Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consistency of Geoid Models, Radar Altimetry, and Hydrodynamic Modelling in the North Sea

ABSTRACT Radar altimetry, when corrected for tides, atmospheric forcing of the sea surface, and the effects of density variations and mean and time-variable currents, provides an along-track realization of the marine geoid. In this study we investigate whether and how such an ‘altimetric-hydrodynamic’ geoid over the North Sea can serve for validating satellite-gravimetric geoids. Our results indicate that, using ERS-2 and ENVISAT along-track altimetry and water levels from the high-resolution operational circulation model BSHcmod, we do find distinct differences in RMS fits for various state-of-the art satellite-only models (beyond degree 145 for GRACE-only, and beyond degree 185 for GOCE models) and for combined geoid models, very similar as seen in GPS-levelling validations over land areas. We find that, at spectral resolution of up to about 200, an RMS fit as low as about 7 cm can be obtained for the most recent GOCE-derived models such as GOCO05S. This is slightly above what we expect from budgeting individual errors. Key to the validation is a proper treatment of the spectral mismatch between satellite-gravimetric and altimetric-hydrodynamic geoids. Comparison of data fits and error budget suggests that geoid truncation errors residual to EGM2008 (i.e. EGM2008 commission and omission error) may amount up to few cm.
Potential Mobility of Metals in Polluted Coastal Sediments in Two Bays of Southern Spain

Abstract Surface sediments from Cadiz and Algeciras Bays (southern Spain) were analysed by a sequential procedure for Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb, Fe, Ni, Cr, and Mn to determine their distribution among four geochemical phases (acid-soluble, reducible, oxidisable, and residual). The total metal content was also determined. The results showed that large amounts of metal accumulate in the interior of Cadiz Bay, whereas in Algeciras Bay, the highest levels of metal are found near the city of Algeciras and an area of major industrial activity. A comparison of metal levels with the sediment quality guidelines suggested by Long et al. (1995) showed areas in both bays in which pollution is sufficient to have noxious effects on marine organisms. Chemical partitioning of the metals revealed that Zn and Pb present the highest percentages in the reducible fraction and that Ni, Cr, and Cd are highest in the residual and reducible fractions. Cu shows the greatest proportion in the oxidisable fraction and Mn in the acid-soluble fraction. Fe is found mainly in the residual fraction, probably because it is an element basically of natural origin.
Sr isotopic constraints on the process of glauconitization

Sr isotopic data of Holocene glauconitic pellets suggest a twofold glauconitization process that is strongly linked to the detrital clay minerals from surrounding mud which act as precursors until the K2O content of the glauconitic material reaches 4%. Above that, a detectable sea-water influence becomes progressively predominant. The process seems to start with a dissolution-crystallization reaction in equilibrium with the precursor, which is followed by a maturation process in isotopic equilibrium with sea-water Sr, while the K2O content increases further. This chemical evolutionary process may also occur for other types of clay minerals.
Social Media Use in Higher Education: Key Areas to Consider for Educators

The use of social media in higher education classrooms is on the rise as faculty employ a variety of software tools and free web applications to enhance learning, communication, and engagement. Web 2.0 social software exists beyond traditional course management systems and potentially opens up the academic environment to a public space. This article presents important issues for educators to consider as they use these new tools by investigating the ramifications of moving academic activities to a public sphere and examining how laws that govern our academic freedoms and behaviors translate in this new environment. The discussion focuses on concerns specific to incorporating the use of social media and user-generated content into the teaching and learning environment in higher education, touching on compliance with disability and privacy law, intellectual property rights, copyright law, and the fair use exemption providing practical advice with each area of consideration.
The Interactions among Cyclone Dynamics, Vertical Thermodynamic Structure, and Cloud Radiative Forcing in the North Atlantic Summertime Storm Track.

