Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How foreign pressure affects mass mobilization in favor of authoritarian regimes

Authoritarian regimes are frequent targets of international pressure in the form of economic sanctions or threats thereof. Existing research shows that foreign interventions can carry several unintended consequences for politics and the economy in the targeted countries. One of the side effects of such interventions is boosting support for incumbent autocrats. Public demonstrations in support of embattled leaders are one aspect of this dynamic. This article investigates the link between foreign pressure and domestic mobilization in favor of ruling autocrats. It is argued that pressure simultaneously increases regime supporters’ willingness to participate in rallies and the regime’s demand to display and even overstate regime support. Foreign pressure facilitates mobilization as autocrats can fuel nationalist sentiments and frame foreign interventions as an attack on the nation as a whole. At the same time, rallies are a strategic tool to reduce political opportunities for the opposition and to signal resolve to the international community. Empirically, I conduct the first quantitative analysis that evidences the existence of a relationship between international pressure and mobilization in support of incumbent autocrats. Using monthly data on rally events in all authoritarian regimes between 2003 and 2015, I find that sanctions but also threats significantly increase pro-government mobilization. In addition, I show evidence for a moderating role of media freedom in the targeted state, highlighting the importance of how international events are portrayed in national news.
Biology of mesenchymal stromal cells: Chondrogenesis, paracrine signalling and cartilage repair

Many researchers world over are currently investigating the suitability of stromal cells harvested from foetal tissues for allogeneic cell transplantation therapies or for tissue engineering purposes. In this study, we have investigated the chondrogenic potential of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) isolated from whole sections of human umbilical cord or mixed cord (UCSCs-MC), and compared them with cells isolated from synovial membrane (SMSCs), Hoffa’s fat pad (HFPSCs) and cartilage. All MSCs were positive for surface markers including CD73, CD90, CD105, CD44, CD146 and CD166, but negative for CD11b, CD19, CD34, CD45 and HLA-DR in addition to CD106 and CD271. Chondrogenic potential of all cell sources was studied using 3D pellet cultures incubated in the presence of different combinations of anabolic substances such as dexamethasone, IGF-1, TGF-β1, TGF-β3, BMP-2 and BMP-7. BMP-2 and dexamethasone in combination with TGF-β1 or TGF-β3 excelled at inducing chondrogenesis on SMSCs, HFPSCs and chondrocytes, as measured by glycosaminoglycans and collagen type II staining of pellets, quantitative glycosaminoglycan expression, quantitative PCR of cartilage signature genes and electron microscopy. In contrast, none of the tested growth factor combinations was sufficient to induce chondrogenesis on UCSCs-MC. Moreover, incubation of UCSCs-MC spheroids in the presence of cartilage pieces or synovial cells in co-cultures did not aid chondrogenic induction. In summary, we show that in comparison with MSCs harvested from adult joint tissues, UCSCs-MC display poor chondrogenic abilities. This observation should alert researchers at the time of considering UCSCs-MC as cartilage forming cells in tissue engineering or repair strategies.
A Regulatory Policy Strategy for Protecting Immigrant Workers

Immigration has become a focal point of many political campaigns, most notably that of President Trump in 2016 and again in 2020. Populist rhetoric also decries immigrant workers for taking Americans’ jobs and depressing wages for US-born workers. Yet immigrants serve a constructive role by working in some of the most dangerous occupations in the country. In fact, it is well-known that immigrant workers, particularly those from Mexico with limited English language skills, face a higher workplace fatality rate than native workers. Efforts to reverse this trend have long been the focus of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which undertook numerous policy initiatives under the Bush and Obama Administrations to reduce immigrant fatalities in the workplace. Using three different datasets, this article empirically shows that, while job safety has improved for immigrant workers, more gains are required to reduce immigrant fatality rates to align with those of native workers. In reaching this result, we make several contributions to the literature. First, we use recent data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) to show that immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, experienced higher fatality rates than native-born workers in 2003, 2007, and 2015. Second, we empirically demonstrate that a large group of recent immigrants to the United States reported in the New Immigrant Survey either remain in high-risk jobs or increase their fatality risks over time. In doing so, this study is the first to exploit the longitudinal nature of the New Immigrant Survey to assess whether immigrant workers progressed into safer jobs between 2003 and 2007. Finally, we provide updated estimates of the Value of Statistical Life for immigrant workers using recent fatality data from the 2015 CFOI. Here, we show that unlike native-born workers, immigrant workers—especially those from Mexico—are not only in higher risk jobs but are also not compensated with hazard pay for workplace fatality risks. In conjunction, these results show that, while OSHA’s outreach programs toward immigrants have served a constructive function, more can be done to communicate job risks to immigrant workers to help them progress into safer jobs. In particular, since immigrant workers who lack English proficiency suffer most in the labor market, we recommend that OSHA target its outreach programs toward providing safety materials in an immigrant worker’s native language to alert workers to the hazards that are present and to promote safety training that immigrant workers can understand. Additionally, we also suggest that OSHA conduct a benefit-cost analysis to assess alternative regulatory policies that mandate employers to provide safety and training materials into other languages, such as Spanish.
COVID-19, Home Confinement, and the Fallacy of “Safest at Home”

