Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Missing a Nurse Visit

While a large literature studies the impact of exposure to early-life investment policies, this paper examines the impact of changes within a program, the Danish nurse home visiting program, on child and maternal health. We exploit variation induced by a nurse strike, which resulted in families missing one of the four universally-provided nurse visit. Using variation in children’s age at strike start, we show that early, but not later, strike exposure increases child and mother contacts to health professionals in the first four years after birth. Forgoing an early nurse visit also increases the probability of maternal contacts to mental health specialists in the first four years after childbirth. We highlight two potential channels for these results: screening and information provision. We show that–in non-strike years–nurses perform well in detecting maternal mental health risks during early visits, and that effects of early strike exposure are strongest for families that we expect to benefit most from information provided by nurses shortly after birth. A stylized calculation confirms that short-run health benefits from early universal home visiting outweigh costs.
Fluorescence Counter-Staining of Cell Nuclear DNA for Multi-Color Laser Confocal Microscopy

Twenty-one nucleic acid-specific fluorochromes were examined for use in cell nuclear counter-staining of specimens observed under a laser confocal microscope equipped with a Krypton/argon laser tube. Six green, three red, and two far-red fluorochromes gave sufficient fluorescence. Among them, SYBR Green I, Pico Green, SYTOX Green, YO-PRO-3, and TO-PRO-3 specifically stained the cell nuclear DNA. Other fluorochromes except POPO-3 stained the cell nuclear DNA and co-stained the cytoplasmic RNA. Conversely, POPO-3 specifically stained the cytoplasmic and nucleolar RNA. Anti-bleaching reagents (PPDA and DABCO) effectively prevented the photobleaching of SYBR Green I, Pico Green, YO-PRO-3, and TO-PRO-3, whereas DABCO accelerated the photobleaching of SYTOX Green. Taking into account the characteristics of these fluorochromes, SYBR Green I, YO-PRO-3, and TO-PRO-3 were best suited for cell nuclear counter-staining as green, red, and far-red fluorochromes, respectively. Especially, TO-PRO-3 seems to be the most useful because its far-red fluorescence enables three-color fluorescence staining by combination with immunofluorescence labeling with fluorescein and rhodamine derivatives.
APPLICATION OF THREE DISCRETE CHOICE MODELS TO MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENTS AND A COMPARISON OF THE RESULTS

In this study, the comparison of results obtained from the same data set of three alternative probability models known as the Linear Probability Model (LPM), Binary Logit Model (BLM) and Binary Probit Model (BPM) has been discussed. The use of these models is an accurate approach in the event of determining a categorical dependent variable with two levels. In order to throw light on the similarities and differences of the results, data recorded by The Department of Traffic Training and Research of the General Directorate of Security Affairs of Turkey has been examined, and also factors influencing the chance of drivers surviving or not surviving motorcycle accidents during 2002 have been determined.
Cetaceans in the coastal waters of southern Romania: initial assessment of abundance, distribution, and seasonal trends

This paper presents the results of two vessel surveys in 2017 (spring and summer) in order to estimate cetacean abundance and distribution in Romanian Black Sea waters following distance sampling methods. Eight transects, from east to west, perpendicular on the shore line with a total length of 211.95 km, were designed and executed in sea conditions ≤ Beaufort 4 in an area of 1063 kmwith coverage of 39.6%. In total there were 275 sightings of bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus ponticus), common dolphin (Delphinus delphis ponticus) and harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena relicta) recorded. Both European Union (EU) Marine Strategy Framework Directive and Habitats Directive require Member States to monitor and maintain at favourable conservation status those species identified to be in need of protection, including all cetaceans. This study provides the baseline data on the Black Sea cetaceans in Romanian waters.
Can Video-creation Project Work Affect Students’ Oral Proficiency? An Analysis of Fluency, Complexity and Accuracy

