Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modelling studies of HOMs and their contributions to new particle formation and growth: comparison of boreal forest in Finland and a polluted environment in China

Abstract. Highly oxygenated multifunctional compounds (HOMs) play a key role in new particle formation (NPF), but their quantitative roles in different environments of the globe have not been well studied yet. Frequent NPF events were observed at two “flagship” stations under different environmental conditions, i.e. a remote boreal forest site (SMEAR II) in Finland and a suburban site (SORPES) in polluted eastern China. The averaged formation rate of 6 nm particles and the growth rate of 6–30 nm particles were 0.3 cm−3 s−1 and 4.5 nm h−1 at SMEAR II compared to 2.3 cm−3 s−1 and 8.7 nm h−1 at SORPES, respectively. To explore the differences of NPF at the two stations, the HOM concentrations and NPF events at two sites were simulated with the MALTE-BOX model, and their roles in NPF and particle growth in the two distinctly different environments are discussed. The model provides an acceptable agreement between the simulated and measured concentrations of sulfuric acid and HOMs at SMEAR II. The sulfuric acid and HOM organonitrate concentrations are significantly higher but other HOM monomers and dimers from monoterpene oxidation are lower at SORPES compared to SMEAR II. The model simulates the NPF events at SMEAR II with a good agreement but underestimates the growth of new particles at SORPES, indicating a dominant role of anthropogenic processes in the polluted environment. HOMs from monoterpene oxidation dominate the growth of ultrafine particles at SMEAR II while sulfuric acid and HOMs from aromatics oxidation play a more important role in particle growth. This study highlights the distinct roles of sulfuric acid and HOMs in NPF and particle growth in different environmental conditions and suggests the need for molecular-scale measurements in improving the understanding of NPF mechanisms in polluted areas like eastern China.
The challenge of protein targeting to the sugarcane vacuoles for metabolic engineering.

Two targeting peptides were tested for their ability to direct foreign proteins to the sugarcane vacuole, as a foundation for metabolic engineering in that compartment. Fusion to N-terminal propeptide (NTPP) of sweet potato sporamin substantially reduced the activity of various reporter proteins (E. coli GUS, non-glycosylated GUS, LUC and GFP) in sugarcane, probably due to instability of reporter proteins in the vacuole. NTPP-GFP fluorescence was found in the vacuoles of Arabidopsis mature leaf mesophyll cells, but not in the vacuoles of any other cell type studied in sugarcane or Arabidopsis. In young leaf mesophyll cells of both sugarcane and Arabidopsis, NTPPGFP fluorescence was found in the chloroplasts indicating mis-trafficking of GFP. The C-terminal propeptide (CTPP) from tobacco chitinase appeared less efficient for vacuolar targeting, with substantial protein apparently retained in the ER. To confirm these interpretations, better tools are needed to distinguish vacuolar targeting and stability.
ENHANCED INDUSTRIALIZED CUSTOMIZATION PERFORMANCE BY EMBEDDED MICROSYSTEMS

High-tech buildings lead to new organizational structures multiplying the possibilities of customization and user adaptation. As it will be outlined in the following paper, between industrialized mass customization of buildings and continuous and commercial service value chains built on flexible high-tech buildings a strong relation could be established extending the approach of automation and robotics in construction over the whole life cycle of buildings. Therefore the paper examines and explains synergies between building integrated performance added sub-systems, emerging service based value-creation and new customer integrating industrialization strategies. The paper ends with the conclusion that new market fields for automation and robotics in construction could be entered proactively carrying on existing knowledge into described fields.
HENRIQUE SÉRGIO GUTIERREZ DA COSTA BIOMETRIC IDENTIFICATION WITH 3D FINGERPRINTS ACQUIRED THROUGH OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

