Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The dynamics of Fe oxidation in riebeckite: A model for amphiboles

Abstract In this work, we investigate the oxidation behavior of a nearly end-member riebeckite, ideally Na2 (Fe32+Fe23+) $\begin{array}{} (\text{Fe}^{2+}_3\text{Fe}^{3+}_2) \end{array} $ Si8O22(OH)2, by using vibrational FTIR and Raman spectroscopies. Combining these results with previous studies performed on the same sample by single-crystal structure refinement and Mössbauer spectroscopy, we conclude that iron oxidation in riebeckite is a multi-step process. (1) In the ~523 K < T < 623 K temperature range, the O-H bond lengthens and both the electrons and the hydrogen cations delocalize. Raman analysis shows that this step is reversible upon cooling to room temperature. (2) In the 623 K < T < 723 K range, the kinetic energy increases so that the electrons can be ejected from the crystal; beyond 723 K an irreversible oxidation of Fe occurs that couples with irreversible changes in the SiO4 double-chains leading to a contraction of the unit-cell volume, i.e., to structural changes detectable at the long-range scale. (3) Beyond 823 K, the irreversible oxidation is completed and H+ ions are forced to leave the crystal bulk. Because of this multi-step process, the onset of the deprotonation process is detected at ~700 K by single-crystal XRD analysis of the unit-cell parameters, but starts at 623 K as indicated by Mössbauer spectroscopy on powders (and by changes in the cation distribution observed by structure refinement). Also, Raman scattering shows that the release of H+ from the crystal surface starts ~100 K before the complete deprotonation of the crystal bulk is witnessed by FTIR absorption. Hence, the oxidation of Fe starts at the crystal surface and induces electron and H+ migration from the crystal interior to the rim and thus subsequent oxidation through the crystal bulk. No deprotonation is observed by FTIR either in powders embedded in KBr or in crystals heated in N2 atmosphere, implying that the release of H+ needs surficial (atmospheric) oxygen to form H2O molecules. Fe2+ → Fe3+ oxidation produces a flux of electrons throughout the crystal matrix, which generates electrical conductivity across the amphibole. An important implication of this work, which might have interesting applications in material science, is that iron oxidation in riebeckite (and possibly in other Fe-rich silicates) is reversible in a given range of temperature. Also, this work shows that complex processes cannot be fully understood or even monitored accurately without using a proper combination of independent techniques.
Tender process and value for money in Tanzania public procurement

The purpose of this study was to find out the effect of the tender process on value for money in Tanzania public procurement. The study applies a cross-sectional survey design and quantitative approach. The data were collected from 164 entities in Tanzania. The analysis of data was mainly based on descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that tender advertising, tender evaluation, tender award, and tender negotiation are significant factors that enhance value for money in public procurement. Conversely, the tendering document was not a significant factor to predict the value for money. Procuring entities in Tanzania need to put more efforts to administer properly tender advertising, tender evaluation, tender award, and tender negotiation to achieve the best value for money. The study has enriched the institutional theory by showing that regulatory and normative pillars need to ensure that the organisations produce the best results.
Creating Shared Value to Enhance Customer Loyalty: A Case of a Sporting Goods Company in Korean Athletic Shoe Market

Despite the efforts of academia on exploring the merits of creating shared value, prior relevant literature seems to have a limitation that overlooks the environmental contribution suggested as a crucial component of creating shared value program by Porter and Kramer. More importantly, since most of the existing creating shared value-related studies have focused on firms in the general marketing field, there is a lack of research on the efficacy of creating shared value programs that are implemented by sporting goods companies. Thus, the objective of the present study was to examine the influence of consumers’ perceived creating shared value activities of sporting goods firm on brand image and customer loyalty in the context of the Korean sporting goods market. A total of 187 Korean sport consumers participated in the present study. Results indicated that sporting goods consumers’ perceived economic, social, and environmental values had significant impacts on brand image and, in turn, brand image positively affected customer loyalty. Consequently, the current study’s findings provide sporting goods firms with practical implications for launching creating shared value programs.
Class structure-aware adversarial loss for cross-domain human action recognition

Cross-domain action recognition is a challenging vision task due to the domain shift and the absence of labeled data in the target domain. With only labelled source domain and unlabelled target domain data during training, some existing methods rely on an adversarial framework to align the features from different domains to a common latent space. However, the existing adversarial-based approaches have a major limitation of only attempting to perform the alignment from a holistic view, ignoring the underlying coherence of class structure across domains. A class structure-aware adversarial loss (CSCAL) is presented to address this issue. The CSCAL incorporates the category information into the adversarial learning branch to capture the fine-grained alignment of each class, effectively avoiding the false mixup of samples from different categories in the embedding space. Experiments on HMDB51, UCF101 and Olympic Sports datasets show significant improvement compared to the baseline. Code and trained model can be found at https://github.com/bregmangh/CSCAL.
Digital transnational queer isolations and connections

