Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Emotional Stress on Neuroendocrine and Autonomic Functions in Skydiving

By using a psycho-physiological approach we investigated the stress response during parachute jumping, a wellcharacterized stress model to study emotional and physical stress in humans. Besides the observation of hormone reactivity in response to such a short-term stressful event, this study focused on the correlations among competitive state anxiety components, hormonal and autonomic responses. Seven male sport-parachutists, aged 35.7 ± 17.5 years, took part in the study after giving their informed consent. Neuroendocrine and autonomic variables were measured 12 h before jumping (basal), within 60 s (jump) and 90 min after touching the ground (post-jump). Prior to boarding, participants were administered the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) questionnaire. Salivary cortisol (Cort) and α-amylase (A-A) concentrations were measured by spectrophotometry using commercial kits. For heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR) assessments data were acquired by holter recording, within an interval time of 5 min following saliva collection. Parachute jumping led to a strong response of Cort, A-A, as well as HR and GSR, as shown by the values noted as basal and at jump, meaning that the psychological arousal linked to this condition acts on different systems. In examining bioumoral correlates and psychological measures of stress and anxiety we found correlations between neuroendocrine parameters and anxiety components. However, no relationship between Cort and somatic or cognitive anxiety was noted, suggesting that this physiological measure is not a good index of stress during parachuting. As revealed by the differences in cognitive or somatic state anxiety, stress related to sport parachuting differentially affected salivary indices. Alpha-amylase seems to be a better physiological indicator than cortisol to examine the relationship between neuroendocrine parameters and state anxiety components. Finally, this is the first report that GSR significantly correlated with A-A and the somatic component of competitive state anxiety, confirming its potential to provide researchers with a tool for objectively measuring stress during operational conditions. On the whole, these findings have contributed to our understanding of hormone-behavior relationships.
Trade Diversification, Income, and Growth: What Do We Know?

This paper surveys the empirical literature on export and import diversification and its linkages with growth. We review widely used measures of diversification and the evidence about their evolution focusing on how export diversification relates to trade liberalization and economic development. We also discuss the linkages between trade diversification and productivity at the firm and industry level, highlighting new advances on the linkages between import diversification and productivity.
Relying on Consensus does not Make Bitcoin Safer

Several distributed cryptocurrencies systems have emerged, and among them, Bitcoin is often designated as the pioneer this kind of systems. As such, Bitcoin shows some vulnerabil- ities in presence of malicious entities, and some recent works have proposed to improve upon Bitcoin weaknesses. This brief abstract is devoted to the analysis of one of these recent works, and shows through an analytical performance evaluation that new Bitcoin improvements are still needed.
Influence of solar activity on magnetic network measurements

The influence of solar activity on magnetic measurements taken during the Italian repeat station surveys performed in 1999/2000 and 2009/2010 has been investigated. A method to estimate the difference between the 2000.0 and 2010.0 surveys in terms of the "residual" (i.e. not completely reduced) external contribution is proposed. This method is also based on the removal of the contribution due to the magnetic field of internal origin by means of CHAOS3 model from magnetic repeat station measurements. The origin of the observed differences is interpreted in terms of the very different level of solar activity between 2000.0 and 2010.0. Indeed, results seem to suggest that differences could be attributed to the enhanced ring current intensity during a phase of solar maximum. The investigation of the spatial patterns of these differences suggests that they could be reduced by introducing a larger number of variometer stations, especially during surveys performed under conditions of high solar activity.
Taxonomy and Technology Mapping of Mobility Assistance Systems

Population ageing and growing prevalence of disability have resulted in a growing need for personal care and assistance. The insufficient supply of personal care workers and the rising costs of long-term care have turned this phenomenon into a greater social concern. This has resulted in a growing interest in assistive technology in general, and assistive robots in particular, as a means of substituting or supplementing the care provided by humans, and as a means of increasing the independence and overall quality of life of persons with special needs. Although many assistive robots have been developed in research labs world-wide, very few are commercially available. One of the reasons for this, is the cost. One way of optimising cost is to develop solutions that address specific needs of users. As a precursor to this, it is important to identify gaps between what the users need and what the technology (assistive robots) currently provides. This information is obtained through technology mapping. The current literature lacks a mapping between user needs and assistive robots, at the level of individual systems. The user needs are not expressed in uniform terminology across studies, which makes comparison of results difficult. In this research work, we have illustrated the technology mapping of assistive robots using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). ICF provides standard terminology for expressing user needs in detail. Expressing the assistive functions of robots also in ICF terminology facilitates communication between different stakeholders (rehabilitation professionals, robotics researchers, etc.). We also investigated existing taxonomies for assistive robots. It was observed that there is no widely accepted taxonomy for classifying assistive robots. However, there exists an international standard, ISO 9999, which classifies commercially available assistive products. The applicability of the latest revision of ISO 9999 standard for classifying mobility assistance robots has been studied. A partial classification of assistive robots based on ISO 9999 is suggested. The taxonomy and technology mapping are illustrated with the help of four robots that have the potential to provide mobility assistance. These are the SmartCane, the SmartWalker, MAid and Care-O-bot (R) 3. SmartCane, SmartWalker and MAid provide assistance by supporting physical movement. Care-O-bot (R) 3 provides assistance by reducing the need to move.
The Relationships between Internalized Heterosexism, Spirituality, and Mental Health in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults

