Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of relative humidity and water soluble constituents of PM2.5 on visibility impairment in Beijing, China

Beijing has been experiencing severe particulate pollution accompanying the fast growing population and economy. This study investigated the impact of PM2.5 and its water soluble organic and inorganic constituents on visual impairment in Beijing under different meteorological conditions. According to the analysis of PM2.5 samples collected in Spring 2012, water soluble species took up 38.1% of PM2.5 mass, among which NO3– was the most abundant constituent, followed by SO42–, NH4+ and water soluble organic matter. The correlation analysis between visibility and aerosol loadings as well as meteorological parameters revealed the dominant impact of meteorological conditions, relative humidity in particular, on visibility impairment over the mass concentration of PM2.5. Compared to the total aerosol loading of PM2.5, visibility was better correlated with the total mass of water soluble constituents (WSC). The visual range in Beijing was the most sensitive to both WSC and PM2.5 in the RH range of 30–70%. Severe visual impairment was observed for RH ? 70% with the least sensitivity to WSC and PM2.5. The effects of synoptic scale circulation on meteorological variables that affect air quality were also examined with the movement of a cold front as a case study. The findings have direct implications to region-wide policy-making and control strategies. (Less)
A quantitative study in terms of the antecedents and outcomes of service recovery performance of the frontline employees of Mutual Trust Bank Limited

Ours is an age of Business, age of dealing with people of different peculiarities. An organization can earn both profits and reputation by satisfying its customers and clients. An organization"s main target is to attain customers" satisfaction by providing the best services to him. With the advancement of modern technologies, it has become quite easy to provide satisfactory services to many customers at a time. Yet as we are human beings, committing mistakes is very likely. Hence customers sometimes do not get the expected services and become highly dissatisfied. Mistakes are unavoidable and cause service failure. As per Bell & Zemke, 1987 defined service failure as "the experience of service result where service reaches lower than customer expectation". Although poor service delivery may result in loss of customer trust, studies have showed that service recovery paves the way of turning angry customers into loyal customers (ref). The more the loyal customers are, the more successful the organization is. Because loyal customers are less price- sensitive and help the firm draw the attraction of new customers. Therefore, "Service Recovery" is a crucial topic to be discussed. Nowadays many researches are being conducted on service recovery and put more emphasis on how to effectively deal with problem customers. Keywords: Service Recovery, customer service orientation of the firm, staff training, teamwork, employee rewards, customer service recovery performance.
Rational planning and politicians’ preferences for spending and reform: replication and extension of a survey experiment

ABSTRACT The rational planning cycle of formulating strategic goals and using performance information to assess goal implementation is assumed to assist decision-making by politicians. Empirical evidence supporting this assumption is scarce. Our study replicates a Danish experiment on the relation between performance information and politicians‘ preferences for spending and reform and extends this experiment by investigating the role of strategic goals. Based on a randomized survey experiment (1.484 Flemish city councillors) and an analysis of 225 strategic plans, we found that information on low and high performance as well as strategic goals impact politicians’ preferences for spending and reform.
Nonhomogeneous Place-Dependent Markov Chains, Unsynchronised AIMD, and Network Utility Maximization

We present a solution of a class of network utility maximization (NUM) problems using minimal communication. The constraints of the problem are inspired less by TCP-like congestion control but by problems in the area of internet of things and related areas in which the need arises to bring the behavior of a large group of agents to a social optimum. The approach uses only intermittent feedback, no inter-agent communication, and no common clock. The proposed algorithm is a combination of the classical AIMD algorithm in conjunction with a simple probabilistic rule for the agents to respond to a capacity signal. This leads to a nonhomogeneous Markov chain and we show almost sure convergence of this chain to the social optimum.
Carsharing systems demand estimation and defined operations: a literature review

Efforts have been made in the last few decades to provide new urban transport alternatives. One of these is carsharing, which involves a fleet of vehicles scattered around a city for the use of a group of members. At first, part of the research effort was put into setting up real life experiments with vehicle fleets and observing the performance of major private operators. In the meantime, with the growth of this alternative and the need to better plan its deployment, researchers started to create more advanced methods to study carsharing systems’ planning issues. In this paper, we review those methods, identifying gaps and suggesting how to bridge them in the future. Based on that review we concluded that carsharing demand is difficult to model due to the fact that the availability of vehicles is intrinsically dependent on the number of trips and vice versa. Moreover, despite the existence of carsharing simulation models that offer very detailed mobility representations, no model is able to characterise accurately the supply side, thus hindering the cost-benefit assessment that is fundamental to justify investment in this transport alternative, in particular those that are being endorsed by the European Union. More complex, however, is the operation of the emerging one-way carsharing systems, where a vehicle may be dropped off at any station, which adds uncertainty as to the location where vehicles can be picked up. Several optimisation approaches have been proposed to mitigate this problem but they are always limited in scope and leave other aspects out for model simplification purposes. Some simulation models have also been developed to study the performance of this type of carsharing system, but they have not included ways of balancing the vehicle stocks.
Inequity in ecosystem service delivery: socioeconomic gaps in the public-private conservation network

