Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring social patterns of participation in university-entrance level mathematics in England

In recent years in England, considerable attention has been given to a range of apparent crises in mathematics education, one of which has been the long term decline of participation in university-entrance level (Advanced or A level) mathematics. Given the negative impact upon mathematics participation of a national reform of Advanced level qualifications, commonly known as Curriculum 2000, together with the government's emphasis on science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM), the political intent to increase participation in Advanced level mathematics is clear. This paper uses the National Pupil Database (NPD) to develop a descriptive statistical account of how completion of Advanced level mathematics varies along the social axes of socioeconomic status, ethnicity and gender. The process of working with the NPD is discussed in some depth in order to clarify the processes involved in this type of quantitative analysis and then to illustrate how such analyses can be used to raise questions about who is studying mathematics in the post-16 age-range.
Production Teamworking: The Importance of Interdependence and Autonomy for Employee Strain and Satisfaction

A UK manufacturer introduced a common model of teamworking which achieved quite different performance results in wire-mills and roperies. Survey data (n = 231) showed higher job-related strain and lower job satisfaction in the wire-mills, where teamworking was not a success. Findings indicated that the differences in employee well-being could be accounted for by contrasting levels of process inter-dependence in the two production areas. Teamworking was a success in the roperies where process interdependence was high, but not in the wire-mills where there was a mismatch between this production process characteristic and a team-based form of work organization. Interactions between interdependence and autonomy were also found, such that higher autonomy had a positive impact only for those working in low interdependence processes. The unintended consequence of teamworking under low interdependence is to create winners and losers, as individual team-members take on responsibilities of the team as a whole.
Inter-Firm Cooperation and Collaboration in Shipper—Shipping Company Relationships for Enhancing Sustainability

This paper aims to reveal the relationship between cooperation, trust, and sustainability, and to uncover whether cooperation, trust, and sustainability is nested within collaboration in shipper–shipping company relationships. Structural equation modeling identified that cooperation has a positive effect on trust, which partially mediates the impact of cooperation on sustainability. Sub-constructs of cooperation included transparency, fairness, and mutuality. Fairness is the prime antecedent of trust, and developing fairness can create more effective and high-quality relationships among firms. A fuller theoretical model reveals how inter-firm cooperation may progress to collaboration, and why transparency does not necessarily lead to trust.
Lossless 4D Medical Images Compression Using Adaptive Inter Slices Filtering

Recent lossless 4D medical images compression works are based on the application of techniques originated from video compression to efficiently eliminate redundancies in different dimensions of image. In this context we present a new approach of lossless 4D medical images compression which consists to application of 2D wavelet transform in spatial directions followed or not by either lifting transform or motion compensation in inter slices direction, the obtained slices are coded by 3D SPIHT. Our approach was compared with 3D SPIHT with/without motion compensation. The results show our approach offers better performance in lossless compression rate.
Explicit Runge-Kutta time-stepping with the discontinuous Galerkin method

In this thesis, the discontinuous Galerkin method is used to solve the hyperbolic equations. The DG method discretizes a system into a semi-discrete system and a system of ODEs is obtained. To solve this system of ODEs efficiently, numerous time-stepping techniques can be used. The most popular choice is Runge-Kutta methods. Classical Runge-Kutta methods need a lot of space in the computer memory to store the required information. The 2N-storage time-steppers store the values in two registers, where N is the dimension of the system. The 2N-storage schemes have more stages than classical RK schemes but are more efficient than classical RK schemes. Several 2N-storage time-stepping techniques have been used reported in the literature. The linear stability condition is found using the eigenvalue analysis of DG method and spectrum of DG method has been scaled to fit inside the absolute stability regions of 2Nstorage schemes. The one-dimensional advection equation has been solved using RK-DG pairings. It is shown that these high-order 2N-storage RK schemes are a good choice for use with the DG method to improve efficiency and accuracy over classical RK schemes.
CLIMATE-GROWTH RELATIONSHIP OF PINUS NIGRA TREE-RING WIDTH CHRONOLOGY FROM THE RHODOPE MOUNTAINS, BULGARIA