Minority stressors like internalized heterosexism have been found to be related to suicidality among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals (e.g., Savin-Williams & Ream, 2003). Additional research is needed, however, to better understand the factors that may serve as moderators (i.e., protective factors) in the relationships between minority stressors and negative mental health outcomes, such as depression and suicidality (e.g., Szymanski et al., 2008). The current study attempted to examine the relationships between internalized heterosexism and two negative mental health outcomes associated with suicide, psychache (defined as unbearable psychological pain) and depression, in a sample of LGB young adults. Given that spirituality has been found to serve as a protective factor against suicide in other populations (e.g., Taliaferro et al., 2009), we also examined whether spiritual well-being served as a protective factor against psychache and depression in our LGB sample. Results showed significant, positive correlations between internalized heterosexism and both psychache and depression. Contrary to our hypotheses, spiritual well-being did not serve as a moderator of the relationships between internalized heterosexism and psychache or depression. Post-hoc mediation analyses revealed, however, that spiritual well-being serves as a partial mediator in the relationships between internalized heterosexism and both psychache and depression. Study limitations, implications, and future directions are considered.
The strong magnetic field of the large-amplitude β Cephei pulsator V1449 Aquilae

Aims. Only for very few β Cephei stars has the behaviour of the magnetic field been studied over the rotation cycle. During the past two years we have obtained multi-epoch polarimetric spectra of the β Cephei star V1449 Aql with SOFIN at the Nordic Optical Telescope to search for a rotation period and to constrain the geometry of the magnetic field. Methods. The mean longitudinal magnetic field is measured at 13 different epochs. The new measurements, together with the previous FORS 1 measurements, have been used for the frequency analysis and the characterization of the magnetic field. Results. V1449 Aql so far possesses the strongest longitudinal magnetic field of up to 700 G among the β Cephei stars. The resulting periodogram displays three dominant peaks with the highest peak at f = 0.0720 d −1 corresponding to a period P = 13. d 893. The magnetic field geometry can likely be described by a centred dipole with a polar magnetic field strength Bd around 3 kG and an inclination angle β of the magnetic axis to the rotation axis of 76 ± 4 ◦ . As of today, the strongest longitudinal magnetic fields are detected in the β Cephei stars V1449 Aql and ξ 1 CMa with large radial velocity amplitudes. Their peak-to-peak amplitudes reach ∼90 km s −1 and ∼33 km s −1 , respectively. Concluding, we briefly discuss the position of the currently known eight magnetic β Cephei
Multi-scale analysis of species-environment relationships

Species-environment models are important tools for ecology and conservation, but ecologists generally lack knowledge of how spatial extent, habitat and environmental heterogeneity interact to affect relationships. This study investigates the effect of the spatial scale when predicting the response of maximum density and probability of occurrence of macrobenthic taxa to changes in sediment mud content. Three spatial scales were used, 2 km (an area within an estuary), 11 km (a single estuary) and 500 km (multiple estuaries), with the range of mud content being similar at the 2 largest spatial extents. Models from each scale were compared using model fit and the shape of the response curve. Different effects of scale were found for different model types and for different taxa, varying from no-scale dependence to markedly different responses at different scales. However, for most taxa, mud content was an important factor and qualitative responses could be predicted. Four species, the bivalves Austrovenus stutchburyi and Macomona liliana and the polychaetes Hetero- mastus filiformis and Nereidae, exhibited flat response curves, indicative of small changes in density over a broad range of mud content. Further analyses for these species indicated that general responses derived from a number of estuaries may reflect direct, local effects of mud content, but also 'mediated' effects, i.e. effects of other variables that correlate with mud content within an estuary, but have different correlations with mud content across estuaries. These results suggest that models should be validated against changes in environmental heterogeneity and spatial extent. Factors oper- ating across scales may compound biases generated by unmeasured variables, but the use of models reflecting different aspects of spatial distribution (e.g. presence/absence, maximum density), incor- poration of natural history information and the testing of hypotheses concerning the relationships developed at different scales may help determine the limits of extrapolation in the application and interpretation of species-environment models.
Cavity assisted measurements of heat and work in optical lattices

We propose a method to experimentally measure the internal energy of a system of ultracold atoms trapped in optical lattices by coupling them to the fields of two optical cavities. We show that the tunnelling and self-interaction terms of the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian can be mapped to the field and photon number of each cavity, respectively. We compare the energy estimated using this method with numerical results obtained using the density matrix renormalisation group algorithm. Our method can be employed for the assessment of power and efficiency of thermal machines whose working substance is a strongly correlated many-body system.
Analyzing Student Teacher Critical Thinking through Blogs in an Electronic Community of Practice.

