Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation in South Asian agriculture.

The purpose of this study is to synthesize the impacts of climate change on agriculture and assess the status of policies, programs and strategies to adapt small farm holders to climate change in South Asia. ,The authors collected secondary information through a desktop review of policy documents, action plans and published reports. Face-to-face interviews with policy makers, agriculture and climate experts representing the government, non-governmental organizations, international development agencies and the private sector were also conducted to validate the secondary information. ,The results revealed that agriculture is the dominant economic mainstay providing livelihood to over 70 per cent, employing 60 per cent of the labor force and contributing about 22 per cent of the regional gross domestic product. Climate impacts, such as floods, sea level rise and salt intrusion, increased frequency and intensity of storms, and pests combined with increasing water scarcity continue to reduce arable land, reduce yield of crops and threaten the food security of farmers. Adaptation efforts include using improved varieties of crop; changing cropping patterns and planting seasons; and water conservation techniques. However, progress remains low because of a lack of adequate technical knowledge and financial resources. ,The amount of published literature on climate change and its impact on agriculture is increasing, but there is little effort to analyze and document impacts and strategies to adapt small farm holders to climate change at a landscape level, particularly in South Asia. This study fills in this gap and will serve as a valuable source of information for those wishing to conduct research or develop adaptation strategies for any of the four countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal.
Winter tourism in Germany is much more than skiing! Consumer motives and implications to Alpine destination marketing

Winter sports tourism is a key economic factor in many mountain regions worldwide. Research to date has concentrated on economic and environmental questions related to winter sports and winter outdoor activities, with the impacts of climate change and adaptation strategies being the dominant fields of discussion. An analysis of German winter holidays indicates that winter sports are only one of several product types. The fact that the majority of German travellers prefer long-haul warm weather destinations in the winter raises the question of triggering factors for winter holiday trips. A qualitative study based on a Germany-wide online discussion forum analyses all aspects of winter trips. It centres on people’s everyday life during the winter and their linked emotions, travel motives, destination choices and general expectations, in particular with relation to trips to Alpine destinations. The results show that the grey winter weather and factors such as cold, humidity, lack of sun and dull atmosphere are the dominant factors in the desire to escape on a holiday trip. Non-skiers expect snow-covered landscapes and an environment conducive to relaxation-related activities and are therefore likely to be looking for sustainable winter products. This supports Alpine destination managers who are developing sustainable winter products in addition to winter sports in order to become more competitive in the non-skier market.
Developing a Code of Ethics for the Swedish audit profession 1923 to 1994 - Juxtaposing the internal and external role of the Code

The paper presents an analysis of context within which FAR, the Swedish professional association representing accountants has developed and revised the Code of Ethics from 1923 to 1995. The purpose is to enhance our understanding of the choices made as to what ethical rules were verbalized or codified and the motivations behind the codification. Building on Birkett and Evans’ (2005) model for organizing and understanding histories of the professionalizing activities of occupational associations of accountants and Abbotts view of professional codes, a theoretical framework has been constructed to analyze the circumstances and sequence of events that have had an influence on codification of ethics. The findings is based on content analysis of the Code of ethics and an extensive review of archival documents from FAR, legislation and previous studies on the development of the profession in Sweden.The findings have been analyzed in three phases depicting the development of the profession as the state shifts from an industrial to a neoliberal state. The phases are:Phase 1 A newly established Gentlemen’s club (1923-1932)Phase 2 Professionalization of auditors (1933-1976)Phase 3 Internationalization of the audit profession (1977-1995)The analysis shows how the Code of Ethics has been verbalized within the context of shifting ideologies of government and governance of both the state and profession in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. Ethical codes are context sensitive. Differing from Anglo Saxon studies; this study is set in the Swedish context where the state and profession have co-developed over time. The code has been codified in a changing regulatory landscape where public and private actors occupy the audit regulatory arena and the ethics of the profession is regulated by a complex interplay of legislation and by laws, international, regional and FAR’s codes of ethics governing professional conduct. In 1923, when FAR was established, the rules of professional conduct were not explicitly codified. Rather, the expected conduct of a member was socialized through initiation and other meetings, social networks and education. The professionalization of auditors, growth and heterogeneity of FARs’ members, the financial scandals, the economic and regulatory developments have led to an increasing need to verbalize and publish the Code of Ethics for the profession. The power to verbalizing the ethical rules has changed over time and with time the profession gained an increasing power over determining the content of its ethical code. The Code serves not only to legitimize the activities of the audit profession to regulators and other important stakeholders but importantly, it acts at the same time as a remedy for association control, juxtaposing the internal and external role of the Code.
Wideband phantoms of different body tissues for heterogeneous models in body area networks

