Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smallholder Households’ Willingness to Pay for Conservation of Ecosystem Services of Alitash National Park, Ethiopia

Background: Despite exceptional ecosystem services are provided by Altash National Park, anthropogenic activities exert immense pressures on the parks’ natural resources from the surrounding community which is eventually degrading the productivity of ecosystem services. Therefore, the aim of this study was economic valuation of ecosystem services of Altash National Park of Ethiopia. Using systematic random sampling 196 sample respondents were selected. Double bounded dichotomous choice followed by open ended format of contingent valuation method was used to state households’ willingness to pay (WTP) and their maximum WTP for conservation of ecosystem services of the park. Seemingly unrelated bivariate probit model was employed to analyse the data. Results: First and second offered bid values, Sex of respondent, Years of living in Kebele, Education status, Distance from home to park, Benefit of preservation, Distance from farm to park, Training on park conservation were found to have statistically significant influence on households’ WTP for improving conservation of ecosystem services of the park. The expected aggregate WTP from double bounded dichotomous choice and open ended format was estimated 1,511,172.96 and 1,526,194.56 birr, respectively. Conclusions: Based on the findings, since all respondents were willing to pay for the conservation of ecosystem services of the park, for every decision and formulation of policies and strategies, participation of local communities should be considered. Finally, regular training and workshop should be delivered for local communities to enhance awareness about the environmental and economic values of the park and to develop sense of ownership.
Trump's January 6 Address: Hate Speech or Freedom of Speech? A Transdisciplinary Study

PurposeThis research is a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of Trump's speech on January 6, 2021, which results in his supporters' storming the US Capitol in order to challenge certifying Biden's victory. The Democrats accused Trump of incitement of insurrection. Consequently, Trump was impeached. This article investigates Trump's speech to label it as hate speech or free speech.Design/methodology/approachAnalytical framework is tri-dimensional. The textual analysis is based on Halliday's notion of process types and Huckin's discourse tools of foregrounding and topicalization. The socio-cognitive analysis is based on Van Dijk's ideological square and his theory of mental models. The philosophical dimension is founded on Habermas's theory of discourse. These parameters are the cornerstones of the barometer that will be utilized to reach an objective evaluation of Trump's speech.FindingsFindings suggest that Trump usually endows “I, We, You” with topic positions to lay importance on himself and his supporters. He frequently uses material process to urge the crowds' action. He categorizes Americans into two conflicting poles: He and his supporters versus the media and the Democrats. Mental models are created and activated so that the other is always negatively depicted. Reports about corruption are denied in court. Despite that, Trump repeats such reports. This is immoral in Habermas's terms. The study concludes that Trump delivered hate speech in order to incite the mob to act in a manner that may change the election results.Originality/valueThe study is original in its tri-dimensional framework and its data of analysis.
Antioxidant and antibacterial efficacy of Chaetomorpha linum and its toxicological evaluation for the prophylactic treatment against Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection in Labeo rohita

ABSTRACT The antioxidant activity and antibacterial efficacy of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Chaetomorpha linum were tested against bacterial infection caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In vitro and in vivo studies revealed the efficacy of ethanolic extract of C. linum in controlling the P. aeruginosa infection. Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy analysis of purified fractions of ethanolic extract was also performed. Ichthyotoxic bioassay of purified seaweed extracts was performed to assess its toxic effect in rohu fish and found to be nontoxic. Experimental pathogenicity of P. aeruginosa showed exophthalmia, reduced intake of feed, and lesions on the body. LD 50 was achieved at the 3.96 × 102 at 48 h and 4.82 × 103 at 72 h in the experimental pathogenicity. The results revealed that the ethanolic extract of C. linum can be used as an alternate source for controlling P. aeruginosa infection in L. rohita.
An improved 𝓁 1 median model for extracting 3D human body curve‑skeleton

