Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of a New Percent Tree Cover Dataset with Existing One and Categorical Land Cover Datasets in Eurasia

The global tree cover percentage is an important parameter used to understand the global environment. However, the available percent tree cover products on global or continental-scale are few, and efforts to quantitatively validate these maps have been limited. We produced a new percent tree cover dataset at 500 m resolution in 2008 for Eurasia using reference data interpreted from Google Earth. It is a part of percent tree cover (PTC) data in Global Mapping project. In this study, the dataset was compared with existing global percent tree cover dataset, MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields, MOD44B. We assessed the agreement of these datasets with two existing global categorical land cover datasets and statistic data in Eurasia. The result showed that estimates of tree cover in our new map and MOD44B were relatively similar at randomly sampled sites. Our map and MOD44B agreed with either or both of land cover maps at 93% of sites and 91% of sites, respectively, for pixel blocks. However, we found that MOD44B disagreed with our map and categorical land cover datasets at about half of the sampled sites where the difference of tree cover percentage between our map and MOD44B was large, especially in the areas with significant differences (more than 50%). Disagreed areas were concentrated in forests of Russia and Indonesia, and in herbaceous dominated vegetation of UK and Ireland. We also found that both our map and MOD44B were somewhat different from the data reported by FRA 2010.
Civic Participation and Gender Beliefs: An Analysis of 46 Countries

Gender equality has progressed a great deal in recent decades in response to modernisation, industrialisation, and the generally rising level of education. A transformation in gender beliefs has accompanied the progress on gender equality and beliefs about gender roles have mainly changed in countries in North America and Europe, while in Muslim and Asian countries they have remained the same. The analysis in this article focuses on civic participation and investigates its relation to equalitarian gender beliefs. Multi-level regression models and data from World Values Survey (WVS) collected from 46 countries in 2005 allow depicting the relationships. The findings show that membership in civic associations covariates with equalitarian gender beliefs, but the sign of the relation depends on the gender and the type of association.
Recent characterization of cowpea aphid-borne mosaic virus (CABMV) in Bahia State, Brazil, suggests potential regional isolation

Woodiness disease is the most important disorder of passion fruit worldwide. The causal agent in Brazil is the Cowpea aphid-borne mosaic virus (CABMV), and despite the economic relevance of passion fruit for agriculture there have been recently very few studies about this virus in Brazil and worldwide. This work reveals the phylogenetic relationships of 10 newly identified CABMV isolates from Bahia State, the region where CABMV was first identified (in that time reported as PWV) in South America before its outbreak. The coat protein of 10 CABMV isolates (CABMV-Lns1 - CABMV-Lns10) from Livramento de Nossa Senhora Country, Bahia State, were sequenced and presented very close identity between themselves (nucleotide: 97 to 99%, amino acid: 95 to 100%). They are phylogenetically closely related to Brazilian CABMV, however forming an isolated cluster within the Brazilian clade. According to previous evidences, our data demonstrate that CABMV-Lns are more closely related to isolates from Southern rather than from Northern Africa. Other two isolates from Bahia State clustered separately from CABMV-Lns, but together with isolates from other Brazilian regions thus suggesting that CABMV-Lns are a strain likely restricted to Bahia. The characterization of new populations of CABMV enables greater resolution of the evolution of viruses causing woodiness disease in passion fruit vines. Our data shed light on an as yet unexplored population of CABMV in Brazil and contributes to the understanding of its evolutionary history. Key words: Passion fruit, Livramento de Nossa Senhora, Bahia, phylogenetics, woodiness disease.
Culture Formation and Endogenous Cultural Distance

