Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cyberville: Clicks, Culture, and the Creation of an Online Town

From the Publisher: Drawing on her own firsthand experiences with Echo and other online services she's visited, Stacy Horn will take you into the heart of today's global cybervillage by illuminating one small corner of it, where the most familiar can be the most astonishing, and where the most unexpected bonds are forged in all but pure air. She'll demonstrate, from the inside, just how a cybercommunity is created, how it shows us the truth of our lives. She'll put you, in a word-by-fascinating-word replay, in the middle of some of the Internet's most memorable and groundbreaking dialogues: no-holds-barred cyber-symposiums on the subjects of good and evil, Mom and Dad, Frank Sinatra, hate speech and censorship, romance, and (of course) sex.
High Levels of Genetic Variation in Northern Abalone Haliotis kamtschatkana of British Columbia

* This series documents the scientific basis for the evaluation of fisheries resources in Canada. As such, it addresses the issues of the day in the time frames required and the documents it contains are not intended as definitive statements on the subjects addressed but rather as progress reports on ongoing investigations. * La présente série documente les bases scientifiques des évaluations des ressources halieutiques du Canada. Elle traite des problèmes courants selon les échéanciers dictés. Les documents qu’elle contient ne doivent pas être considérés comme des énoncés définitifs sur les sujets traités, mais plutôt comme des rapports d’étape sur les études en cours.
Age‐related variation in wing shape of migratory and sedentary Blackcaps Sylvia atricapilla

In many passerines, juveniles have shorter and more rounded wings than adults. Given that (1) long and pointed wings improve endurance in migratory flights, (2) shorter and rounded wings improve manoeuvrability, and (3) juvenile birds are more vulnerable to predators than adults, it has been hypothesised that ontogenetic variation in wing shape results from a greater importance of predation avoidance relative to migration performance during the first year of life. If so, wing shape should not change with age in the absence of migration-related selection for longer and more pointed wings. We test this by studying the variation with respect to age in wing length and wing pointedness of migratory and sedentary Blackcaps wintering in southern Spain. Migratory Blackcaps had longer and more pointed wings than sedentary Blackcaps. Juveniles had shorter wings than adults in migratory populations, but not in sedentary populations. The variation with age in wing pointedness was less pronounced, and was found in migratory females only. These differences between the two traits could be related to a stronger selection for pointed wings than for longer wings with increasing distance of migration, and to an increased migratoriness of females in partially migratory Blackcap populations. We hypothesise that, in migratory Blackcaps, a shorter and more rounded wing in juveniles could be selected for if the decrease in predation rate compensated for the somewhat greater costs of the first migration attempt. On the other hand, there are no costs of migration in sedentary Blackcaps, which hence maintain a similar wing shape, giving high manoeuvrability, both as juveniles and as adults.
22. BIOGENIC AND TERRIGENOUS SEDIMENTATION AT CEARA RISE, WESTERN TROPICAL ATLANTIC, SUPPORTS PLIOCENEÐPLEISTOCENE DEEP-WATER LINKAGE BETWEEN HEMISPHERES 1

Calcium carbonate percentages at Þve Ceara Rise sites were estimated at 1- to 2-k.y. intervals over the past 5 m.y. , using resectance spectroscopy and magnetic susceptibility proxies. From these estimates and detailed correlations between sites, gradients of calcite and terrigenous sediment accumulation rates in a depth transect of sites reveal variations in local climate and calcite dissolution related to deep-water masses. Relative to shallow sites on the southern Ceara Rise, accumulation rates of terrigenous sediments at deeper sites near the Amazon Fan were higher during glacial periods. Analogous variations in terrigenous sedimentation before the expansion of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets ~3 m.y. ago suggests that tropical climate cycles occurred independently of polar glaciation. Decreasing accumulation rates of calcite with increasing water depth reveal patterns of carbonate dissolution, which varied on orbital time-scales (10 - 100 k.y. periods) throughout the PlioceneÐPleistocene. Maximum dissolution at deep relative to shallow sites occurred in the transition from interglacial to glacial conditions, and maximum preservation occurred during global warming, at all orbital periods. If the local dissolution gradient is linked to relative contributions of North Atlantic Deep Water and Antarctic Bottom Water, this phasing of events conÞrms a key prediction of SPECMAP that deep-water adjustments may translate climate changes between hemispheres. Dissolution and preservation events, however, may also resect a transient response to a net sux of organic matter between the continents and the oceans during ice-age climate transitions.
Analysis of Correlations between the Level of Partnering Relations and their Influence on the Time, Cost, Quality and Safety of Implementation of Construction Projects