Technology is becoming increasingly popular in higher education in the way students are asked to communicate and collaborate. The student teaching experience is an integral part of developing critical thinking skills in pre-service teachers. During this experience, it is important that student teachers practice the theory they have been taught in their preparatory programs. This study determined the frequency in which student teachers at Iowa State University posted blogs in an electronic community of practice at each level of critical thinking, the relationship between the number of blogs posted by each student teacher and student teachers’ average level of critical thinking displayed in those blog posts. The Florida Taxonomy of Cognitive Behavior was used to code student teacher blog posts. Six levels of critical thinking, according to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, were present. Of the student teachers’ blog posts (n=942), 89.5% (f = 843) were at lower-order levels of critical thinking, consistent with prior research. The results did not indicate a significant relationship between the number of posts per student teacher (N=21) and student teachers’ average level of critical thinking. Teacher preparation programs should focus on modeling critical thinking in order for student teachers to incorporate and practice problem-solving, evaluating, creating, and many other critical thinking skills during the student teaching experience.
Enzyme activity in bioregulator-treated tomato (Solanum lycopersicon) genotypes.

The challenges of using exogenous plant bioregulators to manipulate plant responses by researchers and producers are increasing rapidly. In previous studies, we have demonstrated that 100 mg/l concentration of the bioregulators; indole-acetic acid (IAA), indole butyric acid (IBA) and naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) is suitable for tomato growth in the field. In this work, spectrophotometric analysis was conducted to determine the level of enzymes that could affect the keeping quality of the fruits harvested at the orange-red ripe stage following pre-sowing seed treatments with 100 mg/l solutions of the bioregulators. The NHLy 11, NHLy 12, NHLy 13, NHLy 15 and NHLy 16 genotypes were used and the activities of lipoxygenase (LOX), catalase, peroxidase, alcohol dehydrogenase and acid phosphatase determined. All treated genotypes showed high LOX activity with a range of 0.06 - 1.07 mmol.abs. units (A234). The NAA-treated NHLy13 genotype had complete loss of catalase activity after 210 s. Peroxidase activity was higher in NAA-treated genotypes with values between 0.07 and 0.62 abs. units/g (A430) while alcohol dehydrogenase activity suffered a decline in all IBA-treated genotypes. IAA gave consistently higher acid phosphatase activity than IBA and NAA in all the test genotypes. These findings have important implications on the biochemical changes associated with the fruits during storage and processing.
Recent Advances in Thermoelectric Performance of Half-Heusler Compounds

Half-Heusler phases (space group F 4 ¯ 3 m , C1b) have recently captured much attention as promising thermoelectric materials for heat-to-electric power conversion in the mid-to-high temperature range. The most studied ones are the RNiSn-type half-Heusler compounds, where R represents refractory metals Hf, Zr, and Ti. These compounds have shown a high-power factor and high-power density, as well as good material stability and scalability. Due to their high thermal conductivity, however, the dimensionless figure of merit (zT) of these materials has stagnated near 1 for a long time. Since 2013, the verifiable zT of half-Heusler compounds has risen from 1 to near 1.5 for both n- and p-type compounds in the temperature range of 500–900 °C. In this brief review, we summarize recent advances as well as approaches in achieving the high zT reported. In particular, we discuss the less-exploited strain-relief effect and dopant resonant state effect studied by the author and his collaborators in more detail. Finally, we point out directions for further development.
To substantiate or not to substantiate ? Analysis of Claim Substantiation and Product Identification on Advertising

Typical body improvement product advertisements use rather exaggerated claims without using substantiation. Does this common yet unproven tactic really work in advertising this particular product category? Does a perceived product identification influence advertising effectiveness with or without claim substantiation? The current study analyzes impacts of two particular independent variables (product identification and claim substantiation) on advertising effectiveness measured through attitude toward ad (Aad) and attitude toward brand (Ab). The current study is based on a 2x2 factorial experimental design with (a) exercise vs. diet pills as two different product identifications, and (b) present vs. absence of claim substantiation as two main conditions. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is utilized (N= 665) as analysis tool. Tested model, which has a very acceptable model fit, shows that the influence of product identification is much larger ( =.39) than the influence of claim substantiation ( =.10) on perceived ad believability. The ad believability is directly influences perceived argument quality ( =.73), which, in turn, exerts heavy influence on Aad ( =.64). The results provide important practical and ethical implications to the field of body improvement industry.
Pulse of the seafloor : Tidal triggering of microearthquakes at 9 50 0 N East Pacific