Abstract This study investigates the changes in the vertical thermodynamic structure of the troposphere associated with the passage of cyclones and the corresponding influence on cloud radiative forcing (CRF). The focus is the synoptic-scale evolution of lower-tropospheric sounding structure in the extratropical North Atlantic during July 1985–89. The type and amount of low-level cloud cover, which has a strong impact on total CRF in this region, is sensitive to these variations. Composite profiles at ocean weather stations L and C are constructed for soundings with low-level temperature inversions, soundings with surface-based inversions, and soundings without inversions, separately for conditions of large-scale subsidence and ascent. In addition, collocated European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts analyzed fields and Earth Radiation Budget Experiment CRF data are averaged for each composite sounding. These composites correspond to distinct dynamical regimes associated with the movement of cycl.
A comprehensive analysis of long bone curvature in Neanderthals and modern humans using 3D morphometrics

Since their discovery Neanderthals were described as having a marked degree of anteroposterior curvature of the femoral shaft. Although initially believed to be pathological, subsequent discoveries of Neanderthal remains made femoral curvature as well as the lateral curvature of the radius to be considered derived Neanderthal features. Femoral curvature has previously been used in racial identification in modern humans but its functional significance is poorly understood. A recent study on Neanderthals and early modern humans found no differences in femoral curvature but did not consider size-corrected curvature. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to 1) use 3D morphometric landmark and semi- landmark analysis to quantify bone curvature (femur, ulna, radius) in Neanderthals, Upper Palaeolithic and recent modern humans, 2) compare adult bone curvature between these populations, and 3) test hypotheses on the effects of climate, body size, and activity patterns on curvature. Comparisons between and within populations were made using geometric morphometrics (3D landmarks) and standard multivariate methods. Comparative material involved all available Neanderthal and Upper Palaeolithic modem human femora, ulnae and radii, archaeological (Mesolithic, Neolithic, Medieval) and recent human populations representing a wide geographical and lifestyle range. The study found that there are significant differences in the anatomy of the femur, ulna and radius between Neanderthals and modern humans. Neanderthals have more curved femora and radii than modern humans. Early modern humans are most similar to recent modern humans in their anatomy. Recent modern human analyses indicate that femoral curvature and lower arm curvature are responses to disparate influences. Femoral curvature is a good indicator of activity level and habitual loading of the lower limb. Curvature of the lower arm is a consequence of cold adaptation and its purpose is to maintain biomechanical function of the lower arm despite its forshortening.
Automatic Leading Indicators ( ALIs ) versus Macro Econometric Structural Models ( MESMs ) : Comparison of Inflation and GDP growth Forecasting

Automatic Leading Indicators (ALIs) versus Macro Econometric Structural Models (MESMs): Comparison of Inflation and GDP growth Forecasting Duo Qin, Marie Anne Cagas, Geoffrey Ducanes, Nedelyn Magtibay-Ramos and Pilipinas Quising Queen Mary, University of London Asian Development Bank (ADB) University of the Philippines December 2006 Abstract This paper compares forecast performance of the ALI method and the MESMs and seeks ways of improving the ALI forecasts. Inflation and GDP growth form the forecast objects for comparison, using data from China, Indonesia and the Philippines. The ALI method is found to produce better short-term forecasts than those by MESMs in general, but the method is found to involve greater uncertainty in choosing indicators, mixing data frequencies and utilizing unrestricted VARs. Two possible improvements are found helpful to reduce the uncertainty: (i) give theory priority in choosing indicators and include theory-based disequilibrium shocks in the indicator sets; and (ii) reduce the VARs by means of the general → specific model reduction procedure.
EARTH DEGASSING, FOREST FIRE AND SEISMIC ACTIVITIES

