Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Landscape structure influences modularity patterns in farm food webs: consequences for pest control

Landscape management affects species interactions within a community, leading to alterations in the structure of networks. Modules are link‐dense regions of the network where species interact more closely within the module than between modules of the network. Insufficient network resolution has meant that modules have proved difficult to identify, even though they appear important in the propagation of disturbance impacts. We applied a standardized approach across 20 farms to obtain well‐resolved food webs to characterize network structure and explore how modularity changes in response to management (organic and conventional). All networks showed significantly higher modularity than random networks. Farm management had no effect on the number of modules per farm or module richness, but there was a significant loss of links between modules on conventional farms, which may affect the long‐term stability of these networks. We found a significant association between modules and major habitat groups. If modules form as a result of interactions between species that utilize similar habitats, then ecosystem services to the crop components of the landscape, such as pest control by parasitoids originating in the non‐crop vegetation, are less likely to occur on these farms.
Comparison of scholarly impact among surgical specialties: An examination of 2429 academic surgeons

The h‐index, a bibliometric indicator that objectively characterizes the impact of an author's scholarship, is an effective tool that may be considered by academic departments for decisions related to hiring and faculty advancement. Our objective was to characterize the scholarly productivity of academic surgeons from different specialties relative to otolaryngologists.
Modeling of reconfigurable material handling system consisting of multiple mobile robots

The modelling of reconfigurable material handling system (RMHS) plays an important role in the planning and operation of a reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS). The reconfigurable mobile robots have great advantages to perform RMS's material handling tasks in the volatile environment, where RMS layout will be frequently adjusted to fulfil the requirements of mutable production tasks. This paper proposes a new definition of RMHS, and presents a novel method based on graph theory and first-order logic calculus for configuration modelling of robot-based RMHS. The method is developed with full consideration of the reconfigurability of a single mobile robot at machine-level, and that of a system consisting of multiple mobile robots at system-level. The novel modelling method can facilitate selecting appropriate hardware and software modules to assemble a mobile robot, and also selecting appropriate mobile robots coupled with some cooperation strategy to construct a team for complex transportation task in the reconfiguration process of a RMHS.
ALCOHOL DETECTION USING SMART HELMET SYSTEM

An accident is a specific, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, with no apparent and deliberate cause but with marked effects. Carelessn ess of the driver is the major factor of such accidents [1]. The traffic authorities give a lot of instructions to the vehicle operators. But many of them do not obey the rules. Nowadays most of the countries are forcing t he motor riders to wear the helmet and not to use the vehicles when the person is in drunken condition. B ut still the rules are being violated by the users. In order to overcome this we introduces an intelligent system, Smart Helmet, which automatically checks whether the person is wearing the helmet and has nonalcoholic breath while driving. Here we have a transmitter at the helmet and the receiver at the bike. There is a swi tch used to sure the wearing of helmet on the head. The ON condition of the switch ensures the placing of the helmet in proper manner. An alcohol sensor is placed near to the mouth of the driver in the helmet to detect the presence of alcohol. The data to be transferred is coded with RF encoder and transmitted through radio frequency transmitter. The receiver at the bike receives the data and decodes it through RF decoder. The eng i e should not ON if any of the two conditions is viola ted. MCU controls the function of relay and thus the ignition, it control the engine through a relay and a relay interfacing circuit.
Bronchial mucus transport velocity in patients receiving desflurane and fentanyl vs. sevoflurane and fentanyl

Background and objective: Sevoflurane has been shown to distinctly reduce bronchial mucus transport velocity, an essential determinant of mucociliary clearance and pulmonary complications. However, sevoflurane is regarded as one of the least irritant volatile anaesthetics, especially when compared with desflurane. Hence, the aim of this double‐blind, randomized, controlled trial was to assess differences in bronchial mucus transport velocity between sevoflurane and desflurane. Methods: Twenty patients listed for general surgery were randomized to receive either maintenance of anaesthesia with desflurane and fentanyl, or sevoflurane and fentanyl. Thirty minutes after tracheal intubation, bronchial mucus transport velocity was assessed by fibreoptic observation of the movement of methylene blue dye applied to the dorsal surface of the right main bronchus. Results: Both agents distinctly reduced bronchial mucus transport velocity when compared with previous studies, but the degree of impairment did not significantly differ between the investigated groups (median [25%/75% percentile]): desflurane 1.5 [0.5/4.2] vs. sevoflurane 1.3 [0.3/2.9] mm min−1, P = 0.343). Conclusions: Desflurane is commonly regarded as more irritant to the airway, but as far as bronchial mucus transport velocity is concerned, the choice between sevoflurane and desflurane does not seem to matter.
Trends in Diagnosis‐Specific Work Disability Before and After Stroke: A Longitudinal Population‐Based Study in Sweden

