Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decision letter for "Moving out of town? The status of alien plants in high‐Arctic Svalbard, and a method for monitoring of alien flora in high‐risk, polar environments"

1. Rising human activity in the Arctic, combined with a warming climate, increases the probability of introduction and establishment of alien plant species. While settlements are known hotspots for persistent populations, little is known about colo-nization of particularly susceptible natural habitats. Systematic monitoring is lack-ing and available survey methods vary greatly. 2. Here, we present the most comprehensive survey of alien vascular plant species in thehigh-ArcticarchipelagoofSvalbardtodate,aimedat(i)providingastatuswithin settlements;(ii)surveyinghigh-riskhabitatssuchasthosewithhighvisitornumbers and nutrient enrichment from sea bird colonies; (iii) presenting a systematic monitoring method that can be implemented in future work on alien plant species in Arctic environments; and (iv) discuss possibilities for mapping alien plant habitats using unmanned aerial vehicles. 3. The systematic grid survey, covering 1.7 km 2 over three settlements and six bird cliffs, detected 36 alien plant species. Alien plant species were exclusively found in areasofhumanactivity,particularlyareasassociatedwithcurrentorhistoricanimal husbandry.Thesurveyidentifiedthesuccessfuleradicationof Anthriscussylvestris in Barentsburg,aswellastherapidexpansionof Taraxacum sect. Ruderalia overthelast few decades. 4. As there is currently no consistent method for monitoring alien plant species tailored to polar environments, we propose a systematic methodology that could be implemented within a structured monitoring regime as part of an adaptive monitoring strategy towards alien species in the Arctic.
Influence of Agroforestry Buffers on Soil Hydraulic Properties Relative to Row Crop Management

Abstract Agroforestry and grass buffers have been developed as part of the management system for row crop areas in temperate regions to improve soil and water quality and diversify farm income. A study was conducted to evaluate the influence of agroforestry and grass buffers relative to row crop management on soil hydraulic properties (saturated hydraulic conductivity, soil water retention, and pore size distribution) for a claypan soil. The experimental watersheds for this project were located at the Greenley Memorial Research Center. The paired watersheds for the study area were under no-till management with a corn (Zea mays L.)–soybean (Glycine max L.) rotation since 1991. The agroforestry buffer watershed and grass buffer watershed had vegetative buffer strips planted between row crop areas, which were 4.5 m wide and 36.5 m apart with vegetation composed of grasses, legumes, and trees. Throughout the grass buffer and agroforestry buffer strips, redtop (Agrostis gigantea Roth), brome grass (Bromus spp.), and birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus L.) were planted. For the agroforestry buffers, pin oak (Quercus palustris Muenchh), swamp white oak (Quercus bicolar Willd.), and bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa Michx.) trees were planted. Soil cores were taken from four 10-cm depth increments with 6 replicates, and hydraulic and physical properties were determined. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were found among the treatments for bulk density, with the row crop treatment having higher values compared with the buffer treatments. Trends also showed higher saturated hydraulic conductivity for the agroforestry buffer treatment compared with the row crop treatment for the 0 to 10 cm and 30 to 40 cm soil depths. These buffer treatments slightly improved soil hydraulic properties after 17 years for this claypan soil.
A statistical-based reach scale classification for the lower Tapajós river channel, eastern Amazonia

The Tapajós river is among the largest rivers in the world and has been credited as the main affluent of the lower Amazon River. Geomorphological studies in the Tapajós commonly deal with evolutionary, hydrological, and sedimentological issues. Recently, important advances have been made in understanding the morphology and dynamics in the Tapajós, especially in the confluence zone near Santarém, eastern Amazonian Brazil. However, the lack of an independent channel classification system makes it difficult to integrate data obtained from different sources. This work presents a classification system for the lower Tapajós based on morphometric variables extracted from transversal profiles coupled with radar and optical remote sensing data. We used discriminant analysis of principal components for the first time in fluvial geomorphology to provide a clustering-based geomorphological classification, which is statistically supported. We propose a segmentation of the channel into three distinct sections referred to as narrower channel reach, higher ria reach, and lower ria reach. The results showed that the channel has a distinct morphological pattern in each of these reaches, which can also be observed by the variation along the longitudinal profile. Our findings showed that the most variable hydrological and sedimentological patterns are found in the lower ria reach, while the higher ria reach comprises a canyon-shaped, more stable part of the channel. We discuss the implications of this pattern on the ria’s evolution. The method developed here could be applied to other areas of the Amazon basin, where the lack of data and logistical difficulties carrying out fieldwork are common obstacles to large-scale investigations. The identified reaches are indended to be considered in the sample design of future works and in the formulation of water resources management strategies.
Big Enough to Bother Them? When Low-Income, First-Generation Students Seek Help From Support Programs

