Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial Statistical Approach to Identifying Snow Crash-Prone Locations

The objective of this research was to devise a unique and innovative approach to identifying and prioritizing snow-prone locations in specific corridors or road segments for the implementation of a road weather safety audit (RWSA). Moreover, there was a need to quantify road weather safety through the incorporation of snow data along with historical crash data for both reactive and, more importantly, proactive approaches towards addressing the issue of adverse weather and its safety impacts. Using this methodology, Wisconsin state highway segments with potential snow-related crash problems were prioritized and their nature and magnitude explained. A grid-based structure for the entire state was used with snow-related crashes aggregated for each grid. A normalized “relative crash rate” was also calculated for each grid section. Twenty and 98 grids of the over 6,000 total grids in Wisconsin consistently appear as high snow crash locations for three years or two out of three years, respectively. The results provide road safety auditors with the location of most critical areas to be prioritized for safety analysis. The statistical procedures give scientific results that overcome the problems associated with naive methodologies of crash rates or frequencies analysis. These procedures can also yield valuable insight into weather-related crashes for road safety auditors and provide an ideal launching pad for identifying specific countermeasures for immediate and effective implementation as a function of weather and crash intensity. Although the analysis in this study is only for snow-related crashes, the same procedures can be used for any other types of weather-related crashes.
Quantum transport and relaxation in one-dimensional interacting systems

In this thesis, the transport properties and relaxation phenomena in 1D interacting systems are studied. The electrical transport is investigated in Josephson junction (JJ) chains which show the remarkable phenomenon of a superconductor-insulator transition. These systems also offer the possibility to examine relaxation phenomena: we consider the decay of excited plasmonic waves in such devices. In addition to the relaxation of bosonic excitations in JJ chains, we dis- cuss the relaxation of high-energy fermions in quantum wires.
Improvement of Durability of Recycled Asphalt Mixture Using Developed Anti-Stripping Agents

In this study, anti-stripping agents were developed to improve the moisture susceptibility of recycled asphalt mixture. As a screening test of moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixture, boiling water test was conducted. The stripping ratio was measured by counting the number of stripped aggregate particles in the boiling water test according to ASTM D3625. Based on screening test results, best performance anti-stripping agents were selected and the indirect tensile strength ratio (TSR) was used to evaluate the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixture and test specimens were conditioned according to Korea Standard (KS) F 2398. For comparison purpose, different asphalt mixtures which are contained limestone, fly ash, desulfurization gypsum and anti-stripping agents were evaluated using TSR values. Also, Hamburg wheel tracking test was conducted to evaluate the moisture susceptibility and rutting resistance of asphalt mixtures contained anti-stripping agents. The results showed that asphalt mixtures contained developed anti-stripping agent have significantly higher or equal TSR values than hydrated lime, fly ash, and desulfurization gypsum. Also, the asphalt mixture contained desulfurization gypsum showed higher TSR value than asphalt mixture contained fly ash. Hamburg wheel test results showed that asphalt mixture contained the developed anti -stripping agent was higher moisture susceptibility and rutting resistance than asphalt mixtures contained hydrated lime and commercialized anti-stripping agent.
The calculation of stress energy tensor from thermal properties of blackfold

Abstract In this paper, we determine thermodynamical quantities for one kind of higher dimensional black holes. We take two charged and neutral blackfold which are higher dimension. We investigate the thermodynamical properties of such black hole at near horizon. By expanding those metrics around horizon, considering periodicity condition of imaginary time and applying some thermodynamical constraints, we extract stress energy tensor of blackfolds. We compare the thermodynamical properties of charged and neutral blackfold. We see here that the stress energy tensor of charged blackfold has brane-tension component in addition to thermal properties. Then by knowing that the spacetime of neutral blackfold is Ricci-flat and there is a nice relation between Ricci-flat and AdS spacetimes we determine the AdS form of Ricci-flat. Also we calculate the corresponding temperature which is satisfied by our previous calculation. Finally, we check the phase transition of blackfolds and show that there is not any critical point for them. So, the thermodynamical stability of both blackfolds will be proven, this result agree with Ref [9].
Propolis induces Ca2+ signaling in immune cells

Propolis possesses several immunological functions. We recently generated a conditional Ca2+ biosensor yellow cameleon (YC3.60) transgenic mouse line and established a five-dimensional (5D) (x, y, z, time, and Ca2+ signaling) system for intravital imaging of lymphoid tissues, including Peyer’s patches (PPs). To assess the effects of propolis on immune cells, we analyzed Ca2+ signaling in vitro and in vivo using CD11c-Cre/YC3.60flox transgenic mice, in which CD11c+ dendritic cells (DCs) specifically express YC3.60. We found that propolis induced Ca2+ signaling in DCs in the PPs. Intravital imaging of PPs also showed that an intraperitoneal injection of propolis augmented Ca2+ signaling in CD11c+ cells, suggesting that propolis possesses immune-stimulating activity. Furthermore, CD11c+ cells in PPs in mice administrated propolis indicated an increase in Ca2+ signaling. Our results indicate that propolis induces immunogenicity under physiological conditions.
INFLUENCE OF CHARGE COMPOSITION ON MICROSTRUCTURE OF NODULAR CAST IRONS AFTER HEAT TREATMENT

