Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disturbance intensity is a stronger driver of biomass recovery than remaining tree‐community attributes in a managed Amazonian forest

Forest recovery following management interventions is important to maintain ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services. It remains, however, largely unclear how above‐ground biomass (AGB) recovery of species‐rich tropical forests is affected by disturbance intensity and post‐disturbance (remaining) tree‐community attributes, following logging and thinning interventions. We investigated whether annual AGB increment (∆AGB) decreases with management‐related disturbance intensity (disturbance hypothesis), and increases with the diversity (niche‐complementarity hypothesis) and the community‐weighted mean (CWM) of acquisitive traits of dominant species (biomass‐ratio hypothesis) in the remaining tree community. We analysed data from a long‐term forest‐management experiment in the Brazilian Amazon over two recovery periods: post‐logging (1983–1989) and post‐thinning (1995–2012). We computed the ∆AGB of surviving trees, recruit trees and of the total tree community. Disturbance intensity was quantified as basal area reduction and basal area remaining. Remaining diversity (taxonomic, functional and structural) and CWM of five functional traits linked to biomass productivity (specific leaf area, leaf nitrogen and phosphorous concentration, leaf toughness and wood density) were calculated for the post‐intervention inventories. Predictors were related to response variables using multiple linear regressions and structural equation modelling. We found support for the disturbance hypothesis in both recovery periods. AGB increment of survivors and of the total tree community increased with basal area remaining, indicating the importance of remaining growing stock for biomass recovery. Conversely, AGB increment of recruit trees increased with basal area reduction because changes in forest structure increased resource availability for young trees. We did not find consistent support for the niche‐complementarity and biomass‐ratio hypotheses, possibly because of a high redundancy in these extremely species‐rich forests. Synthesis and applications. The intensity of disturbance through management, expressed as basal area reduction and basal area remaining, was consistently more important for explaining forest biomass recovery following harvesting and thinning than remaining diversity or trait composition. This points to the importance of controlling logging and thinning intensity in forests of the eastern Amazon. Given the high intervention intensities applied in this experiment, it is likely that low to moderate harvesting intensities permitted by the current legislation for the Brazilian Amazon (30 m³/ha) will not impair biomass recovery in these forests.
Daytime Sleepiness and Academic Performance among Medical Students

The study aimed to examine the prevalence of daytime sleepiness among medical students and to explore its relationship with academic performance. A total of 161 consenting Saudi male medical students aged 18 and above participated in this cross-sectional survey done in Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University in Alkharj, Saudi Arabia. All subjects answered a generalized questionnaire that was piloted and included information on demographics and Epworth-sleepiness scale (ESS). Excessive daytime sleepiness was observed in 37.8% of the subjects. Only 22 (13.7%) of the subjects had less than 4 hours of sleep while majority (70.8%) fell within 4-8 hours. Comparison between subjects with normal sleep versus those with excessive daytime sleepiness revealed no significant differences, including GPA scores. Excessive daytime sleepiness is common among Saudi male medical students and this does not seem to influence GPA scores. Prospective studies are needed to validate the present findings.
Why honey is effective as a medicine

The effectiveness of honey as a therapeutic agent has been unequivocally demonstrated in the literature reviewed in Part 1 of this article published in 1999, but the biochemical explanation of these effects is more hypothetical. However, a rational explanation can be seen when one looks at the scientific literature outside that on honey. Some of the components of honey are substances known to have physiological actions that would explain many of its therapeutic effects. In addition, research on honey has shown directly that it has physiological actions that would give therapeutic effects.
Parameterizing Running Kinematics

The aim of the present study was to develop a parametric running technique model with a minimum set of parameters. Full-body kinematic trajectories of 90 running trials was used to drive musculoskeletal models in the AnyBody Modeling System for simulation of a variety of running motions. A mixed terms Fourier series (FS) representation of the anatomical joint angles along with the translational and rotational components of the pelvis was performed. The coefficients of these FS served as the primary parameters of the running simulation model. All FS coefficients in company with the subject anthropometry were exposed to a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) which revealed that 90% of the variance could be explained by the first 12 principal components (PCs). Transforming only these 12 PCs back to its original domain allowed for recreation of the running trials. New running techniques were generated by multiplying the standard deviation of different PCs with different factors, adding them to the mean values of the 12 first principal components, and importing them back into AMS for a pseudo generated population of different running techniques.
CAN GRAZING LIVESTOCK IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES BENEFIT FROM USE OF GENOMIC SELECTION ?

