Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of precautionary principle on risk perception about cell phone radiation

Cell phones represent a technology associated with uncertain risks, yet one that has already been accepted as a normalized part of society. A pair of online experiments examined how individuals cognitively process uncertain risks associated with previously accepted technology when confronted with precautionary information. The second study expanded the initial results by comparing the effects between U.S. and Chinese students. Results suggest that individuals who initially perceived greater benefits from their cell phone showed less change in perceived risk after reading the precautionary message. Perceived risk also had a significant positive relationship with intentions to engage in protective behaviors. The Chinese participants in general displayed more relationships and larger effects that the U.S. participants. An additional line of inquiry explored if messages addressing perceived social norms and self-efficacy would influence dissonance reduction strategies, yet no effects were found in either participant groups.
A Study on Primary School English Teachers ’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs

The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not primary school English language teachers’ self–efficacy beliefs changed according to the variables of (a) the department graduated, (b) taking a course about teaching English to children, (c) taking an in-service training, and (d) experience. The descriptive study was conducted with 266 English language teachers working for the public primary schools in the villages and the city center of Mersin in Turkey in 2004. Two data collection instruments used were a questionnaire consisting of 15 items which sought demographic and educational information about the teachers and a 34item Likert-type scale titled Teachers’ Perception of Professional Competence. The findings revealed that primary school English language teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs changed according to the department graduated, and taking a course about teaching English to children. The teachers who had taken a course about teaching English to children perceived themselves more efficacious than the teachers who had not. Furthermore, the teachers who graduates of English Language Teaching, and English/American Language and Literature, and Linguistics departments perceived themselves more efficacious than the teachers who were graduated from the departments other than English teaching. On the other hand, the study indicated that the teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs did not change according to taking an in-service training. Finally, the outcome of the research implied the interplay between training regarding specific content area and efficacy. According to the overall findings of this research, it is concluded that English teachers’ perception of their teaching competencies has very much to do with their educational background. For this reason, especially primary school English teachers should be equipped with specific teaching methods, techniques and materials for teaching English to young children.
Asymmetric information and R & D competition

This paper analyses R&D competition among firms with incomplete information. In a stochastic R&D game, firms possess private information regarding their R&D progress. They can only observe the rival's R&D investments, but not its actual R&D position, R&D investments thus carry both investment and signalling effects. In this two-period model. there are two possible regimes for the second period game: the complete information regime and the signalling regime. In the signalling regime. in order to credibly convey to the rival its first period research success, the first mover has to over-invest. Both firms have higher profits in the complete information regime. The game is in the signalling regime if the difference b€tween monopoly and duopoly profit is sufficiently large and if the possibility of leapfrogging is high. For some parameter ranges, the choice of the information regime is endogenous.
Relationships between walking and percentiles of adiposity inolder and younger men

To assess the relationship of weekly walking distance to percentiles of adiposity in elders (age {ge} 75 years), seniors (55 {le} age <75 years), middle-age men (35 {le} age <55 years), and younger men (18 {le} age <35 years old). Cross-sectional analyses of baseline questionnaires from 7,082 male participants of the National Walkers Health Study. The walkers BMIs were inversely and significantly associated with walking distance (kg/m{sup 2} per km/wk) in elders (slope {+-} SE: -0.032 {+-} 0.008), seniors (-0.045 {+-} 0.005), and middle-aged men (-0.037 {+-} 0.007), as were their waist circumferences (-0.091 {+-} 0.025, -0.045 {+-} 0.005, and -0.091 {+-} 0.015 cm per km/wk, respectively), and these slopes remained significant when adjusted statistically for reported weekly servings of meat, fish, fruit, and alcohol. The declines in BMI associated with walking distance were greater at the higher than lower percentiles of the BMI distribution. Specifically, compared to the decline at the 10th BMI percentile, the decline in BMI at the 90th percentile was 5.1-fold greater in elders, 5.9-fold greater in seniors, and 6.7-fold greater in middle-age men. The declines in waist circumference associated with walking distance were also greater among men with broader waistlines. Exercise-induced weight loss (or self-selection)more » causes an inverse relationship between adiposity and walking distance in men 35 and older that is substantially greater among fatter men. « less
Natural personalised ventilation for hospital wards: experimental validation

