Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparison of Mathematics Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Coeducational Secondary Schools’ Mixed and Gender Streamed Classes in Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, Kericho and Baringo Counties of Kenya

The study compared mathematics teachers’ attitudes towards mixed sex and gender streamed (boys’ and girls’ only) classes all organized in public coeducational secondary schools of Nakuru, Uasingishu, Kericho and Baringo Counties of Kenya. An ex post facto causal comparative research design was used. Purposive and stratified random sampling techniques were used to select 20 co-educational secondary schools each from two school categories (county and sub-county) and types (those with mixed sex and gender streamed classes). Two mathematics teachers from each class type were selected from each school based on gender stratification where possible giving a total of 203 teachers. A mathematics teachers’ attitude questionnaire named (MTAQ) was used to collect data. This instrument was piloted and validated to improve it before use and a reliability coefficient of 0.87 using Chronbach alpha obtained. This was considered appropriate as it was within the accepted threshold of 0.70 and above in social science research. The collected data was then analyzed using both descriptive statistics (means, standard deviation and percentages) and inferential statistics (ANOVA) at a confidence level of 0.05. The results of the study revealed that mathematics teachers’ attitudes were lower towards girls’ only classes as compared to boys’ only and mixed sex classes in both county and sub-county co-educational schools. The statistical tests of significance show that there were statistically significant differences in county schools’ mathematics teachers’ attitudes while there were no significant differences in sub-county schools. The results from the study have yielded valuable information that may be used to inform the intervention in Kenya’s coeducational secondary schools and advice policy makers, teachers and administrators of the schools on appropriate measures to undertake to enhance its effectiveness in the teaching and learning of mathematics.
Field experiments using CO2 enrichment: a comparison of two main methods.

Abstract: The dramatic increase in global atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past century is hypothesized to have significant impacts on the earth system. To understand the effects of elevated CO2 on terrestrial ecosystems, two main methods have been used to simulate an increase of CO2 in a semi-controlled field setting: 1) Open Top Chambers (OTC); and 2) Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE). The OTC method has been applied to study the components of forest ecosystems at small scale by manipulating seedlings or isolated juvenile trees, but is not able to address ecosystem processes as a whole. For technical reasons, OTC cannot be used to consider scaling issues, interaction with the boundary layer, and competition among species. To address these issues FACE technology was developed. FACE enables longer-term studies in larger plots, and allows studies of plant processes such as leaf area and canopy development, canopy energy balance and canopy gas exchange. In this review, I synthesize results from literature, in particular from meta-analysis techniques applied either to OTC or FACE. The results are qualitatively similar: CO2 enrichment leads to reduced stomatal conductance and leaf nitrogen, and enhanced photosynthesis and production. However, photosynthesis and crop yield were lower in FACE experiments than OTC, while starch content was higher. These results provide support for ecosystem model simulations, and help fill the gap between individual plants, forest and regional ecosystem. Neither OTC nor FACE can provide a clear indication of the regional-scale feedbacks between atmosphere and vegetation that might be expected under elevated CO2. To address this issue, further research is needed.
Satellite‐observed drop of Arctic sea ice growth in winter 2015–2016

An anomalous warm winter 2015–2016 lead to the lowest winter ice extent and highlights the sensitivity of the Arctic sea ice. Here we use the 6 year record of an improved sea ice thickness product retrieved from data fusion of CryoSat‐2 radar altimetry and Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity radiometry measurements to examine the impact of recent temperature trend on the Arctic ice mass balance. Between November 2015 and March 2016, we find a consistent drop of cumulative freezing degree days across the Arctic, with a negative peak anomaly of about 1000 degree days in the Barents Sea, coinciding with an Arctic‐wide average thinning of 10 cm in March with respect to the 6 year average. In particular, the loss of ice volume is associated with a significant decline of March first‐year ice volume by 13%. This reveals that due to the loss of multiyear ice during previous years, the Arctic ice cover becomes more sensitive to climate anomalies.
Exploring H2O Prominence in Reflection Spectra of Cool Giant Planets