1 UNE Business School, University of New England, New South Wales, Australia 2 Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, University of New England, New South Wales, Australia 4 Animal Production Institute, Agricultural Research Council, Private Bag X2, Irene, South Africa 4 Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, University of Queensland, Australia 5 Research and Innovation Systems, Agricultural Research Council, P.O. Box 8783, Pretoria, South Africa 6 Agricultural Business SA (Pty) Ltd, P.O. Box 543, Irene, South Africa
Antiulcerogenic activity of ethanol extract of the bark from Terminalia catappa in gastric ulcer model induced by ethanol in Rattus norvegicus

Terminalia is a genus which has extensive utilization by people worldwide in tradicional medicine and has also several pharmacological activities described. Accordingly, this study evaluated the antiulcerogenic activity of ethanol extract of the bark from T. catappa (EETC) by using the model of acute gastric ulceration induced by ethanol. EETB 250 mg/kg showed good results in reducing the gastric lesion area, while EETB 500 mg/kg protection was higher than one of the standard drug, carbenoxolone 100 mg/kg. Thus, EETC exhibits notable gastroprotective effect, showing that additional studies are necessary.
Computationally Efficient Active Inference in High-Dimensional State Spaces

We develop a novel approach for decision making under uncertainty in high-dimensional state spaces, considering both active unfocused and focused inference, where in the latter case reducing the uncertainty of only a subset of variables is of interest. State of the art approaches typically first calculate the posterior information (or covariance) matrix, followed by determinant calculation of thereof, and do so separately for each candidate action. In contrast, using the generalized matrix determinant lemma, we avoid calculating these posteriors and determinants of large matrices. Furthermore, as our key contribution we introduce the concept of calculation re-use, performing a one-time computation that depends on state dimensionality and system sparsity, after which evaluating the impact of each candidate action no longer depends on state dimensionality. Such a concept is derived for both active focused and unfocused inference, leading to general, non-myopic and exact approaches that are faster by orders of magnitude compared to the state of the art.
Preparing a realist evaluation to investigate the impact of privately practising nurse practitioner services on patient access to care in Australia

Background : Evaluation of privately practising nurse practitioner (PPNP) services in Australia is an important issue, because the sustainability of viable health services requires that they are underpinned by sound research. As part of ongoing work in relation to the evaluation of PPNP services, the authors plan to use realist evaluation (RE) to explore, not only whether PPNP services increase patient’s access to care, but also the means by which they achieve (or do not achieve) this outcome. RE is a complex methodology and its application requires careful preparation. Objective : To present the application of the RE methodology to an evaluation of PPNP services of health care in Australia. Method : This paper explores the philosophical underpinnings of RE and articulates the steps taken in preparing to apply RE to an evaluation of PPNP services in Australia. Discussion : RE is a complex methodology to understand and apply. There is an absence of documented detail in terms of how to apply RE to ensure that the evaluation is truly ‘realist’. Yet making the choice to apply RE to evaluations of PPNP services in Australia and overseas holds many advantages, primarily because of RE’s emphasis upon the context in which health care is delivered and how and why the context relates to the outcomes produced. This paper will contribute to the emerging dialogue on how to apply RE to evaluations of health care and will assist those considering using RE.
Approximate Low-Rank Tensor Learning

Many real-world data arise naturally in the form of tensors, i.e. multi-dimensional arrays. Equipped with an appropriate notion of low-rankness, learning algorithms can benefit greatly from exploiting the rich dependency encoded in a tensor. However, due to complexity issues, most existing works still resort to unfolding the tensor to one (or several) matrix, at the risk of losing valuable structural information. To address this problem, we choose to directly learn a low-rank tensor in an approximate manner. By combining a simple approximation algorithm for the tensor spectral norm with the recent generalized conditional gradient, we establish a formal optimization guarantee for a general low-rank tensor learning formulation. Extensive experiments verify the superiority of our algorithm.
Determination of surface water area using multitemporal SAR imagery