Personalised ventilation (PV) systems are useful in protecting vulnerable hospitalised patients from airborne infection due to localised delivery of clean air. A natural personalised ventilation (NPV) system has previously been shown to be a feasible, natural and low-energy alternative to mechanised PV systems. The original NPV system was investigated using three conceptual designs which used dynamic thermal modelling and steady-state computational fluid dynamics to simulate a single-bed hospital ward. Findings from these designs led to optimisation of the NPV system components (stack and ducts) which also serve as the basis for this experimental validation. The objective of this research is to validate the flow characteristics of the optimised NPV system using scaled model experiments in addition to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies. Water-bath modelling (WBM) was carried out in a large Perspex tank and a scaled version of the single-bed ward was also constructed in Perspex. Results improve our understanding of the proposed NPV strategy, in particular showing that different locations of heat sources within the model leads to considerably different internal temperatures at steady state. Close similarities between CFD and WBM simulations were also observed.
Pre-failure behaviour of an unstable limestone cliff from displacement and seismic data

Abstract. We monitored the displacement and seismic activity of an unstable vertical rock slice in a natural limestone cliff of the southeast Vercors massif, southeast France, during the months preceding its collapse. Displacement measurements showed an average acceleration of the movement of its top, with clear increases in the displacement velocity and in the discrete seismic event production rate during periods where temperature falls, with more activity when rainfall or frost occurs. Crises of discrete seismic events produce high amplitudes in periodograms, but do not change the high frequency base noise level rate. We infer that these crises express the critical crack growth induced by water weakening (from water vapor condensation or rain) of the rock strength rather than to a rapid change in applied stresses. Seismic noise analysis showed a steady increase in the high frequency base noise level and the emergence of spectral modes in the signal recorded by the sensor installed on the unstable rock slice during the weeks preceding the collapse. High frequency seismic noise base level seems to represent subcritical crack growth. It is a smooth and robust parameter whose variations are related to generalized changes in the rupture process. Drop of the seismic noise amplitude was concomitant with the emergence of spectral modes – that are compatible with high-order eigenmodes of the unstable rock slice – during the later stages of its instability. Seismic noise analysis, especially high frequency base noise level analysis may complement that of inverse displacement velocity in early-warning approaches when strong displacement fluctuations occur.
A method of determination of port terminal capacity under irregular cargo delivery and pickup

There was built up and analyzed a stochastic model of a work of a port terminal that takes into consideration irregularity of delivery and pickup of a cargo. It is supposed that a terminal consists of n interchangeable moorages, in which there is carried out loading to ships. The ships arrive to a terminal to take a cargo independently on each other, their total number is equal to N. Time from departure of any loaded ship to the moment of its arrival to a terminal is a random variable that is distributed according to the exponentional law. All cargoes, that come to a terminal with a help of land transport, are immediately unloaded to a storehouse. It is supposed that a stream of incoming cargoes is described with a model of the compound Poisson process with zero drift. From a storehouse cargoes are loaded to any shipl that is in a moorage, with the rate W. With use of non-standard type of the Markov process with drift for finding of limit join distribution of number of ships, that are in moorages, and amount of cargo, that is in a storehouse, there is got a system of integral-differential equations together with relevant boundary conditions. There is given a method of solving of this boundary-value problem, that is based on use of the Laplace-Stieltjes transformation for getting of a solution in a closed form. It gives a possibility to get simple calculation formulae for assessment of indices of capacity of a terminal: the average number of ships in moorages, the average amount of cargo in a storehouse, possibility of demurrage of ships because of absence of cargoes in a storehouse and etc. There are given examples of practical use of the got theoretical results, namely: a method of calculation of necessary capacity of a storehouse, assessment of a term of recoupment of a project of construction of a terminal. They showed that the worked out method of calculation of capacity of a port terminal in conditions of irregularity of a work of transport can be used in project calculations.
Regression and non-parametric estimators for two-phase forest inventories in the design-based Monte-Carlo approach

This technical report adapts rank based nearest neighbor methods to classical kernel estimators using neighborhoods defined by a metric in the feature space resting upon the predictions obtained from a linear model. The approach is purely design-based. The main concepts of kernel-based density and regression estimators are summarized and reformulated in the design-based Monte-Carlo approach to forest inventory. New estimators are proposed which are based on the conditional expectation of the response variable given its prediction and are compared to the classical two-phase regression estimator and to twophase k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) estimators, using either a multidimensional metric or a one-dimensional metric based on the Euclidian distance between the predictions. The results suggest that the commonly used analytical external variance formula may systematically underestimate the true variance for a variety of nonparametric kernel based estimators including kNN, but is still adequate for the classical regression estimator. Although using a bootstrap variance can help to correct this underestimation it was also found that the bootstrap variance estimates can be unstable if the bandwidth or the number of neighbors are recalculated in each bootstrap sample. These findings suggest that if the model captures the main features of the underlying process, which is clearly the case for timber volume estimates based on canopy characteristics obtained from LiDAR measurements, then it is advisable to use the classical regression estimator because it performs at least as well as the other techniques and is by far the simplest to implement.
Design of Embedded Sing-around System for Ultrasonic Velocity Measurements in Liquids

