Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Climate change and hazardous processes in high mountains

The recent and continuing reduction in glacier ice cover in high mountains and thaw of alpine permafrost may have an impact on many potentially hazardous processes. As glaciers thin and retreat, existing ice- and moraine-dammed lakes can catastrophically empty, generating large and destructive downstream floods and debris flows. New ice-dammed lakes will form higher in mountain catchments, posing additional hazards in the future. The magnitude or frequency of shallow landslides and debris flows in some areas will increase because of the greater availability of unconsolidated sediment in new deglacierized terrain. Continued permafrost degradation and glacier retreat probably will decrease the stability of rock slopes.
Einstein's Riddle as a Tool for Profiling Students.

There are many computer games, learning environments, online tutoring systems or computerized tools which keeps the track of the user while learning or engaging in the activities. This paper presents results from an exploratory study and aims to group students regarding their behavior data while solving the Einstein’s riddle. 45 undergraduate students were given this logic puzzle as a complex cognitive task without any time limitation. After completing the task, they were asked to report their mental effort. While grouping the similar students, cluster analysis with X-Means algorithm was used. Features such as task performance, puzzle’s difficulty levels, item movements inside and between the puzzle’s sections, duration and a total number of incorrect moves were used while grouping students. At the end of the lab session, six out of forty-five participants solved the puzzle and find the correct answer, on the other hand, other students reached different completion levels. Based on cluster analysis students grouped into three different clusters, Cluster_0, Cluster_1 and Cluster_2. Cluster_2 was the successful group with the highest score, lowest moves and errors, medium level of mental effort in the shortest time period. Cluster_0 had the medium level of success with highest moves and errors, the highest level of mental effort in the highest time period. Cluster_1 was the least successful group with the lowest score, medium level of moves and errors and lowest level of mental effort.
Competing paradigms in qualitative research.

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A Note on Construction of Multiple Swap Curves with and without Collateral

There are now available wide variety of swap products which exchange Libors with different currencies and tenors. Furthermore, the collateralization is becoming more and more popular due to the increased attention to the counter party credit risk. These developments require clear distinction among different type of Libors and the discounting rates. In this brief note, we will explain the method to construct the multiple swap curves consistently with all the relevant swaps with and without a collateral agreement.
Age of learning effects on the duration of sentences produced in a second language

Research has shown that L2 utterances diverge increasingly from target language phonetic norms as the age of L2 learning increases. Other research has suggested that L2 speakers produce longer utterances than native speakers. The aim of this study was to determine whether L2 utterance durations increase as age of learning increases. Fluently produced English sentences spoken by 240 native speakers of both Italian and Korean (selected on the basis of age of arrival [AOA]) were examined. For both L1 groups, the duration of English sentences was positively correlated with AOA. The AOA effect was found to be significant even when confounding variables were partialed out. These results are taken as preliminary support for the proposal that the more established the L1 is at the time of first exposure to the L2, the more it will interfere with L2 production, thus requiring greater processing resources to suppress it.
Multi-Nozzle Biopolymer Deposition for Freeform Fabrication of Tissue Constructs

Advanced freeform fabrication techniques have been recently used for the construction of tissue scaffolds because of the process repeatability and capability of high accuracy in fabrication resolution at the macro and micro scales. Among many applicable tissue scaffolding materials, polymeric materials have unique properties in terms of the biocompatibility and degradation, and have thus been widely utilized in tissue engineering applications. Hydrogels, such as alginate, has been one of the most important polymer scaffolding materials because of its biocompatibility and internal structure similarity to that of the extracellular matrix of many tissues, and its relatively moderate processing. Three-dimensional deposition has been an entreating freeform fabrication method of biopolymer and particularly hydrogel scaffolds because of its readiness to deposit fluids at ambient temperatures. This paper presents a recent development of biopolymer deposition based freeform fabrication for 3-diemnsinal tissue scaffolds. The system configuration of multi-nozzles used in the deposition of sodium alginate solutions and Poly-? Caprolactone (PCL) are described. Studies on polymer deposition feasibility and structural formability are conducted, and the preliminary results are presented.
Reestructuración de los Estados del Bienestar ¿Hacia un cambio de paradigma?