This paper introduces a new approach to "cultural transmission of preferences" (see Bisin and Verdier, 2000, 2001). It is based on the conceptualization of the culture of a person as a set of cultural values and attitudes, represented as an n-dimensional tuple in Euclidean space. The culture of a person is formed through social learning and imitation from role-models, which correspond to the chosen "displayed cultures" of parents ("vertical transmission") and the society at large ("oblique transmission"). Parents might choose a "displayed culture" that does not coincide with their true culture, since they aim at countervailing negative cultural influences that their children are exposed to in the society at large. Additionally, they can invest into the success that their displayed culture has in the socialization process of their children. We will consider in the present paper an OLG model with two cultural groups, and where in any period, the members of each of the cultural groups have identical culture. We show that if parents have a desire for cultural closeness to their children (e.g. "imperfect empathy"), then they will always behave culturally more "radical" relative to the culture of the other cultural group. Furthermore, they will always invest into their socialization success. Nevertheless, these investments are never sufficient to let the distance between the future cultures of the children of both cultural groups be larger or equal than the cultural distance of the parental generation. As a consequence, the cultures of both groups converge to a homogeneous steady state culture, which can be interpreted as a mixture of the two initial cultures. This result corresponds to the "melting pot" theory of integration of cultural groups.
A 277 year cool season dam inflow reconstruction for Tasmania, southeastern Australia

Seasonal variability is a significant source of uncertainty in projected changes to precipitation across southeastern Australia (SEA). While existing instrumental records provide seasonal data for recent decades, most proxy records (e.g., tree rings, corals, speleothems) offer only annual reconstructions of hydroclimate. We present the first cool‐season (July–August) reconstruction of dam inflow (Lake Burbury) for western Tasmania in SEA based on tree‐ring width (Athrotaxis selaginoides) and mean latewood cell wall thickness (Phyllocladus aspleniifolius) chronologies. The reconstruction, produced using principal component regression, verifies back to 1731 and is moderately skillful, explaining around 23% of the variance. According to the reconstruction, relatively low inflow periods occurred around 1860, the early 1900s and 1970, while relatively high inflows occurred in the 1770s and 1810s. Highest reconstructed inflows occurred in 1816, and lowest in 1909. Comparison with available documentary and instrumental records indicates that the reconstruction better captures high rather than low flow events. There is virtually no correlation between our reconstruction and another for December–January inflow for the same catchment, a result consistent with the relationship between seasonal instrumental data. This suggests that conditions in one season have not generally reflected conditions in the other season over the instrumental record, or for the past 277 years. This illustrates the value of obtaining reconstructions of regional hydroclimatic variability for multiple individual seasons in regions where dry and wet seasons are not strongly defined. The results also indicate that the hydroclimate of the southeastern Australian region cannot be adequately represented by a single regional reconstruction.
Reputation management: Misuse of social media by customers and consequences on the marketing strategies of firms

The misuse of customer power by means of posting in social media platforms (SMP) is a reality that a company is confronted with. Literature suggests that organizations have to rethink their marketing strategies with regards to SMPs. SMPs enable consumers to share their thoughts and opinions about a company and their products with millions of others within seconds. Since customers do not only share good experiences, corporations are faced with different types of misuses such as negative comments or unfavorable rankings. Consciously or unconsciously the abuse of SMPs by customers can lead to problems for companies, for instance it can cause a bad reputation. This research aims to identify various types of misuse of SMPs by customers and the consequences on marketing strategies. The research is based on a critical literature review. Additionally, case studies with different companies from various industries were conducted. First the threats were diagnosed, followed by the classification of the types of abuse. Apart from that, opportunities to prevent bad reputation and actions that are possible after forfeiting reputation were identified. Lastly, the literature and the practice were compared in order to show similarities and differences between them both. Literature and case studies indicate that the misuse of SMPs by customers can lead to reputational problems. Furthermore, companies claim that there is still no strong motive to change their marketing strategies since the customer abuses faced so far were manageable.
Aprendizaje cooperativo en Educación Física: estado de la cuestión y propuesta de intervención (Cooperative learning in Physical Education: the state of the question and intervention proposal)