This study reports on how project-based language learning in which L1 Japanese EFL learners created short videos affected L2 oral proficiency. Students took short speaking tests before and after the class, and the fluency, complexity and accuracy of the preand posttests were measured to see which, if any, of these three aspects of proficiency would show improvement. The results indicated that participants made marginal progress in fluency, reducing their number of pauses and increasing their raw speech rate slightly, and significantly improved their syntactic complexity (p<.001, d=1.1) and both syntactic (p=.04, d=.48) and pronunciation accuracy (p=.002, d=.75), but did not seem to make gains in lexical complexity. Overall, the results suggest that project-based learning can result in clear improvements in oral proficiency, meaning that it can be appropriately implemented in oral communication classes, but that the greatest gains are likely to be made in accuracy and syntactic complexity. However, it is still unclear whether different types of project settings will affect L2 oral proficiency in the same way. Project-based language learning (PBLL), a teaching methodology in which students learn or practice a foreign language by participating in project work in the target language, has been gaining increasing attention in foreign language teaching research because of its student-centered approach and focus on improving students’ communicative competencies in a variety of settings from elementary school through university (e.g., Beckett, 2006; Beckett & Slater, 2005; Liu, 2016; etc.). However, while several studies suggest that PBLL can help students to improve their oral communication in their target language (e.g., Kobayashi, 2006; Liu, 2016; Dooly & Sadler, 2016), other studies report little to no benefit to target language communication skills (Eguchi & Eguchi, 2006), and most offer no hard evidence of improvement, instead relying on surveys of student opinion or reporting what the teachers felt went well (Hong, 2019; Dooly, 2013; Foss et al., 2007; etc.). Therefore, it is still unclear whether PBLL can enhance oral proficiency, and if it can, to what degree and in what specific ways. Here, an analysis of objective measures of speech, specifically
Vertical cloud structure of warm conveyor belts – a comparison and evaluation of ERA5 reanalyses, CloudSat and CALIPSO data

Warm conveyor belts (WCBs) are important cyclone-related airstreams that are responsible for most of the cloud and precipitation formation in the extratropics. They can also substantially influence the dynamics of cyclones and the upper-level flow. So far, most of the knowledge about WCBs is based on model data from analyses, reanalyses and forecast data with only a few observational studies available. The aim of this work is to gain a detailed observational perspective on the vertical cloud and precipitation structure of WCBs during their inflow, ascent and outflow and to evaluate their representation in the new ERA5 reanalysis dataset. To this end, satellite observations from the CloudSat radar and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) lidar are combined with an ERA5-based WCB climatology for nine Northern Hemisphere winters. Based on a case study and a composite analysis, the main findings can be summarized as follows. (i) WCB air masses are part of deep, strongly precipitating clouds, with cloud-top heights at 9–10 km during their ascent and an about 2–3 km deep layer with supercooled liquid water co-existing with ice above the melting layer. The maximum surface precipitation occurs when the WCB is at about 2–4 km height. (ii) Convective clouds can be observed above the inflow and during the ascent. (iii) At upper levels, the WCB outflow is typically located near the top of a 3 km deep cirrus layer. (iv) There is a large variability between WCBs in terms of cloud structure, peak reflectivity and associated surface precipitation. (v) The WCB trajectories with the highest radar reflectivities are mainly located over the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and – apart from the inflow – they occur at relatively low latitudes. They are associated with particularly deep and strongly precipitating clouds that occur not only during the ascent but also in the inflow and outflow regions. (vi) ERA5 represents the WCB clouds remarkably well in terms of position, thermodynamic phase and frozen hydrometeor distribution, although it underestimates the high ice and snow values in the mixed-phase clouds near the melting layer. (vii) In the lower troposphere, high potential vorticity is diabatically produced along the WCB in areas with high reflectivities and hydrometeor contents, and at upper levels, low potential vorticity prevails in the cirrus layer in the WCB outflow. The study provides important observational insight into the internal cloud structure of WCBs and emphasizes the ability of ERA5 to essentially capture the observed pattern but also reveals many smalland mesoscale structures observed by the remote sensing instruments but not captured by ERA5.
Monarch

Monarch is a globally-distributed in-memory time series database system in Google. Monarch runs as a multi-tenant service and is used mostly to monitor the availability, correctness, performance, load, and other aspects of billion-user-scale applications and systems at Google. Every second, the system ingests terabytes of time series data into memory and serves millions of queries. Monarch has a regionalized architecture for reliability and scalability, and global query and configuration planes that integrate the regions into a unified system. On top of its distributed architecture, Monarch has flexible configuration, an expressive relational data model, and powerful queries. This paper describes the structure of the system and the novel mechanisms that achieve a reliable and flexible unified system on a regionalized distributed architecture. We also share important lessons learned from a decade's experience of developing and running Monarch as a service in Google.
Feature Selection via a Fourier Framework

The Fourier analysis over the Boolean cube has been an essential tool in a wide 1 range of problems in computer science. However, such analysis is restricted to 2 mutually independent random variables making its practical usage limited. We 3 demonstrate that this limitation is overcome, developing a novel Fourier expansion 4 on the Boolean cube with correlated variables. We further apply our Fourier 5 analysis to stochastic mappings, extending its capabilities beyond classical usage. 6 As one application of this analysis, we investigate the feature selection problem and 7 reformulate it in the Fourier domain. We propose two feature selection algorithms, 8 one for supervised and the other for an unsupervised variant of the problem. The 9 computational complexity of the algorithms can be as low as O p nd q with n being 10 the number of samples and d the number of features. Based on our Fourier 11 analysis, we show that for binary features the proposed algorithms ﬁnd provably 12 asymptotically optimal feature subsets. Through exhaustive numerical experiments, 13 we demonstrate that our methods outperform state-of-the-art feature selection 14 algorithms (e.g., mRMR, ReliefF, MCFC, Laplacian Score) on various data sets. 15
Floristic Diversity in a Community Managed Forest of Kanchanpur District, Western Nepal

