Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparative study of the marine ecoregions of the southern Iberian Peninsula, as identified from different coastal habitats

EC Directive 2000/60 of the European Parliament and of the Council of Europe provides for the need to establish ecological regions along European coasts. The present article outlines research carried out in various coastal marine ecosystems as a contribution to the characterization of these ecoregions of the coast of Andalusia (southern Spain). Sampling was undertaken along the coastline in the intertidal zone and sublittoral sediments. The various systems studied all gave very similar results with regard to the ecoregions identified, which is indicative of their robustness. These results consistently identified a main Mediterranean region, which could subsequently be subdivided into two, as well as three main ecoregions in the Atlantic: one from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Bay of Cadiz, and the other two along the Huelva coastline, which are clearly affected by the effluents of major river systems such as the Guadalquivir, Odiel and Tinto. Our results suggest that similar structuring factors are operating within these systems.
TAEKWONDO COACH–ATHLETE INTERACTION AND PERCEIVED PERFORMANCE: A COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO TAEKWONDO STYLES, GYEORUGI AND POOMSAE

Background and Objective This study aims to provide fundamental knowledge on approaches to enhance the performance of Taekwondo players by validating how the coach–athlete interaction affects perceived performance, and how its effect varies between gyeorugi (sparring) and poomsae. Materials and Methods A survey was conducted on 394 Taekwondo players from universities located in Seoul, Gyeonggi, Incheon, and Chungnam, all of which are official members of the Korea Taekwondo Association as of 2016. Participants were selected through purposive sampling, a type of non-probability sampling. Subsequently, 382 of 394 respondents, excluding 12 respondents who did not return the questionnaires, were selected for data collection (gyeorugi: n=180 and poomsae: n= 202; 230 [60.2%] men and 152 [39.8%] women). Results Coach–athlete interaction had a statistically positive influence on perceived performance of University Taekwondo players (p < 0.05). Furthermore, coach–athlete interaction showed a greater impact on perceived performance in a group of gyeorugi players than in their poomsae counterparts (19.6% vs. 6.5%). The result of pairwise parameter comparison exceeded the critical value (±1.96: α = 0.05; ±2.58: α = 0.01), suggesting that the effect of coach–athlete interaction was statistically significant at a 99% confidence level. Conclusion These results indicated that in Taekwondo training, coach–athlete interactions including instruction on technique, faith, encouragement, and passing on know-how were more effective in enhancing the performance of gyeorugi players than Poomsae players.
Effect of acid modification on physicochemical characteristics of Kpautagi clay

Chemical activation was carried out on the kaolin clay obtained from Kpautagi Area in Niger State using sulfuric and hydrochloric acids. In order to study the effect of acid activation, the physicochemical characteristics of the Kpautagi clay were determined before and after acid modification and the results obtained were subsequently compared. These characteristics include surface morphology, surface functional groups, surface area and pore volume. Characterization results showed that acid modification of Kpautagi kaolin clay with sulphuric and hydrochloric acids improved the surface area of the clay from 7.598m/g to 15.5cm/g and 13.2cm/g respectively and enhancement in pore volume and average pore diameter were also noted. The changes in the characteristics of the clay after acid modification were further supported by the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) micrographs and Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscope (FTIR) spectra. Therefore, the outcome of this study shows that sulphuric and hydrochloric acid could be used to improve the characteristics of Kpautagi clay but better performance could be achieved employing sulphuric acid. 87 http://ljs.academicdirect. org/ Effect of acid modification on physicochemical characteristics of Kpautagi clay Matthew A. ONU, Joseph O. OKAFOR, Abdusalami S. KOVO, Yahaya S. MOHAMMAD
Seismic Imaging of Rapid Onset of Stratified Turbulence in the South Atlantic Ocean

