Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Strengthening the synergies among global biodiversity targets to reconcile conservation and socio‐economic demands

Most of the world's nations adopted the 20 Aichi global biodiversity targets to be met by 2020, including the protection of at least 10% of their coastal and marine areas (Target 11) and the avoidance of extinction of threatened species (Target 12). However, reconciling these biodiversity targets with socio‐economic demands remains a great dilemma for implementing conservation policies. In this paper, Aichi Targets 11 and 12 were simultaneously addressed using Brazil's exclusive economic zone as an example. Priority areas for expanding the current system of marine protected areas within the country's eight marine ecoregions were identified with data on threatened vertebrates under different scenarios. Additionally, the potential effects of major socio‐economic activities (small‑ and large‐scale fishing, seabed mining, and oil and gas exploration) on the representation of conservation features in proposed marine protected areas were explored. Areas selected for expanding marine protected areas solely based on biodiversity data were different (spatial overlap from 62% to 93%) from areas prioritized when socio‐economic features were incorporated into the analysis. The addition of socio‐economic data in the prioritization process substantially decreased opportunity costs and potential conservation conflicts, at the cost of reducing significantly (up to 31%) the coverage of conservation features. Large‑ and small‐scale fisheries act in most of the exclusive economic zone and are the major constraints for protecting high‐priority areas. Nevertheless, there is some spatial mismatch between areas of special relevance for conservation and socio‐economic activities, suggesting an opportunity for reconciling the achievement of biodiversity targets and development goals within the intricate Brazilian seascape by 2020 and beyond.
Effect of 1, 25 (OH)2 Vitamin D3 on Serum Levels of Inflammatory Cytokines in Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting

Background: A number of preventive or therapeutic strategies have been proposed to compensate for the inflammatory process during adult cardiac surgeries; none has been considered definitive. 1,25 (OH)2 vitamin D3 is a type of physiologic hormones with immunomodulatory effects. This study assessed the effect of oral vitamin D on serum levels of interleukin-1 (IL-1), IL-6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) in adult coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Materials and methods: In a double blind placebo controlled clinical trial, with a sample size of 80 patients, randomly assigned in either the placebo group (including 40 patients; placebo pills) or the intervention group (i.e. 40 patients; vitamin D pearls), CABG surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass was performed. Serum cytokines (IL-1, IL-6, and TNF-α) were evaluated preoperatively and during the first postoperative day. Results: Serum TNF-α level was similar in the two groups; however, postoperative levels of IL-1 and IL-6 were significantly lower in vitamin D group. Conclusion: The current study demonstrated that oral vitamin D supplements could augment immunomodulatory effects in adult patients undergoing cardiac surgical procedures (mainly CABG).
BURNOUT AS A MEDIATOR OF THE INTERRELATIONS BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND STRESS COPING STRATEGIES IN NURSES

The research focuses on the questions of if nurses working in various health care facilities present different abilities for emotional adaptation to the work environment, if they differ in feeling job related burnout, and what stress coping strategies they tend to employ. The Questionnaire of Emotional Intelligence (INTE), Link Burnout Questionnaire (LBQ), and the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) were administered. The study comprised 104 nurses from various health care facilities located within 7 voivodships (Polish provincial administrative divisions). This included three groups of different types of work: general care, specialized medical care, and units providing care for patients at a high risk of dying. A statistical analysis was performed with IBM SPSS Statistic 24. A regression analysis of the interface between emotional intelligence and stress-coping strategies showed that a high degree of emotional intelligence fostered a strategy of task-avoidance coping, and diminished the tendency to concentrate on emotions during stressful situations, it also minimized the propensity of the individual to reduce stress by distracting themselves with other activities. However, the mediation analysis revealed that the impact of emotional intelligence decreased after the role of occupational burnout was taken into consideration. This finding suggests that it is rather the occupational burnout that limits the possibility to apply effective stress coping strategies and that stress management does not reduce the risk of burnout. The study indicated the significant role of emotional intelligence: as a higher level of this form of intelligence corresponded with a lower feeling of burnout in all its dimensions. The mediation analysis revealed that it is the occurrence of burnout that plays the most significant role in adjustment to the work environment. This finding suggests that the prevention of burnout is the most effective factor enabling productive work, and the maintenance of psychological wellbeing despite the many job stressors which may occur in the workplace. It creates the need to clarify its links with depression in order to concentrate on a really effective treatment.
Pixie: A Social Chatbot

We present Pixie, a socialbot submitted to the 2017 Alexa Prize, developed with the objective of holding engaging casual conversations on open-ended topics. We discuss the modular, heterogeneous architecture of the Pixie system, and highlight the successes and shortcomings of our primarily template-based approach. We reﬂect on our ﬁndings about alternative paradigms used in the prototyping phase; in particular, we discuss the challenges of bridging recent breakthroughs in deep learning with the frontier of machine social dialogue.
A variational approach to 3D geometry reconstruction from two or multiple views

