Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low-frequency selectivity in flat-plate boundary layer with elliptic leading edge

Linear perturbation analyses of zero-pressure-gradient boundary layers at subcritical Reynolds numbers predict that transient disturbance amplification can take place due to the lift-up mechanism. Upstream, streamwise-elongated vortices yield the largest response per unit of inflow disturbance energy, which takes the form of streamwise-elongated streaks. In this work, we compute the linear and also nonlinear inflow disturbances that generate the largest response inside the boundary layer, for flow over a thin flat plate with a slender leading edge. In order to compare our results with earlier linear analyses, we constrain the inlet disturbance to be monochromatic in time, or a single frequency. The boundary layer effectively filters high frequencies, and only low-frequency perturbations induce a strong response downstream. The low-frequency optimal inflow disturbance has a spanwise wavenumber that scales with $\sqrt{Re}$ , and it consists of streamwise and normal vorticity components: the latter is tilted around the leading edge into the streamwise direction and, further downstream, generates streaks. While none of the computed monochromatic disturbances alone can lead to breakdown to turbulence, secondary instability analyses demonstrate that the streaky base state is unstable. Nonlinear simulations where the inflow disturbance is supplemented with additional white noise undergo secondary instability and breakdown to turbulence.
EPIC FORCE Evidence-based Policy for Integrated Control of Forested River Catchments in Extreme Rainfall and Snowmelt

The EPIC FORCE project (Evidence-based Policy for Integrated Control of Forested River Catchments in Extreme Rainfall and Snowmelt), aimed to clarify the issue of forest impact on flood response for extreme rainfall and snowmelt events and thence to develop science-based policy recommendations for integrated forest and water resources management, relevant to the Latin American environment (specifically Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina). Data analysis and model application support the hypothesis that, as the size of the flood peak increases, the effect of forest cover becomes less important. Guidelines for integrated water and forest resources management are developed which recognize this effect but emphasize the role that forests play in reducing the flood levels of more moderate events and in reducing soil erosion and sediment loads. Large woody debris in river channels is shown to have important benefits. The research findings are transferred to policy-making for the four Latin American focus countries, taking into account the institutional frameworks, achievable policy objectives and key stakeholders. Policy briefs have been produced at the local, national and international level and project results have been adopted in national policies. The project shows how an advance in scientific understanding can support improvements in management practices and policy formulations which affect people and the environment in which they live.
Double Whammy: Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of Older African Americans Experiencing HIV & Age Related Comorbidities

HIV among older African Americans represents one of the fastest and largest growing populations of infected groups in America (CDC, 2008). With the availability of antiretrovirals (ARV), or AIDS cocktail drugs, HIV has become a chronic illness. As African Americans are living longer with HIV, they are encountering the diseases that are consonant with aging. The effect of aging with HIV and an age-related comorbid condition can be physically and emotionally debilitating. Many of these older adults are also dealing with poverty, stigma, poor healthcare access, and limited social support. The purpose of this study was to explore how these older African Americans make sense of their experience of living with HIV and an age-related comorbidity, through semistructured interviews. Using a form of qualitative analysis called interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), this researcher located three superordinate themes or principal areas of concern to older HIV-positive African American adults’ understanding of their lived experiences with HIV and age-related co-morbid conditions: “HIV as the new normal,” “HIV spurs self-advocacy,” and “health as a fragile construct. ” The results suggest that while older African Americans’ current experiences of HIV may be less daunting, their experiences of co-morbid conditions are more acute and severe, and combined with HIV, have left them more vulnerable and in need of support. The electronic version of the dissertation is accessible at the Ohiolink ETD center http://www.ohiolink. edu/etd.
DESTABILIZATION OF FRONTS IN A CLASS OF BI-STABLE SYSTEMS

In this article, we consider a class of bi-stable reaction-diffusion equations in two components on the real line. We assume that the system is singularly perturbed, i.e. that the ratio of the diffusion coefficients is (asymptotically) small. This class admits front solutions that are asymptotically close to the (stable) front solution of the ‘trivial’ scalar bi-stable limit system ut = uxx + u(1 − u). However, in the system these fronts can become unstable by varying parameters. This destabilization is either caused by the essential spectrum associated to the linearized stability problem, or by an eigenvalue that exists near the essential spectrum. We use the Evans function to study the various bifurcation mechanisms and establish an explicit connection between the character of the destabilization and the possible appearance of saddle-node bifurcations of heteroclinic orbits in the existence problem.
Trading Performance Analysis: A Comparisons Between the Original MA Crossover and Modified MA Crossover Strategy

