Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolution of clustered supernovae

We study the merging and evolution of isolated supernovae (SNe) remnants in a stellar cluster into a collective superbubble, with the help of 3-D hydrodynamic simulations. We particularly focus on the transition stage when the isolated SNe remnants gradually combine to form a superbubble. We find that when the SN rate is high ($\nu_{\rm sn}\sim 10^{-9}$ pc$^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$), the merging phase lasts for $\sim 10^4$ yr, for $n=1\hbox{--}10$ cm$^{-3}$, and the merging phase lasts for a longer time ($\sim 0.1$ Myr or more) for lower SN rates ($\nu_{\rm sn}\le 10^{-10}$ pc$^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$). During this transition phase, the growing superbubble is filled with dense and cool fragments of shells and most of the energy is radiated away during this merging process. After passing through the intermediate phase, the superbubble eventually settles on to a new power-law wind asymptote that is smaller than estimated in a continuous wind model. This results in a significant (more than {\it several times}) underestimation of the mechanical luminosity needed to feed the bubble. We determine the X-ray and H$\alpha$ surface brightnesses as functions of time for such merging SNe in a stellar cluster and find that clusters with high SN rate shine predominantly in soft X-rays and H$\alpha$. In particular, a low value of the volume averaged H$\alpha$ to H$\beta$ ratio and its large spread can be a good indicator of the transition phase of merging SNe.
The Impact of Compact and Mixed Development on Land Value: A Case Study of Richmond, Virginia

Sustainable development entails various development patterns commonly associated with compact and mixed development that usually leads to reduced driving, more public transportation utilization, lower energy consumption, better walkability, and improved public health. To examine if the benefits of compact and mixed development are reflected in land value, this study sets forth to measure development compactness and land use mix and assesses the impacts of such patterns on land value. Impacts of accessibility to jobs, retail stores, and public transportation on land value are also investigated and compared to the impacts from development patterns. The study finds that: (1) accessibility has greater impacts than development pattern on land value; (2) compact development and mixed land use influence land value differently depending on the nature of existing land uses and land values; (3) accessibility to jobs and retail stores always contributes to the increase of land value; and (4) accessibility to public transportation helps but it does not influence land value in a consistent fashion. The results suggest that areas with higher residential property values, good proximity to the city center, less industrial land uses, and good access to jobs and retail stores have greater potential to realize an increase of land value resulted from compact and mixed development in Richmond, Virginia.
AHA Scientific Statement New and Emerging Weight Management Strategies for Busy Ambulatory Settings

Goutham Rao, MD, Chair; Lora E. Burke, PhD, MPH, FAHA; Bonnie J. Spring, PhD; Linda J. Ewing, PhD; Melanie Turk, PhD, RN; Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, FAHA; Marc-Andre Cornier, MD; J. David Spence, MD, FAHA; Michael Coons, PhD; on behalf of the American Heart Association Obesity Committee of the Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism, Council on Clinical Cardiology, Council on Cardiovascular Nursing, Council on the Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease, and Stroke Council
Teachers’ Perceptions of Self-Observation as an Appraisal Tool

This study explores teachers' beliefs about self-observation on practice as one alternative for the appraisal process. In this study, teachers were interviewed about how they viewed self-observation and how well it served them in developing their teaching on the one hand, and enhancing reflective practice on the other one. The findings in this paper are based on a qualitative research that employed an interpretivist/constructivist theory, in which qualitative data was gathered primarily through interviews with a view to clarifying teachers' perceptions and understanding the beliefs and practices behind them. The study attempted to answer mainly the following question. "What do teachers understand by self-observation and how do they perceive its role in professional development? " The findings of the study revolve around two main themes; the benefits and the drawbacks of self-observation theory. While, the first one describes self-observation as an opportunity for reflection, awareness and professional growth, the second view claims that such practices depend on personality and attitudes, and is limited by various constraints.
Swarm optimization based adaptive fuzzy control design from robust stability criteria

