Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Economic Consequences of Alternative Exchange Rate and Monetary Policy Regimes in Canada

This paper uses a stochastic Dynamic General Equilibrium Model to analyze the economic and welfare consequences for Canada of two alternative exchange rate and monetary policy rules: a flexible exchange rate regime with a price-level target and a permanently fixed exchange rate regime, which might occur with the formation of a North American monetary union. The model is calibrated to Canadian data and then simulated to determine the impact of term-of-trade shocks on key macroeconomic variables under the two regimes. The main finding of the paper is that employment, output, and consumption are much more volatile under a fixed exchange rate. Because agents are risk-averse, this volatility has significant welfare costs. The study also shows that transactions costs would have to be implausibly high and agents almost risk neutral for the welfare advantage of a flexible exchange rate to disappear.
High rate anaerobic treatment for bakery yeast wastewater in Chile

DSM Bakery Ingredients (DBI) operates a bakery yeast production plant in Santiago, Chile, producing bakery yeast for the national and international market. Beet molasses is used as raw material. As a result wastewater equivalent to 150.000 – 200.000 pollution equivalents is produced. Treatment by the local sanitary company would result in high discharge fees, close to US$ 1.000. 000, -increasing in the years to follow. In order to improve this situation, DBI decided to construct a wastewater treatment plant. To be able to discharge directly into a canal in the neighbourhood of the yeast plant, anaerobic treatment, to be followed by conventional aerobic treatment (SBR type), was selected. The contract for the design and supply of key equipment for the plant was awarded to Biothane Systems International from the Netherlands. The anaerobic process applied is based on the Biobed® EGSB (Expanded Granular Sludge Bed) technology and is the first application in Chile. It is by far the biggest industrial wastewater treatment plant in Chile with an investment close to US$ 5.000. 000. This poster highlights the start-up and the operation of the anaerobic part of the plant. In order to design the wastewater treatment plant, DBI has executed a monitoring program to determine the volume and contaminant concentrations in the total factory effluent. In the following table the design parameters are summarised.
Recent deceleration of oceanic pCO2 increase in the western North Pacific in winter

Recent changes in oceanic CO2 partial pressure (pCO2sea) have attracted increasing interest as they relate to the increase in atmospheric CO2 and climate change. We report decadal changes in the growth rates of pCO2sea in latitudinal zones from 3°N to 33°N along the repeat hydrographic line at 137°E in the western North Pacific in winter. The growth rates of pCO2sea for 1999–2009 (−0.3 ± 0.9 [mean ± 1σ] to 1.7 ± 0.5 μatm yr−1) were lower than those for 1984–1997 (0.7 ± 0.3 to 2.2 ± 0.6 μatm yr−1) at most latitudes, indicative of the recent notable deceleration of pCO2sea increase. For latitudes around 10–20°N, we attribute the reduction in the growth rate of pCO2sea for 1999–2009 primarily to the reduction in the contribution from dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) originating from a reduction in carbon accumulation associated with the expansion of the western Subtropical Gyre towards the south.
AN ANNOTATED CHECKLIST OF THE BIRDS OF KOREA

Abstract : The checklist includes all the birds recorded from Korea including Quelpart (Cheju), Dagelet (Ullung) and smaller offshore islands. It lists 382 species of 18 Orders, 67 Families and 189 Genera, with 191 subspecies, a total of 419 forms. Each form is given with the scientific, Korean and English names and synonyms where these are necessary. Details of specimens in the author and other recent collections and present status are also included. The majority of the collections examined are those made by the author in South Korea since the Korean War. (Author)
Cross-hole magnetometric resistivity (MMR)

The last decade has seen a growing acceptance of the magnetometric resistivity (MMR) method as a viable exploration technique in various geologic environments. Until recently, MMR exploration was carried out with both current electrodes and recording magnetometer located on the surface of the Earth. Significant improvements in anomaly amplitude can be achieved by lowering the recording magnetometer inside a drill hole. In contrast, the lowering of current electrodes beneath the surface does not always improve surface MMR responses. The advantages of locating the magnetic detector in a drill hole are illustrated numerically, anomaly calculations being carried out with a novel yet simple integral equation technique for a plate‐like body. The practicality of the cross‐hole MMR technique is demonstrated with a successful case history. Massive sulfide mineralization is mapped at a depth exceeding 500 m.
A generalized log law formulation for a wide range of boundary roughness typically encountered in natural streams

