Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metasomatic Processes in the Lithospheric Mantle Beneath the No. 30 Kimberlite (Wafangdian Region, North China Craton)

This paper presents the first major and trace element compositions of mantle-derived garnet xenocrysts from the diamondiferous No. 30 kimberlite pipe in the Wafangdian region, and these are used to constrain the nature and evolution of mantle metasomatism beneath the North China Craton (NCC). The major element data were acquired using an electron probe micro-analyzer and the trace element data were obtained using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Based on Ni-in-garnet thermometry, equilibrium temperatures of 1107–1365 °C were estimated for peridotitic garnets xenocrysts from the No. 30 kimberlite, with an average temperature of 1258 °C, and pressures calculated to be between 5.0 and 7.4 GPa. In a CaO versus Cr2O3 diagram, 52% of the garnets fall in the lherzolite field and 28% in the harzburgite field; a few of the garnets are eclogitic. Based on rare earth element patterns, the lherzolitic garnets are further divided into three groups. The compositional variations in garnet xenocrysts reflect two stages of metasomatism: early carbonatite melt/fluid metasomatism and late kimberlite metasomatism. The carbonatite melt/fluids are effective at introducing Sr and the light rare earth elements, but ineffective at transporting much Zr, Ti, Y, or heavy rare earth elements. The kimberlite metasomatic agent is highly effective at element transport, introducing, e.g., Ti, Zr, Y, and the rare earth elements. Combined with compositional data for garnet inclusions in diamonds and megacrysts from the Mengyin and Wafangdian kimberlites, we suggest that these signatures reflect a two-stage evolution of the sub-continental lithospheric mantle (SCLM) beneath the NCC: (1) early-stage carbonatite melt/fluid metasomatism resulting in metasomatic modification of the SCLM and likely associated with diamond crystallization; (2) late-stage kimberlite metasomatism related to the eruption of the 465 Ma kimberlite.
Fashion subscription retailing: an exploratory study of consumer perceptions

Fashion subscription service is a newly emerged retailing model that provides an innovative way of shopping to meet consumers’ fashion needs. From the perspective of innovation adoption, the purpose of this paper is to provide an insight of consumers’ perceptions as well as adoption intention of this innovative retailing format. ,This research is qualitative in nature, utilizing focus group study approach. In this paper, content analysis was applied to analyze the data. ,While possessing varying degrees of knowledge about fashion subscription retailing, the participants shared the following perceptions of relative advantages, including convenience, personalization, consumer excitement, opportunities to try new styles, and opportunity to better manage their apparel budget. Concerns mainly focused on missing social shopping experiences and the hassle in the cancellation process. The overall adoption intention was high. ,Due to the nature of this research, the sample size was limited and results may not be generalized. This research paid less attention to individual differences, in terms of demographic and psychographic characteristics. ,Future marketing could focus more on educating consumers about the attributes of the services they provide. Retailers can strategically leverage the positively perceived advantages in their marketing communications to enhance consumers’ adoption intention of their services. ,The paper fills a gap in the literature on consumer behavior toward fashion subscription retailing and sheds light for companies in their endeavors to excel in this new retailing venue.
On the Effect of Managerial Power on Psychological Characteristics of Entrepreneurial Employees (Case Study: Agriculture Jahad Organizations of Western Azarbaijan Province)

The main objective of this research was to investigate the effect of managerial power on entrepreneurship psychological characteristics of employees in Agriculture Jahad Organizationsof Western Azarbaijan Province. The stratified random sampling method was applied for data collection. In order to collect data, the power assessment questionnaire developed by Hinkin and Schriesheim (1989) and that of assessing entrepreneurship psychological characteristics developed by Durham Institute were used. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) based on partial least squares approach and SmartPLS v2 were used to analyze data. Results showed a significant positive relationship between managerial power (except for coercive power) and achievement orientation, intrinsic control, creativity, ambiguity tolerance, and independence characteristics; however, no significant relationship was observed between managerial power and the risk-taking characteristic. Additionally, results from the structural model showed managers' referent and expert powers have a significant positive effect on entrepreneurship psychological characteristics of employees. Therefore, drawing on the results of this research and the proper use of their power, managers of Agriculture Jahad Organizationscan develop and strengthen entrepreneurial characteristics and entrepreneurship spirit amongst their employees, and consequently, guarantee the organization success and prosperity.
Enhanced Security and Pairing-free Handover Authentication Scheme for Mobile Wireless Networks

