Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Andalusian Demand for Non-Market Goods from Mountain Olive Groves

Agricultural multifunctionality is the recognition of the joint exercise of economic, environmental and social functions by this sector. In order to make this concept operative for the design of public policies, it is necessary to estimate the social demand for such functions. The main objective of this article is to present an empirical application in this line. For this purpose we have taken the agricultural system of mountain olive groves in Andalusia (Southern Spain) at risk of abandonment after the decoupling of the EU subsidies as a case study. The economic valuation technique used is the Choice Experiment. According to the results, there is a different contribution of each attribute to the improvement of the Society level of utility. The main finding of this study is the identification of a social demand for public goods and services provided by the mountains olive groves. This support for agricultural multifunctionality is heterogeneous in its perception by the citizens and the valuation of the various attributes that the concept involves. Taking into account the impact of an overall improvement in the attribute levels and the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents, the results suggest that women, people with higher education levels, urban citizens and families with more than three members are those who benefit most from the provision of public goods by agriculture. There is a different contribution of each attribute to the improvement of the Society level of utility. Thus, and taking into account its WTP for each attribute, keeping rural population in their villages and fighting soil erosion (with 22.61 and 21.55/individual/year, respectively) seem to be the most valued functions of the mountain olive groves by Andalusian citizens. It follows the improvement of the visual quality of the rural landscapes (12.20/individual/year) and the reduction of food residuals (7.14/individual/year). Finally, the results of this study support the new orientation of the CAP which makes decoupled payments on compliance with a range of environmental, food safety, animal and plant health and animal welfare standards, as a result of which, the cross-compliance requirement of the EU agricultural support will, presumably, promote a net increase in social welfare. Yet, according to the results of this research, some efforts should be done to allow cross-compliance to reinforce the objectives of keeping rural population in rural areas and the improvement of the landscape.
Early and mid-Holocene climate in the tropical Pacific: seasonal cycle and interannual variability induced by insolation changes

Using a coupled atmosphere-ocean model we analyze the responses of the mean climate and interannual variations in the tropical Pacific to the changes in insolation during the early and mid-Holocene, with experiments in which only the variations of Earth's orbital configuration are considered. We first discuss common features of the Early and mid-Holocene climates compared to the pre-industrial conditions. In particular, an equatorial annual mean cooling that has a "U" shape across the tropical Pacific is simulated, whereas the ocean heat content is enhanced in the western tropical Pacific and decreased in the east. Similarly, the seasonality is enhanced in the west and reduced in the east. We show that the seasonality of the insolation forcing, the cloud radiative forcing and ocean dynamics all contribute to increasing these east–west contrasts. ENSO variability is reduced in the early Holocene and increases towards present-day conditions. Obliquity alone does not affect ENSO characteristics in the model. The reduction of ENSO magnitude results from the relationship between changes in seasonality, which involves wave propagation along the thermocline, and the timing of the development of ENSO anomalies. All these effects are larger in the Early Holocene compared to the mid-Holocene. Despite a one-month difference in the insolation forcing and corresponding response of SST, winds and thermocline depth between these two periods, the timing and changes in the east–west temperature and heat content gradients are similar. We suggest that it explains why the timing of development of ENSO is quite similar between these two climates and does not reflect the differences in the seasonal timing.
Influence of natural convection in a porous medium when producing from borehole heat exchangers

Convection currents in a porous medium form when the medium is subject to sufficient heating from below (or equivalently, cooling from above) or when cooled or heated from the side. In the context of geothermal energy extraction, we are interested in how the convection currents transport heat when a sealed borehole containing cold fluid extracts heat from the porous medium; also known as a borehole heat exchanger. Using pseudospectral methods together with domain decomposition, we consider two scenarios for heat extraction from a borehole; one system where the porous medium is initialized with constant temperature in the vertical direction and one system initialized with a vertical temperature gradient. We find the convection currents to have a positive effect on the heat extraction for the case with a constant initial temperature in the porous medium, and a negative effect for some of the systems with an initial temperature gradient in the porous medium: Convection gives a negative effect when the borehole temperature is close the initial temperature in the porous medium, but gradually provides a positive effect if the borehole temperature is decreased and the Rayleigh number is larger.
Isolation and characterization of few-layer black phosphorus

