Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relative Impact of Sea Ice and Temperature Changes on Arctic Marine Production

We use a modern Earth system model to approximate the relative importance of ice versus temperature on Arctic marine ecosystem dynamics. We show that while the model adequately simulates ice volume, water temperature, air‐sea CO2 flux, and annual primary production in the Arctic, itunderestimates upper water column nitrate across the region. This nitrate bias is likely responsible for the apparent underestimation of ice algae production. Despite this shortcoming, the model appears to be a useful tool for exploring the impacts of environmental change on phytoplankton production and carbon dynamics over the Arctic Ocean. Our experiments indicate that under a warmer climate scenario, the percentage of ocean warming that could be apportioned to a reduction in ice area ranged from 11% to 100%, while decreasing ice area could account for 22–100% of the increase in annual ocean primary production. The change to CO2 air‐sea flux in response to ice and temperature changes averaged an Arctic‐wide 5.5 Tg C yr−1 (3.5%) increase, into the ocean. This increased carbon sink may be short‐lived, as ice cover continues to decrease and the ocean warms. The change in carbon fixation from phytoplankton in response to increased temperatures and reduced ice was generally more than a magnitude larger than the changes to CO2 flux, highlighting the importance of fully considering changes to the marine ecosystem when assessing Arctic carbon cycle dynamics. Our work demonstrates the importance of ice dynamics in controlling ocean warming and production and thus the need for well‐behaved ice and BGC models within Earth system models if we hope to accurately predict Arctic changes.
Spatio-Temporal Land-Cover Change Analysis of the Imo River Estuarine Wetlands and its Implication on the Mangrove Ecosystem

Land-cover in coastal areas determines to an extent the degree its surrounding water bodies differ from their pristine nature. Change mapping within coastal wetlands especially in areas prone to anthropogenic activities will help protect these fragile habitats. A land-cover change analysis was carried out on the Imo River estuary covering about 724 hectares of the estuarine wetlands, using 3 satellite images of the area acquired from Landsat 5TM (1986), Landsat 7 ETM (2000) and Landsat 8 OLI (2016) for a period of 30 years. Results showed that mangrove vegetation decreased by 17.5%, crop and grassland increased by 17% while total coverage of settlements increased by 3.4%. This implies that mangrove vegetation has significantly depleted over time and if this trend is not checked could lead to increase siltation of the river through runoff as a result of deforestation. There is also a likelihood of increase waste discharge directly or indirectly into the river by neighboring communities. It is recommended that proper waste management practices be adopted to suit urban growth within these communities and constant monitoring should be carried out using high resolution images to monitor coastal wetlands to protect fishes and other endangered species.
Association between Candida species and periodontal disease: A systematic review

Periodontal diseases result in the inflammation of the supporting structures of the teeth, thereby leading to attachment loss and bone loss. One of the main etiological factors responsible for this condition is the presence of subgingival biofilms, comprising microorganisms, namely bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Candida species is one of the fungi reported to be found in periodontal disease which is suggestive of the presence of an association between these variables. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the association of Candida species with periodontal disease and determine the prevalence of these species in the patients affected with this disease. The articles related to the subject of interest were searched in several databases, including the PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Scopus. The search process was accomplished using three keywords, namely ‘‘Candida species’’, ‘‘Chronic periodontitis’’, and ‘‘Gingivitis’’. All the identified studies were comprehensively evaluated for the association of Candida species with periodontal disease. This systematic review included 23 articles, which assessed the prevalence of Candida species in periodontal diseases. The results of 21 studies were indicative of a positive association between Candida species and periodontal diseases. Accordingly, it was concluded that there is a strong association between the presence of Candida species and periodontal diseases
Siamese convolutional neural network-based approach towards universal image forensics

This study proposes a novel deep learning-based method which can detect different types of image editing operations carried out on images. Unlike most of the existing methods, which can only detect the editing operations considered in the training stage, the proposed method can generalise to manipulations not seen in the training stage. The method is based on the classification of image pairs as either similarly or differently processed using a deep siamese neural network. Once the network learns features that can discriminate different editing operations, it can check whether an image is processed with an editing operation, not present in the training stage, using the one-shot classification strategy. An image forgery detection and localisation technique is also proposed using the trained siamese network. The experimental results show the efficacy of the proposed method in detecting different editing operations and also show the ability in detecting and localising image forgeries.
Political Connections, Debt Restructuring, and Enterprise Investment: Evidence from China

