Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Establishment and early growth of conifers on compact soils in urban areas.

A study of pitch pine, Austrian pine, and Norway spruce on two different urban soils compacted to bulk densities of 1.2, 1.3, 1.6, and 1.8 gcm-3 and maintained at high water potentials showed that all three species could become established from seed at high soil bulk densities. Pitch pine was the most suceessful species in establishment, Only a silt loam soil, packed to a bulk density of 1.8 gcm-3, significantly reduced establishment of all three species. A sandy loam soil, also packed to 1.8 gcm-3, did not reduce establishment. Root penetration was restricted at a bulk density of 1.4 gcm-3 on the silt loam and 1.6 gcm-3 on the sandy loam; there was a strong interaction between bulk density and soil type. Measured soil resistance to penetration may be a better indicator than bulk density for predicting seedling performance.
Constipation preceding Parkinson's disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective To systematically review published literature to estimate the magnitude of association between premorbid constipation and later diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. Background Constipation is a recognised non-motor feature of Parkinson’s and has been reported to predate diagnosis in a number of observational studies. Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis was carried out following the Meta-analysis Of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) criteria. A literature search was undertaken in December 2014 using PubMed and the search terms ‘Parkinson's disease’ and ‘constipation’. Articles were screened for suitability and reviewed against inclusion and exclusion criteria. Studies were included if they assessed constipation by means of a structured questionnaire or if constipation/drugs used to treat constipation were coded in patient medical records. Data were extracted using a standardised template and effect size estimates combined using a fixed-effects model. Heterogeneity was explored with the I2 statistic. Results 9 studies were included in the meta-analysis, with a combined sample size of 741 593 participants. Those with constipation had a pooled OR of 2.27 (95% CI 2.09 to 2.46) for developing subsequent Parkinson’s disease compared with those without constipation. Weak evidence for heterogeneity was found (I2=18.9%, p=0.282). Restricting analysis to studies assessing constipation more than 10 years prior to Parkinson’s disease gave a pooled OR of 2.13 (95% CI 1.78 to 2.56; I2=0.0%). Conclusions This systematic review and meta-analysis demonstrates that people with constipation are at a higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease compared with those without and that constipation can predate Parkinson’s diagnosis by over a decade.
Sources of Heat in Synthetic Turf Systems

9 INTRODUCTION 11 MATERIALS AND METHODS 13 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 16 FUTURE RESEARCH 18 LITERATURE CITED 20 APPENDIX TABLES 23 CHAPTER 2: LABORATORY EVALUATION OF SYNTHETIC TURF COMPONENTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND ARTIFICAL TURF SURFACE TEMPERATURE 27 ABSTRACT 28 INTRODUCTION 30 MATERIALS AND METHODS 33 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 37 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 40 LITERATURE CITED 4128 INTRODUCTION 30 MATERIALS AND METHODS 33 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 37 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 40 LITERATURE CITED 41
Perverse Consequences of Well Intentioned Regulation: Evidence from India&Apos;S Child Labor Ban

While bans against child labor are a common policy tool, there is very little empirical evidence validating their effectiveness. In this paper, we examine the consequences of India's landmark legislation against child labor, the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986. Using data from employment surveys conducted before and after the ban, and using age restrictions that determined who the ban applied to, we show that child wages decrease and child labor increases after the ban. These results are consistent with a theoretical model building on the seminal work of Basu and Van (1998) and Basu (2005), where families use child labor to reach subsistence constraints and where child wages decrease in response to bans, leading poor families to utilize more child labor. The increase in child labor comes at the expense of reduced school enrollment. We also examine the effects of the ban at the household level. Using linked consumption and expenditure data, we find that along various margins of household expenditure, consumption, calorie intake and asset holdings, households are worse off after the ban.
Imagerie géoradar (GPR) en milieu hétérogène : application aux failles actives en Mongolie et aux dépôts pyroclastiques du Tungurahua (Equateur)