The contribution deals with comparing of microstructure and mechanical properties of synthetic nodular cast irons with graded amount of steel scrap in a charge. Chemical composition of individual meltages was regulated alternatively by ferrosilicon (FeSi) and carburizer or metallurgical silicon carbide (SiC). The paper shows the influence of charge composition on microstructure of nodular cast irons after casting and after heat treatment (ferritizing annealing and isothermal heat treatment). The results of experiments shows that SiC additive positively influences the microstructure as well as mechanical properties of nodular cast iron, especially in specimens from the meltages with higher ratio of steel scrap in the charge. Moreover, production of synthetic nodular cast irons with SiC additive is economically advantageous.
Preliminary Analysis of SELENE GRS Data -- The Iron Case

Diez, C. d’Uston, S. Maurice, N. Hasebe, O. Okudaira, N. Yamashita, S. Kobayashi, Y. Karouji, M. Hareyama, E. Shibamura, M.N. Kobayashi, R.C. Reedy, and the Selene GRS team, Université de Toulouse, France (Olivier.Gasnault@cesr.fr), Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan), College of Health Science, Saitama Prefectural University (Saitama, Japan), Nippon Medical School (Kanagawa, Japan), Planetary Science Institute (Los Alamos, USA).
A Tale of Two Concepts

Schmuck, A. 2022. A Tale of Two Concepts. Exploring the Relationship between Firm Performance and Multinationality. Doctoral thesis / Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet 216. 78 pp. Uppsala: Department of Business Studies. ISBN 978-91-506-2965-1. Despite being a pivotal topic over the past 50 years, the benefits and costs of internationalization are not well understood. A substantial body of research in international business, strategy, and general management is devoted to understanding firm internationalization and its connection to a firm’s financial performance; however, results are inconclusive. This thesis explores firm performance in relation to internationalization processes and, consequently, a firm’s degree of multinationality. The aim is to critically assess the extant literature, evaluate prevailing underlying assumptions, and investigate the causal direction between the two key concepts: firm performance and multinationality. A sequential, multiphase research approach divides the research process into three consecutive phases – exploratory, confirmatory, and explicatory – allowing for a combination of methods, including a systematic literature review, fixed effects logistic regression on 13 years of unbalanced panel data, curvilinear OLS regression on panel data, and content analysis of pilot case studies. Together, this provides a holistic response to the research question: What role does firm performance play in relation to multinationality? Findings reveal a paradigmatic bias in previous research, where authors propagate the ubiquitous causal assumption that multinationality affects firm performance. Instead, this thesis finds solid statistical support for a reversed causal relationship – firm performance drives multinationality. The theoretical arguments are derived from behavioral theories, including the resource-based view, the internationalization process model, and prospect theory. This thesis bridges organizational-level with individual-level theories, contributing to the discussion on managerial decision-making in the internationalization process.
Jurassic cyclostratigraphy and paleontology of the Hartford basin

INTRODUCTION Jurassic age lacustrine strata of the Hartford rift basin (Figs. 1, 2) are profoundly cyclical. Interbedded with the three laterally extensive basalt flow sequences of the Central Atlantic magmatic province (CAMP; Marzoli, 1999), the Shuttle Meadow and East Berlin sedimentary formations show a dominance of the familiar ~20 ky climatic precession cycle as well as the ~100, ~400, and longer eccentricity cycles that are strongly influenced in frequency by the chaotic behavior of the Solar System. Less well-studied, the lower 2 km of strata of the 4 km-thick Portland Formation immediately above the basalts are also cyclical. In this guidebook, we describe and interpret the cyclicity and biofacies through most of the major Jurassic intervals in the south-central Hartford basin. We use the permeating Milankovitch cyclostratigraphy as the basis for an astronomically calibrated time scale for the Hettangian and possibly early Sinemurian ages, placing into environmental and temporal context the rich paleontological and biostratigraphically useful assemblages in the aftermath of the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction and the great CAMP flood basalt eruptions. With its nearly symmetrical meridional supercontinent, Pangea, the Triassic and Early Jurassic represent an extreme end member of Earth's geography and climate. With no evidence of polar ice (Frakes, 1979), this " hot house " world is marked by coal deposition in polar and equatorial regions and plausibly extremely high pCO 2 , as inferred from soil carbonate data (Wang et al. Despite vast climate differences from the present, a humid equatorial zone of modern dimensions (Kent and Olsen, 2000; Kent and Tauxe, 2005) existed (Fig. 3). Within the transition zone between this humid region and the arid, central subtropics to the north, a series of continental rifts from Nova Scotia to North Carolina filled with lacustrine and fluvial strata of the Newark Supergroup during the crustal extension that ultimately led to the fragmentation of Pangea. The Hartford basin is one of the largest segments of these extensive central and north Atlantic margin rifts (Fig. 1). In central Pangea, including eastern North America, continental synrift sedimentation started in the middle Permian (Olsen et al., 2002d) and continued through the Early Jurassic (Olsen, 1997). The synrift sequence is comprised of four tectonostratigraphic sequences (Olsen, 1997; Fig. 4). Tectonostratigraphic sequences (TS) are conceptually similar to marine sequence stratigraphic units in that they are largely unconformity-bound, genetically-related packages, but are controlled largely by tectonic events. Tectonostratigraphic sequence I (TS I) is …
Tracing the Link between Government Size and Growth: The Role of Public Sector Quality

