Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Active Engagement with Virtual Reality Reduces Stress and Increases Positive Emotions

Stress, anxiety, and depression negatively affect productivity and the global economy with an estimated annual cost of ${\$}$1 trillion U.S. dollars, according to the World Health Organization. Moreover, prolonged daily stress—even if minor—can lead to severe health consequences, including cancer and various mental disorders. Virtual reality (VR) has been shown to be a promising tool for relieving daily stressors given its accessibility and its projected availability as compared to visiting with mental health professionals. Prior work in this area has mostly focused on the restorative effects of nature simulations, demonstrating that passively experiencing immersive nature scenes improves positive affect. However, aside from providing opportunities for exercise, little is known about how active VR engagement can improve one’s mental health. To address this research gap, this paper presents a new, active form of VR therapy and assesses its effectiveness as compared to passive VR experiences. We developed VR Drawing—inspired by art therapy, which promotes positive emotions through artistic creation—and VR Throwing—inspired by “rage rooms”, which allow people to release negative emotions via intentional destruction. In a between- participants study (n = 64), we found that both VR Drawing and VR Throwing significantly reduced participants’ stress levels and increased positive affect when compared to passively watching nature scenes in VR. Linear regression models suggest that the total number of user interactions positively affects improvement in positive emotions for VR Drawing, but has a negative impact on positive emotions for VR Throwing. This study provides empirical evidence of how active VR experiences may reduce stress and offers guidelines for creating future VR applications to promote psychological well-being.
Current Issues in Cadastral Regulations in Romania

SUMMARY Currently in Romania have been introduced some legislative regulations which want to improve the workflow of real estate registration. In this paper we want to highlight current workflow in this domain and main changes. It is highlighted some registration and recording changes in systematic land registration and sporadically land registration. Also in present exist concerns about changing the law of cadastre and land registration in Romania. SUMMARY In prezent in Romania au fost adoptate unele modificari legislative in scopul de a imbunatati fluxul de inregistrare a proprietatilor. In acest articol dorim sa evidentiem modificarile care se aduc fluxului de lucru utilizat in prezent. Sunt aratate schimbarile principale in ceea ce priveste inregistrarile sistematice si cele sporadice. In etapa actuala exista de asemenea preocupari privind modificarea legii cadastrului din Romania.
Significance of gravimetric versus volumetric measurements of soil quality under biodynamic, conventional, and continuous grass management

ABSTRACT: We analyzed 22 physical, biological, and chemical soil properties using adjacent fields from commercial farms in New Zealand. Our objective was to measure the effects of biodynamic, conventional, and continuous grass systems on soil quality. One set of three adjacent farm fields included a biodynamic vegetable field, a conventional vegetable field, and a biodynamic pasture field. A second set of three adjacent farm fields included a biodynamic mixed (grain/sheep/beef) field, a conventional mixed field, and a biodynamic pasture field. The pasture fields had soils of higher biological quality (i.e., more organic matter, microbial activity, and earthworms) than the soils of the biodynamically or conventionally cropped fields. The biodynamic vegetable field had soil of higher physical, biological, and chemical quality than its conventional neighbor. When converting the chemical and biological data from a mass to a volume basis, most statistically significant differences remained in the vegetable/pasture data set, whereas many became nonsignificant in the mixed/pasture data set. Presenting data on a volume basis per unit given surface depth (like 0 to 10 cm in this study) may penalize a farm with lower bulk densities and thicker topsoils in comparison to an adjacent farm with higher bulk densities and thinner topsoils. We recommend calculating soil measurements on a volume basis per unit of top-soil depth (comphte A horizon) or per unit of solum depth (A and B horizons). Whether data are presented on a mass or volume basis, biological or ecological significance should be emphasized rather than statistical significance.
Copper-Doped Tin Oxide Thin Films Prepared by Sol-Gel Dip Coating Technique for CO Gas Sensing

Copper-doped tin oxide (Cu: SnO2) thin films have been fabricated using the sol-gel dip coating technique with one, two, and three immersion cycles. This study aimed to investigate the influence of the number of immersion cycles on the structural, morphological, and optical properties of the films for their potential application in CO gas sensing. The thin films were characterized by means of electronic microscopies (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies, and UV-Vis’s spectroscopy. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis studies the film's crystalline structure and phase purity. The SEM images showed that the films had a uniform and dense structure, with an increase in the number of immersion cycles. UV-Vis spectroscopy was conducted to investigate the optical properties of the films. Gas sensing measurements were performed to evaluate the CO gas sensing performance of the films. The results demonstrated that the films prepared with three immersion cycles exhibited the highest sensitivity (1137.70) to CO gas.
Outcrops and well logs as a practicum for calibrating the accuracy of traveltime tomograms

