Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparative study of 17 phenological models to predict the start of the growing season

Vegetation phenological models play a major role in terrestrial ecosystem modeling. However, substantial uncertainties still occur in phenology models because the mechanisms underlying spring phenological events are unclear. Taking into account the asymmetric effects of daytime and nighttime temperature on spring phenology, we analyzed the performance of 17 spring phenological models by combining the effects of photoperiod and precipitation. The global inventory modeling and mapping study third-generation normalized difference vegetation index data (1982–2014) were used to extract the start of the growing season (SOS) in the North–South Transect of Northeast Asia. The satellite-derived SOS of deciduous needleleaf forest (DNF), mixed forest (MF), open shrublands (OSL), and woody savannas (WS) showed high correlation coefficients (r) with the model-predicted SOS, with most exceeding 0.7. For all vegetation types studied, the models that considered the effect of photoperiod and precipitation did not significantly improve the model performance. For temperature-based models, the model using the growing-degree-day temperature response had a lower root mean square error compared with the models using the sigmoid temperature response Importantly, we found that daily maximum temperature was most suitable for the spring phenology prediction of DNF, OSL, and WS; daily mean temperature for MF; and daily minimum temperature for grasslands. These findings indicate that future spring phenological models should consider the asymmetric effect between daytime and nighttime temperature across different vegetation types.
Current state and development of Airbnb accommodation offer in 167 countries

ABSTRACT The paper examines the size, structure, distribution, dynamics, and use of Airbnb accommodation offer in 167 countries. Web-scrapping Airbnb website in fall 2018 and 2019 resulted in a datasets on 5.7 million listings, including 3.6 million active listings which have been rented out (reviewed) during the last year. Listings are divided into four groups based on types of properties and numbers of offers hosted by one platform user. The results show that the platform is most commonly used to rent out entire apartments by multi-hosts. The numbers of Airbnb listings in countries depend on the level of economic development and size of inbound tourism. One third of Airbnb supply is located in big cities, another one third near seacoasts. Airbnb offer grows most quickly in its relatively new markets, while in primary urban destinations of some European countries it is stable or decreases. The offer of professional hosts is growing more quickly than of peer-to-peer hosts. Differences in the frequency of use and prices of listings exaggerate the geographical unevenness in benefits and impacts of Airbnb activity. Airbnb supply is not a uniform segment of tourist accommodation and its effects on destinations should be considered in relation to territorial context.
Nursing research methods and critical appraisal for evidenced based practice 8th Edition Wood Test Bank

A The review of the literature is important throughout all stages of a research study. B A completed study may be published to disseminate the findings of a study and thus become one citation in a literature review for future studies. However, the literature review does not ensure this. C The review of the literature guides the problem statement as it is defined along with all other parts and stages of a research study. D The review of the literature contributes to consistencies in the literature, locates instruments used to measure variables, identifies experts on topics, etc.
FIRST DNA BARCODES OF ARTHROPOD PESTS FROM ROMANIA

DNA barcoding is a diagnostic method proposed by Paul Hebert and his team in 2003, using a short standardized genetic marker in an organism’s DNA to facilitate identification at a certain taxonomic level. Identification consist in finding the closest matching reference record in different databases. For arthropods, the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene is used. The Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD) is the online facility created by Centre of Biodiversity Genomics as a freely available collaborative hub which supports the assembly and use of DNA barcode data. Currently ~6.650 k barcodes for specimens from 188 countries are available through the platform, of which 5.420 k represent arthropod specimens with barcodes. From Romania, 2817 arthropod records are available, for 408 species, mainly butterflies (biodiversity data). Our present research made available the first DNA barcodes of arthropods plant pests from Romania, with emphasis on the invasive species. 85 insect specimens belonging to eight orders, 30 families, lead to 79 barcode compliant sequences. None of the barcoded species from Romania was previously recorded in BOLD, with the exception of one Autographa gamma specimen collected in 1980, deposited in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Discover Millions of Spammers in Weibo

Weibo is the Chinese counterpart of Twitter that has attracted hundreds of millions of users. Just like other online social networks (hereafter OSNs), it has a large number of spammers that are created to boost the ranking or follower number of other accounts. Spammers are difficult to identify individually, especially when they are created by sophisticated programs or controlled by human beings directly. This paper proposes a novel spammer detection method that is based on the very purpose of the existence of the spammers: they are created to follow their targets en masse with high regularity, resulting in near-duplicate accounts that have similar sets of followers. The discovery of near-duplicates is a challenging task for such a large network. Instead of calculating the Jaccard similarity among all the pairs on the original graph, we estimate the similarities among large accounts by taking a sample graph that contains one million random nodes. We find 395 near-duplicates. From such near-duplicates, we identify 12 millions of spammers (account for 4.56% of the total users) and 741 millions of spam links (account for 9.50% of the total edges). Furthermore, we characterize several typical structures of the spammers, cluster these spammers into 34 spammer producers, and analyze the main targets of these spammers.
Alternative Pathways to High School Graduation: An International Comparison