Abstract:Low-income, first-generation students complete college at disproportionately low rates compared to their higher-income and continuing-generation peers. Actors across federal, state, and institutional levels have developed a wide variety of support programs to increase the retention and graduation rates of this group, and typically measure program impact through quantitative outcomes or onetime interviews. In contrast, few studies reveal how students experience these programs and how participation actually helps them resolve social and structural barriers to success. I conducted in-depth, longitudinal interviews with 8 female, low-income, first-generation college students over the course of their first year to understand how they experience, utilize, and find value in two different student support programs at one public, 4-year university. Participants encountered a wide range of financial, health, and academic challenges over the course of their first year. Whether they turned to programs for help depended on their help-seeking orientations and the strength of relationships they developed with program staff. One program's mandatory meetings were shown to enable more consistent relationship building than the opt-in structure of the other. This study extends our understanding of how students engage with a support program, the critical role that relationships play in supporting student success, and the need to complement support programs with structural and cultural change.
Fake News on Social Media and Adolescent’s Cognition

This research aims to determine the extent to which teenagers distinguish true news from fake news and how these fake news affect adolescents’cognition. A lot of hoax information has sprung up on social media, especially during the 2019 Indonesian presidential election. The ability to check on the information spread in online media is influenced by each individual’s cognitive abilities. A person’s cognitive ability is to think rationally, including aspects of knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. This study used an explanative survey method with a quantitative positivistic paradigm. The results showed that the most influencing X variable to the Y variable was the Satire variable, which is positive and unidirectional. The Hoax variable has the most influence on cognitive abilities, even though the value is negative and not unidirectional. This means, the lower the understanding of Hoax, the higher the level of cognitive abilities.
Four electrode-based impedimetric biosensors for evaluating cytotoxicity of tamoxifen on cervical cancer cells

In the current study, novel four electrode-based impedimetric biosensors have been fabricated using photolithography techniques and utilized to evaluate the cytotoxicity of tamoxifen on cervical cancer cell lines. The cell impedance was measured employing the electric cell-substrate impedance sensing (ECIS) method over the frequency range of 100 Hz to 1 MHz. The results obtained from impedimetric biosensors indicate that tamoxifen caused a significant reduction in the number of HeLa cells on the electrode surfaces in a dose-dependent manner. Next, the impedance values recorded by the fabricated biosensors have been compared with the results obtained from the different conventional techniques such as 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT), live-dead cell assay, and flow cytometric analysis to estimate the cytotoxicity of tamoxifen. The impedimetric cytotoxicity of tamoxifen over the growth and proliferation of HeLa cells correlates well with the traditional methods. In addition, the IC50 values obtained from impedimetric data and MTT assay are comparable, signifying that the ECIS technique can be an alternative method to assess the cytotoxicity of different novel drugs. The working principle of the biosensor has been examined by scanning electron microscopy, indicating the detachment of cells from gold surfaces in a dose-dependent manner, signifying the decrease in impedance at higher drug doses.
A doxorubicin–platinum conjugate system: impacts on PI3K/AKT actuation and apoptosis in breast cancer cells

In recent years, the development of a nano-conjugate system for drug delivery applications has gained attention among researchers. Keeping this in mind, in this study, we developed a doxorubicin–platinum conjugate system that targeted breast cancer cell lines. To achieve this, we developed platinum nanoparticles using polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). High resolution-transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) revealed the occurrence of octopod-shaped platinum nanoparticles. Subsequently, doxorubicin (DOX) was conjugated on the surface of the as-prepared platinum octopods via an in situ stirring method. The physicochemical characterization of the doxorubicin–platinum conjugate system revealed that the PVP of PtNPs interacts with the NH2 group of doxorubicin via electrostatic interaction/hydrogen bonding. Besides, the doxorubicin–platinum conjugate system exhibited a sustained drug release profile within the cancer cells. Furthermore, the evaluation of the in vitro anticancer efficacy of the doxorubicin–platinum conjugate system in breast cancer cells (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) unveiled the induction of apoptosis via intracellular ROS and DNA damage, rather than free DOX and PtNPs. Remarkably, we also perceived that the doxorubicin–platinum conjugate system was strong enough to down-regulate the PI3K/AKT signalling pathway. As a result, the tumour suppressor gene PTEN was activated, which led to the stimulation of a mitochondrion-based intrinsic apoptotic pathway and its downstream caspases, triggering cell death. Hence, our findings suggested that a biologically stable doxorubicin–platinum conjugate system could be an imperative therapeutic agent for anticancer therapy in the near future.
Torrefaction as a Pre-Treatment of Biomass: A Bibliometric Analysis