The H2O abundance of a planetary atmosphere is a powerful indicator of formation conditions. Inferring H2O in the solar system giant planets is challenging, due to condensation depleting the upper atmosphere of water vapor. Substantially warmer hot Jupiter exoplanets readily allow detections of H2O via transmission spectroscopy, but such signatures are often diminished by the presence of clouds composed of other species. In contrast, highly scattering water clouds can brighten planets in reflected light, enhancing molecular signatures. Here, we present an extensive parameter space survey of the prominence of H2O absorption features in reflection spectra of cool (Teff < 400 K) giant exoplanetary atmospheres. The impact of effective temperature, gravity, metallicity, and sedimentation efficiency is explored. We find prominent H2O features around 0.94 μm, 0.83 μm, and across a wide spectral region from 0.4 to 0.73 μm. The 0.94 μm feature is only detectable where high-altitude water clouds brighten the planet: Teff ∼ 150 K, g ≳ 20 ms−2, fsed ≳ 3, m ≲ 10× solar. In contrast, planets with g ≲ 20 ms−2 and Teff ≳ 180 K display substantially prominent H2O features embedded in the Rayleigh scattering slope from 0.4 to 0.73 μm over a wide parameter space. High fsed enhances H2O features around 0.94 μm, and enables these features to be detected at lower temperatures. High m results in dampened H2O absorption features, due to water vapor condensing to form bright, optically thick clouds that dominate the continuum. We verify these trends via self-consistent modeling of the low-gravity exoplanet HD 192310c, revealing that its reflection spectrum is expected to be dominated by H2O absorption from 0.4 to 0.73 μm for m ≲ 10× solar. Our results demonstrate that H2O is manifestly detectable in reflected light spectra of cool giant planets only marginally warmer than Jupiter, providing an avenue to directly constrain the C/O and O/H ratios of a hitherto unexplored population of exoplanetary atmospheres.
Zooplankton Abundance and Composition in Surf Zone of Gopalpur Port, East Coast of India-A Case Study

Zooplankton abundance, biomass and composition were studied by quantitative approach in coastal water of Gopalpur Port in two selected stations. From the study we recorded a total of 28 zooplankton groups/taxa of which the copepods formed the dominant group in both the stations. The other dominant groups were chaetognaths, decapod larvae, gastropods, bivalve larvae, cladocera, amphipod etc. In the study area, the maximu m bio mass at 11.9 ml/ 100m 3 and the minimu m at 8.6 ml/100m 3 were recorded . The maximu m and minimu m densities of zooplankton were at 17389 Nos./100m 3 and 13425 Nos./100m 3 respectively. There was not any significant difference in zooplankton abundance between stations (p> 0.05) and within sampling months (p>0.05).
Effects of topsoil loss on wheat productivity in dryland zones of Chile

Considering that the most important processes of biogeochemical cycles occur in the upper first centimetres of the soil, minor degrees of erosion may affect crop productivity, especially in the case of low input dryfarming production systems, which dominate the central coastal areas of Chile. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of topsoil loss on wheat productivity in dryfarming areas with Mediterranean climates in Central Chile. The experiment was conducted on a Chilean Alfisol (Pencahue; 35°18`53``S and 71°53`40``W), and the topsoil of this soil was progressively removed from a depth of 2 to 18 cm (2, 6, 10, 14 and 18 cm). Once the plots (25 m 2 ) were prepared, winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.; cultivar Pandora-INIA) was sown by applying the traditional techniques of the zone. A design was established on randomised blocks with six treatments and three replications. After one growing season, the results showed significant differences ( p<0.05) in grain yield (kg ha -1 ) between the control treatment (T 0 ) and the treatment with 18 cm of soil removed (T 18 ) with productivity decreasing by 35%. Furthermore, most of the considered productivity parameters were negatively correlated with the depth of soil removed. The results highlighted the importance of topsoil fertility and depth in crop yield.
Parsing with Local Context