This paper empirically analyses the Trading Performance by using technical analysis approach. The original moving-average (MA) crossover strategy as compare with the modified moving-average crossover strategy. The modified trading rules are the rules that been established to trading rules such as entry rule, exit rule, holding rule, and stop-loss rule. The results show The MAshort of 10-period for modified strategy underperform the original strategy, except for MA (10,100). The modified MA (20,200), (50,100), (50,200), and (100,200) underperform the original strategy. Only modified MA (20,50) and (20,100) outperform the original strategy. The outperformance and underperformance due to the stricter additional trading rule that reduces trading signals, and thus lower number of trades.
Difficulties faced by patients with chronic diseases in the primary care setting in Singapore: a cross-sectional study

INTRODUCTION Patients with chronic diseases face difficulties when navigating the healthcare system. Using the Healthcare System Hassles Questionnaire (HSHQ) developed by Parchman et al, this study aimed to explore the degree of hassles faced by patients in primary care in Singapore and identify the characteristics associated with greater hassles. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted on patients with chronic diseases at Hougang Polyclinic, Singapore, using the interviewer-administered HSHQ. The mean HSHQ score was compared with that reported by Parchman et al. The associations between the number of chronic diseases, demographic variables and healthcare hassles were assessed using multivariate linear logistic regression analysis. RESULTS In total, 217 outpatients aged 21 years and above were enrolled. Their overall mean HSHQ score (4.77 ± 6.18) was significantly lower than that of patients in the study by Parchman et al (15.94 ± 14.23, p < 0.001). Patients with five or more chronic diseases scored 3.38 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.11–6.65, p = 0.043) points higher than those with one chronic disease did. With each increasing year of age, the mean HSHQ score decreased by 0.17 (95% CI −0.26 to −0.08, p = 0.001) points. Patients with polytechnic/diploma/university education and higher scored 2.65 (95% CI 0.19–5.11, p = 0.035) points higher than those with primary education and lower did. CONCLUSION Patients in our population reported less hassles than those in the study by Parchman et al did. Increasing age and lower education level were associated with less hassles. Further analysis of the types of chronic diseases may yield new information about the association of healthcare hassles with the number and types of chronic diseases.
Between-Day Reliability and Usefulness of a Fitness Testing Battery in Youth Sport Athletes: Reference Data for Practitioners

ABSTRACT This study aimed to evaluate the between-day reliability and usefulness of a fitness testing battery in a group of youth sport athletes. Fifty-nine youth sport athletes (age = 17.3 ± 0.7 years) undertook a fitness testing battery including the isometric mid-thigh pull, counter-movement jump, 5–40 m sprint splits, and the 5–0-5 change of direction test on two occasions separated by 7 days. Usefulness was assessed by comparing the reliability (typical error) to the smallest worthwhile change. The typical error was 5.5% for isometric mid-thigh pull and 3.8% for counter-movement jump. The typical error values were 2.7, 2.5, 2.2, 2.2, and 1.8% for the 5, 10, 20, 30, and 40 m sprint splits, and 4.1% (left) and 5.4% (right) for the 5–0-5 tests. The smallest worthwhile change ranged from 1.1 to 6.1%. All tests were identified as having “good” or “acceptable” reliability. The isometric mid-thigh pull and counter-movement jump had “good” usefulness, all other tests had “marginal” usefulness.
Matched-accent processing: Bulgarian-English bilinguals do not have a processing advantage with Bulgarian-accented English over native English speech

The Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit (ISIB) hypothesis for Talkers suggests that there is a potential benefit when listening to one’s second language when it is produced in the accent of one’s first language (matched-accent processing). This study explores ISIB, considering listener proficiency. According to second language learning theories, the listener’s second language proficiency determines the extent to which they rely on their first language phonetics, hence the magnitude of ISIB may be affected by listener proficiency. The accuracy and reaction times of Bulgarian-English bilinguals living in the UK were recorded in a lexical decision task. The English stimuli were produced by native English speakers and Bulgarian-English bilinguals. Listeners responded more slowly and less accurately to the matched-accent stimuli than the native English stimuli. In addition, they adapted their reaction times faster to new speakers with a native English accent compared to a Bulgarian accent. However, the listeners with the lowest English proficiency had no advantage in reaction times and accuracy for either accent. The results offer mixed support for ISIB for Talkers, and are consistent with second language learning theories according to which listeners rely less on their native language phonology when their proficiency in the second language has increased.
Title: Frontal transcranial direct current stimulation abolishes list-method directed forgetting effects: a double blind study. Authors

