Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thermal dependence in seed germination of Diospyros inconstans Jacq. (Ebenaceae)

Defining the cardinal temperatures for germination in the scenario of climate change with prediction of an increased terrestrial temperature plays an important role in conserving plant resources. This study aimed to define the cardinal temperatures, the time of conducting germination tests, and to apply the thermal time model for seeds of Diospyros inconstans. Thermal screening was carried out, based on germination tests performed in BOD chambers, at constant temperatures of 10, 20, 25, 30 and 40 °C, under a photoperiod of 12 hours/light. The cardinal temperatures for germination of D. inconstans seeds are 26.7 °C (optimal temperature), 13.8 °C (minimum temperature) and 37.7 °C (maximum temperature). Germination tests for the species can be conducted at optimum temperature, lasting 26 days for radicle emission and 63 days for formation of normal seedlings.
Sevoflurane and fentanyl exert protective effect on cognitive function in aged rats via regulation of inflammatory response in the brain

Purpose: To investigate the effects of sevoflurane and fentanyl on cognitive function in aged rats, and to determine the mechanism of action. Methods: A total of 160 adult male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to four groups of 40 rats each. With the exception of control, the rats were surgically operated on. Sevoflurane group received sevoflurane (2 %) via inhalation for 2 h/day for 7 days, while the fentanyl group received fentanyl (50 μg/kg body weight) for 1 h via their tail veins for 7 days. The cognitive function of the rats was evaluated by shuttle box and Morris water maze (MWM) tests, while interleukin-6 (IL-6), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) were evaluated using ELISA kits. Results: The learning and memory latencies of the rats were significantly prolonged in surgery, with prolongation greater in sevoflurane and fentanyl groups than in control group; however, the latencies were significantly shorter in sevoflurane and fentanyl groups than in surgery group (p < 0.05). The levels of VEGF, IL-6 and TNF-α were significantly higher in the surgery, sevoflurane and fentanyl groups than in control group (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Sevoflurane and fentanyl improve cognitive function in aged rats via a mechanism involving the regulation of inflammatory response in the brain.
The Impacts of Warming Temperatures on US Sorghum Yields and the Potential for Adaptation

Growing evidence suggests that climate change will have significant negative effects on agricultural productivity across many highly-concentrated production regions. Much empirical analysis has begun to focus on both shortand long-run adaptation within these regions. US sorghum production has received relatively less attention than other commonly grown grains, such as corn and wheat, despite that it is one of the top five grains grown in the US and ranks in the top ten of all crops grown globally. This share could rise substantially in the near future as switching from corn to sorghum has been advocated as a potential adaptation strategy in response to climate change. We match farm-level yield outcomes with fine-scale gridded weather data to generate a unique panel of Kansas sorghum producers totaling 45,971 observations spread across 7,298 farms and 38 years. Fixed effects regressions leverage substantial cross-sectional and temporal variation in both yields and weather to estimate the effect of warming temperatures on yields. Results suggest that sorghum is quite sensitive to warming temperatures as moderate increases of 2°C in growing season temperatures lead to an average 24% reduction in yields – thereby raising doubts about its potential for offsetting climate change impacts relative to other crops. We also consider whether warming impacts can be lessened through adjustment of the growing season (i.e. shifting up, shortening, or extending the growing season) and find very little support for this form of adaptation. A cross-sectional identification approach that encapsulates additional forms of adaptation also finds limited adaptation potential for sorghum producers. As a possible upside, we find evidence that sorghum’s ability to withstand extreme heat has decreased substantially over time, suggesting that there might exist currently-outdated production practices and/or seed varieties that could help offset warming impacts.
Customer value and customer brand engagement: Their effects on brand loyalty in automobile business

The study investigates the extent to which customer value affected brand loyalty among mid-sized automobile customers in Thailand. It`s focused on assessing whether customer brand engagement acted as an intervening variable in the relationship between customer value and brand loyalty. A questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of 380 current users of medium-sized passenger automobiles in Thailand; these participants were drawn from the list of automobile customers using a multistage sampling technique. The dealership customers were asked to complete an electronic survey using their cell phones. Structural equation modeling was applied to prove the theoretical model. All the model fit indices revealed that the model was reasonably consistent with the data. Results validated customer brand engagement composed of three dimensions using confirmatory factor analysis and its role as a mediator. The findings also provided novel insight into the interplay of the relevant variables and could be used as a guideline for managing automobile customers and promoting automobile marketing in the country.
Measuring institutional support for online and blended learning professional development: validating an instrument that examines teachers’ perceptions