The earth is not only a solid body, but also a five gas\|spheric globe. When the crust of the earth is under pressure, the crust deforms and ruptures Gases (CH 4,CO,etc) underneath the crust are released. Forest fire and earthquake are caused by earth degassing. Some successful predictions of earthquake using satellite thermal infrared image (STII) are described.Since 1990,149 earthquake predictions have been made and the reports of these have been submitted to the Bureau of Seismology. Of the 149 predictions,100 are right while 49 are not. Of the right 100 ones,65 are highly accurate, including 10 M s7 earthquakes, 19 M s6 earthquakes, and 36 M s 5 earthquakes. Twenty five of the predictions have a medium level of accuracy, including 4 M s 7 earthquakes. The rest 10 have a low level of accuracy. Owing to the interference of the cloud, 49 earthquakes were neglected and 20 wrong predictions.Some interesting indication of forest fires reflected by STII are also introduced as follows. Forest fire in Arshan in the Dahingganling Mountains in Inner Mongolia was occurred between May 13 and 22,1998. Ten days prior to the forest fire, there was an semicircle area of degassing temperature increase where the forest fire occurred. Fenyang forest fire in Shanxi Province was occurred on April 3,1999, four days before it, there was an isolated\|circle degassing temperature increasing area indicated by STII on March 31,1999. Forest fired in the suburbs Fuzhou on March 28,1999,when temperature increasing anomaly along the coastal areas in Fujian Province was reflected by STII. Lanyu earthquake with magnitude 7.1 was occurred on September 6,1996. Eleven days prior to it,there was a peculiar tectonic stress thermal system with a “e” type due to temperature increasing.
Methane Emissions from Rice Production in the United States — A Review of Controlling Factors and Summary of Research

Flooded rice Oryza sativa L. ) cultivation has been identified as one of the leading global agricultural sources of anthropogenic methane (CH 4 ) emissions. Furthermore, it has been estimated that global rice production is responsible for 11% of total anthropogenic CH 4 emissions. Considering that CH 4 has a global warming potential that is approximately 25 times more potent, on a mass basis, than carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and rice production is globally extensive and concentrated in several mid-southern and southern states and Cal‐ ifornia, the purpose of this review is two-fold: (i) discuss the factors known to control CH 4 production in the soil and transport to the atmosphere from rice cultivation and (ii) summarize the historic and recent research conducted on CH 4 emissions from rice pro‐ duction in the temperate United States. Though some knowledge has been gained, there is much more that still needs to be learned and understood regarding CH 4 emissions from rice production in the United States, its contribution to climate change, and poten‐ tial mitigation strategies. Extending the current knowledge base surrounding CH 4 emis‐ sions from rice cultivation will help regulatory bodies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, refine greenhouse gas emissions factors to combat the potential nega‐ tive effects of climate change.
A Test of Racial Bias in Capital Sentencing

This paper proposes a test of racial bias in capital sentencing based upon patterns of judicial errors in lower courts. We model the behavior of the trial court as minimizing a weighted sum of the probability of sentencing an innocent and that of letting a guilty defendant free. We de? ne racial bias as a situation where the relative weight on the two types of errors is a function of defendant and/or victim race. The key prediction of the model is that if the court is unbiased, ex post the error rate should be independent of the combination of defendant and victim race. We test this prediction using an original dataset that contains the the race of the defendant and of the victim(s) for all capital appeals that became ? nal between 1973 and 1995. We ? nd robust evidence of bias against minority defendants who killed white victims: in Direct Appeal and Habeas Corpus the probability of error in these cases is 3 and 9 percentage points higher, respectively, than for minority defendants who killed minority victims.
Overall Properties of A Material With Inclusions Or Cavities

SUMMARY The method of smoothing has already been employed to provide estimates of the overall properties of materials containing flat cracks, accurate to second order in the number density of cracks. Results from these calculations have been used to invert data on crustal materials for about a decade now. The analysis is extended here to apply to materials containing inclusions or cavities, modelled as ellipsoids with non-vanishing aspect ratio. As before it is assumed that wavelengths of any radiation field will be large compared with the diameters of the inclusions and with their spacing. The results enable the calculation of the elastic stiffnesses of such a material for either static or dynamic stimulation. The appropriate value of the density in the dynamic equations turns out to be the average density for the material as a whole. The overall stiffnesses depend on the response of a single inclusion and, therefore, on the properties of the inclusion material.
Angiogenesis , Metastasis , and the Cellular Microenvironment Quiescin Sulfhydryl Oxidase 1 Promotes Invasion of Pancreatic Tumor Cells Mediated by Matrix Metalloproteinases