In this paper, an adaptive fuzzy controller design methodology via MultiObjective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) based on robust stability criterion, is proposed. The plant to be controlled is modeled from its input-output experimental data considering a Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy NARX model, by using the fuzzy C-Means clustering algorithm (antecedent parameters estimation) and Weighted Recursive Least Squares (WRLS) algorithm (consequent parameters estimation). An adaptation mechanism as MOPSO problem for online tuning of a fuzzy model based digital PID controller parameters, based on the gain and phase margins speciﬁcations, is formulated. Experimental results for adaptive fuzzy digital PID control of a thermal plant with time varying delay is presented to illustrate the efﬁciency and applicability of the proposed methodology.
The Effect of Nonlocal Vehicle Restriction Policy on Air Quality in Shanghai

In recent years, road space rationing policies have been increasingly applied as a traffic management solution to tackle congestion and traffic emission problems in big cities. Existing studies on the effect of traffic policy on air quality have mainly focused on the odd–even day traffic restriction policy or one-day-per-week restriction policy. There are few studies paying attention to the effect of nonlocal license plate restrictions on air quality in Shanghai. Restrictions toward nonlocal vehicles usually prohibit vehicles with nonlocal license plates from entering certain urban areas or using certain subsets of the road network (e.g., the elevated expressway) during specific time periods on workdays. To investigate the impact of such a policy on the residents’ exposure to pollutants, CO concentration and Air Quality Index (AQI) were compared during January and February in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Regression discontinuity (RD) was used to test the validity of nonlocal vehicle restriction on mitigating environmental pollution. Several conclusions can be made: (1) CO concentration was higher on ground-level roads on the restriction days than those in the nonrestriction days; (2) the extension of the restriction period exposed the commuters to high pollution for a longer time on the ground, which will do harm to them; and (3) the nonlocal vehicle restriction policy did play a role in improving the air quality in Shanghai when extending the evening rush period. Additionally, some suggestions are mentioned in order to improve air quality and passenger health and safety.
Introducing an Irrigation Scheme to a Regional Climate Model: A Case Study over West Africa

This article presents a new irrigation scheme and biome to the dynamic vegetation model, Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS), coupled to version 3 of the Regional Climate Model (RegCM3-IBIS). The new land cover allows for only the plant functional type (crop) to exist in an irrigated grid cell. Irrigation water (i.e., negative runoff) is applied until the soil root zone reaches relative field capacity. The new scheme allows for irrigation scheduling (i.e., when to apply water) and for the user to determine the crop to be grown. Initial simulations show a large sensitivity of the scheme to soil texture types, how the water is applied, and the climatic conditions over the region. Application of the new scheme is tested over West Africa, specifically Mali and Niger, to simulate the potential irrigation of the Niger River. A realistic representation of irrigation of the Niger River is performed by constraining the land irrigated by the annual flow of the Niger River and the amount of arable land in the region as reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). A 30-yr simulation including irrigated cropland is compared to a 30-yr simulation that is identical but with no irrigation of the Niger. Results indicate a significant greening of the irrigated land as evapotranspiration over the crop fields largely increases—mostly via increases in transpiration from plant growth. The increase in the evapotranspiration, or latent heat flux (by 65‐150Wm 22 ), causes a significant decreasein thesensibleheatfluxwhilesurfacetemperatures coolon averagebynearly58C. Thiscoolingisfelt downwind, where averagedailytemperaturesoutsidetheirrigationarereducedby 0.58‐1.08C. Likewise,large increases in 2-m specific humidity are experienced across the irrigated cropland (on the order of 5gkg 21 ) but also extend farther north and east, reflecting the prevailing surface southwesterlies. Changes (decreases) in rainfall are found only over the irrigated lands of west Mali. The decrease in rainfall can be explained by the largesurfacecoolingandcollapseof theboundarylayer(by approximately 500m). Both leadtoareductionin the triggering of convection as the convective inhibition, or negative buoyant energy, is never breached. Nevertheless, the new scheme and land cover allows for a novel line of research that can accurately reflect the effectsofirrigationonclimateandthesurroundingenvironmentusingadynamicvegetationmodelcoupledto a regional climate model.
Development Of The Cherenkov-Type Diagnostic System To Study Runaway Electrons Within Tokamaks