It is a point of controversy as to whether directed forgetting effects are a result of active inhibition or a change of context initiated by the instruction to forget. In this study we test the causal role of active inhibition in directed forgetting. By applying cathodal transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) over the right prefrontal cortex we suppress cortical activity commonly associated with inhibitory control. Participants who underwent real brain stimulation before completing the directed forgetting paradigm showed no directed forgetting effects. Conversely, those who underwent sham brain stimulation demonstrated classical directed forgetting effects. We argue that these findings suggest that inhibition is the primary mechanism that results in directed forgetting costs and
In vivo screening and discovery of novel candidate thalidomide analogs in the zebrafish embryo and chicken embryo model systems

Thalidomide, a drug known for its teratogenic side-effects, is used successfully to treat a variety of clinical conditions including leprosy and multiple myeloma. Intense efforts are underway to synthesize and identify safer, clinically relevant analogs. Here, we conduct a preliminary in vivo screen of a library of new thalidomide analogs to determine which agents demonstrate activity, and describe a cohort of compounds with anti-angiogenic properties, anti-inflammatory properties and some compounds which exhibited both. The combination of the in vivo zebrafish and chicken embryo model systems allows for the accelerated discovery of new, potential therapies for cancerous and inflammatory conditions.
Information Behaviors and Information Literacy Skills of LIS Students: An International Perspective

Librarians are expected to be expert searchers, and developing information literacy skills to navigate the vast world of information is a focus of most library and information science (LIS) programs. It is important to understand the information literacy and behaviors of LIS students to see if they are employing the skills they will need to assist and educate their future patrons, yet there is relatively little research into the information literacy and behaviors of librarians and library students. Using a survey on information behaviors, this study addresses this gap in the literature by examining how LIS students in 18 countries search for, evaluate, and use information in various contexts, and on whom they rely for help. The results of this study demonstrate library science students’ information literacy skills within an international context. Faculty in LIS programs will be interested to see how their students approach information problems, and might use this understanding to develop or strengthen courses and inform curricular decisions
Migrants, Families, and Religion: An Intriguing Research Agenda. Book’s Content and Introduction

This chapter introduces the collection of essays presented in the book, starting by describing the challenging and exploratory meaning of the relationship between family, religion, and immigration. In the European landscape, only recently has the religion of migrants started to be investigated in new ways, that are careful to grasp the complexity of the religious experience and to avoid pre-conceived and stereotyped readings: a sort of “normalisation” in the approach to the topic, fed by both migration studies and religion studies. The chapter presents a reading of a selected sample of recent studies, adopting an approach based on the de-instrumentalization of religion and on the re-humanization of migrants, enabling them to express their subjective outlook on their own experience and on the significance of religious belonging. Lastly, the contents of the following chapters are presented and discussed.
Animals, Economy and Status: Integrating Zooarchaeological and Historical Data in the Study of Dudley Castle, West Midlands (c.1100-1750)

This volume charts the changing human-animal relationship at one particular location, Dudley Castle, West Midlands, over several centuries. The temporal span considered (the 11th-18th centuries) is, arguably, one of the most formative in the evolving relationship between humans and animals. The period was one of profound economic, social and demographic change, witnessing not only the evolution of modern breeds of domestic animals, but also a change in the way animals were perceived and treated. In this study, the animal bones recovered from archaeological excavations at Dudley Castle have been integrated with historical documentation to provide a basis from which to explore these issues. Site-specific questions, as well as broader trends within the social and economic landscape of the medieval and post-medieval periods in England are considered. This study also attempts to explore dietary patterns on site, and the way in which the acquisition and consumption of food was used in the negotiation of social relationships.
Warm conveyor belts in present-day and future climate simulations – Part 1: Climatology and impacts

