Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Involvement of the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis and its interaction with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in the ontogeny of avian thermoregulation: a review

The emergence of thermoregulation in avian species is a complex matter in which neural as well as hormonal processes are involved. In a previous paper, the neural aspects of primary avian thermoregulation were discussed. In this paper the role of the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis (HPT-axis) and the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) in the ontogeny of avian thermoregulation is evaluated. The regulatory mechanisms and different important hormones of both axes, which have stimulatory or inhibitory effects, are discussed. Because the onset of functionality of the thermoregulatory system is of great interest, the ontogeny and functionality of the hormonal axes are clarified. There is a great difference between precocial and altricial birds in hormonal events as well as in neural processes which are involved in the emergence of thermoregulation. In precocial avian species the HPT-axis becomes functional during the mid- to late embryonic period while the same axis only becomes fully functional during the first week post-hatch in altricial avian species. As early as the sixties, the emergence of homeothermy in chickens was investigated. It was concluded that the thyroid gland plays an important role in the thermoregulatory mechanisms of newly hatched chicks. More recent studies however were not able to show any direct effect of the thyroid hormones on the thermoregulation of day-old chicks, although blocking the conversion of T4 to T3 caused a decrease in body temperature in young chicks. Thyrotropin releasing hormone (TRH) is known to act in thermoregulation in mammals and several authors have found an effect of TRH on the metabolism of young and older chicks. However, the exact mechanism still remains unclear. Because the HPT- and the HPA-axis show close relationships, the role of the HPA-axis in the ontogeny of thermoregulation is also taken into consideration in this review. In mammals as well as in birds, corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) is involved in the primary thermoregulation. We conclude that the HPT-axis has an important role in the ontogeny of avian thermoregulation. The exact role of the HPA-axis remains largely unclear although at least CRH is definitely of some importance.
Why is There More Crime in Cities?

Crime rates are much higher in big cities than in either small cities or rural areas. This paper explains this connection by using victimization data, evidence from the NLSY on criminal behavior, and the Uniform Crime Reports. Higher pecuniary benefits for crime in large cities can explain at most one‐quarter of the connection between city size and crime rates. Lower probabilities of arrest and a lower probability of recognition are features of urban life, but these factors seem to explain at most one‐fifth of the urban crime oeffect. Between one‐third and one‐half of the urban effect on crime can be explained by the presence of more famale‐headed households in cities.
The role of intonation and visual cues in the perception of sentence types: Evidence from European Portuguese varieties

In this paper, we explore the role of intonation and visual cues in the perception of statements and questions in two varieties of European Portuguese—the standard (SEP) and the insular variety of Azores, Ponta Delgada (PtD)—previously shown to convey sentence type contrasts by different uses of intonational means and/or facial gestures, namely eyebrow movements. Forty native speakers (20 from each variety) were exposed to SEP and PtD stimuli in a perception task with three conditions (audio only, video only, and audiovisual). The audiovisual condition includes congruent and incongruent (both original and manipulated) stimuli, where there is either a match or a mismatch between the auditory and visual features as potential cues for a specific sentence type. We concluded that both SEP and PtD participants rely more on intonation than on eyebrow movement to identify sentence types, even when exposed to incongruent audiovisual stimuli. In the absence of audio information, unexpectedly, participants do not interpret eyebrow raising as a question marker, not even when perceiving stimuli from their native variety. When exposed to non-native audiovisual stimuli, both SEP and PtD participants present longer reaction times (RTs), especially for incongruent stimuli. Finally, although we confirm the strength of intonation over visual cues, RTs in the audiovisual condition are significantly shorter than in the audio condition, thus pointing to the relevance of visual cues for structural/linguistic marking.
Oil and democracy: More than a cross-country correlation?

This article revisits the empirical relationship between oil and democracy. Existing studies establish a negative cross-country correlation between oil and democracy in a Pooled OLS framework. This insight has recently been challenged by claiming that it suffers from omitted variables, and that including country fixed effects removes the statistical association between oil and democracy. This article argues that because of the high persistence of democracy and oil, the findings of no effect of oil on democracy suffers from weak instrument problems and is not informative. Indeed, this article shows that levels of oil systematically predict both levels and changes in democracy in a sample of up to 156 countries between 1972 and 2002. By considering a different identification assumption for oil and by using additional and more informative moment conditions to instrument the regressors, this article demonstrates that the relationship between oil and democracy is negative also when country fixed effects are taken into account. This result holds for alternative measures of democracy and alternative measures of oil abundance; it is robust when including additional covariates and when removing major oil producers.
Interannual variability and ventilation timescales in the ocean cavity beneath Filchner‐Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica

