Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Open dynamics under rapid repeated interaction

We investigate the emergent open dynamics of a quantum system that undergoes rapid repeated unitary interactions with a sequence of ancillary systems. We study in detail how decoherence appears as a subleading effect when a quantum system is bombarded by a quick succession of ancillas. In the most general case, these ancillas are (a) taken from an ensemble of quantum systems of different dimensions, (b) prepared in different states, and (c) interacting with the system through different Hamiltonians. We derive an upper bound on decoherence rates in this regime, and show how a rich variety of phenomena in open dynamics (such as projection, thermalization, purification, and dephasing) can emerge out of our general model of repeated interaction. Furthermore, we show a fundamental link between the strength of the leading-order dissipation and the intrinsic ``unpredictability'' in the system-ancilla interaction. We also discuss how these results encompass and extend results obtained with other earlier models of repeated interaction.
Chemical and ecotoxicological assessment of microplastics and emerging risks in the coastal environments

vii Resumen . ix Index of figures . xiii Index of tables . xv 1 . Introduction. 1 1.1 Plastics and polymers . 3 Definition and origin . 3 Classification and properties . 3 Plastic production and uses . 4 End-of-life of plastics . 7 1.2 Plastics in the environment . 10 Sources . 11 Plastic degradation . 12 Plastic size-classification: from macro to nano . 14 Micro(nano)plastics . 14 1.3 Analysis of microplastics . 17 Sampling . 17 Sample pre-treatment . 18 Characterisation . 19 Quality assurance and quality control . 22 1.4 Environmental fate and impacts of microplastics. 23 Occurrence in the aquatic environment . 23 Risk assessment . 31 2 . Objectives and thesis structure . 33 2.1 Objectives . 35 2.2 Thesis structure . 36 3 . Plastics in estuarine environment, from macro to micro: transport, analysis, and behaviour . 37 3.
The effect of hedges and certainty markers on the perceived quality of a manager.

This study looks at the effect of uncertainty markers and certainty markers on the perceived quality of a manager. Earlier research has shown the influence of hedges, but not a lot of research has been done on certainty markers. The focus on internal communication in an organizational context is new in the field. Three versions of a message were used, differing in linguistic markers. Quality was measured with authoritativeness, trustworthiness, competence and sociability. An experiment with a between-subjects design done by 97 students showed no significant effects of the version on the perceived quality. Although not significant, the data indicated that authoritativeness, trustworthiness and competence were given the highest score when the message without markers was read and the lowest score when the message with uncertainty markers was read. Sociability was also perceived highest when the message without markers was read, but was perceived lowest when the message with certainty markers was read. The current study has several limitations, so future research done differently might contribute significant results in this field.
Bounds on the effective conductivity of two-dimensional composites made of n ≧ 3 isotropic phases in prescribed volume fraction: the weighted translation method

We establish lower and upper bounds which are valid for the overall conductivity of twodimensional composites. They are based on a method which modifies the so-called translation method in a way which makes it effectively much more flexible. When specialised to composites of n > 2 isotropic phases, the new bounds are often strictly better than all the previously known ones. From the mathematical point of view, the improvement is due mainly to a new regularity result in p.d. e.s [2]. From the physical point of view the latter can be interpreted as a result bounding in a suitable sense the fluctuations of the ‘electric field’.
GENERATING EFFICIENT CODE WITH AUTOMATIC DIFFERENTIATION

Sensitivity methods in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) have long been limited by the computational expense of state-gradient based techniques (e.g. finite dier- ence, tangent linearisation). Adjoint CFD codes have failed to become widely favoured because of the diculty and human eort associated with their implmentation. Automatic Dierentiation (AD) automates much of the tedious and error-prone work involved in deriving tangent linear and adjoint sensitivity codes. Presently, automatically generated code is often thought of as inherently inferior to hand written code. In practice, it is apparent that the performance of automatically transformed code is highly sensitive to the structure of the underlying code. This paper uses two examples from CFD to show how small rearrangements to the underlying code can improve the performance of code gener- ated by AD. The rearrangements, which can mostly be automated, allow AD to produce code that compares very favourably with hand-written tangent and adjoint code.
Comparative analysis of the insect mobile genetic element repertoire and its influence on genome size dynamics