En los ultimos anos varias investigaciones han subrayado las ventajas del aprendizaje cooperativo para promover el aprendizaje motor y social en Educacion Fisica. Sin embargo, rara vez se describe lo que los docentes hacen cuando aplican este modelo pedagogico en sus clases de Educacion Fisica. Este articulo presenta un estudio exploratorio orientado a dar respuesta a esta pregunta. Ciento noventa y ocho profesores de Educacion Fisica espanoles respondieron a un cuestionario dirigido a conocer como conciben el aprendizaje cooperativo y el modo en que lo implementan en sus clases con alumnado de Primaria y Secundaria. Los resultados del estudio muestran que el aprendizaje cooperativo es todavia una metodologia poco implementada en Educacion Fisica. Los profesores la conciben desde una perspectiva cercana al juego cooperativo. Se propone entonces un nuevo enfoque pedagogico, denominado coopedagogia , orientado a facilitar que los docentes puedan desarrollar un proceso de intervencion que permita, por una parte, que el alumnado aprenda a cooperar y, por otra, que utilice la cooperacion como recurso para aprender en las clases de Educacion Fisica. Abstract . Over the last few years several studies have emphasized the advantages of cooperative learning to promote motor and social learning in Physical Education. However, what teachers do when they implement this pedagogical model in their Physical Education classes is rarely described. This paper presents an exploratory study aimed at answering this question. One hundred and ninety-eight Spanish Physical Education teachers completed a questionnaire designed to find out how cooperative learning is conceived and applied practically in Primary and Secondary school classes. The results of the study reveal that cooperative learning is still underutilized in Physical Education. Teachers conceive cooperative learning from a perspective close to cooperative play. A new pedagogical approach, called coopedagogy , is then proposed to facilitate teachers in developing an intervention process that allows students to learn how to cooperate and how to use the cooperation as a resource of learning in Physical Education classes.
Object tracking with SURF: ARM-Based platform Implementation

: Several algorithms for object tracking, are developed, but our method is slightly different, it’s about how to adapt and implement such algorithms on mobile platform. We started our work by studying and analyzing feature matching algorithms, to highlight the most appropriate implementation technique for our case. In this paper, we propose a technique of implementation of the algorithm SURF (Speeded Up Robust Features), for purposes of recognition and object tracking in real time. This is achieved by the realization of an application on a mobile platform such a Raspberry pi, when we can select an image containing the object to be tracked, in the scene captured by the live camera pi. Our algorithm calculates the SURF descriptor for the two images to detect the similarity therebetween, and then matching between similar objects. In the second level, we extend our algorithm to achieve a tracking in real time, all that must respect raspberry pi performances. So, the first thing is setting up all libraries that the raspberry pi need, then adapt the algorithm with card’s performances. This paper presents experimental results on a set of evaluation images as well as images obtained in real time.
Biodiesel processes energy improvement based on pinch and exergy analysis

With the growth of energy demands and depleting fossil fuel reserves, there is an increasing incentive to improve an energy efficiency of industrial processes. This project aims to develop energy improvement methodologies containing both Pinch and exergy Analysis in an iterative manner, and identify promising modifications that can be applied on industrial scale processes to improve process energy performance across three criteria: heat recovery, exergetic efficiency, and economic profitability. In this work, the barley straw as the biomass stock feed to produce biodiesel production processes are optimized by Heat Integration to construct heat exchanger network (HEN), and the promising modifications proposed from the results of the exergy analysis are then investigated to reduce the exergy loss of processes. For this case, modifications such as increasing the reaction temperature and adjusting the reactants ratio on the identified three exergetic losses units would reduce the process exergy loss by 23 % and increase the exergetic efficiency by 4.74 %.
Investigating the Optimum Efficiency of Acoustoelectric Conversion Plate Devices