One of the key issues about wireless technologies is their interaction with the human body. The so-called internet of things will comprise many devices that will transmit either around or through the human body. These devices must be tested either in their working medium, when possible, or in the most realistic one. For this purpose, tissue-like phantoms are the best alternative to carry out realistic analyses of the performance of body area networks. In addition, they are the conventional way to certify the compliance of commercial standards by these devices. However, the number of phantoms that work in large bandwidths is limited in literature. This work aims at presenting chemical solutions that will be useful to prepare a variety of wideband tissue phantoms. Besides, the colon was mimicked in two ways, the healthy tissue and the malignant one, taking into account studies that relate changes on the relative permittivity with cancer. They were designed on the basis of acetonitrile in aqueous solutions as described in a previous work. Thus, many scenarios could be developed such as multilayers which imitate parts of the heterogeneous body.
FM-Hawkes: A Hawkes Process Based Approach for Modeling Online Activity Correlations

Understanding and predicting user behavior on online platforms has proved to be of significant value, with applications spanning from targeted advertising, political campaigning, anomaly detection to user self-monitoring. With the growing functionality and flexibility of online platforms, users can now accomplish a variety of tasks online. This advancement has rendered many previous works that focus on modeling a single type of activity obsolete. In this work, we target this new problem by modeling the interplay between the time series of different types of activities and apply our model to predict future user behavior. Our model, FM-Hawkes, stands for Fourier-based kernel multi-dimensional Hawkes process. Specifically, we model the multiple activity time series as a multi-dimensional Hawkes process. The correlations between different types of activities are then captured by the influence factor. As for the temporal triggering kernel, we observe that the intensity function consists of numerous kernel functions with time shift. Thus, we employ a Fourier transformation based non-parametric estimation. Our model is not bound to any particular platform and explicitly interprets the causal relationship between actions. By applying our model to real-life datasets, we confirm that the mutual excitation effect between different activities prevails among users. Prediction results show our superiority over models that do not consider action types and flexible kernels
Physical education teachers' knowledge and practice in teaching culturally diverse students

The purpose of this study was to examine in-service physical education teachers‘ knowledge and practice in teaching culturally diverse students in elementary schools. The theoretical perspectives that guided this research include symbolic interactionism and situated cognition. This study was a qualitative case study, which examined a purposefully selected three in-service teachers at different schools. Data were collected through interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. Two major research questions guided the examination of this study: The first question focused on the types of knowledge and practices that the in-service teachers used in teaching to diversity in the schools, and the second question concerned types of curriculum and teaching that were culturally relevant in teaching diverse student populations. The grounded theory method guided the data analysis. The findings of the study revealed the participants to be well aware of the different attitudes and behaviors of students from different cultural backgrounds, and they had positive attitude towards cultural diversity. The participants thought the following five aspects were important in successful teaching culturally diverse students: (1) sport as universal language, (2) promotion of positive student identity development through sports, (3) passion for physical education, (4) patience in teaching diverse students, and (5) building a good relationship with students. Furthermore, the participants perceived discipline to be an important consideration in teaching culturally diverse students. However, the curriculum followed by each participant in the current study seemed to be based on the traditional physical education curriculum, which did not reflect any ethnic and cultural values and traditions. Three conclusions were drawn related to in-service physical education teachers‘ teaching culturally diverse students: (1) in-service physical education teachers showed knowledge and practices that are appropriate for teaching culturally diverse students, (2) curriculum of in-service physical education teachers showed lack of multicultural content in their curriculum, and (3) the curriculum guide that the in-service physical education teachers used had physical education standards that disregarded multiculturalism. INDEX WORDS: Elementary physical education; Multicultural education; Cultural diversity; Teacher knowledge; Teacher practice; Physical education teacher. PHYSICAL EDUCATION TEACHERS' KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE IN TEACHING CULTURALLY DIVERSE STUDENTS
"Somos Parte de la Solución": Women Activists' Knowledge of Gendered Risk and Their Educational Responses to HIV/AIDS in the Peruvian Amazon