[1] Multiyear time series of ocean current and temperatures from beneath Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica, demonstrate both seasonal and interannual variability. The seasonal signal is visible at all measurement sites, although it was swamped for a 2-year period (1999 - 2001) when extraordinarily light sea-ice cover in the southern Weddell Sea during the 1997 - 1998 Austral summer caused an anomalously large pulse of High Salinity Shelf Water to flush beneath the ice shelf. The pulse was observed twice at an instrumented site near the Berkner Island coast, once on its way to the Filchner Depression and once after the signal had propagated around the depression and returned to the site as an anomalously large pulse of Ice Shelf Water. The timings of the signal allow an estimate of 24 - 30 months for the flushing timescales of the sub-ice shelf ocean cavity, indicating that the cavity is highly responsive to external forcing. A timescale for the full ventilation of the cavity of 4 - 5 years is obtained from the length of time the sub-ice shelf conditions take to return to their original state, a timescale significantly shorter than previous estimates.
ALKALINE CHEMICAL ACTIVATION OF URBAN GLASS WASTES TO PRODUCE CEMENTITUOUS MATERIALS

This is a preliminary work for evaluate the promising direction to reuse the recycled vitreous material by the alkaline activation than help to produce an alternative material with cementitious characteristic. NaOH and NaOH/Na2CO3 solutions were used like activation agents during the alkaline chemical activation of glass waste/blast furnace slag mixtures. The particle size of glass waste and nature of alkaline solution were analyzed to identify their influence on the mechanical properties. The NaOH/Na2CO3 solutions showed better performance to activate the blast furnace slag. The mechano-chemical process is an option for dissolve the glass waste in an alkaline solution. The alkaline solution formed with the glass waste will be use like alkaline activation agent for the blast furnace slag.
Crowdsourcing citizen science: exploring the tensions between paid professionals and users

This paper explores the relationship between paid labour and unpaid users within the Zooniverse, a crowdsourced citizen science platform. The platform brings together a crowd of users to categorise data for use in scientific projects. It was initially established by a small group of academics for a single astronomy project, but has now grown into a multi-project platform that has engaged over 1.3 million users so far. The growth has introduced different dynamics to the platform as it has incorporated a greater number of scientists, developers, links with organisations, and funding arrangements—each bringing additional pressures and complications. The relationships between paid/professional and unpaid/citizen labour have become increasingly complicated with the rapid expansion of the Zooniverse. The paper draws on empirical data from an ongoing research project that has access to both users and paid professionals on the platform. There is the potential through growing peer-to-peer capacity that the boundaries between professional and citizen scientists can become significantly blurred. The findings of the paper, therefore, address important questions about the combinations of paid and unpaid labour, the involvement of a crowd in citizen science, and the contradictions this entails for an online platform. These are considered specifically from the viewpoint of the users and, therefore, form a new contribution to the theoretical understanding of crowdsourcing in practice.
On effect of wave breaking on short wind waves

The paper presents an attempt to estimate short wave generation by wave breaking. A breaking wave crest disturbs the surface and generates sub‐surface turbulence. The locally disturbed area further disperses and feeds short wave energy to the surroundings. The total short wave energy results from summing up the effect of wave breaking events randomly distributed over the sea surface. The rate of short wave generation is determined by the frequency of wavebreaking events per unit area. The source of short wave energy is isotropic, thus it generates waves at cross and opposite wind directions. The model qualitatively reproduces observed directional property of short wind wave spectra and mean square slope.
Optimum Distributed Generation Location, Type, and Penetration for Radial Distribution Networks

This paper studies the effect of implementing distributed generation (DG) units into radial distribution systems to optimize the electrical performance of the network. The IEEE 13 bus radial test feeder was chosen as an example for radial distribution networks. The DG units are categorized by the type of power generated, which are apparent power (P+jQ) and active power (P only). The optimization process uses two techniques, the first is the generalized reduced gradient (GRG) and the second is the genetic algorithm (GA). The paper studied and compared the impact of implementing both categorize of DG units, using both optimization techniques on the electrical performance of the radial distribution system, from three points of view; the overall system losses, the bus voltage, the generation costs. Graphs are presented to show the effect of varying the penetration level (i.e. DG size) with each point of view separately, in addition to a comparison between the performance of GRG and GA. Finally the DG units with apparent power generation are preferred from the three points of view. And the GA performance is better with larger number of variables.
Automated Physical Testbeds for Emulation of Wireless Networks