Inland water and freshwater constitute a valuable natural resource in economic, cultural, scientific and educational terms. Their conservation and management are critical to the interests of all humans, nations and governments. In many regions these precious heritages are in crisis. The main focus of this research is to investigate the capability of time variable ENVISAT ASAR imagery to extract water surface and assess the water surface area variations of lake Poyang in the basin of Yangtze river, the largest freshwater lake in China. Nevertheless, the lake has been in a critical situation in recent years due to a decrease of surface water caused by climate change and human activities. In order to classify water and land areas and to achieve the temporal changes of water surface area from ASAR images during the period 2006-2011, the image segmentation technique was implemented. For this purpose, a thorough analysis of the SAR system and its properties is first discussed. Indeed, some impairments can affect the SAR imaging signals. These impairments such as different types of scattering, surface roughness, dielectric property of water, speckle and geometric distortions can reduce SAR image quality. To avoid these distortions or to reduce their impact, it is therefore important to pre-process SAR images effectively and accurately. All the images were pre-processed using NEST software provided by ESA. To calculate the water surface area, each image was tiled into 9 parts and then it is segmented using two different methods. Firstly histogram for each tile is observed. Using a local adaptive thresholding technique, two local maxima were determined on the histogram and then in between these local maxima, a local minimum is determined which can be considered as the threshold. In the second technique a Gaussian curve was fitted using Levenberg-Marquardt method (1944 and 1963) to obtain a threshold. These thresholds are used to segment the image into homogeneous land and water regions. Later, the time series for both methods is derived from the estimated water surface areas. The results indicate an intense decreasing trend in Poyang Lake surface area during the period 2006-2011. Especially between 2010 and 2011, the lake significantly lost its surface area as compared to the year 2006. Finally, the results are presented for both locally adaptive thresholding and Levenberg-Marquardt methods. These results illustrate the effectiveness of the locally adaptive thresholding method to detect water surface change. A continuous monitoring of water surface change would lead to a long term time series, which is definitely beneficial for water management purposes.
Towards resolving strongly-interacting dark sectors at colliders

Dark sectors with strong interactions have received considerable interest. Assuming the existence of a minimally coupled dark sector which runs to strong interactions in the infrared, we address the question whether the scaling behavior of this dark sector can be observed in missing energy signatures at present and future hadron colliders. We compare these findings to the concrete case of self-interacting dark matter and demonstrate that the energy dependence of high-momentum transfer final states can in principle be used to gain information about the UV structure of hidden sectors at future hadron colliders, subject to large improvements in systematic uncertainties, which could complement proof-of-principle lattice investigations. We also comment on the case of dark Abelian Uð1Þ theories.
Quantitative Visualization of Heat Transfer in Oscillatory and Pulsatile Flows

Oscillatory and pulsatile flows arise in a variety of engineering applications as well as in nature. Typical examples include blood flow, breathing, flow in some pipe systems, acoustic systems, etc. Typical engineering applications include enhancement of heat transfer and species transport, chemical species separation, flow control, flow velocity measurement equipment calibration and biomedical applications. Very often these flows are accompanied by heat or mass transfer processes. During the past four decades numerous studies have addressed issues specific for purely oscillatory and modulated or pulsatile flows (oscillatory flow superimposed on a mean steady flow). Recent advances in the study of oscillatory flows were reviewed by Cooper et al. (1993) and Herman (2000). A better understanding of these flows and the accompanying heat transfer processes is essential for the proper design of equipment for such processes and physical situations. Both the experimental study and the computational modeling of oscillatory and pulsatile flows pose specific challenges, which will be addressed in this chapter, with the emphasis on quantitative experimental visualization using holographic interferometry. Experimental visualization of oscillatory and pulsatile flows and heat transfer requires noninvasive measurement techniques, to avoid affecting the investigated process. In this chapter we discuss holographic interferometry (HI) as a powerful tool in the quantitative visualization of oscillatory and pulsatile flows and heat transfer. Two situations will be considered to demonstrate the applications of the method: (i) the study of self-sustained oscillatory flows and the accompanying heat transfer in grooved and communicating channels and the study of (ii) oscillatory flow and heat transfer in the stack region of thermoacoustic refrigerators. In this chapter we introduce holographic interferometry as an experimental technique that simultaneously renders quantitative flow and heat transfer data. We demonstrate that for a certain class of problems HI is superior to conventional flow visualization techniques, such as tracer methods or dye injection, since it can provide not only qualitative but also quantitative insight into certain types of unsteady flows and it does not require the seeding of the flow. Several types of flows and heat transfer processes amenable for quantitative evaluation will be analyzed in the paper. We begin the discussion by introducing the experimental apparatus and technique, followed by the description of the investigated
WELL-BEING AND MBTI ® PERSONALITY TYPE IN THE WORKPLACE AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

A primary goal for the vast majority of people is to have a happy and healthy life (Diener, 2000; Haybron, 2008; Ford et al., 2015). Measuring and enhancing wellbeing, also referred to as “happiness” in layperson’s terminology, has become a key focus of research and practice in the growing field of positive psychology (Diener, 2000; Lyubomirsky, 2001; Seligman, 2011). An increasing number of researchers and practitioners have identified how a person’s level of well-being influences a wide range of life outcomes, including his or her health, relationships, academic performance, creativity, collaboration, and income (Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, & Staw, 2005; Bryson et al., 2014; Diener & Tay, 2012; Heintzelman & King, 2014; Khaw & Kern, 2015; Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005; Seligman, 2011; Swart & Rothmann 2012). While the interest in well-being is not a new area of research, the past decade has seen significant developments in theory and methods for measuring human psychological well-being (Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2006; Diener & Tay, 2012; Kahneman & Krueger, 2006).
Non-invasive cardiac output monitoring techniques in the ICU

