Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Marine mammals in the Western English Channel, a survey from the Rame Head Peninsula

This paper presents the first records of marine mammals in Plymouth Sound National Marine Park (NMP), and over 1000 individual animal observations were recorded. Marine mammal temporal and spatial distributions were quantified for the first time at Rame Head, a vantage point overlooking the NMP and the Western English Channel. A biodiversity hotspot, the Western English Channel supports many species of marine mammals, yet it is subject to increasing anthropogenic pressures, such as heavy shipping, which could significantly impact populations. Whilst marine mammals are well studied, their distributions and population sizes remain largely unknown; effective conservation of these animals requires monitoring to quantify these patterns. Shore-based surveys were conducted over two months, and observational data were collected. Observation rates were analysed against a suite of environmental variables to identify trends. Key species identified were the harbour porpoise ( Phocoena phocoena ), common dolphin ( Delphinus delphis ) and grey seal ( Halichoerus grypus ), with common dolphins accounting for over half of the observations. Observation rates were variable, and correlation was detected with several environmental variables. Observation rates of all species peaked during the mid-cycle phase of the spring/neap cycle. Furthermore, an increased sea state correlated with decreased observation rates for all species. Surprisingly, the tidal phase had no significant correlation with observation rates. Limited assumptions can be drawn about the harbour porpoise as correlations were found with minimal variables. In comparison, some clear trends were identifiable for common dolphins and grey seals. This study indicates significant variability in marine mammal distributions around Rame Head; however, further investigations are needed to gain a deeper understanding. Specifically, extending the study’s timeframe and including a thorough investigation into the local oceanography could provide valuable insights. While monitoring changes in marine mammal populations can present challenges due to the instability seen within their ranges and behaviours, we must dedicate effort to quantifying these variables and enabling effective conservation management. These findings increase our understanding of marine mammal populations within the Western English Channel and can help inform future conservation policy.
Monopsony in the Labor Market New Empirical Results and New Public Policies

This paper summarizes the results of nearly a dozen new papers presented at the Sundance Conference on Monopsony in Labor Markets held in October 2018. These papers, to be published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Resources, study various aspects of monopsony and failures of competition in labor markets. It also reports on the new developments in public policies associated with widespread concerns about labor market competition and efforts to ameliorate competitive failures. The conference papers range from studies of the labor supply elasticity individual firms face to studies of local labor market concentration to studies of explicit covenants suppressing labor market competition. New policies range from private and public antitrust litigation to concerns about the effect of mergers and interfirm agreements on labor market competition. We provide a detailed discussion of the mechanics of the Silicon Valley High Tech Worker conspiracy to suppress competition based on Court documents in the case. Noncompete agreements, which are not enforceable in three states already, have also come under scrutiny.
First Order Stochastic Optimization with Oblivious Noise

We initiate the study of stochastic optimization with oblivious noise, broadly generalizing the standard heavy-tailed noise setup. In our setting, in addition to random observation noise, the stochastic gradient may be subject to independent oblivious noise , which may not have bounded moments and is not necessarily centered. Specifically, we assume access to a noisy oracle for the stochastic gradient of f at x , which returns a vector ∇ f ( γ, x ) + ξ , where γ is the bounded variance observation noise and ξ is the oblivious noise that is independent of γ and x . The only assumption we make on the oblivious noise ξ is that Pr [ ξ = 0] ≥ α for some α ∈ (0 , 1) . In this setting, it is not information-theoretically possible to recover a single solution close to the target when the fraction of inliers α is less than 1 / 2 . Our main result is an efficient list-decodable learner that recovers a small list of candidates, at least one of which is close to the true solution. On the other hand, if α = 1 − ϵ , where 0 < ϵ < 1 / 2 is sufficiently small constant, the algorithm recovers a single solution. Along the way, we develop a rejection-sampling-based algorithm to perform noisy location estimation, which may be of independent interest.
We Fighting the Last War? Affecting the Central Nervous System: Are Neuroimaging in Zoonotic Outbreaks

SUMMARY: When preparing for the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and its effects on the CNS, radiologists should be familiar with neuroimaging appearances in past zoonotic infectious disease outbreaks. Organisms that have crossed the species barrier from animals to humans include viruses such as Hendra, Nipah, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, and in ﬂ uenza, as well as bacteria and others. Brain CT and MR imaging ﬁ ndings have included cortical abnormalities, microinfarction in the white matter, large-vessel occlusion, and features of meningitis. In particular, the high sensitivity of diffusion-weighted MR imaging in detecting intra-cranial abnormalities has been helpful in outbreaks. Although the coronaviruses causing the previous Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak and the current coronavirus disease 19 pandemic are related, it is important to be aware of their similarities as well as potential differences. This review describes the neuroimaging appearances of selected zoonotic outbreaks so that neurora-diologists can better understand the current pandemic and potential future outbreaks.
Annular Modes in a Multiple Migrating Zonal Jet Regime