Treebanks, as a quantitative extension of decades of syntactic theorizing, typically use annotation schemes with a small set of well-motivated phrasal categories. For constituency-based treebanks, these phrasal categories are selected to describe distributional regularities. These treebanks are often used as a data set for estimating Probabilistic Context Free Grammars (PCFGs) for parsing, but the phrasal category sets which are best for constituency description may be suboptimal for constituency parsing. Specifically, phrasal categories may exhibit a probabilistic bias towards different expansions in different parts of the overall tree, and there may be unanticipated but useful correlations between constituency annotation and other levels of linguistic annotation. In this thesis, the symbol-splitting technique of Johnson (1998) is extended to enrich syntactic categories with information about local syntactic context on the English Penn Treebank and the German Verbmobil II Treebank. The split symbols are then subjected to two different clustering techniques to preserve only relevant category distinctions, forming linguistically-motivated generalizations and assuaging data sparsity. The symbol-splitting and clustering techniques are then employed, on the Verbmobil treebank, to enrich syntactic categories with information about implicit prosodic break strength alone and then together with information about local context. Local syntactic context is found to be helpful on both treebanks examined. Experiments on the German Verbmobil II Treebank then show that information about ii implicit prosodic break strength presents slightly larger gain over information about local syntactic context, and that combining both sorts of information leads to the largest increase in parse accuracy. This research shows that implicit prosody, as imposed by the annotators of the Verbmobil project, does vary with syntactic structure in a useful way outside of a laboratory setting. It is moreover suggestive of exploring prosody as a cue to grammar learning in children.
The Usefulness of State Trade Missions for the Internationalization of Firms: An Econometric Analysis

Os estudos empiricos sobre a utilidade das visitas oficiais (VOs) enquanto promotor da internacionalizacao das empresas sao escassos, assumindo-se frequentemente do ponto de vista politico que tais visitas tem impactos tao positivos quanto imensuraveis. Centrando-nos num caso relativamente inexplorado (Portugal), onde as VOs tem tido uma crescente visibilidade junto de empresas e publico em geral, o presente estudo procurou, atraves da aplicacao de um modelo econometrico, avaliar a importância relativa das caracteristicas estruturais das empresas versus caracteristicas das VOs, no modo como os participantes das visitas oficiais percepcionam a utilidade dessas mesmas visitas para a promocao das suas empresas e negocios nos mercados visitados. Com base em 136 participacoes em 12 visitas oficiais que decorreram entre 2005 a 2007, os resultados sugerem que a dimensao das empresas, o capital estrangeiro, a intensidade exportadora, a intensidade de inovacao e a experiencia no mercado visitado sao variaveis estatisticamente relevantes na avaliacao dos resultados e objectivos das VOs. A atitude pro-activa das empresas surge aqui particularmente relevada - por um lado, estabelecer contactos no âmbito das VOs pressupoe por parte das empresas algumas capacidades/competencias previas, nomeadamente ao nivel da inovacao; por outro lado, a prepacao para a entrada num mercado esta directa e positivamente relacionada com o facto da empresa exportar para esse mercado, ou seja, empresas mais experientes reconhecem retirar maiores proveitos das VOs enquanto mecanismos de preparacao para entrada, bem sucedida, nos mercados. Desta forma, ressaltamos que nao basta investir na simples organizacao das VOs; para que estas tenham a eficacia desejada e necessario que, no curto prazo, se seleccionem as empresas com maiores competencias e, no longo prazo, que os programas de organizacao de missoes sejam acompanhados de programas mais estruturantes de criacao e/ou melhoria de competencias, designadamente em termos de inovacao, das empresas.
Term structure of bank flows to emerging countries: what effects of short- vs. long-term regulatory arbitrage are?

