Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Binge Drinking and Educational Participation among Youth in the COMPASS Host Study (Year 5: 2016/2017): School Connectedness and Flourishing as Compensatory Factors

The current study investigated resilience factors influencing the associations between binge drinking and measures of educational participation among Canadian youth. Self reported data were collected during the 2016/2017 school year from 5238 students in Grades 9 through 12 (2744 females, 2494 males) attending 14 secondary schools in Ontario and British Columbia as part of the COMPASS study. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine relationships between binge drinking, school connectedness and flourishing on measures of educational participation. Binge drinking was associated with increased likelihood of skipping classes, going to class without completing homework, lower Math and English scores, and having educational and/or training expectations and aspirations beyond high school only. Decreased flourishing was linked to increased likelihood of going to class with incomplete homework, lower Math and English scores, and decreased likelihood of aspiring and expecting to achieve education and/or training beyond high school only. Increased school connectedness was associated with decreased likelihood of skipping classes and going to class with incomplete homework, higher Math and English scores, and increased the likelihood of aspiring to and expecting to achieve education and/or training beyond high school only. Lower flourishing was additive in its effect on current binge drinking in negatively impacting class attendance and homework completion and academic performance, while higher school connectedness was compensatory in its effect on these outcomes. This study suggests that, for high school students who are susceptible to binge drinking, those who are more connected to school and have a higher sense of wellbeing can maintain active participation in school and achieve their educational goals.
Spatial priorities for conserving the most intact biodiverse forests within Central Africa

The forests of Central Africa contain some of Earth’s few remaining intact forests. These forests are increasingly threatened by infrastructure development, agriculture, and unsustainable extraction of natural resources (e.g. minerals, bushmeat, and timber), all of which is leading to deforestation and forest degradation, particularly defaunation, and hence causing declines in biodiversity and a significant increase in carbon emissions. Given the pervasive nature of these threats, the global importance of Central African forests for biodiversity conservation, and the limited resources for conservation and sustainable management, there is a need to identify where the most important areas are to orientate conservation efforts. We developed a novel approach for identifying spatial priorities where conservation efforts can maximize biodiversity benefits within Central Africa’s most intact forest areas. We found that the Democratic Republic of Congo has the largest amount of priority areas in the region, containing more than half, followed by Gabon, the Republic of Congo and Cameroon. We compared our approach to one that solely prioritizes forest intactness and one that aims to achieve only biodiversity representation objectives. We found that when priorities are only based on forest intactness (without considering biodiversity representation), there are significantly fewer biodiversity benefits and vice versa. We therefore recommend multi-objective planning that includes biodiversity representation and forest intactness to ensure that both objectives are maximized. These results can inform various types of conservation strategies needed within the region, including land-use planning, jurisdictional REDD + initiatives, and performance related carbon payments, protected area expansion, community forest management, and forest concession plans.
Estimation of Benefits and Difficulties When Applying IFRS in Vietnam: From Business Perspective

While many countries around the world have adopted IFRS at different levels, Vietnam is in the process of IFRS adoption by 2022. The study was conducted through the survey of 119 directors and accountants to estimate the benefits and difficulties of applying IFRS in Vietnam. The forecast content include (i) Business benefits; (ii) Benefits for investors; (iii) Benefits to policy makers; (iv) Benefits for state management agencies; (v) Challenges of applying IFRS. By regression analysis, the forecast results showed that all factors have a significantly affect on the IFRS adoption in Vietnam and they explain 54.5% of the reasons for the application. The group of benefits has a positive impact on IFRS application in Vietnam, of which, the strongest impact is the business benefits, while the challenge factor has a negative impact on IFRS adoption in Viet Nam. This result suggests policy implications for the application of IFRS in Vietnam.
Low‐Cost Permanent Magnet‐Assisted Switched Reluctance Motor for Adjustable Speed Drive Applications

