Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
COVID-19, Productivity and Reallocation: Timely evidence from three OECD countries

The longer run consequences of the pandemic will partly hinge on its impact on high productivity firms, and the ongoing process of labour reallocation from low to high productivity firms. While Schumpeter (1939) proposed that recessions can accelerate this process, the nature of the COVID-19 shock coupled with a policy response that prioritised preservation (over reallocation) raises questions about whether job reallocation remained productivity-enhancing. Using novel, near-real-time data for Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this paper shows that while labour turnover fell in response to the pandemic, job reallocation remained connected to firm productivity – that is, high productivity firms were more likely to expand and low productivity firms were more likely to contract. The pandemic coincided with a temporary strengthening of the reallocation-productivity link in Australia – but a weakening in New Zealand – which appears related to the design of job retention schemes. Finally, firms that intensively used Apps to manage their business were more resilient, even after controlling for productivity. Thus, while policy partly suppressed creative destruction, the nature of the shock – i.e. one where being online and able to operate remotely were key – favoured high productivity and tech-savvy firms, resulting in a reallocation of labour to such firms. The use of timely, novel data to investigate the allocative effects of the pandemic marks a significant advance, given that the seminal paper on productivity-enhancing reallocation during the Great Recession arrived some six years after Lehman Brothers collapsed.
The clinical presentation and treatment of an invasive conjunctival squamous spindle cell carcinoma

Ocular surface squamous neoplasia represents neoplastic epithelial abnormalities of conjunctiva and cornea, ranging from squamous dysplasia to invasive squamous cell carcinoma and is both sight- and life-threatening. Squamous spindle cell carcinoma (SSCC) of conjunctiva is a rare variant with distinct behavior which is thought to be more locally aggressive. We describe an 83-year-old woman with a progressively enlarging huge SSCC in her right eye over the past 2 years. The tumor bulged out with local invasion into intraocular and orbital cavities. Wide excision of the tumor with frozen section control was performed. After surgery, topical 0.03% mitomycin C was given as adjuvant therapy. At 40-month follow-up, the lesion site showed no evidence of local recurrence. This case provides a valuable and complete experience of the clinical presentation for the progression and treatment of this rare disease.
Incorporating Price into Recommendation With Graph Convolutional Networks

In recent years, much research effort on recommendation has been devoted to mining user behaviors, i.e., collaborative filtering, along with the general information which describes users or items, e.g., textual attributes, categorical demographics, product images, and so on. Price, an important factor in marketing — which determines whether a user will make the final purchase decision on an item — surprisingly, has received relatively little scrutiny. In this work, we aim at developing an effective method to predict user purchase intention with the focus on the price factor in recommender systems. The main difficulties are two-fold: 1) the preference and sensitivity of a user on item price are unknown, which are only implicitly reflected in the items that the user has purchased, and 2) how the item price affects a user’s intention depends largely on the product category, that is, the perception and affordability of a user on item price could vary significantly across categories. Towards the first difficulty, we propose to model the transitive relationship between user-to-item and item-to-price, taking the inspiration from the recently developed Graph Convolution Networks (GCN). The key idea is to propagate the influence of price on users with items as the bridge, so as to make the learned user representations be price-aware. For the second difficulty, we further integrate item categories into the propagation progress and model the possible pairwise interactions for predicting user-item interactions. We conduct extensive experiments on two real-world datasets, demonstrating the effectiveness of our GCN-based method in learning the price-aware preference of users. Further analysis reveals that modeling the price awareness is particularly useful for predicting user preference on items of unexplored categories.
Factors Influencing Business Efficiency of Steel Firms: Evidence from Vietnam

This study aims to identify and analyze the impact of internal factors on business efficiency of steel firms in Vietnam. The article uses data collected from the financial statements of 26 steel firms operating in Vietnam between 2012 and 2019. With the application of E-view software in quantitative analysis to build regression models on the table data (panel data), and the study has built a regression model identifying the relationship and impact level of internal factors affecting business efficiency of steel firms in Vietnam. In the study, the dependent variable is business efficiency, determined by the profit after tax on the firm’s assets. The independent variables are firm size, growth rate, capital structure, ratio of long-term assets, receivables management, and solvency. The research results show that the four factors of firm size, growth rate of assets, receivables management, and solvency have a positive impact on business efficiency, while two factors including capital structure and ratio of long-term assets do not affect business efficiency of enterprises. The results of this article are very useful for corporate executives in general and for financial managers in particular, helping managers make the right financial decisions for the company to promote business efficiency of the company.
Odnos teksta i ilustracije - perspektiva ilustratora i učitelja