Applying fluid mechanics principles to mobile bed conditions is simplified by demonstrating that fitting log profiles to streamwise velocity measurements using the plane of zero velocity is applicable to a larger range of roughness conditions than previously expected. Four sets of detailed velocity measurements obtained under the supervision of the authors were analyzed encompassing sediment‐scale roughness elements, roughness caused by rigid vegetation, and large‐scale roughness elements comprised of mobile bed forms. The analyses resulted in similar normalized zero‐plane displacements for all roughness types considered. The zero‐plane displacements, dh, normalized by roughness height, ks, were 0.20 and 0.26 for the sediment‐ and vegetation‐scale experiments, respectively. The results for two experiments with bed form dominated roughness were 0.41 and 0.34. Estimates of dh/ks ranging from 0.2 to 0.4 are therefore recommended for a range of roughness types with the higher end of the range more appropriate for the larger, bed form‐scale roughness elements, and the lower end for the sediment‐scale roughness elements. In addition, it is demonstrated that the location of the plane of zero velocity is temporally constant even when the bed height is not. The findings can be applied to field velocity measurements under mobile bed conditions facilitating the calculation of turbulence parameters such as shear velocity by using point measurements and providing guidelines for the estimation of an appropriate value for zero‐plane displacement.
A multiscale analysis of drought and pluvial mechanisms for the Southeastern United States

The Southeast (SE) U.S. has experienced several severe droughts over the past 30 years, with the most recent drought during 2006–2008 causing agricultural impacts of $1 billion. However, the mechanisms that lead to droughts over the region and their persistence have been poorly understood due to the region's humid coastal environment and its complex climate. In this study, we carry out a multiscale analysis of drought mechanisms for the SE U.S. over 1979–2008 using the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) to identify conditions associated with drought and contrast with those associated with pluvials. These conditions include land surface drought propagation, land‐atmosphere feedbacks, regional moisture sources, persistent atmospheric patterns, and larger‐scale oceanic conditions. Typical conditions for SE U.S. droughts (pluvials) are identified as follows: (1) weaker (stronger) southerly meridional fluxes and weaker (stronger) westerly zonal fluxes, (2) strong moisture flux divergence (convergence) by transient eddies, and (3) strong (weak) coupling between the land surface and atmosphere. The NARR demonstrates that historic SE droughts are mainly derived from a combination of a strong North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH) and Icelandic Low (IL) during summer and winter, respectively, which peak 1 month earlier than the onset of the drought. The land surface plays a moderate role in drought occurrence over the SE via recycling of precipitation, and the oceans show an asymmetric influence on droughts and pluvials depending on the season. This study suggests that the NASH and IL can be used as a predictor for SE droughts at 1 month lead despite the overall that it represents an atmospheric forcing.
Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology

: Port-wine stains are a type of capillary malformation affecting 0.3% to 0.5% of the population. Port-wine stains present at birth as pink to erythematous patches on the skin and/or mucosa. Without treatment, the patches typically darken with age and may eventually develop nodular thickening or associated pyogenic granuloma. Laser and light treatments provide improvement through selective destruction of vasculature. A variety of vascular-selective lasers may be employed, with the pulsed dye laser being the most common and well studied. Early treatment produces more optimal results. Advances in imaging and laser treatment technologies demonstrate potential to further improve clinical outcomes.
Human Capital Development and Economic Growth in Nigeria : An Empirical Investigation

Human capital development has been identified as bedrock of any nation’s economic development. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the impact of human capital development on economic growth in Nigeria. The data used in this study was derived from secondary data only. The data included capital expenditure on education, recurrent expenditure on education and total number of students’ enrolments in tertiary institutions for the period of 2000 to 2013. These were collated from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin. Inferential statistics such as Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMCC) and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) were used to analyse the data. Result shows that human capital development indicators jointly (R2 = 0. 9739, P= 0.000) have positive and significant impact on Nigeria economic growth. The study concludes that human capital development is a strong predictor of economic growth in Nigeria. Subsequently, the study recommends that government should be determined to make provision for effective funding of education by ear marking 26% of the total budget for educational development as recommended in the United Nations Organization. Also, government at all levels must commit vast resources towards the school infrastructures and education manpower to the extent that the propagation of worthwhile knowledge can be guaranteed.
University of Birmingham Facilitating better postnatal care with women-held documents in The Gambia

Background: Women‑held documents are a basic component of continuity of maternity care. The use and comple‑ tion of women‑held documents following discharge could improve treatment and care for postnatal women. Using a mixed‑methods study design, we aimed to assess the number, type, quality and completeness of women‑held discharge documents, identify factors contributing to document completeness and facilitators or barriers for effective use of the documents. Methods: Documents given to women at discharge from three hospitals in the Greater Banjul Area, The Gambia, were reviewed for content and quality. All women completed a questionnaire on the use of the documents. Poisson regression was used to estimate factors predicting document completion. Semi‑structured interviews ( n = 21) and focus groups ( n = 2) were carried out with healthcare professionals (HCPs). Results: Nearly all ( n = 211/212; 99%) women were given a document to take home. The most complete document (maternal record) had on average 17/26 (65%) items completed and 10% of women held an illegible document. None of the women’s sociodemographic or clinical characteristics predicted document completeness. The follow‑ ing facilitators for effective use of documents were identified from the women’s responses to the questionnaire and interviews with HCPs: 94% of women thought written information is important, 99% plan to have postnatal check‑ups and 67% plan to use their documents, HCPs understand the importance of the documents and were familiar with the document’s use and content. The following barriers for effective use of documents were identified: HCPs had too many women‑held documents to complete at discharge, there is no national protocol
Anticipated performance index of some tree species considered for green belt development in an urban area

