Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regional Development and Climate Change Adaptation: A Study of the Role of Legitimacy

Abstract This paper presents results from a study of Czech Local Action Groups (LAGs), focusing on gaining knowledge about their internally perceived legitimacy and their potential role in local adaptation to climate change. Former studies on the role of governance networks in climate change adaptation have suggested that these networks’ legitimacy are crucial for their success. In this article we provide an analytical framework that can be used to address different aspects of local governance networks which are important for their legitimacy and the way they are apt as instruments for climate change adaptation actions. We also present a survey among LAG members that provide empirical data that we discuss in the article. The framework and the data are discussed with reference to existing contributions in the intersection of legitimacy, governance networks and climate change adaptation. A specific aim is to provide research based recommendations for further improving LAGs as an adaptation instrument. In addition, knowledge is generated that will be interesting for further studies of similar local governance initiatives in the climate change adaptation context.
The effect of dietary calcium inclusion on broiler gastrointestinal pH : Quantification 2 and method optimization 3

17 There is little consensus as to the most appropriate methodology for the measurement of 18 gastrointestinal pH in chickens. An experiment was conducted to establish the optimum 19 sampling method for the determination of broiler digesta pH in birds fed differing levels of 20 dietary calcium. Ross 308 broilers (n = 60) were fed one of two experimental diets, one 21 containing 0.8% monocalcium phosphate and 2% limestone and one containing 0.4% 22 monocalcium phosphate and 1% limestone. Four factors were investigated to determine the 23 most appropriate method of measuring broiler gastrointestinal digesta pH: removal from the 24 tract, prolonged air exposure, altering the temperature of the assay, and controlling the water 25 content of the digesta. The conditions were assessed at bird ages from 7 to 42 d post hatch. 26 Dietary Ca content had no significant effect on in situ pH, but it contributed towards variance 27 in ex situ pH of both gizzard and duodenum digesta. Digesta pH read to be higher when the 28 digesta was removed from the tract, but the amount of time the digesta was exposed to air did 29 not affect the reading. Digesta pH read higher when measured at room temperature than when 30 measured at 41°C; temperature made the strongest unique contribution to explaining variance 31 in duodenum pH, and the second strongest contribution to explaining variance in gizzard pH, 32 after diet. When water was added to the digesta, prior to pH determination, the pH of the 33 digesta read higher (P < 0.001) than when measured in situ. The method that resulted in pH 34 readings that were most representative of bird gastrointestinal environment was insertion of a 35 pH probe directly into the gut lumen post euthanasia, because measurement ex situ likely 36 encourages dissociation of carbonic acid, the major buffer in the gastrointestinal tract, which 37 causes pH to read to be higher than when measured in situ. This study shows that the method 38 of pH measurement needs careful consideration to ensure the validity of the result. 39
Labour Management for Profit and Welfare in Extensive Sheep Farming

Sheep welfare is an emerging topic in research and food marketing, and recent studies suggest that farm labour is a key factor for both animal welfare and productivity in extensive sheep farming systems, although little research has been done into labour utilisation in these systems. This paper reports field data collection on two commercial farms and the use of a linear programming (LP) model to link labour economics and animal welfare analysis. The model maximises the number of ewes to clooked after over the lambing period, when constrained by labour availability for various key tasks and by a pre-determined level of sheep welfare. The results show a trade-off between welfare level and labour input per sheep. Dropping tasks with less significant welfare and productivity consequences is an effective way of increasing carrying capacity (from 977 ewes/shepherd to 1428), as is working longer hours (1174 ewes/shepherd) or only doing the legal minimum of welfare checking (labour reduced from 0.68 min/ewe to 0.44 min/ewe) . The field data suggest that farmers currently provide high welfare, and that, despite much time spent away from the flock (e.g. driving), they spend a large amount of time (39% of total) with their sheep.
Quantification of NIRS data of a blood phantom by spectral multicomponent analysis

In order to quantify the chromophore components from in vivo blood NIRS, a blood- equivalent phantom has been developed which consists of properly diluted intralipid and ICG dye. The reflection and transmission near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) of the phantoms with different scattering backgrounds and ICG concentrations are measured and analyzed by the spectral multicomponent analysis (MCA) method to extract ICG concentration. The experimental results show that the MCA method can be used to quantify absolute ICG concentrations in scattering media if the average path lengths are known. Moreover, it was found by the experiments that both the water absorption peak at 970 nm and the ICG absorption peak at 800 nm show similar behavior during the change of the scattering background. Thus the ratio of the MCA-estimated concentration factor of ICG to water is independent of the blood-phantom scattering.
“Islamic Finance” After State-Sponsored Capitalist Islamism