Isolation and characterization of mechanically exfoliated black phosphorus flakes with a thickness down to two single-layers is presented. A modification of the mechanical exfoliation method, which provides higher yield of atomically thin flakes than conventional mechanical exfoliation, has been developed. We present general guidelines to determine the number of layers using optical microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in a fast and reliable way. Moreover, we demonstrate that the exfoliated flakes are highly crystalline and that they are stable even in free-standing form through Raman spectroscopy and TEM measurements. A strong thickness dependence of the band structure is found by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The exciton binding energy, within an effective mass approximation, is also calculated for different number of layers. Our computational results for the optical gap are consistent with preliminary photoluminescence results on thin flakes. Finally, we study the environmental stability of black phosphorus flakes finding that the flakes are very hydrophilic and that long term exposure to air moisture etches black phosphorus away. Nonetheless, we demonstrate that the aging of the flakes is slow enough to allow fabrication of field-effect transistors with strong ambipolar behavior. DFT calculations also give us insight into the water-induced changes of the structural and electronic properties of black phosphorus.
The Empirics of Regulatory Reforms Proxied by Categorical Variables: Recent Findings and Methodological Issues

Some regulatory reforms do not change just a specific signal that can be represented by a quantitative continuous variable, such as a tax rate, a price cap, or an emission threshold. The standard theory of reform in applied welfare economics (going back to contributions by e.g. Ramsey, Samuelson and Guesnerie) asks the question: What is the marginal effect on social welfare of changing a policy signal? However, reforms such as privatization, unbundling or liberalization of network industries are often described by ‘packages’ shifting a policy framework. It is increasingly frequent in the empirical evaluation of such reforms to use categorical variables, often in polytomous form, for instance describing unbundling steps (vertical integration, accounting, functional, legal, ownership separation) on a discrete numerical scale, such as those proposed by the OECD and other international bodies. We review recent econometric literature evaluating regulatory reforms using such variables (40 papers) and we discuss some methodological issues arising in this context.
A New Eulerian Model for Turbulent Evaporating Sprays in Recirculating Flows

A new Eulerian model for the computation of turbulent evaporating sprays in recirculating flows is derived. It comprises droplet heating and evaporation processes by solving separate transport equations for the droplet's temperature and diameter. Full coupling of the droplet and the gaseous phase is achieved by the exchange of source terms due to momentum, heat and mass transfer. The partial differential equations describing the droplet's transport and evaporation in the new method can be solved using the same numerical procedure as for the gas phase equations. The validity of the model is established by comparison with a well known Lagrangian approach and with experimental data. For this purpose calculations of a recirculating droplet charged air flow within a model combustor are presented.
Title Evaluating multiway joins over discounted hitting time

The discounted hitting time (DHT), which is a random-walk similarity measure for graph node pairs, is useful in various applications, including link prediction, collaborative recommendation, and reputation ranking. We examine a novel query, called the multi-way join (or n-way join), on DHT scores. Given a graph and n sets of nodes, the n-way join retrieves a set of n-tuples with the k highest scores, according to some aggregation function of DHT values. This query enables analysis and prediction of complex relationship among n sets of nodes. Since an n-way join is expensive to compute, we develop the Partial Join algorithm (or PJ). This solution decomposes an nway join into a number of top-m 2-way joins, and combines their results to construct the answer of the n-way join. Since PJ may necessitate the computation of top-(m+ 1) 2-way joins, we study an incremental solution, which allows the top-(m+ 1) 2-way join to be derived quickly from the top-m 2-way join results earlier computed. We further examine fast processing and pruning algorithms for 2-way joins. An extensive evaluation on three real datasets shows that PJ accurately evaluates n-way joins, and is four orders of magnitude faster than basic solutions.
Unified Motor Vehicle Sales System

In Sri Lanka, current vehicle sales trading methods are diverse and require a lot of effort in finding a preferred vehicle from web advertisements online newspapers and printed newspaper advertisements. Due to popularity of the newspaper classified advertising, many people tend to use it and the classifieds amount in a newspaper has been increasing drastically. Therefore the buyers face many difficulties in finding a specific vehicle of their preference. This project addresses the problem by integrating all vehicle sales trading methods mentioned above. After integration, the output is given to the user by a web application and a desktop application. In order to achieve this, web scraping, image processing, character recognition techniques and Google Custom Search are used. From these technologies, web scraping and image processing are used for online and printed newspapers respectively. Custom web search module is implemented using Google Custom Search for more focused web searching. As for the future improvements, since the application is based only in English, it is preferred to create using Sinhala and Tamil languages. As an innovative addition, mobile application can be implemented for publishing vehicle advertisements in the web application of the implemented website in multiple mobile platforms.
Rapid and Green Synthesis of some Benzothiazole-, Benzimidazole- and Benzoxazole-2-thiol Derivatives Using Copper Sulfate in Aqueous Media

In this study an easy, green, efficient and simple approach is reported for the synthesis of some benzothiazole-, benzimidazole- and benzoxazole-2-thiol derivatives. The proposed approach employs the reaction of corresponding aromatic amine with potassium isopropyl xanthate (Z11) in the presence of copper sulfate (CuSO4) as a catalyst under conventional heating and ultrasonic irradiation. The advantages of this protocol are: using water and glycerol as green solvents, commercially available precursors, simple work-up, an inexpensive catalyst, high yield and short reaction time.
DFT and k · p modelling of the phase transitions of lead and tin halide perovskites for photovoltaic cells