SHISHKOVA, V. and M. PANAYOTOV, 2013. Climate-growth relationship of Pinus nigra tree-ring width chronology from the Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., Supplement 2, 19: 225–228 Previous studies of Austrian pine (Pinus nigra Arnold) from different parts of Europe outlined the species as valuable for dendroclimatic analysis. It is usually suitable for high quality precipitation reconstruction for the periods before instrumental measurements. Despite this and the fact that in Bulgaria there are centuries-old Pinus nigra forests, local dendroclimatic studies are scarce. The aim of the study is to analyze the climate-growth relationship in tree-ring width chronology constructed from Pinus nigra trees from the region of Dobrostan in the Rhodope Mts. , Bulgaria. The constructed chronology was composed of 32 cores from 17 trees for the period 1741-2007 using standard dendrochronological methods. The statistical analysis showed high inter-series correlation (r = 0.645) and population signal (EPS) above 0.85 after 1850. Correlation analysis of the constructed chronology was performed with the climatic data from Sadovo, which is close to the study site and offers one of the longest reliable climate series in Bulgaria with continuous measurements since 1893. Our results showed high statistically signifi cant negative correlation with the temperatures from the summer of growth and the summer prior to growth (r > 0.4). The relationship with precipitation amounts is high and positive. Therefore, we consider that there is clear and temporally stable drought signal in the constructed chronology and it could be successfully used to reconstruct precipitation for the period without instrumental data.
Finding strong, common and discriminating characteristics of clusters from thematic maps

The goal of the thesis is to discover knowledge on large spatial databases. Specifically, it discusses the problem of extracting patterns and characteristics of clusters from thematic maps. For instance, a characteristic of an expensive housing cluster may be that the average household income is over 100,000 dollars. Three key issues are addressed in this thesis. The first issue is how to measure the interest/utility values of characteristics. In order to accommodate different kinds of thematic maps, two measures are proposed and analysed: one based on entropy, and the other on standard deviation. Both measures satisfy all the desirable properties, and work effectively in practice. The second issue is how to extract patterns from multiple clusters. Two pattern extraction operations are defined. The commonQ operation is able to find the common characteristics among multiple clusters. The differentQ operations is capable of discovering the characteristics which distinguish one cluster from another. The third issue is how to compute characteristics utility measures and pattern extraction operations efficiently. Four different methods are proposed and evaluated for the computation of utility measures. Complexity and experimental results indicates that a technique based on isothetic rectangle intersections is the most efficient, outperforming all the other techniques such as a technique based on R-tree technique. For the problem of how to extract patterns of multiple clusters efficiently. Two different methods for pattern extraction are evaluated. The technique based on isothetic rectangle intersections again outperforms the technique based on R-tree, and can extract patterns from hundreds of thematic maps in seconds of CPU time.
Megahertz peaked-spectrum sources in the Boötes field I - a route towards finding high-redshift AGN

We present a 324.5 MHz image of the NOAO Bootes eld that was made using Very Large Array (VLA) P-band observations. The image has a resolution of 5:6 5:1 arcsec, a radius of 2:05 and a central noise of 0:2 mJy beam 1 . Both the resolution and noise of the image are an order of magnitude better than what was previously avail- able at this frequency and will serve as a valuable addition to the already extensive multiwavelength data that are available for this eld. The nal source catalogue con- tains 1370 sources and has a median 325 to 1400 MHz spectral index of -0.72. Using a radio colour-colour diagram of the unresolved sources in our catalogue, we identify 33 megahertz peaked-spectrum (MPS) sources. Based on the turnover frequency linear size relation for the gigahertz peaked-spectrum (GPS) and compact steep-spectrum (CSS) sources, we expect that the MPS sources that are compact on scales of tens of milliarcseconds should be young radio loud active galactic nuclei at high (z > 2) redshifts. Of the 33 MPS sources, we were able to determine redshifts for 24, with an average redshift of 1.3. Given that ve of the sources are at z > 2, that the four faint sources for which we could not nd redshifts are likely at even higher redshifts and that we could only select sources that are compact on a scale of 5 arcsec, there is encouraging evidence that the MPS method can be used to search for high-redshift sources.
EXPLORING STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS IN ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM THROUGH LEARNING STYLES AND LEARNING STYLE-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES IN MTHATHA HIGH SCHOOLS