In the last years we have developed some methods for 3D reconstruction. First we began with the problem of reconstructing a 3D scene from a stereoscopic pair of images. We developed some methods based on energy functionals which produce dense disparity maps by preserving discontinuities from image boundaries. Then we passed to the problem of reconstructing a 3D scene from multiple views (more than 2). The method for multiple view reconstruction relies on the method for stereoscopic reconstruction. For every pair of consecutive images we estimate a disparity map and then we apply a robust method that searches for good correspondences through the sequence of images. Recently we have proposed several methods for 3D surface regularization. This is a postprocessing step necessary for smoothing the ﬁnal surface, which could be afected by noise or mismatch correspondences. These regularization methods are interesting because they use the information from the reconstructing process and not only from the 3D surface. We have tackled all these problems from an energy minimization approach. We investigate the associated Euler–Lagrange equation of the energy functional, and we approach the solution of the underlying partial diﬀerential equation (PDE) using a gradient descent method.
Edward Gerald Hingert STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT IN ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION CASE: ABANDONED MINE LAND REHABILITATION

Edward Hingert: Stakeholder engagement in ecological restoration. Case: Abandoned mine land rehabilitation. Master’s Thesis: 82 pages, 2 appendix pages Master’s Programme in Leadership for Change, Sustainable Business Management December 2019 In this master’s thesis, the study focuses on the stakeholder engagement that occurred in a form of ecological restoration namely Abandoned mine lands (AMLs) rehabilitation projects. AML rehabilitation project is a project that involves the assisting of the natural environment in its rejuvenation process. The research aims to comprehend the occurrence of stakeholder engagement and its contribution to the success of AML rehabilitation projects. The research questions include (1) When and how does stakeholder engagement happen in AML rehabilitation initiatives? and (2) What is the contribution of stakeholder engagement to the success of AML rehabilitation projects? The study includes the identification and categorization of stakeholders from featured AML rehabilitation cases, analysis of the stakeholder interests and evaluation of successful AML rehabilitation cases. The theoretical framework of this study is formulated using stakeholder theory, stakeholder engagement, ecological restoration, and stakeholder value creation. This leads to the utilization of factors including stakeholder interests and stakeholder interactions. Furthermore, the stakeholder engagement of the natural environment is extensively discussed. The study utilizes a qualitative case study and the data is generated using document collection and interviews (phone communication and text-based communication). The data are then analyzed inductively through the use of content analysis methods. Three propositions derived from these research outcomes are; (1) Stakeholder engagement commences immediately after the site is assessed and chosen for rehabilitation before the detailed planning process. (2) Stakeholder engagement with the natural environment is an extensive and complex process. (3) Successful stakeholder engagement in the AML rehabilitation project allows the transferring of confidence and know-how to the next stage of the project or the further projects. This master’s thesis contributes to the stakeholder and ecological restoration literature by giving a further comprehensive depth on the effects and importance of stakeholder engagement in AML rehabilitation. In conclusion, the study proposes that various elements of stakeholder engagement have significant influences on the success of AML rehabilitation projects.
First Record of the Lizardfish Synodus mundyi (Actinopterygii: Aulopiformes: Synodontidae) from Japan

A rare lizardfish, Synodus mundyi Randall, 2009, is newly reported from the northwestern Pacific around Japan, based on a single specimen (147 mm in standard length) collected from off Muko-jima island of the Ogasawara Islands at a depth of 63 m. Prior to the present study, the species was represented by only the two type specimens collected from the Hawaiian Islands. Among Japanese congeners, it is most similar to the Indo-Pacific Synodus doaki Russell and Cressey, 1979 especially in having a very long nasal flap, but differs notably from the latter in that the tip of the pectoral fin extends well beyond a line connecting the dorsaland pelvic-fin origins (vs. just reaching this level). The Japanese specimen is fully described, with a color photograph of the fresh specimen. A new standard Japanese name, “Kaede-eso”, is proposed for S. mundyi.
Psychological and Sociological Factors Weakening Public Budget Awareness

Public budget, which is the total of the expenditures made to meet the common needs of the society and of the revenues obtained to finance these expenditures can be expressed with a “common wallet” metaphor. However, the main problem is, in the case that public resources are not used correctly and effectively, why citizens do not show as much sensitivity towards their common wallets, as they show towards their personal wallets. It is important to examine the factors that weaken public budget awareness (common wallet perception) on the basis of behavioral economics, which is an area that observes the effects of people's attitudes, behaviors, and thoughts on economic-based choices and decisions and examines these observations based on experiments. For this reason, the main purpose of our study has been to bring some concepts used in the fields of psychology and sociology in the field of public finance. In this study, the "fiscal alienation" concept was derived from the concept of lack of social belonging, “lack of fiscal altruistic punishment" concept from the concept of altruistic punishment, "fiscal bystander effect" from the concept of the bystander effect, "fiscal social loafing" concept from the concept of social loafing, "behavioral fiscal dissonance" concept from the concept of the theory of cognitive dissonance, and "the problem of fiscal ethic" concept from the concept of undeveloped ethical culture/behaviors.
Warm Start of Multi-channel Weighted Nuclear Norm Minimization for Color Image Denoising