ABSTRACT Supporting teachers professionally, both in their teaching skills and the inclusion of technology, is one of the few direct interventions to help them grow. Currently, few instruments assessing these perceptions exist, and evidence on their validity is sparse. Hence, this paper presents the development and validation of an instrument assessing teachers’ perceived institutional support for online and blended learning professional development. A sample of 317 adult education teachers completed the eight-item instrument. Overall, the reliability, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggest that the presented scale can be used to determine how teachers perceive institutional support for online and blended learning professional development and provides evidence supporting a validity argument. Recommendations for the academic and practical use of the ISOBL questionnaire are made.
The Influence of Grain Legume and Tillage Strategies on CO2 and N2O Gas Exchange under Varied Environmental Conditions

By this in vitro study addressing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from soil-plant mesocosms, we suggest a method to investigate the joint effects of environmental conditions, growth of plants, and agricultural soil management. Soils from two long-term agricultural trials in France were placed in climate chambers. The rotation trial was with or without grain legumes, and the tillage trial used plowing or reduced tillage. Environmental conditions consisted of two contrasting temperature regimes combined with ambient (400 ppm) or high (700 ppm) CO2 concentrations in climate chambers. The plant growth went from seeding to vegetative growth. Carbon dioxide gas exchange measurements were conducted in both soil types for a period representing initial plant growth. The CO2 exchange was influenced by the growing plants increasing the mesocosm respiration and gross ecosystem production. The environmental settings had no noticeable impact on the CO2 exchange in the soils from the legume trial. The CO2 exchange from the tillage trial soils exhibited variations induced by the environmental conditions depending on the tillage treatment. The N2O emission measurements in the legume trial soils showed little variability based on rotation, however, in soils with legumes, indications that higher temperatures will lead to more N2O emission were seen.
Purification use and toxicity of paramagnetic short multi-walled carbon nanotubes

ABSTRACT Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have high surface area and absorption capabilities and the absorption capacity of multi-walled CNTs (MWNTs) enables paramagnetic nanotubes to be obtained by absorbing iron salts. Characterization of paramagnetic MWNTs was performed with TEM, FTIR, DSC, and VSM. Paramagnetic CNTs are used for the purification of water from heavy metals and plastic originated compounds. Most of the PVC-based materials contain phthalate acid esters (PAE) which have considerable effects on human health. In this study, MWNTs were used for removing diethyl phthalate (DEP) from methanol after their toxicity evaluation. Concentration-dependent absorption of 494, 1461, and 2950 ppm, respectively, were measured from the mixture containing 13.3, 33.3, and 66.6% DEP in 40 mg paramagnetic MWNT solution. Although it was concluded that magnetic nanotubes would exhibit significant toxic effects compared to untreated MWNTs, GC-MS results were showed a reliable absorption capacity of magnetic nanotubes for purification applications. The results demonstrated that the use of magnetic MWNTs for the extraction of PAEs is an efficient way from liquids.
Gender-Equality Concerns and Political Attitudes toward Women in the 2019 Legislative Election: Evidence from Pelalawan

The presence of women in Indonesian politics remains underrepresented whereas cultural and societal aspects pose critical influence in determining voter behavior toward female candidates. The aim of this article is to examine voter behavior regarding female candidates and the probability for them to be elected as members of parliament. We apply quantitative method by developing three models representing three combinations of predictor variables, (i) socio-demography, (ii) genderequality concern, and (iii) political attitude towards female candidates as determinants towards female candidate electability. The study took place in Pelalawan Regency in Riau Province, by analyzing 400 respondents with equal numbers of men and women from various socio-economic backgrounds through clustered random sampling method. We tested these hypotheses and our three models by utilizing logistic regression analysis. The result shows that political attitude toward female candidates (Model 3) are the strongest coefficient and most significant determinant for female candidate electability. The study also revealed that female candidate’s electability in Pelalawan Regency is lower than male candidate’s electability among male respondents. On the other hand, female candidate’s electability is higher than male candidate’s electability among female respondents. Moreover, we also found that education determines female candidate’s electability where the more educated an individual is, the more he/she tends to vote for female candidates.
Incidence and risk factors of hypoglycemia among neonates: a hospital based prospective study