Recent studies of the teaching and learning process have shown that learners tend to receive and process information in different ways. This study was conducted to explore the impact of matching instructional strategies to the learners learning styles, considering their cultural background in the teaching of Electricity and Magnetism among Grade 11 physical science learners in schools around Mthatha. To achieve the intended objective and to answer the research question “what impact does the learners‟ learning style preferences have on learners‟ academic achievements”, a total of 205 physical science learners were sampled for the study. A purposive convenience sampling technique was used to select four schools from the target population. A non-experimental quantitative exploratory design was adopted for the study. Physical Science Achievement Test and Index of Learning Style Questionnaire were the main instruments used for gathering the data. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics including an independent sample ttest together with multiple regression analysis. The result indicates that, the four learning style categories combined did not contribute significantly to the academic achievement of the grade 11 learners in electricity and magnetism at the four high schools in Mthatha.
iUSE - Visual Analytics & Web Framework for Desktop Runtime Intelligence Services

iUSE is a Runtime Intelligence Service web framework for desktop applications that provides the means to collect, transport, analyze and visualize application usage. It offers a stack of client and server tools to software producers that unobtrusively capture real-time usage data directly from their applications. Collected intelligence is rendered as visualizations that show usage trends and patterns that unveil user profiles. iUSE innovates, when compared to similar products, on how information visualization is applied and on its ability to provide integration with the semantic web and its linked-data world. iUSE introduces the concept of networks for Visual Analytics in the domain of software runtime intelligence and the representation of data using semantic models for the web (OWL and RDF).
Aspects of Complexity in Life and Science.

A short review of complexity research from the perspective of history and philosophy of biology is presented. Complexity and its emergence has scientific and metaphysical mean­ ings. From its beginning, biology was a science of complex systems, but with the advent of electronic computing and the possibility of simulating mathematical models of complica­ ted systems, new intuitions of complexity emerged, together wIth attempts to devise quan­ titative measures of complexity. But can we quantify the complex?
Summer deficit irrigation in a hedgerow olive orchard cv. Arbequina: relationship between soil and tree water status, and growth and yield components.

Stem water potential (Phi-stem) is a useful tool for irrigation scheduling in tree crops, provided threshold values for growth and production are determined for each physiological period. Four irrigation treatments were evaluated in a hedgerow olive orchard. Control (CON) was irrigated using soil water sensors to maintain the root zone close to field capacity. Severe water deficits were applied by irrigating at 30% CON from end of fruit drop to end of July (DI-J) or from end of July until beginning of oil synthesis (DI-A). Less severe water deficit was applied in July and August by irrigating at 50% CON (DI-JA). Continuous measures of soil moisture, Phi-stem and shoot length were recorded in all treatments. Fruit dry weight and oil content were measured at the end of the experimental period and at harvest. Relative extractable soil water to 0.8 m depth (REW) and Phi-stem were highly correlated and influenced by irrigation treatment. Shoot growth, fruit characteristics and oil production were correlated to Phi-stem. Shoot growth was reduced by 50% relative to CON by irrigating at Phi-stem of -1.3 MPa. Fruit dry matter and oil content (g fruit-1) were linearly reduced as mean summer Phi-stem decreased. Oil production was highly related with Phi-stem in August but not in July. Water can be saved in July by irrigating at Phi-stem of -2.9 MPa but Phi-stem should be maintained higher than -2.0 MPa in August to prevent decrease of oil production.
Ultraviolet vision in vertebrates

