Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-term development of acid deposition (1880–2030) in sensitive freshwater regions in Europe

Abstract. Time series of the deposition of acidifying substances are a pre-requisite for the study of the acidification and recovery of ecosystems such as surface waters. This paper reports the derivation and calculation of deposition trends of the potentially acidifying compounds SO2, NOx and NH3 in sensitive freshwater regions in Europe studied in the EU-funded RECOVER: 2010 project. The time interval covered is 151 years: from 1880, which can be considered as the pre-industrial era in most countries, to 2030, taking into account the consequences of current emission reduction agreements in Europe. The historic and predicted emissions for European countries are used to calculate the deposition development in the study areas, using meteorologically averaged atmospheric source-receptor transfer coefficients derived from the EMEP Lagrangian acid deposition model. These time series were used as driving forces for the application of the dynamic acidification model MAGIC to study the acidification and recovery of sensitive freshwater ecosystems in Europe. Keywords: acid deposition, historic depositions, sensitive lake regions, Europe
Is Impact a Measure of Quality? Some Reflections on the Research Quality and Impact Assessment Agendas

This article uses the development of a ‘Research Quality Framework’ in Australia as a focus for reflection on the way in which quality is assessed in relation to education research, and a consideration of the role and situation of a national association of education research in relation to that. The study examines ways in which ‘quality’ and ‘impact’ are being defined in particular practices, and how the broader context of the status of education research impacts on debates and strategies with regard to quality. It is argued that the current focus on measures of quality assessment need to be re-coupled with more attention to contexts of production of education research and the issue of how quality research can be developed. It is argued too that education research associations do need to engage with the quality assessment exercises, but that doing this will pose some real tensions for them.
Improvement of Personalized Recommendation Algorithm Based Content-boosted Collaborative Filtering Algorithm

Collaborative filtering (CF) systems have been proven to be very effective for personalized and accurate recommendations. These systems are based on the Recommendations of previous ratings by various users and products. Since the present database is very sparse, the missing values are considered first and based on that, a complete prediction dataset are made. In this paper, some standard computational techniques are applied within the framework of Content-boosted collaborative filtering with imputational rating data to evaluate and produce CF predictions. The Content-boosted collaborative filtering algorithm uses either naive Bayes or means imputation, depending on the sparsity of the original CF rating dataset. Results are presented and shown that this approach performs better than a traditional content-based predictor and collaborative filters.
Social Anxiety in Relation to Self-Control Depletion Following Social Interactions

Although prior research suggests that high social anxiety is associated with poor self-control during and after social interactions, only a few studies have formally tested this relationship. The current research therefore includes three studies examining how social anxiety is related to self-control. Study 1 showed that social anxiety is negatively related to general trait self-control. Studies 2 and 3 showed that higher social anxiety is related to poorer behavioral self-control after two types of social interactions, social evaluation and working with another person on a task. These results demonstrate that higher social anxiety is indeed related to decrements in self-control following social interaction. This suggests that socially anxious individuals are at risk of exhibiting poor self-control during and/or after social interactions, which has many negative implications, including poor interpersonal relationships and an exacerbation of social anxiety symptoms.
Explaining Interest Rate Decisions When the MPC Members Believe in Different Stories

Modern central banks do not only announce the interest rate decision, they also communicate a "story" that explains why they reached the particular decision. When decisions are made by a committee, it could be difficult to find a story that is both consistent with the decision and representative for the committee. Two alternatives that give a unique and consistent story are: (i) vote on the interest rate and let the winner decide the story, (ii) vote on the elements of the story and let the interest rate follow from the story. The two procedures tend to give different interest rate decisions and different stories due to an aggregation inconsistency called the "discursive dilemma". We investigate the quality of the stories under the two approaches, and find that alternative (ii) gives stories that tend to be closer to the true (but unobservable) story. Thus, our results give an argument in favour of premise-based, as opposed to conclusion-based, decisionmaking.
Instruction prefetching using branch prediction information

Instruction prefetching can effectively reduce instruction cache misses, thus improving the performance. In this paper, we propose a prefetching scheme, which employs a branch predictor to run ahead of the execution unit and to prefetch potentially useful instructions. Branch prediction-based (BP-based) prefetching has a separate small fetching unit, allowing it to compute and predict targets autonomously. Our simulations show that a 4-issue machine with BP-based prefetching achieves higher performance than a plain cache 4 times the size. In addition, BP-based prefetching outperforms other hardware instruction fetching schemes, such as next-n line prefetching and wrong-path prefetching, by a factor of 17-44% in stall overhead.
Time course of recovery of vertical jump height and heart rate versus running speed after a 90-km foot race

