Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is advective heat transport significant at the Dead Sea basin

An understanding of heat flux is a necessary component in reconstructing tectonic, seismic, and hydrologic models of the Dead Sea basin. Heat may be transferred by both conduction and advection by groundwater. Although the conductive heat flux in Israel has been extensively measured to be approximately 40 mW m )2 , there is still a debate about the total heat flux. Recently, the discharge of hot springs along the western Dead Sea shore has been determined to be 10 7 m 3 year )1 . Simple calculations show that the heat discharged by groundwater at these hot springs is of the same order of magnitude as the measured conductive heat flux in deep boreholes. Therefore the total heat flux could be significantly higher than 40 mW m )2 . However, results of numerical modeling show that the current hot-spring heat discharge is two orders of magnitude greater than that predicted for steady-state conditions and can be explained by the rapid recession of the Dead Sea.
Self-Care Management of Cancer Cervix among the Patients Admitted In Caritas Cancer Center, Kottayam

Cervical cancer is the fifth most common cancer in humans, the second most common cancer in women worldwide and the most common cancer cause of death in developing countries. The study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of self-instructional module regarding self-care management of cancer cervix among women and also to find out the association between post-test knowledge scores on self-care management of cancer cervix with their selected demographic variables of the women. Quasi experimental research design and cross -sectional survey approach was used. 45 women with cancer cervix between the age group of 35-65 years of age admitted in caritas cancer center, kottayam were selected by using purposive sampling technique. The data was collected by using closed ended questionnaire and were analysed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings depicts that Highest percentage of women (37.8%) were diagnosed as cancer cervix before 1 month of data collection and (64.4%) of women had undergone chemotherapy. Highly significant difference was found between pre and post-test knowledge scores (P 0.05).
IMBALANCED CLASS DISTRIBUTIONS

Document-level sentiment classification aims to automate the task of classifying a textual review, which is given on a single topic, as expressing a positive or negative sentiment. In general, people express their opinions towards an entity based on their characteristics which may change over time. User‘s opinions are changed due to evolution of target entities over time. However, the existing sentiment classification approaches did not considered the evolution of User‘s opinions. They assumed that instances are independent, identically distributed and generated from a stationary distribution, while generated from a stream distribution. They used the static classification model that builds a classifier using a training set without considering the time that reviews are posted. However, time may be very useful as an important feature for classification task. In this paper, a stream sentiment classification framework is proposed to deal with concept drift and imbalanced data distribution using ensemble learning and instance selection methods. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in compared with static sentiment classification.
Noise Reduction for ILSE Interviews Asunción Pastrana

This thesis presents a research on noise reduction in order to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) applied to the ILSE (Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study on Adult Development and Aging) interviews. The first interviews were recorded more than 20 years ago and new ones are still recorded nowadays. This results in varying recording conditions. In the first recordings, external conditions were not taken into account since ASR was not considered. This, plus the loss of quality due to the tape’s aging, make the available data very noisy. After some investigation, it was found that the best way to approach this goal was to apply cepstral normalization. In this direction, three techniques have been implemented: noise cepstral mean normalization (NCMN), noise cepstral mean and variance normalization (NCMVN), and noise cepstral squared normalization (NCSN). The results of this methods don’t improve the word error rates (WER) from the best approach; 76.30% for the baseline, 76.41% for NCMN, 77.00% NCMVN and 83.05% for NCSN. However, the results prove that the acoustic model (AM) built NCMVN is the most accurate. Although NCSN is the approach that provides higher WER, this technique improves the number of substituted as well as inserted words. This, plus NCMVN’s acoustic model, could inspire future research.
Academic Dishonesty, Self-Control, and General Criminality: A Prospective and Retrospective Study of Academic Dishonesty in a New Zealand University