The present study describes the floristic diversity of Janahit Mahakali community forest in Kanchanpur district, Western Nepal. The forest comprises an area of 198.93 hectares. Altogether, 148 plant species belonging to 123 genera under 59 families were recorded from 72 different sampling plots. Among the recorded species, the herbaceous species were quite higher than shrubs and trees. There were total 117 dicots, 23 monocots and 8 pteridophytes recorded. The study area was found to be dominated by Fabaceae with 13 genera and 19 species followed by Lamiaceae with 8 genera and 9 species. The frequency distribution of Shorearobusta and Terminaliaalata was found highest among all recorded species. Similarly, Mazus pumilis and Phyllodium pulchellum were among the most dominant herb and shrub.
A New Dimension of Space-Based Observations of Clouds and Precipitation

DECEMBER 2002 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | O ne of the more stunning features of the images of earth from space are the clouds that move around our planet in quasi-organized largescale systems (e.g., Rossow and Cairns 1995). The character and movement of these coherent cloud features are primarily governed by the large-scale atmospheric circulation and, as such, are an essential manifestation of weather systems. Motions of synopticscale cloud masses, in turn, trace the circulation patterns of the atmosphere. By tracking movements of individual cloud elements we can also determine the wind fields (e.g., Menzel 2001). These large cloud systems are not mere passive tracers of wide-scale movement of air. They exert an enormous influence on our weather and climate. Clouds are a fundamental stage of the cycle of water in the atmosphere, condensing water vapor and forming precipitation. Clouds also dominate the energy budget of the planet. They tend to cool the earth by reflecting sunlight back to space while simultaneously warming the earth by absorbing and reemitting thermal radiation emitted by the surface and lower atmosphere (for more on this complex process see Wielicki et al. 1995). By modulating the distribution of heating within the atmosphere and at the surface, clouds fundamentally influence the circulations of the atmosphere and oceans. The importance of clouds to the resultant redistribution of heating is underscored in the study of Glecker et al. (1995). They showed how poorly resolved clouds, through their effects on the surface radiation budget, produce an unacceptable discrepancy THE CLOUDSAT MISSION AND THE A-TRAIN A New Dimension of Space-Based Observations of Clouds and Precipitation
Towards Diversity and Relevance in Neural Natural Language Response Generation

In Neural Response Generation a system produces responses in a chit-chat dialogue covering a wide variety of topics. While the research community has long been focused on task-speci c systems, these open-domain queries have become an active area of research thanks to advancements in deep learning and the availability of large amounts of conversational data. Early models were able to generate responses that are semantically valid responses with respect to the query, however their outputs are often short, general, and provide little information [81]. This work compares existing architectures that tackle these problems and try to generate more diverse and informative dialogues. We train and evaluate existing models on our Reddit corpus. Two notable works for diversity and informativeness by Zhang et al., 2017 [89] and Gao et al., 2019 [26] are based on an adversarial and a recurrent multi-tasking approach, respectively. The two works are evaluated and compared to a baseline. The latter showed the most promising results. While Gao et al. outperform existing works in the diversity of their outputs recurrent neural networks in general have di culties when dealing with longer sequences of text [90]. To further increase diversity and informativeness we propose two novel approaches. We add a hierarchical encoder structure to Gao et al., 2019 in order to capture more information in multi-turn dialogues. Secondly we build a Transformer with the same multi-task setting, and leverage pre-training. The model shall both improve diversity and informativeness by leveraging Gao et al.’s approach, the non-recurrent architecture, the additional amount of parameters, and the high-volume of pre-training data (compared to the size of our dataset). Both solutions outperform the other evaluated models in Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU), Metric for Evaluation of Translation with Explicit ORdering (METEOR), and Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation (Rouge), which are commonly used to evaluate response generation tasks.
Kinetic and thermodynamic studies on the removal of Cr (VI) ions from aqueous solution using n-ZVI

We have studied the removal of Cr (VI) ion from aqueous solution at different condition using n-ZVI. The n-ZVI was prepared via borohydrate reduction under inert atmosphere. The effect of temperature, concentration and loading quantities on kinetic and equilibrium of chromium ion removal using n-ZVI were thoroughly examined. The prepared nZVI was characterized by several techniques including X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The adsorption capacity was found to be 40 mg g-1 at pH 3.9 and 300 K. The pseudo second order was found to be the best fitting kinetic model. The adsorption activation energy was calculated and given to be 41.56 kJ mol-1. The thermodynamic parameters ∆Go, ∆Ho and ∆So, were also calculated. The results indicate the endothermic and spontaneous nature of the adsorption process.
Impaired Scaling of Step Length in Parkinsonian Postural Instability