—The multi-channel weighted nuclear norm minimization (MCWNNM) performs excellently on color image de-noising. Can we further improve the effectiveness of MCWNNM? To answer this question, we propose warm start of multi-channel weighted nuclear norm minimization (WS-MCWNNM) for color image denoising. In WS-MCWNNM, spatial ﬁltering is utilized to preprocess the noisy image, and the result of preprocessing is treated as the input of MCWNNM model to remove noise. Experiment results show the proposed WS-MCWNNM outperforms MCWNNM both on peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity.
IMESET’19 MALAYSIA

It is aimed to eliminate the need to develop a method to ensure that the availability of the military vehicles in the contracting stage, which is determined for the needs of the army, can be provided in a costeffective manner at the beginning of the project. A prototype fabricated military vehicle will be used as a subject. The average Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) for the vehicle systems will be determined according to the expected availability target at the contracting stage. In this study, real MTTR values and availability values will be calculated by working on the prototype vehicle manufactured and comparison will be made. Since the actual readiness value is not suitable, a histogram graph will be created with MTTR data to determine which systems should be intervened. Since a military vehicle with prototype manufacturing was used in the study, due to confidentiality, the numerical data cannot be shared one-to-one and will be shared over a certain amount of modified data to accurately reflect the results of the calculations. The vehicle consists of 60 main systems. The availability of the vehicle under the contract is expected to be 80%. This value is distributed according to previous experience, according to the main systems, the number of subsystems and the mission critical levels. Mean time between failures (MTBF) and MTTR values of the systems used in the projects implemented are taken into consideration. Although MTTR values of the systems on the prototype vehicle were calculated at this stage, MTBF values were obtained from past projects using the same or very similar systems. The availability of the prototype vehicle increased to approximately 82%. As a result of the studies, it was seen that the availability of a vehicle in the preliminary design stage was achieved thanks to its practical knowledge. However, one of the major factors in the consistency of calculations is the ability to make accurate estimates due to experience. Considering this situation, it is aimed to develop a theoretical calculation method.
Equity incentives, earnings management and corporate governance: Empirical evidence using UK panel data

JEL Classification: G340, M210, M410, M420, M480 DOI: 10.22495/cocv17i2art10 Using a UK panel data set drawn from 1675 Chief Executive Officer (CEO) year observations and 1540 Chief Financial Officer (CFO) year observations, we examine the relationship between CEO and CFO equity incentives and earnings management. In addition, we examine the moderation effect of corporate governance mechanisms on the relationship between executives’ equity incentives and earnings management. We use multivariate regression models to test our hypotheses. We find that CEO equity incentives are related to higher absolute and income increasing earnings management. These results support the managerial power theory argument that CEOs exploit equitylinked compensation to obtain more personal benefits without causing public anger. Contrary to CEO equity incentives, we could not find any significant relationship between CFO equity incentives and any of the earnings management proxies. In addition, we find that corporate governance quality (measured by individual mechanisms and overall index) has no effect on the relationship between executives’ equity incentives and earnings management. This result indicates that whereas some corporate governance mechanisms can reduce earnings management in general, they do not affect wealth driven incentives to manipulate accruals. In total, results question the effectiveness of the corporate governance system in mitigating opportunistic behavior motivated by executives’ compensation structures.
Observations of speciated isoprene nitrates in Beijing: implications for isoprene chemistry

