Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the role of the shape and size of foraging area, and colony size, in selecting critical areas for Cape Griffon Gyps coprotheres conservation action.

The Cape Griffon (vulture) Gyps coprotheres , which is endemic to southern Africa, has, despite some conservation action, undergone a marked decrease in range and numbers in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Further such action is now urgently required to halt, and even reverse, this decline. For any strategic conservation plan for this species to succeed, it is necessary to identify those sites or areas where ‘on-theground’ conservation action must be focused. This exercise should take into account, inter alia, key biological and ecological parameters for the species in question. Noting that the breeding segment of a population is critical for its survival into the future, this article discusses the role of the shape and size of the mean daily foraging area for griffons at active breeding colonies as a means of identifying areas where conservation action should be focused. It transpires that a circular range, with a radius of 40 km (centred on the active breeding colony) realistically identifies these key foraging areas in the grassland-dominated Eastern Cape. The article also makes a case for the largest (according to number of active breeding pairs) active colonies being a higher priority for conservation action than the smaller ones, and, consequently, the active colonies in the Eastern Cape are ranked from largest to smallest.
Independent and interactive effects of HIV infection, clinical stage and other comorbidities on survival of children treated for severe malnutrition in rural South Africa: A retrospective multicohort study

Background. There is still limited to no evidence on the independent and interactive effects of HIV infection, disease stage, baseline disease severity and other important comorbidities on mortality risk among young children treated for severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in South Africa (SA, using the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended treatment modality. Objectives. To determine baseline clinical characteristics among children with SAM and assess whether HIV infection, disease stage, critical illness at baseline and other comorbidities independently and interactively contributed to excess mortality in this sample. Methods. We followed up children aged 6 - 60 months, who were admitted with and treated for SAM at two rural hospitals in SA, and retrospectively reviewed their treatment records to abstract data on their baseline clinical characteristics and treatment outcomes. In total, 454 children were included in the study. Descriptive statistical tests were used to summarise patients’ clinical characteristics. Kaplan-Meier failure curves were created for key characteristics and compared statistically using log-rank tests. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression was used to estimate independent and interactive effects. Results. The combined case fatality rate was 24.4%. HIV infection, clinical disease stage, the presence of lower respiratory tract infection, marasmus and disease severity at baseline were all independently associated with excess mortality. The critical stage for higher risk of death was when cases were admitted at WHO stage III. The interactions of two or three of these characteristics were associated with increased risk of death when compared with having none, with HIV infection and critical illness showing the greatest risk (hazard ratio 22, p<0.001). Conclusion. The high HIV prevalence rate in the study setting and the resultant treatment outcomes support the notion that the WHO treatment guidelines should be revised to ensure that mechanisms for effective treatment of HIV comorbidity in SAM are in place. However, a much more rigorous study is warranted to verify this conclusion.
Trade credit and the propagation of corporate failure: An empirical analysis

We quantify the importance of trade credit chains for the propagation of corporate bankruptcies. Our results show that trade creditors (suppliers) that issue more trade credit are more exposed to trade debtor (customer) failures, both in terms of the likelihood of experiencing a debtor failure and the loss given failure. We further document that the credit loss invoked by a debtor failure imposes a substantially enhanced bankruptcy risk on the creditors. The propagation mechanism is mitigated for creditors that are less levered, cash rich, and highly profitable, and enhanced in R&D intense industries and during economic downturns.
Marine submicron aerosol gradients, sources and sinks

Abstract. Aerosol principal sources and sinks over eastern North Atlantic waters were studied through the deployment of an aerosol chemistry gradient sampling system. The chemical gradients of primary and secondary aerosol components – specifically, sea salt (SS), water-insoluble organic matter (WIOM), water-soluble organic matter (WSOM), nitrate, ammonium, oxalate, amines, methanesulfonic acid (MSA) and water-soluble organic nitrogen (WSON) – were examined in great detail. Sea salt fluxes were estimated by the boundary layer box model and ranged from 0.3 to 3.5 ng m−2 s−1 over the wind speed range of 5–12 m s−1 and compared well with the derived fluxes from existing sea salt source parameterisations. The observed seasonal pattern of sea salt gradients was mainly driven by wind stress in addition to the yet unquantified effect of marine OM modifying fractional contributions of SS and OM in sea spray. WIOM gradients were a complex combination of rising and waning biological activity, especially in the flux footprint area, and wind-driven primary sea spray production supporting the coupling of recently developed sea spray and marine OM parameterisations.
Vulnerability of agro-pastoral farms to climate change in Dakoro