Measurements of fast electrons produced in plasma a nd escaping from tokamak-type facilities are of particular interest for diagnostics, because such electrons deliver information about processes occurring inside bulk plasma. A team from the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ, former IPJ) proposed Cherenkov-type probes for measurements of fast electrons in tokamaks because of high spatial- and temporal-reso lution of such detectors. The paper presents feasibility and design studies o f the Cherenkov-type probes, a development of the measuring head constructions designed for di fferent tokamak devices. In order to lower an energy threshold of the electron detection the auth ors applied radiators with the highest values of the refractive index. Different radiator materia ls, such as aluminium nitride (AlN) and CVD diamond crystals were applied. Several versions of measuring heads and different manipulators, e.g., a movable vacuum-tight shaft or a fast-moving reciprocating probe, have been manufactured and used. The practical application of the Cherenkov probes required also a consideration of the optical fibres and photomultip liers spectral characteristics. In order to investigate an energy distribution of fast electron beams the multi-channel probes have been designed and manufactured.
Construction and characterization of a metagenomic DNA library from the rhizosphere of wheat ( Triticum aestivum )

El suelo rizosferico de las plantas de trigo contiene una alta diversidad de microorganismos y por lo tanto, constituye una gran reserva para el descubrimiento de los genes con diversas aplicaciones de la biotecnologia agricola. En este trabajo, hemos construido una biblioteca metagenomica empleando como huesped heterologo E. coli , clonando grandes fragmentos de ADN genomico en un cromosoma artificial bacteriano (BAC), proveniente de la rizosfera de plantas de trigo. El promedio de los segmentos de ADN clonado vario de 5 a 80 kb, con un tamano promedio de 38 kb. Los extre - mos de varias clonas BAC, tomadas al azar fueron secuenciadas. Los resultados de homologia de los BACs analizados mostraron princi - palmente funciones metabolicas y cataliticas (40%), incluyendo ami - dohidrolasas, hidrolasas, peptidasas, serina proteasas, endonucleasas y exonucleasas. Otra parte interesante de las clonas revelo secuencias genomicas con funcion hipotetica (17%) o desconocida (9%). Las secuencias metagenomicas pertenecen en su mayoria a Firmicutes, Proteobacterias, Arqueas, Actinobacterias, hongos, virus, bacterias y taxones desconocidos sin clasificar. Se espera que la biblioteca meta - genomica del suelo rizosferico de las plantas de trigo siga creciendo. Al mismo tiempo, se estan llevando a cabo analisis funcionales en la busqueda de genes de interes agro-biotecnologico
International Conference on Information Systems ( ICIS ) 2009 Business Value of IT in Commercial Banks

Many banks have deployed information technology (IT) to serve customers more efficiency in diverse ways. In a competitive business environment, bank managers must simultaneously use multiple service channels to win customers and increase profit. Most prior research on IT investment in the banking industry has focused on the adoption of innovative IT-based service channels such as Internet banking, from customers’ perspective. In this research, we adopt the banks’ perspective to analyze the impact of IT on performance by simultaneously considering the traditional physical channel and alternative IT-based service channels. Our initial findings reveal contrasting strategic rationale supporting the use of ATM-based channel versus more recent Internet-based banking.
Opacity Effects on Pulsations of A-Type Stars