AbstractBroadband measurements of the internal wavefield will help to unlock an understanding of the energy cascade within the oceanic realm. However, there are challenges in acquiring observations with sufficient spatial resolution, especially in horizontal dimensions. Seismic reflection profiling can achieve a horizontal and vertical resolution of order meters. It is suitable for imaging thermohaline fine structure on scales that range from tens of meters to hundreds of kilometers. This range straddles the transition from internal wave to turbulent regimes. Here, the authors analyze an 80-km-long seismic image from the Falkland Plateau and calculate vertical displacement spectra of tracked reflections. First, they show that these spectra are consistent with the Garrett–Munk model at small horizontal wavenumbers (i.e., kx ≲ 3 × 10−3 cpm). There is a transition to stratified turbulence at larger wavenumbers (i.e., kx ≳ 2 × 10−1 cpm). This transition occurs at length scales that are significantly larger th.
SYNERGISTIC EFFECT OF CALOTROPIS PLANT IN CONTROLLING CORROSION OF MILD STEEL IN BASIC SOLUTION

ABSTRACTS The alcoholic extracts of leaves, latex and fruit from the Calotropis procera and Calotropis gigantea are tested for corrosion inhibition in basic solution by mass loss method and thermometric method. In the present investigation the extract reduces the corrosion rate of mild steel in basic solution. The inhibition efficiency increases as the extract concentration is increased. The alcoholic extract of Calotropis is found effective corrosion inhibitor in basic media and give up to 80.89% efficiency. Key words : Mild steel, Mass loss method, Thermometric, Corrosion, Adsorption. e-mail- sudeshneyol@gmail.com INTRODUCTION Mild steel is widely used in chemical industries due to its low cost and easy availability for fabrication reaction of vessel, tanks, pipeline and boiler, because it suffer from severe corrosion in aggressive environments, it has to be protective. The corrosion of metal in aqueous solution occurs in two steps oxidation and reduction. Oxidation reaction takes place at anode, whereas reduction takes place at cathode. The cathodic reaction may be either by evolution of hydrogen and absorption of oxygen.Mild steel is a reactive metal to reduce the corrosion problem in these environment inhibitive effects of various naturally occurring substance like
SOCIAL INFORMATION IMPUTATION

We propose an NMF (Nonnegative Matrix Factorization)-based approach in collaborative filtering based recommendation systems to improve the Cold-Start-Users predictions since Cold-Start-Users suffer from high error in the results. The proposed method utilizes the trust network information to impute a subset of the missing ratings before NMF is applied. We proposed three strategies to select the subset of missing ratings to impute in order to examine the influence of the imputation with both item groups: Cold-Start-Items and Heavy-Rated-Items; and survey if the trustees' ratings could improve the results more than the other users. We analyze two factors that may affect results of the imputation: (1) the total number of imputed ratings, and (2) the average of imputed rating values. Experiments on four different datasets are conducted to examine the proposed approach. The results show that our approach improves the predicted rating of the cold-start users and alleviates the impact of imputed ratings.
Can we measure individual black-hole spins from gravitational-wave observations?

Measurements of black-hole spins from gravitational-wave observations of black-hole binaries with ground-based detectors are known to be hampered by partial degeneracies in the gravitational-wave phasing: between the two component spins, and between the spins and the binary’s mass ratio, at least for signals that are dominated by the binary’s inspiral. Through the merger and ringdown, however, a different set of degeneracies apply. This suggests the possibility that, if the inspiral, merger and ringdown are all within the sensitive frequency band of a detector, we may be able to break these degeneracies and more accurately measure both spins. In this work we investigate our ability to measure individual spins for nonprecessing binaries, for a range of configurations and signal strengths, and conclude that in general the spin of the larger black hole will be measurable (at best) with observations from Advanced LIGO and Virgo. This implies that in many applications waveform models parameterized by only one effective spin will be sufficient. Our work does not consider precessing binaries or subdominant harmonics, although we provide some arguments why we expect that these will not qualitatively change our conclusions.
Farming for bees: annual variation in pollinator populations across agricultural landscapes