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the study of ultraviolet vision in vertebrates. The presence of retinal photopigments that allow for ultraviolet vision appear to be relatively common among birds and fishes, and there is evidence that such pigments are to be found in some species from each of the following classes: amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. Following a review of the distribution and nature of ultraviolet vision in vertebrates the issue of the utility of this capacity is discussed.
Research on Relationship between Agricultural Pollution and Economic Growth Based on the EKC in Chengdu

The relationship between agricultural environmental pollution and economic development has aroused the concern of theorists and practitioners, as it is directly related to agricultural economic growth and country's grain security. Based on the theory of environmental Kuznets curve, this paper studies the relationship between agricultural economic growth and agricultural non-point source pollution with the data of Chengdu from 1995 to 2012. The research results show that the relationship between per capita gross output value of agriculture (including farming, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery) and fertilizer input density reveals an N-shaped pattern. At the same time, there are 3 inverted U curves existing between per capita gross output value of agriculture and mulching input film density, pesticide input density and the number of slaughtered fattened hogs, and these pollutants have passed through the turning points of curves. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the management of chemical fertilizer, pesticide and mulching film, to increase the investment for new technology and the support of soil remediation technology and soil remediation industry, and to implement strict supervision to ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products.
Characterization of urban particulate matter for a health-related study in southern Finland

Particulate matter was physically and chemically characterized in November 2005-May 2006 concurrently with an epidemiological study among cardiac patients in Kotka, Finland. The daily PM 2.5 concentrations (campaign mean 10.6 μg m -3 ) typically displayed a similar pattern to that in Helsinki, suggesting that the air masses were well-mixed over a large area of southern Finland. There were occasionally increased short-term PM 2.5 and particle number concentrations, most likely due to emissions from local industrial sources. A strong relationship was detected between high particle number concentrations (> 30 000 cm -3 ) and north-easterly winds. PM 2.5' black carbon (BC) or nitrogen oxides (NO x ) did not show corresponding connection. The mean contribution of local traffic to BC and NO x were estimated at 30% and 55%, respectively, during the campaign. The main chemical component of PM 2.5 was particulate organic matter (37% ± 14%) followed by non-sea-salt sulphate (26% ± 11%), whereas main component of PM 2.5-10 was soil-derived crustal material (49% ± 11%).
The Haagerup type cross norm on *-algebras

Several cross norms between the projective C -norm and the projective cross norm are introduced. Let . 4 and B be ('*-algebras. It is shown that h is equivalent to ,, on A 0 13 if and only if A or B is subhomogeneous. INTRODUCTION In [4] Eifros and Kishimoto introduced a norm on the tensor product A 0 B of C* algebras as follows: >jn a 2 Ebb IlXllh = nf Eax,,aZ |E b,h b| X =Ea' Xg bcAo@B) for any . x = >, a, ? b, E A 0 B, which was called the Haagerup norm. Let 11 II,, be the projective cross norm on A 0 B, namely IIx.I, = inf E 1|a,1 1b1,| x=E>a,obt,EAoB} forany x= 1l a Xb, cAXB. On the tensor product of commutative C*-algebras, h and are equivalent [2], indeed 1 h? < I,, < K1ll where KGc is the complex Grothendieck constant. In this paper, we introduce several Haagerup type cross norms which are not equivalent with each other, however, if the two C*-algebras are commutative, they coincide. One of the aims of this paper is to recognize noncommutativity from the view point of the noncommutative Grothendieck inequality [5]. To see the difference of these norms, we determine conditions which are equivalent. Received by the editors February 23, 1989. 1980 Mathemiiatics Subject Classification ( 1985 Revision). Primary 46L05.
Learning monadic and dyadic relations : three case studies in systems biology