Among the pulse techniques in ultrasonics, sing around technique is widely used for measurements of ultrasonic velocity in liquids and solids. It is simple, versatile and highly accurate for absolute and relative ultrasonic velocity measurements. In the present work, an embedded sing around system, at operating frequency of 2 MHz, is designed around PIC 18F4550 microcontroller. Pulser and receiver circuits have been designed using locally available electronic components. Necessary controls have been dumped or embedded as software in the microcontroller to add intelligence to the sing around system. The designed system is compact, stand-alone, reliable, accurate and portable with onboard display of the ultrasonic velocity of propagation in the sample under study. Ultrasonic velocity measurements have been carried out in standard liquids and found to be in well agreement with the values reported in the literature.
Complex Resonances of a Rectangular Patch in a Multilayered Medium: a New Accurate and Efficient Analytical Technique

A new analytical technique to study the complex resonances of a rectangular patch in a multilayered medium is introduced. The problem is formulated as an electric fleld integral equation (EFIE) in the spectral domain and discretized by means of products of Chebyshev polynomials of flrst and second kind multiplied by their orthogonal weights in a Galerkin's scheme. The method is fast convergent, i.e., few expansion functions are needed to achieve accurate results, but leads to the numerical evaluation of inflnite double integrals of oscillating and slowly decaying functions. To overcome this problem, suitable half-space contributions are pulled out of the kernels of such integrals in order to obtain exponentially decaying integrands. Moreover, the slowly converging integrals of the extracted contributions are expressed as combinations of quickly converging integrals by means of algebraic manipulations and an appropriate integration procedure in the complex plane.
Non-Invasive Electromagnetic Ablation of Female Breast Tumors

Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor among women today. Available techniques for treating breast cancer often introduce strong side effects. The non-invasive electromagnetic ablation of breast tumors has a lot of potential, because it can provide a quick treatment modality without introducing harmful side effects. In this project we assess the feasibility of non-invasive electromagnetic ablation of female breast tumors. The two main challenges in this project are: 1. The computation of electromagnetic fields inside the female breast. 2. The focussing of power such that the power dissipated in the tumor is maximized while the power dissipated in healthy tissue is minimized. In our investigation we simulate a two-dimensional configuration with a circular array of line-sources operating at a single-frequency within the range of 1 to 10 GHz. The electromagnetic fields are computed using a discretized EFIE method, after which we evaluate three algorithms that focus the dissipated power in order to gain insight in the potential of this treatment modality.
Operational-Condition-Independent Criteria Dedicated to Monitoring Wind Turbine Generators

Condition monitoring is beneficial to the wind industry for both land-based and offshore plants. However, because of the variations in operational conditions, its potential has not been fully explored. There is a need to develop an operational-condition-independent condition monitoring technique, which has motivated the research presented here. In this paper, three operational-condition-independent criteria are developed. The criteria accomplish the condition monitoring by analyzing the wind turbine electrical signals in the time domain. Therefore, they are simple to calculate and ideal for online use. All proposed criteria were tested through both simulated and practical experiments, showing that these criteria not only provide a solution for detecting both mechanical and electrical faults that occur in wind turbine generators, but that they provide a potential tool for diagnosing generator winding faults.
Ion Assisted Deposition of TiO2 on Moving Web Using Oxygen Ions

Ion Assisted Deposition technique (IAD) has become established process for the production of optical coatin The continuous bombardment of the substrate with e getic inert or reactive gas ions produces a highly de stoichiometric coating with excellent adhesion to the s strate. This process offers many advantages over the ventional method of vacuum evaporation onto heated strates which produces coatings with poorer optical mechanical properties. Furthermore, the conventio method of using a heated substrate is not suitable for mally sensitive substrates such as plastics.
What Type of Defective Feature Do Exceptionally Case-Marked Clauses of Turkish Bear?

Core Functional Categories are defined to be v0, T0, C0. They differ in that T0 is not treated as a phase head, while C0 and v0 are assumed to be phase heads: 1) a) [+ phase]: C0, v(*). b) [- phase]: T0. These heads are assumed to bear uninterpretable φ-features. T0 forms a defective a domain unless it is selected by C0. In other words, if T0 is selected by the phase head C0, it starts bearing a full φ-feature set; otherwise, it cannot inherit the features from C0, which leads to a defective domain allowing exceptional case marking (henceforth, ECM). Accordingly, T0 cannot also delete the features of the goal it enters an agree relation. In this respect, the defective features are Case/T0 features in the sense of Pesetsky & Torrego (2007). At this point, some other studies suggest that the defectivity is peculiar to only phase heads, and that T0 is ruled out of this argumentation: 2) a) [+ [+/- defective]]: C0, v0. b) [- [+/- defective]]: T0. There is an asymmetry in the understanding of defectivity between these two reasoning. The aim of this study is to discuss this asymmetry, and present evidence as to which distinction on defectivity does exist. We employed ECM data in Turkish to discuss the relevant distinction with reference to specific empirical proofs such as long distance scrambling, binding and negative polarity items. The results of the study support in favor of Pesetsky & Torrego (2007).
Identification of 23 specific nucleotide patterns in the HN gene of Newcastle disease viruses isolated from Iran