This paper shows that the link between debt restructuring and enterprise investment in emerging economies hinges critically on the political connections. Taking Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2005 to 2016 as samples, we examine whether and how political connections affect the relationship between debt restructuring and enterprise investment based on the DID method. The results show that compared with nonpolitically connected enterprises, debt restructuring effectively improves the investment efficiency in enterprises with political ties, which is mainly due to alleviating the overinvestment and underinvestment. Furthermore, the positive effect of debt restructuring on investment is more prominent in enterprises with weak strength of political connection. It is worth noting that as the strength of political connection increases from weak to strong, the positive impact of debt restructuring on investment turns to negative impact, which reflects the heterogeneity of connection strength on the relation between debt restructuring and investment. This paper provides new evidence for understanding the investment behaviour of debt restructuring enterprises and provides some policy implications for managers and decision-makers intending to improve the investment efficiency and enhance the sustainable development of enterprises from the perspective of political connections.
Evaluating Host Resistance to Limit Colletotrichum coccodes on Onion

Leaf and neck anthracnose is incited by Colletotrichum coccodes (Wallr.) Hughes, a new foliar disease of onion (Allium cepa L.) in Michigan that has been observed in the state since 2010. Symptoms include elliptical lesions on the leaves, necks, or both that appear bleached with a pale salmon to dark brown center. To develop an effective integrated disease management strategy, field studies were conducted in 2011 and 2012 to evaluate 16 commercial onion cultivars for their susceptibility to the pathogen. The incidence and severity of anthracnose were evaluated weekly following inoculation. Onion cultivars differed significantly in disease severity and incidence; differences between years were also observed. ‘Hendrix’ had the lowest disease severity, whereas ‘Highlander’ and ‘Candy’ exhibited severe onion leaf and neck anthracnose symptoms. Using less susceptible onion cultivars combined with effective fungicides against C. coccodes may limit crop losses for Michigan growers.
Financial development and health care expenditure in Sub Saharan Africa Countries

Abstract The study aimed to examine the relationship between financial development and health care expenditure in 46 Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) countries. The paper argues that health care expenditure is a key transmission mechanism through which financial development influences better health outcomes. The study used random and fixed effects as well as instrumental variable estimation methods using data from 1995 to 2014. The results showed that financial development leads to increased health care expenditure. In terms of policy implications, the findings underscore the need to foster financial development in SSA economies to assist with domestic resource mobilisation to finance health care expenditure.
Chemical and toxicological properties of coal fly ash. Environmental geology notes

Nine fly ash samples generated from Illinois Basin coals and three samples from western coals were characterized in terms of their physicochemical properties, solubility and toxicity to fathead minnow fry. Organic compounds identified in the fly ashes were only slightly soluble in the aqueous extracts. Five extracts were selected for toxicity testing on the basis of the diversity of pH values. All five extracts were acutely toxic to fathead minnow fry. Physicochemical components probably responsible for the acute toxicity of the fly ash extracts to fish were pH, Al, ironic strength, and Zn. The fathead minnows and green sunfish accumulated similar elements from the fly ash extracts; the six chemical constituents most commonly accumulated from fly ash extracts were Al, B, Cd, Mn, Mo, and Ni.
Calophyllum inophyllum extract as a natural enhancer for improving physical properties of bioplastics and natural antimicrobial

Umiyati R, Millati R, Ariyanto T, Hidayah C. 2020. Calophyllum inophyllum extracts as a natural enhancer for improving physical properties of bioplastics and antimicrobial activity. Biodiversitas 21: 3294-3302. The utilization of Calophyllum inophyllum (or nyamplung) cake (NC) is still limited, only as fertilizer and animal feed. This research aimed to evaluate C. inophyllum (or nyamplung) cake extract (NCE) and its utilization as an antimicrobial agent in packaging material. Bioplastics were prepared by the thermo-compression method. The results showed that the NC and NCE contained tannins and amide groups. They had antimicrobial activities toward Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Only NCE had antifungal toward Aspergillus nigger. Therefore, HPS bioplastic containing NCE exhibited antibacterial. Besides, NCE and NC contained carbonyl and amide groups. As a result, NCE addition was able to significantly increase tensile strength (σ) of bioplastic, in which it was about 1.5 times higher compared to control. But NCE did not have a significant effect on elongation at break (ε) and modulus of elasticity (Y). Water solubility (WS) and water vapor permeability (WVP) were reduced with an increase in NCE concentration. HPS-NCE bioplastics show a finer and more homogeneous texture compared to control bioplastic. The NCE shows the ability as a natural enhancer for improving bioplastics properties as well as function as an antibacterial agent against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in bioplastics.
3D target localization based on multi–unmanned aerial vehicle cooperation