With the widely deployment of mobile wireless networks, we aim to propose a secure and seamless handover authentication scheme that allows users to roam freely in wireless networks without worrying about security and privacy issues. Given the open characteristic of wireless networks, safety and efficiency should be considered seriously. Several previous protocols are designed based on a bilinear pairing mapping, which is time-consuming and inefficient work, as well as unsuitable for practical situations. To address these issues, we designed a new pairing-free handover authentication scheme for mobile wireless networks. This scheme is an effective improvement of the protocol by Xu et al., which is suffer from the mobile node impersonation attack. Security analysis and simulation experiment indicate that the proposed protocol has many excellent security properties when compared with other recent similar handover schemes, such as mutual authentication and resistance to known network threats, as well as requiring lower computation and communication cost.
Essays in Maternal and Child Health Economics

Overall, this dissertation studies important issues around the early years of our lives, both in developing and developed countries. With coauthors I first look at how maternity and neonatal care are influenced by what else is going on while a woman is laboring in a hospital. Analyzing a robust dataset covering a 16 year period in Philadelphia, we find that the busyness of a labor floor – measured by the number of other women on the floor – has meaningful adverse effects on the risks of use of interventional procedures such as cesarean sections and of adverse maternal health outcomes. There is no association with adverse neonatal health outcomes, suggesting that the increased use of interventional procedures may be unnecessary from a medical perspective. After this analysis, I turn to the first years after children are born. During this period nutritional intake is especially important due to the lifetime consequences on cognitive development, health, and physical development. With this motivation, I study the effects of two randomized interventions targeting child nutritional intake in Ethiopia. In the first experiment, with coauthors I analyze how behavioral techniques can be used to translate the development of improved crop varieties (Quality Protein Maize, in this case) into actual behavior change and improvements in nutritional status. Prior efforts in this space have resulted in the development of numerous improved crop varieties that improve children’s nutritional status in controlled settings, but little effect on children in real-world settings. We find that educating caregivers and household heads about the importance of keeping improved crop varieties separate for their
INSTRUMENTO DE EVALUACION DE FACTORES PSICOSOCIALES ESTRESANTES EN DOCENTES UNIVERSITARIOS

Psychosocial factors constitute a potential risk when it comes to their possible repercussions on workers' health. The objective of this research is to validate an instrument that detects those psychosocial factors that are most frequently related to stress in university teachers. The sample was formed by 180 teachers from the Autonomous University of Nayarit. Based on the results, a Cronbach's alpha of 0.796 was obtained through factor analysis.
Laboratory School Protocol Mini-Review: Use of Direct Observational and Objective Measures to Assess ADHD Treatment Response Across the Lifespan

Introduction The time of onset and the duration of treatment effect are important considerations in the choice of the medication to be prescribed in treating children, adolescents, and adults with ADHD. Early onset of effect may facilitate preparation for school, improved behavior during the trip to school, and attention during morning classes. Sustained treatment effect through afternoon and evening hours can be important because impairments associated with ADHD are not limited to the naturalistic classroom. Laboratory school protocols (LSPs) provide a simulated, rigorously controlled classroom setting environment and have proven valuable for providing pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic information about medications, and other treatments used in managing ADHD in school-aged children and across the lifespan. Methods This paper is an invited mini-review of LSPs of stimulant medication, which includes data from multiple, randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled medication trials for ADHD. Assessment endpoints included the permanent product measure of performance (PERMP), Swanson, Kotkin, Agler, M-Flynn, and Pelham (SKAMP) rating scale in the preschool assessment laboratory (PAL), child/adolescent, and adult workplace environment (AWE) studies. These measures allow the study of improvement in attention and behavior in individuals with ADHD. Results Analog classroom settings (LSP or AWE) have been used to assess immediate and modified-release stimulant formulations of medications to treat ADHD in multiple age groups. Results based on both subjective (e.g., SKAMP ratings) and objective (e.g., PERMP) measures are used as clinical outcomes in testing drugs currently in development for ADHD. Conclusion The LSP and its extension to PAL and AWE settings continue to be used to assess the time-course of effect of ADHD medications because they provide valuable information in their respective structured, controlled environments.
Evaluating model free policy optimization strategies for non linear systems