The effects of opacities in driving pulsations and extending the pulsation instability region for B-type stars (SPB and $\beta$ Cep variables) have recently been explored by, e.g., Walczak et al. 2015, 2017, Daszynska-Daszkiewicz et al. 2017; Moravveji 2016, and Cugier 2014. For these stars, the pulsations are driven by the opacity bump of Fe-group elements at around 200,000 K in the stellar envelope. For $\delta$ Scuti pulsations in A-type stars, pulsations are driven instead by the $\kappa$ effect in the second helium ionization region at around 50,000 K. Opacity modifications investigated for B-type stars may also have an effect on the structure of A-type stars and the instability region. Studies of the pulsation instability region for A-type stars show that other factors also influence the pulsations, for example, helium abundance and diffusive settling. Here we explore some of these effects, focusing on modeling of A-type stars. We compare results using the new LANL OPLIB vs. LLNL OPAL opacities for the AGSS09 solar abundance mixture. We comment on prospects for using BRITE observations of A-type stars to constrain opacities.
Interpreting transient carbonate compensation depth changes by marine sediment core modeling

[1] With the advent of computationally fast ‘‘intermediate complexity’’ models of Earth’s climate and carbon cycle the marine record can be interpreted much more directly than before. Specifically, the mechanistic simulation of deep-sea sediment cores provides an important step in bridging the model-data divide. Here I use this methodology to help interpret the excursion in carbonate compensation depth (CCD) during the PaleoceneEocene thermal maximum that is recorded in cores recovered from Walvis Ridge in the South Atlantic. By explicitly simulating the expected geological record of a massive CO2 release in an Earth system model I show how reduction in the intensity of subsurface mixing of the sediment by benthic animals substantially magnifies the recorded shoaling of the CCD. Conversely, to quantify correctly the carbon release consistent with the observed CCD changes, one must account for any bioturbational changes. A reduction in sediment mixing intensity also appears to be important to reproducing the sharpness of the contact between carbonate-rich late Paleocene sediments and the overlying early Eocene clay layer at Walvis Ridge. Assuming a relatively rapid (approximately 1 ka duration) CO2 release further helps to account for some of the paleoceanographic observations. Finally, interbasin differences in bioturbational regime help resolve some of the observed disparity in carbonate preservation between Walvis Ridge and sites outside of the Atlantic, although changes in ocean ventilation and circulation are also likely to play a critical role in this.
α(E)-Catenin Regulates BMP-7 Expression and Migration in Renal Epithelial Cells

Background: The aging kidney has a decreased ability to repair following injury. We have shown a loss in expression of α-catenin in the aging rat kidney and hypothesize that decreased α-catenin expression in tubular epithelial cells results in diminished repair capacity. Methods: In an effort to elucidate alterations due to the loss of α-catenin, we generated NRK-52E cell lines with stable knockdown of α(E)-catenin. Results: α(E)-catenin knockdown resulted in decreased wound repair due to alterations in cell migration. Analysis of gene expression in the α(E)-catenin knockdown cells demonstrated almost a complete loss of bone morphogenetic protein-7 (BMP-7) expression that was associated with decreased phospho-Smad1/5/8 staining. However, addition of exogenous BMP-7 increased phospho-Smad1/5/8, suggesting that the BMP-7 pathway remained intact in C2 cells. Given the potential role of BMP-7 in repair, we investigated its role in wound repair. Inhibition of BMP-7 decreased repair in non-targeted control cells; conversely, exogenous BMP-7 restored repair in α(E)-catenin knockdown cells to control levels. Conclusions: Taken together, the data suggests that the loss of α(E)-catenin expression and subsequent downregulation of BMP-7 is a mechanism underlying the altered migration of tubular epithelial cells that contributes to the inability of the aging kidney to repair following injury.
Relationships among Total Quality Management Practices: An Empirical Study in Turkish Industry

This study investigated the relationships between Total Quality Management (TQM) practices and multiple performance measures using a cross-sectional survey methodology. We sent questionnaires to 750 randomly selected ISO 9001:2000 certified companies in different industries in the Marmara region of Turkey in 2005 and 2010, obtaining 486 usable questionnaires for a response rate of 64.8%. After confirming the validity and reliability of the latent variables, we tested the model and the hypotheses using structural equation modeling. The measurement and structural models fit the data satisfactorily. The study shows interdependency and interaction between TQM practices and performance.
How Do Men's Female Relatives Feature in Their Accounts of Changing Eating Practices during a Weight-Management Programme Delivered through Professional Football Clubs?