Institute of Reliable Embedded Systems and Communication Electronics, Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany has developed an automated testing environment, Automated Physical TestBeds (APTB), for analyzing the performance of wireless systems and its supporting protocols. Wireless physical networking nodes can connect to this APTB and the antenna output of this attaches with the RF waveguides. To model the RF environment this RF waveguides then establish wired connection among RF elements like splitters, attenuators and switches. In such kind of set up it’s well possible to vary the path characteristics by altering the attenuators and switches. The major advantage of using APTB is the possibility of isolated, well controlled, repeatable test environment in various conditions to run statistical analysis and even to execute regression tests. This paper provides an overview of the design and implementation of APTB, demonstrates its ability to automate test cases, and its efficiency.
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THE FAST DENSE GAS EXPERIMENT

The preliminary design of a Ludwieg tube experiment for the verification of the existence of nonclassical rarefaction shock waves in dense vapors is here critically analyzed by means of real gas numerical simulations of the experimental setup. The Flexible Asym- metric Shock Tube (FAST) setup is a dense gas Ludwieg-type tube in which a rarefaction shock is produced after the opening of the valve separating the reservoir from the charge tube. Quasi-onedimensional simulations of the FAST experiment are presented to support the current design of the experiment. Simulations are performed using the CFD software zFlow linked to the appropriate thermodynamic libraries that implement newly developed thermodynamic models. Off-design situations are also investigated numerically and in- clude uncertainties related to thermodynamic modeling, the possibility of using different fluids and the sensitivity to a small change in the nozzle throat section. The preliminary design is confirmed to be feasible and constructions requirements are found to be well within technological limits.
149-158 Bernasconi

The ultimate importance of paternal contributions to fitness and of post-pollination selection in flowering plants have remained elusive, largely because of the technical difficulty of assigning paternity. I review empirical studies that use heritable markers to investigate per-fruit seed paternity in natural populations and after experimental multiple-donor pollination. Thirty-one studies covering 23 species from 16 plant families document that in natural populations seeds from a single fruit are often fathered by multiple pollen donors (5 species from 5 families), that donors can differ significantly in seed-siring success (8 species from 6 families), that variation in pollen tube growth rates can be heritable (n = 1 out of 4 studies), that donor and recipient genotypes can simultaneously affect paternity (n = 2), and that temporal order of pollen deposition (n = 1) and environmental effects (n = 2) affect the outcome of pollen competition. These studies also investigate the role of post-pollination selection in the avoidance of inbreeding and for species boundaries. Most studies of male reproductive success in plants to date base on isozyme electrophoresis. The availability in the last decade of highly polymorphic molecular markers such as microsatellite DNA has been expected to open new possibilities to investigate competition and selection during the gametophytic phase. Yet, to date, there is still need for greater data wealth on seed paternity to test theories of sex allocation and to gain deeper understanding of floral trait evolution and of the evolutionary consequences of post-pollination selection in flowering plants.
Some fixed-point theorems on locally convex linear topological spaces

Let (E, τ) be a locally convex linear Hausdorff topological space. We have proved mainly the following results. (i) Let f be nonexpansive on a nonempty τ-sequentially complete, τ-bounded, and starshaped subset M of E and let (I-f) map τ-bounded and τ-sequentially closed subsets of M into τ-sequentially closed subsets of M. Then f has a fixed-point in M. (ii) Let f be nonexpansive on a nonempty, τ-sequentially compact, and starshaped subset M of E. Then f has a fixed-point in M. (iii) Let (E, τ) be τ-quasi-complete. Let X be a nonempty, τ-bounded, τ-closed, and convex subset of E and M be a τ-compact subset of X. Let F be a commutative family of nonexpansive mappings on X having the property that for some f1 ∈ F and for each x ∈ X, τ-closure of the set contains a point of M. Then the family F has a common fixed-point in M.
Line and Grid Impedance Impact on the Performances of a Parallel Connected Modular Inverter System

With the rising fuel cost, increasing demand of power and the concerns for global climate change, the use of clean energy make the connection of power electronics building bloc in the heart of the current research. The high output current applications make the parallel connection of modular inverters to be a solution for the use of low power building block inverters where the output power cannot be handled by a single inverter configuration. In this context, average-modeling using average phase–leg technique allows the n -parallel connected inverters to be analyzed accurately and rapidly without requiring the complexity of the full switched inverter topology. The obtained analytical solution along with the equivalent circuit model makes easier the design of the control loop. The analytical solution of the n -parallel connected inverters shows the impact of the line and grid impedance on the performance of the overall system. The impact of this coupling has to be investigated such that the main feature of paralleling inverters is guaranteed and that the inverter mode of operation will not be compromised. The main advantage of paralleling inverters can be lost for a certain coupling impedance considerations.
Hours and effort variation in sunspot-based business cycle theory