In Niger, climate change affects the majority of the population, especially the rural communities. The present study intends to contribute to the understanding of the actual perception of climate changes by the population along with the degree of apprehensiveness of the population regarding the climatic manifestations described by scientists. To this end, two communities have been targeted in the Department of Dakoro. The data from the study were mainly obtained by collecting quantitative and qualitative information on the community perception of the impacts of climate change and variability. The results of this scientific contribution demonstrate once again the link between the experiences of producers and scientific evidence. Thus, perceptions of the phenomenon of climate change are very diverse and vary according to the communities and their level of vulnerability. The impacts listed include drought, rainfall deficit, rising temperatures and decreasing soil fertility. The rainfall deficit associated with the decline in soil fertility and the resurgence of crop pests weakens the agricultural sector. The livestock system is highly vulnerable to recurring forage deficit, drought, and degradation of grazing areas and, above all, animal theft, which reflects the increased poverty in the area. Further research on the characterization of adaptation strategies to the impacts experienced by producers will be appropriate.
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of corporate bankruptcy prediction models based on financial ratios: Evidence from Colombia

Logit and discriminant analyses have been used for corporate bankruptcy prediction in several studies since the last century. In recent years there have been dozens of studies comparing the several models available, including the ones mentioned above and also probit, artificial neural networks, support vector machines, among others. For the first time for Colombia, this paper presents a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of several models predicting corporate bankruptcy. Such models have previously been mostly used in relation to European and North American markets, whereas here they are applied to the financial ratios of three firms located in Colombia. The main objective is to corroborate the validity of these models in terms of their ability to predict firm failure in the Latin American context, specifically for two bankrupt Colombian firms and one healthy one. The analysis is conducted using bankruptcy forecasting models widely proposed in the literature and used systematically in developed countries: the multiple discriminant analysis Z-Altman model, Korol’s two-function model and Prusak’s P2 model. In addition, the logit and decision tree models developed by T. Korol are tested.
The necessary and sufficient conditions for general Hadamard product of classes of analytic functions

Let Pa(A,B) be the classes of analytic functions f (z) , where f (z)≺ a+Az 1−Bz , A+aB = 0 and |B| 1 . For classes H1,H2 , · · · ,Hn of analytic functions, we define the general hadamard product of the form H1 ∗m1 H2 ∗m2 H3 ∗ ·· · ∗mn−1 Hn(z) = { f1 ∗m1 f2 ∗m2 f3 ∗ ·· · ∗mn−1 fn(z) : fi ∈ Hi, i = 1,2, . ,n,n ∈ Z,mi ∈ C} . In this paper, we discuss the conditions for equality Pa1(A1,B1) ∗m1 Pa2(A2,B2) ∗ ·· · ∗mn−1 Pan(An,Bn) = Pc(X ,Y ). Some consequences of the main results for known classes of analytic functions are also pointed out.
The determinant of faculty attitude to academic (over-) work load: An econometric analysis

Whilst educational managers and entrepreneurs are expanding online education opportunities, at least some academics are becoming less enthusiastic about the initiative. As a result, a complex and in many ways contested working environment for academics is emerging in tertiary institutions. Some academics are showing dissatisfaction with their workload. Scholars argue that academics’ job satisfaction is highly correlated with students’ learning outcomes. While economists advocate the expansion of online education in the context of rising costs of university education in economics literature, the psychological states of teaching academics are overlooked in economics literature. Attitudes to academic (over-)workload are a psychological issue in tertiary education, particularly in universities globally where online education has a strong presence. This paper deals with teachers’ attitude at an Australia university. This study explains the variations in academics’ attitudes to (over-)workload at an Australian university. For this study we have used primary data collected from a single Australian university - University of Southern Queensland (USQ) - during the period of February-March 2014. The total population size for this study is approximately 400 (four hundred), who are distributed across the then five faculties of the university. The data are collected online. In response to our online survey invitation, 83 (eighty-three) participating academics has taken part in the survey. We have used Likert-type data, where the scale of measurement is represented by ordinal numbers. Research methods used in this study are descriptive analysis of data and inferential statistics based on probit regression. The estimated coefficients of the regression analysis show that three variables are statistically significant at the 5 per cent level. These variables are: the use of the Internet per week, the native language (English) status and the academic qualification status. However, the estimates of the marginal effect show that because of a change of native English status from zero to one, an academic is 23 per cent more likely to be strongly agreed with the statement – online teaching increases academic workload. This implies that attitudes to academic (over-)workload vary among the academics. The policy implication is that education administrators will have to give attention to the working conditions of the academics in order to expand online education successfully.
A multi-satellite study of accelerated ionospheric ion beams above the polar cap