This study aims to develop the acoustoelectric conversion plate in terms of electromagnetic induction law to convert sound energy to electricity, where the developed apparatus is made of three parts, the thin film coil, the spring, and the high-intensity magnetic framework. In process, the thin film coil receives the injecting sound vibration in connection with the spring to cause the reciprocating motion between the coil and the high-intensity magnet, which yields the electromotive force (EMF). In this study, a pearl plate of length 95 mm, width 95 mm, and thickness 1.5 mm adhered with a PET film of thickness 0.08mm is built as the substrate plate due to it has good properties of light and elasticity. In connection with the substrate plate and the electric coil is the thin film coil. Experiments used the speaker with output frequencies of 30~156 Hz and sound power of 0.5 W (sound intensity 0.32 W/m 2 , sound pressure level 115 dB) as the sound source. The sound energy is captured by the acoustoelectric conversion plate for working efficiency and optimization parameters analysis. The studied parameters content of diameter, turns, and width of electric coil as well as distance between high intensity magnet and coil. The results show that diameter 0.11 mm, turns 220, and width 3 mm of the electric coil, in connection with steel spring of diameter 0.2 mm while input sound is 30 Hz, receives the average output voltage of 0.57 V, the average output current of 5.46 mA, the average output power of 3.13 mW, and the sound electric conversion efficiency of 0.63%. This innovation device could be used in highway, near waterfalls, and some high noise factories to capture energy for immediately charging cell-phone to save human life.
Variations in optical properties of aerosols on monsoon seasonal change and estimation of aerosol optical depth using ground-based meteorological and air quality data

12 In this study, the optical properties of aerosols in Penang, Malaysia were analyzed for four 13 monsoonal seasons (northeast monsoon, pre-monsoon, southwest monsoon, and post14 monsoon) based on data from the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) from 15 February 2012 to November 2013. The aerosol distribution patterns in Penang for each 16 monsoonal period were quantitatively identified according to the scattering plots of the 17 aerosol optical depth (AOD) against the Angstrom exponent. A modified algorithm based on 18 the prototype model of Tan et al. (2014a) was proposed to predict the AOD data. Ground19 based measurements (i.e., visibility and air pollutant index) were used in the model as 20 predictor data to retrieve the missing AOD data from AERONET because of frequent cloud 21 formation in the equatorial region. The model coefficients were determined through multiple 22 regression analysis using selected data set from in situ data. The predicted AOD of the model 23 was generated based on the coefficients and compared against the measured data through 24 standard statistical tests. The predicted AOD in the proposed model yielded a coefficient of 25 determination R2 of 0.68. The corresponding percent mean relative error was less than 0.33 % 26 compared with the real data. The results revealed that the proposed model efficiently 27 predicted the AOD data. Validation tests were performed on the model against selected 28 LIDAR data and yielded good correspondence. The predicted AOD can beneficially monitor 29 shortand long-term AOD and provide supplementary information in atmospheric corrections. 30
Human Capital Versus Sorting: The Effects of Compulsory Attendance Laws

Under the educational sorting hypothesis a state compulsory school attendance law will increase the educational attainment of high-ability workers who are not directly affected by the law. Under the human capital hypothesis such laws affect only those individuals whose behavior is directly constrained. We find that compulsory attendance laws do increase enrollment rates in age groups they do not affect directly. Thus, our results contradict the human capital hypothesis and are consistent with the sorting hypothesis.
Combined effects of inorganic nutrients and organic enrichment on intertidal benthic macrofauna: an experimental approach