Academic dishonesty is an insidious problem that besets most tertiary institutions, where considerable resources are expended to prevent and manage students' dishonest actions within academia. Using a mixed retrospective and prospective design this research investigated Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory as a possible explanation for academic dishonesty in 264 university students. The relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was also examined. A significant but small to moderate relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was present, including correlations with general dishonesty, violent crime and drug offending subcategories. These findings suggested that a general criminological theory may be of use in explaining academic dishonesty, but the overall ability of self-control variables to explain academic dishonesty was not strong. Controlled logistic regressions indicated that a significant positive association with academic dishonesty was only present for one of 6 self-control subscales (self-centeredness), and even this association was only present in the prospective study component. A strong relationship between past and future academic dishonesty was present. Implications of the study for institutions are discussed.
DELONIX ELATA - A POTENT MEDICINAL PLANT: A REVIEW

Objective: The objective of this review article is to highlight all the available information online or offline in the form of books or articles on Delonix elata (L.), one of most important medicinal plants. Methods: This article is a compiled report on medicinal properties and phytochemistry of D. elata based on the updated information collected from reviews, literature databases, research articles and books. Results: Delonix elata (L.) Gamble (Poinciana elata Linn.) commonly known as “white gul mohur” in English and is a reputed folklore remedy for arthritic disorders in many parts of Gujarat, India. The leaf extracts are anti-inflammatory agents. Root decoction of this plant is consumed for abdominal pains. Leaves are reported to be used by traditional practitioners for inflammatory joint disorders as a folklore remedy. Its pychosomatic medicinal use relating to scorpion bite treatment is also reported. The presence of phytochemicals such as alkaloids, tannins, triterpenoids, steroids and glycosides in the extracts of this plant supports its traditional uses as a potent medicinal plant for the treatment of various ailments. Conclusion: Scientific investigations are needed to be carried out on D. elata to bring such unexplored drugs into light to combat with various
Strategic human resource development (SHRD) in lean times: assessing its maturity in Greek banks at the time of the economic crisis

Purpose: This study explores SHRD's maturity in Greek banks within the context of the economic crisis. It aims to explore and advance our understanding of how SHRD is perceived within diverse institutions through the respective lens of different HRD stakeholders, while also portraying the factors inhibiting or facilitating its adoption, and accordingly contributing to its maturity in some organisations during lean economic times. Methodology: The study draws upon qualitative research data from two case study banking organisations in Greece, reporting on 76 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders (HR staff, Bank Managers, employees). Interview questions were focused on a pre and post-crisis assessment, supplemented by the analysis of various organisational documents. A modified SHRD model was also employed so as to assess and evaluate SHRD’s maturity within organisations. Findings: Research evidence highlights the complexity attached with stakeholders' perception of SHRD, and the level of its maturity respectively. This entanglement is further explained through a variety of factors inhibiting or expediting its strategic adoption in some organisations, and further contributed to its maturity, at the time of the economic crisis. Research Limitations: The analysis is limited by non-including other key stakeholders (e.g. top management, TD thus, future research may consist of a comparison amongst bank institutions from different countries, along with including interviews with representatives from other potential groups of interest. Practical Implications: Familiarise organisational stakeholders with SHRD's necessity and complexity during hard economic times. Make HR executives aware of the level of maturity of their HRD practices so as to proceed to all necessary amendments in order to increase their strategic embeddedness. Originality/Value: The research’s value derives from its critical mindset, thus extending existing SHRD theory and models through its multi-constituent research perspective. Likewise, it enhances existing knowledge on SHRD maturity both within a different industrial and cultural context and within the context of an economic crisis.
AN IMPROVED ALGORITHM USED IN AUTOMATIC MATCHING FOR LOW- ALTITUDE AERIAL IMAGE