This paper shows evidence of strong heterogeneity in the relationship between government size and growth, depending on the quality of public sector institutions. Focusing on a wide sample of developed and developing countries over the period 1981-2005, we find that government size reduces growth when bureaucracy quality is low, whereas no significant effect is observed for sufficiently high levels of bureaucracy quality. The results hold both in cross-section and panel data analyses and are robust to a large number of robustness checks. These findings have important implications for assessing the role of government size in economic growth.
Geologic factors in predicting coal mine roof-rock stability in the upper Kittanning coalbed, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Report of investigations

Roof-rock instability in advancing sections of underground coal mines is a major contributing factor to accidents resulting in fatalities and injuries. Such roof-rock conditions can also result in loss of production due to additional cleanup time and increased amounts of reject material. The Bureau of Mines is investigating fundamental geologic factors affecting coal mine roof-rock instability in order to develop techniques to predict zones of potential unstable roof-rock. Two distinct directional trends of unstable shale roof-rock in a mine working the Upper Kittanning Coalbed are delineated: one trend is associated with the sandstone-shale transition zone, the other with a fault system. The unstable shale roof-rock associated with the transition zone, a consequence of differential compaction, is comprised of slickensided roof-rock. Whereas, the unstable shale roof-rock associated with the fault system, a consequence of structural deformation of the strata, is comprised of fault planes. These faults, small in comparison to the sandstone-shale transition zone, are difficult to delineate with a standard drilling program. Trends of the transition zone associated with the sedimentary facies change are projected into unmined portions of the coalbed with the aid of exploration core data.
Multiple stressors in agricultural streams: interactions between farming intensity and water abstraction

Most ecosystems are exposed to multiple anthropogenic stressors that may interact additively or non-additively, where the combined stressor effects are larger or smaller than expected based on their individual effects, and therefore cause “ecological surprises”. Among the known threats for freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem processes, agriculture and water abstraction for irrigation are important stressors of stream ecosystems, especially in drier parts of the world. Due to global climate change, both the number of temporary rivers and the severity of flow intermittence are expected to increase, and there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the consequences of water abstraction for stream ecosystem functioning. Agricultural development can impose a number of stressors in streams, including augmentation of nutrients in the water and fine sediment on the stream bed. Water abstraction, on the other hand, reduces discharge and current velocities downstream from water takes. These changes to the hydrological regime can be expected to further enhance the accumulation of fine sediment, and to change in-stream temperature regimes and the rate of processing of organic matter. The wide range of consequences makes it difficult to tease apart the individual and combined effects of agricultural development and water abstraction on stream ecosystems. To study the effects of multiple stressors on stream ecosystem structure and function, I surveyed 43 stream sites in the Manuherikia River catchment in the Central Otago region of New Zealand. Strategic choice of study sites meant that agricultural intensity and water abstraction intensity were uncorrelated. I used general linear models and an information-theoretic model selection approach to identify the best models predicting the interactions among farming intensity, water abstraction and related physicochemical variables for a series of biological response variables, including fish presence and densities (Chapter 2), invertebrate taxa and biological traits (Chapter 3), stream algal traits (Chapter 4), and δN isotope ratios of primary consumers as indicators of nitrogen dynamics (Chapter 5). I determined whether patterns in these response variables followed positive, negative or unimodal relationships along stressor gradients and whether interactions occurred among paired stressors. For the algal study, I also developed and tested a conceptual model and compiled a detailed database for ten biological traits of stream algae because to date no such comprehensive trait-based approach exists for stream algae. Algal and invertebrate traits proved to be suitable tools for disentangling the mechanisms by which multiple stressors affect stream communities. Overall, when focusing on stressors
Understanding the interaction between students' theories of intelligence and learning activities