Background: Among neonates, one of the common metabolic problem is hypoglycemia. Hence basic care of the neonate involves monitoring of blood glucose. If not diagnosed and treated early, it may lead to problems associated with physical growth and neurodevelopment. The objective was to study incidence and risk factors of hypoglycemia among neonates. Methods: This was a prospective study carried out at a tertiary care center. 100 neonates were included. Standard glucometer was used to measure blood glucose in mothers and neonates. For mothers, it was measured at time of delivery. For neonates, it was measured at zero, three, six, twelve and twenty four hours of birth. Standard treatment protocol was followed for neonatal hypoglycemia. Results: Incidence of hypoglycemia at birth was 17%. As maternal blood glucose increased, neonatal glucose decreased. Important risk factors found for hypoglycemia in neonates were being born by lower segment cesarean section (LSCS), low for gestational age (LGA) babies and small for gestational age (SGA) babies, pre-term and post term babies. But these risk factors were not found to be statistically significant (p>0.05). Conclusions: Blood glucose varied widely in the neonates. Important risk factors found for hypoglycemia in neonates were being born by LSCS, LGA babies and SGA babies, pre-term and post term babies.
Shattering the Glass Podium: Successes and Setbacks of Women in Collegiate Choral Conducting

The purpose of this study was to explore the status and experiences of women in collegiate choral conducting positions. Out of all collegiate choral conductors (N = 992) at institutions accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music in the United States, 68.65% (n = 681) were men and 31.35% (n = 311) were women at the time of this study; I invited the women collegiate choral conductors to serve as study participants. Ninety-six respondents completed an online survey, resulting in a response rate of 30.86%. I collected data through a researcher-designed survey. First, I asked respondents to provide demographic information and respond to Likert-type and open-ended prompts related to three domains: gaining entry into the profession, navigating the profession, and issues surrounding gender. I analyzed data through descriptive statistics and qualitative methods of assigning codes, combining codes into themes, and displaying the data. I addressed general discrepancies in the self-reported attitudes of respondents. Although women reported an overall attitude of satisfaction as choral conductors in their Likert-type responses, many respondents detailed several instances of gender discrimination and other challenges in their open-ended responses. Implications for the music profession, including specific strategies to help empower women in collegiate choral conducting settings, are discussed.
Learning gender equality: how women’s protest influences youth gender attitudes

ABSTRACT Current comparative analyses of gender attitudes among adolescents largely focus on individual-level characteristics. Understudied is the role of women’s protest on adolescents’ gender attitudes. This paper investigates how women’s protests reported in national news shape young citizens’ gender attitudes across 32 countries. Using the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Study survey data (2009), we test whether women’s protests have a positive impact on egalitarian gender attitudes among adolescents. Our multi-level models demonstrate that girls are more egalitarian in their gender attitudes than boys. The gap between boys and girls changes depending on the level of gender equality in a country. In countries with lower gender equality, the gender gap increases slightly as the number of women’s protests increases, although the difference is not significant. In countries where gender equality is already high, the gender gap is significant at all levels of protest but narrows as protest increases. Our findings expand scholars’ understanding of how protest influences public opinion among young people and have important implications for how gender attitude change occurs and whether women’s protest serves as a tool for developing gender equality.
Inference of activity patterns from urban sensing data using conditional random fields

The study of human activity–travel patterns for urban planning has evolved a long way in theories, methodologies, and applications. However, the scarcity of data has become a major barrier for the advancement of research in the field. Recently, the proliferation of urban sensing and location-based devices generates voluminous streams of spatio-temporal registered information. In this study, we propose an approach using the linear-chain Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) model to learn the spatio-temporal correspondences of different types of activities and the inter-dependencies among sequential activities from training dataset such as the household travel or time use surveys, and to infer the hidden activity types associated with urban sensing data. The performance of the CRFs model is compared against the Random Forest (RF) model, which has been used in a number of existing studies. The results show that the linear-chain CRFs models generally outperform the RF counterparts with respect to classification accuracy of activity types, in particular for those travelers having more outdoor daily activities. The proposed methodology is demonstrated by reconstructing the activity landscape of the surrounding area of a major Mass Rail Transit station in Singapore using the transit smart card transaction data. The inferred activities from the transit smart card data are expected to complement the ground surveys and improve our understanding of the interactions of different components of activities/travels as well as the relationship between urban space and human activities.
CEO Overconfidence and Voluntary Disclosure of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: With a Focus on the Role of Corporate Governance

