Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantification of CH4 coal mining emissions in Upper Silesia by passive airborne remote sensing observations with the Methane Airborne MAPper (MAMAP) instrument during the CO2 and Methane (CoMet) campaign

Abstract. Methane (CH4) is the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, whose atmospheric concentration is modulated by human-induced activities, and it has a larger global warming potential than carbon dioxide (CO2). Because of its short atmospheric lifetime relative to that of CO2, the reduction of the atmospheric abundance of CH4 is an attractive target for short-term climate mitigation strategies. However, reducing the atmospheric CH4 concentration requires a reduction of its emissions and, therefore, knowledge of its sources. For this reason, the CO2 and Methane (CoMet) campaign in May and June 2018 assessed emissions of one of the largest CH4 emission hot spots in Europe, the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (USCB) in southern Poland, using top-down approaches and inventory data. In this study, we will focus on CH4 column anomalies retrieved from spectral radiance observations, which were acquired by the 1D nadir-looking passive remote sensing Methane Airborne MAPper (MAMAP) instrument, using the weighting-function-modified differential optical absorption spectroscopy (WFM-DOAS) method. The column anomalies, combined with wind lidar measurements, are inverted to cross-sectional fluxes using a mass balance approach. With the help of these fluxes, reported emissions of small clusters of coal mine ventilation shafts are then assessed. The MAMAP CH4 column observations enable an accurate assignment of observed fluxes to small clusters of ventilation shafts. CH4 fluxes are estimated for four clusters with a total of 23 ventilation shafts, which are responsible for about 40 % of the total CH4 mining emissions in the target area. The observations were made during several overflights on different days. The final average CH4 fluxes for the single clusters (or sub-clusters) range from about 1 to 9 t CH4 h−1 at the time of the campaign. The fluxes observed at one cluster during different overflights vary by as much as 50 % of the average value. Associated errors (1σ) are usually between 15 % and 59 % of the average flux, depending mainly on the prevailing wind conditions, the number of flight tracks, and the magnitude of the flux itself. Comparison to known hourly emissions, where available, shows good agreement within the uncertainties. If only emissions reported annually are available for comparison with the observations, caution is advised due to possible fluctuations in emissions during a year or even within hours. To measure emissions even more precisely and to break them down further for allocation to individual shafts in a complex source region such as the USCB, imaging remote sensing instruments are recommended.
"Dope Syllabus": Student Impressions of an Infographic-style Visual Syllabus

Despite its importance in the classroom, there has been limited research into the functional design of the syllabus as a means to motivate students to read and use it. This mixed methods study investigates student impressions of a 4-page full-length infographic-style visual syllabus. Identically formatted infographic syllabi were used in three courses with different student populations—a freshman seminar, a 300-level elective liberal arts course, and a 400-level minor elective course. Students completed a short questionnaire to capture their immediate reactions to the syllabus, followed by a longer questionnaire at the end of the semester. Across class standing, students strongly preferred an infographic syllabus and described it as easy to use, memorable, organized, and engaging. Students reported reading the infographic syllabus more completely, feeling less anxious about the course and more comfortable with its requirements due to the syllabus style. Recommendations for creating an engaging infographic-style visual syllabus are shared.
Effect of in situ incorporation of legume green manure crops on nutrient bioavailability, productivity and uptake of maize

Abstract Maize, being a nutrient exhaustive crop and also grown as a monocrop season after season, is leading to drastic deterioration of the soil fertility status. Hence green manure legumes initially grown in situ and later incorporated before flowering stage into the soil will help to rejuvenate the soil health. An experiment was conducted at Agricultural Research Station, Vizianagaram for three consecutive years during kharif 2015, 2016 and 2017 to evaluate the effect of green manures on soil health, nutrient bioavailability and yield attributes of the succeeding maize crop. Three green manure legumes viz., sunhemp, dhaincha and green gram were grown in situ and incorporated into the soil before sowing of the maize crop in the respective treatments and different doses of fertilizer levels were applied to study the cumulative effect of green manures and inorganic fertilizers on the growth and yield attributes, economics and nutrient uptake of succeeding maize. Pooled data of all three years proved that the grain and straw yield was found to be the highest in the treatment of in situ incorporation of dhaincha with 100% RDF (65.2 q/ha and 74.0 q/ha). Moreover, the soil available nitrogen was also found highest in the same treatment (230 kg/ha), whereas the available P2O5 (73 kg/ha) and K2O (318 kg/ha) was found highest in the treatment with in situ incorporation of sunhemp with 100% RDF, but these treatments are at par with in situ incorporation of dhaincha with 75% RDF. The soil available Fe was found high in the treatment with in situ incorporation of dhaincha with 100% RDF (12.98 ppm), whereas soil available Mn was found highest in the treatment with in situ incorporation of sunhemp with 100% RDF (12.43 ppm) but at par with in situ incorporation of dhaincha with 100% RDF and in situ incorporation of dhaincha with 75% RDF. The N and K uptake by maize plant was found highest in the treatment with in situ incorporation of dhaincha with 100% RDF (110.0 kg/ha and 87.5 kg/ha) whereas the uptake of P was found highest in the treatment with in situ incorporation of sunhemp with 100% RDF (39.1 kg/ha), but both the treatments are at par with each other in the uptake of N, P and K nutrients and significantly higher than sole crop of maize with 100% RDF.
Art as Symptom or Symptomatology? Performative Subjects, Capitalist Performativity, and Performance-Based Therapy in Duncan Macmillan's People, Places and Things