Considering the literature of economic stability, the need to analyze short-term external bank flows is particularly obvious to prevent the contagion crisis. Moreover, the context of crisis has put prudential regulation at the center of the current debate in this literature. In this paper, we offer a new perspective on the role of regulation as a determinant of banking flows maturity, with a focus on the issue of short-term vs. long-term regulatory arbitrage. Indeed, regulatory arbitrage that favors short-term bank flows is a destabilizing factor of the financing of these countries as they have experienced major crises due to the external financing volatility. We adopt a macroeconomic approach to study the importance of bank regulation adjustments as a determinant of bank flows maturity from 12 developed countries to 37 emerging countries for the period 1990-2014. The results confirm the significant effect of risk-based regulation on the term structure of bank flows to emerging countries, especially to speculative countries.
CYCLIC BEHAVIOR AND ENERGY APPROACH OF THE FATIGUE OF SHAPE MEMORY ALLOYS

This paper presents an energy-based low-cycle fatigue criterion that can be used in analyzing and designing structures made from shape memory alloys (SMAs) subjected to cyclic loading. Experimentally, a response similar to plastic shakedown is observed: during the first cycles the stress-strain curve shows a hysteresis loop which evolves during the first few cycles before stabilizing. By adopting an analogy with plastic fatigue, it is shown that the dissipated energy of the stabilized cycle is a relevant pa- rameter for estimating the number of cycles to failure of such materials. Following these observations, we provide an application of the cyclic model, previously developed by the authors within the framework of generalized standard materials with internal constraints (16), in order to evaluate such parameter. Numerical simulations are presented along with a validation against experimental data in case of cyclic superelasticity.
Current Status and Future Outlook Pertaining to Encapsulation of Organic Pigments: Review Article

Organic pigments have a wide range of commercial applications in coatings, printing and paint industries. Encapsulating pigments with various polymers is a promising approach for improving the quality of the pigment dispersion. This article gives a summary of the most commonly and new processes along with techniques for encapsulation of organic pigments. It must be noted that a successful encapsulation technique should not impair the original color appearance of pigments, but enhance their dispersion. The review describes a wide variety of polymeric materials or functional nanomaterials can be used for encapsulation to create nanoscale organic pigments with completely new properties. Many techniques have been reviewed for encapsulating organic pigments such as emulsion or miniemulsion polymerization, phase separation, layer-by layer assembly, sol-gel, and free radical precipitation polymerization. Additionally, some living materials such as macro-RAFT copolymer and polymerizable dispersant were also reported for pigment encapsulation. The effect of polymer encapsulation on electrophoretic property of organic pigments has been also reviewed.
Evaluation of IFN- γ, Inflammatory Marker And Infectious Etiology As Risk Factors For Coronary Artery Disease

Background: We evaluated the role of Chlamydia pneumoniae ( C. pneumoniae ) and Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in coronary artery disease(CAD) patients. Interferon- γ (IFN-γ) levels in serum were assessed for ongoing inflammatory activity by these microorganisms. Methods: Persistent and chronic infection of C. pneumoniae was assessed by the level of IgA and IgG antibodies as well as 16S rRNA gene of C.pneumoniae . Chronic CMV presence was detected by IgG antibodies. IFN-γ levels in serum were analysed by ELISA. Results: Among the 63 CAD cases, C. pneumoniae IgG antibodies were present in 34(53.97%;95% CI: 41.66% to 66.28%) cases, C. pneumoniae IgA antibodies were detected in 42(66.67%; 95% CI :55.03% to78.31%) cases (p<0.05). PCR for detection of C. pneumoniae was done on 40 cases, among which 13 (32.5%; 95% CI: 17.99% to 47.01%) of cases were positive for 16SrRNA gene of C. pneumoniae . CMV IgG was positive in 41 (65.08%; 95% CI: 53.31% to 76.85%) cases. On assessing the patients of CAD for major traditional risk factors,35(55.55%) had past history of CAD, 20(31.75%) of dyslipidemia, 19 (30.16%) gave history of smoking and 18 (28.75%) were obese. On comparison of infectious etiology and traditional risk factors, it was clear that C. pneumoniae and CMV both were more (p<0.001) strongly associated with CAD than the traditional risk factors. Mean level of IFN-γ in these patients was 32.13pg/ml and that of controls was 11.32pg/ml. Raised IFN-γ was observed in 39 (61.9%) patients of which 14 (35.9%) were patients of primary hypertension, 7 (17.9%) were patients of angina and 18 (46.15%) were patients of MI. Conclusions: C. pneumoniae and chronic CMV infection appear to have a role in the pathogenesis of CAD. Elevated IFN-γ levels suggests that these pathogens aggravate the inflammatory process of atherogenesis and hasten the disease process. DOI: 10.21276/APALM.1551
Chemical Characterization of Some Wild Edible Plants of Eastern Region of Anatolia, Turkey