Permanent Magnet (PM) motors have been attracting great attention in recent technology because of providing higher efficiency as well as power/volume as compared to conventional wound‐rotor type machines. Recently, it has been demonstrated that NdFeB magnets, which are one of the expensive magnets, can be replaced by Alnico magnets in the case of Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM) without any performance degradation. However, the performance of this machine has not been analyzed so far under a proper torque control strategy. The main objective of this work is to investigate the performance of DITC‐controlled PM‐SRM under various conditions. The possible demagnetization effect of the Alnico magnets on motor performance has also been considered. Compared to same size SRM, 3% efficiency increase has been obtained at rated operation. Overall results demonstrate that PM‐SRM drive shows valuable performance and may have potential to be used in near future motor drive technology. © 2020 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
Bisphenol A: Food Exposure and Impact on Human Health.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial compound used extensively to produce synthetic polymers, such as epoxy resins, which are incorporated into the inner coating of metal cans, and also to manufacture polycarbonates with applications in bottles, including bottles of water. Several studies have reported on the transfer of this compound to food. Regarding human exposure to BPA, food intake can be considered the most serious among all the routes, not only because it potentially reaches more people in different age groups (including infants, an especially vulnerable group), but also because it inadvertently occurs over long time periods. BPA is considered an endocrine disruptor and several studies have proposed a relationship between exposure to BPA and the appearance of adverse health effects, such as cancer, infertility, diabetes, and obesity, among others. In 2015 however, the European Food Safety Authority concluded in its last scientific opinion that this compound does not pose any risk to the exposed population's health. Therefore, the EU regards BPA as an authorized product to be used as food contact material. Although BPA intake through food is apparently below the set limits, research into BPA and its potential negative effects is still ongoing. This review contains the most recent in vitro and in vivo studies on BPA toxicity and its harmful effects on health, and it intends to address human exposure to BPA, namely through dietary exposure and its impact on human health.
The competency component needed by the Project Manager in managing the Road Project in West Sumatera, Indonesia

Road construction and upgrading projects are currently being intensively implemented in West Sumatra, and this is very important in increasing the competitiveness of the Indonesian economy. During the construction period, it will give a positive impression to be able to reduce transportation costs, use value and labour productivity. In this case, a project manager will play an important role in the success of the project. There are some opinions that a project manager will determine the likelihood of a project success, even though their projects often facing big problems. In this paper, the focus is on determining the competency component of the Road Project Manager in West Sumatra in implementing the Project Management concept that leads to project success. Based on this and in accordance with this study, the approach used in data collection and processing is a qualitative. The results of the factor analysis are shown to the experts, to establish that all of these factors are important in developing the success of the project managed by the Project Manager. The results of the factor analysis obtained 65 combined factors what has been validated by experts. In conclusion, all these factors are important in determining the performance of a Project Manager in West Sumatra.
Dragon in the “backyard”: China’s investment and trade in Latin America in the context of crisis

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to analyze China’s trade and investment relations with Latin America, especially with Brazil and MERCOSUR in the context of the international economic crisis. In a scenario in which commodity prices appear to remain low, the region increases its dependence on China. Thus, the Chinese take advantage to advance on the economies of the region, increasing reprimarization of the economies of these countries.
Can black swans be tamed with a flexible m
 ean‐variance
 specification?

Correspondence Vasiliki Chatzikonstanti, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. Email: v.chatzikonstanti@rug.nl Abstract We examine the homogeneity of the highly improbable returns, what practitioners and the mainstream economic press also call black swan events. By setting up a simple framework and using the benchmark stock market indices of all OECD countries, we find that the frequency of black swans varies greatly over the last two decades often with dramatic changes that can be related to major economic events. Moreover, during the global financial crisis, black swans were substantially more frequent for most countries even after controlling for the level of volatility. This implies that, despite the plethora of appropriate financial instruments to counter this effect, during an obvious economic turmoil, stock markets are still more likely to experience highly improbable events.
CHANGES IN SOW BACKFAT THICKNESS BEFORE AND AFTER FARROWING IN A LOCAL SWINE NUCLEUS BREEDING FARM

This study aimed to investigate changes in backfat measurements before and after farrowing of 117 Landrace and 211 Large White sows producing 312 and 268 litters, respectively, and to assess whether they are associated with sow reproductive performance commonly recorded in a local swine nucleus breeding farm. Sow backfat thickness decreased by 3.06 mm, 2.76 mm, 3.00 mm, and 2.94 mm at the shoulder (BFT1), midback (BFT2), ham area (BFT3), and their average (AvBFT), respectively, when measured 15.5 ± 6.1 d before farrowing and 24.4 ± 4.1 d after farrowing. Reduction in backfat levels (due to greater backfat loss during lactation than backfat gain during gestation), was significantly associated with the number of stillbirths (r= +0.09 to +0.13) for BFT1, BFT2 and AvBFT, litter size at birth (r= -0.08 to -0.09) for BFT2 and AvBFT, and farrowing interval (r= -0.11) for BFT3. There was no significant association ( P >0.05) between changes in backfat levels and parity, litter size at birth, mummified piglets, birth weight, weaning weight, farrowing index, and sow productivity index. Reduction in backfat thickness was significantly affected by breed especially when measured at the shoulder and midback area ( P <0.05). Reduction in all backfat measurements was also significantly affected by month-year of farrowing ( P <0.01).
Assessment of natural organic matter in Quabbin Reservoir