Quiescin sulfhydryl oxidase 1 (QSOX1) oxidizes sulfhydryl groups to form disulfide bonds in proteins. We previously mapped a peptide in plasma from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) patients back to an overexpressedQSOX1parent protein. In addition to overexpression in pancreatic cancer cell lines, 29 of 37 patients diagnosed with PDA expressed QSOX1 protein in tumor cells, but QSOX1 was not detected in normal adjacent tissues or in a transformed, but nontumorigenic cell line. To begin to evaluate the advantageQSOX1might provide to tumors, we suppressed QSOX1 protein expression using short hairpin (sh) RNA in two pancreatic cancer cell lines. Growth, cell cycle, apoptosis, invasion, and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) activity were evaluated. QSOX1 shRNA suppressed both short and long isoforms of the protein, showing a significant effect on cell growth, cell cycle, and apoptosis. However, QSOX1 shRNA dramatically inhibited the abilities of BxPC-3 and Panc-1 pancreatic tumor cells to invade through Matrigel in a modified Boyden chamber assay. Mechanistically, gelatin zymography indicated that QSOX1 plays an important role in activation ofMMP-2 andMMP-9. Taken together, our results suggest that the mechanism of QSOX1-mediated tumor cell invasion is by activation of MMP-2 and MMP-9. Mol Cancer Res; 1–11. 2011 AACR.
Linking onshore and offshore structures: Mesozoic extension in the Scottish Highlands

Geological relationships in the offshore basins flanking northern Scotland suggest that a regional Caledonian control on the structure of these basins is far from proven, but conversely Mesozoic faults of the offshore set may extend onshore. The Strathconnon fault, long held to be late Caledonian, may be Mesozoic in age, forming the principal kinematic link between the east and west coast basins of northern Scotland. The numerous outcrops of Precambrian basement within the Minch/Hebrides basin nearly all lie in the uplifted footwalls of Mesozoic faults. Similar fault controls on the distribution of onshore outcrop within the Precambrian may exist.
Jerk-based feature extraction for robust activity recognition from acceleration data

A current trend in activity recognition is to use just one easily carried accelerometer, either integrated into a mobile phone, carried in a pocket, or attached to an animal's collar. The main disadvantage of this approach is that the orientation of the accelerometer is generally unknown. Therefore, one cannot separate body-related accelerations from the gravitational acceleration or determine the real directions of the observed accelerations accurately. As a solution, we introduce a new technique where jerk (changes of accelerations) is analyzed instead of the original acceleration signal. The total jerk magnitude is completely orientation-independent and it reflects only body-related accelerations. If the direction of the gravitation can be approximated even loosely, then the jerk signal can be further enriched with valuable information on jerk angles (direction changes). According to our experiments this kind of jerk-filtered signal produces robust features and can improve the recognition accuracy remarkably.
OLD WINE IN A NEW BOTTLE: THE MILP ROAD TO MIQCP

This paper surveys results on the NP-hard mixed-integer quadratically constrained programming problem. The focus is strong convex relaxations and valid inequalities, which can become the basis of eﬃcient global techniques. In particular, we discuss relaxations and inequalities arising from the algebraic description of the problem as well as from dynamic procedures based on disjunctive programming. These methods can be viewed as generalizations of techiniques for mixed-integer linear programming. We also present brief computational results to indicate the strength and computational requirements of the these methods.
The Determinants of the Flow of Funds of Managed Portfolios: Mutual Funds vs. Pension Funds

Abstract This study compares the relations between asset flow and performance in the retail mutual fund and fiduciary pension fund segments of the money management industry, and relate empirical differences to fundamental differences in the clientele they serve. A striking difference is the shape of the flow-performance relation. In contrast to mutual fund investors, pension clients punish poorly performing managers by withdrawing assets under management and do not flock disproportionately to recent winners. We interpret these and other empirical differences in the context of the manager evaluation procedures typical in each segment. We conclude that pension managers have little incentive to engage in the risk-shifting behavior previously identified among mutual fund managers.
Caffeine Improves Elevated IOP by modulating Oxido-inammatory responses in Rat Models of Glaucoma

