Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Riverine turtles select habitats maintained by natural discharge regimes in an unimpounded large river

Turtle populations are imperiled worldwide, but limited ecological information from unaltered systems hampers science‐based management and conservation of some species, especially riverine turtles such as the spiny softshell (Apalone spinifera). We therefore investigated movements and spatial habitat selection of 54 A. spinifera in 633 river kilometres (rkm) of the least‐altered river in the conterminous United States—the Yellowstone River in Montana—from 2005 to 2009. Movement rates and home ranges were smaller than in fragmented, altered river systems because nesting and overwintering habitats were common and in close proximity. Habitat selection also differed. A. spinifera in the Yellowstone River overwintered in unaltered bluff pools and summered in complex reaches with side channels, islands, and diverse habitats. However, those in the highly altered Missouri River used deep alluvial pools for overwintering and flooded, inundated, or backwatered tributary mouths in spring and summer. Importantly, selected habitats in both rivers were functionally similar, including complex river reaches (with multiple channels, islands, and diverse habitats) and natural pool types. Unfortunately, these are the very habitats that are limited in rivers affected by dams, bank stabilization, and channelization. Therefore, preservation of natural and diverse riverine habitats—and the fluvial dynamics that maintain them—may enhance conservation of A. spinifera in large rivers.
Aid to and from Family by Immigrants in College

This thesis examines various types of financial transfers between college students and their family members and how they differ by immigration status. Types of financial transfers examined include whether family members: helped students make tuition or loan payments, paid for unexpected expenses, provided health insurance, gave assistance with utilities and credit card payments, rent payments, or provided a regular allowance. Variables used to measure transfers from students to family members are whether students: babysat family member’s children or let family members live with them during college, and whether these services were done for free, and whether students gave money to family members while in college. Data was collected from a 2017 survey examining how over 3,000 college students pay for and experience college at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Rutgers University - Camden. Results were analyzed using mixed effects logistic regressions that controlled for gender, race, class, highest level of parent’s education, and for each university where data was collected. Results show immigrants are less likely to receive assistance with tuition or student loan payments, help with unexpected expenses, or be provided with health insurance by family members. Immigrants are less likely than non-immigrants to help their family members by babysitting for them, but twice as likely to help by letting them live with them during college. Immigrants not only let their family members live with them at a greater rate than non-immigrants, they also do so for free more often than non-immigrants. Lastly, immigrants babysit for their families less frequently than non-immigrants. Other results show immigrants and non-immigrants do not significantly differ in terms of aid received for utilities and credit card payments, rent, money given to family, receipt of allowance, or babysitting for free.
Using ecosystem integrity to maximize climate mitigation and minimize risk in international forest policy

Several key international policy frameworks involve forests, including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). However, rules and guidelines that treat forest types equally regardless of their ecosystem integrity and risk profiles in terms of forest and carbon loss limit policy effectiveness and can facilitate forest degradation. Here we assess the potential for using a framework of ecosystem integrity to guide policy goals. We review the theory and present a conceptual framework, compare elements of integrity between primary and human-modified forests, and discuss the policy and management implications. We find that primary forests consistently have higher levels of ecosystem integrity and lower risk profiles than human-modified forests. This underscores the need to protect primary forests, develop consistent large-scale data products to identify high-integrity forests, and operationalize a framework of ecosystem integrity. Doing so will optimize long-term carbon storage and the provision of other ecosystem services, and can help guide evolving forest policy at the nexus of the biodiversity and climate crises.
A Policy Conflict Detection Scheme in Software Defined Networking

As a kind of emerging technology in the initial phase, SDN can't be perfect, and its many advantages are like a double-edged sword, which not only provides great benefits and convenience, but also brings security problems such as application policy conflict that cannot be ignored. To solve the issue of application policy conflict, a policy conflict detection scheme based on rule set grouping in the software defined networking was proposed. Rule set grouping which can reduce calculate expenses. Simulations are implemented and the results show the proposed policy conflict detection scheme is useful.
A Shellcode Detection Method Based on Full Native API Sequence and Support Vector Machine

Dynamic monitoring the behavior of a program is widely used to discriminate between benign program and malware. It is usually based on the dynamic characteristics of a program, such as API call sequence or API call frequency to judge. The key innovation of this paper is to consider the full Native API sequence and use the support vector machine to detect the shellcode. We also use the Markov chain to extract and digitize Native API sequence features. Our experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper has high accuracy and low detection rate.
Critical evaluation of classifiers in data stream mining