A method to obtain epidermal and dermal 3D fingerprints from high-resolution images acquired using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is proposed. This method addresses limitations of current 3D reconstruction techniques that employ multiple cameras/triangulation or structured illumination such as depth and resolution variations from the center to the borders of the fingerprint caused by reconstruction errors, sensitivity to low illumination and poor contrast. The availability of these 3D fingerprints allowed the creation of new matching methods that benefit from the rich information available in 3D. A 3D fingerprint matching technique based on novel patterns, the KH maps (used to surface region segmentation in range and intensity images), extracted by computing the Gaussian and mean curvatures (SILVA; BELLON; GOTARDO, 2001) from a region of interest around the minutiae, named minutiae clouds is presented. Large databases of KH maps, one for each identified minutiae cloud can be built. The matching strategy, a two-step approach, relies on local gradient patterns (LGP) of the KH maps to narrow the search space, followed by a similarity matching, the normalized cross correlation of patterns being matched. The accuracy and matching compatibility, comparable or improved in relation to the 2D matching methods, is verified through matching 3D fingerprints from two databases one acquired using OCT and a public database gently made available by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The OCT database, the first 3D database acquired using Optical Coherence Tomography, to our knowledge, is made of images collected from eleven volunteers in two scanning sessions and contains images of people of different ages, genders and ethnicities and also cases of scars, calluses and alterations as abrasion and scratches. A 2D fingerprint database, scanned from the same volunteers using a regular fingerprint reader was also obtained for comparison with traditional matching methods. We investigate the applicability of our method to the identification of altered fingerprints, damaged unintentionally or accidentally. In these cases, the 3D dermal fingerprint, compatible with the epidermis fingerprint, is employed. Matching with 3D dermal and epidermal fingerprints is tested in the OCT database. Matching accuracy is compared with the obtained using traditional matching 2D methods by using False Acceptance and False rejection rate (FARxFRR) and Cumulative Matching Characteristics (CMC) graphs. Unwrapped fingerprints, 2D fingerprints extracted from 3D fingerprints by virtual unrolling were generated and tested for compatibility with 2D databases. A set of quality evaluation measures were employed to the 3D fingerprint databases and their correspondence to the matching scores was analyzed to identify those that can contribute to improve the matching accuracy. Key-words: 3D Fingerprints. Biometric identification. Optical Coherence Tomography.
How can sponsoring of sports teams influence healthy eating on children

3 Introduction 4 Literature Review and Research Questions 5 Sponsorship and Sports Sponsoring 5 Children Cognitive and Social Development 7 Sponsorship and Brands’ influence on children eating habits 8 Research Questions 10 Methodology 11 Legal and Ethical Issues 11 Sample 11 Research Design 12 Procedure 14 Measures 15 Results 17 Knowledge and Attitudes towards the Brand and the Product 18 Behaviour 20 Attitudes towards Healthy Eating 20 Understanding the Persuasive Intent 21 Discussion and Implications 23 Knowledge and Attitudes towards the Brand and the Product 23 Behaviour 24 Attitudes towards Healthy Eating 25 Understanding the Persuasive Intent 26 Limitations and Future Research 27 References 28
Ranking influencing factors on relative efficiency of banking industry

Article history: Received January 30, 2013 Received in revised format 20 May 2013 Accepted May 28 2013 Available online May 31 2013 Measuring the relative efficiency of banking industry has been one of the most interesting areas of research for the past few years. There are literally various techniques for measuring the relative performance of similar units such as banks including data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the relative performance of some Iranian banks located in province of Alborz, Iran for two consecutive fiscal years of 2009 and 2010. The proposed study implements stochastic frontier analysis to measure the performance of these banks based on two set of criteria. In the first model, total loans devoted are considered as output and employees, total customers’ investment, total fixed assets as well as no-interest deposits are considered as inputs of the model. For the second model, special banks’ characteristics such as total economic value of branch, the ratio of fixed assets to total assets, educational backgrounds of employees as well as the level of automation in the system are considered as input parameters of the systems. The results indicate that most bank perform relatively well according to their efficiencies. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Human Ear Cartilage

The human ear (Fig. 1) is of an ovoid form, with its larger end directed upward. Its lateral surface is irregularly concave, directed slightly forward, and presents numerous eminences and depressions to which names have been assigned (Beahm, Walton, 2002; Walton, Beahm, 2002). The prominent rim of the human ear is called the helix while another curved prominence, parallel with and in front of the helix, is called the antihelix; this divides above into two crura, between which is a triangular depression, the fossa triangularis. The narrowcurved depression between the helix and the antihelix is called the scapha; the antihelix describes a curve around a deep, capacious cavity, the concha, which is partially divided into two parts by the crus or commencement of the helix; the upper part is termed the cymba concha, the lower part the cavum concha. In front of the concha, and projecting backward over the meatus, is a small pointed eminence, the tragus, so called from its being generally covered on its under surface with a tuft of hair, resembling a goat’s beard. Opposite the tragus, and separated from it by the intertragic notch, is a small tubercle, the antitragus. Below this is the lobule, composed of tough areolar and adipose tissues, and wanting the firmness and elasticity of the rest of the auricula. Up to now, total human ear reconstruction for congenital microtia or auricular traumatic amputation still remains one of the greatest challenges for plastic surgeons(Brent, 1999; Nagata, 1993; TANZER, 1959). Although tissue engineering is a promising method for repair and reconstruction of cartilage defects(Chung, Burdick, 2008; Langer, Vacanti, 1993), engineering cartilage with a delicate three dimensional (3D) structure, such as a human ear, remains a great challenge in this field(Ciorba, Martini, 2006; Sterodimas et al., 2009; Zhang, 2010). Since in 1997 Cao et al. engineered the cartilage with a shape of human auricle in a nude mouse model(Cao et al., 1997), many researchers have tried to explore further developments of this tissue engineering system, but few of them have succeeded in in vitro regeneration of a cartilage construct with a complete and anatomically refined auricle structure(Haisch et al., 2002; Isogai et al., 2004; Kamil et al., 2003; Kamil et al., 2004; Naumann et al., 2003; Neumeister et al., 2006; Shieh et al., 2004; Xu et al., 2005)(Table 1). One major reason leading to the failure of in vitro engineering a cartilage construct with sufficient control over shape is the lack of appropriate scaffolds(Liu et al., 2010). The optimal scaffold used for engineering a cartilage construct with accurate designed shapes should possess at least three characteristics: good biocompatibility for cartilage formation, ease of
Cosmic-ray propagation with DRAGON2: II. Nuclear interactions with the interstellar gas