AbstractWe have developed two case studies demonstrating the use of high-resolution seismic tomography and reflection imaging in the field of paleoseismology. The first study, of the Washington fault in southern Utah, USA, evaluated the subsurface deposits in the hanging wall of the normal fault. The second study, of the Mercur fault in the eastern Great Basin of Utah, USA, helped to establish borehole locations for sampling subsurface colluvial deposits buried deeper than those previously trenched along the fault zone. We evaluated the seismic data interpretations by comparison with data obtained by trenching and logging deposits across the Washington fault, and by drill-core sampling and video logging of boreholes penetrating imaged deposits along the Mercur fault. The seismic tomograms provided critical information on colluvial wedges and faults but lacked sufficient detail to resolve individual paleoearthquakes.
Strathprints Institutional Repository a Matrix Iteration for Dynamic Network Summaries *

Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Abstract. We propose a new algorithm for summarizing properties of large-scale time-evolving networks. This type of data, recording connections that come and go over time, is generated in many modern applications, including telecommunications and online human social behavior. The algorithm computes a dynamic measure of how well pairs of nodes can communicate by taking account of routes through the network that respect the arrow of time. We take the conventional approach of downweighting for length (messages become corrupted as they are passed along) and add the novel feature of downweighting for age (messages go out of date). This allows us to generalize widely used Katz-style centrality measures that have proved popular in network science to the case of dynamic networks sampled at nonuniform points in time. We illustrate the new approach on synthetic and real data. 1. Introduction. Large-scale complex networks arise in a range of natural and technological settings [7, 19], and they pose many challenges to applied and computational mathematicians. Many key ideas in this area came from the field of social network analysis [23], at a time when interactions were typically recorded link by link in the field and systems involved tens or perhaps hundreds of players. Nowadays, however, the same principles are being applied to networks in biology, online behavior , and telecommunications, where data involving millions of nodes or more can be generated and stored automatically. The motivation for our work is that many emerging interaction data sets involve an element of time [11]. For example, human social contact can be monitored in relation to emails and phone calls [6, 22], online chats [12], allegiances during massive online gaming [20], and physical proximity [13]. In neuroscience we can record which
EUI Working Papers

This paper examines trade across the Mediterranean against the background of the efforts to foster both North-South and intra-South trade flows as engines of growth. We first consider the shares of these regions (and of the countries constituting them) in the trade of each other as indicators of trade importance; and relative trade intensity indices – the ratio of these shares to the corresponding ones in the trade of the rest of the world – as measures of trade affinity and as means of identifying 'natural' trade partners. Because of the sheer size disparity, trade with the North-Med is more important to the South-Med than the other way round. But both regions display trade affinities with each other, making them natural trading partners, though there are wide disparities between individual countries within each region. Insofar as being natural trading partners forms a criterion for economic integration, there are promising prospects for some form of integration between the countries on the North and the South littorals of the Mediterranean. Contrary to the popular view of Arab South-Med trade being dominated by cultural, religious and linguistic commonalities, our findings show that geography still matters: the Arab South-Med affinity with the group of EU countries not lying on the Mediterranean littoral is much lower than with those that do. Arab commonality also seems to be more important in the trade of the Levant than in that of the Maghreb, whose trade affinities with its former colonial powers suggest the colonial heritage there to be still of importance. More generally, the differences observed here between the Maghreb and the Arab Levant have relevance to the EU's Barcelona Process policy, which encourages the formation of a South Mediterranean Free Trade Area. The findings of our study suggest that though the Arab Levant constitutes indeed a natural trading area, this is not as true for the region as a whole.
EUI Working Papers