Over past decade there has been a significant increase in the volume of online data. Extracting meaningful knowledge from this high volume data is considered as important aspect of research. It is very difficult to completely store full data, because of its perpetual nature. Therefore, analysis is needed while the “data is moving”. This moving data is known as data stream and analyzing it without storing it completely is termed as data stream mining. In recent years, many new techniques have been proposed to overcome the challenges of data stream mining. In this paper, we review the operation of popular streaming algorithms highlighting their strength and weaknesses. We also evaluate the classifiers used in these algorithms against two popular benchmark datasets namely (a) forest cover (forest) and (b) german credit available at UCI repository. Finally, we present our critical observation and draw conclusions on the basis of our analysis.
Modèles de distribution et changements environnementaux : Application aux faunes d'échinides de l'océan Austral et écorégionalisation

Les modifications environnementales qui affectent aujourd'hui les milieux marins recouvrent des problematiques scientifiques et societales majeures, d'autant que ces changements devraient s'accelerer au cours du 21eme siecle. Comprendre et anticiper la reponse de la biodiversite marine a ces changements represente un enjeu scientifique d'actualite. Les approches biogeographiques et macroecologiques constituent un cadre scientifique dans lequel il est possible d'etudier, de decrire, et de comprendre les motifs de distribution des especes a large echelle et d'estimer leur evolution possible face aux changements environnementaux. C'est notamment le cas dans l'ocean Austral ou les effets du changement climatique se font deja sentir et ou les modifications environnementales associees pourraient avoir des effets profonds sur la structure et le fonctionnement des ecosystemes. Malgre de recents efforts d'echantillonnage, nos connaissances sur la distribution des especes dans l’ocean Austral comptent encore de nombreuses lacunes attribuables au caractere recent des decouvertes, a l'isolement et a l'eloignement de cet ocean d'acces difficiles. Dans ce contexte, les objectifs de cette these consistaient a mieux comprendre les motifs de distribution d'especes a l’echelle de l’ocean Austral, a mettre en evidence les facteurs qui en sont a l’origine et enfin, a evaluer l’impact du changement climatique sur leur distribution. Pour cela, differents types de modeles de niche ecologique (MNE) ont ete employes. Les echinides (oursins), organismes communs des communautes benthiques de l’ocean Austral ont servi de modele d'etude pour ce travail.
State-of-the-art on the protection of FACTS compensated high-voltage transmission lines: a review

In recent years, the inclusion of flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS)-based compensating devices such as a thyristor-controlled series capacitor (TCSC) and a unified power flow controller (UPFC) has been increased in high-voltage power transmission systems due to numerous technical and economical benefits. However, the operation of such FACTS devices introduces harmonics and non-linearity in power system and causes fast changes in line impedance. As a result, the most widely used fixed impedance setting based distance relaying scheme finds limitation in protecting such compensated lines. Significant research has been carried out in recent years to develop new algorithms and methods to address the problem. This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent developments in the protection of TCSC/UPFC compensated high-voltage transmission lines. The relative merits and demerits of each of the available methods are also presented for comparison. Prior to detail review, the impact of TCSC/UPFC on distance protection is evaluated by using data generated through EMTDC/PSCAD on a 400 kV two-bus test power system. This study can be useful to both academic researchers and practicing engineers to gain insight on the protection of FACTS compensated transmission lines and for further development of newer algorithms.
Kinematics of Active Deformation in the Malawi Rift and Rungwe Volcanic Province, Africa

Although the deep, wide basins of the Western rift, Africa, have served as analogues for the evolution of half‐graben basins, the geometry and kinematics of the border, intrabasinal, and transfer fault systems have been weakly constrained. Despite the >100‐km‐long fault systems bounding basins, little was known of seismicity patterns or the potential for M > 7.5 earthquakes. Using our new local earthquake database from the 2013‐2015 Study of Extension and maGmatism in Malawi aNd Tanzania (SEGMeNT) seismic array (57 onshore, 32 lake‐bottom stations) and TANGA14 (13 stations), we examine the kinematics and extension direction of the Rungwe Volcanic Province and northern Malawi rift. We relocated earthquakes using a new 1‐D velocity model and both absolute and double‐difference relocation methods. Local magnitudes of 1,178 earthquakes within the array are 0.7 < ML < 5.2 with a b‐value 0.77 ± 0.03, and magnitude of completeness ML 1.9. Focal mechanism solutions for 63 earthquakes reveal predominantly normal and oblique‐slip motion, and full moment tensor solutions for ML 4.5, 5.2 earthquakes have centroid depths within 2 km of catalog depths. The preferred nodal planes dip more than 40° from surface to >25‐km depths. Extension direction from local earthquakes and source mechanisms of teleseismically detected earthquakes are approximately N58°E and N65°E, respectively, refuting earlier interpretations of a NW‐SE transform fault system. The low b‐value indicating strong coupling across crustal‐scale border faults, border fault lengths >100 km, and evidence for aseismic deformation together indicate that infrequent M > 7.5 earthquakes are possible within this cratonic rift system.
A Unified Welfare Analysis of Government Policies