The authors investigate the dynamics of zonal jets in a semihemisphere zonally reentrant ocean model. The forcings imposed in the model are an idealized atmospheric wind stress and relaxation to a latitudinal temperature profile held constant in time. While there are striking similarities to the observed atmospheric annular modes, where the leading mode of variability is associated with the primary zonal jet’s meridional undulation, secondary (weaker) jets emerge and systematically migrate equatorward. The model output suggests the following mechanism for the equatorward migration: while the eddy momentum fluxes sustain the jets, the eddy heat fluxes have a poleward bias causing an anomalous residual circulation with poleward (equatorward) flow on the poleward (equatorward) flanks. By conservation of mass, there must be a rising residual flow at the jet. From the thermodynamics equation, the greatest cooling occurs at the jet core, thus creating a tendency to reduce the baroclinicity on the poleward flank, while enhancing it on the equatorward flank. Consequently, the baroclinic zone shifts, perpetuating the jet migration.
A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF RETRACTED ARTICLES IN NIGERIA AND SOUTH AFRICA BETWEEN 2016-2020

Retraction of public domain articles to self-correct research is expedient to remedy misleading and false findings in the scientific community. This paper, therefore, examined the trends and prevalence of article retraction in Nigeria and South Africa. The comparative cross-sectional survey used www.retractiondatabase. org to sample 51 retracted articles from Nigeria (20) and South Africa (31) between 2016 and 2020. Data was analysed at univariate and bivariate levels. Findings revealed that while Elsevier retracted more articles from South Africa, Taylor and Francis had the most retracted publications from Nigeria. Medical scientists were more likely than authors from other fields to have their publications withdrawn. While errors and concerns about methods and analysis were the primary reasons for the retraction of articles from South Africa, plagiarism was the primary reason for retractions from Nigeria. It is, therefore,
POPULATION DYNAMICS AND HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT IN WEST AFRICA

The global population, which stood at 7.7 billion in 2019, is projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050; and thereafter peak at about 11 billion in 2100. West Africa, the fastest growing (2.69%) sub-region in sub-Saharan Africa and the second largest in the region after East Africa, constitutes 5.07% of the global population figure. By 2050, the third largest country in the world – Nigeria – will emerge from West Africa. All these have far-reaching implications for economic outcomes, sustainable development activities and human capital development in the sub-region. Currently, the progress achieved in human capital development in West Africa appears very low compared to other parts of the world. This study investigated the role of population dynamics in human capital development in West Africa over the period 1990–2017, covering 15 countries. Three human capital measures — life expectancy, primary school completion and secondary school enrolment rates — were employed as regressands with the static panel data modelling approach, using fixed effects (FE) and random effects (RE) estimators. However, the Hausman test result was significant, implying the appropriateness and consistency of FE. The findings overwhelmingly revealed that population dynamics is a drag on human capital development in West Africa. This is evident in the negative and statistical significance reported for most of the coefficients of demographic variables. In view of this, policy enactment and implementation should focus on measures to reduce adolescent fertility, population ages 0–14, and the death rate. Specifically, education, particularly for girls, is a powerful weapon that can reduce adolescent and total fertility, and also contribute to
Increasing Aerosol Direct Eﬀect Despite Declining Global Emissions

Anthropogenic aerosol particles partially mask global warming driven by greenhouse gases, both by directly reﬂecting sunlight back to space and indirectly by increasing cloud reﬂectivity. In recent decades, the emissions of anthropogenic aerosols have declined globally, and at the same time shifted from the North American and European regions to foremost Southeast Asia. Using simulations with the MPI-ESM1.2 global climate model we ﬁnd that the direct eﬀect of aerosols has continued to increase, despite declining emissions. Concurrently, the indirect eﬀect has diminished in approximate proportion to emissions. The enhanced eﬃciency of aerosol radiative forcing to emissions is associated with less cloud masking, longer atmospheric residence time, and diﬀerences in aerosol optical properties
Rural Schools in Spain: Strengths and Weakness

