Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WaxPSM: A Forward Model of Leaf Wax Hydrogen Isotope Ratios to Bridge Proxy and Model Estimates of Past Climate

The D/H ratio of epicuticular plant waxes (δDwax) preserved in sedimentary archives is a powerful tool for paleoclimate reconstruction, but comparisons to other proxy records or to climate model simulations requires a proxy system model (PSM) that accounts for transformations between δDprecip and δDwax. Here we present a new, publicly available PSM for plant waxes, WaxPSM. WaxPSM predicts δDwax from observational data or any isotope‐enabled modern, paleo, or future climate model experiment. δD values of the C29 n‐alkane are calculated based on precipitation or soil water δD and observed apparent fractionation values, adjusted for plant‐type differences. Using WaxPSM, we assess three key uncertainties in δDwax records: the degree to which variations in δD may reflect changes in vegetation rather than climate, structural uncertainties that arise from limited water isotopic observations, and the impacts of land cover change on climate reconstructions during the Last Glacial Maximum and the Preindustrial period. Parametric and structural uncertainties can cause δDwax variations up to 50‰, but in most cases, the differences are ∼10–30‰. The drier subtropics are additionally impacted by the incorrect structural assumption that plants' source water, δDsoil, is isotopically similar to the climate variable of interest, δDprecip. We recommend a coordinated, systematic effort to elevate observational constraints on δDprecip, δDsoil, and the δD of multiple compound classes, which would dramatically reduce parametric and structural uncertainties and allow further complexity to be built into the model.
Aberystwyth University Inequality as a driver of migration

In this study, we analyse the relationship between migration and inequality, within a network setting. Specifically, we employ social network analysis to investigate whether migration flows move between countries with similar or dissimilar levels of income and inequality, across 41 European countries. We observe that emigration flows move between more unequal to less unequal countries and find indications of two migration regimes: one reflecting the movement predominantly between EU-15 member states and another propelled by per-capita income differences for the migrants from other countries in Europe. As the first study to investigate the relationship between inequality and migration flows within a network, rather than considering the flows as unrelated to each other, it significantly contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between inequality and migration.
LEPTOSPIROSIS IN DOGS: RETROSPECTIVE STUDY OF NINTEEN CASES FROM THRISSUR DISTRICT

Leptospirosis is one of the major zoonotic diseases, endemic in Kerala, caused by different serovars of Leptospia spp. A retrospective study describing nineteen clinical cases of dogs presented to University Veterinary Hospitals Mannuthy and Kokkalai, Thrissur District, diagnosed with leptospirosis by Microscopic Agglutination Test (MAT) from July to December, 2018 is presented. Major hematological findings were leucocytosis, anaemia and thrombocytopenia. Serum creatinine levels were elevated in 36.8% of the cases. All the cases were treated with Benzyl penicillin (40,000IU/Kg body weight) along with supportive therapy. Uneventful recovery was noticed in all cases except one, where in still birth and macerated fetus was noticed in a bitch.
Internet Technology Adoption Vs Demographics: A Case Study of Solan of Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh

The present investigations were carried out to study the effect of different demographic factors on the use and ownership of mobile phones and internet. Male respondents had slightly higher access to internet than female whereas reverse trend was recorded for the access of internet on both mobile phone and PC/Laptop. Age group of 10-20 years of age had 100% internet usage followed by 21-30 years. Undergraduates used maximum internet followed by post graduates. Respondents belonging to higher family income groups had more use of internet than the lower income groups. Internet usage among students was found to be maximum. Female respondents had higher ownership of smartphones and other kind of mobile phones as well. Maximum ownership of smartphone was found in 10-20 years of age group. Undergraduates also had the highest ownership of smartphones whereas ownership of other kind of mobile phones was higher among illiterates and 10+2 categories. Higher income groups possessed more smartphones and other kind of mobile phones were owned maximum by lowest income group.
Predicting disease-related genes by path-based similarity and community structure in protein-protein interaction network

Network-based computational approaches to predict unknown genes associated with certain diseases are of considerable significance for uncovering the molecular basis of human diseases. In this paper, we proposed a kind of new disease-gene-prediction methods by combining the path-based similarity with the community structure in the human protein-protein interaction network. Firstly, we introduced a set of path-based similarity indices, a novel community-based similarity index, and a new similarity combining the path-based similarity index. Then we assessed the statistical significance of the measures in distinguishing the disease genes from non-disease genes, to confirm their availability in predicting disease genes. Finally, we applied these measures to the disease-gene prediction of single disease-gene family, and analyzed the performance of these measures in disease-gene prediction, especially the effect of the community structure on the prediction performance in detail. The results indicated that genes associated with the same or similar diseases commonly reside in the same community of the protein-protein interaction network, and the community structure is greatly helpful for the disease-gene prediction. PACS: 89.75. –k; 89.75. Fb; 89.75. Hc
Current Draft : April 4 , 2003 First Draft : April , 2002 Comments welcome To Steal or Not to Steal : Firm Attributes , Legal Environment , and Valuation Art