Understanding the isotopic composition of cosmic rays (CRs) observed near Earth represents a milestone towards the identification of their origin. Local fluxes contain all the known stable and long-lived isotopes, reflecting the complex history of primaries and secondaries as they traverse the interstellar medium. For that reason, a numerical code which aims at describing the CR transport in the Galaxy must unavoidably rely on accurate modelling of the production of secondary particles. In this work we provide a detailed description of the nuclear cross sections and decay network as implemented in the forthcoming release of the galactic propagation code DRAGON2. We present the secondary production models implemented in the code and we apply the different prescriptions to compute quantities of interest to interpret local CR fluxes (e.g., nuclear fragmentation timescales, secondary and tertiary source terms). In particular, we develop a nuclear secondary production model aimed at accurately computing the light secondary fluxes (namely: Li, Be, B) above 1 GeV/n. This result is achieved by fitting existing empirical or semi-empirical formalisms to a large sample of measurements in the energy range 100 MeV/n to 100 GeV/n and by considering the contribution of the most relevant decaying isotopes up to iron. Concerning secondary antiparticles (positrons and antiprotons), we describe a collection of models taken from the literature, and provide a detailed quantitative comparison.
Knowledge and adoption of organic agriculture: Diffusion over time among Andalusian olive farmers

The objective is to analyse the diffusion over time process of the knowledge and adoption of a sustainable technological innovation -organic agriculture- in the South of Spain -Andalusia region- and for a crop of paramount importance there -olive- within the framework of the Diffusion of Innovations Theory. Results show that diffusion is essentially due to an autonomous "contagion" among olive growers with a little external intervention. In many regions, particularly in low yield conditions, adoption of organic farming has come to an standstill, demonstrating the need to strengthen or modify the mechanisms of diffusion commonly used up to this time.
A Randomised Controlled Trial to Test the Effect of Promoting Caregiver Contingent Talk on Language Development in Infants from Diverse SES Backgrounds

Background Early language skills are critical for later academic success. Lower socioeconomic status (SES) children tend to start school with limited language skills compared to advantaged peers. We test the hypothesis that this is due in part to differences in caregiver contingent talk during infancy (how often the caregiver talks about what is in the focus of the infant's attention). Methods In a randomised controlled trial with high and low SES families, 142 11‐month olds and their caregivers were randomly allocated to either a contingent talk intervention or a dental health control. Families in the language intervention watched a video about contingent talk and were asked to practise it for 15 min a day for a month. Caregiver communication was assessed at baseline and after 1 month. Infant communication was assessed at baseline, 12, 15, 18 and 24 months. Results At baseline, social gradients were observed in caregiver contingent talk to their 11‐month olds (but not in infant communication). At posttest, when infants were 12 months old, caregivers across the SES spectrum who had been allocated to the language intervention group engaged in significantly more contingent talk. Lower SES caregivers in this intervention group also reported that their children produced significantly more words at 15 and 18 months. Effects of the intervention did not persist at 24 months. Instead expressive vocabulary at this age was best predicted by baseline infant communication, baseline contingent talk and SES. Conclusions A social gradient in children's communication emerges during the second year of life. A low‐intensity intervention demonstrated that it is possible to increase caregiver contingent talk and that this is effective in promoting vocabulary growth for lower SES infants in the short term. However, these effects are not long‐lasting, suggesting that follow‐up interventions may be necessary to yield benefits lasting to school entry.
Electro-thermal Modeling of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor

In this paper, we present a methodology for electro-thermal characterization of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). This modeling approach is in the aim to evaluating the different temperatures in different active parts of the motor, to choose the type and characteristics of the cooling system to use. This study led to the selection of a cooling system by water forced convection.
Social Network Clustering

As we know, the datasets related to social networks are increasing. There are different procedures to analyze these types of datasets; one of these procedures is clustering which makes communities of social data. Random walk is a process which can find communities in a network, in other words when a random walk is used, it scans the nodes in some steps; it begins with an initial node and based on a random process progresses to neighboring nodes. In this paper an algorithm is proposed which aims to finding communities in a way that modularity factor increases, for this goal, random walks with random local search agent are combined. Experimental results show that the proposed method gives better modularity in comparison with other algorithms.
Additive effects of predator diversity on pest control caused by few interactions among predator species