This article sought to investigate biomass torrefaction, analyzing the collaboration network between authors, institutions and countries in order to systematize the dynamics of scientific research on the subject. The systematic evaluation of the articles obtained in the scope of the research was important to provide an overview of the main stakeholders in the academic and institutional scope. This research is characterized as exploratory-descriptive of quantitative nature, whose technical procedure adopted was bibliometric research. A set of 662 documents were extracted from the main collection of Web of Science. The Vosviewer software was used to create scientific collaboration and co-citation networks. It was noted that the number of documents has been growing steadily since 2011, with a high degree of multidisciplinary collaboration and prolific contributions from American and Chinese researchers on this topic. The USA is the country with the largest number of publications (120 publications), followed by China (70 publications). There was a total of 1,894 authors and 594 institutions researching on biomass torrefaction, with SINTEF Energy Research - Norway having the largest number of publications, followed by National Cheng Kung University - Taiwan and Norwegian University of Science and Technology - Norway. The use of bibliometrics proposed here offers a systematic and dynamic approach to scientific research on biomass torrefaction. The identified groupings and collaboration networks presented a specific outline of the contents already published, authors, countries and institutions, in order to contribute as a starting point to future work in the field of biomass torrefaction.
Analysis of E-Consumer Behaviour – Selected Findings from an Analysis of Czech E-Shops and their Customers during the Global Pandemic

The study presented in this contribution deals with the issue of using modern methods of data collection for the purposes of analysing consumer behaviour. Professional literature as well as business practice offer us an enormous number of approaches, traditional or innovative, with which it is possible to obtain and then evaluate data in order to understand specific patterns of consumer behaviour. Following on from our previous research in the field, we have applied a method of collecting and evaluating customers e-data in real time. As a source of data, we used the virtual social network Facebook. As a sample we selected customers of the five largest e-shops operated in the Czech Republic. On a sample of more than one and a half million users we monitored the B2C communication of e-shops and subsequently the C2B Facebook interaction of their customers during the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the observed period we analysed hundreds of thousands of interactions and then outlined basic trends and specific characteristics of consumer behaviour suitable for further research. The selected findings resulting from the implemented analyses contribute to the creation of a knowledge base of a qualitative nature, which can help to define research goals in the future process of examining the effects of the pandemic on various aspects of business.
Intimate Partner Violence Help-Seeking for Latina Undocumented Immigrant Survivors: Feminist Intersectional Experiences Narrated Through Testimonio

In addressing the grand challenge to build healthy relationships to end violence, social workers continue to engage in helping individuals affected by intimate partner violence (IPV). IPV often results in negative mental health and physical health outcomes. This qualitative study explored Latina immigrant women’s experiences of IPV by using an intersectional Chicana feminist approach. Twenty Latina undocumented immigrants who experienced IPV shared their testimonio interviews to denounce the injustices they experienced when seeking help. A narrative analysis is presented to illustrate some of the ineffective responses the participants experienced when seeking help as well as effective responses that provided them support. The analysis of the survivors’ testimonios also offered detailed stories to help us understand the intersectional experiences related to the survivors’ gender, ethnicity, social class, and undocumented immigration status when seeking help. Providing support to Latina immigrant survivors requires a better understanding of the unique help-seeking barriers they encounter in the United States. Implications from this study suggest that in order to effectively support the health of undocumented survivors of IPV, social workers need to consider trust building and be prepared to respond to the current political climate and institutional barriers when providing services for undocumented immigrant survivors.
Natural parasitism of greater wax moth, Galleria mellonella Linnaeus larvae by Apanteles galleriae Wilkinson in Madurai district, Tamil Nadu

Apanteles galleriaeWilkinson, a larval parasitoid was observed from natural population of greater wax moth, Galleria mellonella Linnaeus larvae in Madurai region, Tamil Nadu, India. The per cent parasitisation and sex ratio (F: M) ranged from 9.09 to 23.08 per cent and 1:1 to 1: 1.40 respectively. Among different periods, high number (12) and parasitism (23.08%) were noticed during November, followed by December 2019. Thereafter, the per cent parasitism declined in March 2019. A similar trend was also observed with regards to sex ratio (F: M).
Driver State Monitoring: Manipulating Reliability Expectations in Simulated Automated Driving Scenarios