In the United States, one in four women and one in seven men experience severe physical IPV at some point in their lives 2 Transgender individuals report even higher levels, with some studies quoting lifetime prevalence of IPV of up to 50% 3 Restricted economic resources, unemployment, and high stress levels all correlate with an increase in both the incidence and the severity of IPV According to the Director for Shelter Services at the Domestic Violence and Child Advocacy Shelter of Cleveland, Ohio, for example, 40% ofcalls in February 2020 were classified as acute crises Many public health experts and epidemiologists believe that several rounds ofshelter-in-place orders may be necessary until a vaccine can be reliably deployed or viral spread has subsided completely
Teacher Education in a New Age of Accountability: How Can Programs Develop Responsible and Valuable Self-Assessment

ABSTRACT This paper intends to demonstrate how within the current contentious environment for teacher education in the U.S., two small teacher preparation programs conducted a voluntary coordinated long-term self-evaluation study, that partially responded to external accountability pressures by the Federal administration, state agencies and various private and non-governmental organizations. In particular, we focus on findings about graduates’ preparation experiences and sense of preparedness for teaching, as well as how they perceived their faculty strengths and weaknesses and programs’ effectiveness. Such an in-depth examination of graduates’ perspectives can serve not only for internal self-study purposes, but also as an example to other preparation programs looking to meet external accountability pressures, while preserving a voice in the process and developing meaningful tools for self-assessment and improvement.
Acquisition of the Mandarin ba-Construction by Cantonese Learners

: Optionality, defined as the coexistence of two or more variants of a given construction, has been investigated in second language studies. Following the notion of optionality, this study defines the Mandarin ba -construction and its corresponding non- ba -forms as optional variants to examine Cantonese-speaking learners’ acquisition of Mandarin. We designed an elicited production task and an acceptability judgement task to test the disposal and locational displacement types of the ba -construction, and invited Cantonese learners and Mandarin native speakers to attend the experiments. The Cantonese learners, like learners with other language backgrounds, produced fewer ba -sentences compared with native speakers, but the Cantonese learners produced much more ba -sentences than learners with other language backgrounds and were aware of the constraints on the ba -construction, which is probably due to the existence of the similar zoeng -construction in Cantonese. Although at an advanced level, the performance of the Cantonese learners diverged from that of the native speakers in both the production and the judgement, which demonstrates the existence of optionality in the Cantonese learners’ interlanguage grammars.
The Impact of Supply Chain Risks and Supply Chain Risk Management Strategies on Enterprise Performance in Ghana

Enterprises are constantly experiencing higher levels of supply chain disruptions in their operations due to the expansion of industries’ business networks. It becomes very necessary for enterprises to continually assess risks in their business operations. To mitigate the adverse consequences of such potential supply chain risks on the performance of enterprises, it becomes imperative for Ghanaian enterprises to implement adequate supply chain risk management strategies. The purpose of this paper is to outline potential risks in the supply chain network of Ghanaian enterprises and investigate the impact of these potential risks and supply chain risk management (SCRM) strategies on enterprise performance. Data for the study was collected from 210 enterprises in Ghana and analyzed by modeling the constructs of supply chain risks, supply chain risk management (SCRM) strategies and enterprise performance and also measuring the complex relationships among the constructs using a structural approach. The structural model result shows that, enterprises with distinct organizational structures dedicated to supply chain risk management with the purpose of mitigating supply chain risks tend to perform better than their competitors. The results also indicated a negative association between supply chain risks and the performance of Ghanaian enterprises. This research provides direction for managers to adopt and develop adequate enterprise supply chain risk register and supply chain risk management (SCRM) strategies to mitigate the consequences of supply chain risks in their planned business operations.
Factors Affecting Unsuccessful Suicide Among Women Referred to Emergency Room of Ardabil City Hospital, Ardabil, Iran