Le georadar est une methode electromagnetique haute frequence (>10 MHz) utilise pour caracteriser les premiers metres du sous-sol. Lors de la presence d'une topographie, les donnees georadar sont deformees en consequence. Afin de retrouver la vraie geometrie des reflecteurs, nous avons codes un algorithme de migration prenant en compte la topographie. La methode est demontree grâce a un modele synthetique simple, puis testee avec succes sur des donnees reelles. Les algorithmes de migration apportent cependant du bruit dans les donnees. Pour pallier a ce probleme, deux methodes ont ete mises en place : la premiere, inherente a la migration, permet de reduire l'aliasing dit sur l'operateur. La deuxieme est un filtre re-interpolant les traces en se basant sur un profil de pendage. Les deux methodes suppriment un bruit incoherent des donnees mais degradent les profils lorsqu'utilisees abusivement. Dans un deuxieme chapitre, nous avons appliques avec succes le georadar dans un contexte de paleo-sismologie en Mongolie. L'utilisation conjointe de deux frequences (50 et 500 MHz) ainsi que des comparaisons avec des tranchees a permis d'obtenir des informations complementaires sur les geometries et les deplacements potentiels le long de deux failles. Dans un dernier chapitre, nous avons appliques les mesures georadar sur les depots pyroclastiques du volcan Tungurahua en Equateur. A nouveau, l'utilisation jointe de differentes frequences (250, 500 et 800 MHz) nous permet d'imager efficacement les depots. Les unites principales sont mises en evidence avec l'antenne de 250 MHz et les architectures des depots sont observables avec les antennes de 500 et 800 MHz.
Power, Distress, and Compassion

Responses to individuals who suffer are a foundation of cooperative communities. On the basis of the approach/inhibition theory of power (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), we hypothesized that elevated social power is associated with diminished reciprocal emotional responses to another person's suffering (feeling distress at another person's distress) and with diminished complementary emotion (e.g., compassion). In face-to-face conversations, participants disclosed experiences that had caused them suffering. As predicted, participants with a higher sense of power experienced less distress and less compassion and exhibited greater autonomic emotion regulation when confronted with another participant's suffering. Additional analyses revealed that these findings could not be attributed to power-related differences in baseline emotion or decoding accuracy, but were likely shaped by power-related differences in the motivation to affiliate. Implications for theorizing about power and the social functions of emotions are discussed.
Evolution of organic aerosol mass spectra upon heating: implications for OA phase and partitioning behavior

Vacuum Ultraviolet (VUV) photoionization mass spectrometry has been used to measure the evolution of chemical composition for two distinct organic aerosol types as they are passed through a thermodenuder at different temperatures. The two organic aerosol types considered are primary lubricating oil (LO) aerosol and secondary aerosol from the alpha-pinene + O3 reaction (alphaP). The evolution of the VUV mass spectra for the two aerosol types with temperature are observed to differ dramatically. For LO particles, the spectra exhibit distinct changes with temperature in which the lower m/z peaks, corresponding to compounds with higher vapor pressures, disappear more rapidly than the high m/z peaks. In contrast, the alphaP aerosol spectrum is essentially unchanged by temperature even though the particles experience significant mass loss due to evaporation. The variations in the LO spectra are found to be quantitatively in agreement with expectations from absorptive partitioning theory whereas the alphaP spectra suggest that the evaporation of alphaP derived aerosol appears to not be governed by partitioning theory. We postulate that this difference arises from the alphaP particles existing as in a glassy state instead of having the expected liquid-like behavior. To reconcile these observations with decades of aerosol growth measurements, which indicate that OA formation is described by equilibrium partitioning, we present a conceptual model wherein the secondary OA is formed and then rapidly converted from an absorbing form to a non-absorbing form. The results suggest that although OA growth may be describable by equilibrium partitioning theory, the properties of organic aerosol once formed may differ significantly from the properties determined in the equilibrium framework.
Representation of Southeast European Countries in International Survey Projects: Assessing Data Quality

This paper deals with the problem of unequal representation of countries in international surveys, and the differences in data quality between survey projects, both obstacles to cross-national comparative research. The first part of the paper investigates international surveys on general population samples conducted in South-East Europe in the period between 1990 and 2010. Documentation of country participation in both general and region- or theme-specific survey projects shows that some countries are systematically excluded from surveys. Consequently, from comparative perspective, the generalizability of research results is not only limited but also potentially biased, omitting atypical cases. The second part of the paper focuses on the quality of surveys. It finds that the most problematic element of surveys is survey documentation, an essential component of the data. Without documentation the value of datasets, analyses using them and conclusions drawn on their basis are questionable. The proposed synthetic measure of data quality, the Survey Quality Index, could lead to setting standards for the documentation of the survey process, and thus facilitate cross-national research and allow for meaningful integration of existing survey data.
Modified Newton-Raphson Technique for Integrated Object-Oriented Water Pipe Network Analysis:

In the proposed research, modified Newton-Raphson technique is developed for integrated object-oriented analysis of water pipe network. An object-oriented concept is used for the integrated simulation model of water pipe distribution network analysis for efficient data handling. This is achieved by treating first the pipe network as a graph data structure with its nodes as the graph's nodes and the pipes as the edges. The algorithm for cycle (real or pseudo cycles) extraction has been developed using Nested Breadth First Search (NBFS) to give cycles in clockwise order. Pseudo loops are found out using shortest path algorithm between two adjacent supply nodes. Pipes in cycles are initialized using conservation of mass at nodes. Friction factor is updated for every change in discharge in pipes. Modified Newton-Raphson technique is developed to obtain solution of the non-linear equation for analyzing the water pipe network considering third order convergence in next step. This technique is more efficient and takes less time to converge the final solution than the traditional Newton-Raphson method. The pressure calculation has been done at last by using balanced discharges and input parameters of pipe network. Balanced discharges and nodal pressure in the pipe network are compared with simultaneous loop flow adjustment method and are found more efficient for complex network. Results have been validated with the results obtained by EPANET software.
Changing the strategy for community forestry in Nepal: The case for active management