During the late part of the nineteenth century CE, nationalist-Islamism emerged as a theology of liberation from the realities of European colonialism under which most Muslims lived. This form of Islamism survived into the mid twentieth century, without significant thought being lent to the possibility or desirability of a so-called “Islamic finance. ” Indeed, juristic developments during this period justified conventional financial practices, and many nationalist movements aimed merely to replace European financial institutions with indigenous ones focused on boosting domestic and regional economic development. Shortly after independence, and under the influence of global currents, the liberation theology of nationalist-Islamism mutated into a socialist-Islamism that focused on self reliance to defeat poverty and continued economic dependence of Muslim-majority countries. To counter this theology that threatened their regimes, oil monarchies used their relatively limited petrodollar resources to promote a religious-identity form of pan-Islamism based on the incoherent mid-century thought of Mawdudi and his followers. Then, starting in the 1970s, ample petrodollar flows, and their recycling, fueled a state-sponsored capitalist-Islamism that included adoption of this incoherent mid-century thought into a so-called “Islamic finance” industry. The rise of this industry may thus be attributed to four forces: (i) governments seeking to appease Islamist sentiments in areas that did not threaten their post-colonial timocracies; (ii) emerging middle classes who favor formulaic religious-identity Islamism, and simultaneously seek to join the upper (increasingly financial and legal) rungs of society; (iii) advances in financial engineering that made it easy to replicate contemporary financial practices using medieval contracts; and (iv) recycling of petrodollars from Muslim economies with limited absorptive capacity. The last two forces created the methods and funds to power so-called “Islamic finance,” while the first two provided advantages and space for its personnel and client-base. As the petrodollar age and its concomitant brand of capitalist-Islamism come to an end, Muslim middle classes and timocracies retain the incentives to sustain the fiction that powers this industry. However, the impending demise of petrodollar-supported capitalist-Islamism, failures of which begat twenty first century terrorist-Islamism, incentivizes them to find another outlet for Muslim liberation theology. This amplifies manifold the risks (and potential, but limited, benefits) of “Islamic finance. ”
Parasitic Contamination in Commonly- Consumed Vegetables in Mazandaran Province, Northern Iran

Background: Raw (fresh) vegetables are an important ingredient of healthy diet. Many enteric bacterial, parasitic and viral pathogens could be transmitted by vegetables. Mazandaran province is located in northern Iran with a coastal area and extensive fields for vegetable cultivation. The current study is designed to evaluate with Parsley and radish with of and were the most and least contaminated vegetables. Free and were the most and least common parasites in our results.
Effects of Post-exposure Description and Imaging on Subsequent Face Recognition Performance

After viewing a crime, witnesses are frequently asked by police investigators to give a verbal description of the perpetrator. At a later time, witnesses may be asked to try to recognize the perpetrator in a lineup or a mugfile. The purpose of this research was to determine whether performance on a later recognition test is influenced by an earlier verbal description test of the target. Participants viewed six target faces, and after each, performed one of four post-exposure activities. Two were verbal description tasks. The descriptor checklist task had participants indicate, using a list of potential adjectives, those descriptors that best described the most recently seen face. The descriptor generate task had participants recall descriptors that best described the most recently seen face. Both description tasks were accomplished using a questionnaire that was identical except for the presence or absence of specific adjectives. Other participants were instructed to image the target face or they performed an irrelevant task during the post-exposure period. In a later recognition test, participants tried to find the targets in a set of faces containing 134 distractors. The results showed that participants using the checklist produced lower performance on the recognition test than participants who generated their own descriptors. Imaging produced the highest recognition performance but was not significantly different from the irrelevant condition. The recognition decrement of the descriptor checklist is explained in terms of interference caused by the presence of irrelevant face descriptors that added noise to participants' memory of the targets. Implications for testing witness memory by police investigators are discussed. For example, if verbal descriptions of faces are requested from eyewitnesses, descriptor recall may be preferred over a descriptor recognition because the former task does not degrade later recognition of the perpetrator.
Linking the Modern Distribution of Biogenic Proxies in High Arctic Greenland Shelf Sediments to Sea Ice, Primary Production, and Arctic‐Atlantic Inflow

The eastern north coast of Greenland is considered to be highly sensitive to the ongoing Arctic warming, but there is a general lack of data on modern conditions and in particular on the modern distribution of climate and environmental proxies to provide a baseline and context for studies on past variability. Here we present a detailed investigation of 11 biogenic proxies preserved in surface sediments from the remote High Arctic Wandel Sea shelf, the entrance to the Independence, Hagen, and Danmark fjords. The composition of organic matter (organic carbon, C:N ratios, δ13C, δ15N, biogenic silica, and IP25) and microfossil assemblages revealed an overall low primary production dominated by benthic diatoms, especially at the shallow sites. While the benthic and planktic foraminiferal assemblages underline the intrusion of chilled Atlantic waters into the deeper parts of the study area, the distribution of organic‐walled dinoflagellate cysts is controlled by the local bathymetry and sea ice conditions. The distribution of the dinoflagellate cyst Polarella glacialis matches that of seasonal sea ice and the specific biomarker IP25, highlighting the potential of this species for paleo sea ice studies. The information inferred from our multiproxy study has important implications for the interpretation of the biogenic‐proxy signal preserved in sediments from circum‐Arctic fjords and shelf regions and can serve as a baseline for future studies. This is the first study of its kind in this area.
English Language Teacher Motivation in Sri Lankan Public Schools

