Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting Recidivism of Aboriginal Youth Offenders: A Look at an Established Risk Assessment Tool and Culturally-Specific Predictors

The application of standard risk assessment tools with Aboriginal youth offenders has been a highly controversial practice. Criticisms are premised on the fact that risk/need tools are largely founded on the social and historical experiences of non-Aboriginal offenders. In turn, scholars and practitioners have recommended the use of culturally- specific risk/need factors considering Aboriginal culture and the unique context of Aboriginal people in Canada. The current project consists of two studies designed to contribute to our understanding of these concerns. Study 1 examined the predictive validity (both discrimination and calibration) of the YLS/CMI with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth offenders. Results found that although the YLS/CMI provides adequate discrimination for Aboriginal offenders (AUCs from .555 to .606), it underestimates the absolute recidivism rates of low and moderate risk Aboriginal youth compared to non-Aboriginal youth. Study 2 explored the utility of PSRs as sources of culturally-specific information and examined the predictive validity of those factors included. Results indicate that although a number of culturally-specific factors predicted re-offending, particularly family breakdown and community variables, PSRs are an inconsistent source of this information. Overall, the findings suggest that the predictive validity of the YLS/CMI with Aboriginal offenders may be improved with increased focus on family breakdown and home community. Implications and next steps for both practice and research are discussed.
COVID-19 and Bangladesh: A study of the public perception on the measures taken by the government

This research attempts to understand the public perception in Bangladesh regarding the measures taken by the government. Corresponding to the fact that this is a war like situation, this study has found that the measures taken by the Bangladesh government should have been taken earlier and more robust measures are necessary to stop this pandemic. Different government authorities partially failed to communicate the measures of the government to the wider public audience. Moreover, this research finds that a proper coordination among all the agencies would help to contain the disease with a continuous lockdown and social distancing policy. Hospitals should be well equipped and frontline fighters should be well protected as well.
Rights-Based Development: The Challenge of Change and Power

This paper was written for the 2005 conference, Winners and Losers from Rights-based Approaches to Development, and draws from the authors` field experience of working with a range of NGOs that incorporate rights into their development activities. In particular it uses case study material from ActionAid International (AAI), an NGO that has been undertaking a shift in its strategies and operations over the last 5 years in order to integrate a rights-based perspective into its work. The paper explores both the benefits and challenges that this approach can bring when focused on strengthening the voice and power of marginalised sectors of society.
Supplementation of Lactic Acid Bacteria Derived from Ensiled Kumpai Tembaga on Live Body Weight, Gastrointestinal Tract, Internal Organs, and Blood Profiles in Pegagan Ducks

| Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are a very potential candidate as probiotics that provide health benefits to the host by improving the intestine microbial balance. This study was performed to investigate the influence concentration of LAB derived from Kumpai Tembaga silage on live body weight, the length and relative weight of the gastrointestinal tract and internal organs, and blood characteristics in Pegagan ducks. One hundred of 7-day-old Pegagan ducks were randomly divided into 5 group treatments and 4 replicates: the first treatment was the control (without LAB), the second to the fifth treatment was LAB supplementation with a concentration of 1x106, 107, 108, and 109 cfu/ml, respectively. Samples were collected at 8 weeks of life to determine the live body weight, length and relative weight of the gastrointestinal tract and internal organs, and hematological and serum biochemical parameters. The administration of LAB with various concentrations improved the live body weight and increased the length and relative weight of the total small intestine, duodenum, jejunum, and caeca. Moreover, LAB supplementation also has a positive effect on lowering the serum level of cholesterol, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and high-density lipoprotein (HDL), where the higher concentration of LAB resulted in the greater decrease in serum lipids. It can be concluded that the potential of LAB derived from Kumpai Tembaga silage by providing concentrations up to 109 cfu/ml is very considerable, particularly in improving the body weight, enhancing the digestive function, and reducing serum lipid levels in Pegagan duck.
The Relation between Stress, Muscle Activity, and Shoulder/Neck Pain: a Long-Term Field Study on Health Care Workers

Background: Shoulder and neck pain (SNP) is one of the main causes for sick-leave, and the high prevalence affects occupations with both high, moderate and low workloads. At present, the knowledge about pain mechanisms in occupations with low physical workload is still limited. The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether perceived work stress during the workday is related to trapezius muscle activity. A second objective was to investiagte whether trapezius activity differs between individuals with long-term SNP. Methods: Twenty-seven female health care workers participated. Surface electromyography (sEMG) was recorded from the trapezius muscle throughout the workday. Simultaneous inclinometer recordings of the thigh was used to identify periods with sitting, standing, and walking. SNP and stress were recorded by visual analogue scale and physical fatigue by Borgs scale every hour throughout the workday. An index for long-term SNP was also calculated. Findings: Two main comparisons were performed: A between group comparison where sEMG in pain-afflicted workers was compared to sEMG recorded from pain-free workers, and an intra-individual comparison where sEMG in periods of high stress was compared to periods of low stress. In the analyses of the sEMG activity pattern, the focus was on median amplitude and rest time defined as activity < 0.5% of the maximal sEMG response. Overall, there was no evidence of a difference in sEMG activity between pain-free and pain-afflicted workers. Neither did sEMG activity differ between periods with high vs. low stress. Interpretation: The current study does not support the hypothesis that SNP is related to stress-induced low level muscle activity. Further research is needed to reveal the relation between stress, muscle activity and SNP, and the mechanisms behind.
Reducing the electricity cost of a Three-Pipe Water Pumping System – a case study using software