Wild bees comprise a diverse group of pollinators essential to healthy ecosystems and crop pollination. Despite their importance, the way in which many driving factors affect specific bees or pollinators in specific regions remains unknown. Northern New England is one such place lacking detailed study. Accordingly, we collected bees from three different landscape types for three consecutive years in northern New England. Annual, seasonal and landscape factor affects were examined. We found that season and landscape type significantly influenced the bee community. Bee abundance and species richness were highest during the warmer seasons. At the landscape scale, overall bee abundance and species richness were greatest in the organic farm landscapes and lowest in the meadow landscapes. We also examined the bee community across multiple taxonomic levels: guild, family and species. Wild bee abundance varied significantly depending on the taxonomic level analyzed. Within genera, certain species had significantly higher abundances in meadow type landscapes, whereas other species had higher abundances in the organic or the conventional farm type landscapes. These results support the need for more regionally and taxonomically specific studies on wild bees, their habitat requirements and the influence of environmental factors across agricultural and unmanaged landscapes.
Discrete Approximation of ECG Signals

In this research we investigate the non-equidistant discre tization generated by Blaschke functions and its application in the compression of ECG signals. This discretization provides interpolation at chosen points of the signal, gives more detail near important regions and cares less about constant-like parts. We focus mainly on the explanation of how to generate this kind of discretization. Questions arise from finding suitable parameters for the system applied as well as from generating the set of discrete points. We suggest possible solutions for these problems and show an example of application on a real signal.
U-shaped development in the acquisition of filler-gap dependencies : Evidence from 15-and 20-month olds

This paper investigates infant comprehension of filler-gap dependencies. Two experiments probe 15-and 20-month-olds' comprehension of two filler-gap dependencies: wh-questions and relative clauses. Experiment 1 shows that both age groups appear to comprehend wh-questions. Experiment 2 shows that only the younger infants appear to comprehend relative clauses. We argue that this surprising U-shaped pattern follows from an offset in the development of grammatical knowledge and the deployment mechanisms for using that knowledge in real time. 15-month-olds, we argue, lack the grammatical representation of filler-gap dependencies but are able to achieve correct performance in the task by using a parsing heuristic based on argument structure. 20-month-olds, we argue, do represent filler-gap dependencies, but are inefficient in deploying those representations in real time.
Working Paper 294 - Agricultural Innovations, Production, and Household Welfare in Africa

Although the impact of the adoption of agricultural innovations has been the subject of extensive investigations, its relationship with indicators of farm production and household welfare remains ambiguous in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. This study contributes to the literature by conducting a meta-regression analysis of 92 studies published between 2001 and 2015 in the sub-Saharan African region on this issue. Overall, the empirical results from this meta-analysis suggest that the adoption of agricultural innovations have a positive and significant effect on farm production and household welfare. However, the magnitude of the impact is relatively small, which also suggests a weak relationship.JEL classification: C1, Q1. Keywords: Adoption, Agriculture, Impact, Innovations, sub-Saharan Africa
Controllable Rotation Workspace of a Metamorphic Parallel Mechanism With Reconfigurable Universal Joints

This paper introduces a metamorphic parallel mechanism which has three topologies with pure translational, pure rotational and 3T1R degrees of freedom. Mobility change stemming from the reconfigurability of a reconfigurable Hooke (rT) joint is illustrated by change of the limb twist screw systems and the platform constraint screw system. Then the paper focuses on the pure rotational topology of the mechanism of which the rotational center can be altered along the central line perpendicular to the base plane by altering the radial rotational axes in the limbs. Singularity analysis is conducted based on the dependency of constraint forces and actuation forces in a screw based Jacobian matrix. Following these, rotation workspace variation is demonstrated in a 2D projection format using the Tilt-and-Torsion Euler angles based on the actuation limits and joint rotation ranges.Copyright © 2013 by ASME
Dynamic Capability and Its Effects on Firm Performance