Three-dimensional human body curve-skeleton is widely used in pose estimation, skeleton animation and other fields. This paper proposes an improved 𝓁 1 median model that can extract three-dimensional human body curve-skeleton. The model includes three-dimensional human body reconstruction from multi-view images, interpolation curve-skeleton extraction, 𝓁 1 median skeleton completion, and continuous frame curve-skeleton optimization. Through the completion and optimization processes, the curve-skeleton we extract is smoother and more complete compared with previous methods. We conduct experiments on multi-view human body image dataset collected from light field acquisition system. Both quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate the effectiveness of our model.
Transparency in Global Agribusiness: Transforming Brazil’s Soybean Supply Chain Based on Companies’ Accountability

Background: Although agri-food supply chains have become fundamental for food security throughout the world, some are associated with negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts. This study explores the possibilities of transforming the governance in Brazil’s soybean supply chain based on stakeholders’ accountability. Methods: We used secondary data from companies’ reports and statistical yearbooks to identify key stakeholders in the soybean supply chain as well as to explore trade-offs between reducing farming expansion into new agricultural frontiers and increasing investments in agro-industrial sectors. Results: The results reveal that at the global level, multinational corporations along with domestic groups should be held accountable for improving the governance of the soybean supply chain in Brazil since foreign multinationals control 65.4% of it. At the domestic level, losses in Brazil’s farming sector can either be offset by an 11% or 5.2% market share increase in the trading segment or in the whole supply chain, respectively, since Brazilian groups control 93.4% of the farming sector but only 7.1% of the agro-industrial sectors. Conclusions: Global accountability and domestic trade-offs are fundamental for transforming governance in global agri-food supply chains. They serve as a means for overcoming the current strategy of expansion into new farming frontiers.
Coptera haywardi females discriminate puparia of Anastrepha obliqua treated with Beauveria bassiana

The capacity of a parasitoid to discriminate hosts can favor the survival of its progeny as well as improve its efficacy as a biocontrol agent when it is used with another natural enemy, as this may result in greater control of the pest. Our aim was to characterize the discrimination ability of Coptera haywardi (Oglobin) (Hymenoptera: Diapriidae) females with respect to puparia of Anastrepha obliqua (Macquart) (Diptera: Tephritidae) treated with the fungus Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin (Hypocreales: Cordycipitaceae), under three conditions: (1) no choice, separately exposing A. obliqua puparia, treated at 0, 24, 48, or 72 h prior to exposure, to the parasitoid and without application of the fungus (absolute control); (2) with the possibility of choosing between untreated and treated puparia with the same times after fungus application; and (3) multiple choice, where parasitoids could select among puparia treated at different times. Observations were made to determine the discrimination behavior of the wasps as well as the number of ovipositions by each female parasitoid; 14 observations were made. Coptera haywardi exhibited different levels of discrimination depending on the test. In the no‐choice test, discrimination was not observed; in the two‐choice test, females significantly discriminated the puparia treated at 0, 24, and 72 h prior to exposure; and in the multiple‐choice test, females preferred the untreated puparia – behavior that was corroborated in the direct observations. Oviposition time ranged from 9 to 86 min and differences in average time among treatments were not significant. We conclude that the discrimination ability of C. haywardi allows the simultaneous use of B. bassiana, as females prefer healthy, untreated puparia without interfering with the fungus.
Thorpe turbulence scaling in night time convective surface layers in the North Indian Ocean