ABSTRACT In this essay, my goal is to push the discourse of critical queer intercultural communication research further and expand its circumference by focusing on transnational and diasporic digitalized queer experiences. Hence, I argue that new media technologies, social media platforms, and quick media applications play a significant role in the lives of transnational, diasporic and immigrant queer individuals by providing new opportunities to imagine home and belonging and perform transnational and accented queer identities. Therefore, I enact and embody decolonizing autoethnographic writing. In doing so, I aim to decolonize mainstream queer spaces, including how queer stories are being told and whose stories are being published in which venues. Thus, I aim to speak from the periphery, including that of queer and critical intercultural communication scholarship, with a transnational queer accent.
The foraging perspective in criminology: A review of research literature

In order to explain how crimes are carried out, and why at a particular place and time and against a specific target, crime studies increasingly harness theory from behavioural ecology, in particular Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT). However, an overview of their main findings does not exist. Given the growing focus on OFT as a behavioural framework for structuring crime research, in this article we review the extant OFT-inspired empirical crime research. Systematic search in Google Scholar and Web of Science yielded 32 crime studies, which were grouped into four categories according to their research topic. Empirical results largely support predictions made by OFT. However, there remains much potential for future OFT applications to crime research, in particular regarding the theoretical foundation of OFT in criminology, and through the application of contemporary extensions to OFT using specific tools developed for the study of animal foraging decisions.
Positive Relationships Questionnaire (PRQ): A Pilot Study

“Positive relationship” is a term frequently used, as synonymous to close, meaningful, supportive or important relationships. However, the characteristics of a relationship characterized as positive have not yet been fully examined and described. This study aims to investigate the psychometric properties of a new instrument for measuring the characteristics of positive relationships. The Positive Relationships Questionnaire (PRQ) is a 35-item self-report instrument that evaluates the quality of positive relationships as well as the conditions that people need to offer and/or provide to others in order to have positive relationships. Its 35 items were drawn from the findings of previous qualitative research and are grouped into three broad categories: positive emotions, active contribution and readiness to support. A total of 331 adults, aged from 17 to 57 years old completed the PRQ and the PERMA Profiler. The findings showed that PRQ has good internal consistency and its factor structure includes four factors: self-improvement, practical support, emotional support, and shared enjoyment. All factors were found to have high correlations with the two domains of PERMA, positive emotions and re-lationships, and low to moderate correlations with engagement, meaning, and accomplishment. These results provide initial evidence of satisfactory convergent and divergent validity. PRQ is a useful instrument. It provides a quantitative evaluation of the quality and content of positive relationships and can be used broadly as a wellbeing index.
Delineation of Fractures Using a 2D GPR Processing Strategy for 3D Imaging: Weak Zones within Carbonates at the Archaeological Site of Xochicalco in Mexico

The use of GPR data multipath summation on data acquired over parallel study lines is presented here within the framework of a study on the effects of natural hazards on cultural heritage areas in order to image weak zones within carbonates, such as fractures and caverns. This study was realized at the archeological site of Xochicalco in Mexico, where fractures and caverns are potential sources of the degradation of the archeological remains. Dense parallel GPR study lines spaced every 0.25 m were surveyed using a 400 MHz monostatic antenna with the aim to image possible weak zones in three dimensions. We used a 2D imaging approach, namely, the method of multipath summation, which efficiently focused the scattered energy within the GPR sections. The study revealed, at depths of 1.6m and 1.8m, several linear events attributed to fractures, leading to the preliminary conclusion of this on-going project that cracks on the walls of the Quetzalcoatl Temple after a large earthquake in 2017 are prone to instability of carbonates rocks.
Apple Quality and Calcium Content as Affected by Fertilizer Treatment

The study was carried out in 2015 in the experimental orchard of the Agropodrinje apple introduction centre in the Gorazde area. The impact of different methods of calcium fertilizer application on fruit quality and calcium content in the ‘Idared’ fruit of an 8-year-old apple tree were studied. Fruit mineral composition and quality parameters were estimated after harvest. Calcium fertilizers used in this research were FolifertilCa, calcium-ammonium nitrate (CAN), and calcium oxide (CaO). Folifertil-Ca was applied through leaves, and CaO and CAN were applied through soil. The method of application where CAN was applied in combination with Folifertil-Ca significantly increased the accumulation of Ca in apple leaves and fruits. Also, this method of calcium fertilizer application had the greatest impact on apple fruit firmness increase. In the present study sugar content and acidity of apple fruit did not differ significantly, regardless of the application method of calcium fertilizers. The results of this study support the fact that the Ca uptake by plant roots and its transport to leaves and fruits are directly affected by a plant’s transpiration rate. This fact suggests that in apple cultivation is better if calcium fertilizers applied through soil or in combination with foliage treatment.
Meeting of minds: Narratives as a tool to reduce prejudice toward stigmatized group members