Problem statement: The study has been mainly attempted as an extension to previous studies made on dynamic capabilities and their necessity in organizational firms for goals’ accomplishments. Approach: The literature review illustrates the effects of dynamic capabilities on product innovation, firm performance and environmental dynamism. The researches of different authors and theorists on the subject of dynamic capability have been consulted and analysed to present a research study through this study. Results: The study has provided with a detailed understanding of the dynamic capability strategies that have been found to be highly significant in successful organizational performance. The development of different propositions also reflect the increasing importance of dynamic capabilities in organizations that managers are integrating in their strategic management practices all the more from before. Conclusion: This study reveals that the availability of dynamic capabilities imply that a firm may be protected from the negative impacts through planned strategic measures intended to encounter challenges and uncertainties and yet perform to the utmost level and succeed in achieving organizational goals and objectives.
The Role of Zinc Cluster Protein Transcription Factors in Regulating Antifungal Resistance in the Pathogenic Yeast Candida glabrata

(3) Résumé. (4) Section 1: Literature Review. (5) 1.1 Fungal Pathogenesis and Candida glabrata. (5) 1.2 Biology of C. glabrata. (6) 1.3 Virulence Factors of C. glabrata. (6) 1.4 Genetics of C. glabrata. (8) 1.5 Antifungal Drugs and their Mechanisms of Action. (8) 1.5. i Polyenes. (9) 1.5. ii Azoles. (9) 1.5. iii Statins. (10) 1.5. iv Flucytosine (also known as 5-fluorocytosine). (10) 1.5. v Echinocandins. (11) 1.6 Antifungal Resistance. (12) 1.6. i Polyene Resistance. (12) 1.6. ii Azole Resistance. (12) 1.6. iii Flucytosine Resistance. (13) 1.6. iv Echinocandin Resistance. (14) 1.7 Zinc Cluster Proteins. (14) 1.7. i Functional Domains. (15) 1.7. ii DNA-binding Specificity. (16) 1.8 Zinc Cluster Proteins Involved in Antifungal Resistance. (16) 1.8. i Pdr1p and Pdr3p. (16) 1.8. ii Yrr1p. (17) 1.8. iii Stb5p. (18) Section 2: Rationale and Objectives. (19) Section 3: Materials and Methods. (20) 3.1 Construction of C. glabrata plasmids for Deletion of Zinc Cluster Genes. (20)
Thermal Flows in the Surface Atmosphere of the Riobamba City

This study evaluated the behavior of surface heat fluxes, in the meteorological and physical conditions of the Riobamba city (height of 2754 m regarding the sea level, geographical position 1°58'58'' Sour of latitude and 78°39'33'' West of longitude, and it is located in the Ecuadorian inter-Andean alley), these meteorological data were monitored at the ESPOCH stations of the alternative energy group during 2010-2012, and applied information processing dynamic model formulated by Van Ulden and Hostlag, which allows the determination of heat flow of sensible heat, latent heat and surface heat generated in the interaction soil-air. The measures allow us to know the average behavior of the heat flow data with variation between, 38.22, 22.15 and 155.20 W/m2 for the latent, sensible and surface heat respectively, while during the day hours significant variations in these flows that reach maximum values during the day with 139, 127 and 763 W/m2 and minimum at the night -3.9, -27.5 and -263.3 W/m2; results differ from those obtained under normal conditions at sea level.
Spacecraft Motion Simulator and associated Modeling for Realistic Hardware-In-Loop Simulation

Hardware–In–loop simulation (HILS) is a realistic dynamic test environment for verification and validation of Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS) of a satellite. The tight attitude rate requirement of the order of +/5.0e-5 deg/sec of AOCS calls for high bandwidth high accuracy 3 degree of freedom spacecraft Angular Motion Simulator (AMS). The AMS along with dynamics model achieves the overall goal of assessing the performance of various control elements for all mission scenarios from satellite injection, transfer orbit acquisition, orbit raising, on-orbit, station-keeping & normal mode operations. The mechanism of AMS and associated modeling is successfully deployed in HILS testing of various satellite missions of Indian Space Program. This paper describes the closed loop system built around AMS for demonstrating the stringent pointing specification requirements of control system of a spacecraft. Keywords—Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS), Angular Motion Simulator (AMS), Dynamic Simulation Modeling (DSM), Hardware In-Loop Simulation (HILS), Spacecraft (S/C), On-Board Computer (OBC).
Altered Protein Expression in Peach ( Prunus persica ) Following Fruit Bagging