Conservation areas, both public and private, are critical tools to protect biodiversity and deliver important ecosystem services (ES) to society. Although societal benefits from such ES are increasingly used to promote public support of conservation, the number of beneficiaries, their identity, and the magnitude of benefits are largely unknown for the vast majority of conservation areas in the United States public-private conservation network. The location of conservation areas in relation to people strongly influences the direction and magnitude of ES flows as well as the identity of beneficiaries. We analyzed benefit zones, the areas to which selected ES could be conveyed to beneficiaries, to assess who benefits from a typical conservation network. Better knowledge of ES flows and beneficiaries will help land conservationists make a stronger case for the broad collateral benefits of conservation and help to address issues of social-environmental justice. To evaluate who benefits the most from the current public-private conservation network, we delineated the benefit zones for local ES (within 16 km) that are conveyed along hydrological paths from public (federal and state) and private (easements) conservation lands in the states of North Carolina and Virginia, USA. We also discuss the challenges and demonstrate an approach for delineating nonhydrological benefits that are passively conveyed to beneficiaries. We mapped and compared the geographic distribution of benefit zones within and among conservation area types. We further compared beneficiary demographics across benefit zones of the conservation area types and found that hydrological benefit zones of federal protected areas encompass disproportionately fewer minority beneficiaries compared to statewide demographic patterns. In contrast, benefit zones of state protected areas and private easements encompassed a much greater proportion of minority beneficiaries (~22–25%). Benefit zones associated with private conservation lands included beneficiaries of significantly greater household income than benefit zones of other types of conservation areas. Our analysis of ES flows revealed significant socioeconomic gaps in how the current public-private conservation network benefits the public. These gaps warrant consideration in regional conservation plans and suggest that private conservation initiatives may be best suited for responding to the equity challenge. Enhancing the ecosystem benefits and the equity of benefit delivery from private conservation networks could build public and political support for long-term conservation strategies and ultimately enhance conservation efficacy.
DNSR: Domain Name Sux-based Routing in Overlay Networks ?

Overlay Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks are application layer networks which facilitate users in performing distributed functions such as keyword searches over the data of other users. An im- portant problem in such networks is that the connection among peers are arbitrary, leading in that way to a topology structure which doesn't match the underlying physical topology. This phenomenon leads to excessive network resource consumption in Wide Area Networks as well as degraded user experience because of the incurred network delays. Most state-of-the-art research concentrates on structuring overlay networks in a way that query messages can reach the appropriate nodes within some hop-count boundaries. These approaches are not taking into account the underlying network topology mismatch making it therefore inappropriate for wide area routing. In this work we propose and evaluate DNSR (Domain Name Sux-b ased Routing), which is a novel technique to route query messages in Overlay Networks, based on the "domain closeness" of the node sending the message. We describe DNSR and show simulation experiments which are performed over PeerWare, our distributed infrastructure which runs on a network of 50 workstations. Our simulations are based on real data gathered from one of the largest open P2P networks, namely Gnutella.
The effect of extraction method on the major constituents and biological effects of Trachyspermum ammi L. fruits

Background and objectives: Variety of extraction methods coupled with definite solvents could increase the removal rate ofmajor constituents from plants. This research has been conducted to evaluate the effect of extraction methods on the main group of compounds, cytotoxicity, anti acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and antioxidant activity of Trachyspermum ammi fruits. Methods: To compare the quality of extracts earned from maceration and reflux techniques, the amounts of total phenolics, flavonoids and antioxidant property of T. ammi’s fruits extracts were determined; moreover, the cytotoxic activity against Human acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cell lines (NALM-6) was conducted using MTT assay. Anti-acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE) activity of both extracts were also examined by Ellman’s method. Results: The extraction yield of the plant was significantly higher for maceration compared to reflux extraction. Also, both antioxidant activity and total flavonoid contents (IC50=132.95 µg/mL and 140.15 mg catechin/g dry extract, respectively) showed higher amounts considerably in the maceration extraction. In reverse, the content of phenolic compounds (147.28 mg gallic acid/g dry extract and 16.6 mg thymol/g dry extract) was elevated in the refluxed extract. The result exerted moderate inhibition on butyrylcholinesterase activity (IC50= 394.161 µg/mL) and cytotoxicity (IC50 =166.92±1.76 μg/mL for NALM-6 cell line) of the extract using maceration. Conclusion: The maceration method could provide additional amounts of major constituents and greater biological properties compared to the reflux technique.
The role of selected plant metabolites in host plant choice by caterpillars of Acrobasis advenella (Zincken, 1818) (Lepidoptera, Pyralidae)