This dissertation is a critical ethnography conducted in the Amazon jungle city of Iquitos, Peru-a city where sex work and sex tourism are becoming increasingly prevalent, and where AIDS cases in women are on the rise. In recent years, HIV positive and sex worker women activists in Iquitos have made significant strides to respond to the AIDS crisis through social movement organizing and educational outreach. This dissertation exposes the nuanced gender relations perspectives of HIV positive and sex worker women activists and underscores the importance of including these subjugated knowledges in solution-oriented discourses in HIV/AIDS education. I deployed a combination of gender relations and postcolonial feminist theories to pursue two lines of inquiry. First, I investigated HIV positive women and sex worker women activists' own understandings of gender relations and gender-related risk factors for HIV. Second, I explored the varied educational spaces that activist women produced to disseminate this knowledge to other affected populations and the wider public. Results show that women activists' collective organizing around their stigmatized identities positioned them to critically comment about how gender influences HIV risk for both women and men and also enabled them to encourage their stakeholders to re-think and re-learn gender in ways that would reduce their risk to HIV. As the title of this dissertation reads, women activists asserted that they are "part of the solution" to combat HIV/AIDS in Peru. My dissertation shows
Asymmetric downside and upside co-movements between stock and REIT markets

ABSTRACT This article aims to investigate whether stock and real estate investment trust (REIT) returns have asymmetric downside and upside co-movements. The investigation is carried out by employing a mixture copula with Markov-switching coefficients for weight, upper tail dependence and lower tail dependence. Empirical result demonstrates that an asymptotic independence and a positive relationship, which has greater dependence in the left tail than in the right tail, coexist. The empirical result provides useful information for making portfolio decisions. In the independent state, the inclusion of stock and REIT indices in a portfolio builds a diversified portfolio. However, a portfolio with stock and REIT assets cannot get the benefit of risk reduction in the positive dependence state.
Seamless transfer strategy considering power balance in parallel operation

This paper presents a power reference modifier for seamless transfer considering the power balance in the parallel operation. When the PCS (Power Conditioning System) is disconnected from the grid, the PCS should operate in the stand-alone mode to supply energy to the critical loads. If multiple PCSs work as one PCS, slave PCSs maintain the current control mode even if master PCS change its control mode from the current control to the voltage control. If the power references of slave PCSs are not changed properly based on the load condition, the power balance condition may not be met. In that case, the voltage applied to the critical loads might be beyond or below the rated voltage. To avoid this phenomenon, the power values absorbed into the loads should be monitored consistently and the power references of the slave PCSs should be modified properly based on them. But the master PCS which transfers the power references to the slave PCSs and works as voltage source in stand-alone mode can obtain it indirectly by calculating its own power values without monitoring the power consumed by critical loads. Using those, simple controller for modifying the power references of the slave PCSs can be configured. The effectiveness of the proposed power reference modifier has been verified through the experimental results. By applying the proposed method, the transition from the grid-connected mode to the stand-alone mode works satisfying Computer Business Equipment Manufacturers Association (CBEMA) curve.
Reverse hierarchical variable clustering on database accelerated algorithm

This paper presents one reverse hierarchical variable clustering on database accelerated algorithm. The present method can both enhance the operation speed in large scale sparse database and save the storage space, simultaneously keep the inherent structure of the database. The main thought of the paper is using reverse variable cluster method to produce a projection clustering database. Many attributes are possible gathered under one projection clustering variable, so the attributes number can be reduced obviously. The present method can compress the sparse database without loss, which improving the speed and saving the storage space at the same time. The experiment indicate that along with the change of the original attribute number of each cluster variable represents, the algorithm can enhance efficiency from 1.17 to 5.04 times, and the attribute number can reduce approximately 88%.
Nonperturbative theory of atom-surface interaction: corrections at short separations

