Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Natural fire regime : a guide for sustainable management of the Canadian boreal forest

The combination of certain features of fi re disturbance, notably fi re frequency, size and severity, may be used to characterize the disturbance regime in any region of the boreal forest. As some consequences of fi re resemble the effects of industrial forest harvesting, conventional forest management is often considered as a disturbance that has effects similar to those of natural disturbances. Although the analogy between forest management and fi re disturbance in boreal ecosystems has some merit, it is important to recognise that it also has its limitations. Short fi re cycles generally described for boreal ecosystems do not appear to be universal; rather, important spatial and temporal variations have been observed in Canada. These variations in the fi re cycle have an important infl uence on forest composition and structure at the landscape and regional levels. Size and severity of fi res also show a large range of variability. In regions where the natural matrix of the boreal forest remains relatively intact, maintenance of this natural variability should be targeted by forest managers concerned with biodiversity conservation. Current forest management tends to reduce this variability: for example, fully regulated, even-aged management will tend to truncate the natural forest age distribution and eliminate over-mature and old-growth forests from the landscape. We suggest that the development of strategic-level forest management planning approaches and silvicultural techniques designed to maintain a spectrum of forest compositions and structures at different scales in the landscape is one avenue to maintain this variability. Although we use the boreal forest of Quebec for our examples, it is possible to apply the approach to those portions of the boreal forest where the fi re regime favours the development of even-aged stands in burns.
Microstructure and Mechanical Property Comparison of Different Keratinous Horns

Author(s): Zhang, Yuchen | Advisor(s): McKittrick, Joanna M | Abstract: This thesis investigates the microstructure and mechanical properties of horns from the bighorn sheep, domestic sheep, mountain goat and pronghorn, which are all composed of keratin. Microstructural similarity is found where disk-shaped keratin cells attach edge-to-edge along the tubule (medullary cavity) growth direction (longitudinal direction) forming a lamella, and the lamellae are layered face-to-face along the impact direction (radial direction), and forming a wavy pattern surrounding the tubules. Differences include the number and shape of the tubules, lamellae aligned direction and shape of keratin cells. Water absorption test reveals that the pronghorn horn has the largest water absorbing ability due to the presence of nanopores in the keratin cells. Stress direction and hydration dependent anisotropic mechanical behavior is found as common characteristics of horns. The differences in the mechanical properties between horns of different species can be explained as facilitating their different fighting behaviors. Fracture surface examination proves similar deformation and fracture mechanisms, with microbuckling and delamination mechanism under compressive stress and fiber breakage mechanism under tensile stress, while crack length and fiber-to-fiber adhesion affect strength of the horns.
Should government support business angel networks? The tale of Danish business angels network

Policies promoting informal venture capital generally and business angel networks (BANs) in particular have gained increased attention in recent years. As a consequence, BANs are now widespread across Europe. However, there continues to be a debate whether BANs should be supported with public money. This article discusses the possible rationale for governments to support BANs and what criteria to apply when evaluating such networks. The article is based on an in-depth observation study of the whole life cycle of a national BAN – the Danish Business Angel Network (DBAN) – and a comparison with a similar national angel network in Wales. Results show that applying traditional evaluation criteria for assessing BANs may provide only a partial picture. DBAN was squeezed between political pressures, impatience and lack of understanding of the broader benefits of an angel network. It was therefore left to die. This contrasts Wales where Xenos was shown more patience and persistence and it was rapidly integrated into the investment community. The implication is that lack of consistent funding, even in economic downswings, may erase the position and awareness of BANs in the capital markets. When governments consider whether to provide continuing support to BANs they should evaluate not only their immediate effectiveness but also whether BANs should be considered a part of the general small business support infrastructure.
Survey on the Relationship between Sleep Habits and Children`s Growth in Ahvaz City 2015

Background: Exact determination between children's sleep habits and their growth could help us to prevent this risk factor of children's growth disorders. Thus this research was performed to investigate the correlation between sleep habits and growth of preschool children in Ahvaz- Iran. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the data was obtained by using available sampling from 208 children of 3-6 years old that came to a private pediatric clinic in Ahvaz, South West of Iran in 2015 without regard to their gender. Measurement of height and weight of all patients with the meter and scale was performed. After measuring height and weight, stature-for- age and weight-for- age percentiles was calculated using child growth chart calculator of CDC for each child. Information on the onset time of night sleep, time to wake up in the morning and nap duration of children were gathered using researcher made questionnaire. Data analysis was performed with descriptive statistic and Kendall's tau-b statistical test using SPSS-19. Results: Results of this study showed of the 208 children that were evaluated, 32 of them (15.38%) was stunted, underweight, or both and 176 (84.6%) of them hadn`t any growth disorder. Results of Kendall's tau test showed that there is no significant relationship between the onset time of night sleep, waking up time in the morning, nap duration and neither height-for-age percentile nor weight-for-age percentile of preschool children (P>0.05). Conclusion The results of this study showed that children sleep habits does not affect their stature and weight- percentile. But this isn`t mean that going to sleep late has no effect on children's health, since the establishment of a normal sleep-wake rhythm is essential for both physical and mental development in children, so it is necessary to educate parents regarding the importance of children's sleep.
CONDITIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES

Changes are one of the most typical phenomena experienced by contemporary organizations and are an inherent element of their functioning. The change introduction process is complex and it is often accompanied by a phenomenon of resistance to change on the part of the employees in an organization, which is considered as the main cause of failure in the change implementation process. The purpose of the article is to discuss the b
Response of sugar cane to limitation hydric and nitrogen dose

The great social and economic importance of sugarcane makes it critical to understand the responses of the crop to adverse stress. This study was carried out to characterize the morpho-physiological index of sugarcane cultivated under different levels of water replacement with four replicates, corresponding to five levels of water replacement (100, 75, 50, 25 and 0% of soil humidity at field capacity) and either associated or not with a nitrogen source (100 kg ha-1 de N). Leaf area, leaf water potential, gas exchange, and chlorophyll fluorescence were determined at different stages of plant development. Suboptimal maintenance of turgor pressure by water potential reduced the photosynthetically active area of sugarcane submitted to hydric deficit. A water replacement of 75% in association with nitrogen promoted optimal maintenance of the photosynthetic process. Key words: Photosynthetic efficiency, nitrogen supply, water potential.
A linguagem dos quadrinhos: estudos de estética, linguística e semiótica

O livro A linguagem dos quadrinhos: estudos de estetica, linguistica e semiotica organizado por Waldomiro Vergueiro e Roberto Elisio dos Santos, publicado em 2015 pela editora Criativo reune trabalhos sobre a linguagem dos quadrinhos. A obra traz no seu cerne discussoes em torno de uma das referencias teoricas em quadrinhos e semiotica no Brasil: Antonio Luiz Cagnin.
EFFICIENT AND ACCURATE INDOOR LOCALIZATION USING LANDMARK GRAPHS

Indoor localization is important for a variety of applications such as location-based services, mobile social networks, and emergency response. Fusing spatial information is an effective way to achieve accurate indoor localization with little or with no need for extra hardware. However, existing indoor localization methods that make use of spatial information are either too computationally expensive or too sensitive to the completeness of landmark detection. In this paper, we solve this problem by using the proposed landmark graph. The landmark graph is a directed graph where nodes are landmarks (e.g., doors, staircases, and turns) and edges are accessible paths with heading information. We compared the proposed method with two common Dead Reckoning (DR)-based methods (namely, Compass + Accelerometer + Landmarks and Gyroscope + Accelerometer + Landmarks) by a series of experiments. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve 73% accuracy with a positioning error less than 2.5 meters, which outperforms the other two DR-based methods.
Evaluating bound on voltage and thermal security margins under power transfer uncertainty.

This paper deals with the evaluation of bounds on voltage and thermal security margins with respect to con- tingencies. A margin is the maximal pre-contingency power transfer between either a generation and a load area or two generation areas, such that specified contingencies do not overload lines or make the system voltage unstable. The min- imum and maximum margins are computed for given inter- vals of variations of bus injections. Each bound is the solu- tion of a constrained L1-norm minimization (or maximiza- tion) problem, for which specific algorithms are given. Ther- mal overloads are handled through linearization, while for voltage stability, fast time simulation and instability mode analysis are used. Nonlinear situations of branch overloads are also considered. The method is illustrated on an 80-bus test system.
Rosuvastatin Slows the Progression of Aortic Stenosis Caused by Hypertension Regardless of