This paper presents a study of nearly field-aligned outflowing ion beams observed on the Cluster satellites over the polar cap. Data are taken at geocentric radial distances of the order of 5–9 R E . The distinction is made between ion beams originating from the polar cusp/cleft and beams accelerated almost along the magnetic field line passing by the spacecraft. Polar cusp beams are characterized by nearly field-aligned proton and oxygen ions with an energy ratio E O+ / E H+ , of the order of 3 to 4, due to the ion energy repartition inside the source and to the latitudinal extension of the source. Rapid variations in the outflowing ion energy are linked with pulses/modifications of the convection electric field. Cluster data allow one to show that these perturbations of the convection velocity and the associated ion structures propagate at the convection velocity. In contrast, polar cap local ion beams are characterized by field-aligned proton and oxygen ions with similar energies. These beams show the typical inverted V structures usually observed in the auroral zone and are associated with a quasi-static converging electric field indicative of a field-aligned electric field. The field-aligned potential drop fits well the ion energy profile. The simultaneous observation of precipitating electrons and upflowing ions of similar energies at the Cluster orbit indicates that the spacecraft are crossing the mid-altitude part of the acceleration region. In the polar cap, the parallel electric field can thus extend to altitudes higher than 5 Earth radii. A detailed analysis of the distribution functions shows that the ions are heated during their parallel acceleration and that energy is exchanged between H + and O + . Furthermore, intense electrostatic waves are observed simultaneously. These observations could be due to an ion-ion two-stream instability.
The RGNLP Machine Translation Systems for WAT 2018

This paper presents the system description of Machine Translation (MT) system(s) for Indic Languages Multilingual Task for the 2018 edition of the WAT Shared Task. In our experiments, we (the RGNLP team) explore both statistical and neural methods across all language pairs. (We further present an extensive comparison of language-related problems for both the approaches in the context of low-resourced settings.) Our PBSMT models were highest score on all automatic evaluation metrics in the English into Telugu, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil portion of the shared task.
Strategic Competition, Capital Structure, and Market Share

This paper examines the interaction between a firm's capital structure and its market share. Theory predicts that this relation depends on the type of strategic competition (i.e., Cournot or Bertrand). We distinguish between Cournot and Bertrand industries in a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms based on an empirical measure of strategic substitutes and strategic complements. We study the joint determination of leverage and market share and test the theoretical predictions of Dasgupta and Titman (1998) and Faure-Grimaud (2000). We show that in Cournot (Bertrand) competition, leverage negatively (positively) affects market share. Conversely, market share has a negative impact on leverage for Cournot firms, but no impact for Bertrand firms. Our findings emphasize the role of strategic competition in the interaction between capital structure and market share.
The Effects of Longevity and Distortions on Education and Retirement

This article studies the impact of longevity and taxation on life-cycle decisions and long run income. Individuals allocate optimally their total lifetime between education, working and retirement. They also decide at each moment how much to save or consume out of their income, and, after entering the labor market, how to divide their time between labor and leisure. The model incorporates experience-earnings profiles and return to education function that follows evidence from the labor literature. In this setup increases in longevity raises the investment in education - time in school - and retirement. The model is calibrated to the U.S. and is able to reproduce observed schooling trends of the last century. It also reproduces the increase in retirement, as the evidence shows. Simulations show that a country equal to the U.S. but with 20% smaller longevity will be 25% poorer, mostly because of the impact of life expectancy on human capital formation and retirement. In this economy labor taxes has a strong impact on the per capita income, as it decreases labor effort, time at school and retirement age, in addition to the general equilibrium impact over physical capital. (Copyright: Elsevier)
COMPUTATION OF MOMENTS IN ORTHOTROPIC THICK PLATES BY THE BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

This paper presents a boundary element formulation for the computation of mo- ments at internal points of laminated composite thick plates. Fundamental solutions for or- thotropic thick plates are obtained using H¨ ormander operator and Radon transform. So, they do not have a closed form and numerical integration is necessary to compute fundamental solutions in each field point. Integral equations for moments are developed and all deriva- tives of the fundamental solution are computed. A special integration technique is used in order to improve performance of the method. The obtained results are in good agreement with literature.
Why Do Firms Evade Taxes? The Role of Information Sharing and Financial Sector Outreach

Informality is a wide-spread phenomenon across the globe. We show that firms in countries with better information sharing systems and greater financial sector outreach evade taxes to a lesser degree, an effect that is stronger for smaller firms, firms in smaller cities and towns, and firms in industries relying more on external financing, with higher liquidity needs and with greater growth potential. However, it is variation in firm size that dominates firm variation in location and industry variation in explaining cross-firm and cross-country variation in tax evasion. This effect is robust to controlling for an array of other measures of the financial and institutional environment firms face. The effect is also robust to controlling for fixed firm effects in a smaller panel dataset of Central and Eastern European countries many of which introduced credit registries or upgraded them in the early 2000s.
Dynamics of free carriers – neutral impurity related optical transitions in Be and Si δ-doped GaAs/AlAs multiple quantum wells: Fractional-dimensional space approach