Community forestry was developed in Nepal in the late 1970s to reduce environmental degradation and provide for the basic needs of rural people, but too much emphasis has been placed on developing new participatory institutions (Community Forest Users Groups (CFUGs)) and not enough on providing technical support for forest management. Consequently, most CFUGs have adopted a passive forest management strategy which emphasizes forest protection, rather than actively managing forests for multiple purposes, and fewer benefits have been realized from community forestry than expected, with wealthy households benefiting more than poor ones. Greater emphasis should be placed on active forest management in future to increase the overall benefits from community forestry and the proportion received by poorer households. This will contribute to the new national policy aim of poverty alleviation.
Oppositional effects of serotonin receptors 5-HT 1 a , 2 , and 2 c in the regulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis

would require a few weeks to mature before they might contribute to the antidepressant action. However, this conclusion has always been debatable since an increase in precursor cell proliferation, not in neuronal maturation showed the characteristic delay. From a clinical perspective the putative effect latency is now also questionable because newer studies directly focusing on this issue failed to confirm any delayed effectiveness (Posternak and Zimmerman, 2005; Katz et al., 2006a,b; Mitchell, 2006). Although, the effect of Flx on the number of proliferating cells in the dentate gyrus was first detectable at 14 days in the Malberg study, there were already suggestive mean differences at earlier time points. We therefore reasoned that there might indeed be acute effects of serotonin on adult neurogenesis that were somehow masked by the experimental design. A detailed study by Banasr et al. (2004), who had detected effects on cell proliferation, pointed into the same direction. Originating from our work on differential acute and chronic effects of voluntary wheel running on different stages of adult neurogenesis (Kronenberg et al., 2003; Steiner et al., 2008), we hypothesized that such balanced effect might also exist for serotonin-dependent regulation of adult neurogenesis. Our idea was that various serotonin receptors IntroductIon Serotonin is long known as a potent regulator of adult hippocampal neurogenesis (Brezun and Daszuta, 1999, 2000; Radley and Jacobs, 2002; Santarelli et al., 2003; Banasr et al., 2004), but data on how this stimulation is actually achieved are limited and partially contradictory. Given the controversies over the ideas that adult neurogenesis might underlie the pathogenesis of depression and that adult neurogenesis might be necessary for antidepressant action (Jacobs et al., 2000; D’Sa and Duman, 2002; Sahay and Hen, 2007; Kempermann et al., 2008), the potential role of serotonin-based antidepressants in the regulation of adult neurogenesis have became a matter of broader interest. Malberg et al. (2000) were the first to show that cell proliferation and the number of newborn neurons derived from the adult subgranular zone (SGZ), the neurogenic niche in the adult hippocampal dentate gyrus, is increased after prolonged treatment with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluoxetine (Flx). The neurogenic response had a latency of a few weeks. This delay was interpreted as possibly explaining the often reported latency in the clinical effect of antidepressants. It was postulated that newly generated neurons stimulated by Flx Oppositional effects of serotonin receptors 5-HT1a, 2, and 2c in the regulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis
Establishment of a standard operating procedure for predicting the time of calving in cattle

Precise calving monitoring is essential for minimizing the effects of dystocia in cows and calves. We conducted two studies in healthy cows that compared seven clinical signs (broad pelvic ligaments relaxation, vaginal secretion, udder hyperplasia, udder edema, teat filling, tail relaxation, and vulva edema) alone and in combination in order to predict the time of parturition. The relaxation of the broad pelvic ligaments combined with teat filling gave the best values for predicting either calving or no calving within 12 h. For the proposed parturition score (PS), a threshold of 4 PS points was identified below which calving within the next 12 h could be ruled out with a probability of 99.3% in cows (95.5% in heifers). Above this threshold, intermitted calving monitoring every 3 h and a progesterone rapid blood test (PRBT) would be recommended. By combining the PS and PRBT (if PS ≥ 4), the prediction of calving within the next 12 h improved from 14.9% to 53.1%, and the probability of ruling out calving was 96.8%. The PRBT was compared to the results of an enzyme immunoassay (sensitivity, 90.2%; specificity, 74.9%). The standard operating procedure developed in this study that combines the PS and PRBT will enable veterinarians to rule out or predict calving within a 12 h period in cows with high accuracy under field conditions.
On the Effect of Polarization and Incidence Angle on the Estimation of Significant Wave Height From SAR Data