In the present study, the Air Pollution Tolerance Index (APTI) of ten plant species collected from an urban area has been evaluated by analyzing important biochemical parameters. High values of APTI were recorded in Psidium guajava (31.75%); Swietenia mahoganii(28.08%); Mangifera indica (27.97%); Polyanthia longifolia (25.58%) and Ficus benghalensis (25.02%). The Anticipated Performance Index (API) of these plant species was also calculated by considering their APTI values together with other socio-economic and biological parameters. According to API most tolerant plant species for green belt development were Ficus benghalensis (87%); Mangifera indica (87%); Swietenia mahoganii (87%) and Saraca indica (81%).
WhenWord Embedding Meets Lexical Networks Research Project for CS 512 : Data Mining Principles

Lexical networks such as WordNet or BabelNet contain wealthy structural information. On the other hand, distributional word representations encode the semantic information and can be generally used for many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. In this paper, we propose a framework that learns embeddings from lexical networks. We also introduce novel enhancements that improve the quality of our embeddings. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach performs effectively on the benchmark datasets.
Study of Doppler spectra of radar sea echo

Doppler spectra of radar sea echo is investigated theoretically and experimentally. Electromagnetic scattering models using composite rough surfaces (i.e., Bragg resonant water waves superimposed on a carrier water wave) are developed by means of the basic principles in hydrodynamics applied to a gravity wave of finite height. The ideas are then carried over to the sea, where the assumption of “fully developed” yields a wave height dependence for the width of the spectra of radar sea echo of the form ∼H0.4–0.6, H being the height of the carrier water wave. New experimental results on spectra of radar sea echo with a multifrequency coherent pulsed radar (428, 1228, 4455, and 8910 MHz) for sea conditions, which ranged from 0.3- to 0.6-meter waves with 0.5- to 1-m/sec winds to 8-meter waves with 23- to 24-m/sec winds, show that the band width of radar sea echo is dependent on polarization and frequency, and the differential Doppler between the spectra for horizontal and vertical polarization is dependent on frequency and depression angle. Both the “noisiness” of the spectra and the greater width of the horizontal return indicate “spray” over the sea might be one of the parameters contributing to these dependencies. The simple models developed in terms of composite scattering surfaces are shown to yield the order of magnitude and the wave height dependence for the width of the spectra of radar sea echo, but they fail to give its polarization dependence.
Global validation of the wave model WAM over a one-year period using Geosat wave height data

The high quality of wave fields simulated by the third-generation wave model WAM has already been demonstrated in various validation studies using in situ measurements as well as data from satellites as reference. However, owing to limitations of the reference data sets, the previous studies concentrated on relatively small regions or short time periods only, for which adequate measurements were available. In this paper the first global verification of the WAM model over a full 1-year period is presented. The significant wave heights hindcast for 1988 by the WAM model as implemented at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts are compared with measurements obtained by the Geosat radar altimeter. The wave heights from WAM and Geosat show good agreement in general. However, significant regional and seasonal differences are found. The underestimation of WAM wave heights in the southern hemisphere, which was already known from a validation study for the Seasat period, shows significant seasonal variations. The hindcast wave heights are underestimated by about 20% in large parts of the southern hemisphere and the tropical region during May-;September. For the rest of the time, the agreement with Geosat data is fairly good. Together with the fact that also the rms variability of wave heights in the tropical region is clearly underestimated by WAM, this can possibly be attributed to simplifications like the neglect of atmospheric stratification effects when converting wind speeds to the wind stress fields driving WAM. Furthermore, the intercomparison indicates that low wave heights below ∼ 1.5 m are generally overestimated by WAM. As it is planned to use altimeter wave heights for updating wave models in future data assimilation systems, it is quite important to have efficient quality control criteria for these data. We show that some additional Geosat parameters, e.g., the off-nadir angle of the altimeter, can be useful quality parameters. The difference between the Geosat and WAM wave heights shows a clear dependence on the additional parameters in some cases, which must be related to quality problems of the Geosat data. Some new criteria for the rejection of incorrect Geosat data points are obtained.
Precise tracing of exhumation and provenance using 40Ar/39Ar geochronology of detrital white mica: the example of the Central Alps