En este trabajo, se examina el posible cambio de paradigma desde el Estado del Bienestar Protector (EBP) hacia un Estado del Bienestar Inversor (EBI), que parece desarrollarse con viejas politicas neoliberales y nuevas retoricas. En la primera parte se expone la trayectoria de reforma de las politicas sociales despues del keynesianismo y en la segunda, se desarrollan las dimensiones extraidas para el analisis: la naturaleza de los problemas y el origen de los riesgos a los que tienen que hacer frente las sociedades, el cambio de objetivos, valores y discursos, y la modificacion de instrumentos, medios y tecnicas empleados en la provision de bienestar. Se concluye que existen muchos indicios de que las reformas en marcha se dirigen hacia un EBI. En cualquiera de los paises de la UE-15 se pueden identificar reformas que incluyen medidas de activacion, endurecimiento de los requisitos para recibir prestaciones sociales, y el avance hacia la desregularizacion del mercado de trabajo y la contencion salarial.
THE IMPACT OF ENTREPRENURSHIP ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA (A CASE STUDY)

The Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) dominate the real sector and play roles in the economic development of countries around the world. This study assessed the impact of entrepreneurship on economic development in Nigeria. The study was carried out at Ilorin, capital city of Kwara State, Nigeria. There were eleven privately owned sawmills factories located in various parts of the city. The study involved 60 entrepreneurs (Wood producers) who accepted to take part in the study. The questionnaire contained both closed and open-ended questions on demographic data as well as the work history, operational efficiency and their impact on Nation economy and employment generation in Nigeria. The Sawmill entrepreneurs were selected by a multistage cluster sampling, while macroeconomic variable data were collected from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and National Bureau Statistics (NBS) websites. Statistical analysis was done to test the stated hypotheses using the SPSS statistical package and statistical significance was set at p-value of < 0.05. In test of hypothesis one the proportion of those that agree is 0.917 with standard error of 0.036 (55 out of 60) and from the table, the p-value is 0.000 (p-value < 0.05) we therefore reject the null hypothesis and conclude that Entrepreneurship is the bedrock of any economy and it drives the development of the economy. In the test of hypothesis two the proportion of those that agree is 0.867 with standard error of 0.044 (52 out of 60) and from the table, the p-value is 0.000 (p-value < 0.05) we therefore reject the null hypothesis and conclude that Entrepreneurship facilitated the achievement of equitable and sustainable industrial diversification and job creation. It is therefore recommended that entrepreneurship / SMEs should be encouraged through lower interest rate, tax holidays among others in Nigeria in order to reduce unemployment and increase Gross Domestic Products (GDP).
Processing Information About Covariations That Cannot Be Articulated

Processing of covariation (among features) present in stimulus material was investigated. Subjects were unable to articulate the manipulated covariation between verbally described psychological characteristics and appearance of a set of stimulus persons. Based on the two-stage question answering model (Glucksberg & McCloskey, 1981), it was hypothesized that if the information related to the manipulated covariation was processed and registered, it would result in an increase of processing time for the questions that might be considered relevant to the covariation. The pattern of response latencies obtained in each of 3 experiments conformed exactly to the predictions. In 2 of these experiments, effects of the stimulus material on subjects' subsequent judgments were found, consistent with the model. Subjects behaved as if they had "learned" the rule (implied by the covariation) and followed it in their subsequent judgments. The demonstrated phenomenon pertains to an important and presumably ubiquitous aspect of processing categorical information. Research on "implicit learning" suggests that people can process information about complex relations between elements of stimulus material without being able to articulate these relations. In a series of studies, Reber and his colleagues demonstrated that after being exposed to a number of items (strings of letters) generated by a set of specific rules (a "grammar" that specifies permissible orders of letters), people are able to use these rules (or information related somehow to these rules) in their subsequent judgments pertaining to whether novel items obey these rules, although the perceivers are not able to articulate the rules they use (Reber, 1967, 1976; Reber & Allen, 1978; Reber & Lewis, 1977). Reber concluded that such implicit and unconscious' learning is a natural product of attending to structured stimuli. Although the specific mechanism of implicit learning is far from being clear, these results indicate that people are able to process information about certain rules contained implicitly in stimulus material and to use these rules (or information related somehow to these rules) in their subsequent perceptions, and still be unable to articulate the rules (see also Brooks, 1978; Gordon & Holyoak, 1983). The research on implicit learning raises the question as to what kind of formal aspect or "hidden" structure contained in stimulus material is subject to such processing without a perceiver's being able to articulate what in particular is being processed. Recent research by Lewicki (1982, in press) suggests that one of these formal aspects might be the covariation among events
Signals, Signal Conditions, and the Direction of Evolution