Over recent decades, many western nations have stepped up their efforts to increase high school graduation rates while maintaining high standards. How systems have approached this, and how successful they are, varies. One of the key differences is in the range of high school programs and the pathways to graduation. This paper documents and examines some of the alternative pathways offered in different countries. What are the main alternative pathways? How do they work? For whom do they work? Are they of equal value? The benefits and costs of alternatives provided in different national systems are highlighted using case studies, including a comparison of the pathways in terms of content, graduation requirements, inclusiveness and outcomes. The author is grateful to Russ Rumberger and an external reviewer for their very helpful comments. The work was supported by the California Dropout Research Project. Alternative pathways to high school graduation: an international comparison
The Combined Effects of Mass Media and Social Media on Political Perceptions and Preferences

Changes in political perceptions and preferences may result from the combined effects of news from various media. Estimating these combined effects requires the best possible, albeit different, measures of news obtained from self-selected mass media and social media that can be linked to panel survey data concerning perceptions and preferences. For the 2017 Dutch national elections, such data is available. Political perceptions and preferences are affected by news statements in self-selected mass media on issue positions, support and criticism, real world conditions and success and failure, in accordance with the theories on agenda setting and issue ownership, social identity, retrospective voting and bandwagon effects, respectively. Combined effects emerge because many people use both mass media and social media. The latter do more than just reinforce predispositions. Social media also have a mere exposure effect, and a multistep flow effect that amplifies news about party successes and failures from self-selected mass media.
Personal Identification using Local and Global Feature of Finger Vein Patterns Images

— Biometric based system securities are superior because they provide a non-transferable means of identifying people not just cards, password or PINs. However many biometric traits are not secure against forgery and spoofing which breaks the biometric security systems. To overcome these security problems of previous biometric systems, people are looking towards vein biometrics which uses unique vascular pattern from human body. Finger vein biometrics has become most promising biometric recognition system due to its accuracy, security and convenience. Recently many researchers are working for developing novel approaches for finger vein pattern based biometric recognition system. This paper presents an approach for personal identification using local and global feature of finger vein pattern images. The local directional features of vein pattern are extracted using Local Directional features method and global texture features extracted using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Rotated Wavelet Filters (RWF) jointly. The feature vector is created by combining the local directional code based features with DWT and RWF based features together at feature level. Then, Canberra distance metric is used for the similarity measurement and classification. Experimental results have shown that the performance of proposed method outperforms other methods in terms of recognition accuracy and error rate.
Burning the candle at both ends: Intraretinal signaling of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells

Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) are photoreceptors located in the ganglion cell layer. They project to brain regions involved in predominately non-image-forming functions including entrainment of circadian rhythms, control of the pupil light reflex, and modulation of mood and behavior. In addition to possessing intrinsic photosensitivity via the photopigment melanopsin, these cells receive inputs originating in rods and cones. While most research in the last two decades has focused on the downstream influence of ipRGC signaling, recent studies have shown that ipRGCs also act retrogradely within the retina itself as intraretinal signaling neurons. In this article, we review studies examining intraretinal and, in addition, intraocular signaling pathways of ipRGCs. Through these pathways, ipRGCs regulate inner and outer retinal circuitry through both chemical and electrical synapses, modulate the outputs of ganglion cells (both ipRGCs and non-ipRGCs), and influence arrangement of the correct retinal circuitry and vasculature during development. These data suggest that ipRGC function plays a significant role in the processing of image-forming vision at its earliest stage, positioning these photoreceptors to exert a vital role in perceptual vision. This research will have important implications for lighting design to optimize the best chromatic lighting environments for humans, both in adults and potentially even during fetal and postnatal development. Further studies into these unique ipRGC signaling pathways could also lead to a better understanding of the development of ocular dysfunctions such as myopia.
Role of Secondary Metabolites from Seaweeds in the Context of Plant Development and Crop Production