In this paper, we present an improved algorithm used for low altitude aerial image automatic matching based on SIFT operator. Compared to traditional photogrammetry based on platforms such as satellites and aerospace aircrafts, the platforms of low-altitude remote sensing system have relatively lighter weight, therefore existing rotation angle and scale differences in the stereo-images. In addition, there appears fracture lines and the discontinuities of parallax in the elevation undulating area. The characteristics above make it unsuitable for the traditional photogrammetry matching method based on grey scale correlation and the matching search strategy based on continuous parallax. In this paper an improved SIFT(Scale-invariant feature transform) operator is applied to the automatic matching of low-altitude aerial images. Several improvements were made to enhance the feature recurrence rate, matching correct rate and speed of matching. Firstly, we applied the theory of zero-crossing in SIFT feature extraction introducing the image geometry feature in scale space detection. Secondly, correlation coefficient is used as similarity measure instead of Euclidean distance in SIFT algorithm. Thirdly, we proposed a new matching strategy based on principal orientation constrain to shorten the search distance compared to the global search in SIFT algorithm. To demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, experiments were carried with four groups low-altitude remote sensing stereo-images from different sensors, and presented different distortions. Results showed that the improved algorithm has higher feature recurrence rate, matching correct rate and speed of matching dealing with different scale, large rotation angle, affine distortion and nonlinear distortion of low-altitude remote sensing stereo-images.
Vibrational analysis of the dioctahedral mica: 2M1 muscovite

Abstract Raman spectra and lattice dynamics calculations are presented for the dioctahedral mica, muscovite. Calculated fundamental mode frequencies for the Raman-active and Ag and Bg species were fit to observed fundamentals assigned to features in the two polarized Raman spectra collected, so that unambiguous vibrational assignments could be made to most peaks in the Raman data. Calculated frequencies for the IR-active Au and Bu modes generally fall within the frequency ranges of bands in the IR spectra for muscovite presented earlier. Factor group analysis indicates that motion from all atom types in the muscovite structure can be found in modes for all four vibrational species. Force constant values determined for muscovite are similar to equivalent values calculated for the trioctahedral mica, phlogopite. Raman and IR-active modes calculated at frequencies greater than 800 cm-1 are dominated by internal sheet T-O stretch and T-O-T bend motions, where T is a tetrahedral site. Modes between 800 and 360 cm-1 have internal tetrahedral sheet motions mixed with K and octahedral Al displacements. Modes at frequencies less than 360 cm-1 have lattice and OH motions. Inter-sheet bonding in the muscovite structure is strong enough to affect modes at frequencies as high as 824 cm-1.
Cylindrical asymmetric thin-shell wormholes

By employing certain cylindrically symmetric spacetimes we construct traversable, asymmetric thin-shell wormholes. Specifically, these spacetimes consist of the cosmic string and the 4-dimensional black string metrics. The corresponding thin-shell wormholes are analyzed within the context of linear stability by suppressing the axial perturbations which result in stable asymmetric thin-shell wormholes. Next, we look for a correlation between the stability and the symmetry of the spacetime under investigation which certifies the previous results for spherical thin-shell wormholes, in the sense that the more symmetric a thin-shell wormhole, the more probable to find it in a stable state. However, there is an exceptional case in cosmic strings which is discussed in detail. Furthermore, it is shown that cylindrically symmetric cosmic string wormholes cannot be supported by a barotropic equation of state.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OUTSOURCING ACCOUNTING TASKS AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN NIGERIA-STRATEGIC RELATEDNESS FACTOR USING THE PARTIAL LEAST SQUARE APPROACH