abstract:What a survey of contemporary British drama reveals is a plethora of plays concerned not only with psychological and medical issues, but with precarious individuals, whose symptomatic condition is presented in terms of schizophrenia or schizoid states. Duncan Macmillan's People, Places and Things (2015) can be considered as a distinctive play in this trend, where not only a rehabilitation center features as its setting, but its main character is afflicted with a complex cluster of symptoms: a schizoid personality, addiction, melancholic loss, and Oedipal tension with parents. Taking People, Places and Things as its focal point, and situating its arguments in the context of "Therapy Culture" (Furedi), this article demonstrates that what distinguishes Macmillan's approach is his deconstructive understanding of the aporias besetting three chief spheres of human action, cognition, and affection: the epistemological, ontological and moral position of (1) his own art/ work and its methods/techniques, (2) the (psycho-)therapeutic disciplines and institutes, (3) contemporary social-cultural discourse and political hegemony. Scrutinizing Macmillan's treatment of the foregoing triad, it will be argued how his method can be characterized in two terms: symptomatic-symptomatological and critical-clinical.
Effect of Mainshock-Aftershock Sequences on Woodframe Building Damage Fragilities

AbstractAlthough aftershocks have the potential to cause severe damage to buildings and threaten life safety, their effect in seismic risk analysis is not explicitly accounted for in modern building design codes, nor in emerging methodologies such as performance-based seismic design. The ultimate objective of this study is to systematically integrate aftershock hazard into performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) through analytical studies with structural degradation models derived from publicly available experimental data. In this paper, the first step is made by introducing a procedure to compute the probability of a mainshock-damaged woodframe building entering different damage states as a result of aftershock. Aftershock fragilities are developed by performing incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) using a sequence of mainshock-aftershock ground motions. To compute the seismic response of the damaged building, IDA is performed using a sequence of mainshocks of different intensity levels combined wi.
VariBAD: Variational Bayes-Adaptive Deep RL via Meta-Learning

Trading oﬀ exploration and exploitation in an unknown environment is key to maximising expected online return during learning. A Bayes-optimal policy, which does so optimally, conditions its actions not only on the environment state but also on the agent’s uncertainty about the environment. Computing a Bayes-optimal policy is however intractable for all but the smallest tasks. In this paper, we introduce variational Bayes-Adaptive Deep RL (variBAD), a way to meta-learn approximately Bayes-optimal policies for complex tasks. VariBAD simultaneously meta-learns a variational auto-encoder to perform approximate inference
AN ACTION RESEARCH ON DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS’ AWARENESS ABOUT RESPECT FOR DIVERSITIES THROUGH THEME-BASED ELT

The purpose of this study is to investigate how to improve higher education students’ awareness about respect for diversities with English teaching based on the theme-based model of the content-based language teaching approach and how to overcome problems that may be encountered during the implementation. The study was designed as an action research, which is one of the qualitative research designs. The study group consisted of second-grade students who were educated at Vocational School of Tourism and Travel Management program of a university in the spring term of 2015-2016 academic year. The research data were collected through semistructured interviews, observation, researcher diary and student products. Positive results were gained regarding the awareness development on respect for diversities in the study. It was determined that students developed in their perceptions of the concept of respect for diversities and the elements that make up the differences and increased the number and variety of examples that contrast with the principle of respect for diversity. Moreover, it was observed that various expressions and behaviours of students that were incompatible with the principles of respect for diversities were also disappeared as a result of various activities designed in the process.
Calibration of the Highway Safety Manual's Accident Prediction Model for Italian Secondary Road Network