Illustrations as an effective means of communication help children to understand what they have read, enriching at the same time their vocabulary and ultimately influencing children's motivation and achievement. The aim of this paper is to determine how teachers and illustrators perceive and understand the relationship between a text and an illustration in a primer. A qualitative research was conducted using a focus group with primary school teachers and an interview with an illustrator. The research results show that from the illustrator's and teachers' narratives one can single out, on one hand, the categories related to and explaining the relationship between a text and an illustration, and on the other hand, the categories describing the scope of the illustrator and the teachers in the process of text and illustration integration, as well as their motivation. A critical attitude of the illustrator and the teachers towards publishing, as well as the importance of illustration, was a common point in the narratives, where they emphasized that it is necessary to have a measure in order to establish the relationship between a text and an illustration in general. It was observed that the responsibility for the integration of texts and illustrations should be shared by all participants in creating the final textbook/primer, and that it is necessary to emphasize the need to connect the authors and illustrators during the creation of the relationship between a text and an illustration on one page of the primer/ textbook. It is additionally important to develop a further framework for teacher education in terms of emphasizing the importance of illustration in the learning process in teaching.
Effect of Filler on Mechanical Properties of Natural Fiber Reinforced Composites

In recent past years, the concept of natural resources has gained key importance due to the necessity to preserve our natural environment. These nature friendly materials are also termed as “eco-materials” or “bio materials”. The meaning of eco-material is ‘safe’ material systems for human and other life forms at all times. From the past experience, it is necessary for us to qualify the materials and settle those which are safe for both short and long-term employment. Selection of a material should be like that it not only satisfies industrial requirements but also meets the wider definition of eco-materials, as described above, is a present necessity for us [1]. Here, the most appropriate concept for material selection is composite materials with natural fiber reinforcement. The involvement of natural fiber reinforced composites is growing at a faster rate both in terms of their industrial works and research works also. The accessibility, renewability, low density and less price as well as satisfactory mechanical properties of the natural fiber reinforcement’s composites make them a pleasing ecological alternative to glass, carbon and other man-made fibers or Effect of Filler on Mechanical Properties of Natural Fiber Reinforced Composites
Perception of Non-radiation Healthcare Workers about Radiation in Cape Coast Metropolis, Ghana

The patient management team includes a wide category of healthcare workers, who in one way or the other interact to render services, including radiation-based services. It becomes imperative that every healthcare worker must have appreciable knowledge and opinions on radiation issues for effective service delivery. Hence, this study assesses the perception of non-radiation healthcare workers about radiation. This was a prospective questionnaire-based study involving 340 consented participants from four hospitals in Cape Coast. A stratified sampling method was employed for the number of respondents from each hospital. The responses obtained from Google Forms WhatsApp-administered questionnaires, were systematically selected to obtain the sample size. Data obtained were analysed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL version 20.0) and the results were presented in appropriate tables and charts. Statistical significance level was set at p≤0.05. The majority of the 340 participants were males. The average age was 32.26±7.618 years. Nurses constituted majority 166 (48.8%) of respondents, followed by allied health professionals. The knowledge of participants about radiation issues was high with over 65% of responses. There were statistically significant associations between gender, educational level, work experience and willingness to accept postings to radiology departments. We conclude that, the majority of non-radiation healthcare workers had a high level of knowledge about radiation issues. The perception of non-radiation healthcare workers was positive from suggestions and recommendations they offered.
Snow interception modelling: Isolated observations have led to many land surface models lacking appropriate temperature sensitivities