Thymus transcaucasicus Ronniger, Lamium amplexicaule L. and Salvia suffruticosa Montbre. & Aucher ex Bentham are of the commonly consumed wild edible plants as food, spice and medicinal purposes inhabitants in Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Nutritional value and mineral compositions of wild edible plants have been investigated for food security and human health. It is though that wild edible plants gathered from nature are cheaper food and important for human health. They are also special ingredients for the distinguished taste and aroma of traditional cousins. Although they are cheap and available in the near, their mineral composition and nutritional value are important for public health. Thus, in the present study nutritional value and mineral composition of used parts of selected plant species were investigated. In laboratory analysis, dry matter, total ash, % N, crude protein, crude fiber and pH were examined as nutritional value. Useful minerals (Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, P, S and Zn) and heavy metals (Cd, Co, Cr and Pb) that hazardous elements for livings were also determined. According to results obtained from laboratory analysis, among the investigated species Salvia suffruticosa Montbre. & Aucher ex Bentham had the richest chemical composition. Although Thymus transcaucasicus Ronniger was rich in dry matter, potassium and phosphorus, Lamium amplexicaule L. had highest values for sulphur and lead.
A New 95 GHz Methanol Maser Catalog. I. Data

The Purple Mountain Observatory 13.7 m radio telescope has been used to search for 95 GHz (80–71A+) class I methanol masers toward 1020 Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS) sources, leading to 213 detections. We have compared the line width of the methanol and HCO+ thermal emission in all of the methanol detections, and on that basis, we find that 205 of the 213 detections are very likely to be masers. This corresponds to an overall detection rate of 95 GHz methanol masers toward our BGPS sample of 20%. Of the 205 detected masers, 144 (70%) are new discoveries. Combining our results with those of previous 95 GHz methanol maser searches, a total of 481 95 GHz methanol masers are now known. We have compiled a catalog listing the locations and properties of all known 95 GHz methanol masers.
The impact of HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns on students who enrolled from 2009-2011 at Central University of Technology, Free State

Central University of Technology (CUT) holds awareness campaigns on yearly basis to educate and test students on health related issues. Basic knowledge about the spread of HIV and safe sexual practices has a critical impact on prevention of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and other associated diseases such as TB. The problem among students at higher education institutions (HEIs) is that they are a high risk group of contracting HIV infection due to uninformed decisions that they end up making. This study aimed to assess the knowledge and attitudes of CUT students towards HIV, sexual transmitted infections (STIs) and sexuality. A cross sectional survey of 120 randomly selected undergraduate students (73 females, 47 males, aged 18-25 years) was performed. Questionnaires were used to assess the knowledge and attitude of the students towards HIV and AIDS. Generated knowledge and attitude scores from the student responses and gender variable were used to study their association. Students had heard about HIV, and 93% understood that HIV is not curable. Ninety percent of the students were aware of the symptoms of STIs, and some didn't know that STIs are associated with an increased chances of having HIV. Participants were well informed about selected aspects of HIV. A high number of participants were conversant with the modes of spread of HIV and the use of condoms in preventing STIs and HIV infection. The gap of knowledge between males and females, and the way they attend to the testing facility suggests the need for targeting males in the national awareness campaigns. The Medical Center should continue to host and fund health awareness campaigns because they play a major role as source of information.