Abstract. Isoprene is the most important biogenic volatile organic compound in the atmosphere. Its calculated impact on ozone (O3) is critically dependent on the model isoprene oxidation chemical scheme, in particular the way the isoprene-derived organic nitrates (IN) are treated. By combining gas chromatography with mass spectrometry, we have developed a system capable of separating and unambiguously measuring individual IN isomers. In this paper we use measurements from its first field deployment, which took place in Beijing as part of the Atmospheric Pollution and Human Health in a Chinese Megacity programme, to test understanding of the isoprene chemistry as simulated in the Master Chemical Mechanism (MCM) (v.3.3.1). Seven individual isoprene nitrates were identified and quantified during the campaign: two β-hydroxy nitrates (IHN), four δ-carbonyl nitrates (ICN), and propanone nitrate. Our measurements show that in the summertime conditions experienced in Beijing the ratio of (1-OH, 2-ONO2)-IHN to (4-OH, 3-ONO2)-IHN (the numbers indicate the carbon atom in the isoprene chain to which the radical is added) increases at NO mixing ratios below 2 ppb. This provides observational field evidence of the redistribution of the peroxy radicals derived from OH oxidation of isoprene away from the kinetic ratio towards a new thermodynamic equilibrium consistent with box model calculations. The observed amounts of δ-ICN demonstrate the importance of daytime addition of NO3 to isoprene in Beijing but suggest that the predominant source of the δ-ICN in the model (reaction of NO with δ-nitrooxy peroxy radicals) may be too large. Our speciated measurements of the four δ-ICN exhibit a mean C1 : C4 isomer ratio of 1.4 and a mean trans : cis isomer ratio of 7 and provide insight into the isomeric distribution of the δ-nitrooxy peroxy radicals. Together our measurements and model results indicate that propanone nitrate was formed from the OH oxidation of δ-ICN both during the day and night, as well as from NO3 addition to propene at night. This study demonstrates the value of speciated IN measurements in testing understanding of the isoprene degradation chemistry and shows how more extensive measurements would provide greater constraints. It highlights areas of the isoprene chemistry that warrant further study, in particular the impact of NO on the formation of the IHN and the NO3-initiated isoprene degradation chemistry, as well as the need for further laboratory studies on the formation and the losses of IN, in particular via photolysis of δ-ICN and hydrolysis.
Do Firms Game Quality Ratings? Evidence from Mandatory Disclosure of Airline On-Time Performance

Many quality disclosure programs provide consumers with information that is based on whether a product meets a particular threshold. This creates the potential for “gaming” as firms have incentives to improve the quality of specifically those products that can easily be brought above the threshold. We investigate this type of behavior in the context of government-mandated disclosure of airline on-time performance. While this program collects data on the actual minutes of delay incurred, it ranks airlines based only on the fraction of their flights that arrive 15 or more minutes late. This creates the incentive for airlines to selectively reduce delays on flights they expect to arrive with about 15 minutes of delay. We estimate the extent to which airlines engage in this type of gaming and, in particular, whether the occurrence of such gaming depends on whether employees are explicitly incentivized based on the airline’s performance in the program. We find little evidence of gaming by airlines that have no incentive programs in place or by airlines that have implemented incentive programs with targets that are unrealistically hard to achieve. On the other hand, we find strong evidence of “gaming” by airlines that have incentive programs with a target level of performance that can realistically be achieved. Specifically, for these airlines, we find that their flights that are predicted to arrive with between 15 and 16 minutes delay have significantly shorter taxi-in times than other flights and are significantly more likely to arrive exactly one minute sooner than predicted. Counterfactual exercises that simulate an airline’s distribution of delays in the absence of taxitime distortions indicate that even small improvements in taxi times can – if applied to the “right” set of flights – result in changes in an airline’s ranking. We thank Severin Borenstein, Bob Gibbons, Matt Mitchell, Steve Puller and seminar participants at Boston University, New York University (Stern), UC Berkeley (Haas), UC San Diego, the University of Maryland, the University of Toronto (Rotman), the U.S. Department of Justice, the AEA Meetings (2011), the Berkeley-Stanford IO Fest (2010) and the USC Conference on Game Theory in Law, Business and Political Economy for helpful comments.
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS-ROLE IN ASSESSMENT OF COM- PETENCY OF KNOWLEDGE IN ANATOMY

Address for Correspondence: Dr. Bheem Prasad, Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Phulwari Sharif, Patna, Bihar-801507, India. E-Mail: drbheemp@aiimspatna.org Background: The accurate, reliable and timely assessment of students is an essential domain of teaching during Medical professional courses. The Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) are time tested method of ready assessment of undergraduate students. Although it evaluates student’s cognitive knowledge but does not evaluate professional skills. However it is said that MCQs emphasize recall of factual information rather than conceptual understanding and interpretation of concepts. Objectives: The main objective of the study is to analyse the items with the help of item analysis and select the items which are good for incorporation into future question bank with reliability. Materials and Methods: This study was done in Department of Anatomy, AIIMS, Patna. A 396 first year MBBS students of different batches took the MCQ test comprising 60 questions in two sessions. During the evaluation process of MCQ’s each correct response was awarded one mark and no marks was awarded for any incorrect response. Each item was analysed for difficulty index, discrimination index and distractor effectiveness. Results: The overall mean of Facilitative value, Discrimination Index, Distractor Effectiveness and Correlation Coefficient was 66.09 (±21.55), 0.26 (±0.16), 18.84 (±10.45) and 0.55±0.22 respectively. Conclusion: The framing of MCQ should be according to Bloom’s classification to assess cognitive, affective as well as psychomotor domain of the students. The MCQ having poor and negative discrimination should be reframed and again should be analysed.