Background There is epidemiological evidence associating cardiovascular risk factors with aortic valve stenosis. The development of aortic valve stenosis has been recently demonstrated in a hypertensive animal model. We hypothesize that treatment with rosuvastatin modifies this transformation. Objective To evaluate the effect of rosuvastatin on the development of aortic valve stenosis. Material and Methods Hypertension was induced in 43 male NZ rabbits by a onekidney, one-clip Goldblatt procedure. The animals were randomly randomly assigned to 3 groups: HT (n=17) without treatment; HT+R (n=14) treated with rosuvastatin 2.5 mg/kg/day and HT+R+C (n=12) treated with rosuvastatin 2.5 mg/kg/day + cholesterol-enriched diet to keep baseline cholesterol levels. A control group (CG) underwent sham surgery (n=15). The characteristics of the aortic valve were measured by echocardiography at baseline, 3 and 6 months after inducing hypertension. Results After 6 months of follow-up, SBP and DBP presented greater increase in the group HT (49% and 40%, respectively; p <0.001) compared to groups treated with rosuvastatin (SBP = 23% and 25%; DBP = 28% and 26%; p <0.001 for HT+R and HT+R+C, respectively). Total cholesterol decreased by 45.7% (p <0.01) only in HT+R group. The aortic valve became thickened in the HT group (0.50 ± 0.01 vs. 0.62 ± 0.02 mm; p <0.01); there were no significant differences in HT+R and HT+R+C. Finally, the aortic valve area was reduced in HT (0.277 ± 0.024 vs. 0.208 ± 0.014 cm 2 ; p <0.05), had no differences in HT+R and HT+R+C, and presented a non-significant increase in CG (0.264 ± 0.022 vs. 0.32 ± 0 .016 cm 2 ; p=0.07). Conclusions Rosuvastatin slows the progression of aortic valve stenosis caused by hypertension. This protection might be independent of the lipid-lowering effect of the drug.
Effects of lapsi fruits (Choerospondias axillaris Roxburgh, 1832) on immunity and survival of juvenile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus Linnaeus, 1758) infected with Aeromonas hydrophila

Lapsi fruit (a native from Nepal) is opulent source of essential amino acids, minerals and ascorbic acid and is commonly used for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in Vietnam, Mongolia and China etc. The phytochemical constituents of lapsi fruit extracts (LFE) are phenol and flavonoid compounds which exhibit potent antioxidant activity to scavenge various free radicals and thus protect from toxic and harmful. A total of 252 fingerlings of O. niloticus (average weight 3.84 ± 0.17 g) were randomly distributed in four treatment groups TI (Basal feed + 0% LFE) control, T2 (Basal feed + 0.1% LFE), T3 (Basal feed + 0.2% LFE) and T4 (Basal feed + 0.4% LFE) each in triplicate form. After 60 days of feeding trail highest (p<0.05) weight gain% (273.03%), protein efficiency ratio (1.82) and specific growth rate (2.19) and lowest feed conversion ratio (1.43) in the T3 group fed fish were recorded. Lowest (p<0.05) alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase activity was found in the T3 group in both liver and muscle. Incorporation of 0.2% LFE in the feed increased the gill superoxide dismutase activity by 3-fold compared to control group (T1). Highest (p<0.05) respiratory burst activity (0.36), albumin (1.21) and globulin (3.48) contents were observed in the T3 group. When challenged with A. hydrophila after 60 days, maximum relative % of survival was noticed in T3 (83.34%) group. Overall, results indicated improvement in the growth, heamato-immunological responses and protected the animals against Aeromonas hydrophila infection at 0.2% LFE incorporation in O. niloticus while higher dose of LFE incorporation led to stress and immunosuppression.
In vitro evaluation of immunogenic properties of active dressings

Abstract The aim of this study was in vitro evaluation of the level of the immune response in relation to wound dressings composed of alginate, calcium carboxymethylcellulose, and dibutyrylochitin and determination of the direction of response, which will make referring next to the results of in vivo phase possible. The subject of the experiments was to examine the commercially available, biodegradable alginate dressing, commercially available but not biodegradable dressing constructed from the sodium carboxymethylcellulose, and synthesized in house biodegradable dressing constructed of the dibutyrylchitin. To determine the direction of the immune response, the degree of secretion of pro-inflammatory interleukin (IL-1, IL-6) and antiinflammatory (IL-10) interleukin from murine fibroblasts having contact with the tested dressings (ELISA enzyme linked immunosorbent assay), was tested.
Potencial e perspectivas da utilização de microalgas para produção de biocombustíveis.

O termo “microalgas” é utilizado para designar organismos eucarióticos fotossintéticos microscópicos, geralmente com dimensões entre 1 e 10 μm. Estes organismos estão distribuídos em diversos filos/divisões de protistas, sendo os principais Chlorophyta (algas verdes), Rhodophyta (algas vermelhas), Glaucocystophyta, Euglenophyta, Chlorarachniophyta, Heterokonta, Haptophyta, Cryptophyta e Alveolata (BHATTACHARYA; MEDLIN, 1998; LARKUM et al., 2012). Neste texto, trataremos também das cianobactérias. Elas são procariotos e, portanto, não são consideradas algas, agrupando-se em um clado monofilético dentro do domínio Eubacteria. Contudo, compartilham várias características com as microalgas, uma vez que, evolutivamente, deram origem aos cloroplastos das algas e plantas terrestres (BHATTACHARYA; MEDLIN, 1998; LARKUM et al., 2012). Tanto as cianobactérias quanto as espécies dos grupos Chlorophyta e Heterokonta – principalmente – apresentam potencial para produção de biomassa para biocombustíveis (LARKUM et al., 2012).
Pemodelan dan Peramalan Deret Waktu Musiman dengan Pendekatan Filter Bank