Hossam S. El-Beltagi1,2*, Heba I. Mohamed3 and Maged M. Abou El-Enain3 1 Cairo University, Faculty of Agriculture, Biochemistry Department, P.O. Box 12613, Gamma St, Giza, Cairo, Egypt 2 King Faisal University, College of Agriculture and Food Sciences, Agriculture Biotechnology Department, P.O. Box 420, Alhassa 31982, Saudi Arabia 3 Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education, Biological and Geological Sciences Department, El Makres St, Roxy, Cairo 1575, Egypt
Incentives and barriers to exercise in women with a history of breast cancer.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To develop and test an instrument to identity the most important incentives and barriers to exercise in women with breast cancer. DESIGN Descriptive, quantitative, retrospective. SETTING Ambulatory, national. SAMPLE Phase I-11 Caucasian women, with a mean age of 43 years, who were treated for breast cancer within the past five years; Phase II-64 primarily Caucasian women, with a mean age of 47 years, who were treated for breast cancer within the past 10 years. METHODS Content analysis of structured interviews, questionnaire. FINDINGS The mean score on the decisional balance index (DBI), an overall exercise weight, was a low +19. The range of scores was from a low -26 to a moderate +57 on a scale from -72 to +72. The DBI accurately predicted 88% of the distribution of women who exercised regularly and those who did not. The most important incentives for exercise in a sample of women with a history of breast cancer were expectation of benefit and sense of responsibility. The most important barriers were lack of time and inertia. CONCLUSIONS Replication is needed with larger, more diverse samples, but the Incentive and Barriers to Exercise Scale (IBES) potentially can screen women with breast cancer with the greatest need for exercise interventions. An individualized plan to promote incentives and reduce barriers should be incorporated into interventions. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE Nurses' proactive support for and education about exercise is needed.
Price Premiums Prediction using Classification and Regression Trees (CART) Algorithm in eBay Auctions

Price premiums in internet auction are the percentage that the sale price exceeds or decreases the average price of this product, so, if the sale price exceeds the average price then the internet auction is price premiums otherwise it is non-price premiums. The objective of the study is to analyze eBay auctions data using Classification and Regression Trees (CART), which is a type of decision trees induction. The information about previous auctions of a specific product was collected from the eBay site to the extent of its users and comprehensive, and the formulation of the previous information in the form of variables can be statistical operations on the processing of decision trees algorithms. This study identifies the critical variables and ranks them according to their importance using the decision-making tree algorithms.
From Theory to Code: Identifying Logical Flaws in Cryptographic Implementations in C/C++

Cryptographic protocols are often expected to be provably secure. However, this security guarantee often falls short in practice due to various implementation flaws. We propose a new paradigm called cryptographic program analysis (CPA) which prescribes the use of program analysis to detect these implementation flaws at compile time. The principal insight of the CPA is that many of these flaws in cryptographic implementations can be mapped to the violation of meta-level properties of implementations. A program property that is necessary to realize a cryptographic property is referred to as meta-level property. We show that violations of these meta-level properties can be identified at compile-time that can serve as sufficient evidence of the encompassing flaws. We investigated existing literature on cryptographic implementation flaws and derived 25 corresponding meta-level properties. To instantiate the abstract paradigm of CPA, we develop a specification language based on deterministic finite automaton (DFA) and show that most of the meta-level properties can be expressed in terms of our language. We then develop a tool called TaintCrypt which uses static taint analysis to identify meta-level property violations of C/C++ cryptographic implementations at compile-time. We demonstrate the efficacy of TaintCrypt by analyzing open-source C/C++ cryptographic libraries (e.g., OpenSSL) and observe that TaintCrypt could have helped to avoid several high-profile flaws. We also evaluated TaintCrypt on 5 popular applications and libraries, which generated new security insights. The experimental evaluation on large-scale projects indicates the scalability of our approach.
Deferred Action: Information seeking in the National electronic Library of Infection (DA-NeLI)

Recently, we have witnessed an overwhelming amount of information to be available in digital libraries and, in particular, on the Internet, however, the design of search engines and site-specific navigation interfaces lacks the human knowledge searching perspective. Typically, the technical design does not pay attention to human search strategies. Without better understanding and evaluating how humans search for knowledge, most electronic information on Internet is never retrieved, or is retrieved in a misunderstanding or misinterpreting way. This is of particular concern in the development of live critical applications, such as medical digital libraries. Understanding how healthcare professionals search for knowledge in the National electronic Library of Infection (NeLI) www.neli. org.uk and improving the search and navigation design of this national project applying deferred system design principles is the main aim of this research project.
Advanced Single Image Resolution Upsurging Using a Generative Adversarial Network