Social support is essential for weight loss but we know surprisingly little about how family relations are (re)negotiated when men attempt to lose weight. We use qualitative data from a men-only weight loss and healthy living programme (observations and focus group discussions) to investigate how men talk about the women in their families in their accounts of modifying their eating practices. Men constructed partners, mothers and mothers-in-law as highly influential, portraying their roles in responding to their changed eating practices in different ways as: facilitative or detached allies, undermining change, or resistant to or threatened by change. We suggest our analysis points to the need to explore how the broader social context can be acknowledged in weight management programmes to facilitate negotiation of changes to eating practices. At a more fundamental level it raises the potential for a broader renegotiation of the relationship between performances of masculinity and health.
Accurate Network Resource Allocation in SDN according to Traffic Demand

The services carried by the Internet have undergone tremendous change over the past decades, along with the emergence of multimedia services and cloud computing, etc. However, there is little change in the framework of network designed primarily for reliable end-to-end communication, which is not suitable for these new services, resulting in poor performance of services and inefficient utilization of network resource. In this paper, we propose a network resource allocation scheme base on SDN (Software Defined Network) an emerging network paradigm, to provide Quality of Service (QoS) support for various services while balance the link load in the network avoiding congestion and idleness. And we demonstrate its performance via experiments under our SDN test bed.
Influence of Constant Magnetic Fields on Formation of Polymer Surface Layers in Polymer Matrix Microcomposites

Abstract The goal of this work is to find out what interface phenomena give rise to improvement of mechanical properties of Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) composite materials filled with ferrite microparticles. This improvement is reached at sufficiently high filler concentrations through influencing the formation of these microcomposites by constant magnetic fields (CMFs). To overcome the constraint due to the limited performance of modern computers, a computational abstraction is proposed that allows handling the chaotic disposition of the filler particles during calculation of magnetic fields in polymer surface layers of microcomposites near phase transition points. Integrated analysis of laboratory measurements and results of numerical calculations is used as a research tool. On the basis of this analysis, it is argued that magnetic fields improve mechanical properties of the microcomposites at sufficiently high filler concentrations due to the fact that PVC macromolecules situated in the polymer surface layers of these microcomposites are pushed out of regions of high magnetic filed intensity.
Variography and kriging allow screening Pinus pinaster resistant to Armillaria ostoyae in field conditions

Summary Armillaria ostoyae is an important disease of Pinus pinaster in north-west Spain, which kills trees following a heterogeneous spatial structure. In a progeny trial of P. pinaster seedlings, spatial heterogeneity and autocorrelation of neighbour mortality caused by A. ostoyae impeded proper analysis of the disease incidence. We used variography and kriging methods to describe the spatial distribution of the infection probability and the genetic variation of the resistance to A. ostoyae among families. The spatial structure of disease incidence was modelled, and the probability of survival was corrected by kriging at each tree location. Cumulative mortality 3 years after planting was 65.1 per cent. Signifi cant differences among P. pinaster families in terms of mortality to A. ostoyae were found, with low individual ( h i = 0 .08 ) and moderate family ( h f = 0 .35 ) heritability estimates. According to a theoretical semivariogram, the patch size of the disease incidence was ~ 63 m wide. This is the fi rst time variography and kriging are used to select P. pinaster resistant to Armillaria root rot. It is concluded that geostatistics provides forest pathologists with a powerful tool for screening resistant trees in fi eld conditions.