The aim of this study was to characterize the time course of recovery of muscle function and the heart rate response to steady-state exercise following an ultramarathon. Eight male runners (46 ± 7 years; mean ± s) competing in the 90-km Comrades marathon and seven control runners (45 ± 6 years) with the same running experience (11 ± 3 years), but who did not run in the race, were recruited for the study. The heart rate response to various running speeds on the track was measured twice before the race. Squat jump, counter-movement jump and drop jump height were measured on three occasions before the race. The track tests were repeated on days 4, 11, 18, 25 and 32 after the race. The vertical jump tests were repeated on the day of the race and on days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 18, 25 and 32 after the race. Although the heart rate response to steady-state exercise was elevated at all speeds (3.75-4.55 m . s ⊃1 ) for the duration of the study, this difference was only statistically significant on day 25 after the ra.
What did we learn from the extremely bright gamma ray bursts 990123 and 080319B

The two brightest and so far the best studied gamma ray bursts (GRBs), 990123 and 080319B, were ordinary, highly collimated GRBs produced in a core collapse supernova explosion within a high-density wind environment and observed from a very near-axis viewing angle. Inverse Compton scattering (ICS) and synchrotron radiation (SR), the two dominant radiation mechanisms in the cannonball (CB) model of GRBs, together with the burst environment, provide a very simple and sufficiently accurate description of the multiwavelength lightcurves of their prompt and afterglow emissions.
Team learning: through the relational dynamics of co‐operation and rivalry in team communities

This paper explores the constructive links between cooperation, rivalry, and learning within the structure of team communities. Drawing upon social learning theory and qualitative data from case studies conducted in Danish team‐based firms, the main purpose is to argue that both cooperation and rivalry are important triggers for mobilizing learning processes within and between teams. However, social learning theory tends to disregard the positive aspects of rivalry. Instead, the paper suggests that rivalry is often critical for learning to take place, and identifies four recurrent stories of rivalry as a trigger of learning based on two case studies of teamwork dynamics in firms. Consequently, this paper argues for the need to extend social learning theory beyond its rather harmonious learning perspective.
A avaliação das relações entre a empatia e a satisfação conjugal: um estudo preliminar

O estudo avaliou as relacoes existentes entre a empatia e a satisfacao conjugal. Participaram da pesquisa 120 individuos casados, alunos e funcionarios de varios Institutos e Faculdades da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, com media de idade de 38,99 anos. Os participantes responderam a um Questionario de Empatia Conjugal (QEC), ao Indice de Reatividade Interpessoal (IRI) (Davis, 1983) e a Medida de Satisfacao Conjugal (Dela Coleta, 1989). Os dados obtidos com os instrumentos acima especificados revelaram um nivel significativamente mais elevado de satisfacao no casamento entre os participantes que possuiam parceiros com niveis mais elevados de empatia conjugal. A avaliacao das correlacoes entre as tres medidas apontou correlacoes estatisticamente significantes entre as escalas: IRI e Satisfacao Conjugal (r=0,28, p<0,01); IRI e QEC (r=0,25, p<0,01); e entre Satisfacao Conjugal e QEC (r=0,74, p<0,001). O coeficiente alfa elevado (0,95) encontrado na medida QEC permite recomendar sua utilizacao na clinica e em pesquisa. Palavras-chave: empatia; satisfacao conjugal; avaliacao.
An Improved Method of Variable Structure Control for Uncertain Discrete-Time Systems

On the basis analysis of the design of sliding surface, some defects of the conventional methods are stated. To overcome the defects, an improved method of variable structure control for uncertain discrete-time systems is presented. The equivalent control strategy is formed. According to the improved method, the variable structure control systems lie on the sliding surface from the beginning of any initial state, and are robust to the parameter variations and disturbance. The simulation results illustrate that the improved method is feasible.
MIMO-OFDM FOR ARBITRARY MULTIPLEXING RATES BASED ONDYNAMIC SUB CARRIER MAPPING

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless technology in combination with the orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) is an attractive air interface solution for next-generation wireless local area networks (WLANs). Among the various resources in MIMO multicarrier systems the multiplexing rate assignment is related to the rate of transmissions. Here we proposed a new hybrid cyclic delay diversity (HCDD) scheme for multiple inputs multiple output (MIMO)-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Here we can achieve non integer multiplexing rate by assigning sub carriers and we can also select required number of transmitting antennas and adjusting diversity and multiplexing gains to matching various user requirements. In order to bridging the multiplexing rate with diversity gain here we propose dynamic sub carrier mapping for subcarrier allocation for multiplexing rate achievements. The advantage of proposed system is presented in the applications of scalable video broadcasting (SVB). Keywords—MIMO-OFDM,DSTTD,CDD,SCDD,diversity multiplexing-tradeoff.
Evolution of Analysis of Polyhenols from Grapes, Wines, and Extracts