Drawing on in-depth qualitative data from fifty-four surveys and five interviews, this study investigated aspects of motivation and demotivation among Sri Lankan English language teachers. The participants included a convenience sample of English teachers currently employed in public schools. The results of the study revealed that students themselves, the act of teaching students, and the prestigious social position for English teachers in Sri Lanka are main motivators for teachers. The main demotivators for the participants included limited facilities for teaching and learning in schools, inefficiency of school administration and zonal education offices, difficulties in obtaining teacher transfers, the discrepancy between the English curriculum and students' English proficiency, and the poor relationship between colleagues. Overall results of the study indicate that teacher demotivation is a significant issue in Sri Lankan public schools which needs the immediate attention of the country's education policy designers and management.
J an 2 01 6 Neural Signal Multiplexing via Compressed Sensing

Transport of neural signals in the brain is challenging, owing to neural interference and neural noise. The re is experimental evidence of multiplexing of sensory information across population of neurons, particularly in the vertebrate visual and olfactory systems. Recently, it has been discovered tha t in lateral intraparietal cortex of the brain, decision signals are multiplexed with decision-irrelevant visual signals. Furthermore, it is well known that several cortical neurons exhibit chaot ic spiking patterns. Multiplexing of chaotic neural signals and their successful demultiplexing in the neurons amidst interfere nce and noise, is difficult to explain. In this work, a novel compressed sensing model for efficient multiplexing of chaotic neural s ignals constructed using the Hindmarsh-Rose spiking model is proposed. The signals are multiplexed from a pre-synaptic neur on to its neighbouring post-synaptic neuron, in the presence o f 10 4 interfering noisy neural signals and demultiplexed using compressed sensing techniques.
Explorer The Method of Assigning Incidences

Incidence calculus is a probabilistic logic in which incidences, standing for the situations in which formulae may be true, are assigned to some formulae, and probabilities are assigned to incidences. However, numerical values may be assigned to formulae directly without specifying the incidences. In this paper, we propose a method of discovering incidences under these circumstances which produces a unique output comparing with the large number of outputs from other approaches. Some theoretical aspects of this method are thoroughly studied and the completeness of the result generated from it is proved. The result can be used to calculate mass functions from belief functions in the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence (DS theory) and define probability spaces from inner measures (or lower bounds) of probabilities on the relevant propositional language set.
CARDIAC OVEREXPRESSION OF METALLOTHIONEIN RESCUES CHRONIC ALCOHOL INTAKE-INDUCED CARDIOMYOCYTE DYSFUNCTION : ROLE OF AKT , MAMMALIAN TARGET OF RAPAMYCIN AND RIBOSOMAL P 70 S 6 KINASE

Aims: Reduced insulin sensitivity following alcohol intake plays a role in alcohol-induced organ damage although its precise mechanism is undefined. This study was designed to examine the effect of cardiac overexpression of the antioxidant metallothionein on alcohol-induced cardiac contractile dysfunction and post-receptor insulin signaling. Methods: FVB and metallothionein mice were fed a 4% alcohol diet for 16 weeks. Cardiomyocyte contractile function was evaluated including peak shortening (PS), time-to-PS (TPS), and time-to-relengthening (TR90). Post-insulin receptor signaling molecules Akt, mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), and ribosomal p70s6 kinase (p70s6k) were evaluated using western blot analysis. Akt1 kinase activity was assayed with a phosphotransferase kit. Results: Alcohol intake dampened whole body glucose tolerance, depressed PS, shortened TPS, and prolonged TR90, which were abrogated by metallothionein with the exception of glucose intolerance. Our results revealed reduced expression of total Akt, phosphorylated mTOR, and phosphorylated p70s6k-to-p70s6k ratio as well as Akt1 kinase activity in alcohol consuming FVB mice. Phosphorylated Akt, total mTOR, and phosphorylated p70s6k were unaffected by alcohol. Metallothionein ablated reduced Akt protein and kinase activity without affecting any other proteins or their phosphorylation. Conclusion: In summary, our data suggest that chronic alcohol intake interrupted cardiac contractile function and Akt/mTOR/p70s6k signaling. Akt but unlikely mTOR and p70s6k may contribute to metallothionein-elicited cardiac protective response.
CGD Policy Paper 119 February 2018 Deterring Emigration with Foreign Aid : An Overview of Evidence from Low-Income Countries