When formulating a hydrologic model, scientists rely on parameterizations of multiple processes based on field data, but literature review suggests that more frequently people select parameterizations that were included in pre‐existing models rather than re‐evaluating the underlying field experiments. Problems arise when limited field data exist, when “trusted” approaches do not get reevaluated, and when sensitivities fundamentally change in different environments. The physics and dynamics of snow interception by conifers is just such a case, and it is critical to simulation of the water budget and surface albedo. The most commonly used interception parameterization is based on data from four trees from one site, but results from this field study are not directly transferable to locations with relatively warmer winters, where the dominant processes differ dramatically. Here, we combine a literature review with model experiments to demonstrate needed improvements. Our results show that the choice of model form and parameters can vary the fraction of snow lost through interception by as much as 30%. In most simulations, the warming of mean winter temperatures from −7 to 0°C reduces the modelled fraction of snow under the canopy compared to the open, but the magnitude of simulated decrease varies from about 10% to 40%. The range of results is even larger when considering models that neglect the melting of in‐canopy snow in higher‐humidity environments where canopy sublimation plays less of a role. Thus, we recommend that all models represent canopy snowmelt and include representation of increased loading due to increased adhesion and cohesion when temperatures rise from −3 to 0°C. In addition to model improvements, field experiments across climates and forest types are needed to investigate how to best model the combination of dynamically changing forest cover and snow cover to better understand and predict changes to albedo and water supplies.
The Effects of Marangoni Convection on the Rate of Condensation of Pure Water

The Effects of Marangoni Convection on the Rate of Condensation of Pure Water Nilendri L. Fernando Master of Applied Science Graduate Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering University of Toronto 2010 A series of steady-state water condensation experiments were conducted to determine the effects of Marangoni convection on the condensation flux. The interface was flat so that the results of the interfacial temperature discontinuities could be compared to past condensation experiments conducted under similar experimental conditions using a spherical interface. Two experimental methods were used. Method 1 was to vary the temperature in the cooling pipes (Tcp) with the position of the interface relative to the cooling pipes fixed. Method 2 was to vary the position of the interface while Tcp was held constant. The interfacial temperature discontinuities in this study were approximately 2.3-9 times smaller in magnitude, than those measured using a spherical liquid-vapour interface. The experimental results showed that the condensation flux increased as thermocapillary convection increased (increase in interfacial temperature gradients and speed). This increase resulted in a 1.37-12.5 times enhancement in the condensation flux of pure water.
A Quantitative Model to Evaluate Serendipity in Hypertext

Serendipity is the phenomenon of people making unexpected and beneficial discoveries. While research on the mechanism and effectiveness of serendipity in information acquisition has been actively conducted, little attempt has been made to quantify serendipity when it occurs. In this paper, we present a quantitative model that measures serendipity experienced by users in a hypertext environment. In order to propose an evaluation model that measures how probable users would experience serendipitous moments in the process of an active search, we define a serendipitous discovery as an unexpected discovery that can happen during a sidetracked search. The proposed model consists of three parts: (a) pre-encountering—how early the user falls into the sidetracked search in the process of an active search; (b) post-encountering—the degree of interests of the entire process from the active search to obtaining unxpected information; and (c) discovery—the degree of the unexpectedness of the information obtained from the discovery. We evaluated the proposed model against examples with different structures and the potential serendipity values computed indicated the difference between the spaces in a meaningful way.
Yield Stress Model for Natural Debris Flows in Presence of Fine and Coarse–Grained Sediments

When dealing with natural geo–hazards, it is important to understand the influence of sediment sorting on debris flows. The presence of coarse fraction is one of the aspects which affects the rheological behaviour of natural viscous granular fluid mixtures. In this paper, experiments on reconstituted debris flow mixtures with different coarse–to–fine sediment ratios are considered. Such mixtures behave just as non–Newtonian yield stress fluids and their rheological behaviour is largely affected by the presence of coarse fraction. Experimental results demonstrate that yield stress is very sensitive not only to bulk sediment concentration but also to coarse sediment fraction. A novel yield stress model is presented. It accounts for an empirical grading function depending on the coarse–to–fine grain content. The yield stress model performed satisfactorily in comparison with the experiments, showing that it is almost independent of the coarse–to–fine grain fraction in case of dominant coarse sediment content.
Temperature dependent electronic conduction through graphene oxide thin film based two terminal devices

ABSTRACT The temperature dependent electronic conduction through GO thin films sandwitched between indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates and top thermally deposited Al electrode (Al/GO/ITO) is explained. The curent-voltage (I-V) characteristic are measured at various temperatures range of 10–100°C. The temperature dependent I-V through Al/GO/ITO structures in both the forward (ITO as anode) and reverse (ITO as cathode) directions, demonstrate Ohmic behavior with an estimated value of temperature coefficient of resistance 4.2 × 10−3 identical to the value for Al. The electrical current decreases with increasing temperature at an applied voltage, suggesting the metallic behaviour arising from the formation of Al filament through the GO films.
Palynological investigation of a later Bronze Age copper mine at Derrycarhoon in south-west Ireland