1. Studies of the impact of predator diversity on biological pest control have shown idiosyncratic results. This is often assumed to be as a result of differences among systems in the importance of predator–predator interactions such as facilitation and intraguild predation. The frequency of such interactions may be altered by prey availability and structural complexity. A direct assessment of interactions among predators is needed for a better understanding of the mechanisms affecting prey abundance by complex predator communities.
Age-related Changes to Attention and Working Memory: An Electrophysiological Study

The aim of this thesis was to help elucidate the mechanisms that underlie age-related decline in visual selective attention and working memory (WM). Older and younger adults completed a behavioural WM task, after which electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded as participants perform a localized attentional interference (LAI) task – competition/attentional interference was manipulated by systematically altering the distance between targets and distractors. Older adults showed impaired accuracy and reaction time on the WM and LAI tasks. Two eventrelated-potentials, indexing spatial attention (N2pc) and target processing (Ptc), displayed attenuated amplitude and increased latency in older adults. Thus, spatial selection, target enhancement and processing speed deficits may contribute to age-related attentional impairments. Furthermore, an unexpected component was found between the N2pc and Ptc in the older adult waveforms. Preliminary analyses suggest this may be the PD, implicated in distractor suppression, which may be differentially contributing to older and younger adults’ electrophysiology and attentional processing.
Endogenous Wage and Capital Dispersion, On-the-Job Search and the Matching Technology

This paper presents a new model of endogenous wage and capital dispersion where heterogeneity is driven by entrepreneurial incentives to pay higher wages in order to attract and retain workers. The main contribution of this model is to provide a framework with microeconomic foundations that give rise to matching frictions, which can be used to understand the dynamic features of job-worker flows, wage dispersion and mobility as well as search on the job. The basic model is also extended to endogenise firms’ optimal investment in job-specific capital and search efforts undertaken by both employed and unemployed individuals. The empirical implications of this model are compared to those of the apparently more tractable and indeed, more frequently used aggregate matching technology. Existing differences turn out to be crucial for the empirical identification of the wage offer distribution and may also bias subsequent inferences about underlying search cost parameters.
Interactive comment on “Application of the Spectral Structure Parameterization technique: retrieval of total water vapor columns from GOME” by R. Lang et al

The advantage in retrieval speed gained by SSP over other types of WVC retrieval makes SSP an interesting alternative, and it is well worth being published in a scientific journal. ACP is an appropriate forum for this paper. In its current form, however, the manuscript cannot be accepted for publication. Substantial revisions, followed by another round of reviews, are required before the manuscript can be considered for publication.
Increased growth and distribution of Ephemerella aurivillii (Ephemeroptera) after hydropower regulation of the Aurland catchment in Western Norway

The Aurland watershed has been regulated for hydropower since the establishment of a series of power plants during the period 1970–1983. This resulted in a strong reduction of the flow in the river Vassbygdelvi, the inlet river to lake Vassbygdvatn. In the downstream river Aurland, the flow has varied, but from 2000 the intention has been to simulate pre‐regulation winter flow as far as possible. The temperature in the river Vassbygdelvi has increased from about 1500 degree‐days per year before regulation to above 2000 degree‐days after regulation. In the river Aurland the thermal regime, expressed as degree‐days per year, was more or less unchanged, but a small reduction in the summer temperature and a corresponding increase during other periods was observed. The mayfly Ephemerella aurivillii (Bengtsson) was not recorded in Vassbygdelvi prior to regulation, but became abundant in the river after. Full‐grown larvae were recorded 1–2 months earlier in the river Vassbygdelvi than in the river Aurland after regulation. E. aurivillii has a 1‐year life cycle with imagos present in June–August. Young larvae occurred from June to early September. It is concluded that larvae of E. aurivillii could not complete their life cycle within 1 year before regulation in the river Vassbygdelvi, due to low temperature. The study demonstrates how temperature can regulate the distribution of a species with a strict 1‐year life cycle. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Vapour-liquid Equilibrium Data for C5 Saturated-Unsaturated Hydrocarbons Solutions with Solvents Monopropylene Glycol, Dipropylene Glycol or N-Methyl-2-Pyrrolidone

The influence of monopropylene glycol (MPG), dipropylene glycol (DPG), or N-methyl-2 pyrrolidone (NMP)solvents on the relative volatility of C5 alkanes in mixtures with C5 olefins was estimated based on vapour-liquid equilibrium data determined experimentally. An Othmer type equilibrium apparatus was used andcompositions of phases were established by gas chromatography. The solvents capacity for saturated –unsaturated hydrocarbons separation by extractive distillation is quantified by the relative volatility