: Despite advances in research on rural schools, their standing remains subordinate to that of urban schools. Also in Spain, although it has gained presence thanks to the enhancement of the rural environment and the incorporation in the public agenda of the depopulation of rural areas in the interior of the peninsula. This article is based on a survey of 1,730 primary schools in Spain as a whole, of which 9.2 % are rural. The aims of the project included the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of rural schools in various areas, the link with the community and the role of the family-school relationship. The results of the study show that some stereotypes about rural schools, in terms of not being modern and lacking innovation and quality, do not currently hold true, and that the family-school relationship is the differentiating factor in relation to the link with the community.
TRADE OPENNESS, HUMAN CAPITAL AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN WEST AFRICA: A Dynamic Panel Data Investigation

West Africa is one of the sub-regions threatened with development challenges globally and in sub-Saharan Africa. Fourteen out of her sixteen countries are in the low human development category while the remaining two fall under the medium group. A greater proportion of her population lives in multidimensional poverty, with a very high degree of intensity of deprivation. This study assessed the effect of trade openness and human capital on poverty in West Africa over the period 2005–2018, with focus on 16 countries. A dynamic panel data model, estimated using the Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond System Generalized Method of Moments was employed. The findings revealed that human capital contributed significantly to poverty reduction in West Africa, whereas, trade openness did not reduce poverty significantly except through human capital (education). Therefore, for trade liberalization to enhance poverty alleviation in West Africa, countries in the sub-region should invest substantially in human capital development activities (tertiary education).
Resilience of plant and testate amoeba communities after climatic and anthropogenic disturbances in a Baltic bog in Northern Poland: Implications for ecological restoration

This study explores the history of the development of Sphagnum communities in an ombrotrophic peatland – Bagno Kusowo – over the past 650 years, based on high-resolution plant macrofossil and testate amoebae analysis. Our research provided information related to the length of peatland existence and the characteristics of its natural/pristine state before the most recent human impacts. Changes in the Sphagnum communities before human impact could have resulted from climate cooling during the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA). In this cold and unstable hydrological period, among vascular plants, Eriophorum vaginatum and Baeothryon caespitosum dominated in the peatland vegetation. Peat-forming Sphagnum communities survived the drainage conducted during the 20th century at the Bagno Kusowo bog. We provide three important messages through this study: (1) testate amoebae reflect similar hydrological trends in two peat cores despite considerable microhabitat variability, (2) average long-term water level 10 cm below the surface should be a target for active bog conservation and (3) sites like Bagno Kusowo are extremely important to preserve the remains of pristine biodiversity (including genetic diversity of plants and protists) that was completely removed from most of the raised bogs in Europe due to human activities, for example, drainage.
Prophylaxis for deep venous thrombosis in neurosurgery: a review of the literature

The incidence of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and subsequent pulmonary embolism (PE) in patients undergoing neurosurgery has been reported to be as high as 25%, with a mortality rate from PE between 9 and 50%. Even with the use of pneumatic compression devices, the incidence of DVT has been reported to be 32% in these patients, making prophylactic heparin therapy desirable. Both unfractionated and low-molecular-weight heparin have been shown to reduce the incidence of DVT consistently by 40 to 50% in neurosurgical patients. The baseline rate for major intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) following craniotomy has been reported to be between 1 and 3.9%, but after initiation of heparin therapy this rate has been found to be as high as 10.9%. Therefore, neurosurgeons must balance the risk of PE against the increased risk of postoperative ICH from prophylactic heparin for DVT. The authors review the literature on the incidence of DVT and PE in neurosurgical patients, focusing on the incidence of ICH related to the use of unfractionated and low-molecular-weight heparin in this patient population
Image retrieval outperforms di � usion models on data augmentation

Many approaches have been proposed to use di � usion models to augment training datasets for downstream tasks, such as classiﬁcation. However, di � usion models are themselves trained on large datasets, often with noisy annotations, and it remains an open question to which extent these models contribute to downstream classiﬁcation performance. In particular, it remains unclear if they generalize enough to improve over directly using the additional data of their pre-training process for augmentation. We systematically evaluate a range of existing methods to generate images from di � usion models and study new extensions to assess their beneﬁt for data augmentation. Personalizing di � usion models towards the target data outperforms simpler prompting strategies. However, using the pre-training data of the di � usion model alone, via a simple nearest-neighbor retrieval procedure, leads to even stronger downstream performance. Our study explores the potential of di � usion models in generating new training data, and surprisingly ﬁnds that these sophisticated models are not yet able to beat a simple and strong image retrieval baseline on simple downstream vision tasks.
METHODOLOGY Many Cooks in the Kitchen: Iterating a Qualitative Analysis Process Across Multiple Countries, Sites, and Teams

