Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Point observations of liquid water content in wet snow - investigating methodical, spatial and temporal aspects

Information about the volume and the spatial and temporal distribution of liquid water in snow is impor- tant for forecasting wet snow avalanches and for predicting melt-water run-off. The distribution of liquid water in snow is commonly estimated from point measurements using a "hand" squeeze test, or a dielectric device such as a "Snow Fork" or a "Denoth meter". Here we compare estimates of water content in the Swiss Alps made using the hand test to those made with a Snow Fork and a Denoth meter. Measure- ments were conducted in the Swiss Alps, mostly above tree line; more than 12 000 measurements were made at 85 loca- tions over 30 days. Results show that the hand test generally over estimates the volumetric liquid water content. Estimates using the Snow Fork are generally 1 % higher than those de- rived from the Denoth meter. The measurements were also used to investigate temporal and small-scale spatial patterns of wetness. Results show that typically a single point mea- surement does not characterize the wetness of the surround- ing snow. Large diurnal changes in wetness are common in the near-surface snow, and associated changes at depth were also observed. A single vertical profile of measurements is not sufficient to determine whether these changes were a re- sult of a spatially homogeneous wetting front or caused by in- filtration through pipes. Based on our observations, we sug- gest that three measurements at horizontal distances greater than 50 cm are needed to adequately characterize the distri- bution of liquid water through a snowpack. Further, we sug- gest a simplified classification scheme that includes five wet- ness patterns that incorporate both the vertical and horizontal distribution of liquid water in a snowpack.
The Impact of Gender Differences on Adoption of Information Technology and Related Responses: A Review

Over the recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of women belonging to the Internet population. With this increase, researchers have begun to investigate the role of gender in information technology (IT) adoption and its related innovations, including e-commerce. Despite the large body of research on the topic, we know of no work that specifically reviews the literature regarding gender differences in these domains. To address this gap, we systematically reviewed the recent literature (in the period 2000–2017) regarding gender differences in IT adoption and six related behaviors and responses: online shopping adoption, online trust, attitude and satisfaction with e-commerce, website design preferences, and information processing strategies. Findings from the current review indicated that, in general, men are more likely to try a new IT and shop online than women, although the findings have been far somehow contradictory. Overall, men tend to have more positive evaluations of websites than women. According to the current review, gender differences play an important role in moderating certain relationships between different influencing variables. We highlight areas requiring future research and discuss the findings in the context of several theoretical perspectives.
Zinc bioaccumulation by microbial consortium isolated from nickel smelter sludge disposal site

Abstract Heavy metal pollution is one of the most important environmental issues of today. Bioremediation by microorganisms is one of technologies extensively used for pollution treatment. In this study, we investigated the heavy metal resistance and zinc bioaccumulation by microbial consortium isolated from nickel sludge disposal site near Sereď (Slovakia). The composition of consortium was analyzed based on MALDI-TOF MS of cultivable bacteria and we have shown that the consortium was dominated by bacteria of genus Arthrobacter. While consortium showed very good growth in the zinc presence, it was able to remove only 15 % of zinc from liquid media. Selected members of consortia have shown lower growth rates in the zinc presence but selected isolates have shown much higher bioaccumulation abilities compared to whole consortium (up to 90 % of zinc removal for NH1 strain). Bioremediation is frequently accelerated through injection of native microbiota into a contaminated area. Based on data obtained in this study, we can conclude that careful selection of native microbiota could lead to the identification of bacteria with increased bioaccumulation abilities.
Q-sets, Sierpinski sets, and rapid filters

We prove the following : Theorem 1: cons(ZF) implies cons(ZFC + there exists a Q-set of reals + there exists a set of reals of cardinality χ 1 which is not Lebesgue measurable). Theorem 2: cons(ZF) implies cons(ZFC + 2 χ#7B h0 is arbitrarily larger than χ 2 + there exists a Sierpinski set of cardinality 2 χ#7B h0 + there are no rapid filters on ω). These theorems give answers to questions of Fleissner and Judah
Analyzing association rules produced by applying the apriori algorithm to structured data

A nalyzing association rules produced by applying the Apriori algorithm to structured data by Darshana Gala Dr. Kazem Taghva, Examination Committee Chair School of Computer Science University of Nevada, Las Vegas Dr. A joy K. Datta, Dr. Tom Nartker, Dr. Shahram Latifi University of Nevada, Las Vegas In this thesis, we will use various techniques from data mining to draw interesting results from a set of structured data on personal privacy information. In particular, the well-known Apriori Algorithm will be used to find frequent item sets and asso­ ciation rules in this data. This process has been shown to be effective in predicting the presence of one type of data when other data is present in other data mining applications. The thesis will also include a detailed analysis of rules generated by the algorithm and their natural interpretations.
Rollback Mechanisms for Cloud Management APIs Using AI Planning

