Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tornado Occurrences in the United States: A Spatio-Temporal Point Process Approach

In this paper, we analyze the tornado occurrences in the Unites States. To perform inference procedures for the spatio-temporal point process we adopt a dynamic representation of Log-Gaussian Cox Process. This representation is based on the decomposition of intensity function in components of trend, cycles, and spatial effects. In this model, spatial effects are also represented by a dynamic functional structure, which allows analyzing the possible changes in the spatio-temporal distribution of the occurrence of tornadoes due to possible changes in climate patterns. The model was estimated using Bayesian inference through the Integrated Nested Laplace Approximations. We use data from the Storm Prediction Center’s Severe Weather Database between 1954 and 2018, and the results provided evidence, from new perspectives, that trends in annual tornado occurrences in the United States have remained relatively constant, supporting previously reported findings.
Comparative study on functional outcome, complication and readmission rate in bilateral simultaneous versus staggered versus staged total knee replacement: a retrospective study

Background: An important source of debate in orthopaedic practices is the choice of performing simultaneously, staggered or staged bilateral total knee arthroplasty (BTKA). Many studies are available which compare bilateral simultaneous vs staged TKA in terms of functional outcome. But still there are no studies which include staggered BTKA (done in a single hospital stay) and compared their functional outcome, associated complication with a 90 days readmission rate. Methods: A retrospective review of 300 TKAs patients who underwent bilateral TKA. Patients were divided into three groups with 100 patients each in simultaneous, staggered, staged group. We use hospital electronic health records database to compare the complication and readmission rates in all three groups. Functional outcome was evaluated pre-operatively using knee society score (KSS), Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC), Oxford knee score, Kujala score and range of motion. Results: The study consists of 234 females and 66 males, among which maximum females were in a simultaneous group while male where more in staggered group. Mean age group in our study was 62.25%. ASA score of 3 was significantly more in staged group. Patient in the staggered group had a better KSS and Kujala score with better range of motion and less readmission and complication rate. Simultaneous BTKA had slightly higher complication rate. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that there is not big significant in functional outcome when comparing simultaneous, staged and staggered bilateral TKA, but still staggered group shows better postoperative functional outcome.
Flow and parameter optimization of tapered vane

Abstract Submerged vanes are the hydrofoils which generate the helical currents in the flow due to the difference in pressure between the approaching flow side and the downstream side of vanes and are placed obliquely with the flow, with angles ranging from 10° to 40°. Previous studies have been done on the rectangular shaped submerged vanes but only a few studies have been reported for the submerged vanes with non-rectangular shapes. The present study aims to optimize the parameters of tapered vanes and their effect on flow structure around the vanes through numerical modelling. Numerical modelling for the present study was done in ANSYS-CFX software using the K-ω turbulence closure model to simulate the vortical flow. It was observed that maximum strength of secondary currents was obtained for angle of attack, sweep angle and relative vane height (ratio of vane height to depth of flow) of 17°, 10° and 0.48, respectively. It was also observed that in the proximity of the tapered vane, secondary currents are dominated by vortex-lift while in far-reaches, potential lift prevails. It was observed that transverse velocity was maximum for a sweep angle of 10°. Comparing the optimal rectangular vane (with angle of attack of 30) with the tapered vane (with angle of attack of 17), it was observed that the rectangular vane has a tendency to generate higher transverse velocities and hence may act as a sediment diverter to counter sediment movement while the tapered vane has a tendency to generate vortical structures over a larger distance, hence may act as a sediment managing device.
Psychosocial Challenges of Caring For the Elderly: A Study of Family Caregivers in Enugu Urban, Southeastern Nigeria

: Aging is often accompanied by chronic illness and continuous deterioration of mental and physical independence. This makes care giving necessary, complex and challenging. The objective of the study was to identify those social, economic and psychological changes facing family caregivers. The objective of this study was to identify those social, economic and psychological challenges facing family care givers in Enugu urban. A cross sectional survey was conducted in three LGAs in Enugu State. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods of enquiry, a total of 372 purposively selected respondents were interviewed using a structured questionnaire and an in-depth interview guide (IDI). The quantitative data was analyzed using and presented using percentages and descriptive analysis. The qualitative data was thematically analyzed. Results showed that majority (66.18%) of the caregivers were females. Caregiving of the elderly is associated with social, psychological and economic challenges therefore inclusive social policies, economic incentives and psychosocial support is strongly recommended.
Cell-extrinsic mechanical forces restore neutrophil polarization in the absence of branched actin assembly