This paper analyzes the role of variable work effort in inducing sunspot equilibria in real business cycle models. Not only is it demonstrated that variable workers' work intensity reduces the degree of increasing returns that is needed to generate indeterminacy but it is also shown that this can be done without assuming a very elastic supply of labor.
Safe Assets As Commodity Money

This paper presents a model in which safe assets are systemic because they are the medium of exchange for risky assets. Like commodity money, these assets are costly to produce and have some intrinsic value, resulting in (a) non-neutrality and (b) overproduction. Quantitatively, the welfare consequences of these inefficiencies depend on the costs of producing safe assets, which can be inferred from the equilibrium value of the liquidity premium. When the model is calibrated to plausible liquidity premia the resulting inefficiencies are not large.
EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF BAFFLE EFFECT ON THE FLOW IN A RECTANGULAR PRIMARY SEDIMENTATION TANK

In primary sedimentation tanks, short-circuiting enlargement of dead zones and high ow mixing problems are caused by circulation regions (dead zones), which can reduce the optimal sedimentation of particles. For proper design of such tanks, the formation of recirculation zones should be avoided. The provision of a bae as a geometrical modi cation of a tank may in uence the ow eld for better sedimentation. Thus, in this study, velocity measurements were performed by a three-dimensional Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) to investigate bae e ects on the velocity distribution in a primary rectangular sedimentation tank, quantitatively. E ects of bae positioning were also determined. Mean ow analysis shows how a bae can alter the hydrodynamics of the ow eld. It was quantitatively found that the intermediate bae not only in uences the ow eld in its downstream, but also a ects the ow pattern in its upstream. It was found that the bae setting and its position relative to the inlet and outlet in uences the ow eld and the development of ow. Baed ow may provide better conditions for sedimentation by in uencing velocity pro les. However, further detailed experimental study is necessary to fully capture the bae e ect and obtain further insight into the complex ow eld in a sedimentation tank.
State of the art of Additive Manufacturing for polymeric medical implants

Additive Manufacturing (AM) commonly known as 3D printing has found many applications in the automotive, aerospace and medical industries. The flexibility to fabricate 3D objects of any complexity displayed by AM technologies such as Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Stereolithography (SLA), Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), PolyJet printing and electrospinning, has been used to improve the lives of many patients through the provision of polymeric implants, scaffolds and devices for drug delivery. The common limitation of such applications is the biocompatibility of the AM material with the human body and systems. An ideal non degradable implant would not invoke an inflammatory or toxic response whereas for a degradable implant, the degradants must also be metabolized in the body after fulfilling its purpose, thus leaving no trace. Furthermore, inertness, weight similar to human bone or even lighter, capability to generate no artifacts on Computer Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans, sufficient strength to resist functional stresses for load bearing implants, low and no thermal conductivity, easy sterilization and low cost of manufacturing are the desired characteristics for the acceptance of the use of an implant in a human body. Metallic and ceramic implants have been extensively used for medical implants. However the possible need for a second surgery to remove metallic implants, the stress shielding effect, the radio-opacity of the metal and long-term presence of metallic ions in vivo are major disadvantages of metallic implants which can be overcome by the use of their counterparts manufactured from polymeric materials. Building on the already established AM powder based technologies; a transition from micro to nanosized powder particles to improve the mechanical properties of SLS polymeric implants is a new trend of development. The optimum ratio of Hydroxyapatite (HA) to polymer composites and the establishment of measuring standards to meet the requirement of a medical implant are the actual challenges of AM for polymeric medical implants.
LABOUR AND DEVELOPMENT: WHAT CAN BE LEARNT FROM THE NORDIC MODEL (Praca i rozwój: jakie lekcje mozna wyciagnac z 'modelu skandynawskiego')

We also experience that many labour organisations in the South as well as left-leaning politicians (e.g. President Lula in Brazil) are interested in importing this model to their countries. Trade unions and political parties, particularly social democratic parties, of the North are just as eager to export their successful social model, and they use a lot of resources to transfer their experiences to the South. Social peace, tri-partite co-operation and social dialogue are being promoted as central measures in order to achieve the welfare state.
A Simple Acceleration Method for the Louvain Algorithm

: The Louvain algorithm is well known for its high speed for detecting community structure in networks. In this paper, first, we analyze the Louvain algorithm as the preliminary experiment to uncover the processes that cause wasted computational time and their characteristics. Then based on this, we propose the Louvain Prune algorithm. The experiments show that the Louvain Prune algorithm significantly reduces computational time by up to 90%, and retains almost the same quality as the original Louvain algorithm.