[1] Unequivocal evidence of tidal triggering is observed for microearthquakes ( 0.4 to 2.0 ML) recorded between October 2003 to April 2004 near 9 500N on the East Pacific Rise (EPR). Although semidiurnal tidal stress changes are small (<2 kPa), seismicity exhibits a significant (>99.9%) nonrandom temporal distribution, with events occurring preferentially near times of peak extension. Due to the proximity of this site to an ocean tidal node, where changes in sea surface height are minimal, periodic stress changes are dominated by the solid Earth tide. In contrast, previous studies on the Juan de Fuca Ridge have shown microearthquake triggering to be a response to seafloor unloading during times of low ocean tide. The modulation of 9 500N microearthquakes by small-amplitude periodic stresses is consistent with earthquake nucleation within a high stressing rate environment that is maintained near a critical state of failure by on-axis magmatic and hydrothermal processes. Citation: Stroup, D. F. , D. R. Bohnenstiehl, M. Tolstoy, F. Waldhauser, and R. T. Weekly (2007), Pulse of the seafloor: Tidal triggering of microearthquakes at 9 500N East Pacific Rise, Geophys. Res. Lett. , 34, L15301, doi:10.1029/2007GL030088.
USENIX Association Proceedings of the First Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation

We have developed SWAP, a system that automatically detects process dependencies and accounts for such dependencies in scheduling. SWAP uses system call history to determine possible resource dependencies among processes in an automatic and fully transparent fashion. Because some dependencies cannot be precisely determined, SWAP associates confidence levels with dependency information that are dynamically adjusted using feedback from process blocking behavior. SWAP can schedule processes using this imprecise dependency information in a manner that is compatible with existing scheduling mechanisms and ensures that actual scheduling behavior corresponds to the desired scheduling policy in the presence of process dependencies. We have implemented SWAP in Linux and measured its effectiveness on microbenchmarks and real applications. Our results show that SWAP has low overhead, effectively solves the priority inversion problem and can provide substantial improvements in system performance in scheduling processes with dependencies.
Hydrothermal multivariable approach. Full-scale feasibility study

A process configuration combining thermal hydrolysis (TH) and anaerobic digestion (AD) of sludge has been studied with the objective of analysing the feasibility of the technology for full scale installations. The study has been performed through pilot scale experiments and energy integration considerations, and a scheme of the most profitable option is presented: thermal hydrolysis unit fed with 7% total solids (TS) secondary sludge, anaerobic digestion of the hydrolysed sludge together with fresh primary sludge, and a cogeneration unit to produce green electricity and provide hot steam for the thermal hydrolysis process. From a technical and practical point of view, the process scheme proposed is considered to be feasible. Based on the results of the pilot plant performance and the laboratory studies, the process has proven to operate successfully at a concentration of 7-8% TS. After the thermal hydrolysis, sludge viscosity becomes radically smaller, and this favours the digesters mixing and performance (40% more biogas can be obtained in nearly half the residence time compared to the conventional digestion). From an economic point of view, the key factors in the energy balance are: the recovery of heat from hot streams, and the concentration of sludge. The article presents the main energy integration schemes and defines the most profitable one: an energetically self-sufficient process, with a cogeneration unit. The scheme proposed has proven to need no additional energy input for the sludge hydrolysis, generates more that 1 MW green electricity (246 kW surplus with respect to the conventional process), and produces 58% less volume of Class A biowaste. The study and balances here presented set the basis for the scale-up to a demonstration plant (hydrolysis + anaerobic digestion + cogeneration unit).
Pulsed operation of high-power light emitting diodes for imaging flow velocimetry

High-powered light emitting diodes (LED) are investigated for possible uses as light sources in flow diagnostics, in particular, as an alternative to laser-based illumination in particle imaging flow velocimetry in side-scatter imaging arrangements. Recent developments in solid state illumination resulted in mass-produced LEDs that provide average radiant power in excess of 10 W. By operating these LEDs with short duration, pulsed currents that are considerably beyond their continuous current damage threshold, light pulses can be generated that are sufficient to illuminate and image micron-sized particles in flow velocimetry. Time-resolved PIV measurements in water at a framing rate of 2kHz are presented. The feasibility of LED-based PIV measurements in air is also demonstrated.