Involuntary job loss in administrative data is commonly identified by focusing on mass-layoffs or plant closures. However, such events usually do not happen without prior knowledge, which potentially leads to selection in the labor turnover of distressed firms. We find that workers separating from closing plants up to 2 quarters before closure are associated with significantly lower displacement costs and on average significantly higher pre-closure earnings levels as opposed to ultimately displaced workers. Furthermore, our results indicate that displaced workers with high pre-closure earnings experience significantly lower reductions in future employment probabilities. These findings suggest that compositional differences cause estimated displacement costs to differ between early leavers and ultimately displaced workers. Focusing exclusively on the latter group would lead to an overestimation of displacement costs. JEL-Code: J63, J65, C21, C23
EUI Working Papers

This paper proposes a set of VaR models appropriate to capture the dynamics of energy prices and subsequently quantify energy price risk by calculating VaR and ES measures. Amongst the competing VaR methodologies evaluated in this paper, besides the commonly used benchmark models, a MC simulation approach and a Hybrid MC with Historical Simulation approach, both assuming various processes for the underlying spot prices, are also being employed. All VaR models are empirically tested on eight spot energy commodities that trade futures contracts on NYMEX and the Spot Energy Index. A two-stage evaluation and selection process is applied, combining statistical and economic measures, to choose amongst the competing VaR models. Finally, both long and short trading positions are considered as it is extremely important for energy traders and risk managers to be able to capture efficiently the characteristics of both tails of the distributions.
European Journal of Education Studies - ISSN 2501-1111

The quality of education has long been intriguing the researchers in recent years, and almost all countries in the world are on the lookout for new methods in order to continuously develop the quality. No matter how carefully they have developed their new curriculum, effective teaching depends on teachers’ knowledge, skills and professional development since teachers are at centre of the movement to achieve quality education. It is therefore essential that ELT researchers and teachers understand and share examples of practice in professional development (PD). They should have opportunity to modify their existing beliefs and develop their practices by gradually incorporating new ideas and ways of working. Academic conferences provide excellent opportunities for the participants to gather fresh insight into the world of education beyond their school walls. Thus, the aim of this study was find out the participants perspectives on the activities carried out during the conference. The results of the quantitative data revealed the overall description of the conference as a positive and encouraging conference, and the qualitative data supported this by providing the thoughts and feelings of the participants.
High Precision Radiation Induced Attenuation Measurements Enabled by Improved Phase Shifted Fiber Loop Ring-Down System

Radiation measurement is critical in ensuring astronauts' safety during space exploration. Although various radiation monitoring techniques have been developed, achieving high-precision measurements remains a significant challenge. This study proposes an improved phase shift fiber loop ring-down (PS-FLRD) system for measuring radiation levels. To enhance the accuracy of the PS-FLRD model, we have constructed a more precise model under discrete conditions, which reduces the fitting error of the phase versus loss equation. Moreover, we have implemented a dual optical path design to mitigate errors arising from environmental changes and ensure the long-term stability of the radiation measurement process. As a result of these improvements, our system can achieve high resolution and low uncertainty, with values of 80 $\mu$dB and 13 mdB, respectively. This level of precision enables the detection of loss variations of 1 m erbium-doped fiber at a radiation dose of 1 Gy, which is one to two orders of magnitude higher than that of commercial instruments. Our proposed system is highly beneficial for measuring the exposure of astronauts to the radiation environment, providing a strong safety guarantee for future surface exploration of the moon and Mars.
Turbanella amphiatlantica, a new species of Gastrotricha (Macrodasyida) from eastern North America and northwest Europe

A new species, Turbanella amphiatlantica n. sp. is described, which has collection locations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, in both the mid-Atlantic and northeasten United States and in both the British Isles and northwestern Europe. The descriptive materials include three independent drawings and five MPEG videos. Preliminary salinity tolerance experiments indicate a very high degree of euryosmotic capabilities, as do the estuarine and marine conditions under which it has been found. We consider to be T. amphiatlantica several instances of specimens provisionally identified as other species, e. g. Turbanella mustela or T. otti, leaving the published distributions of these two species as originally described, namely the eastern Pacific Ocean and the upper Adriatic Sea, respectively.
Efficient Adaptive Loose Virtual Clustering Based Routing For Power Heterogeneous MANETs Using Local Geographical