The Iterative Linear Quadratic Regulator (ILQR), a variant of Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) is a tool for optimizing both open-loop trajectories and guiding feedback controllers using dynamics information that can be inferred from data. This technique assumes linear dynamics and quadratic cost functions and improves the control policy iteratively until convergence. We demonstrate the capabilities of this framework in designing controllers for regulating both natural and custom behavior on a simple pendulum, the primitive non linear system. The method’s assumptions limit its validity to smaller regions of the state space. Direct Policy Search methods use Reinforcement Learning to develop controllers for such scenarios. Nevertheless, these methods require numerous samples to generate an optimal policy and often converge to poor local optima. Guided Policy Search (GPS) is a new technique that optimizes complex non-linear policies, such as those represented through deep neural networks, without computing policy gradients in high dimensional parameter space. It trains the policy in a ”supervised” fashion using numerous locally valid controllers produced by ILQR. GPS provides appealing improvement and convergence guarantees in simple convex and linear settings and bounds the error in a non-linear setting. We apply Guided Policy Search to generate control policies for locomotion of a tensegrity robot, producing closed-loop motion that could not be achieved with previous methods. Defense Committee: Kostas Bekris (chair), Abdeslam Boularias, JingJin Yu
PIPF: Proposal-Interpolating Particle Filter

Particle filters are a commonly used technique for sensor fusion in indoor localization use-cases. Multiple strategies exist, that control when the particle filter is updated and with which data. We take a look at three commonly used update strategies. The first runs a full particle filter update for every incoming measurement, the second uses a fixed-interval update rate and the third is triggered by events, such as detected steps. All of these strategies have different advantages and disadvantages. The first strategy, for example, has the problem that steps are recognized only after they have been completed - which makes for a constant temporal discrepancy between the proposal distribution and the measurements evaluated on top. Due to the configured delay, the fixed-interval strategy, in comparison, can pre-date incoming step events to mitigate this discrepancy. In this paper we present PIPF as a novel approach to combine advantages of the fixed-interval update strategy with advantages of the strategy that runs a full update per measurement. This works by using the transition to calculate a trajectory, which is then followed during the evaluation. The proposal distribution in the form of particles is interpolated on this trajectory for every incoming measurement, which removes the temporal discrepancy between both. To evaluate PIPF's performance and characteristics at different configurations, we compare it to a conventional fixed-interval particle filter on a real-world indoor positioning scenario.
The Role of Thermography in Cattle Smart Farming: A Review

Modern cattle smart farms are gradually adopting infrared thermography as an essential tool for evaluating the State-of-Health of their animals. The goal of our work is to introduce a more comprehensive animal model, aiding the next generation of intelligent bio-monitoring systems. Described are: bovine biology, tissue mechanics, hair covering effects, thermal windows for the biomedical observation and detection of different clinical conditions and infectious diseases. Discussed are the physiological and behavioral changes induced by animal handling and environmental influences.
How Governance Mechanisms in Family Firms Impact Open Innovation Choices: A Fuzzy Logic Approach

The inbound open innovation (OI) process consists of the opening of the innovation funnel to the contribution of external partners, with the aim of tapping into their knowledge. This opportunity is particularly valuable for family firms (FFs), which often have insufficient resources. However, the literature on the OI behaviour of family firms is not conclusive. Indeed, both the behavioural theory (BT) and the resource&#8208;based view (RBV) posit negative and positive outcomes regarding openness choices in FFs. We claim that these contrasting results can be reconciled if, according to the literature, FFs are seen as a heterogeneous breed, whose differences are determined by different levels of participation of non&#8208;family members in the governance mechanisms. Indeed, non&#8208;family members can act in favour of OI. However, previous literature has failed to satisfactorily grasp the nuances of this heterogeneity. We suggest that it is necessary to adequately operationalize the heterogeneity concept by means of fuzzy logic. We conducted a survey on 178 Italian FFs. Results show that the involvement of non&#8208;family members affects the extent to which firms draw on knowledge from external partners. Specifically, the higher the involvement of non&#8208;family members, the more there is collaboration with vertical partners along the supply chain.
What do we know about the relationship between entrepreneurial finance and growth

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the recovery of the UK economy has been sluggish, and a key concern of policymakers is that private sector firms should have adequate access to finance. Available data suggest a significant decline in both debt and equity finance flows to SMEs. While the degree of success of recent policy initiatives is yet to be fully understood, a widely held perception is that the funding gap of a large proportion of firms is yet to be bridged. The attendant concern is that the prevailing funding gap may be limiting firm growth in the private sector.
Antimicrobial activity of cationic antimicrobial peptides against stationary phase bacteria