Grape and wine phenolics are structurally diverse, from simple molecules to oligomers and polymers usually designated as tannins. They have an important impact on the organoleptic properties of wines, that’s why their analysis and quantification are of primordial importance. The extraction of phenolics from grapes and from wines is the first step involved in the analysis. Then, several analytical methods have been developed for the determination of total content of phenolic, while chromatographic and spectrophotometric analyses are continuously improved in order to achieve adequate separation of phenolic molecules, their subsequent identification and quantification. This review provides a summary of evolution of analysis of polyphenols from grapes, wines and extracts.
Is the home health care monitoring effective?

The monitoring blood pressure at home is an important part of managing hypertension. We have developed a home healthcare system to monitor blood pressure. Our system has operated for about 1 year. In this study, we focused on blood pressure monitoring and discussed the motivation of subjects, and the importance of monitoring. We tested two different locations: one was a non-interventional location in Sapporo, the other was an interventional location in Osaka. Sixty-one out of 144 and 34 out of 61 subjects performed more than 100 measurements per year in Sapporo and Osaka, respectively. The results showed that the data obtained from subjects who monitored more than 100 times, twice a day, during the year are reproducible and reliable. Home blood pressure monitoring may be a good predictor of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease. However, the successful monitoring depended on the motivation and improvement of health condition of subjects.
Prevalence of child victimization, abuse, crime, and violence exposure.

The epidemiology of child victimization, abuse, crime, and violence exposure is muddled by terminology, making an accurate counting of the problem harder. For example, take three ofthe key terms used to define this field: exposure to violence, child abuse, and child maltreatment. Unfortunately, none of these terms accurately and distinctively covers the domain that professionals are actually concerned about. For example, violence (as in exposure to violence) rigorously defined means acts of physical force intended to cause pain. Yet many people concerned about these issues are interested in inappropriate but nonviolent sex offenses against children that do not require actual force and are not intended to cause pain. This is not technically violence; so violence is not a fully accurate term.
OWL-T: An Ontology-based Task Template Language for Modeling Business Processes

With the growth of business demands, it becomes crucial to compose existing services in order to create new value added applications. Some languages like BPEL, WSCI enable creating complex composite services but they only allow static, manual composition. Basing on semantic technologies, many researchers have proposed (semi-)automatic methods for service composition, which often rely on a close world assumption and are not scalable for complex systems. In essence, these approaches lack a means for users expressing their complex business demands in a form that facilitates systems automatically generating a composite service. In this paper, we introduce our approach to provide an ontology/language based on the OWL, called OWL-T, for formally and semantically defining task templates that capture business demands at a high-level abstraction. Therefore, with a complex business demand expressed in terms of structured tasks, users need not to care about technical details of composition languages and an automatic composition method can be used to transform task templates into executable processes. In addition, based on semantic technologies, the OWL-T ontology also enhances the interoperability for better sharing and reuse of task templates in various domains of discourse.
Specifying and implementing UI data bindings with active operations

Modern GUI toolkits propose the use of declarative data bindings to link the domain data to their presentations. These approaches work fine for defining simple bindings, but require an increasing programming effort as soon as the bindings become more complex. In this paper, we propose the use of active operations for specifying and implementing UI data bindings to tackle this issue. We demonstrate that the proposed approach goes beyond the usual declarative data bindings by combining the simplicity of the declarative approaches with the expressiveness of active operations.
Effects of X-Ray Dose On Rhizosphere Studies Using X-Ray Computed Tomography

X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) is a non-destructive imaging technique originally designed for diagnostic medicine, which was adopted for rhizosphere and soil science applications in the early 1980s. X-ray CT enables researchers to simultaneously visualise and quantify the heterogeneous soil matrix of mineral grains, organic matter, air-filled pores and water-filled pores. Additionally, X-ray CT allows visualisation of plant roots in situ without the need for traditional invasive methods such as root washing. However, one routinely unreported aspect of X-ray CT is the potential effect of X-ray dose on the soil-borne microorganisms and plants in rhizosphere investigations. Here we aimed to i) highlight the need for more consistent reporting of X-ray CT parameters for dose to sample, ii) to provide an overview of previously reported impacts of X-rays on soil microorganisms and plant roots and iii) present new data investigating the response of plant roots and microbial communities to X-ray exposure. Fewer than 5% of the 126 publications included in the literature review contained sufficient information to calculate dose and only 2.4% of the publications explicitly state an estimate of dose received by each sample. We conducted a study involving rice roots growing in soil, observing no significant difference between the numbers of root tips, root volume and total root length in scanned versus unscanned samples. In parallel, a soil microbe experiment scanning samples over a total of 24 weeks observed no significant difference between the scanned and unscanned microbial biomass values. We conclude from the literature review and our own experiments that X-ray CT does not impact plant growth or soil microbial populations when employing a low level of dose (<30 Gy). However, the call for higher throughput X-ray CT means that doses that biological samples receive are likely to increase and thus should be closely monitored.
AGENT-BASED SIMULATION OF PRODUCT INNOVATION : MODULARITY , COMPLEXITY AND DIVERSITY