3D hybrid organic perovskites, CH3NH3PbX3 (X = halogen), have recently been used to strongly improve the efficiency of dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) leading to a new class of low‐cost mesoscopic solar cells. CsSnI3 perovskite can also be used for hole conduction in DSSC. Density functional theory and GW corrections are used to compare lead and tin hybrid and all‐inorganic perovskites. The room temperature optical absorption is associated to electronic transitions between the spin–orbit split‐off band in the conduction band and the valence band. Spin–orbit coupling is about three times smaller for tin. Moreover, the effective mass of relevant band edge hole states is small (0.17). The high temperature phase sequence of CsSnI3 leading to the room temperature orthorhombic phase and the recently reported phases of CH3NH3MI3 (where M = Pb, Sn) close to the room temperature, are also studied. Tetragonal distortions from the ideal cubic phase are analysed by a k · p perturbation, including spin–orbit effect. In addition, the non‐centrosymmetric phases of CH3NH3MI3 exhibit a splitting of the electronic bands away from the critical point. The present work shows that their physical properties are more similar to conventional semiconductors than to the absorbers used in DSSC. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Recommendations for the analysis of hemocyte-related immunocompetent oxidative activity in the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis

P. Boisseaux,1 P. Noury,1 M. -L. Delignette-Muller,2,3 H. Thomas,4 J. Garric1 1Irstea, UR MALY, Centre de LyonVilleurbanne, Villeurbanne; 2Université de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, CNRS, UMR 5558, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, Villeurbanne; 3Université de Lyon, VetAgro Sup Campus Vétérinaire de Lyon, Marcy l’Etoile; 4LIttoral ENvironnement et Sociétés (LIENSs) UMR 7266, La Rochelle, France
Magnitude and Factors of Occupational Injury among Workers in Large Scale Metal Manufacturing Industries in Ethiopia

Background: The burden of occupational injury in most developing countries including Ethiopia is becoming a public health problem. Therefore, information that shows the magnitude and predictors of occupational injury in most risky work places in Ethiopia such as large scale metal manufacturing industries is indispensable for proper health intervention programs. Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the magnitude and factors affecting occupational injuries among workers engaged in large scale metal manufacturing industries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: Facility based cross sectional study was conducted among 829 workers engaged in large scale metal manufacturing industries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from February 1 to March 30, 2010. Fifty percent (50%) of large scale metal manufacturing industries were selected by simple random sampling after stratification. Then, calculated sample size was allocated for each industry by probability to proportional sample size. Subjects were stratified by working sections and those who were directly engaged in the work were selected from each stratum by simple random sampling after preparing a frame from payroll of those industries. The data were collected by pretested structured questionnaire. Observational checklist and in-depth interview with key informants were held to triangulate the information with quantitative findings. Both bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions were done to identify factors of occupational injury. Results: The magnitude of occupational injury was 489 per 1000 exposed workers per year. Twenty nine percent of injured workers were hospitalized of which 98 (82.4%) for 24 or more working hours. Sex of workers [AOR: 3.32, 95% CI: (1.88, 5.85)], safety and health supervision [AOR: 1.60, 95% CI: (1.03, 2.60)], hours worked per week [AOR: 2.37, (95% CI: (1.55, 3.61)], cigarette smoking [AOR: 3.36, 95% CI: (1.73, 6.50) ] and presence of functional danger signs/posts [AOR: 2.65, (95% CI: (1.67, 4.19)] were significantly associated factors with magnitude of occupational injury. Conclusion: The burden of occupational injury in metal manufacturing industry is really significant public health problem. Emphasis should be given to provide health and safety services on sex of workers, safety and health supervision, hours worked per week, cigarette smoking and functional danger signs.
Data Compression Scheme of Fronthaul Network Based on LTE

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">As the long term evolution (LTE) mobile users and transmission data increase, the load of the fronthaul network increases. In order to control the consumption of optical fiber resources, and prevent congestion under the premise of increasing data transmission, it is necessary to compress the data of the fronthaul network. In this paper, a data compression scheme of LTE-based fronthaul network is proposed. According to the characteristics of LTE baseband signals, discrete sine transform (DST) is applied to the time domain signals, and the transformed coefficients are partitioned according to the energy concentration characteristics. Bit allocation is performed in different blocks, and the coefficients of each block are quantized by Lloyd-Max quantizer. Finally, Huffman coding is carried out to improve the compression ratio under the condition that the error is allowed. The simulation results show that the proposed data compression scheme has good performance in both compression ratio (CR) and error vector magnitude (EVM). </span>
Diffusive representation of a fractional control using adaptive partitioning algorithm