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between overconfident CEOs, voluntary disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions and firm value, and whether corporate (internal and external) governance affects this association. Using logistic regression and a firm-fixed effect model, I analyzed a sample of voluntary disclosing firms with the fiscal year in December that are listed in the Korean stock market for the period from 2011 to 2019, measuring corporate governance based on female representation within boards and industry-level competition. As a result, this study finds that, on average, CEO overconfidence is positively related to voluntary disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, in firms with more female representation on boards, the positive relationship between CEO overconfidence, voluntary disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions, and firm value is more pronounced, implying that women directors effectively monitor overconfident CEOs. Similarly, this positive relationship is also strengthened according to the degree of industry-level competition, which indicates that the external governance role of competition can alleviate CEO overconfidence. This study is meaningful as the first study to examine the effect of voluntary greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions disclosure on investors’ valuation in the Korean capital market, taking the characteristics of managers and governance structure into account.
Separating Long‐Term and Short‐Term Mass Changes of Antarctic Ice Drainage Basins: A Coupled State Space Analysis of Satellite Observations and Model Products

Satellite gravimetry and altimetry measurements record gravity and elevation changes, respectively, which are useful for determining mass and volume change of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Common methods employ products from regional climate modeling and firn modeling to aid interpretation and to link volume changes to mass changes. Estimating deterministic parameters over defined time periods is a conventional way to evaluate those changes. To overcome limitations of deterministic analyses with respect to time‐variable signals, we have developed a state‐space model framework. Therein, we jointly evaluate four mass and volume data sets by coupling of temporal signal variations. We identify long‐term signals of ice drainage basins that are observed by the satellite gravimetry mission GRACE and several satellite altimetry missions from April 2002 until August 2016. The degree to which we can separate long‐term and short‐term variations strongly depends on the similarity of the mass and volume change time series. For the drainage system of the Pine Island Glacier (West Antarctica), our results show noticeable variations of the long‐term trend with an acceleration of the contribution of ice dynamics to the mass balance from −11 ± 8 to −58 ± 8 Gt a−1. Our results in Dronning Maud Land (East Antarctica) show a positive long‐term contribution to the mass balance at almost a constant rate. The presented approach can fit time‐variable changes without artificial selection of periods of interest. Furthermore, because we only enforce common long‐term time variations between mass and volume data, differences in mean trend rates help to uncover model discrepancies.
Study on the Influencing Factors and Acting Path of the Sustainable Development of Rural Tourism Based on EEAM-ISM Model

The sustainable development of rural tourism is a complex system that includes both objective environmental factors and subjective human factors. Based on the three dimensions of “man–machine–environment”, the element event analysis method (EEAM) is introduced to identify and determine the components of the rural tourism composite system. Then, a hierarchical digraph of the rural tourism complex system is constructed by the interpretative structural model (ISM), and the logical structural relations among factors are explored to clarify the action paths. It is found that: (1) through three rounds of soliciting opinions and revising the list of factors, a total of 26 key factors affecting the sustainable development of rural tourism were screened out; (2) the influencing factors are related to each other to form a five-level factor hierarchical structure, which clearly reveals the overall structure of the system and the support dependencies among factors; (3) on the basis of clarifying the path of influencing factors, the targeted countermeasures and suggestions for the sustainable development of rural tourism are proposed for three key paths. This not only provides a certain theoretical basis for sustainable forecasting but also helps decision-makers to take targeted countermeasures.
Preliminary Effectiveness of Brief Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD: Expanding Access to Effective Therapies

Over the last three decades, several empirically supported trauma therapies have been developed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet issues such as access to treatments and dropout are ongoing barriers to adequate dissemination and implementation, especially in low resource settings. To this end, we present results on the preliminary effectiveness of a brief prolonged exposure therapy (PE) for PTSD in South Africa, a low resource setting. Based on a case-series design, seven participants (n = 7) from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds were recruited and started a six-session brief PE for PTSD and co-morbid depression and anxiety. To examine the treatment outcomes, participants were assessed at baseline, during treatment, post-intervention, and at 3-month follow-up. Overall, brief PE reduced symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety from baseline to post-intervention, and at 3-month follow-up. A downward trend in symptoms was evident during treatment, with slight symptom variations during exposure sessions. In conclusion, a six-session brief PE intervention produced positive outcomes for PTSD, depression, and anxiety at two community counseling centers in South Africa. We reflect on the implementation of brief PE in a South African context.