This thesis presents comparative genomics studies in insects as well as bioinformatics software development. Its empirical research part is focused mainly on mobile genetic elements, also termed transposable elements. The data basis contains datasets from public repositories, a rich and often underexplored source of information on genomic biodiversity. Transposable elements in particular are often neglected when the results of a genome sequencing study are published, although they make up a major part of virtually every eukaryotic genome. After a general introduction in Chapter 1, I characterize and compare the transposable element repertoire of 73 arthropod species in Chapter 2 and find that it correlates to genome size in both abundance and diversity. In Chapter 3, I study the effect of transposable elements on the evolution of genome size in more detail and on an expanded dataset of 96 species. In Chapter 4, I present a software pipeline for delineating orthology among coding nucleotide sequences, an essential tool for many comparative and phylogenetic studies. Finally, Chapter 5 is a general conclusion. Chapter 2 Transposable elements (TEs) are a major component of metazoan genomes and are associated with a variety of mechanisms that shape genome architecture and evolution. Despite the ever-growing number of insect genomes sequenced to date, our understanding of the diversity and evolution of insect TEs remains poor. Here, we present a standardized characterization and an order-level comparison of arthropod TE repertoires, encompassing 62 insect and 11 outgroup species. The insect TE repertoire contains TEs of almost every class previously described, and in some cases even TEs previously reported only from vertebrates and plants. Additionally, we identified a large fraction of unclassifiable TEs. We found high variation in TE content, ranging from less than 6 % in the antarctic midge (Diptera), the honey bee and the turnip sawfly (Hymenoptera) to more than 58 % in the malaria mosquito (Diptera) and the migratory locust (Orthoptera), and a possible relationship between the content and diversity of TEs and the genome size. While most insect orders exhibit a characteristic TE composition, we also observed intraordinal differences, e.g., in Diptera, Hymenoptera, and Hemiptera. Our findings
Cultivating Global Entrepreneurs in the Food Supply Chain

Food supply chain from an entrepreneur’s perspective has many needs today. To cultivate food entrepreneurs addressing the growing global demand in food, there is an emerging trend in integrating vital players in food supply chain to form food clusters. Like most of start-up entrepreneurs in other industries, food entrepreneurs have their challenges of identifying market opportunities, building a trusted management team, and securing funding sources to run the businesses. They also need facilities to produce their foods, the facilities needed to be certified by local food authorities, securing product liability insurance, and marketing channels to distribute their food products. In this paper, we discussed how LSU Food Incubator is established and developed to address those challenges. Specifically, it is a “Flying High, Landing Soft” platform. We plan to empower the platform with mobile cloud learning practices and capabilities and extend this platform to emerging markets like Turkey.
Der Umgang mit Ressourcenknappheit in der Pflege. Reichweite und Grenzen individueller Verantwortung unter Knappheitsbedingungen

European Journal for Nursing History and Ethics, Vol. 2, Iss. 1 - Empirische Studien zeigen, dass Pflegefachkrafte haufig nicht in der Lage sind, all diejenigen Pflegetatigkeiten auszufuhren, die von ihnen als notwendig erachtet werden. Das Phanomen der unvollstandig ausgefuhrten Pflegetatigkeiten stellt eine Folge der Ressourcenknappheit in der Patientenversorgung und Form der Rationierung von Pflegeleistungen dar. Obwohl die Pflegefachkrafte nicht fur den Ressourcenmangel selbst verantwortlich gemacht werden konnen, ist dennoch ein ethisch reflektierter Umgang mit Priorisierungs- und Rationierungsentscheidungen, ebenso wie mit Effizienzerwagungen in der pflegerischen Versorgung von Patient*innen zu fordern. Das Phanomen der unvollstandig ausgefuhrten Pflegeleistungen ist nicht nur in einem pflegewissenschaftlichen und gesundheitsokonomischen Kontext zu thematisieren, sondern gleichermasen in einen ethischen Interpretationsrahmen zu stellen. In einem derartigen Rahmen lassen sich auch Reichweite und Grenzen der individuellen Verantwortung von Pflegefachkraften unter Knappheitsbedingungen in Grundzugen bestimmen.
Evaluation of a Solar Power Plant at Longyearbyen