Abstract The present paper uses the developed model of the influence of partnering relations on the time, cost, quality and safety of implementation of construction projects. On its basis, a questionnaire has been created and a preliminary survey has been conducted. The paper presents an analysis of correlations between the level of partnering relations in the context of the partnering measures indicated in the model and their influence on the time, cost, quality and safety of implementation of construction projects. The analysis was conducted based on the data collected in 52 construction projects. The values of the Spearman rank correlation coefficient and the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient have been calculated for the examined relations. The analysis allowed for indicating the measures of partnering whose improvement most often brings benefits with regard to the time, cost, quality and safety of implementation of construction projects. Among the 80 analysed correlations, the ones identified as strong were: 15 relations connected with the time, 8 with the cost, 5 with the quality and 1 with the safety of implementation of construction projects.
Plant Polyphenols as a Double-Edged Sword in Health Promotion: Lessons from the Experimental Models Using Simple Phenolic Acids

© 2016 TERRAPUB, Tokyo. All rights reserved. doi:10.5047/agbm.2016. 00601.0001 erized molecules such as tannins are reportedly identified. Phenolic acids include caffeic acid, vanillic acid, and coumaric acid, that account for approximately onethird of the total dietary intake of polyphenols. Flavonoids, account for the remaining two-thirds of polyphenol intake, can be further subdivided into 13 classes, including flavones, flavanones, flavonols, isoflavones, catechins (flavanols), anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins, with more than 5,000 identified compounds. Epidemiological studies have supported the hypothesis that high dietary intake of polyphenols is associated with decreased risk of a range of diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases (Fraga 2007; Martin and Appel 2010). Since the French paradox was described two decades ago (Renaud and Lorgeril 1992), several Abstract Polyphenols in foods possess potential to exhibit various beneficial effects in health promotion. Although polyphenols are well known to have antioxidant properties, a wealth of data suggests that most of the relevant mechanisms of disease prevention by polyphenols are not mainly related to their antioxidant properties. The protective function of phenolic compounds, which can be metabolically converted into electrophiles, might be ascribed to the induction of the cytoprotective responses against oxidative stress or toxic chemicals. Based on compelling evidence regarding the beneficial potential of polyphenols, various polyphenol-rich dietary supplements are being developed for public use. It is recently becoming apparent that commonly used dietary compounds can exert deleterious effects at pharmacological (supraphysiological) doses. Moreover, some human intervention trials showed not only failure to protect by polyphenols but accelerated development of chronic diseases in susceptible subjects. Thus, the present monograph tries to provide experimental evidence supporting the idea that optimal polyphenol supplementation can confer beneficial effects but high doses elicit adverse effects in an electrophilic reaction-dependent manner, thereby establishing a double-edge sword in health promotion. Current knowledge of polyphenols as phase II inducers is also discussed, with consideration of the metabolic activation, binding targets and factors influencing the biological activities of polyphenols. In addition, this monograph attempts to provide a brief perspective on the beneficial and harmful effects of food polyphenols. Plant Polyphenols as a Double-Edged Sword in Health Promotion: Lessons from the Experimental Models Using Simple Phenolic Acids
Sense of social support in chonic pain patients

Statistical data show that one in five adults of the European citizen suffer from some type of chronic pain. One of the most common types of chronic pain is chronic low back and neck pain. Emotional factors are currently viewed as important determinants in pain perception and behaviour. The perceived social and emotional support have impact to the individual’s adaptation to chronic disease (Cohen, Wills, 1985). The material: 110 chronic low back pain (CLBP) patients (48 male and 62 female; in age from 24 to 60 years, mean: 44.2±8, 0) and pilot study of 23 chronic neck pain (CNP) patients (19 female and 4 male; in age from 35 to 60 years, mean: 48, 1 ±6. The assessment methods: structured interview; Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). SF-36 ® Health Survey: assessment of emotional and social support. Results and conclusions: CLBP patients in presence of symptoms of depression and elevated level of anxiety matched for socio-demographic features had less sense of social support and marked pain impact to daily activities, lower self rating health relating quality of life. In CLBP patients the sense of social and emotional support had relevant interaction with level of participation in daily activities both in patients with and without mental health problems. This fact has to be considered in process of rehabilitation and in managing of health care of CLBP patients. The results of CNP patients pilot study revealed interesting trend that chronic back and neck pain patients seems to be quite different according to sense of social and emotional support, therefore sense of social and emotional support in different chronic pain patients need further research to improve the process and results of rehabilitation in these patients.
Domestic and International Knowledge Spillovers in the South Korean Manufacturing Industries