Abstract Acrobasis advenella is an oligophagous species feeding on plants of the Rosaceae family. The differences in concentrations of host plant quality components, above all primary metabolites and the presence or absence of secondary metabolites, directly affects herbivore growth and development. The objectives of this research were to determine the food preferences of 1st instar larvae according to the chemical composition of host plants. The highest acceptance of rowan in the free choice test by 1st instar larvae, as compared to hawthorn and black chokeberry, is positively influenced by the high content of total sugars and phenolic acids. The conclusion to be drawn from the results is that the differences in food choice by 1st instar larvae feeding on fruits could have been due to the different chemical compositions of the fruit.
ðLa 0 : 4 Ba 0 : 4 Ca 0 : 2 ÞðMn 0 : 4 Ti 0 : 6 ÞO 3 : A new titano-manganate with a high dielectric constant and antiferromagnetic interactions

A new perovskite-based titano-manganate, ðLa0:4Ba0:4Ca0:2ÞðMn0:4Ti0:6ÞO3; has been prepared by the ceramic route at 1100°C. This oxide was found to possess the cubic perovskite structure with 'a' — 3:9477ð23Þ A (space group Pm3%m). The refined composition as obtained by Rietveld analysis of powder X-ray data was found to be ðLa0:44Ba0:38Ca0:18ÞðMn0:43Ti0:57ÞO2:91ð3 (Rp — 0:0704; wRp — 0:0828). The composition was also ascertained by Energy dispersive X-ray analysis. Iodometric studies led to a slightly higher oxygen content (compared to Rietveld refinement) corresponding to an average manganese oxidation state of 3.05. The above oxide was found to exhibit high dielectric constant (e) of 6980 at 1 kHz decreasing to 590 at 100 kHz. At high temperatures (200°C) it shows an unusually high dielectric constant of 20,000 at 1 kHz. In addition to the dielectric properties, detailed magnetic studies show evidence of long-range antiferromagnetic interactions near 5 K. The presence of unusually high dielectric constant coupled with the long-range magnetic interactions may open up interesting applications.
Displacement operator formalism for renormalization and gauge dependence to all orders

We present a new method for determining the renormalization of Green functions to all orders in perturbation theory, which we call the displacement operator formalism, or the D formalism, in short. This formalism exploits the fact that the renormalized Green functions may be calculated by displacing by an infinite amount the renormalized fields and parameters of the theory with respect to the unrenormalized ones. With the help of this formalism, we are able to obtain the precise form of the deformations induced to the Nielsen identities after renormalization, and thus derive the exact dependence of the renormalized Green functions on the renormalized gauge-fixing parameter to all orders. As a particular nontrivial example, we calculate the gauge dependence of tan{beta} at two loops in the framework of an Abelian-Higgs model, using a gauge-fixing scheme that preserves the Higgs-boson low-energy theorem for off-shell Green functions. Various possible applications and future directions are briefly discussed.
Evaluating the effect of computer simulations on secondary biology instruction: An application of Blooms taxonomy

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of computer simulations designed to assist 9th grade students in learning the “cell unit”. Bloom taxonomy was utilised for the design of the study and the interpretation of its findings. Participants were 91 (Male =55, Female=36) year nine students studying at Fatih Secondary School in Diyarbakir, Turkey. The control and experimental groups were selected at random. Students in the control group were taught using traditional teacher centred methods, where as students in experimental group were taught with the assistance of relevant computer simulations. An achievement test consisting of five questions in each of Bloom’s six domains (that is, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation) was given to both the control and experimental groups as a pre- and post- test. The data were analysed using SPSS 15.0 package program (t-test and ANOVA). Finding suggest that students who had access to the computer simulations scored higher on the post- tests. Key words: Simulations, teaching/learning strategies, secondary education, improving classroom teaching, interactive learning environments.
Experimental results on an IDA-PBC controller for a full-bridge boost converter