Background Although a stroke event often leads to work disability, diagnoses behind work disability before and after stroke are largely unknown. We examined the pre‐event and postevent trends in diagnosis‐specific work disability among patients of working age. Methods and Results We included all new nonfatal stroke events in 2006–2008 from population‐based hospital registers in Sweden among women and men aged 25 to 60 years (n=12 972). Annual days of diagnosis‐specific work disability were followed for 4 years before and after stroke. Repeated measures negative binomial regression models using the generalized estimating equations method were fitted to examine trends in diagnosis‐specific work disability before and after the event. Already during the 4 pre‐event years, work disability attributed to circulatory diseases increased among women (rate ratio, 1.99; 95% confidence interval, 1.68–2.36) and men (rate ratio, 2.20; 95% confidence interval, 1.88–2.57). Increasing trends before stroke were also found for work disability attributed to mental disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, neoplasms, diseases of the nervous, respiratory, and digestive systems, injuries, and diabetes mellitus. As expected, a sharp increase in work disability days attributed to circulatory diseases was found during the first year after the event among both sexes. Overall, during 4 years after the stroke, there was a decreasing trend for circulatory diseases and injuries, whereas the trend was increasing for nervous diseases and diabetes mellitus. Conclusions Work disability attributed to several mental and somatic diagnoses is higher already before a stroke event.
Hate Crime in Suffolk: Understanding prevalence and support needs

This research project was commissioned by the Suffolk Hate Crime Partnership with funding allocated to them from the Ministry of Justice. The aim of the project was to provide independent evidence of: the prevalence of Hate Crime in Suffolk; and the needs of victims and communities affected by Hate Crime across the victimisation themes of race, allegiance to a faith, sexuality, gender identity and disability. For this project, Hate Crime1 encompasses both hate incidents and Hate Crimes as defined by the Association of Chief Police Officers relating to race, faith, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. The methodology included: a literature review and documentary analysis; analysis of reported Hate Crime and estimating unreported Hate Crime; survey of communities vulnerable to Hate Crime; interviews and focus groups with individuals from communities vulnerable to Hate Crime; interviews with representatives from local agencies and a workshop with representatives from local agencies. Findings from the survey, interviews, focus group and workshop findings should be treated with caution given the relatively small sample of individuals involved. The quantitative data used in the study was affected by the quality and consistency of recording. This summary draws together the key findings from the study and three recommendations for local agencies to implement.
Restructuring Welfare Organizations in Europe: From Democracy to Good Management?

List of Tables List of Abbreviations Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: Welfare and Administration: The New Settlement, 1980-2007 The New Administrative Settlement of the Welfare State The Internalisation of Accountability PART II: State Schools and Public Hospitals in Europe Enduring Managerialism in the Internal Governance of Public Hospitals Patterns of Convergence in Educational Accountability in State Schools in Europe PART III: Welfare Democracy and Managerialism Towards the Managerial Welfare State: The Mechanism of a Silent Revolution European Welfare States and Democracy: Marching at the Same Tune? Notes Bibliography Index
Health and Safety Reform: A Review of Four Different Approaches

New Zealand reformed its approach to occupational health and safety in 1992, with the passage of the Health and Safety in Employment Act and the Accident, Rehabilitation, Compensation, and Insurance Act. These legislative changes were not, for the most part, informed by a thorough review of the variaus policy options. This paper provides part of such a review by assessing the effectiveness of four different approaches to occupational health and safety. The first three approaches examined are found to have major deficiencies. The market approach of compen sating dangerous work with wage premiums is criticized, because workers nor mally lack the bargaining power to secure pay concessions or hazard prevention measures. The regulatory approach of setting startdards to limit hazard levels or to prescribe safe production methods is faulted for being difficult to errforce and difficult to apply to most hazards. The accident compensation approach of experi ence-rating employer levies to employee claims is also faulted for failing to tightly link employer costs to unsafe conditions. In contrast, the fourth approach of giving workers the right to refuse unsafe work is lauded for its advantages in both detecting hazards and providing incentives for their prevention and rectification. However, improvements on the North American variants of the right to refuse unsafe work are suggested to allow workers to refuse to work in a greater variety of unsafe circumstances without fear of being disciplined.
Productivity, quality and relationship marketing in service operations A revisit in a new service paradigm