This article presents optimal fractional control. This control is based on the property of the invariance of a fractional order differential equation. The problem formulation of the used control is expressed by diffusive representation. The fractional control problem is described in a minimization form, where the global optimum represents the diffusive realization of the controller. To determine the optimal fractional diffusive control, an adaptive partitioning algorithm is used. As an application, we have chosen the control of a DC motor with uncertain parameters.
Influence of body position on maximum bite force

Objective: To evaluate the maximum bite force (MBF) in subjects with and without Temporomandibular Dysfunction (TMD), in three different positions (sitting, lying and standing). Methods: The sample consisted of 60 individuals, aged between 19 and 35 years, who were divided into two groups: with TMD (n = 30) and without TMD (n = 30). First, the RDC/TMD questionnaire was applied and, after diagnosis, all of the subjects selected were submitted to the measurement of MBF, on each side (right and left), in three different positions (sitting, lying and standing), by means of a digital gnatodynamometer. Results: No significant difference in mean MBF was found between the two groups; however, the mean MBF for the subjects, comparing the same side and different positions, was significantly different, being smaller when the individual was lying down. Conclusions: According to the results, it was concluded that the MBF is influenced by the change of position.
The Effects of Beverage Type on Liver Cirrhosis Mortality Rate in Russia

Background: Liver cirrhosis is a major cause of deaths in many developed countries. There is evidence that beverage preference may have modifying influence on liver cirrhosis risk independently of the amount of alcohol consumed. The aim of this study was to examine the relation between the consumption of different beverage types and liver cirrhosis mortality rates in Russia. Method: Time-series analytical modeling techniques (ARIMA) were used to examine the relation between the sale of different alcoholic beverages (vodka, wine, beer) and age-standardized male and female liver cirrhosis mortality data for the period 1970-2005. Results: Total alcohol sale is a statistically significant associated with both male and female liver cirrhosis mortality rates, implying that a 1-litre increase in per capita alcohol sale is associated with an increase in male mortality of 17.2% and female mortality of 5.3%. The analysis also suggests that of the three beverages (vodka, beer and wine) vodka alone was associated with liver cirrhosis mortality in Russia. The estimated effects of vodka sales on the liver cirrhosis mortality rate are clearly statistically significant for both sexes: a 1 liter increase in vodka sale would result in a 37.6% increase in the male liver cirrhosis mortality rate and in 9.3% increase in female mortality rate. Conclusions: The findings from present study support the substantial literature which demonstrates a close link between alcohol consumption and liver cirrhosis mortality at aggregate level, and most important, suggests that this relationship is mediated by beverage preference.
Conversational Analytics using Apache Spark: Acquisition of user engagement characteristics and providing recommendations of products and service

With the increasing popularity of development of chatbots to overcome restrictions of complex user interface design and inconvenience to the user in requesting data and services, we felt that there is a strong need for an analytics platform for chatbot developers through which they can implement analytics on the information collected by the chatbot to better understand the needs of the user. The paper tries to identify and find solutions for two types of analytics needed by the chatbot. One is to summarize the reviews and nature of a product or service from multiple sources on the internet. Other caters to capture and analyse user engagement characteristics to provide better recommendations.
Distribution of Aerobic Anoxygenic Phototrophsin Freshwater Plateau Lakes

Aerobic anoxygenic phototrophic (AAP) bacteria are known functionally as photoheterotrophic microbes. Though numerously reported from ocean habitats, their distribution in freshwater lakes is far less documented. In the present study we investigated the dynamics of AAP bacteria in freshwater plateau lakes. Results revealed a high abundance of AAP bacteria in eutrophic lakes. Moreover, AAP bacteria were positively correlated with TN, TP, and Chl a, but the variations of AAP bacterial proportion to potential total bacteria (AAPB%). Alphaproteobacteria-related sequences dominated lakes Luguhu, Erhai, and Chenghai at ratios of 93.9, 85.4, and 70.6%, respectively, and in total comprised eight clearly defined subgroups. Sequences affiliated with Betaand Grammaproteobacteria were found to be rare taxa. Additionally, Alkalibacterium-like sequences belonging to Firmutes were assigned. Overall, sequences from Alpha-, Beta-, Gammaproteobacteria, and Firmutes separately comprised of 81.6, 8.8, 0.8, and 4.0%. Our present work revealed extreme dynamics of AAP bacteria in both water columns and non-euphotic sediments of plateau aquatic ecosystems, which consolidated their wide distribution and enhanced
Localization for Invariant Submanifolds

Given a manifold M with an equivariantly formal circle action and any invariant submanifold W which does not contain fixed points of the action, we present a new localization theorem, which expresses an integration over W/S1 in terms of an integration over the fixed points of the action. In the setting of symplectic geometry our results imply the Jeffrey-Kirwan localization theorem for the circle action.