The dynamics of impurity-related optical transitions in 20 nm wide silicon and beryllium δ-doped GaAs/AlAs multiple quantum wells with various doping levels has been investigated at near liquid helium temperatures. The radiative lifetimes of the free electron-neutral acceptor and the free hole-neutral donor have been identified. The capture cross-sections of the free electrons by neutral Be acceptors were experimentally determined to σ e-Be = 4 × 10 –10 cm, whereas this corresponded to σ h-Si = 2.2 × 10 –8 cm for the free holes by neutral Si donors. The experimentally determined cross-section ratio of σ h-Si /σ e-Be = 55 is close to the estimated 2D value of σ h-D /σ e-A = 64 and remains lower compared to the calculated value for the 3D case of σ h-D /σ e-A = 121.
Scour around Spur Dyke: Recent Advances and Future Researches

Synopsis Scour is a common phenomenon in river engineering and a challenging problem for hydraulic research. Scour may bring human either benefits or disasters depending on whether the scour process is well understood and effectively managed. Investigation on scour around spur dyke has a long history and still receives much attention to date. This paper provides background knowledge and research prospect on this topic. The paper is organized mainly in three parts. The first part presents a state-of-the-art on related researches such as the flow structure, estimation formulae for equilibrium scour depth, temporal and spatial variation of scour and scour around grouped spur dykes. After that, recent advances in numerical modeling techniques are presented, including the principle ideas, governing equations and solution methods. Finally, possible avenues for future researches are suggested.
The effect of curing on the performance of ACF bonded chip‐on‐flex assemblies after thermal ageing

Purpose – Anisotropic conductive film (ACF) is now an attractive technology for direct mounting of chips onto the substrate as an alternative to lead‐free solders. However, despite its various advantages over other technologies, it also has many unresolved reliability issues. For instance, the performance of ACF assembly in high temperature applications is questionable. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of bonding temperatures on the curing of ACFs, and their mechanical and electrical performance after high temperature ageing.Design/methodology/approach – In the work presented in this paper, the curing degree of an ACF at different bonding temperatures was measured using a differential scanning calorimeter. The adhesion strength and the contact resistance of ACF bonded chip‐on‐flex assembly were measured before and after thermal ageing and the results were correlated with the curing degree of ACF. The ACF was an epoxy‐based adhesive in which Au‐Ni coated polymer particles were randomly disp.
Characterizing Privacy Perceptions of Voice Assistants: A Technology Probe Study

The increasing pervasiveness of voice assistants in the home poses several privacy threats, including the stealthy recording of conversations. Little is known about user mental models of such threats, levels of comfort with their presence, and perceptions of potential interventions to eliminate them. In this paper, we present the design and prototyping of two such interventions as technology probes, "Obfuscator" and "Blackout. " We also present our findings from a field study that used both prototypes to better understand user mental models, preferences, and perceptions of privacy threats surrounding voice assistants. The findings from the field study have revealed several themes, including the importance of the aesthetics, ease-of-use, and form factor of the prototypes, all superseding the privacy-preserving features of the intervention. We discuss the design and research implications of our findings for the development of future interventions, the design of voice assistants, and our understanding of user privacy perceptions of voice assistants.
Nondestructive Raman spectroscopy confirms carotenoid-pigmented plumage in the Pink-headed Duck

ABSTRACT A small group of pigment classes is responsible for the wide range of plumage colors in modern birds. Yellow, pink, and other “warm” feather colors of many species are attributed to carotenoid pigments, a plumage trait that has an uneven distribution across modern bird species. Carotenoid plumage pigments are especially rare among fowl (superorder Galloanseres), and until recently, the Pink-eared Duck (Malacorhynchus membranaceus) from Australia provided the only evidence that any species of waterfowl (order Anseriformes) exhibits carotenoid-pigmented plumage. We analyzed a Pink-headed Duck (Rhodonessa caryophyllacea) study skin using Raman spectroscopy, without plucking or otherwise damaging the specimen. Raman spectra confirmed that the pink feathers of Rhodonessa are pigmented with carotenoids. Spectra from Rhodonessa were similar to those from Malacorhynchus, which suggests that the same carotenoid is the primary plumage pigment in both species. Moreover, spectra from Rhodonessa were similar to spectra from other taxa pigmented with ketocarotenoids. Malacorhynchus and Rhodonessa are distant relatives within Anseriformes, so these findings indicate multiple evolutionary origins of plumage carotenoids within the waterfowl or (less likely) many losses of plumage carotenoids from duck species. Our results show that pigment chemistry can be studied in precious ornithological specimens without damaging the specimens, and provide new evidence that the (apparently extinct) Rhodonessa possessed what is evolutionarily an extremely rare trait among waterfowl.