Abstract Single-grain 40Ar/39Ar dating of detrital white mica from Oligocene to Miocene (31–13 Ma) sediments of the North Alpine Foreland Basin in Switzerland reveals three prominent age clusters indicating cooling of the source rocks below 350–420°C in Carboniferous, Early Permian, and Tertiary times. Precise calibration of sedimentation age throughout the study area enables the thermal evolution of the hinterland in space and time to be precisely traced. Palaeozoic mica ages are documented in all samples and are used as additional provenance indicators. Tertiary mica ages are restricted to sediments younger than 21 Ma, and are only found in central and western drainage systems. Tertiary micas document progressively increasing average cooling rates up to 34–41°C/Ma in the source area (Lepontine Dome), between 21 Ma and 14 Ma. The observed cooling rates and the time-span for rapid cooling in the source area (between 19 and 14 Ma) agree with thermal models derived from currently exposed rocks of the Lepontine metamorphic dome. This study proves that detrital mica geochronology is a robust tool for deciphering the thermal histories of ancient orogens which are no longer exposed today.
Quality of Inputs and Technical Efficiency Nexus of Citrus Farmers: A Case Study of Sargodha District, Punjab (Pakistan)

This study reports the results of an investigation into the technical efficiency of citrus farmers of Sargodha District of Punjab Province. The method employed was the stochastic frontier production function approach suggested by Battese and Coelli (1995) for cross sectional data. The model was estimated by using the data on 82 citrus farmers for the period 2008. The coefficients of the production function revealed that the use of more water and nitrogen by the farmers involved in intercropping reduced citrus output. The estimates of technical efficiencies of the farmers range from 0.53 to 0.98 while the mean technical efficiency was 0.88. This suggests that 12 % of citrus output forgoes because of inefficiency. Quality of inputs like water and land were found to be significant determinants of technical efficiency of the citrus farmers.
A record of Eocene (Stronsay Group) sedimentation in BGS borehole 99/3, offshore NW Britain: Implications for early post-break-up development of the Faroe–Shetland Basin

Synopsis A punctuated Eocene succession has been recovered in British Geological Survey borehole 99/3 from the Faroe–Shetland Basin. The borehole was drilled close to the crest of the Judd Anticline and penetrated 110.5 m into the post-break-up Stronsay Group. The borehole proved 23.8 m of Ypresian–earliest Lutetian paralic to shallow-marine deposits, unconformably overlain by 43.85 m of mid-Lutetian lower shoreface to shallow-marine shelf deposits, in turn unconformably overlain by 42.85 m of late Bartonian–Priabonian mass-flow (slope apron) and basinal deposits. At the borehole site, the Ypresian–earliest Lutetian sediments were subaerially exposed in early Lutetian times; these deposits were subsequently transgressed by the mid-Lutetian shelf – itself eroded in the late Lutetian with reworked material transported northwards and re-deposited in the Mid-Eocene basin-floor fan complex in Quadrants 213 and 214. The eroded mid-Lutetian shelf was subsequently downlapped and buried beneath prograding late Bartonian–Priabonian slope apron-to-basinal sediments as the borehole site subsided. Integrating the borehole data with the regional seismic-stratigraphy indicates three major intervals of regression – early/mid-Lutetian, late Lutetian and late Bartonian – which, it is suggested, coincide predominantly with tectonic activity, particularly compressional deformation, possibly linking the early post-break-up development of the Faroe–Shetland Basin to the evolution of the adjacent Norwegian Basin.
Influence of compost fertilization on the biology and morphology of green peach aphid ( Myzus persicae ) on pepper

*Corresponding Author Email: mdellell@yahoo.fr Aphids are important pests of pepper and their abundance may be influenced by fertilizers. To address the influence of compost fertilizers on the morphology and biology of Myzus persicae Sulzer, an experiment was carried out in 2014/15 on pepper plants cultivated in a greenhouse. Five treatments using four types of composts (C1, C2, C3, and C4), a combination of vegetables scraps and equine, poultry, cattle and sheep manures and one control were used with six replications. The population of M. persicae on pepper for the five treatments was counted weekly and thirteen morphometric characters were studied. The results showed that aphid morphology and biology were affected by treatments. Highest population (4283 aphids/plant), higher mean relative growth rate (0.068) and lowest population doubling time (10.14 days) were registered with C4, whereas, minimum population (2019 aphids/plant), minimum mean relative growth rate (0.046) and higher population doubling time (15 days) were registered with C1. These results showed that C1 can reduce the damage caused by aphid on pepper and this knowledge might be useful in making a more informed compost fertilizer application choice.