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are ancient antimicrobial weapons used by multicellular organisms as components of their innate immune defenses. Because of the antibiotic crisis, AMPs have also become candidates for developing new drugs. Here, we show that five different AMPs of different classes are effective against non-dividing Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. By comparison, three conventional antibiotics from the main three classes of antibiotics poorly kill non-dividing bacteria at clinically relevant doses. The killing of fast-growing bacteria by AMPs is faster than that of slow-dividing bacteria and, in some cases, without any difference. Still, non-dividing bacteria are effectively killed over time. Our results point to a general property of AMPs, which might explain why selection has favored AMPs in the evolution of metazoan immune systems. The ability to kill non-dividing cells is another reason that makes AMPs exciting candidates for drug development.
Cost-benefit analysis of aquaculture expansion in Arctic Norway

Abstract According to governmental plans, Norway faces huge expansions in the production of farmed Atlantic salmon. However, it is municipalities that designate coastal areas to aquaculture activities and their motivation depends on net benefits at municipal level from such use. Yet, there is little empirical evidence on costs and benefits of using coastal areas to aquaculture activities. We set up a cost-benefit analysis of salmon farming as seen from a municipal perspective. On the benefit side, we count consumer and producer surplus of increased aquaculture production in the region and the region’s share of the national rent in aquaculture received as transfers from the national Aquaculture Fund. Costs are the opportunity cost of the land (sea) use, measured by households’ willingness to pay to avoid aquaculture expansion, using data from a choice experiment. We find that parts of the producer surplus have to contribute to the regional economy for the NPV to be positive for a region.
Respiratory virus type to guide predictive enrichment approaches in the management of the first episode of bronchiolitis: A systematic review

It has become clear that severe bronchiolitis is a heterogeneous disease; even so, current bronchiolitis management guidelines rely on the one-size-fits-all approach regarding achieving both short-term and chronic outcomes. It has been speculated that the use of molecular markers could guide more effective pharmacological management and achieve the prevention of chronic respiratory sequelae. Existing data suggest that asthma-like treatment (systemic corticosteroids and beta2-agonists) in infants with rhinovirus-induced bronchiolitis is associated with improved short-term and chronic outcomes, but robust data is still lacking. We performed a systematic search of PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane’s Library to identify eligible randomized controlled trials to determine the efficacy of a personalized, virus-dependent application of systemic corticosteroids in children with severe bronchiolitis. Twelve studies with heterogeneous methodology were included. The analysis of the available results comparing the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-positive and RSV-negative children did not reveal significant differences in the associatons between systemic corticosteroid use in acute episode and duration of hospitalization (short-term outcome). However, this systematic review identified a trend of the positive association between the use of systematic corticosteroids and duration of hospitalization in RSV-negative infants hospitalized with the first episode of bronchiolitis (two studies). This evidence is not conclusive. Taken together, we suggest the design for future studies to assess the respiratory virus type in guiding predictive enrichment approaches in infants presenting with the first episode of bronchiolitis. Systematic review registration https://www.crd. york.ac. uk/prospero/, identifier CRD42020173686
Alcohol Use Disorder in Adolescents from Network Theory Perspective

Alcohol use disorders in adolescents has been a major health and social concern across the globe demanding timely intervention in order to prevent the great deal of morbidity and mortality that are often associated with maladaptive pattern of substance use. Understanding the causation, maintenance and progression of alcohol use disorder is of utmost importance in formulating strategies for its treatment and prevention. There has been a major paradigm shift in understanding of the complex phenomenon of alcohol use in the form of application of concept of network theory. In this review a sincere attempt has been made to give insight into the various issues related to alcohol use disorders in adolescents.
What Makes You Happy? Predicting Wellbeing in Nicaraguan Adolescents and Young Adults

The present study sought to identify significant predictors of wellbeing within a sample of 2,764 high school and university students in Nicaragua, a country where significant stressful events and suicide are common. Ages ranged from 11-22 years ( M = 16.63, SD = 2.85), and 60.3% identified as female. Measures used include the Personal Wellbeing Index, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure, the Patient Health Questionnaire-4, and demographic questions. Parent occupations were coded using the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08). A multiple regression was conducted to identify five core variables that combined to predict approximately 30% of the variance of wellbeing, R 2 = . 30, R 2adj = . 297, F (11, 2727) = 106.188, p < . 001. Resilience is positively related to wellbeing, while age, depression, anxiety, and mother’s education are inversely related to wellbeing. These findings could inform mental health workers in Latin America and contribute to increased wellbeing for the youth they work with, especially in Nicaragua, as the population has experienced increasing civil unrest. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.