Purpose - This article aims to look at the evolution of service management and marketing through three paradigms, the latest prescribing a new logic of service, to comment on a previously published article (Gummesson, 1998) on productivity, quality and relationship marketing in service operations. Design/methodology/approach - The article takes the form of a critical review on productivity, quality and relationship marketing in service operations. Findings - The article suggests that practitioners and scholars in the hospitality field should pay close attention to the new logic of service. Research limitations/implications - The analysis of the 1998 article shows that many of the essential issues are still valid but others need to be amended or dropped. When the original article is cited, it is imperative that researchers consider this. Originality/value - This article shows that the new service logic, Paradigm 3, offers a synthesis of the best of earlier research and discards what is no longer or never was viable. It is a new theory on a higher level but it has an open code and keeps developing. Scholars in the hospitality field are invited to make contributions.
Activation, Public Employment Services and their Clients: The Role of Social Class in a Continental Welfare State

This article fills a gap in the existing literature by investigating how public employment service (PES) staff actually deal with their clients under a continental regime of activation. The results reported here are based on interviews both with PES staff and their unemployed clients in Germany. We argue that due to its Bismarckian origins as an insurance-based system of ‘unemployment protection’, Germany's system of unemployment compensation is attractive not only for the marginalized, but also for core workers. As a result, PES staff deal with clients from very heterogeneous class backgrounds. We demonstrate that social class is a significant factor in client outcomes, and that earlier research has perhaps overemphasized the role of frontline staff as ‘street-level bureaucrats’. While staff do have considerable power, the result of the encounters between the administration and clients also depends on the capabilities of the clients, which, in turn, are strongly related to social class.
Building of a Corporate Governance System in Poland: initial experiences

The process of building a corporate governance system in Poland is an ongoing one. It may be assumed, however, that the past ten years have seen the foundation created for the system. The institution of the supervisory board occupies an essential position within the infrastructure. For its part, the developing capital market, with such important institutions as the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the Stock Market, fills a significant – though not yet broad – supporting function. It must be remembered, however, that the Polish system of corporate governance is still very young and is subject to continuous transformations. To a great extent, the direction of these transformations is marked by the quest for ever more effective solutions in the realm of supervision whilst the pool of experience already accumulated makes possible the implementation of the selected orientation.
Did Overzealous Activists Destroy Housing Affordability in San Francisco?

In this article, I use time-series models of construction and price levels in the San Francisco housing market to test claims that implementation of more strict zoning controls restricts housing construction and artificially inflates housing prices. The results do not support these claims. I argue that the primary barrier to new housing construction derives from the interaction of financial market variables, household search behavior, and the unique characteristics of urban land markets that in tandem act to constrain new construction to high-end luxury segments of the local housing market. Increasing the supply of affordable housing in San Francisco will therefore require large-scale public subsidies to compensate for the failure of the market to meet the pressing housing needs of low-to-moderate-income households.
Active and reactive power coordinated control strategy of battery energy storage system in active distribution network

Large penetration of intermittent renewable energy and complex loads in Active Distribution Network (ADN) has aggravated the fluctuation of voltage and increased power loss. Battery energy storage system (BESS) is a critical device in ADN, which are used to provide active power for the system. However, by connected with the grid using converter, battery has the ability to provide reactive power for the grid without other reactive compensation devices. To exploit the potential of BESS to regulate voltage fluctuations in ADN, in this paper, an active and reactive power coordinated optimization of BESS is proposed, with the goal of realizing lowest power loss as well as minimal voltage fluctuations in ADN. Then a specific solution to this optimal problem is given based on particle swarm algorithm. The results of a case study show that, by comparison between active power control strategy and active and reactive power coordinated control strategy, this paper has confirmed that the latter with reactive output of battery can have a better effect on reducing the power loss and stabilizing voltage fluctuation.
Changing Conceptions of Protected Areas and Conservation: Linking Conservation, Ecological Integrity and Tourism Management

From their first creation, national parks and equivalent reserves were socially constructed in the New World as static, primordial, untouched representations of a pre-European contact environment characterised by the ‘balance of nature’ resting in a steady (climax) state. While these images still linger in the minds of the public, the recent utilisation of landscape ecology, conservation biology and social constructivism to study and re-conceptualise protected areas has demonstrated that parks are not the protected islands of virgin wilderness they were constructed to represent; rather than protecting these areas from disturbance, we now recognise that disturbance is a major component in ecological integrity. We suggest that the resultant shift from species- to process-based conservation (i.e. ecological integrity), from attempting to cocoon parks from outside influences to re-engaging parks with landscape-level processes, has critical ramifications for protected area and sustainable tourism management. Land managers need to adapt to a new paradigm that reflects and supports this philosophical change in conservation principles; this shift is also reflected in science itself, manifested by a move from normal to ‘post-normal’ science which embraces these new principles. This approach should link visitor expectations with dynamic, non-linear, self-organising natural processes in order to meet conservation objectives.
An examination of the factors that signal hotel image to travellers