We conduct a comparative welfare analysis of 133 historical policy changes over the past half-century in the United States, focusing on policies in social insurance, education and job training, taxes and cash transfers, and in-kind transfers. For each policy, we use existing causal estimates to calculate the benefit that each policy provides its recipients (measured as their willingness to pay) and the policy’s net cost, inclusive of long-term effects on the government’s budget. We divide the willingness to pay by the net cost to the government to form each policy’s Marginal Value of Public Funds, or its ``MVPF''. Comparing MVPFs across policies provides a unified method of assessing their effect on social welfare. Our results suggest that direct investments in low-income children’s health and education have historically had the highest MVPFs, on average exceeding 5. Many such policies have paid for themselves as the government recouped the cost of their initial expenditures through additional taxes collected and reduced transfers. We find large MVPFs for education and health policies among children of all ages, rather than observing diminishing marginal returns throughout childhood. We find smaller MVPFs for policies targeting adults, generally between 0.5 and 2. Expenditures on adults have exceeded this MVPF range in particular if they induced large spillovers on children. We relate our estimates to existing theories of optimal government policy, and we discuss how the MVPF provides lessons for the design of future research.
Pengaruh corporate governance, profitabilitas, dan leverage perusahaan terhadap environmental disclosure

Penelitian bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh corporate governance, profitabilitas dan leverage perusahaan terhadap environmental disclosure. Corporate governance di dalam penelitian ini disesuaikan dengan proporsi dewan komisaris independen, ukuran komite audit dan rapat dewan komisaris. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan ukuran komite audit berpengaruh negatif signifikan terhadap environmental disclosure, rapat dewan komisaris berpengaruh signifikan terhadap environmental disclosure, dan proporsi dewan komisaris independen, profitabilitas dan leverage perusahaan tidak berpengaruh terhadap environmental disclosure.
Credit constraints and aquaculture productivity

Abstract The aquaculture sector is a capital intensive production process where access to credit is helpful in order to develop and manage farms in developing countries. Nevertheless, a supply of credit is often not readily available, which is creating credit constraint situations. This study investigates how credit constraints affect the productivity of aquaculture farmers in Bangladesh. An endogenous switching regression model is used to estimate the effects of credit constraints on productivity. The results show that productivity is significantly higher for farmers who are not exposed to credit constraints. This result reveals significant production-enhancing effects when using modern inputs for both constrained and unconstrained farmers. However, the effects are larger for the credit-unconstrained farmers because they have the opportunity to buy higher quality inputs and use them in a better input mix.
Response Strategies And Sustainability Of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society In Kenya To Changes Of The Macro-Environmental Factors

viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Background of the Study. 1 1.1.1. Response Strategies . 2 1.1.2 Sustainability . 4 1.1.3 Macro-Environmental Factors . 5 1.1.4 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in Kenya . 6 1.2 Research Problem . 8 1.3 Research Objectives . 10 1.4 Value of the Study . 11 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW . 12 2.
ASSESSING ADMINISTRATIVE STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING PEACE EDUCATION IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN THE AGADEZ REGION, NIGER REPUBLIC

This study was carried out to assess administrative strategies for enhancing Peace Education (PE) in 29 Junior Secondary Schools in the region of Agadez, Niger Republic. The study was descriptive. Quantitative and nonparametric data that helped determine majority views were collected, tallied, converted into simple percentages and means using a calculator. Information from documents that were initially in French was translated into English. The research used a total population of 487 teachers and school administrators from 29 Junior Secondary Schools in the region of Agadez. All the 84 administrators from the 29 Junior Secondary Schools were included in the research as their number was small; 388 teachers were sampled out of 403 using the Research Advisors’ Sample Size Table and Simple Random Technique. The research instrument was a self-designed structured questionnaire titled Administrative Strategies for Enhancing Peace Education Questionnaire, which was validated and had a reliability index of . 75. This paper dealt with the curriculum content that could enhance Peace Education in Junior Secondary Schools in the region of Agadez. The findings revealed that the Peace Education curriculum content was scanty. The study recommended, among others, that the Junior Secondary Schools Peace Education curriculum should be revised, and should therefore encompass relevant issues that would mould the students’ minds, issues that would help them to learn to live together and enhance mutual understanding in community; to this end, the Peace Education curriculum should mainstream Human Rights Education, Conflict Resolution Education, Disarmament Education, Development Education, International Education, Civics and any other type of education that is likely to bar the students from getting involved in violent conflict or even terrorism.
Health Tourism and Thermal Heritage: Assessing Italian Spas with Innovative Multidisciplinary Tools