Newly released data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within-country variation, with the variation increasing as legal environment gets less investor friendly. This paper examines why firms practice high-quality governance when law does not require it; firm attributes related to the quality of governance; how the attributes interact with legal environment; and the relation between firm valuation and corporate governance. A simple model, in which a controlling shareholder trades off private benefits of diversion against costs that vary across countries and time, identifies three relevant firm attributes: investment opportunities, external financing, and ownership structure. Using firm-level governance and transparency data on 859 firms in 27 countries, we find that firms with greater growth opportunities, greater needs for external financing, and more concentrated cash flow rights practice higher-quality governance and disclose more. Moreover, firms that score higher in governance and transparency rankings are valued higher in the stock market. Equally important, all these relations are stronger in countries that are less investor friendly, demonstrating that firms do adapt to poor legal environments to establish efficient governance practices. JEL Classification: G32 (Financial Policy; Capital and Ownership Structure), K23 (Corporation and Securities Law)
Factors influencing Nutritional Needs of Children with Disabilities in United Arab Emirates: Special Education Teachers vs Parents

Purpose : The United Nations, in its Sustainable Development Goals, has strongly encouraged countries to promote good eating habits among children. However, children with disabilities are likely to have poor eating habits, resulting in their being underweight or overweight. Using a health literacy model by Nutbeam as a framework, this study has attempted to gain insights into the factors which may impact the understanding and practice of stakeholders regarding nutritional needs of children with disabilities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Method : The revised Food and Nutritional Literacy Scale was used to collect data from 149 parents and special education teachers. The collected survey data was analysed by computing the mean and subjecting it to t-test and one-and two-way Analysis of Variances. Results: The results showed that parents and teachers were ambivalent about knowledge and practical skills to promote good eating habits among children with disabilities. Also, variables such as age, participant type, nationality, gender, and awareness of nutritional policy were found to influence awareness about nutritional needs of children with disabilities. Conclusion: It is recommended that policymakers in the UAE expedite public education and professional development by key stakeholders in the area of safe and good nutrition for children with disabilities.
Do Interictal Epileptiform Discharges and Brain Responses to Electrical Stimulation Come from the Same Location? An Advanced Source Localization Solution

Identiﬁcation of sources of seizures in the brain is of paramount importance, particularly for drug-resistant epilepsy patients who may require surgical operation. Interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs), which may or may not be frequent, are known to originate from seizure networks. Delayed responses (DRs) to brain electrical stimulation have been recently discovered. If DRs and IEDs come from the same location and the DRs can be accurately localized, there will be a signiﬁcant step in the identiﬁcation of the source of seizures. The solution to this important question has been investigated in this paper. For this, we have exploited the morphology of these spike-type, events as well as the variability in their temporal location, to develop new constraints for an adaptive Bayesian beamformer that outperforms the conventional and recently proposed beamformers. This beamformer is applied to an array (a.k.a mat) of cortical EEG electrodes. As the signiﬁcant outcome of applying this beamformer, it is very likely (if not certain) that the IEDs and DRs
Ethically Aligned Stakeholder Elicitation (EASE): Case Study in Music-AI

Engineering communities that feed the current proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) have historically been slow to recognise the spectrum of societal impacts of their work. Frequent controversies around AI applications in creative domains demonstrate insufficient consideration of ethical predicaments, but the abstract principles of current AI and data ethics documents provide little practical guidance. Pragmatic methods are urgently needed to support developers in ethical reflection of their work on creative-AI tools. In the wider context of value sensitive, people-oriented design, we present an analytical method that implements an ethically informed and power-sensitive stakeholder identification and mapping: Ethically Aligned Stakeholder Elic-itation (EASE). As a case study, we test our method in workshops with six research groups that develop AI in musical contexts. Our results demonstrate that EASE supports critical self-reflection of the research and outreach practices among developers, discloses power relations and value tensions in the development processes, and foregrounds opportunities for stakeholder engagement. This can guide developers and the wider NIME community towards ethically aligned research and development of creative-AI.
A Macroeconomic Model with Financially Constrained Producers and Intermediaries ∗ September 30 , 2018