Quabbin Reservoir is a drinking water supply reservoir located in central Massachusetts. A study of natural organic matter (NOM) in Quabbin Reservoir was conducted using measures of total organic carbon (TOC), ultraviolet absorbance at 254 nm (UV-254), trihalomethane formation potential (THMFP), and apparent molecular weight distribution (AMWD) in Quabbin Reservoir and tributary waters. In general, NOM in Quabbin tributaries had elevated TOC, UV and THMFP, and different AMWDs as compared to Quabbin Reservoir. While distinct spatial (across the watershed) and temporal variations of NOM characteristics were observed in tributary inputs, the characteristics of reservoir NOM were relatively uniform with space and time. Measures of TOC, UV, THMFP and AMWD did not provide clear evidence of allochthonous and autochthonous NOM in the reservoir. One exception was the positive linear relationship observed between THMFP yield and blue-green algae density. Material balance analysis indicated that the net effect of waterbody processes on NOM inputs to the system was a reduction of 26% TOC, 71% UV-254 and 48% THMFP over a 2-year period, suggesting that waterbody processes differentially impact NOM characteristics.
Molecular Basis of DNA Repair Defects in FUS-Associated ALS: Implications of a New Paradigm and Its Potential as Therapeutic Target

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive motor neuron disorder, characterized by a diverse etiopathology. While ALS is predominantly sporadic, mutations in one or more of a dozen risk factors have been linked to approximately 10% of familial ALS patients. The multifunctional RNA/DNA-binding protein fused in sarcoma (FUS) is one such protein whose autosomal dominant missense mutations were identified in a subset of familial and sporadic ALS patients. Initial studies linked FUS with both RNA-related and genome maintenance functions, yet the mechanisms and potential implications to neurodegeneration were not completely understood. We recently identified a novel function of FUS in repair-ing single-strand break (SSB) in the genome. FUS directly interacts and recruits XRCC1/DNA Ligase III α (LigIII) to DNA oxidative damage sites in a PARP1 activity-dependent manner, which facilitates optimal oxidative genome damage repair. Besides, FUS regulates DNA strand break sealing by enhancing ligation activity of LigIII. The mutation of FUS induces accumulation of oxidative DNA damage as well as DNA repair deficiency in ALS patients. The novel findings provide insights into a previously undescribed mechanism of DNA repair defect in FUS-associated neurodegeneration, and raise the pentientials of developing neuroprotective therapies by targeting DNA break ligating defects.
Quantum Chemistry of Solids: LCAO Treatment of Crystals and Nanostructures

Space Groups and Crystalline Structures. - Symmetry and Localization of Crystalline Orbitals. - Hartree-Fock LCAO Method for Periodic Systems. - Electron Correlations in Molecules and Crystals. - Semi-empirical LCAO Methods for Molecules and Periodic Systems. - Kohn-Sham LCAO Method for Periodic Systems. - Basis Sets and Pseudopotentials in Periodic LCAO Calculations. - LCAO Calculations of Perfect-Crystal Properties. - Modeling and LCAO Calculations of Point Defects in Crystals. - Surface Modeling in LCAO Calculations of Metal Oxides. - LCAO Calculations on Uranium Nitrides and Oxides. - Symmetry and Modeling of BN, TiO2 and SrTiO3 Nanotubes.
Spectrogram Classification Using Dissimilarity Space

In this work, we combine a Siamese neural network and different clustering techniques to generate a dissimilarity space that is then used to train an SVM for automated animal audio classification. The animal audio datasets used are (i) birds and (ii) cat sounds, which are freely available. We exploit different clustering methods to reduce the spectrograms in the dataset to a number of centroids that are used to generate the dissimilarity space through the Siamese network. Once computed, we use the dissimilarity space to generate a vector space representation of each pattern, which is then fed into an support vector machine (SVM) to classify a spectrogram by its dissimilarity vector. Our study shows that the proposed approach based on dissimilarity space performs well on both classification problems without ad-hoc optimization of the clustering methods. Moreover, results show that the fusion of CNN-based approaches applied to the animal audio classification problem works better than the stand-alone CNNs.
THE WILLINGNESS TO ADOPT THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) CONCEPTION IN TAIWAN’S CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Internet of Things (IoT) conception has become a popular trend among industries. Many have already adopted the technology and put it into practice. IoT can incentive and change the way people conduct business in the construction industry. The objective of the research is to figure out the impact factors that influence practitioners’ willingness to adopt IoT in Taiwan’s construction industry. The hypothesis was developed based on a comprehensive literature review and the concept of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTUAT). The UTUAT framework and hypotheses developed included 5 main hypotheses, 6 aspects and 33 stems. A pilot study aimed at experienced practitioners in the industry was carried out before the full-scale survey to adjust the stems. The adjusted questionnaire including 31 stems belonging to 7 aspects was then distributed to practitioners. A total of 282 valid questionnaires distributed were collected and 6 types of analysis (descriptive statistics, reliability, validity, t-test, one-way of variance, and structural equation modelling). The findings including (1) anticipated benefits significantly affect the users’ willingness to adopt IoT; (2) anticipated efforts significantly affect the users’ willingness to adopt IoT; (3) societal expectations significantly affect the users’ willingness to adopt IoT.
El oxígeno en la zona radical y su efecto en las plantas