We use profiles from a Lagrangian Float in the North Indian Ocean to explore the usefulness of Thorpe analysis methods to measure vertical scales and dissipation rates in the ocean surface boundary layer. An rms Thorpe length scale LT and an energy dissipation rate εT were computed by resorting the measured density profiles. These are compared to the mixed layer depth (MLD) computed with different density thresholds, the Monin-Obukhov (MO) length LMO computed from the ERA5 reanalysis values of wind stress and buoyancy flux B0 and dissipation rates ε from historical microstructure data. LT is found to accurately match MLD for small (<0.005 kgm-3) density thresholds, but not for larger thresholds, because these do not detect the warm diurnal layers. We use ξ = LT/|LMO| to classify the boundary layer turbulence during night-time convection. In our data, 90% of points from the Bay of Bengal (Arabian Sea) satisfy ξ < 1 (1 < ξ < 10), indicating that wind forcing is (both wind forcing and convection are) driving the turbulence. Over the measured range of ξ, εT decreases with decreasing ξ, i.e. more wind forcing, while ε increases, clearly showing that ε/εT decreases with increasing ξ. This is explained by a new scaling for ξ ≪ 1, εT = 1.15 B0ξ0. 5 compared to the historical scaling ε = 0.64 B0 + 1. 76ξ−1. For ξ ≫ 1 we expect ε = εT. Similar calculations may be possible using routine ARGO float and ship data, allowing more detailed global measurements of εT thereby providing large-scale tests of turbulence scaling in boundary layers.
A study of a person-centred approach to teacher education within a drama course: its contribution to pre-service teachers’ professional ethics

ABSTRACT This study explores the contribution of a person-centred approach as applied in the drama course of a teacher education programme to the growth of the professional ethics of a group of pre-service primary teachers. It is founded on three questions, which examine the conducive epistemological conditions of the drama course to the development of pre-service teachers as persons; the virtues that they might develop in its context; and to what extent do they understand the person-centred approach of drama as critical in forming their professional ethos. The findings demonstrate that recreation, beauty, surprise and collectiveness comprise the epistemological premises that encouraged them to construct their virtuous-dispositional learning. Within this framework, they developed ethical and intellectual virtues, including sympathy, empathy and respect, persistence, courage and open-mindedness. The study reinforces the notion that a drama course in teacher education can enable pre-service teachers to cultivate both their personal ethos and professional ethics.
Fibre-Reinforced Geopolymer Composites Micro-Nanochemistry by SEM-EDS Simulations

The focus of the present study is on fibre-reinforced geopolymer composites, whose optimization and application necessarily need a detailed chemical characterization at the micro-nanoscale. In this regard, many geopolymer composites presenting micro and nanometric architectures pose a challenge for scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (SEM-EDS) quantification, because of several potential sources of errors. For this reason, the present work reports a SEM-EDS Monte Carlo approach to carefully investigate the complex physical phenomena related to the cited quantification errors. The model used for this theoretical analysis is a simplified fibre-reinforced geopolymer with basalt-derived glass fibres immersed in a potassium-poly(sialate-siloxo) matrix. The simulated SEM-EDS spectra showed a strong influence on the measured X-ray intensity of (i) the sample nano-to-micro architecture, (ii) the electron beam probing energy and (iii) the electron probe-sample-EDS detector relative position. The results showed that, compared to a bulk material, the X-ray intensity for a nano-micrometric sized specimen may give rise to potential underestimation and/or overestimation of the elemental composition of the sample. The proposed Monte Carlo approach indicated the optimal instrumental setup depending on the sample and on the specific SEM-EDS equipment here considered.
Acquiring conversational speaking style from multi-speaker spontaneous dialog corpus for prosody-controllable sequence-to-sequence speech synthesis

