nm and 287nm respectively. The system obeyed Beer's law over the concentration range of 2-10 μg/ml and 10-50 μg/ml for Acyclovir and Silymarin respectively. Method was validated for linearity, range, accuracy, precision and recovery studies as per ICH norms. Thus the proposed method was found to be rapid, specific, precise, accurate and cost effective quality control tool for the routine analysis of Acyclovir and Silymarin in niosome formulation.
Low-Cost Vision-Based Positioning System

This study will introduce a prototype design of indoor positioning system with the combination of vision-based pedestrian tracking and digital map information in WGS 1984 and in future will combine with INS. A trial has been finished for visual tracking with integration of digitized floor plan, taking place in PMB Building in University of Nottingham. The result is promising for future development of positioning system.
Towards Simulation Study of FAST TCP Compared to XCP in Satellite Networks

Summary More and more attention has been paid to the Internet access via satellite networks. But theory and simulations have proved that TCP suffers severe degradation in high bandwidth-delay product networks. Some improved mechanisms have been proposed, and FAST TCP and XCP are two promising representatives. FAST TCP uses a window-based policy and XCP uses a feedback-based policy. The performance of FAST TCP and XCP is thoroughly evaluated in this paper under the context of GEO satellite networks. The results show that FAST TCP and XCP maintain good fairness, low queue length and identical friendliness to TCP. In steady state, the throughput of FAST TCP is larger than that of XCP, but the convergence time is longer than that of XCP. Through comparison, the pros and cons of two protocols are illustrated and can be the guideline to design new congestion control mechanisms in satellite networks.
Payment Systems and Interchange Fees

In a typical bank credit card transaction, the merchant's bank pays an interchange fee, collectively determined by all participating banks, to the cardholder's bank. This paper shows how the interchange fee balances charges between cardholders and merchants under imperfect competition. The privately optimal fee depends mainly on differences between cardholders' and merchants' banks, not their collective market power. In a non-extreme case, the profit-maximizing interchange fee also maximizes total output and producers' plus consumers' surplus. There is no economic basis for favoring proprietary payment systems, which do not need interchange fees to balance charges, over the cooperative bank card systems.
Distinct attentional mechanisms for social information processing as revealed by event-related potential studies

Phenomena such as the vanishing ball illusion, in which a ball seems to disappear in the at mosphere, whereas the magician is just using cues that capture social attention in order to deceive the audience, shows how human visual perception can be susceptible to social information. In this review the most recent event-related potentials (ERPs) studies of visual social information processing will be discussed. The available literature will be analysed concerning the question whether the processing of social informat ion uniquely modulates attentional mechanis ms (indexed in ERP amp litudes and latencies) compared to non-social information. The review demonstrates that ERPs show indeed functional consistency in amp litude and latency modulation on some co mponents (e.g., P1, N170) across different types of social stimuli tested. Importantly, these unique attentional modulations in response to social stimuli as opposed to non-social stimu li were found beyond modulation by other stimulus characteristics. The attentional mechanis ms reflected by these components are believed to facilitate social in formation processing in neurotypicals and point towards a special role of the social do main in human info rmation processing.
Direct Investments in Private Equity - a Nordic Perspective

Based on an extensive survey among Nordic investors, we find that a majority of those investing in private equity are also pursuing direct investments. 17 in-depth interviews unveil that institutional investors are increasingly seeking to co-invest because of reduced fees and efficient capital allocation. However, institutional investors are not organized to fully take advantage of all the opportunities presented, as the internal team structure and processes are not yet at the maturity level desired by private equity firms. Solo investments are most commonly pursued by family offices, which utilize their long-term horizon and industrial expertise to create value through active ownership in a niche outside the scope of private equity firms. Discrepancies in views of extent and importance of co-investments have caused investors to adjust their investment strategies in anticipation of more co-investments, while private equity firms are reluctant to offer more opportunities than currently presented, causing a mismatch in supply and demand for co-investments.
Reassessment of the generic status of Codonoboea (Gesneriaceae) and its species

The genus Codonoboea Ridley is reduced to sectional level within Didymocarpus. Section Codonoboea is distinguished by its epiphyllous flowers. It includes four species: Didymocarpus corneri Kiew (a new species), D. ericiflorus Ridley, D. lilacinus Ridley, and D. niveus (Kiew) Kiew. Didymocarpus caelestis (Ridley) Kiew and D. leucocodon (Ridley) Kiew, both of which Ridley placed in Codonoboea, are excluded from sect. Codonoboea.
Workplace Innovation in European Companies