This paper explores the relationship between the productivity growth and both domestic and international knowledge spillovers in the Korean manufacturing industries, using panel data for twenty eight industries over the period 1970-2000. To empirically verify the extent of domestic and international knowledge spillovers we have followed endogenous growth approach and wisdom from new international trade theory. We find strong productivity effects from industry’s own R&D as well as domestic and foreign knowledge spillovers. International knowledge spillovers transmitted by trade played dominant role in explaining productivity growth in the Korean manufacturing industries during the 1970s and 1980s, but the international knowledge spillovers did not play any significant role in the 1990s. This empirical finding has strong implications for the Korean technology policy as well as for the strict intellectual property rights regime enacted by the WTO.
Use and Abuse of Rights Issues. Do they really Protect Minorities

This paper discusses the use of rights issues when interest conflicts between controlling shareholders and minorities arise due to the existence of private benefits that the former can extract from the value of a listed company. While the literature considers the issue of pre-emptive rights as an essential tool to protect minorities from expropriation, we propose a model where rights are used to enforce the subscription of seasoned equity issues, even at negative conditions for investor’s value. We define an abuse condition allowing a controlling shareholder to choose discretionally an issuing price, granting a discount with respect to the market price, so that minorities either undertake the issue or sell the rights, minimizing an exit cost that greater than zero in all cases. As the rights issue never fails under these condition, we define this phenomenon as "enforced subscription". This model fits the Italian legal framework, and many other international contexts where rights issues are dominant. We report the case of Alitalia’s rights issue in 2005 as a typical example of "enforcement at work". As rights issues at a high discount often involve an abuse of power by the controlling shareholder, we argue that their use should be carefully regulated.
Tourism Development in the Post-Soviet and Post-Revolutionary Country: A Case Study of Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan as the post-soviet state is a blank spot on the map of international tourism. Though 94 % of the territory of the country are occupied with Tien Shan Mountains with unique touristic resources as Issyk-Kul and hospitable Kyrgyz people that keeps the disappearing way of life of ancient nomads. However, findings of this study show that the negative information due to two revolutions (2005 & 2010) on a destination spread in mass media can give a positive marketing effect. In paper, potential of the touristic resources of the Kyrgyzstan were defined and exploitation processes in market economy conditions were studied.
The critical point of the transition to turbulence in pipe flow

In pipes, turbulence sets in despite the linear stability of the laminar Hagen–Poiseuille flow. The Reynolds number ( $Re$ ) for which turbulence first appears in a given experiment – the ‘natural transition point’ – depends on imperfections of the set-up, or, more precisely, on the magnitude of finite amplitude perturbations. At onset, turbulence typically only occupies a certain fraction of the flow, and this fraction equally is found to differ from experiment to experiment. Despite these findings, Reynolds proposed that after sufficiently long times, flows may settle to steady conditions: below a critical velocity, flows should (regardless of initial conditions) always return to laminar, while above this velocity, eddying motion should persist. As will be shown, even in pipes several thousand diameters long, the spatio-temporal intermittent flow patterns observed at the end of the pipe strongly depend on the initial conditions, and there is no indication that different flow patterns would eventually settle to a (statistical) steady state. Exploiting the fact that turbulent puffs do not age (i.e. they are memoryless), we continuously recreate the puff sequence exiting the pipe at the pipe entrance, and in doing so introduce periodic boundary conditions for the puff pattern. This procedure allows us to study the evolution of the flow patterns for arbitrary long times, and we find that after times in excess of $10^{7}$ advective time units, indeed a statistical steady state is reached. Although the resulting flows remain spatio-temporally intermittent, puff splitting and decay rates eventually reach a balance, so that the turbulent fraction fluctuates around a well-defined level which only depends on $Re$ . In accordance with Reynolds’ proposition, we find that at lower $Re$ (here 2020), flows eventually always resume to laminar, while for higher $Re$ ( ${\geqslant}2060$ ), turbulence persists. The critical point for pipe flow hence falls in the interval of $2020<Re<2060$ , which is in very good agreement with the recently proposed value of $Re_{c}=2040$ . The latter estimate was based on single-puff statistics and entirely neglected puff interactions. Unlike in typical contact processes where such interactions strongly affect the percolation threshold, in pipe flow, the critical point is only marginally influenced. Interactions, on the other hand, are responsible for the approach to the statistical steady state. As shown, they strongly affect the resulting flow patterns, where they cause ‘puff clustering’, and these regions of large puff densities are observed to travel across the puff pattern in a wave-like fashion.
Synchro-push: A new production control paradigm

The paper aims at proposing a new production control paradigm, the Synchro-push, that offers a step forward with respect to the traditional push and pull production paradigms as for plant re-configurability power and quick reaction to demand changes: in fact, theoretically, it offers the advantages of the two traditional approaches without suffering their drawbacks. This could be of advantage for any manufacturing company and especially for SMEs (Small-Medium Enterprises), acting as a support against worldwide competition. The paper presents a brief history of the evolution of the push and pull approaches, the comparison between them and among the different alternatives that have been proposed in literature for their implementation. It presents the new approach, its theory and the subsequent industrial implications. The new approach is now made possible by the development of innovative smart technologies that allow the close-to-real-time decision making in scheduling and a higher level of modularity in the plant.
On the Quadratic Convergence of the Cubic Regularization Method under a Local Error Bound Condition