Ground target three-dimensional positions measured from optical remote-sensing images taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle play an important role in related military and civil applications. The weakness of this system lies in its localization accuracy being unstable and its efficiency being low when using a single unmanned aerial vehicle. In this paper, a novel multi–unmanned aerial vehicle cooperative target localization measurement method is proposed to overcome these issues. In the target localization measurement stage, three or more unmanned aerial vehicles simultaneously observe the same ground target and acquire multiple remote-sensing images. According to the principle of perspective projection, the target point, its image point, and the camera’s optic center are collinear, and nonlinear observation equations are established. These equations are then converted to linear equations using a Taylor expansion. Robust weighted least-squares estimation is used to solve the equations with the objective function of minimizing the weighted square sum of re-projection errors from target points to multiple pairs of images, which can make the best use of the effective information and avoid interference from the observation data. An automatic calculation strategy using a weight matrix is designed, and the weight matrix and target-position coordinate value are updated in each iteration until the iteration stopping condition is satisfied. Compared with the stereo-image-pair cross-target localization method, the multi–unmanned aerial vehicle cooperative target localization method can use more observation information, which results in higher rendezvous accuracy and improved performance. Finally, the effectiveness and robustness of this method is verified by numerical simulation and flight testing. The results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the precision of the target’s localization and demonstrates great potential for providing more accurate target localization in engineering applications.
Effects of pregnancy serum and scriptaid on development in early partheno embryo

Partheno Embryo's research is known to play a very important role in identifying the development of embryonic cells or analyzing the genetic mechanisms of embryonic development, but the information on apoptosis formed during the early stage of development on Partheno Embryo is very little. Therefore, this study analyzed whether the embryonic cell death of unit embryos can be inhibited by adding Scriptaid, one of HDACi, which plays a role in demethylation of histone proteins as a method of regulating the cell cycle in the early embryo development of Partheno Embryo. As a result, the differentiation rate was higher in the group that added Scriptaid and FBS, but the cellular development was higher in the group that added pregnant serum to Scriptaid. As a result of analyzing the expression of the gene through IF and PCR, the group with the addition of gestational serum increased the expression of BCL2 and PCNA, which affects the anti-Casp3 action in cell survival. In addition, it is interpreted that treatment of Scriptaid for 16 hours, rather than 24 h treatment lowers the expression of Casp-3, a representative factor of apoptosis, and also increases embryonic development, thus affecting early embryo development. Therefore, it is concluded that the 16-hour treatment of Scriptaid and the use of gestational serum will inhibit cell death in the early embryonic development and increase the development rate of the embryo.
Virtual welding: A didactic perspective

This research was conducted as part of a Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme in Technical and Industrial Production and is a collaboration between Aas upper secondary school in Akershus and the Department of Vocational Teacher Education at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). Starting in autumn 2017, simulated welding has been the first step in the use of simulation teaching in order to produce qualified professionals. In TVET education, Virtual Reality technology is a new training tool for welding, and little is known about the pedagogical approaches and didactic challenges. This article is based on interviews that were conducted with teachers and their immediate supervisors to gain insight into their prior knowledge, the approaches they intended to use, and their initial experiences of the introduction of simulation-based teaching. The research consists primarily of qualitative analyses, based on a phenomenological approach. The focus for the article is the possibilities and limitations of a virtual welding machine, as well as how it might be introduced as an educational and didactic tool in upper secondary school. The article provides useful knowledge for those who will be using some form of simulation in teaching in general and for simulated welding in particular. This applies to both current TVET teachers and those undergoing Technical and Vocational Teacher Education.
How to Teach Empathy to Business Students?

Empathetic leadership has been considered as important trait nowadays. Leaders with empathy are considered being able to influence, inspire and help people achieve their dreams and goals. When many people think that empathy is something you’re born with, studies show that empathy is actually can be learned and grown if it is practiced with discipline along a period of time. The skill of empathizing has become important in the era where disruption and transformation have changed organization consistently. Communicating the change and its impact to the employees’ life should be conveyed empathetically when successful transformation is at the stake. But many leaders do not know how to do it. The benefit to improving empathy capability will be strongly connected with the latest trend in education 4.0 which are connecting data, technology and human. Teaching empathy has been a standard process in teaching nurses and medical students. Rarely the methodology for teaching empathy in Business is being documented. The role of empathy in innovation has been mentioned in design thinking. Empathy as the center of design thinking will help to build the human’s side of the students. And since empathize is the most difficult process, finding the right tool and methods will help achieve the empathizing capability. The project is to seek the structured methodology to improve empathizing capability among Master of Management students with major in creative marketing. The project involves measurement of empathy score, introduction several interventions and the evaluation of methodology is presenting in this paper.
Filament formation by the translation factor eIF2B regulates protein synthesis in starved cells