Cardiac output (CO) measurement is an essential part of haemodynamic management in critically ill patients, especially in the intensive care unit (ICU). Since 1970 the ‘clinical reference standard’ for CO monitoring is the use of a pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) for thermodilution (TDPAC). Because of concerns about the safety and overall benefit of the PAC, less invasive and non-invasive techniques have emerged to measure CO in the ICU and these techniques are developing quickly. The aim of this review is to give an overview of the currently available non-invasive techniques for continuous CO monitoring such as oesophageal Doppler, partial carbon dioxide rebreathing, bioimpedance, bioreactance and volume clamping. Furthermore, we evaluate their accuracy in the setting of the ICU by comparing them with the ‘gold standard’ TDPAC. Although the non-invasive techniques show reasonably good results in elective postoperative ICU patients, the noninvasive techniques are not able to replace TDPAC for accurate CO measurements in non-elective ICU patients. Overall the non-invasive techniques seem to perform better as a trend-monitoring device as opposed to measuring absolute CO.
The Extent of Skills Mismatch Among Childhood Education Graduates of Princess Alia University College

This study is aimed at investigating the extent of skill mismatch between the skills the childhood education graduates at Al- Balqa Applied University - Princess Alia University College acquired during their studies and those demanded in the labor market. The descriptive survey design was adopted and the purposive sampling technique was employed to select 110 participants to respond to a questionnaire items utilized by the researcher based on their knowledge. Three research questions were answered and two hypotheses were tested at the significant level of 0.05. Statistical analysis of the responses using the t-test and ANOVA (analysis of variance) showed that there was a negative relationship between skills demand and supply (r = -0.006 ; p < 0.05), which is generally low. Additionally, the extent of skills mismatch was 48.37 with major weaknesses found in communication, interpersonal, decision-making, critical thinking, and analytical skill. The analytical skill was the most required skill by the labor market, while self directing learning was the least. The mean for each of the skills demand was significantly different from its supply. The university graduates were not adequately prepared for work with respect to the skills demanded in the labor market. The implications of these findings were discussed and it was suggested that universities should have a clear vision of the labor market demand for skilled graduates. The research’s limitations and implications included financial constraints, which automatically re-defined the researchers’ need to expand the scope of coverage, limiting the investigation to childhood graduates of 2013-2014, at Al-Balqa Applied University – Princess Alia University College. Therefore, the generalization of the study is limited to the sample of students involved. Keywords: Skills mismatch, employability, graduates, labor market, higher education institutions.
Pesticide and Environmental Toxicology Branch Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment California Environmental Protection Agency P.O. Box 4010, MS-12B Sacramento, California 95812 Attention: PHG Program Subject: Comment to the Proposed Update of the Public Health Goals for Nitrate and Nitri

The signatories below appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Proposed Update of the Public ealth oals for Nitrate and Nitrite in rinking Water (“ raft P ”). We feel that the scientific literature published since the development of the original public health goals (PHGs) in 1997 do, in fact, support changing the current PHG of 45 parts per million (ppm) for nitrate (10 ppm when expressed as nitrogen) and 3 ppm for nitrite (1 ppm when expressed as nitrogen). A multitude of scientific studies have been conducted and published since 1997 on nitrate’s effects on human health that, contrary to O ! 's assertion, suggest a more health-protective PHG is warranted. Additionally, although the link between nitrate/nitrite and cancer is the subject of continued scientific investigation and, therefore, uncertainty, in light of the evidence that does exist, the precautionary principle weighs in favor of a more health-protective PHG or, at least, an update to the uncertainty factors. Similarly, likely cumulative impacts from the synergistic properties of multiple, cooccurring contaminants, though not yet well understood as a scientific matter, should lead to a lower and more health-protective PHG.
Criterios de robustez para sistemas lineales

Al construir un modelo de un sistema, este siempre incluye algun grado de incertidumbre con respecto al sistema real y a su entorno. El sistema puede cambiar de manera inesperada o estar sujeto a perturbaciones inesperadas. Debido a factores como los cambios en los parametros, las dinamicas y retardos no modeladas, los cambios en los puntos de operacion, el ruido en los sensores o las perturbaciones no predichas, el modelo de un proceso no puede ser una representacion completamente acertada del sistema real [1].