Human-induced faults play a large role in systems reliability. In cloud platforms, system administrators may inadvertently make catastrophic mistakes, like deleting a virtual disk with important data. Providing rollback for cloud operations can reduce the severity and impact of such mistakes, by allowing to revert to a known, good state. However, in the context of cloud management this is non-trivial, since cloud consumers only have limited visibility and indirect control. In this paper, we present a scalable approach to rollback operations that change the state of a system on proprietary cloud platforms. In our previous work, we provided a system that augments cloud APIs and provides rollback operation using an AI planner. In this paper, we build upon our previous work, but parallelize the rollback plan generation based on characteristics unique to rollback scenario. Furthermore, we introduce a distributed anytime algorithm that gradually improves plan quality over time, until either an optimal plan is found or a timeout is reached. Through experimental evaluation we show that our approach scales better than a naïve approach, and effectively avoids the exponential behavior of AI planning. Further, we explore the trade-offs between the quality of rollback plans and plan generation time.
Tüketicilerin Kurumsal Sosyal Sorumluluk Algılamalarının Marka Değeri Üzerine Etkisi

Tuketicilerin kurumsal sosyal sorumluluk algilarinin marka degerinin boyutlari ve marka degerinin boyutlarinin da genel marka degeri uzerindeki etkisinin arastirildigi bu calismada, sut ve sut urunleri tuketen ve bu urunleri kendisi satin alan 18 yas uzeri 341 tuketici ile yuz yuze anket yapilmistir. Arastirmanin verilerine, soz konusu hipotezleri test etmek icin, dogrulayici faktor analizi ve yapisal esitlik modeli uygulanmistir. Elde edilen bulgular, hayirsever yonlu sosyal sorumluluk algisinin algilanan kalite uzerinde, dusuk olmakla birlikte, anlamli bir etkisinin oldugunu, ancak marka bagliligi uzerinde anlamli bir etkisinin olmadigini gostermistir. Buna karsin ekonomik/etik sorumluluk algisinin hem marka bagliligini hem de algilanan kaliteyi olumlu yonde etkiledigi gorulmustur. Ayrica, marka bagliliginin ve algilanan kalitenin genel marka degeri uzerindeki etkilerinin istatistiki bakimdan anlamli oldugu ancak marka bagliliginin genel marka degerine katkisinin daha yuksek oldugu gorulmustur
GTM-UVIGO System for Albayzin 2018 Speech-to-Text Evaluation

This paper describes the Speech-to-Text system developed by the Multimedia Technologies Group (GTM) of the atlanTTic research center at the University of Vigo, for the Albayzin Speech-to-Text Challenge (S2T) organized in the Iberspeech 2018 conference. The large vocabulary automatic speech recognition system is built using the Kaldi toolkit. It uses an hybrid Deep Neural Network - Hidden Markov Model (DNN-HMM) for acoustic modeling, and a rescoring of a trigram based word-lattices, obtained in a ﬁrst decoding stage, with a fourgram language model or a language model based on a recurrent neural network. The system was evaluated only on the open set training condition.
Bioceramics in the Realm of History

Bioceramics have revolutionized the field of medicine by giving us the hope of generating engineered human tissues. During the past years, there have been great advances in bioceramics, glasses and glassceramics, and recently emphasis has shifted towards the use of this class of biomaterials especially for bone and dental tissue engineering. On this front, with the advent of advanced bioceramics, it has been speculated that the search for ideal combination of different methods and materials could result in significant advances in different areas of medicine over future years. Undoubtedly, this class of biomaterials needs further advancement and a lot of critical questions have yet to be answered. This note shortly reviews the groundbreaking work that has been performed in the field of bioceramics.
Discovering Data Quality Issues in Service-oriented ArchitecturesA Framework and Case Study

In this paper we examine web services from a data quality perspective. Based on a data quality management approach, we propose a framework for analysing data produced by the composite service execution. Apart from other monitoring tools available which targeting the technical aspect of service composition – service time response, service throughput and etc., we propose data consistency and accuracy monitoring, focusing on the business value of the data produces by the services. We developed framework that will store business rules into a rules repository. By analysing service data against the rules we will be able to identify problems in service composition and execution. Moreover taking into account the Quality of Service (QoS) we are able to provide an approximate location of the error.
Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia Stem Cells are sensitive to the pharmacological inhibition of Hypoxia Inducible Factor-1 α