Understanding the interaction between students’ motivation and instructional factors is critical for extending current cognitively based frameworks of learning, and can have important practical applications. Two laboratory experiments were conducted to explore how students’ implicit theories of intelligence interact with different types of learning activities. The ICAP framework by Chi (2009) organizes learning activities into passive, active, constructive, and interactive activities representing an increasing order of effectiveness. In Experiment 1, participants’ theories of intelligence were manipulated to be either entity or incremental, and the learning activity — inventing a formula to calculate variability, was manipulated to be constructive (inventing individually) or interactive (inventing collaboratively). It was predicted that individuals would learn procedurally simple aspects of the task better than collaborators regardless of their theory of intelligence, consistent with theories of collaboration and cognitive load. In contrast, while all collaborators were predicted to learn more conceptual knowledge than individuals, students with incremental theories were predicted to benefit more from collaboration than those with entity theories. Results showed that while individuals learned more than collaborators on procedural problems, the predicted interaction between collaboration and theories of intelligence on conceptual problems was not supported. Experiment 2 tested whether different types of constructive activities interacted with students’ theories of intelligence to affect learning outcomes. In this experiment, students’ theory of intelligence was manipulated to be either incremental or entity, and the type of constructive activity was manipulated to be either tell-and-practice instruction or invention. Two competing interaction hypotheses were proposed. Hypothesis one was that if invention activities led to more constructive processing, entity theorists would learn more from invention than from tell-and-practice instruction, but incremental theorists would learn equally well from either type of instruction. Hypothesis two was that if invention activities cause off-task behavior and impose excessive cognitive load, then tell-and-practice instruction would lead to better learning for entity theorists, however, both types of instruction would be equally effective for incremental theorists. Bayesian model selection provided some support for hypothesis one. Results of the two experiments are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical significance.
SnuCL: an OpenCL framework for heterogeneous CPU/GPU clusters

In this paper, we propose SnuCL, an OpenCL framework for heterogeneous CPU/GPU clusters. We show that the original OpenCL semantics naturally fits to the heterogeneous cluster programming environment, and the framework achieves high performance and ease of programming. The target cluster architecture consists of a designated, single host node and many compute nodes. They are connected by an interconnection network, such as Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand switches. Each compute node is equipped with multicore CPUs and multiple GPUs. A set of CPU cores or each GPU becomes an OpenCL compute device. The host node executes the host program in an OpenCL application. SnuCL provides a system image running a single operating system instance for heterogeneous CPU/GPU clusters to the user. It allows the application to utilize compute devices in a compute node as if they were in the host node. No communication API, such as the MPI library, is required in the application source. SnuCL also provides collective communication extensions to OpenCL to facilitate manipulating memory objects. With SnuCL, an OpenCL application becomes portable not only between heterogeneous devices in a single node, but also between compute devices in the cluster environment. We implement SnuCL and evaluate its performance using eleven OpenCL benchmark applications.
Transnational (Dis)connections: Mountain Gorilla Conservation in Rwanda and the DRC

This thesis uses a case study of mountain gorilla conservation in Rwanda and the DRCto explore how diverse connections and disconnections influence idea circulation anddisseminate different forms of inclusion and exclusion of particular people and groups.It is embedded within a theoretical framework that brings together three bodies ofliterature on non-governmental organisations (NGOs), transnational networks andideational power to ask questions about network interactions and what they mean interms of idea circulation. The thesis addresses three research questions: What dotransnational networks look like on the ground; what do (dis)connections look like andwhat do they mean in terms of idea circulation, inclusion and exclusion; and (how) dotransnational networks operate to include and circulate the ideas of more marginalisedgroups in society? This thesis presents results from a survey of the work of 281 conservation NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa, which maps out the institutional context of mountain gorillaconservation and raises questions about the interactions, equality and inclusiveness ofthe sector. Having identified mountain gorilla conservation as a suitable case study forthis research, the thesis explores the political and environmental history of the Virungas,looking at how the two interact and influence (dis)connections. Using data gatheredfrom semi-structured interviews, this thesis introduces the key actors, structures andprocesses involved in mountain gorilla conservation in Rwanda and the DRC andexplores the connections between them. It shows how connections based on perceptionsof expertise, staff movement and the professional and social circles people move incause certain ideas to be respected and circulated, whilst other people and their ideas are? accidentally? excluded. At the same time ? strategic? disconnections, which result frompersonal and organisational conflicts, can prevent idea circulation and lead to projectduplication in some areas and a lack of projects in others. The thesis also examinesNGO and state claims that ? the idea (for interventions) came from the community? Itargues that, with exceptions, in a context of ? sensitisation? of communities toconservation and a complex political history, NGOs and states often define community? ideas? themselves and do not typically have processes in place to foster local ideas,potentially excluding some of the more marginalised groups in society.