Background: Postural stepping is an important strategy for recovery of balance in response to postural perturbations. It is disrupted by Parkinson's disease (PD) and other conditions. The nature of this disruption remains poorly understood. Understanding the motor control nature of this impairment can guide the development of novel interventions. Objectives: To identify the motor control abnormalities responsible for parkinsonian impairment of postural stepping. Methods: We studied four groups of participants: control, aged, PD, and normal-pressure hydrocephalus (NPH). We performed kinematic analysis of postural stepping by recording participants' body motion during a modified version of the clinical pull test, which was performed multiple times with different amounts of pulling forcefulness. Results: Successful postural stepping in the control group was accompanied by linear scaling of their first step's length and latency to the body's initial motion: more forceful pulls caused larger initial body acceleration, which resulted in longer steps that began earlier. PD patients exhibited reduced scaling of step length: they maintained normal reaction time but took steps that were inadequately short. Reduced step length scaling was present, but less severe, in aged individuals, and was more severe in NPH patients. Aged individuals and PD patients exhibited partial compensation for reduced step length scaling: their step length included a component that was independent of initial body acceleration, which was absent in control and NPH groups. Conclusions: the impairment of postural stepping caused by PD and related conditions is due to inadequate scaling of movement amplitude and is thus a form of hypokinesia.
"I walk around like my hands are covered in mud": food safety and hand hygiene behaviours of Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic

Objectives: To investigate how and why Canadians engaged in different food handling and hand hygiene behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Seven online, text-based focus groups were conducted with a total of 42 participants. Eligible participants included adults living in Canada that prepared meals at home at least once per week. Focus groups took place from May-June 2020 and followed a semi-structured question guide. Participants were asked about their practices relating to food preparation habits at home; food purchasing, handling, and storage; hand hygiene and sanitation; and information sources about food safety concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. A thematic analysis was conducted using the Theoretical Domains Framework as a coding guide. Results: The most notable changes in behaviour since the onset of the pandemic were seen in participants' hand washing, sanitation, and grocery shopping practices. Participants tended to perceive grocery store employees, shoppers, and food service staff as having inadequate sanitation precautions and, therefore, as a source of COVID-19 transmission risk. They heavily relied on public health, medical, and government officials as sources of information. Feelings of stress and anxiety appeared to be linked to certain sanitation behaviours. Many participants displayed a general apathy toward routine food safety practices such as safe food storage at home. Conclusion: This work supports the need for clear and concise messaging for hand hygiene and food safety behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic and in future times of crisis. It also highlights a need for ongoing food safety messaging.
Traits of an invasive grass conferring an early growth advantage over native grasses

Aims Invasive species often have higher relative growth rates (RGR) than their native counterparts. Nutrient use efficiency, total leaf area and specific leaf area (SLA) are traits that may confer RGR differences between natives and invasives, but trait differences are less prominent when the invasive species belongs to the same plant functional type as the dominant native species. Here, we test if traits displayed soon after germination confer an early size advantage. Specifically, we predicted that invasive species seedlings grow faster than the natives because they lack trade-offs that more strongly constrain the growth of native species. Methods We quantified plant morphological and physiological traits and RGR during early seedling growth at high and low nutrient levels in three dominant perennial native c4 grasses: Panicum virgatum L. (switchgrass), Schizachyrium scoparium (Michx.) Nash (little bluestem) and Andropogon gerardii Vitman (big bluestem); and a perennial c4 exotic invasive grass, Sorghum halepense (L.) Pers. (Johnsongrass). Important Findings After 2 weeks of growth, Johnsongrass seedlings had greater biomass, SLA and photosynthetic nitrogen use efficiency, but lower leaf N concentrations (% leaf N) and root:shoot ratio than natives. As growth continued, Johnsongrass more quickly produced larger and thicker leaves than the natives, which dampened the growth advantage past the first 2 to 3 weeks of growth. Investment in carbon gain appears to be the best explanation for the early growth advantage of Johnsongrass. In natives, growth was constrained by an apparent trade-off between allocation to root biomass, which reduced SLA, and production of leaves with high N content, which increased carbon gain. In Johnsongrass, root:shoot ratio did not interact with other traits, and % leaf N was decoupled from RGR as a result of a trade-off between the positive indirect association of % leaf N with RGR and the negative direct association of % leaf N with RGR.