Background: Along with the complexity of social communications, the rate of suicide is increasing, and according to studies, women commit suicide more than men. Various factors affect the occurrence of this phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors affecting unsuccessful suicide among women referring to the emergency room of the hospital of Ardabil City, Iran. Methods: This study was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted on 236 women who had unsuccessful suicide. Questions were asked from patients with a checklist. This checklist has four parts. The first part relates to the patient’s personal information, and the second part relates to the patient’s previous history of mental, physical, and addiction problems. The third part asked about the causes of suicide and the fourth part related to the prior announcement. The collected data were analyzed by statistical methods in SPSS v. 18. Results: The Mean±SD age of the women was 27.66±9.95 years, and the majority was between 15 and 20 years old. About 64% of women were housewives, and 37.7% had undergraduate education. Also, 36% had a positive history of psychological diseases, and 30.9% had a history of suicide. The most common causes of suicide among women were emotional problems (91.9%), family and marriage conflict (81.8%), spouse’s disregard (50.4%), and economic issues (44.5%). Conclusion: The results showed that emotional problems and family and marital conflicts were common causes of suicide among women, and all women had at least one crucial reason for their suicide attempt.
Investigation of Ozone Microbubbles for the Degradation of Methylene Orange Contaminated Wastewater

In the present study, semi – batch experiments were conducted to investigate the efficiency of ozone microbubbles (OMBs) in the treatment of aqueous dye solutions methylene orange under different reaction conditions such as effect of initial solution pH , ozone generation rate and initial MO-concentration. The results showed that the removal of MO by OMBs were very high at the acidic and alkaline media and upon increasing the generation rate of ozone from 0.498 to 0.83 mg/s, the removal efficiency dramatically increased from 75to 100% within 15 min. The rate of oxidation reaction followed a pseudo first- order kinetic model. The results demonstrated that OMBs is efficient in terms of the decline of methylene orange concentration and its total mineralization.
An experimental study to evaluate the postfire mechanical properties of concrete specimens

In this research, the mechanical behavior of structural concrete made with materials in Iran has been experimentally investigated after experiencing high temperatures. For this purpose, six different mix designs were selected in accordance with Iranian Concrete Standard (ABA). Six different target temperatures (25, 100, 250, 500, 700, and 900°C) were also selected for the purpose of fire experience. Compressive and tensile strength tests were carried out on all of the samples and their behavior was evaluated after experiencing different target temperatures. The results show a strong drop in compressive and tensile strength at temperatures above 700°C. It can be noted that at 900°C all specimens lost their strength. Finally, thanks to the large number of experiments, different relationships are presented based on the results to determine the mechanical properties of different mix designs at different temperature levels.
Trends, patterns, and networks of illicit wildlife trade in Nepal: A national synthesis

Illicit wildlife trade may have devastating consequences for Nepal's wildlife populations given its increasing national and global connectivity and proximity with large Indian and Chinese markets. Despite its potential impacts, our understanding about trends, patterns and networks of illicit wildlife trade in Nepal is very limited. Here, we provide a thorough and comprehensive national assessment of such trade in Nepal using 5 years (2011 through 2015) of data on wildlife seizures and arrests (n = 830) collected from 73 districts. Nearly 87% of arrests included seizures, and globally threatened species were confiscated from 56% of total arrests. There were increasing trends of arrest cases over the time period for all species (p = 0.03), leopards (p = 0.02) and red pandas (p = 0.002), and a decreasing trend for rhinoceros (p = 0.04). Seizures of multiple species—especially tigers, leopards, and pangolin—in arrest cases were suggestive of international organized criminal linkages, whereas individual small‐scale seizures were likely for local, species‐specific markets. The trade networks suggested connections between species core habitats (poaching sites), cities (collection sites), and transit routes between India and China (international markets). Our results show that wildlife trade, except for rhinoceros, is increasing and trade nodes along districts bordering China and India are suggestive of large, international networks.
Short-Term Spatio-Temporal Drought Forecasting Using Random Forests Model at New South Wales, Australia