The resolution of an image is a very important criterion for evaluating the quality of the image. A higher resolution of an image is always preferable as images of lower resolution are unsuitable due to fuzzy quality. A higher resolution of an image is important for various fields such as medical imaging; astronomy works and so on as images of lower resolution becomes unclear and indistinct when their sizes are enlarged. In recent times, various research works are performed to generate a higher resolution of an image from its lower resolution. In this paper, we have proposed a technique of generating higher resolution images form lower resolution using Residual in Residual Dense Block network architecture with a deep network. We have also compared our method with other methods to prove that our method provides better visual quality images.
The influence of faculty expectations on students’ workload

Students’ retention, progression and completion have been the focus among higher education institutional practitioners, researchers and policy makers for many years now. Research shows that students’ sense of belonging and engagement are essential for achieving these aims (a.o. Kuh, Cruce, Shoup & Kinzie 2008). Earlier research framed student engagement as the time and energy students invest in educationally purposeful activities, in combination with the effort institutions devote to using effective educational practices (Kuh 2001). Student surveys often show considerable variation among study programs in the time students invest in educational activities. Students’ study time is thought to be influenced by the academic aspirations, expectations and demands of faculty members. The higher and the more clearly faculty members’ academic aspirations and demands, the higher and the more effective is students’ study time investment. In this paper we test this hypothesis by studying the relationship between faculty members’ aspirations and demands on the one hand, and students’ study time on the other. We use quantitative data on study time and faculty expectations from the Norwegian national student survey ‘Studiebarometeret’. We conducted focus group interviews with students and faculty members of selected study programs to learn more about how faculty members’ expectations influence the students. Results show that there is indeed a relationship between students’ study time and faculty members’ demands and aspirations. The influence of faculty members’ academic aspirations is stronger for students’ self-study, while the influence of demands is stronger on students’ time devoted to organized learning activities. The interviews made clear that heterogenic student groups with respect to start competences, motivation and learning styles makes it difficult for institutions to set clear demands for all students. The interviews also showed that both clear and unclear demands lead to a high devotion of study time, while the latter is assumed as a non-effective way of learning. This curve linear effect is partly confirmed in the quantitative survey data. Introduction There is ample research showing that teacher expectations about students’ future achievements can positively and/or negatively influence student performance (Rubie-Davies, Hattie & Hamilton 2006). Effects of teacher expectations are classified in sustaining expectation effects and self-fulfilling prophecy effects (Brophy 1983, Jussim 1986). Sustaining expectations induce students to perform the way they do and therefore hamper change in students’ behavior. Self-fulfilling prophecy effects, on the contrary, encourage change because they are created when potential false beliefs lead to fulfillment. Low teacher expectations hinder student achievement and therefore lead to undesirable and negative effects (Golem-effects), while
Antimicrobial activity of some crude herbal drugs used for skin diseases by Pawra tribes of Nandurbar district.

Identification of traditional remedies for the skin is an important activity for the preservation of traditional knowledge and for the search of novel antimicrobial treatments against skin and soft tissue infections. A study was undertaken to document and authenticate treasured knowledge of Pawra tribe of Nandurbar district in terms of botanicals used for the topical applications on skin ailments. Antimicrobial activity of five herbal crude drugs, viz. stem of Cryptolepis buchanani Roem. & Schult. , roots of Curculigo orchioides Gaertn. , stem bark of Diospyros melanoxylon Roxb. , leaves of Kleinia balsamica (Dalz. & Gibs.) P. Halliday and stem bark of Ougenia oojeinensis (Roxb.) Hochr. was tested against different Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria and a yeast, using agar diffusion method. Extracts at higher concentration (60 and 80 mg/l) exhibited considerable antimicrobial activity but less or no inhibition was observed in case of lower concentration (20 and 40 mg/l).
Presetting with QoS Architecture to Enhance LBS

— Location-Based Services (LBS) send and receive real time information, which users access via their mobile phones. Enhancing the Quality of Service (QoS) of mobile location based services is a vital research area that requires attention in order to enhance such applications. One such method of improvement is by using a pre-setting process, which simplifies the restoration of data and guarantees an immediate response to user requirements as well as needing less calculations. There are some important requirements (presetting with select valid region, strong data indexing with less storage BQR*-tree, more storage with local servers) that will support roaming mobile users by utilizing more storage and less computations. The general aim of this paper is to propose a distributed database architecture with an algorithm based on a presetting process that supports lesser communication costs, while maintaining the quality of service. Additionally, the paper will present an overview about using WiMAX instead of WLAN in moving object and spatial or non-spatial queries.