Pada makalah ini penulis mengajukan suatu metode untuk memodelkan dan meramalkan deret waktu musiman. Tidak seperti metode tradisional yang hanya bergantung sepenuhnya pada model dinamik, di sini diajukan suatu metode yang mengkombinasikan pemodelan dinamik stokastik dengan analisis filter bank yang dirancang untuk mengurangi dimensionalitas dan untuk menggali komponen yang ada untuk peramalan jangka panjang yang dapat dipercaya. Filter bank mengubah (decomposes) deret waktu menjadi komponen-komponen musiman dan hanya komponen tersebut yang koheren melalui periode yang terpilih untuk pemodelan dan peramalan selanjutnya. Percobaan yang dilakukan menunjukkan bahwa menurut kondisi tertentu yang tepat, penggunaan komponen koheren yang tepat tidak hanya mengurangi kompleksitas pemodelan dan jumlah data percobaan yang diperlukan tetapi juga membatasi dampak perubahan berkala dan juga gangguan (noise) dalam data percobaan sedemikian sehingga memberikan ramalan robust dengan variabilitas yang berkurang.
THE ASSOCIATION OF THE SEXUAL PRACTICE WITH PROTECTIVE METHODS AND SELFEFFICACY OF THE STUDENTS OF VLORA UNIVERSITY TO HIV INFECTION

Introduction: Regardless the fact of whether a country has a low or a high prevalence rate of AIDS, reducing the vulnerability of young people to HIV infection is the principal defense against the epidemics of the future. Purpose: To establish the association of the sexual practice with knowledges about prevention measures and self-efficacy of the students of Vlora University to HIV infection. Methodology: This is a descriptive study where quantitative method was used for the data and information resulting from a survey structured in the form of a questionnaire. The study participants were 721 randomly selected students from the Vlora University. For statistical analysis of the data was used statistical program SAS version 9.1. Results: The average age of the students was 20.75 ± 2.2 years, 56.45% were female and 43.55% male. 29% of the students manifest risky sexual practices and 71% safe practices. In total we notices that 46.66% of the students did not have good knowledge on preventive measures to HIV/AIDS. The Chi-square=0.3113>0.05 indicator does not show statistical significance between students’sexual practices and knowledge of preventive measures. In the students with safe practices 58% of them have very good and good knowledge, the ones with risky sexual practices only 55% have very good and good knowledge Conclusions: The students of Vlora University do not have the sufficient knowledge on the preventive measures. HIV/AIDS-related education programs should include specific interventions to change practices, along with preventive measures knowledge
Supply Chains and Global Health: An Imperative for Bringing Operations Management Scholarship into Action

Many people in developing countries do not have access to effective vaccines, medicines, and other life-saving health technologies. Shortage of health care workers, severe financial constraints, and lack of awareness are some of the major obstacles that prevent higher access. However, ineffective and poorly designed supply chains for purchasing and distributing the medicines, vaccines, and health technologies are one of the most important barriers to increasing access. We argue that the ineffectiveness of the global health supply chain can be attributed largely to: coordination problems across multiple stakeholders with widely divergent objectives, lack of careful supply chain design, and use of myopic operational objectives and metrics. The operations management research community can contribute to improving this by applying existing knowledge to the field of global health delivery and by researching new frameworks of analysis which would then become the cornerstones for policy advice to those who design, operate, or finance these supply chains.
SHORT TERM EFFECTS OF PERMANENT INCOME'S FACTORS OVER CONSUMPTION IN PAKISTAN (1976-2009)

This paper critically examines the short term effects of the permanent income over consumption as introduced by the Milton Friedman. The purpose of the present study is to explore the extent to which wealth indicators relating to permanent income can have an impact on consumption with respect to the income related indicators observed in Pakistan like gross value added, gross national expenditure, total reserves, natural resources and gross savings. The analysis of the consumption and income determinants has been carried out from 19762009. An error correction model has been conducted to study this Permanent income phenomenon to observe the impacts of all these variables in short run. The research showed the results that the adjustment process is slow and short-term disequilibrium of previous period never adjusts completely in the current period. Short run adjustment pace of consumption is statistically significant, indicating that short run discrepancies do not adjust completely in the same period. Based on these evidences it is apparent that consumption and wealth variables are important to determine the macroeconomic stability in Pakistan. If the government gives priority to long-term consumption on the basis of exploring the available natural resources, it can gain better results in economic growth, poverty alleviation and unemployment reduction. The policy makers and economists in financial sector need to focus on the greater opportunities for wealth creation in the economy income hymen and the focus of this study is also on the effects of permanent income factors over consumption. A limitation of the research was the inclusion of only a limited number of wealth indicators.