Droughts can cause significant damage to agriculture and water resources, leading to severe economic losses and loss of life. One of the most important aspect is to develop effective tools to forecast drought events that could be helpful in mitigation strategies. The understanding of droughts has become more challenging because of the effect of climate change, urbanization and water management; therefore, the present study aims to forecast droughts by determining an appropriate index and analyzing its changes, using climate variables. The work was conducted in three different phases, first being the determination of Standard Precipitation Evaporation Index (SPEI), using global climatic dataset of Climate Research Unit (CRU) from 1901–2018. The indices are calculated at different monthly intervals which could depict short-term or long-term changes, and the index value represents different drought classes, ranging from extremely dry to extremely wet. However, the present study was focused only on forecasting at short-term scales for New South Wales (NSW) region of Australia and was conducted at two different time scales, one month and three months. The second phase involved dividing the data into three sample sizes, training (1901–2010), testing (2011–2015) and validation (2016–2018). Finally, a machine learning approach, Random Forest (RF), was used to train and test the data, using various climatic variables, e.g., rainfall, potential evapotranspiration, cloud cover, vapor pressure and temperature (maximum, minimum and mean). The final phase was to analyze the performance of the model based on statistical metrics and drought classes. Regarding this, the performance of the testing period was conducted by using statistical metrics, Coefficient of Determination (R2) and Root-Mean-Square-Error (RMSE) method. The performance of the model showed a considerably higher value of R2 for both the time scales. However, statistical metrics analyzes the variation between the predicted and observed index values, and it does not consider the drought classes. Therefore, the variation in predicted and observed SPEI values were analyzed based on different drought classes, which were validated by using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC)-based Area under the Curve (AUC) approach. The results reveal that the classification of drought classes during the validation period had an AUC of 0.82 for SPEI 1 case and 0.84 for SPEI 3 case. The study depicts that the Random Forest model can perform both regression and classification analysis for drought studies in NSW. The work also suggests that the performance of any model for drought forecasting should not be limited only through statistical metrics, but also by examining the variation in terms of drought characteristics. Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 4254; doi:10.3390/app10124254 www.mdpi. com/journal/applsci Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 4254 2 of 16
The 2010-2015 Megadrought and its influence on the fire regime in central and south-central Chile

Forest ﬁ re activity has increased in recent years in central and south-central Chile. Drought conditions have been associated with the increase of large wild ﬁ res, area burned and longer ﬁ re seasons. This study examines the in ﬂ uence of drought on ﬁ re regimes and discusses landscape management opportunities to decrease ﬁ re hazard. Speci ﬁ cally, we investigate the effect of the 2010 – 2015 Megadrought (MD) compared to 1990 – 2009 period on ﬁ re activity ( ﬁ re-season length, number of ﬁ res and burned area across months, ﬁ re sizes, regions and vegetation cover types, simultaneity, and duration of ﬁ res) in central and south-central Chile (32 ° – 39 ° S), using contemporary ﬁ re statistics derived from the Chilean Forest Service. For large ﬁ re events ( > 200 ha) the average season length increased by 67 d (44%), comparing 2010 – 2015 to 1990 – 2009. Earlier and later ignition dates resulted in extended ﬁ re seasons in MD years. During the MD, the number, area burned, simultaneity, and duration of large ﬁ res increased signi ﬁ cantly compared to the control period, including the unprecedented occurrence of large ﬁ res during winter. The burned area in large ﬁ res increased in all vegetation types, during the MD compared to the control period, especially in the exotic plantation cover type. The regions that were most affected by ﬁ re (i.e., total area burned) during the MD were Maule, B (cid:1) ı o-B (cid:1) ı o, and Araucan (cid:1) ı a (35 – 39 ° S) that concentrate > 75% of forest plantations in Chile. Although both maximum temperatures and precipitation are drivers of ﬁ re activity, a simple attribution analysis indicates that the sustained rainfall de ﬁ cit during 2010 – 2015 was the most critical factor in the enhanced ﬁ re activity. Future climate change predictions indicate more recurrent, intense, and temporally extended droughts for central and south-central Chile. Under this scenario, land-use planning and ﬁ re and forest management strategies must promote a more diverse and less ﬂ ammable landscape mosaic limiting high load, homogenous, and continuous exotic plantations.
Role of Financial Literacy and Peer Effect in Promotion of Financial Market Participation: Empirical Evidence in Vietnam

The research examines how interactions of financial literacy and peer effect indicators impact financial market participation of Vietnamese investors. In this research, financial literacy indicator is constructed from two levels, namely, basic financial literacy and advanced financial literacy. An empirical study was carried out by investigating 387 individuals who are currently working in finance-related areas such as banking, insurance and real estate industries. The findings indicate that individuals with higher level of financial literacy, specifically those with advanced financial literacy level, tend to participate in financial market. However, individuals with basic financial literacy level tend to walk away from financial market because the nexus between basic financial literacy and financial market participation is found negative statistically significant. The findings also suggest that peer effect and perceived financial literacy have a positive significant relationship with financial market participation. These findings remain robust after endogenous problem is addressed by employing instrument variable (IV) method, especially Ivprobit regression. Hence, these findings recommend that policy-makers should design and develop financial literacy programs, specifically at sophisticated level, to adapt and overtake the trend in financial innovation development. This should be done, not only on individual, but also national scale to ensure greater financial market participation.