Cells exposed to starvation have to adjust their metabolism to conserve energy and protect themselves. Protein synthesis is one of the major energy-consuming processes and as such has to be tightly controlled. The mechanism by which starved cells regulate the process of protein synthesis is largely unknown. Here, we report that the essential translation initiation factor eIF2B forms filaments in starved budding yeast cells. We demonstrate that filamentation is triggered by starvation-induced acidification of the cytosol, which is caused by an influx of protons from the extracellular environment. We show that filament assembly by eIF2B is necessary for rapid and efficient downregulation of translation. Importantly, this mechanism does not require the kinase Gcn2. Furthermore, analysis of site-specific variants of eIF2B suggests that eIF2B assembly results in enzymatically inactive filaments that promote stress survival and fast recovery of cells from starvation. We propose that translation regulation through protein assembly is a widespread mechanism that allows cells to adapt to fluctuating environments.
Institutions and Immutable Causes of Human Capital

My doctoral thesis examines the broad question of whether appropriately designed institutions and policies can address the shortand long-term consequences of determinants of human capital which are “immutable” by nature or are perceived as such. I consider three different types of immutable determinants of human capital: male versus female biology; colonization; and traditional norms of gender roles. In Chapter 1, I examine whether, and how, change in political regime type affects excess male infant mortality. Analyzing data on more than 3 million live births from sub-Saharan African countries, I exploit within-mother variation in political regime type to find that excess male infant mortality significantly decreases following a transition to democracy. I identify competitiveness of executive recruitment, constraints on the chief executive, and political participation as the features of democracy that matter most. Examining causal mechanisms, I find that democracy fosters the provision of health inputs, including maternal education, tetanus immunization, breastfeeding, and normal birth weight, all of which have stronger health benefits for boys than for girls, despite being found to be ex-ante “gender-neutral” in my setting. In Chapter 2, I examine how colonial reproductive laws interact with market incentives to shape long-term fertility behavior in Africa. Exploiting the arbitrary division of ancestral ethnic homelands and the resulting discontinuity in institutions across the British-French colonial borders, I find that women in former British areas are more likely to delay sexual debut and marriage, and have fewer children. However, these effects disappear in areas close to sea, where market access and the opportunity cost of childbearing appear to be high irrespective of the colonizer identity. This heterogeneous impact of colonial origins extends to measures of local economic development and household welfare. Examining causal mechanisms, I argue that the fertility effect of colonial origins is
Caracterização e análise da declividade das trilhas do Parque Nacional da Tijuca: subsídios para a gestão da visitação

Um dos mais importantes impactos biofísicos resultantes da visitação em áreas protegidas é a erosão e a perda de solos, que está relacionada com a pluviosidade e com a declividade das trilhas do local, dentre outros aspectos. No presente trabalho utilizamos ferramentas de geoprocessamento para estimar a declividade de trilhas do Parque Nacional da Tijuca, correlacionando esta informação com possíveis impactos sobre a erosão do solo e com o sistema de graduação de dificuldade de trilhas da unidade. Nossos dados mostraram que as trilhas do Parque Nacional da Tijuca apresentam em geral declividades bastante superiores ao que a literatura considera sustentável, bem como mostraram que as classes de dificuldade, ao contrário do esperado, não apresentam correlação com a declividade de trilhas.
Synthesis of sulfonylurea derivatives and their α-glucosidase inhibitory activity

Sulfonylurea derivatives are oral hypoglycemic agents used for the treatment of type II diabeties for almost eight decades [1]. These drugs act by releasing insulin from the β cells of the pancreas [2]. Along with antidiabetic activity, large numbers of sulfonylurea derivatives also exhibit a wide range of biological activity [3] such as diuretic, histamine H3 receptor antagonist, antimalarial, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory activity.
Genetic evidence for several cryptic species within theScarturus elaterspecies complex (Rodentia: Dipodoidea): when cryptic species are really cryptic

1Lomonosov Moscow State University, Vorobievy Gory, 119992 Moscow, Russia 2Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, B. Nikitskaya 6, 125009 Moscow, Russia 3Slovenian Museum of Natural History, PO Box 290, 1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia 4Das Zoologische Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, Adenauerallee 160, 53113 Bonn, Germany 5Institute of Zoology Tashkent, Uzbekistan Academy of Science, 100125 Tashkent, Yunusabad district, Bogishamol str. , 232 B, Uzbekistan 6Pavlodar State Pedagogical Istitute, Mira str. , 6