For directed movement, cells must constrain protrusions to a limited region of their surface. Both the local positive and global negative feedback loops that generate polarity are thought to be regulated by actin polymerization. However, the types of actin networks contributing to feedback and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here we show that branched actin networks assembled by Arp2/3 and WAVE complex are essential for proper neutrophil polarity and motility in unconfined environments. In contrast, confined cells use a distinct mode of leading-edge advance and polarization whose regulatory positive and negative feedback loops do not depend on branched actin networks. By applying physical perturbations to the plasma membrane, we find that the long-range inhibitor enabling front competition does not solely respond to changes in membrane tension. This work revises our understanding of the core neutrophil polarity network and indicates that cells have distinct molecular circuits for polarity that dominate in different environments.
Through the Eyes of Narcissus: Competitive Social Worldviews Mediate the Associations that Narcissism has with Ideological Attitudes

ABSTRACT The present research examined whether the associations that the assertive/extraverted, antagonistic/disagreeable, and vulnerable/neurotic aspects of narcissism had with ideological attitudes were mediated by social worldviews . The assertive/extraverted and antagonistic/disagreeable aspects of narcissism had similar associations with the competitive social worldview which, in turn, mediated their associations with certain ideological attitudes. In contrast, social worldviews did not mediate the tendency for vulnerable/neurotic narcissism to be characterized by the rejection of right-wing ideological attitudes and the endorsement of left-wing ideological attitudes. These results suggest that these aspects of narcissism diverged in their associations with ideological attitudes and that the competitive social worldview played an important role in the associations that the assertive/extraverted and antagonistic/disagreeable aspects of narcissism had with ideological attitudes.
Simulation of Wind Speed Based on Different Driving Datasets and Parameterization Schemes Near Dunhuang Wind Farms in Northwest of China

In this study, we evaluate the impacts of different datasets (e.g., NCEP global forecast system (GFS) and ERA5) that are used to derive the initial and boundary conditions, various planetary parameterization boundary layer (PBL) schemes and radiation parameterization schemes on wind speed simulations over wind farms near Dunhuang in Northwest of China. The mesoscale community Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is employed to simulate the wind speeds in March of 2014. The sensitivity of numerical simulations to different PBL schemes, including the Yonsei University (YSU), the Asymmetric Convective Model (ACM2) and the Mellor–Yamada–Janjic (MYJ) scheme are examined. Besides, simulations with different radiation parameterization schemes, including the Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for general circulation model (GCM) applications (RRTMG) and the Fu–Liou–Gu radiative transfer scheme (FLG), are compared. Based on hourly observation data from three national basic meteorological observing stations and an anemometer tower in Dunhuang, the simulation results are evaluated. Results show that, using the GFS data as the initial data, the simulation error of 10-m wind speed is rather smaller under the combination of the YSU and FLG. When using the ERA5 data as the initial data, the error of the 2-m temperature simulation is smaller, and it is also less than that of the 10-m wind speed simulation. The simulation results show significant differences at different altitudes. The relative error of wind speed is larger at higher altitude. In the vertical direction, the wind speed is smaller at a lower height and so is the simulation error. In terms of wind speed from the anemometer tower, the error of the wind speed is related to the magnitude of the observed wind speed. Therefore, according to specific conditions of the simulated area, selecting an appropriate combination of initial data and parameterization schemes can effectively reduce the errors of simulated wind speed.
Incivility, Role-Conflict, and Emotional Exhaustion in Teaching Profession: The Moderating Role of Gender

This study examined the effect of incivility and role conflict on emotional exhaustion of teaching staff. Incivility was determined in terms of discouretous and neglecting behavior of family memebrs at home while immediate supervisors at workplace. Role-conflict refers to the interferences of family members during office hours. The study further examined the moderating role of gender in each proposed effect. For empirical analysis, primary data were collected from regular teachers of public sector universities of AJ&K through mailed questionnaires. To examine the proposed direct effects, Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied in AMOS 24. Feasible measurement model was identified and selected with the help of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The study further applied PROCESS macro of Hayes (2013) in SPSS 24 to examine the moderating role of gender. The results show a positive effect of family incivility, family-workplace conflict, and supervisors’ incivility on emotional exhaustion of respondents. Interestingly, the moderating role of gender was not observed for all three cases. On the basis of these findings, different policy implications were presented and discussed.
The Development of a Droplet Formation and Entrainment Model for Simulations of Immiscible Liquid-Liquid Flows