How much capital should financial intermediaries hold? We propose a general equilibrium model with a financial sector that makes risky long-term loans to firms, funded by deposits from savers. Government guarantees create a role for bank capital regulation. The model captures the sharp and persistent drop in macro-economic aggregates and credit provision as well as the sharp change in credit spreads observed during the Great Recession. Policies requiring intermediaries to hold more capital reduce financial fragility, reduce the size of the financial and non-financial sectors, and locally increase macro-economic volatility. They redistribute wealth from savers to the owners of banks and non-financial firms. Current capital requirements are close to optimal. JEL: G12, G15, F31.
Relationship between Demand Forecasting and Operational Performance of Stores Function in Commercial State Corporations in Kenya

: Inventory management practices play a major role in the operation of many organizations. These practices help to improve firm‟s production scheduling, delivery lead times and ultimately increase its operational performance. With the reported 46.4% of state corporations making losses, achieving Vision 2030 would be impossible without a critical look into how some of the practices including material categorization. This study intended to fill this knowledge gap by examining the influence of demand forecasting practices on operational performance of stores function in commercial state corporations in Kenya. The study was anchored on the Pareto (ABC) Model. The target population for the study was 906 Senior Management, Procurement Managers and Inventory Management Officers in the 54 Commercial State Corporations in Kenya. The researcher used the sampling formula recommended by Nassiuma to arrive at 99 sample size. Data collection was done through a structured open and closed ended questionnaire. Before embarking on data collection, the instruments were piloted to ensure they are valid and reliable. The study established significant influence of maintained inventory level as demand forecasting practice on operation performance of stores functions (β=-0.223, p=0.018<0.05). The study further established significant influence of information flow as demand forecasting practice on operation performance of stores functions (β=0.372, p=0.000<0.05). The study recommends that the policy makers in the commercial state corporations in Kenya need to formulate policies that will entrench the adoption of the best demand forecasting strategy as an inventory management practices. As a matter of policy, all the commercial state corporations in Kenya should adopt inventory management practices supported by the Public Procurement and Disposal Act 2015.
Automatic prediction of speaker age using CART

This paper describes a small attempt to automatically estimate speaker age aimed at increasing the phonetic knowledge of age. Acoustic features were extracted from the four phonemes of the Swedish word /ra:sa/ (collapse) produced by 428 adult Swedish speakers, and then used to build CARTs (Classification and Regression Trees) for prediction of age, age group and gender. Results showed that the CARTs used different strategies to estimate different phonemes, and that age predictors for /a:/ and /s/ performed best. The best CARTs made about 91% correct judgements for gender, about 72% for age group, while the correlation between biological and predicted age was about 0.45. When comparing this results to those of an earlier study of human age perception, it was found that although humans and CARTs used similar cues, the human listeners were somewhat better at estimating age. More studies with larger and more varied speech material are needed in further pursuit of a good automatic age predictor.
Non-Destructive Detection Of Some Quality Characteristics Of Strawberry Fruit In The Ripening Stage Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy a

The products' internal and external quality characteristics were predicted using Fourier transform (FT-NIR) near-infrared spectroscopy technique in Albion cultivar (Fragaria ananassa) strawberry samples. Since the shelf life of strawberry fruits is short after harvest, their quality characteristics are an essential criterion, especially for exported products. Determining the quality characteristics of products using non-destructive measurement systems such as FT-NIR is less time-consuming and less costly than chemical or physical methods. Quality features are significant for exported products. Non-destructive spectroscopic measurements of strawberries were made using reflectance (780-2500 nm) and transmittance (800-1725 nm) techniques. Generally, high calibration and validation results were obtained for both measurement methods (Reflectance and Transmittance) in color properties. Hue prediction values on transmittance were predicted to have the best result in the measurement at R 2 =84.81 (RMSECV= 0.347) for validation, while R 2 =91.77 (RMSEE= 0.268) for calibration. In reflectance mode, it showed high predictive performance of a* value with the red color variable R 2 =82.19 (RMSECV= 5.81) for validation and R 2 =89.42 (RMSEE= 4.73) for calibration during the ripening period of the strawberry. On the other hand, the intrinsic properties' prediction performance remained lower than the color properties. The most successful prediction performance was found for soluble solids content (SSC) (R 2 =50.66; RMSECV= 0.951) in reflectance mode, while pH (R 2 =58.21; RMSECV= 0.0472) for transmittance mode. As can be seen from the results, using FT-NIR spectroscopy to predict color properties without damage during the ripening period of strawberry products was highly successful, while more restrictive results were obtained in predicting internal properties.
Constraint Based Program Repair for Persistent Memory Bugs