Glaucoma, a neurodegenerative disease caused by continuous damage to the retina and optic nerve, is the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally. Caffeine, a central nervous system stimulant, is widely consumed for its psychoactive effects. This study aimed to determine caffeine's anti-oxidative and anti-inammatory role on elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) following hyaluronic acid and hypertonic saline injections. Thirty (30) adult Long-Evans rats were distributed randomly into six (n=6) groups. The Control group received 50 µL of dH 2 0. H.A. received 25 µL of hyaluronic acid into the corneosclera junction. H.S. , 50 µL of hypertonic saline into the episcleral vein. PHA and PHS were treated with an intraperitoneal injection of 20mg/kg caffeine. Group CAF received an intraperitoneal injection of 20 mg/kg of caffeine. IOP measurement was taken, and markers of oxidative stress, malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD) were assayed. The in�ammasome immunoreactivity was evaluated. We observed severe in�ammasome activation in the H.S. model of elevated IOP. H.A. and H.S. injections induced antioxidant imbalance by increased and decreased levels of MDA and SOD, respectively. In addition, an increase in the IOP and retina damage was observed following H.A. and H.S. injection, while caffeine demonstrated an ameliorative role in reviving the RGC damage. Caffeine demonstrated an ameliorative role in reducing the intraocular pressure and rejuvenating effect on the RGC, which was more evident in the hypertonic saline model of elevated IOP.
The Relationship between oak tree roots and groundwater in fractured rock as determined by tritium tracing

The depths to which trees can extend their roots to obtain water have commonly been estimated to equal the height of the aerial portion of the plants. A detailed hydrogeologic investigation on a foothill pilot watershed has included diamond core drill holes which penetrate the fractured and jointed metamorphic rock well into the saturated zone. These holes provide observation wells for groundwater measurements and access for the injection of tritiated water into the groundwater zone. Over a 3-year period, injections have been made at various locations where the groundwater occurs at different depths from ground surface. In all the injection tests, significant amounts of tritiated water have been found in the water extracted from the fractured rock by the oak trees. Size and species of the oak trees do not influence the uptake of the injected tritiated water from the groundwater. Results of the 1962 experiment show that the oaks extend roots through the fractured rock to depths in excess of 70 ft. The number of oak trees in which the uptake of injected tritiated water has been detected indicates that all oak trees in the study area use water from the capillary zone immediately above the water table during the summer and fall months, a fact supported by observations of the decline of ground-water levels during these seasons. The decline occurs at nearly the same rate regardless of the depth to groundwater or the location of the well on the watershed.
PREDICTIVE VALUE OF KINEMATIC PARAMETERS ON THE RESULTS OF THE LONG JUMP WITH STUDENTS

The aim of the research is to determine predictive value of kinematics’ parameter variable value of a long jump affecting effecting jump length. The research was conducted on the sample of 50 students I year of Faculty of physical education and sport. The sample of variables presented 9 kinematics parameters variables (as predictor variable system) and one variable effective long jump length (as criteria variable). In order to determine predictor set of variables and criteria variable of a long jump we applied regression analysis. Appliance of regression analysis we obtained that the coefficient of multiple correlations (R) of predictor set of data with criteria variable KPEDSK (effective long jump length). 806, with total variability (R Square) . 646 on the level of significance . 000, According to analysis of individual partial regression correlation of predictor variable kinematics parameters affecting criteria variable KPEDSK, we can conclude that the biggest and statistically significant influence had three variables as follows; KPBZ5M – speed in last 5 meters (.465 Beta), then KPVTTO variable – body gravity height at bounce (.556 Beta) and variable KPVTTL – body gravity height in the highest stage of a flight (.673 Beta). We assume that the results of the research can help further planning and programming of education, curriculum and training.