Abstract:This paper presents the results of a recent palynological analysis at a prehistoric mine in the Mizen Peninsula of West Cork. Archaeological survey and excavation confirm Derrycarhoon is the first copper mine in Ireland dated to the later Bronze Age, c. 1400–1000 BC. The production there represents the end of a mining tradition in the south-west region that began a millennium or so earlier at Ross Island, Co. Kerry. The palynological study at Derrycarhoon examines the contemporary environment of the early mine, to understand its effect on local vegetation during the later second millennium BC. This environmental impact was reduced by the small scale of ore extraction over several centuries, and by a mining technology that did not significantly impact local woodland at a location where contamination from surface ore-processing was both short-lived and localised. The results add to information on the variability of environmental impacts caused by mining and metal production in prehistoric Europe. Finally, this study contributes to a wider understanding of vegetation history and anthropogenic influences during the Holocene in the West Cork region.
Carbon-fibre-reinforced modified cyanate ester winding composites and their thermomechanical properties

Although the extensive research has expanded on the modification of cyanate ester (CE) resins and the mechanical properties of CE composites, very few studies have been conducted on carbon fibre (CF)/modified CE winding composites and the thermomechanical properties of the composites. In this research, epoxy (EP)-modified novolac cyanate ester (NCE) and bismaleimide (BMI)-modified NCE resins were prepared. The CF/modified CE winding composites were manufactured, and their thermomechanical properties were tested. The optimal winding process was determined, and a preheating technique was implemented. Then, the EP/CE resin (10:90) and the BMI–DBA/CE resin (10:90) were selected as the resin matrix of the winding composite based on the viscosity properties, mechanical properties and thermal analysis (using thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry) of the modified CE resin. The selected resin exhibited good manufacturability at 70°C, good thermal stability and high Tg (above 370°C). The thermomechanical property tests indicate that the modified CE resin composite exhibits an outstanding mechanical strength at room temperature and at high temperatures (130°C, 150°C and 180°C) compared with that of the pure CE resin composite. The reasons for this enhancement can be attributed to a toughening mechanism and the effect of sizing agents on the CFs.
Sunlight and SARS-CoV-2: A Case of Clinical Insignificancy

Dear Editor, Hussain et al. proposed an interesting opinion about the potential impact of sunlight on SARSCoV-2 [1]. The authors introduced two possible mechanisms in which sunlight could contribute to better management and improved outcomes of COVID-19 infection; immunomodulatory effects of vitamin D and germicidal property of the ultraviolet (UV) light. The impact of vitamin D deficiency on the severity and mortality of COVID-19 and the positive effects of vitamin D supplementation have been shown in recent studies [2]. Regarding the other mechanism, although some previous Canadian Journal of Medicine
The severity of symptoms and outcomes of patients admitted with rheumatic diseases and COVID-19; a prospective cohort study in Iran

Introduction: In severe COVID-19 patients, a pre-inflamatory condition leads to a cytokine storm syndrome. This may signify the need for using immunomodulatory drugs. Patients with rheumatic diseases (RDs) are prone to severe infectious diseases. Objectives: Whether the presence of the RD itself or the use of its drugs in patients with COVID-19 increases the severity of symptoms and outcomes remains largely unknown. Patients and Methods: In a prospective cohort study conducted in Khorshid hospital of Isfahan, Iran, 219 patients with COVID-19 were enrolled and divided into two groups of patients with a positive history for RD (n=19) and those without this history (NRD, n=200). The severity of symptoms and outcomes was compared between the groups. Results: Shortness of breath (P=0.001), cough (P=0.019), and weakness (P=0.001) were significantly higher in the RD than the NRD group after, but not before, recovery. All the patients in the RD group had comorbid diseases (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, ischemic heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease), the number of which was significantly higher than that of the NRD group (P<0.001). The Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) was used to predict 10-year survival in patients with multiple comorbidities. It was significantly lower in the RD group as opposed to the NRD group (P<0.001). Logistic regression also showed a non-significantly higher chance of the composite outcome (ICU admission, death status, and intubation status) in the RD group as opposed to the NRD group, both before and after adjustment for confounding factors. However, no difference was found between the RD patient who received corticosteroid as a treatment (RD-CS) and those who did not (RD-NCS). Conclusion: The results showed an increased risk for severe forms of COVID-19 in RD patients. This risk is possibly attributable to a high prevalence of comorbidities in these patients.