The importance of modularity in product innovation is analyzed in this paper. Through simulations with an agent-based modular economic model, we examine the significance of the use of a modular structure in new product designs in terms of its impacts upon customer satisfaction and firms' competitiveness. To achieve the above purpose, the automatically defined terminal is proposed and is used to modify the simple genetic programming.
Kriging Model combined with latin hypercube sampling for surrogate modeling of analog integrated circuit performance

The strong nonlinearity brought by the large circuit scale and more complicated physical/electrical models is making traditional Response Surface Model (i.e. linear or quadratic polynomial) unsuitable for the surrogate-modeling of nowadays integrated circuits. Besides, the random-measurement-error-based analysis techniques and principles developed for traditional Response Surface Model may be meaningless facing the deterministic data from circuit simulation experiments, which are not subject to random measurement errors essentially. Further, traditional Response Surface Model can not mimic circuit behaviors in global process/designable parameter space. This paper proposes using Kriging Model combined with Latin Hypercube Sampling to build surrogate model of circuit performance. We firstly introduce and compare the Response Surface Modeling based on traditional Design of Experiments and the Kriging Modeling combined with Latin Hypercube Sampling, and then apply both methods to circuit performance surrogate-modeling of an integrated operational amplifier. The result shows that Kriging Model needs less sample points and provides 2× higher accuracy than quadratic Response Surface Model does. Kriging Modeling of circuit performance can be utilized to estimate parametric yield. Besides, it may facilitate the global optimization of parametric yield or circuit performance.
A Modulation Strategy to Operate Multilevel Multiphase Diode-Clamped and Active-Clamped DC–AC Converters at Low Frequency Modulation Indices With DC-Link Capacitor Voltage Balance

This paper proposes a modulation strategy for multilevel multiphase diode-clamped dc–ac converters (also applicable to other functionally equivalent topologies) able to keep the dc-link capacitor voltages balanced under passive front ends, low frequency modulation indices (i.e., low number of switching transitions per fundamental cycle), any value of the amplitude modulation index, and any ac-side displacement power factor. A suitable phase voltage pattern with minimum number of switching transitions is presented for the n-level three-phase case. Subsequently, it is extended to higher number of switching transitions per fundamental cycle and to higher number of phases. Simulation results with three, four, and five levels; three and five phases; and several frequency-modulation-index values are presented to validate the proposed modulation strategy. Experimental results obtained with a four-level three-phase dc–ac converter prototype are also provided. The proposed modulation strategy enables the use of this type of converters in applications where the ac fundamental frequency may be close to the switching frequency, such as in high-power systems and variable-speed motor drives.
Predictors for abnormal voiding cystourethrography in pediatric patients undergoing renal transplant evaluation

Abstract: The role of pretransplant voiding cystourethrography (VCUG) in adults has been questioned owing to the low prevalence of abnormal findings. As there are no studies evaluating the relevance of VCUG in children and because vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) occurs with higher prevalence in children, we performed a retrospective cohort study to identify any predictors for abnormal VCUG. We reviewed 271 consecutive renal transplants performed between 1980 and 1997. By logistic regression, the etiology of end‐stage renal disease (ESRD) and age at transplantation (Tx) were strong predictors of abnormal pretransplant VCUG findings in children. On multi‐variate analysis, children with urologic etiologies of renal disease had an odds ratio (OR) of 16.5 (p < 0.0001) for abnormal VCUG as compared to children with non‐urologic or acquired causes of ESRD. Similarly, children transplanted when younger than 8 yr of age had an OR of 3.0 (p = 0.0043) for having an abnormal VCUG when compared with older children. Finally, our analysis suggests that children with abnormal pretransplant VCUG findings, whether or not pretransplant surgical correction was performed, were over three‐fold more likely to require post‐transplant urologic surgery when compared to children with normal pretransplant VCUG. We conclude that urologic causes of ESRD and age under 8 yr are strong independent predictors of abnormal pretransplant VCUG findings, and that these findings are of clinical relevance both in deciding whether to pursue pretransplant VCUG and in the post‐transplant course of the patient.