The forthcoming first edition of the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) will introduce safety predictive models both for road segments and intersections. A key issue for allowing HSM to become a standard for road owners and managers worldwide is the transferability of the predictive models to different networks. The application of the calibration procedure of the HSM model to different countries has been evaluated, with all practical and potential application problems outlined. In this study, the calibration procedure of the HSM model has been applied to the road network of the Italian province of Arezzo to evaluate the effective transferability of this methodology to a region characterized by a different environment and different road characteristics, driver behavior, and crash reporting systems than those on which the HSM models have been developed. The considered road network covers 1,300 km of rural two-lane highways located in the Arezzo province, and a 3-year (2002–2004) accident database has been used. The considerable difference between the road network of the Italian province of Arezzo and the one of Minnesota, for which the HSM model has been developed, causes practical application problems, mainly related to segmentation and over-estimation of curvature effects, which are discussed in the paper. Four approaches to define the calibration factor have been applied and discussed to determine the most effective one. Finally, this work points out the problems related to the identification of data needs and necessary treatments for the HSM model calibration and application.
Harvesting the Rain: The Adoption of Environmental Technologies in the Sahel

Many agricultural and environmental technologies require upfront investments. This may deter adoption, particularly in settings characterized by information liquidity and credit constraints. We test for these barriers to the adoption of an agricultural technique that helps address land degradation in Niger. We find little evidence that liquidity or credit constraints deter adoption: instead, providing farmers with training increases the share of adopters by over 90 percentage points. Conditional or unconditional cash transfers have no additional effect. Adoption increases agricultural output and reduces land turnover in the longerterm. In our setting, training provides both specific technical knowledge and addresses behavioral constraints.
Molecular Authentication, Phytochemical Evaluation and Asexual Propagation of Wild-Growing Rosa canina L. (Rosaceae) Genotypes of Northern Greece for Sustainable Exploitation

Dogroses belong to a taxonomically difficult genus and family and represent important phytogenetic resources associated with high ornamental, pharmaceutical-cosmetic and nutritional values, thus suggesting a potentially high exploitation merit. Triggered by these prospects, wild-growing Rosa canina populations of Greece were selected for investigation and evaluation of their potential for integrated domestication. We collected ripe rosehips from Greek native wild-growing populations (samples from seven genotypes) for phytochemical analysis (total phenolics, total flavonoids, antioxidant activity and vitamin C content), leaf samples for DNA analysis using the ITS2 sequence (nine genotypes) and fresh soft-wood stem cuttings for propagation trials (seven genotypes). After evaluation of these materials, this study reports for the first-time distinct DNA-fingerprinted genotypes from Greece with interesting phytochemical profiles mainly in terms of Vitamic C content (up to 500.22 ± 0.15 mg of ascorbic acid equivalents/100 g of sample) as well as effective asexual propagation protocols for prioritized R. canina genotypes via cuttings. The latter highlights the importance of the levels of external hormone application (2000 ppm of indole-3-butyric acid), the effect of season (highly-effective spring trials) and genotype-specific differences in rooting capacities of the studied genotypes. All inclusive, this study offers new artificially selected material of Greek native R. canina with a consolidated identity and interesting phytochemical profile. These materials are currently under ex-situ conservation for further evaluation and characterization in pilot field studies, thus facilitating its sustainable exploitation for applications in the agro-alimentary, medicinal-cosmetic, and ornamental sectors.
Inverted ILM Flap Technique in Optic Disc Pit Maculopathy

Abstract Purpose To present the outcome of optic disc pit maculopathy (ODPM) managed successfully with an inverted internal limiting membrane (ILM) flap over the optic disc. A narrative review of ODPM pathogenesis and surgical management techniques are also provided. Case Report This prospective interventional case series included three eyes of three adult patients (25–39 years old) with unilateral ODPM and a mean duration of unilaterally decreased visual acuity of 7.33 ± 2.40 months (4–12 months). The pars plana vitrectomy with posterior vitreous detachment induction was performed on eyes, followed by an inverted ILM flap insertion over the optic disc and gas tamponade. Patients were followed for 7–16 weeks postoperatively; best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) improved dramatically in one patient from 2/200 to 20/25. BCVA in other patients improved two and three lines – to 20/50 and 20/30, respectively. A significant anatomical improvement was achieved in all three eyes, and no complication was detected throughout the follow-up period. Conclusion Vitrectomy with inverted ILM flap insertion over the optic disc is safe and can yield favorable anatomical improvement in patients with ODPM.
Rewards for safe driving behavior : Influence on following distance and speed