The world face one of the greatest challenges of all time, changing the economy in a direction where higher resource productivity and lower greenhouse gas emissions are the main focus. The most prominent solution to reduce green house gases is a greater utilisation of renewable energy sources. With a rapid technological advancement, solar energy is now one of the least expensive forms of power in two thirds of the world (Olson, 2019). The main aim of the thesis is to find the solar energy potential at Spitsbergen in Norway, by creating a model of a solar plant at Longyearbyen in PVsyst and simulate it. The model is a replica of the solar plant at Svalbard Airport. If the simulations of the plant are accurate with the power yield of the solar plant, the model in PVsyst is confirmed. The model can be used for finding areas of improvement on the plant, and quantify these areas. Further, to find the best use of solar energy in the Arctic, simulations of an optimal generic 10 kW system for standard and bifacial modules with meteorological data from Longyearbyen are run. A similar model is run with meteorological data in Munich to see how the results compare with locations in another climate. This part of the study also includes data from solar modules at the University of Tromsø for comparison. The results from simulations of the model show a higher total power production than the power yielded from the Airport in 2019 of 9,6%, with multiple areas for improvements on the plant, e. g—oversized inverters and snow cover. Results from simulations of the generic 10 kW system show that the benefits of bifacial modules are more prominent in an Arctic climate than in Munich.
SHORT AND LONG TERM EFFECT OF GOODWILL IMPAIRMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS ON THE SHARE PRICES OF EUROPEAN BASED LISTED COMPANIES

This research investigates the effect of goodwill impairments on the share prices of European listed companies. Theabnormal returns in the(-5,5), (-3,3), (-1,1) and (0,3)event period surrounding a goodwill impairment and the yearprior to a goodwill impairment announcement are investigated. In the (-5,5) event period a positive cumulative abnormal return of 1.90%isfound.Acumulativebuyandholdabnormalreturnof-3.90%isfoundforthefirstninemonthsoftheyear priortothegoodwillimpairmentanda-0.30%cumulativebuyandholdabnormalreturnisfoundforthetotalyear priortothegoodwillimpairment.Anexplanationfortheseresultsisthatinvestorsanticipategoodwillimpairments and that therefore, the negative reaction to a goodwill impairment happens long before the announcement of the impairment.Anpessimistic anticipation by investors might be the reason why the actual impairment announcement is receivedas positive news.Therelativesizeoftheimpairment,therelativeamountofgoodwillinacompanyand the level of information asymmetry between a company and its investorsare investigated on their influence on both the surprise effect andthe level of anticipation. There is some proof that the positive reactionintheshorttermandthenegativereactioninthelongtermareduetoanticipatinginvestors.
Short bouts of gait data and inertial sensors can provide reliable measures of spatiotemporal gait parameters from bilateral gait data of participants with multiple sclerosis