In this paper we consider the cubic regularization (CR) method for minimizing a twice continuously differentiable function. While the CR method is widely recognized as a globally convergent variant of Newton's method with superior iteration complexity, existing results on its local quadratic convergence require a stringent non-degeneracy condition. We prove that under a local error bound (EB) condition, which is much weaker a requirement than the existing non-degeneracy condition, the sequence of iterates generated by the CR method converges at least Q-quadratically to a second-order critical point. This indicates that adding a cubic regularization not only equips Newton's method with remarkable global convergence properties but also enables it to converge quadratically even in the presence of degenerate solutions. As a byproduct, we show that without assuming convexity, the proposed EB condition is equivalent to a quadratic growth condition, which could be of independent interest. To demonstrate the usefulness and relevance of our convergence analysis, we focus on two concrete nonconvex optimization problems that arise in phase retrieval and low-rank matrix recovery, respectively, and prove that with overwhelming probability, the sequence of iterates generated by the CR method for solving these two problems converges at least Q-quadratically to a global minimizer. We also present numerical results of the CR method when applied to solve these two problems to support and complement our theoretical development.
Estimating the value of foresight: aggregate analysis of natural hazard mitigation benefits and costs

Hazard mitigation planners claim that foresighted present actions and investments produce significant future benefits. However, they have difficulty in supporting their claims, since previously their evidence typically was derived from individual case studies. Constituents and decision makers are often sceptical, believing that individual cases are either inapplicable to their situation or non-randomly selected to support a particular view. Planners need objective evidence based on a large body of experience to support the case for mitigation. Such is the unique contribution of a recent U.S. study that found that each dollar spent in three federal natural hazard mitigation grant programs (the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, Project Impact, and the Flood Mitigation Assistance Program) saves society an average of $4 in future avoided losses. Complementing the aggregate benefit-cost analysis with community-based evaluations, the study yielded insights on how planners can improve long-term community resilience in the face of extreme events. Valuable lessons for mitigation planners and policy makers emerged: the need to consider a wide variety of losses, the importance of mixing qualitative with quantitative analysis, the value of averaging results over a large number of projects, and the need to more explicitly address social issues and data collection in order to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience to cope with twenty-first century hazards.
Growth-selective survival in piscivorous larvae of Japanese Spanish mackerel Scomberomorus niphonius: early selection and significance of ichthyoplankton prey supply

Scombrid fishes are considered to have adopted a survival strategy characterized by fast growth and the ability to consume large prey at an early age. Variability in feeding condition can significantly affect larval growth as early as the post first-feeding stage and may control growth-related survival during the early larval stage. Through otolith microstructure analysis, growth-selective survival was demonstrated for post first-feeding larvae of Japanese Spanish mackerel Scomberomorus niphonius, which exhibit exclusive piscivory, a high growth rate, and low tolerance to starvation. Larvae and juveniles were repeatedly collected in the Seto Inland Sea in June and July from 1997 to 1999. Growth trajectory back-calculated using otolith microanalysis was compared between the survivors (SV) captured in July and the presumed original population (OP) captured in June. Selection for fast-growing larvae was evident during the 5 d after first feeding (Days 5 to 10). More than 90% of the SV had a mean growth rate during Days 5 to 10 (G 5-10 ) > 0.8 mm d -1 , and those with G 5-10 < 0.8 mm d -1 rarely survived the period. Intensity of selection differed among 3 years. A less intense selection was observed in 1999 when the larval cohort experienced higher prey concentrations and G 5-10 . Laboratory experiments demonstrated that 1 to 2 d starvation retarded the larval growth during the following larval period, and supported the conclusion that fluctuation in ichthyoplankton prey abundance alters larval survival probability by affecting the larval growth rate within a short period subsequent to first feeding.
Teaching Business Research Methods with an Internet Course Website: Testing the Applicability of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in Explaining Usage

The present research looks at the complementary nature of traditional classroom delivery with the use of Internet as supporting material. Data was collected from second year business management students who are required to use the course website for their business research methods class. We used the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) developed by (1) as the model for investigating the usage of the course website. TAM proposes that perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) are key determinants of usage of a particular technology or system.The regression analysis results indicate that the two constructs were able to explain 49% of the variation in the usage of the course website. Perceived usefulness (β = 0.423, p<0.01) was the more influential predictor of usage with perceived ease of use (β = 0.371, p<0.01) also significant. Perceived ease of use was also positively related to perceived usefulness of the course website. Thus we can conclude that TAM is a valid model that can be used to explain usage of a course website.