Power heterogeneity is common in mobile ad hoc networks. There are increasing interests and use of mobile ad hoc networks with the fast progress of computing techniques and wireless networking techniques. Mobile network consists of devices with heterogeneous characteristics in terms of transmission power, energy, capacity, radio, etc. In such a heterogeneous network, different devices are likely to have different capacities and are thus likely to transmit data with different power levels. However, the throughput of power heterogeneous MANETs can be severely impacted by high power nodes. To address this issue, a loose virtual clustering based (LVC) routing protocol for power heterogeneous (LRPH) MANETs is defined. To explore the advantages of high power nodes, we develop an LVC algorithm to construct a hierarchical network and to eliminate unidirectional links. However the node loose clustering just on the categories of the node will not be sufficient. The current approach just assumes the quality based on the power aspect, which cannot be taken as a standalone parameter. To overcome this problem, geographical information of the node (GPS) is used which increases the ability of network in terms clustering. Each node periodically broadcasts a beacon containing its position to another node. A Well known position based Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR) is used which reduces delay in terms of clustering
Generator Tripping for Transient Stability Considering Coupling Characteristic of Frequency and Power Angle

With the increased scale of the power system, the mechanism of transient process has become more complex. The generator tripping is useful to prevent transient instability. This paper proposes a method to determine the action time of generator tripping. The mechanism of inter-unit dynamic after a major disturbance is derived. The effect of power angle oscillation on frequency is analyzed. Based on the obtained analysis conclusion, the minimum frequency deviation between the two units after generator tripping is used as the evaluation index to determine the time of implementing measures. The case study shows that the proposed method is reliable to suppress the inter-unit frequency oscillation at different swing amplitude.
Impact of Rapid Urbanization on Water Quality and Related Mitigation Options in Taihu Lake Area

Located in one of the most rapidly developing areas in China, Taihu Lake watershed is undergoing an accelerated process of urbanisation. Concomitant to fast economic bloom and urban expansion is the deterioration of water quality. The eutrophication of Taihu Lake has become a major environmental concern of the region. The main objective of this paper is to summarize the effects of urbanization on eutrophication of the lake. In addition to the increased discharge of domestic wastewater there are also some indirect impact of urbanization on the nutrient status of surface water. Among them are decreased utilization of organic manure, increased dosage of chemical fertilizer, the shift of scattered livestock and poultry breeding to highly concentrated ones, higher runoff due to more impermeable ground, and the encroachment of wetland in which a significant amount of nutrients can be removed from water. All of these can lead to a larger contribution of non-point source N and P to water bodies. To mitigate these negative effects of urbanization on environment some practicable options have been proposed by the authors.
RETROSPECTIVE: DRPM: Dynamic Speed Control for Power Management in Server Class Disks

Our ISCA 2003 DRPM paper was unique compared to computer architecture papers of that time in two respects. First, this paper focused on a layer of the memory hierarchy that was not a common topic in most computer architecture conferences then: storage. Second, the paper delved into the microarchitecture of the then predominant storage device in servers: the hard disk drive (HDD), whose internal composition is primarily electro-mechanical and details of which were rarely the focus of study in computer architecture. As maverick as this paper may have been, it was grounded in certain key trends and shifts in computing at the turn of the 21st century
A new back‐and‐forth iterative method for time‐reversed convection modeling: Implications for the Cenozoic evolution of 3‐D structure and dynamics of the mantle

The 3‐D distribution of buoyancy in the convecting mantle drives a suite of convection‐related manifestations. Although seismic tomography is providing increasingly resolved images of the present‐day mantle heterogeneity, the distribution of mantle density variations in the geological past is unknown, and, by implication, this is true for the convection‐related observables. The one major exception is tectonic plate motions, since geologic data are available to estimate their history and they currently provide the only available constraints on the evolution of 3‐D mantle buoyancy in the past. We developed a new back‐and‐forth iterative method for time‐reversed convection modeling with a procedure for matching plate velocity data at different instants in the past. The crucial aspect of this reconstruction methodology is to ensure that at all times plates are driven by buoyancy forces in the mantle and not vice versa. Employing tomography‐based retrodictions over the Cenozoic, we estimate the global amplitude of the following observables: dynamic surface topography, the core‐mantle boundary ellipticity, the free‐air gravity anomalies, and the global divergence rates of tectonic plates. One of the major benefits of the new data assimilation method is the stable recovery of much shorter wavelength changes in heterogeneity than was possible in our previous work. We now resolve what appears to be two‐stage subduction of the Farallon plate under the western U.S. and a deeply rooted East African Plume that is active under the Ethiopian volcanic fields during the Early Eocene.