There is a bewildering diversity of signals, sensory systems, and signaling behavior. A consideration of how these traits affect each other's evolution explains some of this diversity. Natural selection favors signals, receptors, and signaling behavior that maximize the received signals relative to background noise and minimize signal degradation. Properties of sensory systems bias the direction of evolution of the signals that they receive. For example, females may prefer males whose signals they can perceive more easily, and this will lead to the spread of more easily perceived male traits. Environmental conditions during signal transmission and detection also affect signal perception. Specific environmental conditions will bias the evolutionary direction of behavior, which affects the time and place of signaling as well as microhabitat preferences. Increased specialization of microhabitats and signaling behavior may lead to biased evolution of the sensory systems to work more efficiently. Thus, sensory systems, signals, signaling behavior, and habitat choice are evolutionarily coupled. These suites of traits should coevolve in predictable directions, determined by environmental biophysics, neurobiology, and the genetics of the suites of traits--hence the term "sensory drive. " Because conditions vary in space and time, diversity will be generated
Force Directed Near-Orthogonal Grid Generation on Surfaces

Single curved surfaces can always easily be covered by meshes that result into an equilateral and orthogonal grid when the surface is developed. On double curved surfaces, however, we can never find a mesh consisting of ‘squares on the surface’. Nevertheless, there is a need for ‘orthogonal and locally almost equilateral meshes’ on such surfaces in several fields, e.g., in architecture (fair and easy to build, increased rigidity) and computer graphics (undistorted mapping of textures, good tessellation for rendering purposes and also for aesthetical reasons). We present an iterative force-directed algorithm that is capable of optimizing given grids with rectangular topology and yields the task in an optimal way. It allows to cover arbitrary parametric double-curved surfaces with grids that are almost orthogonal and, optionally, locally have almost constant grid size in both directions.
Limiting factors for the use of palm oil biodiesel in a diesel engine in the context of the ASTM standard

Abstract Biodiesel is a biodegradable fuel contains fatty acid methyl or ethyl esters which are typically produced by the transesterification reaction among the triglycerides in the vegetable oils or animal fats and an alcohol such as methanol or ethanol. There are many resources of biodiesel production. In present study it was selected the palm oil to produce the ethyl ester biodiesel and the limiting factors for the use of palm oil biodiesel in a diesel engine in the context of the ASTM standards were discussed. Based on results, the maximum engine power is obtained in maximum load of engine and indicates no sensible change in engine power for biodiesel blends. Increasing the engine load decreases the Brake Special Fuel Consumption (BSFC). The best BSFC accrues in the range of B10–B40. The engine efficiency is increased by increasing load. The best efficiency is observed in range of 50–100% of engine load and the best efficiency is in range of B10–B40. Generally, by considering three parameters of engine power, BSFC and engine efficiency the B10 fuel of palm biodiesel offers the best performance, therefore it can be the recommended fuel for this study.
Web site satisfaction and purchase intentions: Impact of personality characteristics during initial web site visit

Purpose – A main focus in recent online consumer research has been on context specific trust, risk, and online buying experience. Despite the importance, their individual level “equivalents” – trust disposition, risk aversion, and technology readiness – have received limited attention. This research attempts to fill that gap by focussing on these crucial personality traits.Design/methodology/approach – This research employs a survey‐based method to test a theoretically grounded set of hypotheses. The measurement model is tested using SEM and the hypotheses are tested using regression techniques.Findings – The personality characteristics are found to have significant moderating effects on online purchase intentions. Interestingly, provided the consumers are satisfied, risk aversion is found to increase the likelihood of purchase. Moreover, while technology readiness increases the likelihood of online purchase, dispositional trust is found not to have a similar effect.Research limitations/implications – Sig.
The prognostic value of Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 5 and Protein Phosphatase 2A in Gastric Cancer

Purpose To discuss the relationship between the clinicopathological data, long-term survival of gastric cancer patients and different expression levels of Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 5 (CDK5) and Protein Phosphatase 2A (PP2A). Method The expression levels of CDK5 and PP2A were detected by immunohistochemistry in specimens from 124 patients with primary gastric cancer. The correlation among the expression of CDK5 and PP2A, clinicopathological factors and prognosis was investigated. Result The expression level of CDK5 was correlated with the TNM stage (p=0.030) and N stage (p=0.001), while the expression level of PP2A was correlated with the TNM stage and N stage (p=0.001 and p=0.004) as well as the degree of differentiation (p=0.046). The expression of CDK5 was positively correlated with the expression of PP2A in gastric cancer. Co-expression of CDK5 and PP2A is an independent prognostic factor that affected overall survival, and provided more accurate prognostic value for the overall survival of gastric cancer patients. Conclusion The expression of CDK5 and PP2A is positively correlated in gastric cancer. Co-expression of CDK5 and PP2A was an independent prognostic factor in patients with gastric cancer.
Prediction and inference diverge in biomedicine: Simulations and real-world data