Efficient control is often the most cost-effective option to improve on the running cost of a ThreePipe Water Pumping System. However, the effect of changing the control strategy (i.e. on energy consumption) is usually difficult to predict. A new simulation tool, QUICKcontrol, was used to investigate the energy cost savings potential in a Three-Pipe Water Pumping System. The influence of pump scheduling, dam level set points, control parameters and different combinations thereof were investigated. The simulation models were firstly verified with measurements obtained from the existing system to confirm their accuracy for realistic control retrofit simulations. With the aid of the integrated simulation tool, it was possible to predict savings of R195 000 per year with an average 3.8 MW of load shifted out of peak times. These control strategies can be implemented in the pumping system with a direct payback period of less than 6 months.
Forebody Flow Visualization on the F-18 HARV With Actuated Forebody Strakes

Use of trade names or names of manufacturers in this document does not constitute an official endorsementof such products or manufacturers, either expressed or implied, by the National Aeronautics andSpace Administration.Available from the following:NASA Center for AeroSpace Information (CASI)7121 Standard DriveHanover, MD 21076- i 320(301) 621,0390National Technical Information Service (NTIS)5285 Port Royal RoadSpringfield.VA 221_61-2171(703) 487-4650
Development of Sled Structural Design Procedures

Abstract : The major objective of this study was to establish improved design analysis procedures for the design of dual rail and monorail rocket sleds. The work included reviewing and evaluating past analytical studies of rocket sleds and experimental test data for two dual rail and two monorail sleds. Studies were undertaken to identify the major sources of dynamic excitation of rocket sleds. Three major sources of dynamic excitation were identified; rail roughness, unsteady aerodynamic forces and oscillating axial and lateral rocket thrust forces. Rail roughness was found to be the prime source of dynamic excitation during the coast portion of the rocket sled trajectory. During the thrust stage of the trajectory, and especially at burnout, oscillating axial and lateral thrust forces were found to produce sled dynamic loads which were the same order of magnitude as those produced by rail roughness.
Design and Evaluation of Physical Protection Systems, Second Edition

Design and Evaluation of Physical Security Systems, 2e, includes updated references to security expectations and changes since 9/11. The threat chapter includes references to new threat capabilities in Weapons of Mass Destruction, and a new figure on hate crime groups in the US. All the technology chapters have been reviewed and updated to include technology in use since 2001, when the first edition was published. Garcia has also added a new chapter that shows how the methodology described in the book is applied in transportation systems. College faculty who have adopted this text have suggested improvements and these have been incorporated as well. This second edition also includes some references to the author's recent book on Vulnerability Assessment, to link the two volumes at a high level. * New chapter on transportation systems* Extensively updated chapter on threat definition* Major changes to response chapter
Helmet-mounted Displays: Sensation, Perception, and Cognition Issues

Abstract : The role of the Warfighter in the modern world has changed tremendously over the past two decades. While the primary job remains defeating the enemy, the Warfighter's role has been expanded to include peacekeeping, disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and anti-terrorism. To more effectively perform these tasks, the U.S. military is transforming itself into a more responsive and agile force that leverages advanced technologies. These advanced systems can expand the operational environment and multiply individual and unit capabilities. However, achieving optimal performance with these systems requires matching the engineering design characteristics of the system with the characteristics of the human user. Nowhere is this truer than for head- or helmet-mounted displays (HMDs), because such systems are intimately mated to the human senses of vision and audition. Failure to understand the human-machine interface can result in degraded performance, which for the Warfighter can mean the difference between mission success and failure or between a safe return and becoming a casualty. The issues of the human-machine interface encompass human anatomy and anthropometry, ergonomics, and human factors. Embedded in these issues is the important requirement to understand the roles of sensation, perception and cognition in the optimization of human performance with these advanced systems.
Scouting the Receptor Binding Domain of COVID-19: A Comprehensive Immunoinformatics Inquisition