The most important objective of the Department of Transport (DOT) in the Netherlands is to make Dutch freeways safer and less congested. To achieve these objectives, standard practice has been to influence the behavior of road users through punitive measures. To investigate the feasibility of doing the opposite, namely, influencing behavior by offering rewards, and of its usefulness if it worked, the DOT launched the Belonitor trial. Each year, tailgating and speeding cause much irritation on roadways. Moreover, these violations often play a role in accidents and congestion. The Belonitor trial therefore focuses on two preferred modes of behavior: maintaining sufficient distance and maintaining the applicable maximum speed. The lease company LeasePlan Nederland N.V. (LPNL) fitted 62 lease cars with equipment that recorded whether drivers maintained sufficient distance from the car ahead and drove within the posted speed limit. The equipment included a display that continuously showed drivers their following distance and speed. LPNL rewarded lease-car drivers for good driving behavior over a 16-week period. The data obtained from surveys, interviews, and the in-car system indicate that feedback and rewards have a strong positive effect on safe driving behavior. The trial results also indicated differences in how drivers handle speed and following distance. In the Belonitor trial, DOT traffic safety objectives were successfully combined with profit goals of the lease company.
On a proposal for a generic package development process

Globalization pressures have now caused significant changes in the way industrial enterprises are organized and how products are developed, manufactured and brought to market. In global enterprises, the handling, transportation and storage of parts, sub‐assemblies and final products demand for an efficient and effective development of the product–package‐system (PPS). The objective set in this paper is to present the development of a generic package development process that facilitates the establishment of integrated product and package development and also provides a more proactive and holistic approach to the development of new and innovative packages for the global market. In an extensive review of the package development literature and through five multiple case studies within the package manufacturing industry, results on the package development process are generated and, in this paper, presented and synthesized into an updated version of the package development process. The process consists of the phases package planning, package system development, package concept design, package design, production ramp‐up, package system integration and package system production ramp‐up. The package development model proposed here takes its starting point in the development of the package system, thus providing the holistic perspective needed for being truly generic. Being generic in the given context assures or at least facilitates the possibility to support the development of the new and innovative package systems and package designs needed in the product manufacturing industry to enhance competitiveness. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Exploring online teaching competence in the context of the COVID 19 pandemic: insights from Sarawak, Malaysia

ABSTRACT Exploring online teaching competencies is paramount in the pandemic setting. This study explores and compares the perceived importance of teachers’ online teaching competence and ability in two higher education (HE) institutions in Sarawak, Malaysia. The study employs the validated Faculty Readiness to Teach Online (FRTO) instrument which assesses four online teaching competencies: Course Design, Course Communication, Time Management, and Technical Competence, to gather data. The findings from 156 respondents revealed that Course Design was rated highest for online teaching competence and ability, followed by Course Communication, Time Management, and Technical Competence. A multivariate analysis of variance, MANOVA, was conducted to examine whether demographic variables made a difference in teachers’ perceived importance and ability. All demographic variables did not influence the perceived importance of online teaching competence and ability. Further analysis from the t-test revealed no significant variation between the perceived importance of online teaching competence and ability. The findings highlight opportunities for strategic orientation to change during crisis. Further qualitative and longitudinal research among more HE institutions is needed to uncover whether such perceptions were articulated into online teaching practices. Implications for pedagogy and policy are discussed.
Chemical and Physical Culture Conditions Significantly Influence the Cell Mass and Docosahexaenoic Acid Content of Aurantiochytrium limacinum Strain PKU#SW8

Thraustochytrids are well-known unicellular heterotrophic marine protists because of their promising ability to accumulate docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). However, the implications of their unique genomic and metabolic features on DHA production remain poorly understood. Here, the effects of chemical and physical culture conditions on the cell mass and DHA production were investigated for a unique thraustochytrid strain, PKU#SW8, isolated from the seawater of Pearl River Estuary. All the tested fermentation parameters showed a significant influence on the cell mass and concentration and yield of DHA. The addition of monosaccharides (fructose, mannose, glucose, or galactose) or glycerol to the culture medium yielded much higher cell mass and DHA concentrations than that of disaccharides and starch. Similarly, organic nitrogen sources (peptone, yeast extract, tryptone, and sodium glutamate) proved to be beneficial in achieving a higher cell mass and DHA concentration. PKU#SW8 was found to grow and accumulate a considerable amount of DHA over wide ranges of KH2PO4 (0.125–1.0 g/L), salinity (0–140% seawater), pH (3–9), temperature (16–36 °C), and agitation (140–230 rpm). With the optimal culture conditions (glycerol, 20 g/L; peptone, 2.5 g/L; 80% seawater; pH 4.0; 28 °C; and 200 rpm) determined based on the shake-flask experiments, the cell mass and concentration and yield of DHA were improved up to 7.5 ± 0.05 g/L, 2.14 ± 0.03 g/L, and 282.9 ± 3.0 mg/g, respectively, on a 5-L scale fermentation. This study provides valuable information about the fermentation conditions of the PKU#SW8 strain and its unique physiological features, which could be beneficial for strain development and large-scale DHA production.