This study investigates a mechanism of mediated intergroup contact effects that occurs through experiencing social presence of a stigmatized outgroup character. Conceiving narrative texts as a context for mediated intergroup contact, we experimentally test (N = 505) the effects of narrative perspective (first vs. third person) and the photograph of the outgroup protagonist (present vs. absent) on perceived social presence of the outgroup character. We further test whether experiencing the outgroup protagonist as socially present affects intergroup outcomes (i.e., perspective-taking, intergroup anxiety, outgroup knowledge, and outgroup attitudes). Findings indicate that first-person narratives are more effective than third-person narratives in inducing social presence of the stigmatized outgroup character; photos, unexpectedly, did not have such an effect. Social presence, in turn, plays a key role in facilitating positive intergroup outcomes from reading online narrative texts. The implications of our findings are discussed.
Unique transcriptome features of pea (Pisum sativum L.) lines with differing responses to beneficial soil microorganisms

BACKGROUND: Garden pea (Pisum sativum L.) possesses the ability to form beneficial symbioses with various soil microorganisms. However, different pea cultivars, genotypes, and lines gain more or less benefit from these interactions, so the trait named efficiency of interaction with soil microorganisms (EIBSM) was suggested to describe this phenomenon. The molecular mechanisms underlying the manifestation of the EIBSM trait are not properly studied, and only few works focusing on plant responses to combined microbial preparations have been published to date. METHODS: Eight pea lines previously described as contrasting in manifestation of the EIBSM trait were grown in pots with soil under combined inoculation with nodule bacteria and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and the transcriptome profiles of the whole root systems of the plants were investigated using 3'MACE RNA sequencing. RESULTS: The relatedness of the lines inferred from the analysis of transcripts SNVs (Single Nucleotide Variants) corresponded to the manifestation of the EIBSM trait: three high-EIBSM lines and three low-EIBSM lines formed two distinct clusters. Thus, the gene expression profiles were compared between these two clusters, which enabled identification of transcriptome signatures characteristic for each group. The lines previously described as high-EIBSM have lower symbiotic activity, and the expression levels of pathogen response genes were elevated compared to the lines with low EIBSM. CONCLUSION: This result suggests that the mechanism of high interaction efficiency may be connected to stricter host control of symbionts, allowing such plants to expend less on the symbioses.
Atlantic Shortfin Mako: Chronicle of a Death Foretold?

This article outlines recent events concerning the conservation and management trajectory of a highly migratory shark species, the shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus), in the North Atlantic, where it has been routinely captured recreationally and as part of commercial fishing operations alongside other species. Noting recent warnings concerning the high mortality of the species in this ocean region, and the threat of imminent population collapse, this article sets out a number of applicable law of the sea provisions, and carries out an evaluation of relevant measures for target and incidental capture species, discussing their applicability to the mako fishery. It also presents an analysis of regional and global governance actions taken to date by the international community and by individual actors, noting a number of shortfalls, and outlining potential responses.
On “Consequentialism” and the Capability Approach

ABSTRACT Amartya Sen defends the capability approach (CA) and the “discipline of consequential evaluation” which suggests that his CA is consistent with some form of “consequentialism”. Yet prominent commentators suggest or imply that Sen’s CA is not “consequentialist”. The resulting confusion is defused by showing that whether Sen’s CA, as a general normative perspective, is consistent with “consequentialism” depends on how “consequentialism” is understood. If “consequentialism” is understood as a moral doctrine, then the CA is not committed to either “consequentialism” or “non-consequentialism”. On a social choice theoretic (SCT) definition a normative framework or view is “consequentialist” if it restricts relevant information to “outcomes”. On this definition, whether the CA is compatible with “consequentialism” depends on whether “outcomes” are understood as “comprehensive” or “culmination” outcomes. Two varieties of “non-welfarist consequentialist” moral theory which restrict information respectively to capability and freedom are compared. Martha Nussbaum’s version of the CA is not a “non-welfarist consequentialist” theory of this sort because it is not a moral doctrine with a maximizing structure. It may, nonetheless, classify as “consequentialist” on the SCT definition if all valued objects in her approach can be included in the description of “outcomes”.
Epidemiology of COVID-19 in the State of Sergipe/Brazil and Its Relationship with Social Indicators