The December of 2019 witnessed emergence of worldwide outbreak by a novel strain of coronavirus termed COVID-19 with sequence similarity of overall 96.2% with BatCoV RaTG13 (coronavirus isolated from bat) and 94% sequence identity with Severe Acute respiratory syndrome Virus (SARS-CoV) that resulted in outbreak in 2002-2003. There is no therapeutic or preventive strategy like vaccine developed so far to overcome infection.The receptor binding domain (RBD) of COVID-19 for any potential vaccine epitopes were explored. The structure of RBD of COVID-19, BatCoV RaTG13 and bACE2 were chalked through homology modeling followed by molecular docking and structural validation. A comprehensive immunoinformatics approach mapped conserved peptide sequence on COVID-19 RBD for their B-, Helper T- & Cytotoxic T-cell epitope profile. The recognized epitopes were further studied and validated for their docking interaction with MHC-I and MHC-II alleles. Through immune-informatics approaches the study identified conserved B- and T-cell epitopes in RBD. The B-cell epitopes lying within the receptor binding motif, LFRKSN and SYGFQPT l were found to be highly antigenic. Among T-cell epitopes, the epitope CVADYSVLY and FTNVYADSF were antigenic and exhibited affinity for maximum number of MHC-I alleles. The T cell epitopes YRLFRKSNL, VYAWNRKRI displayed affinity for maximum number of MHC-II alleles. The docking analysis of the epitopes with MHC proteins revealed strong interactions of T-cell epitopes with MHC-I and MHC-II alleles. The overlapping epitope among B- and T-cells was YRLFRKSNL. The deployment of these epitopes in potential vaccine against COVID-19 may help in sweeping the COVID-19 infectious spread.
Summary of Ergonomics Research for the Crew Chief Model Development

Abstract : Accessibility has been recognized as a major problem in maintaining aircraft, systems and equipment for some time. When new equipment is being designed the designer attempts to place those items with high failure rates or frequent inspection or servicing requirements in the most accessible locations, but the function of the component usually takes precedence in determining location. Also, when designing new equipment, the expected failure rates are estimates, and some times turn out to be far from accurate. Thus, if the failure rates are higher than expected for a specific component it may well be in an inaccessible location. The inconvenient locations force maintenance technicians into comfortable and inefficient working postures such as kneeling, squatting, supine and prone. This report describes ergonomic research accomplished by the University of Dayton Research Institute under Air Force Contract F33615-84-C-0519, in support of the CREW CHIEF and associated programs. The largest single effort described in this report is in the area of strength testing. More then 100,000 strength measures were made. Data collected were used to develop algorithmic models to predict strength capabilities for the various functions of the CREW CHIEF programs.
Effects of adaptive optics on bit error rate of M-ary PPM oceanic optical wireless communication systems with aperture averaging in strong turbulence

Scintillation is the result of oceanic turbulence reducing the bit error rate (BER) performance of oceanic optical wireless communication (OWC) systems. The scintillation, also known as intensity fluctuations, occurs due to the turbulence-induced wavefront deformations. The correction of deformations by adaptive optics (AO) reduces the scintillation effect of turbulence and results in improved BER performance. In this paper, an oceanic OWC (OOWC) system that has a Gaussian laser beam at the transmitter, finite-sized circular aperture at the receiver, employing M-ary pulse position modulation (PPM) and operating in strong oceanic turbulence, is considered. Improvement in the BER performance of the OOWC system is examined with the implementation of AO correction. Comparison of BER performances between the AO and non-adaptive optics OOWC systems is shown by calculating the metric defined. BER of M-ary PPM OOWC links is evaluated over gamma–gamma fading channels. The modified Rytov theory together with the Zernike filter functions is used to find the AO corrected aperture averaged scintillation index where extended Huygens–Fresnel technique is used to obtain the average received signal power.
Linkage between anomalies of pre-summer thawing of frozen soil over the Tibetan Plateau and summer precipitation in East Asia

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is sensitive to climate change in the land–atmosphere coupling mechanism due to its complex topographic features and unique geographic location. This study explored the teleconnection between pre-summer thawing of frozen soil over the TP and summer precipitation in East Asia in the Meiyu–Baiu rainy season (June, July) from 1981 to 2019 using maximum covariance analysis (MCA). The precipitation fields forced by thawing of frozen soil were calculated by the coupled manifold technique. The variations in East Asian precipitation are significantly impacted by thawing of frozen soil over the TP, with a variance explained ratio in the surrounding middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River (MLYR) of around 10%–20%. The MCA analysis also revealed that the thickness of pre-summer frozen soil thawing had a positive relationship with summer precipitation in the MLYR and southern Japan (fraction = 0.59, correlation ≈ 0.99). To find out the possible mechanism, composite analyses were conducted on atmospheric and surface components with reanalysis products. The analysis results suggested that more (less) frozen soil thawing would increase (decrease) the sensible heat and land surface temperature with enhanced (weakened) surface diabatic heating over the TP. Then, the positive (negative) surface diabatic heating would result in an enhanced (weakened) South Asia High extending eastward followed by stronger (weaker) upper troposphere (200 hPa) westerlies, as well as the West North Pacific Subtropical High extending westward. As a result, the northeastward movement of the integrated vapor transport intensified (weakened) with the westward extension (eastward retreat) of the Meiyu–Baiu rain belt, leading to more (less) precipitation in the MLYR and southern Japan. It is thus suggested that pre-summer thawing of frozen soil over the TP could play a vital role in regulating East Asian summer precipitation and movement of the Meiyu–Baiu rain belt.
Synergistic and separate effects of plasma and transient heat loads on the microstructure and physical properties of ITER-grade tungsten