Background:Wearable devices equipped with inertial sensors enable objective gait assessment for persons with multiple sclerosis (MS), with potential use in ambulatory care or home and community-based assessments. However, gait data collected in non-controlled settings is often fragmented and may not provide enough information for reliable measures. We evaluate a novel approach, extracting pre-defined numbers of gait cycles from the full length of a walking task, and their effects on the reliability of spatiotemporal gait parameters.Methods:The present study evaluates intra-session reliability of spatiotemporal gait parameters for short bouts of gait data extracted from the full length of the walking tasks to 1) determine the effects of the length of the walking task on the reliability of calculated measures and 2) identify spatiotemporal gait parameters that can provide reliable measures for gait assessments and reference data in different settings.Thirty-seven participants (37) diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS (EDSS rage 0 to 4.5) executed two trials, walking 20m each, with inertial sensors attached to their right and left shanks. Previously published algorithms were applied to identify gait events from the medio-lateral angular velocity. Short bouts of gait data were extracted from each trial, with lengths varying from 3 to 9 gait cycles. Twenty-one measures of spatiotemporal gait parameters were calculated. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated to evaluate how the degree of agreement between the two trials of each participant varied with the number of gait cycles included in the analysis.Results:Spatiotemporal gait parameters calculated as the mean across included gait cycles reach excellent reliability from three gait cycles. Stride time variability and asymmetry, as well as stride velocity variability and asymmetry, reach good reliability from six gait cycles and should be further explored for persons with MS, while stride time asymmetry and step time asymmetry do not seem to provide reliable measures and should be reported carefully.Conclusion:Short bouts of gait data, including at least six gait cycles of bilateral data, can provide reliable gait measurements for persons with MS, opening new perspectives for gait assessment using wearable devices in non-controlled environments, to support monitoring of symptoms of persons with neurological diseases.Trial registrationNot applicable.
Managing E-Government Projects: Concepts, Issues, and Best Practices

Stephen Kwamena Aikins holds a PhD from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida (USF), Tampa, USA. His teaching and research interests include e-government, public financial management, government auditing, and political economy. He has published in various scholarly journals, including International Public Management Review, and State and Local Government Review. Dr. Aikins is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Information Systems Auditor. He has experience working in various capacities in management, accounting and auditing for nearly twenty years, ten of which were spent in the financial services industry. Dr. Aikins was honored in the 2008-2009 edition of Madison Who is Who Registry of Executives and Professionals for his exemplary contribution to the business community. Stephen Kwamena Aikins (University of South Florida, USA)
Secretly asymmetric dark matter

We study a mechanism where the dark matter number density today arises from asymmetries generated in the dark sector in the early universe, even though total dark matter number remains zero throughout the history of the universe. The dark matter population today can be completely symmetric, with annihilation rates above those expected from thermal WIMPs. We give a simple example of this mechanism using a benchmark model of flavored dark matter. We discuss the experimental signatures of this setup, which arise mainly from the sector that annihilates the symmetric component of dark matter.
A Natureza e as Características do Turismo Rural Sustentável

The Nature and Characteristics of Sustainable Rural Tourism. This article deals with a reflection on sustainable rural tourism, highlighting its fundamental features and characteristics. In this respect, it analyses such concepts as tourism and the rural environment, incorporating this same paradigm of sustainability; this involves the reorientation and improvement of planning and tourism management in general, and rural tourism in particular. A priority in rural settings is the promotion of tourism activities which respect the environment and the cultural and social values of the community, which then leads to a positive interchange of experiences between residents and visitors. The relationship between tourists and the community must be balanced, so that the benefits of the activity can be shared equally by all those participating in the activity (private companies and public organisms), to enable travelers to have an Palavras-chave: Tourism. Rural
Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019

As the economy of the United States continues to rebound from the Great Recession, the well-being of households and consumers provides important information about the scope and pace of the economic recovery. In order to monitor the financial and economic status of American consumers, the Federal Reserve Board began conducting the Survey of Household Economics and Decision making in 2013 and conducted the survey for a second time in October 2014. The findings from the October 2014 survey are covered in this report. Topics examined in the survey include the financial health of individuals on a number of levels, such as overall well-being, housing, economic fragility, savings and spending, access to credit, education and student loans, and retirement planning.
In-Vitro Antihyaluronidase Activity and Physical Properties of Alpinia zerumbet Rhizome Extract-Loaded Nanostructured Lipid Carrier