Abstract : Droplet formation is a common phenomenon in turbulent mixing and has many practical applications. The ability to predict the relative sizes and distributions of fluid droplets formed from mixing events is a complex problem which is dependent on many different parameters including geometric considerations, the nature and physical properties of the fluids in question, turbulence parameters, buoyancy and body forces, and flow history. While there have been many researchers who have analyzed this problem for both liquid-liquid and gas-liquid systems, the present study will focus only on droplet formation in immiscible liquid-liquid systems. A review of the literature has shown that previous attempts at describing fluid droplet sizes essentially fall into two categories: (1) phenomenological models, and (2) statistical models. The use of phenomenological models usually involves semi-empirical analyses of a particular liquid-liquid or gas-liquid system, and typically employs a force balance to determine the conditions under which droplet formation or breakage occurs. Statistical models, on the other hand, utilize flow history and probability density functions to determine the size and number distribution of daughter droplets formed from the splitting of larger droplets or the coalescence of smaller ones. In the present study we will adopt many of the methods of the former set of models, resulting in expressions which determine the sizes of the dispersed phase droplets based on local flow parameters including turbulence quantities, appropriate characteristic length scales, and dimensionless parameters such as the gradient Richardson number. While much of the development of the droplet formation/entrainment (DFE) model comes from results from the literature concerning stratified shear flows, the model can be calibrated through the adjustment of certain constants to conform to a wide variety of flow scenarios.
The Effect of Business Risk and Firm Size on Firm Value with Debt Policy as Intervening Variable

This study aims to determine the effect of business risk and firm size on firm value with debt policy as intervening variable. The population used in this study are property and real estate companies listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange (BEI) during 2014-2018. Sample determination was done by purposive sampling method. Methods of data analysis using multiple linear regression analysis and path analysis. The results showed that business risk negatively affect the debt policy, while firm size has a positive effect on debt policy. Business risk negatively affects firm values while firm size and debt policy have a positive effect on firm value. Debt policy is only able to mediate the impact of business risk on corporate value
Unlocking Demand-Side Flexibility for Reliable Energy Systems: The Impact of Information Support on Household Search for Load Shifting Under Dynamic Pricing

To improve the reliability of energy system operations, utilities are increasingly addressing ways to promote the active and timely deployment of demand-side resources. Although previous literature has confirmed that dynamic pricing is effective for managing electricity peak demand, it presents complexity challenges attempting to modify households’ consumption decisions. This study improves our understanding of households’ decision-making processes and limitations, suggesting the possible role that information about behavioral alternatives and payoffs, decision-relevant information, can play in unlocking demand-side flexibility. We draw on the NK model, perform stylized simulations to propose a micro-level foundation for households’ adaptive search and role of decision-relevant information, and conduct a randomized field experiment to put these insights into practice under a dynamic tariff setting. While the households indeed curtail peak demand, those received such information exhibit a three standard-deviation greater demand response without reducing overall daily consumption. Confirming our simulation results, the individual households’ demand response also differs by their pre-experimental consumption patterns, with the effect of the informational support diminishing over time. Utility planners are encouraged to provide decision-relevant information not only to reduce peak demand but also to enhance public acceptance of dynamic pricing by promoting load-shifting that alleviates discomfort from reduced electricity consumption.
A Qualitative Study: The Perception on Anti- Smoking Campaign among Smokers in Kuantan

Smoking is an inevitably unhealthy habit among Malaysian that could harm not only the smokers but also the community. Even though there are a lot of anti-smoking campaign had been introduced by the government but the effectiveness is still marginal. Thus, the objectives of this study were to explore the main factor related to the failure of anti-smoking campaign in Malaysia, to explore the effectiveness of “Smoking Cessation Clinic” and to discover the best solution to ensure the campaign is effective in the future. This is a qualitative cross-sectional study. Interviews were conducted among five voluntary respondents which were smokers and ex-smoker at Public area and selected smoking cessation clinics in Kuantan. This study used thematic analysis to analyse the data. This study found that few contributing factors from the perspective of smokers need to be prioritised by higher authority for improvements. Those contribution factors are minimal creativity on managing anti-smoking promotion, low self-awareness about health, demand on energizer at workplace and poor stress management. Findings recommend that the campaign shall start from primary and secondary school, improvise warning sign of disease, widening the promotion area, provides reward during campaign and smokers to take initiative to involve in the program. Furthermore, the government also needs to focus on the prevention of start smoking rather than the intervention to quit smoking that may cost lots of financial demand.
Understanding and progressing health system decentralisation in Myanmar