We propose a constraint based method for repairing bugs associated with the use of persistent memory (PM) in application software. Our method takes a program execution trace and the violated property as input and returns a suggested repair, which is a combination of inserting new PM instructions and reordering these instructions to eliminate the property violation. Compared with the state-of-the-art approach, our method has three advantages. First, it can repair both durability and crash consistency bugs whereas the state-of-the-art approach can only repair the relatively-simple durability bugs. Second, our method can discover new repair strategies instead of relying on repair strategies hard-coded into the repair tool. Third, our method uses a novel symbolic encoding to model PM semantics, which allows our symbolic analysis to be more efficient than the explicit enumeration of possible scenarios and thus explore a large number of repairs quickly. We have evaluated our method on benchmark programs from the well-known Intel PMDK library as well as real applications such as Memcached, Recipe, and Redis. The results show that our method can repair all of the 41 known bugs in these benchmarks, while the state-of-the-art approach cannot repair any of the crash consistency bugs.
Platelet rich plasma (PRP) Injection in the Treatment of Platelet rich plasma (PRP) Injection in the Treatment of Supraspinatus Partial Tear Supraspinatus Partial Tear

Background : Many people around the world suffer from rotator cuff (RC) lesions. RC tears are also an extremely common complaint, and their incidence rises with age. Both bursal-sided and articular-sided tears can occur as partial-thickness tears. Aim : We aimed to determine the role of therapeutic shoulder injection with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in the management of supraspinatus partial tears. Patients and methods : This prospective research was performed on 20 patients at Al-Azhar University Hospitals (El Hussein Hospital and Sayed Galal Hospital) from September 2021 to November 2022. We included 20 patients suffering from a partial-thickness tendon tear. We measured patient satisfaction after injection with PRP in the shoulder surgery. Results : Their average age was 51 years, with a range of from 42 to 65 years. The most impacted age group was between 50 and 60 years. The right side was signi ﬁ cantly affected higher than the left side at a percentage of 80 %. Fourteen (66.6 %) patients complained of a moderate degree of shoulder pain. There were 85 % of the participants, who were very satis ﬁ ed, 10 % who were moderately satis ﬁ ed, and one patient who was not satis ﬁ ed. Conclusion : Subacromial injection of PRP is an effective minimally invasive therapy for supraspinatus partial tears. It is an accurate and safe technique that showed effective outcomes in tendon healing without signi ﬁ cant risks or side effects.
COP28 AND ENVIRONMENTAL FEDERALISM: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM AN EMERGING ECONOMY, INDIA

Against the backdrop of COP28, this paper investigates the impact of intergovernmental fiscal transfers (IGFT) on climate change commitments in India. Within the analytical framework of environmental federalism, we tested the evidence for the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) using a panel model covering 27 Indian States from 2003 to 2020. The results suggest a positive and significant relationship between IGFT and the net forest cover (NFC) across Indian states. The analysis also suggests an inverse-U relationship between Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and the environmental quality, indicating a potential EKC for India. The findings substantiate the fiscal policy impacts for climate change commitments within the fiscal federal frameworks of India, and the significance of IGFT in increasing the forest cover in India. This has policy implications for the Sixteenth Finance Commission of India in integrating a climate change–related criterion in the tax-transfer formula in a sustainable manner.
Do Afﬁliated Bankers on Board Enhance Corporate Social Responsibility? US Evidence

: In this study, we examine whether and to what extent afﬁliated bankers on board may affect ﬁrms’ corporate social performance. Using a propensity score-matched sample from 2002 to 2016, we ﬁnd that board directors from afﬁliated banks exert signiﬁcantly positive inﬂuence on ﬁrms’ corporate social performance. Furthermore, board of directors from afﬁliated banks are negatively associated with ﬁrm investments in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities when ﬁrms experience ﬁnancial distress. Finally, we ﬁnd that the effect of afﬁliated bankers on board on ﬁrms’ CSR performance depends on the afﬁliated banks’ CSR orientation, as afﬁliated banker directors from banks with higher CSR orientation have a stronger inﬂuence on ﬁrms’ investments in CSR activities. The results suggest that improving ﬁrm’s CSR performance is consistent with the afﬁliated banks’ interests.