Fruit bagging has been widely practiced in peach cultivation to produce high quality and unblemished fruit. Moreover, fruit bagging has been utilized to study the effect of shading on the quality of fruit. We conducted a proteomic analysis on peach fruit to elucidate the biochemical and physiological events that characterize the effect of bagging treatment. Comparative analysis of 2D electrophoresis (2-DE) gels showed that relative protein levels differed significantly at 125 DAFB (days after full bloom), as well as at 133 DAFB in fruit that had been bagged until 125 DAFB, followed by exposure to sunlight. Most of the proteins with altered expression were identified by MALDI TOF/TOF. Twenty-one proteins with differential expression among the groups were identified at 125 DAFB, while thirty proteins with differential expression among the groups were identified at 133 DAFB. The analysis revealed that expression of proteins involved in photosynthesis, stress responses, and biochemical processes influencing metabolism were altered during bagging treatment, suggesting that regulation of the synthesis of carbohydrates, amino acids, and proteins influenced fruit size, solid/acid ratio, and peel color. This work provides the first characterization of proteomic changes in peach in response to fruit bagging treatment. Identifying and tracking protein changes may allow us to better understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of bagging treatment.
Biochemical, biophysical, and thermal properties of alkaline phosphatase from thermophile Thermus sp. NTU-237

Description of the subject. Alkaline phosphatases (APases) are commonly used as nonradioactive markers for detecting specific proteins or DNA targets in clinical medicine and molecular biology. However, their applications in the biotechnology industry require thermostability and storage stability. Our preliminary study revealed that APase from Thermus sp. NTU-237 (TsAPase) is thermostable and exhibits high activity. Therefore, it is desirable to establish the optimal conditions for its application. Objectives. To characterize APase from thermophile Thermus sp. NTU-237 and to evaluate its potential applications. Method. The APase gene of Thermus sp. NTU-237 was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. Subsequently, the effects of buffer, glycerol, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), NaCl, and temperature on enzyme activity were studied to establish the optimal conditions for TsAPase assays. In addition, the potential for application of TsAPase was evaluated using the 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl phosphate/nitro blue tetrazolium (BCIP/NBT) active staining method. Results. Recombinant TsAPase was identified as having a dimeric structure and a molecular mass of 109 kDa. Sequence alignment analysis of known thermophilic APases with TsAPase and E. coli APase revealed that catalytic and binding residues were highly conserved. This finding suggested that the catalytic mechanism of TsAPase is the same as that of other APases. TsAPase activity was inhibited by glycerol and SDS but enhanced by NaCl and Tris-HCl buffer. The kinetic parameters Km, kcat, and Vmaxwere determined to be 81 µM, 6.08 s-1, and 6.76 U·mg-1, respectively. The optimum temperature of TsAPase was 80 °C, and TsAPase was stable at room temperature for more than 10 days. Moreover, TsAPase could catalyze the dephosphorylation of BCIP and could elicit blue color development by the BCIP/NBT reaction kit at room temperature. Conclusions. These results illustrate that TsAPase has potential for application in medical or basic research.
Optimizing Traffic Engineering in Software Defined Networking

The digital society is an outcome of the Internet which has nearly made everything connected and accessible no matter where or when. Nevertheless, despite the fact that conventional IP networks are complicated and very hard to manage, they are still widely adopted. The already established policies make the network configuration/reconfiguration a complex process that reacts to errors, load, and modifications. The prevailing networks are vertically integrated which makes things more and more complicated: Data planes and control are strapped together. Software-defined networking is a model that is meant to solve this issue by splitting the vertical integration and detaching the network’s control logic from the implicit routers and switches; this could be achieved by reinforcing centralization of network control and making the network programmable. In this work, we worked to implement MPLS networks with SDN, to enhance the traffic engineering over the network, and to minimize the network delay and latency, with minimum cost using three of the different SDN networks. The experiment results showed the advantage of the proposed approach for reducing the network delay, comparing with previous studies. Where the average of network delay in our approach reaches to 3.01 milliseconds.