The nonperturbative expressions for the free energy and force of interaction between a ground-state atom and a real-material surface at any temperature are presented. The transition to the Matsubara representation is performed, whereupon the comparison is made with the commonly used perturbative results based on the standard Lifshitz theory. It is shown that the Lifshitz formulas for the free energy and force of an atom-surface interaction follow from the nonperturbative ones in the lowest order of the small parameter. Numerical computations of the free energy and force for the atoms of He∗ and Na interacting with a surface of an Au plate have been performed using the frequency-dependent dielectric permittivity of Au and highly accurate dynamic atomic polarizabilities in the framework of both the nonperturbative and perturbative theories. According to our results, the maximum deviations between the two theories are reached at the shortest atom-surface separations of about 1 nm. Simple analytic expressions for the atom-surface free energy are derived in the classical limit and for an ideal-metal plane. In the lowest order of the small parameter, they are found in agreement with the perturbative ones following from the standard Lifshitz theory. Possible applications of the obtained results in the theory of van der Waals adsorption are discussed.
Amnion Epithelial Cells of Buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) Term Placenta Expressed Embryonic Stem Cells Markers and Differentiated into Cells of Neurogenic Lineage In Vitro

ABSTRACT Aim of the present study was the isolation, culture, and characterization of amniotic membrane-derived epithelial cells (AE) from term placenta collected postpartum in buffalo. We found that cultured cells were of polygonal in shape, resistance to trypsin digestion and expressed cytokeratin-18 indicating that they were of epithelial origin. These cells have negative expression of mesenchymal stem cell markers (CD29, CD44, and CD105) and positive for pluripotency marker (OCT4) genes indicated that cultured cells were not contaminated with mesenchymal stem cells. Immunofluorescence staining with pluripotent stem cell surface markers, SSEA-1, SSEA-4, TRA-1-60, and TRA-1-81 indicated that these cells may retain pluripotent stem cell characteristics even after long period of differentiation. Differentiation potential of these cells was determined by their potential to differentiate into cells of neurogenic lineages using retinoic acid. In conclusion, we demonstrate that AE cells expressed pluripotent stem cell markers and have propensity to differentiate into cells of neurogenic lineage upon directed differentiation in vitro.
University-Level Recruiting and Black Underrepresentation in the Auditing Profession

For decades, Blacks have been earning accounting degrees at high rates and, since the 1960s, the auditing profession has been making highly publicized efforts to increase the hiring and retention of Blacks. Yet, today, Blacks remain underrepresented among auditors. Why? One theory is that Black underrepresentation in auditing is partially a consequence of the recruiting practices of auditing firms, which some argue is targeted at universities with few Black graduates. In this study, we use novel data on the hiring practices of auditing firms to test this theory and find evidence that big N and non-big N audit firms hire significantly fewer graduates from universities with high levels of Black representation, a result that is robust to the inclusion of a number of controls including measures of university, business school, and accounting program quality. Our results could be explained as a consequence of demand-side forces, in which low audit firm demand for Black workers causes them to hire less from universities with high Black representation, or supply-side forces, in which a low supply of qualified Black workers causes it. Our evidence suggests that the negative association we document between high Black representation and audit firm hiring is likely a consequence of both demand-side and supply-side forces, but that a significant portion of the problem could be corrected at low cost and without reducing the quality of people hired if audit firms were to reallocate recruiting resources across schools.
A development of Fractal PIFA (planar inverted F antenna) with bandwidth enhancement for mobile phone applications

A novel Fractal planar inverted F antenna (F-PIFA) based on the self affinity design is presented in this paper. The procedure for designing a Fractal Planar Inverted F Antenna is explained and the 2nd iteration of Sierpinski Carpet is chosen to use in mobile phones. The F-PIFA has a total dimension 27mm × 27mm are designed and optimized in order to receive GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) and HiperLAN (HigH Performance Radio LAN with the frequency range from 1710 MHz to 2170 MHz, 1885 to 2200 MHz for 3G and 4800MHz to 5800MHz for HiperLAN respectively. The antenna achieved the GSM, UMTS and HiperLan frequency with −6dB return loss and has almost omnidirectional radiation pattern. This antenna has been tested using mobile phone model and all the performance met the criteria for a mobile phone application.