espanolLa informacion presentada analiza el estado del arte de las evidencias en los ultimos 20 anos de la importancia y los efectos de la disponibilidad de oxigeno en la rizosfera sobre el crecimiento y desarrollo de las plantas. Las condiciones adversas de factores bioticos (microrganismos) y abioticos (temperatura, anegamiento, salinidad, otros) que influyen en la concentracion de oxigeno en la rizosfera, pueden conducir a una caida rapida en los niveles de oxigeno y afectar la morfologia, metabolismo y fisiologia de las raices, con un efecto negativo sobre el crecimiento de la planta. Las tecnicas de oxigenacion en el medio radical pueden ser favorables, tanto en suelos como en sustratos, en situaciones donde existe un riesgo de hipoxia, pero se requieren estudios especificos sobre el efecto de la aplicacion de oxigeno en cada especie, asi como la medicion de las respuestas para identificar los requerimientos de oxigeno que maximicen el rendimiento y la calidad de los productos cosechados, tanto en campo como en invernadero. En el sector agricola, se requieren tecnicas que sean sustentable y economicamente viables aun con los altos costos que implica el uso de las nuevas tecnologias. EnglishThe information presented analyzes the state of the art of the evidence in the last 20 years of the importance and the effects of the availability of oxygen in the rhizosphere on the growth and development of plants. Adverse conditions of biotic (microorganisms) and abiotic factors (temperature, waterlogging, salinity, others) that influence the oxygen concentration in the rhizosphere, can lead to a rapid drop in oxygen levels and affect morphology, metabolism and physiology from the roots, with a negative effect on the growth of the plant. Radiation medium oxygenation techniques can be favorable, both in soils and in substrates, in situations where there is a risk of hypoxia, but specific studies are required on the effect of oxygen application in each species, as well as the measurement of the answers to identify the oxygen requirements that maximize the yield and quality of the harvested products, both in the field and in the greenhouse. In the agricultural sector, techniques that are sustainable and economically viable are required, even with the high costs of using new technologies
Cognitive Ability in Virtual Reality: Validity Evidence for Vr Game‐Based Assessments

Virtual reality (VR) technology may provide unique benefits for assessing individual characteristics, in contrast with traditional assessments. This study examined validity evidence for the use of VR game (VRG) scores to indicate specific cognitive abilities. Participants completed three VRGs, three computer&#8208;based assessments (CBAs), and additional scales. To evaluate convergent validity, VRG scores were compared with CBA scores. For divergent validity, VRG scores were compared with five factors of personality based on the Five Factor Model. For criterion&#8208;related validity, VRG scores were compared with academic achievement (i.e., grade point average). Findings generally provided support that the VRG scores are related to certain spatial reasoning subdimensions of cognitive ability. However, further research is needed to examine the qualities of VRGs as assessment tools.
High Resolution Air Quality Forecasting over Prague within the URBI PRAGENSI Project: Model Performance during the Winter Period and the Effect of Urban Parameterization on PM

The overall impact of urban environments on the atmosphere is the result of many different nonlinear processes, and their reproduction requires complex modeling approaches. The parameterization of these processes in the models can have large impacts on the model outputs. In this study, the evaluation of a WRF/Comprehensive Air Quality Model with Extensions (CAMx) forecast modeling system set up for Prague, the Czech Republic, within the project URBI PRAGENSI is presented. To assess the impacts of urban parameterization in WRF, in this case with the BEP+BEM (Building Environment Parameterization linked to Building Energy Model) urban canopy scheme, on Particulate Matter (PM) simulations, a simulation was performed for a winter pollution episode and compared to a non-urbanized run with BULK treatment. The urbanized scheme led to an average increase in temperature at 2 m by 2 ∘ C, a decrease in wind speed by 0.5 m s − 1 , a decrease in relative humidity by 5%, and an increase in planetary boundary layer height by 100 m. Based on the evaluation against observations, the overall model error was reduced. These impacts were propagated to the modeled PM concentrations, reducing them on average by 15–30 μ g m − 3 and 10–15 μ g m − 3 for PM 10 and PM 2.5 , respectively. In general, the urban parameterization led to a larger underestimation of the PM values, but yielded a better representation of the diurnal variations.