Sequence-to-Sequence Text-to-Speech (S2S TTS) architectures that directly generate low level acoustic features from phonetic sequence are known to produce natural and expressive speech, when provided with moderate-to-large amounts of high quality training data. When exposed to a sequence of coarse speaker-agnostic prosodic descriptors , such systems become prosody-controllable and can learn and transfer desired prosodic patterns (e.g. word-emphasis or speaking style) from one seen speaker to another (in multi-speaker settings). But what if a high quality speech corpus for a desired speaking style is not available? In this work we explore the feasibility of teaching a neutral pre-trained prosody-controllable S2S TTS voice to speak with a conversational speaking style, as learnt from a low-quality multi-speaker spontaneous dialog corpus (originally intended for Automatic Speech Recognition). We have found that it is absolutely necessary to incorporate word semantics for that task. We ﬁne-tune BERT network to predict the prosodic descriptors from the input text, based on that corpus, and apply them to the prosody-controllable S2S TTS at inference time. The subjective listening tests revealed that the learnt conversational style rated higher than baseline for 68% of the stimuli under test. The overall quality and naturalness rated higher than baseline in 64% of the stimuli under test. The improvement came mostly as a result of improving common conversational speech patterns, such as ﬁller words and phrases. However, the overall MOS did not signiﬁcantly improve due to less convincing realization of the rising intonation on declarative statements ( uptalk ).
An accuracy comparison of piecewise linear reconstruction techniques for the characteristic finite volume method for two‐dimensional convection‐diffusion equation

In this paper, we apply the characteristic finite volume method (CFVM) for solving a convection‐diffusion problem on two‐dimensional triangular grids. The finite volume method is used to discretize the equation while the finite element method is applied to estimate the gradient quantities at cell faces. The numerical analysis of the convergence has been implemented for the CFVM in one‐dimension. The approximate L2 norm of the error is derived to determine the errors for the approximate solution. The accuracy of four piecewise linear reconstruction techniques, namely, Frink, Holmes‐Connell, Green‐Gauss, and least‐squares methods are investigated on structured triangular grids. Numerical evidence shows that the least‐squares method is the most accurate of all methods for smooth initial condition problems. For discontinuous initial condition problems, the Frink and the Holmes‐Connell methods give a spurious oscillating solution in the vicinity of the discontinuity upstream of the discontinuity, and the Green‐Gauss and least‐squares methods give a spurious oscillating solution in the vicinity of the discontinuity downstream of the discontinuity. Moreover, the amplitude of the oscillation could be amplified on the finer grid sizes.
Central Bulge Ferrite Core for Efficient Wireless Power Transfer

To improve the efficiency of the wireless power transfer (WPT) system without increasing the system size, a central bulge ferrite core with a novel configuration is proposed. The mutual inductance between magnetic coupling structures is able to increase obviously, which is approved by eigenfunction expansion method. In this paper, the mathematical models of the planar core and the central bulge core are established, respectively, as two types of the mutual inductance are calculated in same condition. The structure parameters of the central bulge ferrite core are further optimized by Maxwell magnetic field simulation. Experiments are conducted to compare the WPT efficiency of two types of ferrite cores in improving the efficiency of WPT system, in which the influence of transmission distance, lateral misalignment, and load variation are taken into account. The results show that central bulge ferrite core has better performance in WPT efficiency than the planar one, even in the case of long power transfer distance and lateral misalignment.
A Gather-to-Guide Network for Remote Sensing Semantic Segmentation of RGB and Auxiliary Image

Convolutional neural network (CNN)-based feature fusion of RGB and auxiliary remote sensing data is known to enable improved semantic segmentation. However, such fusion is challengeable because of the substantial variance in data characteristics and quality (e.g., data uncertainties and misalignment) between two modality data. In this article, we propose a unified gather-to-guide network (G2GNet) for remote sensing semantic segmentation of RGB and auxiliary data. The key aspect of the proposed architecture is a novel gather-to-guide module (G2GM) that consists of a feature gatherer and a feature guider. The feature gatherer generates a set of cross-modal descriptors by absorbing the complementary merits of RGB and auxiliary modality data. The feature guider calibrates the RGB feature response by using the channel-wise guide weights extracted from the cross-modal descriptors. In this way, the G2GM can perform RGB feature calibration with different modality data in a gather-to-guide fashion, thus preserving the informative features while suppressing redundant and noisy information. Extensive experiments conducted on two benchmark datasets show that the proposed G2GNet is robust to data uncertainties while also improving the semantic segmentation performance of RGB and auxiliary remote sensing data.
Establishing a Baseline: Bringing Innovation to the Evaluation of Cross-National Probability-Based Online Panels