6 INTRODUCTION . 8 Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia . 8 Haematopoietic Stem Cells . 12 Leukaemia Stem Cells . 14 The haematopoietic stem cell niche . 16 Endosteal (osteoblastic) niche . 18 Perivascular niche . 19 Hypoxia and Hypoxia Inducible Factor . 20 Role of hypoxia in normal haematopoiesis and Leukaemia . 20 HIF and their role in cancer . 24 HIF in Cancer Stem Cells . 28 HIF in Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia . 29 HIF-1 pharmacological inhibitors . 29 MATERIALS AND METHODS . 31 Cells and culture conditions . 31 Reagents . 32 Isolation of mononuclear cells from human BM aspirates . 32 Measurement of cell viability. 33
Accounting and auditing in municipal organisations – Four papers on accounting compliance and audit costs

This thesis is a quantitative study of accounting compliance and audit costs in Swedish municipal organisations, consisting of four papers. Three of the papers explore factors that explain accounting compliance concerning financial reporting and revenue recognition in Swedish municipal water, sewerage and solid waste management organisations. The fourth paper explores the determinants of professional audit costs in Swedish municipal administrations. The overall purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge of what factors influence accounting compliance and audit costs in municipal organisations.Explaining accounting compliance in the water and sewerage and solid waste management sectors reveals that these sectors are influenced partly by different factors and partly by the same factors but differently. The results indicate that the strength and the strictness of the institutional framework (legislation, sanctions, court cases) play an important role in relation to if and how each sector is influenced by certain economic, political and institutional factors. Further, the studies show that factors like market competition, legal form of corporation, regionalisation, cross-sectoral coordination and engaged audit firm alter, replace or introduce new institutional, political and economic forces that influence accounting compliance. These are all factors that can be linked to municipal reforms, thus providing some evidence on the consequences of such reforms. Regarding audit costs the results of the thesis also indicate that audit costs vary dependent upon external stakeholder factors (population, tax base and tax rate), which supports the proposition that audit cost might be influenced by external monitoring demand and political signalling incentives. The implication is that audit might not only be a tool to secure compliance; it might also be a tool to manage stakeholder relations.From a policy perspective, the results indicate that the changing institutional and organisational environment (municipal governance reforms) has not been matched by attention to, and regulation of, reporting structures that secure external vertical accountability reporting, neither at the utility service level and nor at the consolidated municipal level. The general implication for future policy and regulations should therefore be to recognise the influence of different economic and institutional forces and develop accountability models that enable and preserve the benefits of governance forms and structures without losing transparency and accountability. The findings of this thesis suggest that accounting regulation and audit control need to bridge the public–private sector divide, level out sector-specific regulations and possibly connect regulation and accountability to the consolidated municipal organisation in order to preserve organisational freedom while securing compliant accountability information to relevant stakeholders.
The effect of changes in manganese concentrations on cellulase yield from bagasse fermented with mutagenised strain of Aspergillus niger AH3

The effect of changes in manganese ion concentrations on cellulase yield from bagasse fermented with a hydroxylamine derived mutant of Aspergillus niger were investigated in a batch culture shake flask fermentations. Three different concentrations were studied using the Mandel-Weber basal medium adjusted to pH 4.8. Enzyme production profile was monitored over a seven day period. Bagasse was found to be a good carbon source and it induced active cellulase production. Cellulase activities were recorded as 0.07256 IU/ml/min, 0.04820 IU/ml/min and 0.04258 IU/ml/min for 0.16 g/L, 0.59 g/L and 0.67 g/L of manganese respectively. Day 4 appears to be best for optimum production of the enzyme at the concentrations studied. Increasing concentrations of manganese ion which is a requirement for pectolytic enzyme and citric acid accumulation in Aspergillus niger does not promote excellent cellulase production from bagasse. Keywords : cellulase, manganese, bagasse, pectolyic, hydroxylamine, mutant, Aspergillus niger Int. J. Biol. Chem. Sci. Vol. 2 (3) 2008: pp. 368-372
Voluntary exercise and depression-like behavior in rodents : are we running in the right direction ?