Experimental results of a new controller able to support bidirectional power flow in a full-bridge rectifier with boost-like topology are obtained. The controller is computed using port Hamiltonian passivity techniques for a suitable generalized state space averaging truncation system, which transforms the control objectives, namely constant output voltage dc-bus and unity input power factor, into a regulation problem. Simulation results for the full system show the essential correctness of the simplifications introduced to obtain the controller, although some small experimental discrepancies point to several aspects that need further improvement.
Validity of Isometric Muscle Strength Measurements of the Lower Limbs Using a Hand-held Dynamometer and Belt: a Comparison with an Isokinetic Dynamometer

[Purpose] The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity of isometric muscle strength measurements of the lower limbs and hips made with a hand-held dynamometer and belt by comparing them with measurements obtained by an isokinetic dynamometer. [Subjects] The subjects were 24 healthy adults (12 men, 12 women) with a mean age of 20.4 years. [Method] Measurements were made with both instruments on the flexors, extensors, abductors, adductors, external rotators and internal rotators of the hip and flexors and extensors of the knee. [Results] Measurements obtained with the hand-held dynamometer and belt were significantly lower than those obtained with the isokinetic dynamometer. Pearson’s correlation coefficients for the measurements made with the two instruments ranged from 0.52 to 0.88 for all muscle groups except the hip abductors which was 0.34. In the hip abductors, the coefficient was 0.65 when forces of 450 N and higher were excluded. [Conclusion] Isometric muscle strength measurements of the lower limbs and hips obtained with a hand-held dynamometer and belt are considered to be valid except for measurement of hip abduction of subjects with high muscle strength.
Measurement Error Issues in Consumption Data

Data available in commonly employed consumer surveys, like the \emph{Consumer Expenditure Survey} in the US, are widely known to be affected by measurement errors. Ignoring the effect of such errors in the estimation of consumption models may result in severely biased estimates of the quantities of interest. In this thesis I consider identification of three different models of consumption behavior allowing for the presence of measurement errors. Identification is particularly difficult to achieve due to the high non-linearity of the specifications involved and to peculiarities of consumptions models. In fact in many instances, allowing for mismeasured covariates also implies correlated measurement errors also in the dependent variable. This further complicates the identification of the model, invalidating most of the non-linear errors in variables results in the literature. The core of the thesis is made of three Chapters. In the first Chapter I consider identification of a particular specification of Engel curves when unobserved expenditure is endogenous and measured with error. In the second Chapter I study identification of a general non-linear errors in variables model allowing for correlated measurement errors on both sides of the equation. In the third Chapter I derive identification and estimation of the distribution of consumption when only expenditure and the number purchases are observed.
Scuba Diving Experience and Sustainability: An Assessment of Online Travel Reviews

Scuba diving is a popular activity in small island destinations which is on the rise. However, it is particularly important to preserve the physical environment for small island developing states due to their unique biodiversity and fragile ecosystems. Scuba diving tourism in island destinations is provided mainly by dive operators who are responsible to deliver the scuba diving experience to tourists. However, despite the importance of sustainability for the tourism industry, it is unclear to which extent the marine environment or green issues are important for consumers. Studies are increasingly suggesting that sustainability is an important feature considered by consumers. However, information is sparse regarding the extent to which sustainability is a key component for customers when evaluating the scuba diving experience. In this study, 3109 text reviews from the Trip Advisor website across all 57 listed diving operators in Mauritius were selected for data analysis. Th e present study uses Leximancer, a text analysis software that conducts unsupervised analysis of natural language texts provided in an electronic format. The Gaze: Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Vol.9 2018 p.43-52
Toward a Heterogeneous Mist, Fog, and Cloud-Based Framework for the Internet of Healthcare Things

Rapid developments in the fields of information and communication technology and microelectronics allowed seamless interconnection among various devices letting them to communicate with each other. This technological integration opened up new possibilities in many disciplines including healthcare and well-being. With the aim of reducing healthcare costs and providing improved and reliable services, several healthcare frameworks based on Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) have been developed. However, due to the critical and heterogeneous nature of healthcare data, maintaining high quality of service (QoS)—in terms of faster responsiveness and data-specific complex analytics—has always been the main challenge in designing such systems. Addressing these issues, this paper proposes a five-layered heterogeneous mist, fog, and cloud-based IoHT framework capable of efficiently handling and routing (near-)real-time as well as offline/batch mode data. Also, by employing software defined networking and link adaptation-based load balancing, the framework ensures optimal resource allocation and efficient resource utilization. The results, obtained by simulating the framework, indicate that the designed network via its various components can achieve high QoS, with reduced end-to-end latency and packet drop rate, which is essential for developing next generation ${e}$ -healthcare systems.