The recent evolution of European health policies and tourism market trends highlights the increasing attention to health promotion strategies along with healthcare tourism innovation. Thermal industry, considered as a set of places of care, represents a possible field for the integration of territorial health tourism services, thanks to its border-crossing connotation and its recognition by the European Commission as main subsector of health tourism. Although Italy represents one of the most attractive European health tourism destination, the thermal sector is still underdeveloped, in extremely heterogeneous and fragmented conditions, unable to catalyze socioeconomic potentialities as well as optimize the use of relevant built heritage. Therefore, it is necessary to develop reliable tools and decision-making models for improving the sector in terms of health, tourism and territorial qualities. Starting from previous studies, the aim of the article is to present the development of archiTHERMability tool and discuss the results of the application on different typologies of thermal facilities. The methodological path followed three steps: (a) a review was conducted among different assessment tools to understand the state of the art; (b) the existing Italian thermal heritage was mapped, and appropriate criteria and macroareas were selected and weighted based on interviews structured with multidisciplinary experts in architecture/territory/management areas; (c) the tool was tested on two different categories of thermal facilities. The tool application on four different thermal facilities highlighted, as expected, the relevance of the managerial field. Nevertheless, the importance of the territorial context and its levels of accessibility plays a fundamental role in the structure's characterization. ArchiTHERMability hence represents an innovative tool for analyzing and understanding the Italian thermal heritage potentialities. Further investigation is necessary to test the tool on a wider sample and with different weights of criteria.
The voice of the students: needs and expectations from learning management systems

Today, many education institutions are exploiting learning management systems (LMS) as part of the learning delivery process. The accessibility of the Internet and the ubiquity of digital devices has made the LMS a popular platform for online learning, blended learning, or face-to-face learning delivery among education institutions. As the LMS plays such a key role in the learning process of the students, it is essential to reflect on the issues students may have faced in their use of the LMS and to understand their needs and expectations from the LMS. Adopting the voice of the customer (VOC) process, which is used in new product or service design to determine customer requirements, this study attempts to investigate the issues, needs, and expectations of university students from the LMS by listening to their “voice. ” Using a mixed-methods approach, this study first gathered LMS-related issues in a focus group from students who were studying in a blended-learning environment at a local university, followed by a large-scale questionnaire survey to collect data on students’ LMS needs. After ranking the students’ needs in order of importance to them, a follow-up focus group study was then conducted to examine students’ expectations for each need. Findings showed that seven needs were important in relation to students’ use of the LMS. These seven needs, in order of importance, were: “LMS allows easy enrolment of subjects”, “LMS allows easy access to learning materials”; “LMS provides fast access to learning materials”; “LMS allows download of multiple files all at one time”; “LMS operates normally most of the time”; “Learning materials are available on LMS one week before lectures”; and “LMS can be accessed from a mobile app. ” However, the students did not convey a strong need to have control over the types of notifications they receive from the LMS; to have a more attractive LMS design; to have a reasonable website response time; to have a live chat feature to interact with lecturers; and to have a uniform web interface across subjects. Findings from this study would help LMS developers to design the LMS better, and lecturers to use the LMS more effectively to meet the needs and expectations of university students.
Cloud System Task Distribution with VM Status and Configuration Management using Fuzzy Logic

: Task distribution and server management are the key requirements for proper operation of any serving system. The proper distribution of task over a number of VMs, configuring the VM depending upon the requirements and maintaining the states of VM in a cloud environment can greatly improve the QoS and power requirements of the cloud. This paper presents a fuzzy logic based system for above mentioned task, where a number of fuzzy decision making systems are used in combination to select the best VM or creates the new VM for the given task on the basis of current operating conditions (like load, available resources, task requirements etc.), and to maintain the states (dissolve, sleep, keep alive) of VM to save the power and reclaim the resources. Besides the providing better QoS and power saving, the proposed technique also reduces the active physical resources requirements. The effectiveness of the proposed technique it is validated by comparing it against standard algorithms and the simulation results verify that the technique outperforms standard techniques in terms of QoS, resource management, and power savings