Marine environments are affected by multiple anthropogenic stressors, but research to date has focussed primarily on the impacts and indicators of individual stressors. Nutrient and organic enrichment can occur separately or in combination with each other, but their combined effects are not fully understood. In a field experiment on a sheltered, sandy-mud, sedimentary intertidal shore, 3 levels of inorganic nutrient addition (nutrient sticks) were crossed with 2 levels of organic matter enrichment (rusks), and benthic macrofauna were sampled at 2 times. Organic matter caused greater impacts on benthic macrofauna than nutrients and had a significant effect on taxon richness and Shannon diversity. Total abundance responded to the interactive effects of nutrients and organic matter. The response observed in total abundance was largely driven by the small opportunistic polychaete Capitella sp. , which responded primarily to organic matter, but its response was mediated by addition of nutrients to the system. This highlights that its abundance varies in response to interactions among stressors, so cannot be easily interpreted. The performance of 2 biotic indices, the AZTI Marine Biotic Index (AMBI) and Multivariate AMBI (M-AMBI), varied, but M-AMBI proved to be the most effective at detecting the combined effects of nutrients and organic enrichment. These findings show that effective management of coastal environments must take account of the potentially complex combined effects of multiple stressors.
Title Evidence for ESCRT-and clathrin-dependent microautophagy

Right © 2017 Oku et al. This article is distributed under the terms of an Attribution‒Noncommercial‒Share Alike‒No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http://www.rupress.org/terms/). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution‒noncommercial‒Share Alike 4.0 International license, as described at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Type Journal Article
DOES MANAGERIAL OWNERSHIP REDUCE AGENCY COST IN TAIWAN? A PANEL THRESHOLD REGRESSION ANALYSIS

Two agency theories have dominated the corporate ownership debate, the convergence of interest and the entrenchment hypothesis. Following the work of Ang et al. (2000) and Sing and Davidson (2003) to a panel of 266 Taiwanese listed companies for the 1996-2006 period, we adopt an advanced panel threshold regression model to determine whether managerial ownership reduces agency costs. We find when managerial ownership is less than 36.55% or greater than 59.06%, consistent with the entrenchment hypothesis, a 1% increase in the managerial ownership decreases asset utilization efficiency by 0.32% and 0.5%, respectively. However, managerial ownership is between 51.35% and 59.06%, consistent with the convergence of interest hypothesis, a 1% increase in the managerial ownership increases asset utilization efficiency by 0.21%.
1 ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKING : SCALE CONSTRUCTION , VALIDATION AND GENERALISABILITY IN MANUFACTURING AND SERVICES SECTORS Competitive

This study operationalizes the construct of organizational networking. We have set out three objectives. First, a critical evaluation of the existing studies was carried out by examining their definitions and dimensions of the construct, use of the network characteristics, and research design. Secondly, based on a four-dimensional view of organizational networking, information acquisition, opportunity enabling, strong-tie resource mobilization, and weak-tie resource mobilization, an item pool was generated and subjected to a three-step qualitative pre-test. A web-based survey was subsequently implemented, and the valid responses were subjected to a rigorous scale validation process. The final objective was to examine whether the scale is applicable across manufacturing and services sectors. Our scale validation process confirms the four dimensions of the measurement model and further provides support for the distinctive nature of all dimensions that tap into different ways of organizational networking by firms. We establish the generalizability of the four-dimensional organizational networking scale between the manufacturing and services sector. The organizational networking scale will provide future research a basis for further establishing a stronger generalizability and explore its role in relation to other organizational behaviors and outcome variables, such as firm performance.
Methodology for Bayesian Belief Network Development to Facilitate Compliance with Water Quality Regulations

Limited resources and drinking water quality requirements pose significant challenges to those managing small and rural drinking water distribution systems (WDSs). Real-time monitoring technologies could support regulatory compliance, if shortcomings such as false readings and data corruption could be overcome. Bayesian belief networks (BBNs) are proposed as a means to mitigate technological shortcomings and increase certainty about the state of a given WDS. This paper describes a methodology for the development of BBNs that integrates known system characteristics with real-time monitoring technologies to support the water quality compliance of small or rural WDSs. Expert judgment was used both in the development of the structure of the BBN and in quantifying the required probability relationships. The results of a case study application of this methodology suggest that it is useful in developing a BBN to support decision making for a WDS with limited use of real-time monitoring technology.