Newcastle disease is considered the most contagious poultry disease and may cause severe economic loss in the poultry industry. The present study was undertaken to focus on molecular and phylogenetic analyses of the hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) gene in the Iranian isolates. The nucleotide sequence of the HN (780-903 nt) coding region of 6 Newcastle disease viruses (NDVs), isolated from various outbreaks in Iran, was determined and aligned with previously published sequences of 26 NDV isolates in GenBank; the resulting alignment was then analyzed in terms of genetic variation. The number of nucleotide sequence variations presented by each of the isolates indicated that all 6 Iranian isolates contained 23 single nucleotide polymorphisms in the HN coding region. These polymorphisms can be considered signature nucleotides in this lineage. Specific positions are as follow: T795->C, T918->C, T1230->C, T1269->C, A819->G, A990->G, A1041->G, A1293->G, A1523->G, C834->T, C1299->T, C1383->T, C1386->T, C1545->T, C1560->T, G906->T, G1134->A, G1368->A, G1251->C, C1266->A, T1344->G, A1374->T, and T1401->A. Sequence analysis of the isolates showed that the 6 Iranian isolates examined share significant similarity with 2 Russian isolates, Sterna-Astr/2755/2001 and VOL95. Interestingly, both Russian isolates have the same nucleotide pattern as the Iranian isolates in all 23 nucleotide positions, except for isolate Sterna-Astr/2755/2001, which is only different at position 1560. The results may reflect that certain migratory birds, such as Sterna albifrons Pallas, might have contributed to the distribution of NDV in Russia and Iran. These best-known migratory birds travelling between Iran and Russia play a crucial role in the transmission of NDV.
The Good? The Bad? The Ugly? Which news drive (co)variation in Swiss and US bond and stock excess returns?

Based on a vector autoregressive model, this paper shows that time variation in monthly excess returns on Swiss government bonds and stocks is predominantly driven by news of inflation and dividends, respectively. This finding is in marked contrast to US evidence which points to a more prominent role of excess return news in this respect. The bond market findings for both Switzerland and the US are consistent with the view that market participants put more weight on news of macroeconomic, i.e. long-term inflation, risks in periods of exceptionally low real interest rates and in crisis periods than in normal times.
DECOMPOSING THE BACTERIAL COMMUNITIES OF CORAL AND ALGAE INTO STABLE AND SPORADIC SPECIES

OF THE THESIS Decomposing the Bacterial Communities of Coral and Algae into Stable and Sporadic Species by Eric Raymond Hester Master of Science in Bioinformatics & Medical Informatics San Diego State University, 2015 Corals and algae are the most common benthic competitor on coral reefs and the benthic community is shaped by the interaction between these two groups. Bacteria play an important role in the outcome of the competition between corals and algae. Understanding the role competition and the environment has on the structure of these bacterial communities is important to the field of coral reef ecology. In this thesis, I present a statistical method to understand individual bacterial species' roles within normal coral or algal holobionts. I was able to partition the bacterial community into species of bacteria that were stably or sporadically associated with their host and independently characterized these subgroups. Stable bacteria, together, had a lower relative abundance with the communities but had a high species diversity while sporadic bacteria were abundant but comprised of fewer species. The partitioning of coral and algal holobionts allows for a detailed assessment of bacterial species with different distribution patterns for a given holobiont. Together, the method and analyses presented in this thesis provide a foundation for understanding the complexity of holobiont membership.
The ontogeny of somatic embryos from in vitro cultured grapevine anthers

Translucent light green to yellow anthers excised from Vitis rupestris cv. Rupestris du Lot flower buds, produced from cuttings grown in a climate-controlled room, produced somatic embryos when cultured on modified Nitsch & Nitsch (1969) medium supplemented with l μM 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and 5 μM 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D). Anatomical features of developing embryogenic explants were studied at various intervals, before and after the start of in vitro culture, using light microscopy. Results indicated that callus was entirely of somatic origin. Embryogenic cells were apparently present before in vitro culture commenced and multiplied sufficiently within the first 15 days' culture to form visible embryogenic growth centres. Embryogenic callus formed from the lateral and abaxial walls of the anther, all connective tissues and the filament. Somatic embryos were observed after 60 days of culture and possessed primordial vascular tissues and secondary embryoids. No vascular connections between somatic embryos were observed.