In the 20th century many advances in biological knowledge and evidence-based medicine were supported by p-values and accompanying methods. In the beginning 21st century, ambitions towards precision medicine put a premium on detailed predictions for single individuals. The shift causes tension between traditional methods used to infer statistically significant group differences and burgeoning machine-learning tools suited to forecast an individual’s future. This comparison applies the linear model for identifying significant contributing variables and for finding the most predictive variable sets. In systematic data simulations and common medical datasets, we explored how statistical inference and pattern recognition can agree and diverge. Across analysis scenarios, even small predictive performances typically coincided with finding underlying significant statistical relationships. However, even statistically strong findings with very low p-values shed little light on their value for achieving accurate prediction in the same dataset. More complete understanding of different ways to define ‘important’ associations is a prerequisite for reproducible research findings that can serve to personalize clinical care.
Research on the Metabolism of Nitrogenous Free Radicals in Ducklings with Selenium poisoning

The ducklings (n=100) were divided into control group and experimental group randomly, and selenium poisoning of ducklings was artificially caused by feeding ration containing 8 mg kg -1 Se every day. The dynamic changes of No content and NOS activity in the serum and tissues were determined by means of the method of nitric acid reductase. The results showed that the NO content and NOS activity in serum and tissues in experimental group increased significantly (P<0.05) and they were time-dependent. It was suggested that the high level of selenium in bodies could increase the NOS activity and NO content as it destroyed the metabolism of material and energy as well as structure and function of tissues and cells. These changes of NO content and NOS activity might be involved in the metabolism of selenium poisoning. (The Journal of American Science. 2005;1(2):77-81).
Changes in ruminal fermentation in sheep fed either alfalfa hay or grass hay after changing to a high-concentrate diet.

Four rumen-fistulated Merino sheep were used in a crossover design experiment with two 44-day periods each to evaluate the changes in ruminal parameters including enzymatic activities that occur after an abrupt change from a 70:30 forage:concentrate diet (HF) to a 30:70 forage:concentrate diet (HC) when forage was either alfalfa hay (AL) or grass hay (GR). Sheep were fed the diets at a daily rate of 55 g/kg body weight 0.75 . During the first 15 days of each experimental period sheep were fed HF diets, and from day 16 thereafter they received HCAL and HCGR. On days 0, 2, 5, 12, 20 and 28 after diet change, ruminal samples from each sheep were collected 3 h after feeding. There were no differences (P > 0.05) between diets (HCAL and HCGR) in any of the measured variables, with the exception of NH3-N and total short chain fatty acid (SCFA) concentrations which were greater (P 0.05) from those on day 0. No effect (P > 0.05) of diet change was observed on endoglucanase, exoglucanase and xylanase activities in ruminal fluid on day 2, but activities of all these enzymes increased (P < 0.05) by day 28. Amylase activity increased (P < 0.05) on day 2 for diet HCAL and remained greater (P < 0.05) for the rest of th e trial. For diet HCGR, amylase activity increased (P < 0.05) on day 12 and remained greater through to the end of the trial.
Morphological Constraints on Intra-sentential Code-Switching: toward a standardization of Spanglish Grammar*

Attraverso l'osservazione del code switching Inglese-Spagnolo e possibile notare che la grammatica dello Spanglish e profondamente influenzata dalla grammatica di entrambe le lingue. Questo articolo mostra come dietro al processo di ibridazione linguistica ci siano regolarita e restrizioni, legate a proprieta sintattiche strutturali come la teoria X-barra e la teoria dell'accordo, ed offre una spiegazione riguardo a come e perche queste teorie linguistiche sono coinvolte nel processo.
Interannual Variability of Patterns of Atmospheric Mass Distribution

Abstract Using the 40-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis (ERA-40) for 1958 to 2001, adjusted for bias over the southern oceans prior to 1979, an analysis is made of global patterns of monthly mean anomalies of atmospheric mass, which is approximately conserved globally. It differs from previous analyses of atmospheric circulation by effectively area weighting surface or sea level pressure that diminishes the role of high latitudes. To examine whether global patterns of behavior exist requires analysis of all seasons together (as opposite seasons occur in each hemisphere). Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis, R-mode varimax-rotated EOF analysis, and cyclostationary EOF (CSEOF) analysis tools are used to explore patterns and variability on interannual and longer time scales. Clarification is given of varimax terminology and procedures that have been previously misinterpreted. The dominant global monthly variability overall is associated with the Southern Hemis.