Once ITER commences full power operation, the ITER divertor will be exposed to high thermal and particle loads. Tungsten was chosen as plasma facing material for the ITER divertor. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to understand the behavior of ITER-grade tungsten under conditions similar to those it will have to withstand inside the reactor. In this study, ITER-grade tungsten samples were exposed to stationary D/He(6%) plasma and ELM-like transient heat loads in the linear plasma device PSI-2. The effects of each kind of load was first studied separately, and the synergistic effects obtained when exposed to both loads simultaneously were then analyzed. Additionally, the hardness of a recrystallized tungsten sample after exposure to simultaneous loads was tested via nanoindentation. The results indicate that hydrogen and helium embrittlement worsens the cracking behavior of the material when exposed to the simultaneous loads compared to only heat loads. Additionally, bubbles of up to 1 μm are formed under the surface due to the synergistic effects at the highest heat load. The nanoindentation tests showed that plasma and heat loads increase the hardness of the material by 39%, but only plasma loads appeared to have no effect on it.
Comment on ‘Carbon Intensity of corn ethanol in the United States: state of the science’

In their recent contribution, Scully et al (2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 043001) review and revise past life cycle assessments of corn-grain ethanol’s carbon (C) intensity to suggest that a current ‘central best estimate’ is considerably less than all prior estimates. Their conclusion emerges from selection and recombination of sector-specific greenhouse gas emission predictions from disparate studies in a way that disproportionately favors small values and optimistic assumptions without rigorous justification nor empirical support. Their revisions most profoundly reduce predicted land use change (LUC) emissions, for which they propose a central estimate that is roughly half the smallest comparable value they review (figure 1). This LUC estimate represents the midpoint of (a) values retained after filtering the predictions of past studies based on a set of unfounded criteria; and (b) a new estimate they generate for domestic (i.e. U.S.) LUC emissions. The filter the authors apply endorses a singular means of LUC assessment which they assert as the ‘best practice’ despite a recent unacknowledged review (Malins et al 2020 J. Clean. Prod. 258 120716) that shows this method almost certainly underestimates LUC. Moreover, their domestic C intensity estimate surprisingly suggests that cropland expansion newly sequesters soil C, counter to ecological theory and empirical evidence. These issues, among others, prove to grossly underestimate the C intensity of corn-grain ethanol and mischaracterize the state of our science at the risk of perversely affecting policy outcomes.
Effect of nitrogen deposition on centennial forest water-use efficiency

The uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere through photosynthesis is accompanied by an inevitable loss of water vapor through the stomata of leaves. The rate of leaf-level CO2 assimilation per unit stomatal conductance, i.e. intrinsic water-use efficiency (WUEi), is thus a key characteristic of terrestrial ecosystem functioning that is central to the global hydroclimate system. Empirical evidence and theory suggest a positive response of forest WUE to increased CO2 levels globally. Although evidence exists for a positive effect of ecosystem nitrogen (N) inputs on WUEi, it is not clear how trends in atmospheric N deposition have affected WUEi in the past. Here we combine twentieth-century climate and nitrogen deposition with stable isotope signature in tree rings and document a WUEi trend reversal at two sites in Switzerland, that matches the timing of a trend reversal in atmospheric N deposition. Using generalized additive models (GAMs), we fitted observed WUEi time series to multiple environmental covariates. This suggested N deposition to have a significant effect on long-term WUEi at the site that was exposed to higher N deposition levels. The ratio of the increase in WUEi in response to increase in CO2 (dWUEi/dCO2) declined by 96% after 1980 (from 0.53 to 0.02) in the beech forest and declined by 72% in the spruce forest (from 0.46 to 0.13) concurrent with a sharp decline in N deposition. Using the GAM model for two scenarios, we show that had N deposition levels not declined after 1980s, WUEi would have increased more strongly in response to increasing CO2. Although the increase in N deposition was limited to the 1950–1980 decades and the signals have declined with improvements in air quality across Europe, the role of atmospheric pollution must be reconsidered in interpretation of tree ring studies and for building environmental proxies that are pivotal to understanding future sink capacity of terrestrial ecosystems in response to climate change.