Establishing and proving methodological rigor has long been a challenge for qualitative researchers where quantitative methods prevail, but much published literature on qualitative analysis assumes a relatively small number of researchers working in relative proximity. This is particularly true for research conducted with a grounded theory approach. Different versions of grounded theory are commonly used, but this methodology was originally developed for a single researcher collecting and analyzing data in isolation. Although grounded theory has evolved since its development, little has been done to reconcile this approach with the changing nature and composition of international research teams. Advances in technology and an increased emphasis on transnational collaboration
Essays in ECONOMIC & BUSINESS HISTORY

This article analyzes the demand for military spending in the 1920s and 1930s, based on variables arising from the international system and the selected countries. The main premise is that the military spending was an impure public good, implying that both public and private benefits drove the demand for this type of expenditure. Threats arising from the autocratic states in the 1930s increased these expenditures, and democracies overall tended to spend less. Moreover, the absence of clear international leadership by the USA or UK destabilized the international system and increased military spending, with alliances failing to produce a public good effect. Military spending resulted in joint products at the level of state and within state, and the level of economic development seemed to exert a downward pressure on the military spending of these states. There were some contradictory spillover effects felt by these states. On the whole, this article suggests that scholars should expand their explanatory models to include impure public good influences in military spending analysis.
A DISEQUILIBRIUM MODEL OF THE DEMAND FOR AND SUPPLY OF RICE PADDY IN NIGERIA

In the face of recent economic upheavals, the need to feed an ailing and hungry society cannot be overemphasized. This was clearly seen in the economic tremors felt in the Nigerian economy when the government put a sledge on the importation of major food products. One of the products highly affected was rice paddy, which had a spiral pattern of consumption. With the recent rush in the demand of rice paddy and inadequacy in its supply, it became imperative to model the disequilibrium in the demand for and supply of rice paddy in Nigeria. In order to achieve this, a simultaneous equations model was adopted. Applying 3-stage least squares (3SLS) technique to time series data spanning 1980-2015, the study found that demand for and supply of rice were price inelastic. It suggested, therefore, that there should be policy that would stimulate sustained increase in domestic rice production capacity while maintaining the fragile and volatile market of the commodity.
PER CAPITA INCOME AND HEALTH OUTCOME CONVERGENCE IN THE ECONOMIC COMMUNITY OF WEST AFRICAN STATES

Whether trade policy agreements within Africa lead to income and also health outcome convergence is unknown. The role of governance quality in this regard is also not commonly explored. Using data from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), this study provides empirical evidence to find out whether countries within the ECOWAS trade bloc exhibit convergence in per capita income and health with focus on the role of governance quality. Data were obtained from the World Development Indicators and World Governance Indicators provided by the World Bank. Estimates are presented using the Generalized Method of Moments and the Pooled Least Squares. The results showed existence of â -convergence in per capita income and health with faster rates in income relative to health. There were also indications of ó -convergence in health outcome except for life expectancy. ó -convergence results however, showed divergence in per capita income. The results suggest strong influence of governance quality in attaining convergence not only for per capita income but also health outcome. Findings for convergence, strongly suggest that economic policy agreements in developing economies such as those of the ECOWAS engender sustainable development in income and health. Policy focus on improving economic performance in Africa should pursue actions that encourage trade bloc operations within the region. Efforts should also be targeted at improving the quality of governance.
Measurement of All the Material Constants of PVDF

PVDF, a piezoelectric material, finds many applications since it is the only piezoelectric material in polymer form as opposed to conventional piezoceramics. However, its properties are not well characterized due to the avahlabihty of poled PVDF only as a thin film. Umaxially oriented poled PVDF is of orthorhombic mm2 symmetry. All nine complex elastic constants, three complex dielectric constants as well as five complex piezoelectric constants arc presented using a thin film and stacked cubical samples of uniaxially oriented poled PVDF film. Ultrasonic measurements, an imped ance analyzer and a least square fitting technique are used to obtain the
WHAT DRIVES INTERNATIONAL STOCK RETURN COMOVEMENTS?

This paper presents new evidence on international financial market integration using stock analyst earnings forecasts from 37 countries. By examining cash flow and discount rate news co-movements, we find that the financial and economic aspects of global market integration have diverged over time as financial integration has developed particularly more rapidly than economic integration over the past decade. However, this divergence is less severe in emerging markets when compared with developed markets, where financial integration has proceeded at a slower pace. We find that financial integration has developed relatively slowly in emerging markets due to the hampering effects of their poor information environments.