In response to the recent migrant and refugee crisis, rich countries have redoubled policy efforts to deter future immigration from poor countries by addressing the “root causes” of migration. We review existing evidence on the extent and effectiveness of such efforts. First, development aid disbursements do not generally follow “root causes” rhetoric. The sectoral distribution of aid to migrant-origin countries does not significantly differ from its distribution in other countries. Second, the evidence suggests that the capacity of development assistance to deter migration is small at best. Aid can only encourage economic growth, employment, and security to a limited degree. Beyond this, successful development in almost all formerly-poor countries has produced an increase in emigration. Third, this evidence implies that donors could achieve greater impact by leveraging development aid not to deter migration but to shape it for mutual benefit.
Stratification of the elements in the atmospheres of blue horizontal-branch stars

Blue horizontal-branch (BHB) stars with T eff approximately larger than 11 500 K show several observational anomalies. In globular clusters, they exhibit low rotational velocities, abundance anomalies (as compared to cluster abundances), photometric jumps and gaps and spectroscopic gravities lower than predicted by canonical models. It is commonly believed that the low rotational velocities of these stars permit atomic diffusion to be efficient in their atmosphere thereby causing the observed anomalies. Recent detections of vertical stratification of iron (and some other chemical elements) in several BHB stars concur with this framework. In this paper, improved model atmospheres that include the vertical stratification of the elements are applied to BHB stars to verify if they can explain their observational anomalies. The results from theoretical model atmospheres are consistent with the photometric jumps and gaps observed for BHB stars in globular clusters. It is found that iron stratification in the theoretical models and that obtained from observations have similar tendencies. Our results also show that the spectroscopic gravities obtained while using chemically homogeneous model atmospheres to fit observations are underestimated. These results significantly strengthen the belief that atomic diffusion is responsible for these BHB-star anomalies.
Phytochemical Analysis and Antioxidant Properties in Colored Tiggiano Carrots

The carrot (Daucus carota L.) is an important vegetable source of bioactive compounds in the human diet. In the Apulia region (Southern Italy), local farmers have domesticated colored landraces of carrots over the years, strictly related to local cults and traditions. Amongst these, an important landrace is the carrot of Saint Ippazio or the Tiggiano carrot. In the present study, we evaluated the content of carotenoids, anthocyanins, phenolic acids, sugars, organic acids, and antioxidant activity in Tiggiano carrots. Our results indicated that yellow-purple carrots have the highest levels of bioactive compounds, together with the highest antioxidant capacity compared to the yellow and cultivated orange varieties. These data point out the nutritional value of purple Tiggiano carrots and may contribute to the valorization of this typical landrace.
Does p-type ohmic contact exist in WSe[subscript 2]–metal interfaces?

Formation of low-resistance metal contacts is the biggest challenge that masks the intrinsic exceptional electronic properties of 2D WSe2 devices. We present the first comparative study of the interfacial properties between ML/BL WSe2 and Sc, Al, Ag, Au, Pd, and Pt contacts by using ab initio energy band calculations with inclusion of the spin-orbital coupling (SOC) effects and quantum transport simulations. The interlayer coupling tends to reduce both the electron and hole Schottky barrier heights (SBHs) and alters the polarity for WSe2-Au contact, while the SOC chiefly reduces the hole SBH. In the absence of the SOC, Pd contact has the smallest hole SBH with a value no less than 0.22 eV. Dramatically, Pt contact surpasses Pd contact and becomes p-type Ohmic or quasi-Ohmic contact with inclusion of the SOC. Our study provides a theoretical foundation for the selection of favorable metal electrodes in ML/BL WSe2 devices.
A STATISTICAL SURVEY OF DYNAMIC PRESSURE PULSES IN THE SOLAR WIND BASED ON WIND OBSERVATIONS

Solar wind dynamic pressure pulse (DPP) structures, across which the dynamic pressure changes abruptly over timescales from a few seconds to several minutes, are often observed in the near-Earth space environment. The space weather effects of DPPs on the magnetosphere–ionosphere coupling system have been widely investigated in the last two decades. In this study, we perform a statistical survey on the properties of DPPs near 1 AU based on nearly 20 years of observations from the WIND spacecraft. It is found that only a tiny fraction of DPPs (around 4.2%) can be regarded as interplanetary shocks. For most DPPs, the total pressure (the sum of the thermal pressure and magnetic pressure) remains in equilibrium, but there also exists a small fraction of DPPs that are not pressure-balanced. The overwhelming majority of DPPs are associated with solar wind disturbances, including coronal mass ejection-related flows, corotating interaction regions, as well as complex ejecta. The annual variations of the averaged occurrence rate of DPPs are roughly in phase with the solar activity during solar cycle 23, and during the rising phase of solar cycle 24.