Highly Automated Driving technology will be facing major challenges before being pervasively integrated across production vehicles. One of them will be monitoring drivers’ state and determining whether they are ready to take over control under certain circumstances. Thus, we have explored their physiological responses and the effects on trust of different scenarios with varying traffic complexity in a driving simulator. Using a mixed repeated measures design, twenty-seven participants were divided in two reliability groups with opposite induced automation reliability expectations -low and high-. We hypothesized that expectations would modulate participants’ trust in automation, and consequently, their physiological responses across different scenarios. That is, increasing traffic complexity would also increase participants’ arousal, and this would be accentuated or mitigated by automation reliability expectations. Although reliability group differences could not be observed, our results show an increase of physiological activation within high complexity driving conditions (i.e., a mentally demanding non-driving related task and urban scenarios). In addition, we observed a modulation of trust in automation according to the group expectations delivered. These findings provide a background methodology from which further research in driver monitoring systems can benefit and be used to train machine learning methods to classify drivers’ state in changing scenarios. This would potentially help mitigate inappropriate take-overs, calibrate trust and increase users’ comfort and safety in future Highly Automated Vehicles.
Evaluation of some trace elements (zinc, chromium, cadmium and manganese) in patients with active tuberculosis attending central hospital Benin city, Edo state

Throughout the world, tuberculosis (TB) infection is on the increase and it has remained one of the most important causes of death among adults in developing countries. This study evaluated the serum concentrations of some trace elements -Zinc (Zn), Manganese (Mn), Chromium (Cr) and Cadmium (Cd ), in 100 blood samples; comprising sixty (60) active TB patients ( test subjects ) and forty (40) apparently healthy individuals (control). Serum concentrations of the elements were determined with an Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, and the results showed significantly (P 0.05) in Zn and Mn concentrations in TB patients, but a significant difference (P<0.05) was observed for Cr and Cd in the male and female subjects studied. On age, there was no significant difference (p<0.05) in the concentrations of Mn and Cd across the age groups studied, but an age dependent decrease in Cr and increase in Cd, was observed in both gender. Our results suggest that Zn, Mn and Cr concentrations are reduced in TB patients, while serum Cd level is increased. Key words : Infectious disease, Serum concentration, Tuberculosis, Trace elements
Examining the practice of elementary mathematics specialists through narratives: implications for professional learning and development

ABSTRACT This study analysed elementary mathematics specialists’ stories of work to examine how these disciplinary-specific teacher leaders engage in their practice. This paper examines the ways in which elementary mathematics specialists conceptualise their leadership roles and the impact of their work on other school stakeholders. Using narrative inquiry, we conducted semi-structured interviews in order to capture participant stories that described specific tasks, actions, context, intent and reflections. Findings suggest that the ways participants articulated their agenda, enacted their agency and positioned themselves and others provide a lens for viewing the range of ways they approached their work as elementary mathematics specialists and ultimately resulting in the categorisation of participants into two profiles based on similarities and differences in these themes. While all participants described challenges and successes, their stories differed in how they engaged in leadership practice and how they engaged others in leadership. We argue that, while having deep knowledge of mathematics content and pedagogy is crucial to elementary mathematics specialist work, to maximise the impact of these disciplinary teacher leaders, the exploration of teacher leadership knowledge, practices, and tools must be a crucial aspect of elementary mathematics specialist preparation and professional development.
Effects of Delayed Tooth Brushing on Enamel Surface Roughness after Home Bleaching

Objective: Few studies have evaluated the effects of daily oral hygiene procedures on enamel surface roughness after bleaching. This study aimed to further assess the changes in enamel surface roughness after bleaching with 15% carbamide peroxide, followed by tooth brushing at three different time intervals (immediately, 1 h, and 2 h after bleaching). We hypothesized that the enamel surface roughness of the bleached teeth would not be affected by delayed tooth brushing after bleaching.
Inorganic pollutants of Ganga water in the region of Berhampore to Katwa, West Bengal

Controle du degre de pollution de la riviere Ganga sur 50 kms de Berhampore a Katwa. Determination par des methodes classiques des parametres physicochimiques courants: pH, teneur en composes solides dissous, teneur en composes en suspensions, durete, DBO, DCO et composes azotes sous differentes formes (phosphates, chlorures et sulfates) et dosage semiquantitatif des ions metalliques
Accounting conservatism: Does business strategy and investment level matter?

This study aims to contribute to the ongoing debate over accounting conservatism through examining whether the corporate strategy can provide a logical justification for the conservatism, and whether this justification is consistent with or contradicts the contractual justification. In this context, the study examines the impact of corporate strategy on the level of conservatism in financial statements, and the impact of the level of conservatism on corporate investment level. Using data from a sample of non-financial Saudi listed companies, the results show that prospector companies are more likely to provide more conservative financial statements, and the level of conservatism influences investment level. The results also show that the integration between corporate strategy and the level of conservatism influence the level of investment. These results suggest that accounting conservatism can be explained in the context of both business strategy and contractual benefits. Also, the results imply that adopting business strategy could influence the financial reporting process.