The rhizome of Alpinia zerumbet (Pers.) B.L. Burtt & R.M. Sm) contains phenolic compounds, has antihyaluronidase activity which can reduce wrinkles on the skin. This study aims to determine the physical characteristics and antihyaluronidase activity of the nanostructured lipid carrier (NLC) of the Alpinia zerumbet rhizome extract in-vitro. Alpinia zerumbet rhizome powder (4/18) was extracted by kinetic maceration method using 70% ethanol solvent, concentrated with a rotary vacuum evaporator at 100 mm Hg at a temperature of ± 50oC. The resulting extract was prepared into NLC nanoparticles using polyethyleneglycol 8-beeswax, isopropyl myristate and acrylyl glucoside with the high speed homogenization-ultrasonication method. The resulting NLC extracts were characterized by nanoparticle size and morphology, polydispersity index and zeta potential and antihyaluronidase activity test was determined using the Sigma Aldrich and Tu & Tawata methods with slight modifications. The results of the NLC characterization of Alpinia zerumbet rhizome extract were 171.3 nm; 0.37; -26.8 mV; and spherical shape. The results of the antihyaluronidase activity of Alpinia zerumbet rhizome extract loaded NLC was 552.75 µg/mL. It was concluded that the Alpinia zerumbet rhizome extract loaded NLC can be formulated into topical preparations which have the potential to be antihyaluronidase with the ability to reduce wrinkles on the skin.
Competitive exclusion and metabolic dependency among microorganisms structure the cellulose economy of agricultural soil

Background Microorganisms that degrade cellulose utilize extracellular processes that yield free intermediates which promote interactions with non-cellulolytic organisms. We hypothesized that these interactions determine the ecological and physiological traits governing the fate of cellulosic carbon (C) in soil. We used data from a metagenomic-SIP experiment to perform comparative genomics and characterize the attributes of cellulolytic and non-cellulolytic taxa accessing 13C from cellulose. We hypothesized that cellulolytic taxa would exhibit competitive traits to limit access, while non-cellulolytic taxa would display metabolic dependency, such as signatures of adaptive gene loss. We tested our hypotheses by evaluating genomic traits indicative of competitive exclusion or metabolic dependency, such as antibiotic production, growth rate, surface attachment, biomass degrading potential and auxotrophy.Results The most 13C-enriched taxa were cellulolytic Cellvibrio (Gammaproteobacteria) and Chaetomium (Ascomycota), which exhibited a strategy of self-sufficiency (prototrophy), rapid growth, and competitive exclusion via antibiotic production. Auxotrophy was more prevalent in cellulolytic Actinobacteria than in cellulolytic Proteobacteria, demonstrating differences in dependency among cellulose degraders. Non-cellulolytic taxa that accessed 13C from cellulose (Planctomycetales, Verrucomicrobia and Vampirovibrionales) were highly dependent, as indicated by patterns of auxotrophy and 13C-labeling (i.e. partial labelling or labeling at later-stages). Major 13C-labeled cellulolytic microbes (e.g. Sorangium, Actinomycetales, Rhizobiales and Caulobacteraceae) possessed adaptations for surface colonization (e.g. gliding motility, hyphae, attachment structures) signifying the importance of surface ecology in decomposition. Conclusions Our results demonstrate that access to cellulose was accompanied by ecological trade-offs characterized by differing degrees of metabolic dependency and competitive exclusion. These trade-offs influence microbial growth dynamics on particulate organic carbon and reveal that the fate of carbon is governed by a complex economy within the microbial community. We propose three ecological groups to describe participants in this economy: (i) independent primary degraders, (ii) integrated primary degraders and (iii) mutualists, opportunists and parasites. The relative importance and taxonomic composition of these groups reported here should be considered context dependent, likely reflecting disturbance and management practices common to agricultural soils.
FFLV-type monomial bases for type $B$

We present a combinatorial monomial basis (or, more precisely, a family of monomial bases) in every finite-dimensional irreducible $\mathfrak{so}_{2n+1}$-module. These bases are in many ways similar to the FFLV bases for types $A$ and $C$. They are also defined combinatorially via sums over Dyck paths in certain triangular grids. Our sums, however, involve weights depending on the length of the corresponding root. Accordingly, our bases also induce bases in certain degenerations of the modules but these degenerations are obtained not from the filtration by PBW degree but by a weighted version thereof.