A number of countries in Europe and beyond have established online or mixed mode panels with a web component based upon probability samples. This paper aims to assess the first ever attempt to do this cross-nationally using an input harmonised approach representing a major innovation in cross-national survey methodology. The European Social Survey established a panel using the face-to-face interview as the basis for recruitment to the panel. This experiment was conducted in Estonia, Slovenia and Great Britain using an input harmonised approach to the design throughout something never done before across multiple countries simultaneously. The paper outlines how the experiment was conducted. It then moves on to compare the web panel respondents to the ESS achieved face-to-face sample in each country, as well as comparing the web panel achieved sample to external benchmarks. Most importantly, since the literature is very scarce, the differences in attitudinal and behavioural characteristics are also assessed. By comparing the answers of the total achieved sample in the ESS to the subset who also answered the CRONOS web panel we assess changes in representativeness and substantive answers without confounding the findings with other changes such as mode effects. This approach is only possible where ‘piggybacking’ recruitment has been used. This in itself is rare at the national level but this is the first time survey methodologists have employed this cross-nationally allowing such an analytical approach. Our findings suggest that the CRONOS sample is not too divergent from the target population and to the ESS with the exception of the oldest age groups. However, there are cross-national differences suggesting cross-national comparability might be different when compared to estimates from a face-to-face survey.
New 3-D Combined Inversion Scheme Using Response Functions Free From Galvanic Distortion

The combined inversion using distortion-free response functions is an effective approach to robustly estimate the 3-D electrical resistivity structure against the distortions caused by near-surface resistivity anomalies. However, previous combined inversion analyses have presented a significant dependency of the inversion results on initial and prior models. Therefore, in this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of the following two new types of 3-D combined inversion using distortion-free response functions: one uses the phase tensor and the vertical and inter-station horizontal magnetic transfer functions, while the other uses the Network-MT response functions, in addition to the former. Because long dipoles are used, the Network-MT response function is negligibly affected by galvanic distortion. To access the combined inversion approach, we developed a novel 3-D inversion scheme combining the response functions of the usual magnetotelluric measurements and the Network-MT response function. The synthetic inversion analysis demonstrated that both of the proposed combined inversions can recover the characteristic resistivity distributions of the target model without a significant dependence on the initial models, at least in the shallow part. These results demonstrate that the combined inversions using only distortion-free response functions have the potential to estimate subsurface resistivity more robustly than what was previously thought. Furthermore, we confirmed that the combined inversion using the Network-MT response function can make the resultant resistivity structure closer to the actual one and enhance the stability of the inversion. This result suggests that the combined use of the Network-MT response function is the preferred approach.
Towards Promising Platform by Using Annular Photonic Crystals to Simulate and Design Useful Mask

Human masks are considered the mainstay in air filtration and purification technologies and against the spreading of bacterial and viral infections. This paper introduces a novel design of a human mask to increase the ultraviolet germicidal irradiation effect on pathogens. The proposed design consists of a tube with an annular photonic crystal (APC) attached to the mask’s orifice, and a UV source is located in the tube’s center. The main role of this study is the enhancement of UV doses based on the reflectivity of the proposed APC. Therefore, increasing pathogens’ inactivation level in the incoming air to the mask’s orifice could be investigated. The numerical investigations demonstrated that the proposed APC could provide a complete photonic bandgap with a high reflectivity in the wavelength regime from 207 to 230 nm. In addition, we have considered the roles of the thickness of layers, inner core radius, and the azimuthal number. Meanwhile, the results showed the ability to use a wide range of core radius values without almost any variations in the optical properties of the proposed design. Such results could grant the advantage of using this design by the manufacturing of human masks with different sizes besides the inclusions in other ultraviolet germicidal irradiation applications.