Abstract. This study investigates how warm conveyor belts (WCBs) will change in a future climate. WCBs are strongly ascending airstreams in extratropical cyclones that are responsible for most of their precipitation. In conjunction with the cloud formation, latent heat is released, which has an impact on the potential vorticity distribution and therefore on the atmospheric circulation in the middle and upper troposphere. Because of these and other impacts of WCBs, it is of great importance to investigate changes in their frequencies, regions of occurrence, and physical characteristics in a warmer climate. To this aim, future climate simulations (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 – RCP8.5 – scenario; 2091–2100) are performed with the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1) and compared to present-day climate (1991–1999). Trajectories are calculated based on 6-hourly 3D wind fields, and WCBs are identified as trajectories that ascend at least 600 hPa in 2 d. WCBs are represented reasonably well in terms of location and occurrence frequency compared to WCBs in the ERA-Interim reanalyses. In a future climate, WCB inflow regions in the North Pacific are systematically shifted northward in winter, which is in agreement with the northward shift of the storm track in this region. In the North Atlantic, increased frequencies are discernible in the southwest and there is a decrease to the south of Iceland. Finally, in the Southern Hemisphere, WCB frequencies increase in the South Atlantic in both seasons and to the east of South Africa and the Indian Ocean in June–July–August (JJA). These changes are partly consistent with corresponding changes in the occurrence frequencies of extratropical cyclones, i.e. the driving weather systems of WCBs. Changes are also found in the WCB characteristics, which have implications for WCB impacts in a future climate. The increase in inflow moisture in the different regions and seasons – ∼23 %–33 % (∼14 %–20 %) in winter (summer) – leads to (i) an increase in WCB-related precipitation – ∼13 %–23 % (∼7 %–28 %) in winter (summer) – especially in the upper percentiles and thus a possible increase in extreme precipitation related to WCBs, (ii) a strong increase in diabatic heating – ∼20 %–27 % (∼17 %–33 %) in winter (summer) – in the mid-troposphere, and (iii) a higher outflow level – ∼10 K (∼10–16 K) in winter (summer) – which favours WCBs more strongly interacting with the upper-level Rossby waveguide. In summary, by investigating a distinct weather system, the WCB, and how it changes in its occurrence frequency and characteristics in a future climate, this study provides new insights into the dynamics and impacts of climate change in the extratropical storm track regions.
Unconventional Monetary Policies: An Appraisal

This paper sets out a framework for classifying and thinking about unconventional monetary policies, highlighting how they can be viewed within the overall context of monetary policy implementation. The framework clarifies the differences among the various forms of unconventional monetary policy, provides a systematic characterization of the wide range of central bank responses to the recent crisis, helps to underscore the channels of transmission and identifies some of the main policy challenges. In the process, the paper also addresses a number of contentious analytical issues, notably the role of bank reserves and their inflationary consequences.
Codimension two spacelike submanifolds of the Lorentz-Minkowski spacetime into the light cone

Abstract Following an original idea of Palmas, Palomo and Romero, recently developed in [12], we study codimension two spacelike submanifolds contained in the light cone of the Lorentz-Minkowski spacetime through an approach which allows us to compute their extrinsic and intrinsic geometries in terms of a single function u. As the first application of our approach, we classify the totally umbilical ones. For codimension two compact spacelike submanifolds into the light cone, we show that they are conformally diffeomorphic to the round sphere and that they are given by an explicit embedding written in terms of u. In the last part of the paper, we consider the case where the submanifold is (marginally, weakly) trapped. In particular, we derive some non-existence results for weakly trapped submanifolds into the light cone.
Empirical comparison of skewed t-copula models for insurance and financial data

Skewed t-copulas recently became popular as a modeling tool of non-linear dependence in statistics. In this paper we consider three different versions of skewed t-copulas introduced by Demarta and McNeill; Smith, Gan and Kohn; and Azzalini and Capitanio. Each of these versions represents a generalization of the symmetric t-copula model, allowing for a different treatment of lower and upper tails. Each of them has certain advantages in mathematical construction, inferential tools and interpretability. Our objective is to apply models based on different types of skewed t-copulas to the same financial and insurance applications. We consider comovements of stock index returns and times-to-failure of related vehicle parts under the warranty period. In both cases the treatment of both lower and upper tails of the joint distributions is of a special importance. Skewed t-copula model performance is compared to the benchmark cases of Gaussian and symmetric Student t-copulas. Instruments of comparison include information criteria, goodness-of-fit and tail dependence. A special attention is paid to methods of estimation of copula parameters. Some technical problems with the implementation of maximum likelihood method and the method of moments suggest the use of Bayesian estimation. We discuss the accuracy and computational efficiency of Bayesian estimation versus MLE. Metropolis-Hastings algorithm with block updates was suggested to deal with the problem of intractability of conditionals.