The overall objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between outsourcing accounting tasks and the financial performance of small and medium enterprises in Nigeria with emphasize on strategic relatedness factor. Several hypotheses were formulated based on the constructs of the Independent Variable. The study specifically seeks to explore the role of outsourcing of accounting functions based on some drivers, as given by the Transaction Cost Economies theory (TCE). The target population of the study are the SMEs in three Geo-political zones of Southern part of Nigeria consisting of 5,796 SMEs. The sampling technique adopted was a two-stage sampling technique applied chronologically as follows: stratified and simple random sampling techniques which eventually produced a sample size of 411 used for the study. Both primary and secondary data options were explored with the main aim of making sufficient data available for the study. Structured Questionnaires were used to collect primary data from the respondent organisations and the secondary data involved the collection of the Annual Financial Reports of the respondent organisations for the 5-year period covering 2008 to 2012 for the extraction of the financial performance indices. The data were subjected to various statistical screening for reliability of the instrument and validity of the variables (in terms of Construct and Convergent validity). Structural Equation Model (SEM) was employed to analyse the data vide SPSS 23 and SmartPLS packages in order to obtain the statistical significance and the direction of the relationships between Inner and Outer models of the study. The study revealed that there was significant relationship between outsourcing of accounting tasks and the financial performance of SMEs in Nigeria when strategic relatedness factor is put into consideration. The study finally recommended that SMEs should take their external accountants as mentors and advisors on how to further devise their firm strategies. This is easily achieved when the outsourcing relationship established is for long term as against the usual short term practices. Here the parties involved would align their goals (goals congruency) and put an arrangement in place for easy knowledge sharing among all the parties involved in the relationship.
Evolution and prospects for single-photon avalanche diodes and quenching circuits

Abstract The evolution of solid-state avalanche detectors of single optical photons is outlined and the issues for further progress are discussed. Physical phenomena that underlay the operation of the single-photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) and determine the performance are considered and their role is assessed (detection efficiency; dark-counting rate; afterpulsing; photon timing resolution; etc.). The main technological issues that hamper the development of detectors with wide sensitive area and of array detectors with high filling factor are illustrated. Silicon SPADs are the main focus of attention; infrared-sensitive SPADs in germanium and in compound semiconductors are also dealt with. The role of the active-quenching circuits (AQC) is assessed and the evolution is outlined up to integrated AQCs, which offer the prospect of monolithic integration of complete photon counter instruments.
VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY ANALYSES FOR CHEMISTRY SELF-CONCEPT INVENTORY

Self-concept, one of affective introductory behaviours, is one of the most frequently studied issues especially in social sciences. Since it is a strong mental structure which psychologists and social psychologists say to be related with learning, this research aims to adapt Chemistry Self-Concept Inventory developed by Bauer (2005) so as to evaluate students’ self-concept into Turkish, and analyse its psychometric properties. The data were collected by applying the inventory to 530 prospective teachers attending the chemistry education, primary school education and science education departments of three different Universities. Following the translation work, Turkish form of the inventory was given the final shape. The construct validity of the inventory was tested by confirmatory factor analysis. McDonald’s Omega (ω) and Cronbach Alpha (α) coefficients were calculated for the reliability study of the inventory. Fit indices were found to be lower in the first confirmatory factor analysis conducted than the ones expected, and 11 items with the fewest factor loads and with the highest modification indices were removed from the inventory. The sub-dimensions apart from creativity were found to have ω and α coefficients above 0.70. Key words: academic enjoyment self-concept, academic self-concept, chemistry self-concept, creativity self-concept, mathematics self-concept
Surface Coating of Red Blood Cells with Monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycol) Activated with Two Different Reagents

Methoxy poly(ethylene glycol) (mPEG) with molecular mass of 5 kDa activated with succinimidyl carbonate and cyanuric chloride, separately was covalently attached to human red blood cells (RBCs). Inhibition of agglutination by blood-type specific antisera (anti-D) was employed to evaluate the effect of the polymer coating. The remaining single cells after incubation with anti-D sera were counted using a simple hemocytometer (Improved Neubauer Ruling). The extent of surface coating was evaluated by addition of FITC labeled-anti-D to the cells and recording the fluorescence intensity ratio of FITC-anti-D bound cells of the PEG-RBCs versus control (uncoated) RBCs. The morphology of RBCs was evaluated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The effect of polymer coating, based on the immunological response of RBCs, using two kinds of activated mPEG, at optimum conditions of PEGylation was compared. It was found that succinimidyl carbonate at its optimum condition (pH=8.7, temperature =14 ° C and reaction time =60 min) is more effective than cyanuric chloride at its optimum condition (pH=8.7, temperature =14 ° C and reaction time =30 min) for RBC coating with mPEG.
Geochemistry and geochronology of ancient southeast Indian and southwest Pacific seafloor