Acute or chronic exposure to stress can increase the risk to develop major depressive disorder, a severe, recurrent and common psychiatric condition. Depression places an enormous social and financial burden on modern society. Although many depressed patients are treated with antidepressants, their efficacy is only modest, underscoring the necessity to develop clinically effective pharmaceutical or behavioral treatments. Exercise training produces beneficial effects on stress-related mental disorders, indicative of clinical potential. The pro-resilient and antidepressant effects of exercise training have been documented for several decades. Nonetheless, the underlying molecular mechanisms and the brain circuitries involved remain poorly understood. Preclinical investigations using voluntary wheel running, a frequently used rodent model that mimics aspects of human exercise training, have started to shed light on the molecular adaptations, signaling pathways and brain nuclei underlying the beneficial effects of exercise training on stress-related behavior. In this review, I highlight several neurotransmitter systems that are putative mediators of the beneficial effects of exercise training on mental health, and review recent rodent studies that utilized voluntary wheel running to promote our understanding of exercise training-induced central adaptations. Advancements in our mechanistic understanding of how exercise training induces beneficial neuronal adaptations will provide a framework for the development of new strategies to treat stress-associated mental illnesses.
Nanoindentation Testing of Porcine Bone

Nanoindentation testing is a technique that is used to measure mechanical properties of materials at the nano-scale. The method has been used to measure properties of metals, ceramics and also biological materials. In this study nanoindentation testing was used to measure the reduced modulus and hardness in the porcine tibia and femur. Testing was done to measure the properties in different directions and also in the anterior and posterior regions of the bone. Two bone samples were analyzed in this study. Bone samples were obtained and cleaned and polished in the area of interest. Samples were tested after air drying for 48 hours. Digital microscopy was used to locate osteon bone in the region of interest. The bone was testing in the axial (x) direction, sagittal plane (y) direction and the frontal plane (z) direction. A loading function with a 5 s rise time, 5 s holding time and 5 s unloading time with a peak value of 4000 μN was used. Statistical analysis of the data was done using a one-way Anova, Tukey test and a linear mixed model. In the first sample, mechanical properties did not vary in different areas tested within a region while in the second sample properties did vary between areas in some regions. Differences in mechanical properties between anterior and posterior regions were found in both femur and tibia of the first sample and the femur of the second sample. Besides, differences in mechanical properties in the different directions were found in both the tibia and femur with most of the axial direction being highest and those in the sagittal plane being the lowest. In general the properties in the femur were greater than that of the tibia. Greater loading in certain bone regions may induce higher hardness and elastic modulus. The different properties in the different directions may suggest a plywood-like composite structure with most fibers orthogonal to the laminate direction. The evaluation of bone mechanical properties can contribute to the knowledge of the effects of location, disease or other factors on the tissue.
Preliminary notes on brain weight variation across labrid fish species with different levels of cooperative behaviour

Brain size and weight vary tremendously in the animal kingdom. It has been suggested that brain structural develop- ment must evolve balanced between the advantages of dealing with greater social challenges and the energetic costs of maintain- ing and developing larger brains. Here we ask if interspecific differences in cooperative behaviour (i.e. cleaning behaviour) are related to brain weight variations in four close-related species of Labrid fish: two are obligatory cleanerfish throughout their en- tire life (Labroides dimidiatus and L. bicolor), one facultative cleaner fish Labropsis australis and one last species that never en- gage in cleaning Labrichthys unilineatus. We first search for the link between the rate of species' cooperation and its relative brain weight, and finally, if the degree of social complexity and cooperation are reflected in the weight of its major brain sub- structures. Overall, no differences were found in relative brain weight (in relation to body weight) across species. Fine-scale dif- ferences were solely demonstrated for the facultative cleaner L. australis, at the brainstem level. Furthermore, data visual exami- nation indicates that the average cerebellum and brainstem weights appear to be larger for L. dimidiatus. Because variation was solely found at specific brain areas (such as cerebellum and brainstem) and not for the whole brain weight values, it suggests that species social-ecological and cognitive demands may be directly contributing to a selective investment in relevant brain areas. This study provides first preliminary evidence that links potential differences in cognitive ability in cooperative behaviour to how these may mediate the evolution of brain structural development in non-mammal vertebrate groups (Current Zoology 61 (2): 274-280, 2015). Keywords Brain weight, Body weight, Macro-area weight, Labridae, Cooperation, Cleaning behaviour
Group and team processes in organisations

During recent decades, organisations have shifted towards team-based structures to enhance organisational performance, and research has shifted to investigate these new work structures. This chapter explores team and group process research in organisations. The initial focus of this chapter is to define groups and teams. Types of teams and team development theory will also be briefly discussed. Several theories of group dynamics will then be presented. The input-process-output framework, which explains the relationships between variables in team research, will provide structure to the ensuing discussion of team-related variables, such as individual and team-level characteristics, team and group processes and team performance. A frequent goal of group and team-based research is to understand how to improve team effectiveness and thus performance. Team performance is therefore included in this framework as an important outcome variable. This framework is then extended and a contemporary way of categorising team-based research in organisations is presented. In addition, the potentially important role of moderating variables in team research will also be discussed.