Significant wave height is an extremely important descriptor of the ocean wave field. We have implemented the CWAVE algorithm using linear regression, with elastic net term selection, and single-layer feed-forward neural network using buoy observations and RADARSAT-2 Fine Quad image data as model inputs. We used a number of standard performance metrics and found that the neural network models comprehensively outperformed the regression models. We explored the effect of incidence angle and polarization on model performance and found that the most accurate models were implemented within incidence angle bins between 1° and 2°, rather than including incidence angle as an independent variable. We found that the performance of copol (horizontal–horizontal, vertical–vertical, and RL) and hybrid-pol (right-circular-horizontal and right-circular-vertical) channels was comparable, and that these channels outperformed cross-pol channels (horizontal–vertical and right-circular–right-circular). The accuracy of our <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H_{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> estimates was significantly higher than other published linear regression and neural network results. We demonstrate that a major factor in improving the accuracy of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H_{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> estimation is to use buoy observations rather that operation wave model hindcasts as training data. We demonstrate an application of our model by creating two high-resolution <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H_{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> maps.
Crab cavity requirements for the Jefferson Lab Electron-Ion Collider

CRAB CAVITY REQUIREMENTS FOR THE JEFFERSON LAB ELECTRON-ION COLLIDER Salvador Isaac Sosa Güitrón Old Dominion University, 2018 Director: Dr. Jean R. Delayen An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) has been proposed to be the next large facility to explore the dynamics of quarks and gluons inside nuclei. A conceptual design for a Jefferson Lab Electron-Ion Collider (JLEIC) is being developed. It is based on the CEBAF 12 GeV machine as a full energy electron beam injector. Two crucial requirements of JLEIC are high luminosity in the 10 cm−2s−1 range, and full acceptance detection of particles. The full acceptance requirement relies on having the beams collide at a relatively large crossing angle of 50 mrad. Such a large crossing angle, however, can reduce the luminosity by as much as an order of magnitude. One way to compensate for geometric luminosity loss due to the beam crossing angle is using crab cavities. Crab cavities are superconducting radio-frequency structures optimized to produce a transverse force that “tilts” the beam bunches in such a way that a head-on collision is restored at the collision point, thus restoring the luminosity. A second set of crab cavities is placed downstream of the collision point and is used to cancel the initial bunch tilt, ideally suppressing any crab-induced effects anywhere else in the rings. In this dissertation, we study the dynamics of JLEIC beams with a bunch crabbing scheme using particle tracking simulations. We first evaluate the beam stability when crab cavities are included in the collider rings and then use this stable model to study effects of crab cavity multipoles and RF noise. We also study the role of crab cavity higher-order modes (HOM) in driving coupled-bunch instability and identify dangerous HOM which need to be damped. A specific crab cavity for JLEIC has not yet been selected. It is the purpose of this dissertation to provide general requirements and tolerances to make future crab cavity designs compatible with JLEIC.
An Efficient Pedestrian Detection Method Based on YOLOv2

In recent years, techniques based on the deep detection model have achieved overwhelming improvements in the accuracy of detection, which makes them being the most adapted for the applications, such as pedestrian detection. However, speed and accuracy are a pair of contradictions that always exist and have long puzzled researchers. How to achieve the good trade-off between them is a problem we must consider while designing the detectors. To this end, we employ the general detector YOLOv2, a state-of-the-art method in the general detection tasks, in the pedestrian detection. Then we modify the network parameters and structures, according to the characteristics of the pedestrians, making this method more suitable for detecting pedestrians. Experimental results in INRIA pedestrian detection dataset show that it has a fairly high detection speed with a small precision gap compared with the state-of-the-art pedestrian detection methods. Furthermore, we add weak semantic segmentation networks after shared convolution layers to illuminate pedestrians and employ a scale-aware structure in our model according to the characteristics of the wide size range in Caltech pedestrian detection dataset, which make great progress under the original improvement.
UBVRI Photometry of the Type Ia SN 1994D in NGC 4526

We present optical photometry for the type Ia SN 1994D in NGC 4526 from 1994 March 7 to June 4 starting 13 days before B-band maximum. The light curves of this SN resemble closely those of the "normal" type Ia events SNe 1989B and 1980N, differing only in a slightly faster decline after maximum in VRI. The optical absolute magnitudes of SN 1994D, however, are significantly brighter than those of its near twins, and brighter than those predicted by Phillips' [ApJ, 413, L105 (1993)] relationship between decline rate and luminosity. Our small amount of IR photometry of SN 1994D is not inconsistent with that of other type IA SNe.