In molecular biology and other subfields of biology one can encounter many machine learning problems where the goal consists of predicting relations or interactions between pairs of objects. In this article we elaborate on three applications that represent such a learning scenario: predicting functional relationships between enzymes in bioinformatics, predicting protein-ligand interactions in computational drug design and predicting heterotroph-methanotroph interactions in microbial ecology. All three case studies are analyzed using an extension of a general kernel-based framework that we proposed recently. From a mathematical perspective, we both consider monadic and dyadic relations, and we use Kronecker product feature mappings to couple feature representations of paired objects, which correspond to vertices in a graph.
Laser beam zooming and deflection using a nonlinear metamaterial refracting medium

In-process control of the focal spot size and pointing position of a laser as it interacts with a target (beam zooming and deflection) offers the possibility of unprecedented efficiency improvements in a number of applications, such as inertial confinement fusion and laser micromachining. Here is described a system in which the focussing characteristics of a laser beam at one wavelength can be controlled by a lower-intensity beam at another wavelength, via their mutual interaction with a nonlinear metamaterial refracting medium. Such a metamaterial approach permits the optical response of the medium to be tailored according to the wavelengths of interest and time response required in a given application. A metamolecule unit cell design is described in terms of an equivalent circuit based on a pair of LCR (inductance, capacitance, resistance) circuits coupled by a common nonlinear capacitor. The circuit is studied using an analytical approach to obtain an understanding of its properties and design relationships between circuit parameters. Potential realisations of the circuit are discussed.
Controllable Molecular Doping and Charge Transport in Solution‐Processed Polymer Semiconducting Layers

Here, controlled p‐type doping of poly(2‐methoxy‐5‐(2′‐ethylhexyloxy)‐p‐phenylene vinylene) (MEH‐PPV) deposited from solution using tetrafluoro‐tetracyanoquinodimethane (F4‐TCNQ) as a dopant is presented. By using a co‐solvent, aggregation in solution can be prevented and doped films can be deposited. Upon doping the current–voltage characteristics of MEH‐PPV‐based hole‐only devices are increased by several orders of magnitude and a clear Ohmic behavior is observed at low bias. Taking the density dependence of the hole mobility into account the free hole concentration due to doping can be derived. It is found that a molar doping ratio of 1 F4‐TCNQ dopant per 600 repeat units of MEH‐PPV leads to a free carrier density of 4 × 1022 m−3. Neglecting the density‐dependent mobility would lead to an overestimation of the free hole density by an order of magnitude. The free hole densities are further confirmed by impedance measurements on Schottky diodes based on F4‐TCNQ doped MEH‐PPV and a silver electrode.
FROM ELECTRON TO BIOMASS: A MECHANISTIC MODEL TO DESCRIBE PHYTOPLANKTON PHOTOSYNTHESIS AND STEADY‐STATE GROWTH RATES 1

A system of differential equations was presented which describes the rate of linear and cyclic electron flow through photosystems II and I. The system describes the rate of photochemistry in terms of electrons generated that are available for cellular metabolism, and results in a realistic description of photosynthesis as a function of irradiance without implicit assumptions for the relationship. The system allows a concise and detailed simulation of fluorescence kinetics. The derivation of the general degree of reduction (γx) and its application to translate the rates of photochemistry (or measured fluorescence yields) to steady‐state rates of carbon fixation and growth was shown. The efficiency of light‐limited photosynthesis (α) was shown to depend on the cellular ratio of carbon to nitrogen. For any given antenna size, α increases with nitrate as N‐source, and decreases with ammonium as N‐source, if the cellular carbon to nitrogen ratio of the phytoplankton increases. Cyclic electron transport around photosystem I increases the ratio of ATP generated relative to linear electron (e−) flow. The increase of ATP/e− is larger under extreme light‐limiting conditions. The long‐known fact that protein synthesis saturates at lower light intensities than carbonate synthesis was explained in terms of the decrease of ATP/e− with increasing irradiance and the higher ATP demand of protein synthesis.