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on how travellers form impressions of the image projected by a prestigious hotel, with data collected from 409 respondents. The main purpose of the study is to gain more insight into the cues used by travellers evaluating corporate image in the context of an intangible service offering, and to determine the importance of these cues in customers' overall assessment of image. The study identifies a set of five factors that explain corporate image. In order of importance, these factors are physical environment, corporate identity, service personnel, quality of services and accessibility. Implications for tracking and building corporate image are given:
Empirical performance modeling of GPU kernels using active learning

We focus on a design-of-experiments methodology for developing empirical performance models of GPU kernels. Recently, we developed an iterative active learning algorithm that adaptively selects parameter configurations in batches for concurrent evaluation on CPU architectures in order to build performance models over the parameter space. In this paper, we illustrate the adoption of the algorithm when concurrent evaluations are not possible, which is particularly useful in the absence of GPU clusters. We present an empirical study of the algorithm on a diverse set of GPU kernels and hardware. We show that even when concurrent evaluations are not possible, the default batch mode of the algorithm yields better models and the iterative active learning algorithm reduces the overall time required to obtain high-quality empirical performance models for GPU kernels.
Modelling the long-term impacts on affected children of adult HIV: benefits, challenges and a possible approach

We outline the benefits, challenges and possible approaches to developing mathematical models that could be used to estimate the magnitude of negative consequences of adult HIV infection for children. Adult HIV infection can lead to numerous negative consequences for dependent children, including depression, anxiety, withdrawal from school and early sexual debut, among others. For advocacy and planning purposes, it is important to highlight and consider as many of these as possible. A focus solely on orphan numbers, which is the typical summary measure for children affected by HIV and AIDS, can be misleading. The complexity of child development that is characterized by the interaction of a multitude of proximal and distal factors, coupled with a significant lack of data on child development in the context of adult HIV infection make the development of models a challenging task. Although it may not be possible in the first attempt to develop a population-based model capable of examining family dynamics, the negative consequences together with the impact of interventions, steps in that direction can be taken. We propose approaches and assumptions that we believe will allow the development of a useful first set of models. We conclude with a brief discussion of the type of data that, if collected, would facilitate refinement and development of these models.
Sexual Morbidity Associated With Poorer Psychological Adjustment Among Gynecological Cancer Survivors

Objectives: Sexual morbidity is a distressing and undertreated problem in gynecological cancer survivorship known to occur early and persist well beyond the period of physical recovery. Although often studied as a separate domain, sexuality represents an integral component of psychological adjustment and quality of life (QoL) that is adversely affected by cancer treatments. The present study tests the association between sexual morbidity, and adverse psychological adjustment and QoL outcomes. Methods: A cross-sectional design was used. The participants were gynecological (cervical, endometrial, ovarian, and vulvar) cancer survivors who were partnered (N = 186), whose cancer was diagnosed 2 to 10 years previously, and who were at least 6 months post any cancer therapy. Most had been found to have early-stage disease (70%) and were treated with hysterectomy (77%), chemotherapy (43%), and/or radiotherapy (23%). Sexual morbidity was operationalized as a multidimensional construct including sexual behavior, sexual functioning, and subjective sexual satisfaction, assessed by patient self-report. Outcomes included self-reported depressive symptoms, traumatic stress symptoms, cancer-specific stress, stress about body changes, and QoL. Nurse-rated of performance status and disruptive signs/symptoms of treatment toxicity, as well as relevant sociodemographic and disease variables were collected as potential controls. Results: Hierarchical multiple regression analyses tested sexual morbidity as a predictor of poor outcomes. All statistical models were significant, accounting for 12% to 53% of the variance in psychological adjustment/QoL. Sexual morbidity covaried with worsened depressive symptoms, body change stress, and psychological QoL beyond the negative contributions of (older) age, (poorer) performance status, and (greater) fatigue. Notably, disease and treatment variables were not statistically significant correlates of psychological adjustment or QoL. Conclusions: These findings suggest that prevention or treatment of sexual morbidity might foster improved psychological adjustment/QoL. Given the high rates of sexual morbidity in this population and the connection between sexuality and broader psychological adjustment/QoL, there is a clear need for better integration of sexuality rehabilitation into routine clinical care.