Within the Australian-Antarctic Discordance (AAD), a boundary exists between isotopically defined "Pacific-type" and "Indian-type" mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB) erupted along the Southeast Indian Ridge (SEIR). This boundary has migrated westward beneath the easternmost AAD spreading segment at a minimum rate of 25 mm/yr since 4 Ma; however, its long-term history remains a matter of speculation. To determine if Pacific-type upper mantle has migrated westward beneath the eastern Indian Ocean basin as Australia and Antarctica drifted apart during the last 70 m.y. , we present new Sr-Nd-Pb isotope data, combined with trace element and 40Ar-39Ar radiometric age determinations, for samples from Legs 28 and 29 of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP). Basaltic basement at these DSDP sites provides a record of their upper mantle source composition and shows regional variations consistent with upper mantle flow in this region. East of the South Tasman Rise, all DSDP basalts have 87Sr/86Sr (0.7025-0.7029) and 206Pb/2O4Pb (18.80-19.48) ratios typical of Pacific-type MORB indicating that Pacific-type upper mantle existed east of the Australian-Antarctic continental margin and beneath the Tasman Sea during the early stages of seafloor spreading in this region. Basalts from DSDP sites west of the AAD have high 87Sr/86Sr (0.7030-0.7035), low 206Pb/204Pb (17.99-18.10) and trace element characteristics typical of present day Indian-type SEIR MORB. Between these two regions, DSDP basalts recovered along the western margin of the South Tasman Rise have isotopic characteristics that are, in one case consistent with an Indian-type MORB source (Site 280A) and, in the second case, transitional between Pacific-type and Indian-type mantle sources. The occurrence of seafloor basalts with transitional or Indian-type isotopic characteristics well to the east of the present Indian-Pacific MORB isotopic boundary within the AAD strongly implies that Pacific-type upper mantle has migrated westward into the region since the South Tasman Rise separated from Antarctica circa 40 Ma.
Effects of 1-methylcyclopropene on activities of ethylene biosynthesis and cell wall degrading enzyme during ripening of papaya 'Sekaki' (Kesan 1-metilsiklopropena terhadap biosintesis etilena dan aktiviti enzim degradasi dinding sel betik 'Sekaki' semasa pemasakan)

Ripening of papaya ‘Sekaki’ at ambient temperature was affected by application of 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP). The percentage weight loss of 1-MCP (270 ppb for 12 h) treated fruit was significantly (p <0.05) lower than control fruit. The loss of tissue firmness of 1-MCP treated fruit was significantly (p <0.05) inhibited, whilst the control fruit showed a dramatic loss in tissue firmness up to 50% yellowing-of-skin colour (YR) stage and then gradually until the end of ripening stage. The ethylene production increased significantly (p <0.05) to a maximum at 50% YR in 1-MCP treated and control fruits, and declining sharply thereafter. The 1-MCP treated fruits showed significant (p <0.05) reduction in ethylene production, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic oxidase (ACO) and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic synthase (ACS) activities but generally maintained the 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) level. The activity of α- and β-galactosidase and pectin methylesterase (PME) was significantly (p <0.05) suppressed as compared to control fruit. The capability of 1-MCP to maintain the firmness of ‘Sekaki’ papaya during ripening might be associated with suppression of ethylene dependent cell wall degrading enzyme activities such as α- and β-galactosidases, PME, α-arabinosidase, α-mannosidase and β-glucosidase. This study showed the effectiveness of 1-MCP in delaying fruit ripening, significantly suppressing the cell wall degrading enzyme activity and maintaining the firmness of ‘Sekaki’ papaya fruit during ripening.