ABSTRACT Despite much lauded change in recent years, Myanmar’s national health system still lags behind its regional counterparts. Decades of civil war and military rule have created, at the national level, a ‘centralisation by fiat’. This was most recently consolidated prior to the beginning of the country’s transition to democracy through the military-drafted 2008 constitution, which centralises power in the military. In part, Myanmar’s experience is also one of ‘decentralisation by default’. Civil war as well as the country’s geographic and demographic circumstances led to greater independence of well over a dozen territories and varying degrees of strength in sub-national structures. In the current period of relative de-confliction and political dialogue, discussions of decentralisation and federalism have never been so important – not the least within political dialogue following the nationwide ceasefire agreement. Moreover, several recent studies have found that public health was a top tier indicator of how Myanmar people of all ethnicities perceive the country’s progress. Decentralisation of the health system, as well as some centralisation or convergence of previously separate health systems in terms of information sharing and resource sharing, will be crucial to consolidate the progress made in the peace and democratisation processes. Indeed, the establishment of a decentralised and equitable public health system should be a leading priority for stabilising the country and ensuring its future prosperity. This paper explores decentralisation in Myanmar’s health system through current theoretical frameworks. It suggests that Myanmar’s experience of ‘decentralisation by default’ may find similarities in other post-conflict and conflict states.
Rollout algorithm for light-weight physical-layer authentication in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are vulnerable to spoofing attacks due to their wireless and cognitive nature. Since the traditional cryptographic authentication can hardly prevent such attacks in CRNs, the physical-layer authentication has been investigated for recent years. To achieve a light-weight physical-layer authentication, a rollout partially observable Markov decision process-based algorithm, named RoPOMDP, is proposed in this study. In general, RoPOMDP formulates the physical-layer authentication as a zero-sum game, based on which a hypothesis test upon channel vectors is developed. That allows us to design the gains for both spoofers and receivers based on Bayesian risks for the game, in which the spoofing attack probability is predicted by a non-linear function approximation utilising v-support vector regression. Then, a RoPOMDP is employed to estimate the optimal threshold for the test statistic such that spoofing attacks can be detected. The theoretical analysis and simulations indicate that: (i) RoPOMDP improves the spoofing detection accuracy; (ii) as a light-weight algorithm, the complexity of RoPOMDP is lower than contemporary ones.
Phenotypic and genetic differentiation of qualitative traits in sheep ecotype from Cameroon Western Highlands

This study was carried out in the highlands zone, west region of Cameroon to evaluate the distribution and frequency of sheep qualitative traits. Four hundred and three (403) adult sheep were randomly sampled in the study area. The qualitative traits observed were the presence or not of toggles, beard, horns and the sheep coat color (white, black, white-black and white-brown). The main results showed that the traits observed were variable according to the locality and sex of the animal. The sheep from the Bamboutos Division have the highest toggles frequency (21.69%) compared to those of the Noun Division whose frequency was the lowest (11.67%). Toggles were present in both sexes with higher frequency of 18.18% in females compared to the males (9.47%). Beard was almost non-existent in the two localities as well as in the two sexes. Horns were present in sheep of all the investigated localities and in both sexes, with higher frequency in males (90.53%) compared to females (8.12%). The action of the gene responsible for the color of the coat was variable as far as any locality was concerned. The predominant color observed was white. The gene frequencies recorded for the presence of the toggles (Waw), beard (Brb) and horns (HoP) were 0.06%, 0.00% and 0.35%, respectively. These values were far below the expected Mendelian value of 0.75. These low frequencies observed would indicate that the sheep populations of the highlands of the west region of Cameroon were variegated without proper actions of artificial selection, opening ways for genetic improvement.
Effect of Ti Content on the Behavior of Primary Carbides in H13 Ingots

The Ti element plays a role in pinning grain boundaries but also has a good binding ability to C and N, forming large primary carbides. Therefore, the effect of Ti content on primary carbides’ behavior in H13 ingots was comprehensively studied. A non-aqueous electrolysis method was used to determine the three-dimensional (3D) characteristics of primary carbides. We found a great difference between the two-dimensional (2D) and the three-dimensional characteristics of primary carbides. When performing 2D analyses, the density of the primary carbides appeared high, while their size was small. The actual characteristics of primary carbides can be obtained only by 3D observation. The primary carbide showed a typical dendritic structure, whose center consisted of Ti–V-rich carbide wrapped by V-rich carbide. As the Ti content increased, the size of the primary carbide increased from 24.9 μm to 41.3 μm, and the number density increases from 25.6 per/mm2 to 43.9 per/mm2. The Ti4C2S2 phase precipitated first, then changed into Ti–V-rich carbide, and finally further partly transformed into V-rich carbide. The addition of elemental Ti promoted the precipitation and transformation of primary carbides, resulting in an increase of the number density and size.