Excerpt] A workplace innovation (WPI) is a developed and implemented practice or combination of practices that either structurally (through division of labour) or culturally (in terms of empowerment of staff) enable employees to participate in organisational change and renewal and hence improve the quality of working life and organisational performance. This report looks at reasons for enabling WPI, along with its adoption and implementation, and the impacts of it from the viewpoints of the organisation and management, employees and employee representatives. From the database of the third European Company Survey (ECS 2013), some 51 companies were selected from 10 EU Member States in which case studies were undertaken.
THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY AND LINGUISTICS

In this paper I will sketch out a comparison between some contemporary approaches and others that were worked out over approximately the past 250 years. In particular, I will focus on some speculations about the origin of language formulated in the period between the middle of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. Such earlier attempts to explain the origin of language are often subjected to rather unfair evaluations, not to say ridiculed, by today’s scholars: this is, for example, the attitude of Botha (2003, p. 3). Botha says that the total lack of any evidence of a factual sort in works about the origin of language in the late 18th – early 19th century was the essential reason why mid 19th century linguists assumed a skeptical attitude with respect to the problem of language origin. Such an attitude found its most clear and extreme formulation in the bylaw, Article II, adopted in 1866 by the Linguistic Society of Paris: «La Societe n’admet aucune communication concernant, soit l’origine du langage, soit la creation d’une langue universelle». My view is that historical events and processes were in fact more complicated than in Botha’s opinion, and that rather the Parisian «ban» had its roots in the paradigm of linguistic research which was dominant during the 19th century, as I will try to show. But I will also try to show that some attempts in earlier epochs to explain the origin of language, if certainly not all, are less ridiculous than they seem to be. To do so,
A sphere theorem for three dimensional manifolds with integral pinched curvature

In a previous paper, we proved a number of optimal rigidity results for Riemannian manifolds of dimension greater than four whose curvature satisfy an integral pinching. In this article, we use the same integral Bochner technique to extend the results in dimension three. Then, by using the classification of closed three-manifolds with nonnegative scalar curvature and a few topological considerations, we deduce optimal sphere theorems for three-dimensional manifolds with integral pinched curvature.
WebQuest experience: Pre-Service secondary maths and chemistry teachers

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of developing WebQuests on the attention, confidence, relevance and satisfaction, or motivation, of pre-service secondary mathematics and chemistry teachers in the instructional technologies and material design course. There were a total of 67 pre-service teachers, 32 preservice secondary mathematics teachers and 35 pre-service secondary chemistry teachers involved in this study, which took place over seven weeks. The pre-service teachers in both groups designed their WebQuests suitable for the level of high-school students. The researcher used a questionnaire in the collection of the data to find the motivational level of the participants. It was given to the participants by the researcher before and after the instruction during a single class period. The paired-samples t-test, independent samples t-test and ANCOVA were used in the analysis of the quantitative data. The study showed that designing WebQuests had more effect on the attention, confidence and relevance of the pre-service chemistry teachers than of the pre-service mathematics teachers. However, in general, although developing WebQuests had positive effects on the motivational levels of both pre-service secondary maths and chemistry teachers, there were no statistically significant differences found in relation to the motivational levels of both groups.
Could Low Hdl-Cholesterol Levels Be an Unvalued Predictor of Cancer Risk?: A Retrospective Case Study

Background: The relationship between serum lipid profile levels and cancer risk remained uncertain. Recently, it had been reported a significant inverse association between high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) and the risk of incident cancer that was independent of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), age or sex. Objective: The aim of our study was to evaluate the behavior of HDL in cancer patients and in healthy population. Methods: We created a retrospectively search strategy in the laboratory information system (LIS). We filtered and searched those patients with CEA within 5 - 20 ng/ml and any value of HDL and corroborated the presence of cancer (Group 1 (G1)) or not (Group 2 (G2)). Moreover, we searched a control group (patients in outpatient oncology clinic) to observe the values of HDL. Comparisons and statistical logistic regression models were applied to link the levels of this biomarkers and cancer risk. Results: We examined 852 valid patients, median age 62 (50 - 73) years. Within the search strategy group, G2 showed highest levels of HDL (54 (43 - 67) mg/dl) and lowest CEA levels (6.7 (5.7 - 8.4) ng/ml) comparing with G1: HDL (47 (37 - 60) mg/dl) and the CEA (7.9 (6.2 - 10.9) ng/ml); p p r2: 0.092; p p = 0.001)] and CEA [OR: 1.115 (1.060 - 1.174), (p < 0.001)] and they were confirmed as independent predictors of cancer. Conclusion: Our findings confirmed the inverse association of HDL levels between healthy populations and were diagnosed with cancer. Moreover, in a random population, patients with cancer presented lower HDL values compared to those without cancer. Therefore, it could demonstrate the possible positive predictive value of low HDL related to cancer risk.