A pandemic is capable of generating a great impact, not only from the point of view of health, but also socioeconomically. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that a new pandemic situation had arisen, due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, whose probable origin was zoonotic. The largest number of cases of this disease is concentrated in the United States of America (USA), India, and Brazil. The mortality rate is estimated at 3.4%, but regional differences may exist, and places with a high demographic density have become true epicentres and may be related to higher rates of transmission. In addition to the above, lower human development indexes (HDI) can be related to worse outcomes, especially in the North and Northeast regions of Brazil since they are the least developed places. The Northeast region is the second-most-affected place in the number of COVID-19 cases in Brazil. An analytical observational study of an ecological type was carried out from April to October 2020 to assess the epidemiological situation of COVID-19 in the state of Sergipe and specifically to analyse the incidence of cases and deaths resulting from COVID-19 in the different health regions of the state of Sergipe, in relation to the values of the HDI and demographic density. During the study period, 84,325 cases of COVID-19 were identified, in which 2205 resulted in death. In most of the regions studied, there was a positive association between the number of cases and deaths and the greater the demographic density, but there was no increase in the risk of becoming ill, nor of dying the lower the HDI. Large and crowded cities are places of greatest vulnerability to illness, due to their greater capacity of transmitting the virus; however, further studies are needed to identify other factors that are decisive in the outcomes of this new disease.
A National Survey of Patient Completion of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Pain: The Role of Therapist Characteristics, Attempt Rates, and Modification.

The implementation of evidence-based psychotherapies, including patient-level measures such as penetration and rates of successfully completing a course of therapy, has received increasing attention. While much attention has been paid to the effect of patient-level factors on implementation, relatively little attention has been paid to therapist factors (e.g., professional training, experience). Objective The current study explores therapists' decisions to offer a particular evidence-based psychotherapy (cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain; CBT-CP), whether and how they modify CBT-CP, and the relationship between these decisions and patient completion rates. Methods The study utilized survey responses from 141 Veterans Affairs therapists certified in CBT-CP. Results Therapists reported attempting CBT-CP with a little less than one half of their patients with chronic pain (mean = 48.8%, s.d.=35.7). Therapist were generally split between reporting modifying CBT-CP for either very few or most of their patients. After controlling for therapist characteristics and modification, therapist-reported percentage of patients with attempted CBT-CP was positively associated with completion rates, t (111) = 4.57, p<. 001. Conclusions Therapists who attempt CBT-CP more frequently may experience better completion rates, perhaps due to practice effects or contextual factors that support both attempts and completion. Future research should examine this relationship using objective measures of attempt rates and completion.
Mentioning the Sample’s Country in the Article’s Title Leads to Bias in Research Evaluation

Psychology research from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries, especially from the United States, receives more scientific attention than research from non-WEIRD countries. We investigate one structural way that this inequality might be enacted: mentioning the sample's country in the article title. Analyzing the current publication practice of four leading social psychology journals (Study 1) and conducting two experiments with U.S. American and German students (Study 2), we show that the country is more often mentioned in articles with samples from non-WEIRD countries than those with samples from WEIRD countries (especially the United States) and that this practice is associated with less scientific attention. We propose that this phenomenon represents a (perhaps unintentional) form of structural discrimination, which can lead to underrepresentation and reduced impact of social psychological research done with non-WEIRD samples. We outline possible changes in the publication process that could challenge this phenomenon.
Proactive and reactive aggression and substance use among detained youth

ABSTRACT Background Proactive and reactive functions of aggression have been found to be differentially associated with substance use; however, the pattern of associations differs across substance and outcome assessed. Methods The current study extends extant literature by examining associations between proactive and reactive functions of aggression and frequency of substance use (tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, e-cigarettes, and prescription drugs) 30 days prior to detainment among a sample of justice-involved youth. Further, the moderating effect of behavioral dysregulation on these associations was evaluated. Results While proactive aggression was positively correlated with past 30-day marijuana and prescription drug use for non-medical purposes, reactive aggression was positively correlated with tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drug use. However, only reactive aggression was uniquely associated with past 30-day use, specifically marijuana and prescription drug use. Further behavioral dysregulation moderated associations, such that reactive aggression was positively associated with frequency of tobacco use and marijuana use, but only at low levels of behavioral dysregulation. Conclusions Reactive aggression appears to be associated with more frequent substance use than proactive aggression during adolescence. Implications for findings are discussed.