Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of atmospheric ozone concentration trends by eighth highest values

In Taiwan, the ambient air quality standard of ozone is 0.12 ppm, which is not to be exceeded by the observed hourly ozone concentration to protect human health. For each day, the maximum hourly ozone concentration is to be identified. For an entire year, the eighth highest value of the 365 daily hourly maxima is used to test the compliance of the standard. To account for the uncertainty in measurement, the regulation stipulates the three-year moving average of the eighth highest value is the figure for use in comparison with the standard. This research collated the observed ambient hourly ozone data from 1998-2002 at 9 continuous monitoring stations maintained by the Government. The eighth highest concentration (MAX8) was calculated for each site by year. For the estimate of confidence interval for MAX8, this research applied a linear regression of the ozone concentrations on their ranks, and a quadratic logistic regression of odd ratios on ozone concentration. To estimate the confidence interval by using the quadratic *Corresponding author. Tel. : 886-4-23323000 ext. 4451; Fax: 886-4-23742365; E-mail address: hhyang@cyut.edu. tw
Mechanical Properties of Basalt Aggregates for Use in Unbound Pavement Layers

To achieve durable and sustainable road pavements, aggregates in pavement layers should have appropriate physical and mechanical properties. Nowadays, because of some weaknesses of conventional limestone aggregates, igneous rocks have become more used in Turkey by the means of highway pavement layers. Igneous rocks are widespread in Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. Also, Basalt is the most common type of igneous rocks. This paper reports the results of experiments, aiming to identify the physical and mechanical properties of basalt aggregates under the repeated tire loadings when it is used as an aggregate for preparation of base layers. Basalt samples are collected from central Anatolia. The experimental program consisted of two stages: study of the physical and chemical properties of basalt and study of the mechanical properties of specimens made with basalt aggregate. In the laboratory, cylindrical specimens prepared with basalt and limestone was tested in Repeated Load Triaxial (RLT) test apparatus. Resilient modulus and permanent deformation values of the specimens were determined. Prior to RLT testing particle size analysis, micro-Deval test, aggregate impact value test, abrasion test, frost resistance test, compaction test, California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test were performed on the materials. The physical and mechanical properties of basalt are compared with conventional crushed limestone. The test results indicate that the physical properties of basalt aggregate offers advantages compared to limestone aggregates. Basalt has a high abrasion resistance, high durability and high bearing ratio, on the other hand, the water absorption of basalt aggregate is partially high.
Wither coastal management in Australia—a call for National Leadership

ABSTRACT Clarke, B and Harvey N. , 2013. Wither coastal management in Australia—a call for National Leadership The prominence of the coast in terms of the Australian Government's policy has significantly diminished over the last decade. With the exception of planning for climate change and sea level rise there is an absence of forward thinking for the coast at the national level. This absence of national contribution towards direction setting has a filtering effect upon the states. Australia's coastal environments are highly varied and exhibit an impressive array of habitats and species. A federal role in coastal management in Australia is warranted because nationally coastal resources have important social, cultural and economic status. However, important aspects of coastal management have been largely neglected in recent years (integrated management, coastal natural resource management, marine and estuaries planning). This is evidenced by the abolition of the key federal governmental committees and agencies that had a direct mandate for the coast. It is argued that national leadership is critical to support and coordinate what has in the past a somewhat disparate and fragmented allocation of effort and funding. This paper provides an analysis of recent changes within the Australian Government and coastal management decision-making, funding allocations and initiatives and governance; and proposes a series of recommendations for possible ways forward.
A Possible Anomalocaridid from the Cambrian Sirius Passet Lagerstätte, North Greenland

Abstract The Sirius Passet biota of North Greenland is one of the oldest Cambrian lagerstätten, and although it is dominated by non-mineralized arthropods and lobopods, anomalocaridids have never been identified. Based on a single specimen, we herein describe for the first time an appendage with possible anomalocaridid affinities as suggested by an overall gross morphology similar to that of the frontal appendage of Anomalocaris from other localitites. Tamisiocaris borealis n. gen. and n. sp. has an elongated appendage with paired spines along one margin, and differs from the frontal appendage of Anomalocaris in that segment boundaries are absent and ventral spines are relatively long and spineless. These differences may be taphonomic, but the entire surface of the appendage is covered in a fine fabric, making it unlikely that this appendage was originally segmented or sclerotized. The taxon is tentatively placed within Radiodonta, but this systematic placement cannot be confirmed while complete body specimens are lacking.
Niveles de engagement y burnout en voluntarios universitarios: Un estudio exploratorio y descriptivo

Se presentan los resultados de una investigacion exploratoria-descriptiva cuyo objetivo fue conocer los niveles de engagement y burnout en un grupo de voluntarios universitarios que participan de proyectos de extension y voluntariado en la Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Se administro una entrevista semi-estructurada y los instrumentos MBI (Maslach Burnout Inventory) y UWES (Utrecht Work Engagement Scale) con la finalidad de evaluar niveles de burnout y engagement respectivamente y de explorar asociaciones entre los mismos. Los resultados ponen en evidencia una distribucion mayoritaria de los voluntarios en niveles medio-altos de engagement en todas sus dimensiones (absorcion, dedicacion y vigor) asociados con bajos niveles de agotamiento y despersonalizacion/cinismo del burnout.
Early marine growth and consumption demand of juvenile pink salmon in Prince William Sound and the northern coastal Gulf of Alaska

Early Marine Growth and Consumption Demand of Juvenile Pink Salmon in Prince William Sound and the Northern Coastal Gulf of Alaska Alison Danielle Cross Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor David A. Beauchamp Aquatic and Fishery Sciences Although early marine growth has repeatedly been correlated with overall survival for Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), we currently lack a mechanistic understanding of the timing, magnitude, and source of stage-specific mortality periods. Pink salmon (O. gorbuscha) are a key plankton consumer in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska, and hatchery production significantly increases their abundance in this region. This study combined within-season back-calculations of growth and bioenergetics techniques to examine interannual variability in the growth performance and consumption demand of the average hatchery, average wild, and surviving hatchery juvenile pink salmon during the first summer at sea in Prince William Sound and the northern coastal Gulf of Alaska among years corresponding to low marine survival (3% in 2001 and 2003) and high marine survival (9% in 2002, 8% in 2004). Juvenile pink salmon were consistently larger throughout the summer and early fall of 2002 and 2004 than in 2001 and 2003, indicating that larger, faster-growing juvenile pink salmon experienced higher survival. All cohorts ate a larger proportion of their theoretical maximum consumption and consumed more prey during 2002 than during 2001 and 2003 while feeding predominantly on the pteropod Limacina helicina. Unmarked “wild” juvenile pink salmon were significantly larger than hatchery fish during low-survival years, but no significant difference was observed during high-survival years. Pink salmon that survived to adulthood were larger at circuli, grew faster, and consumed more prey than the average juvenile. The localized standing stock biomass of key prey exceeded the daily consumption demand of juvenile pink salmon during July–August; however, estimated prey biomass was not enough to sustain the high level of consumption required to satisfy observed growth. The high percentage of prey biomass consumed, low feeding rates during May–July, a mid-summer decrease in circulus spacing and growth efficiency, and the fact that growth and consumption rates were much higher for all cohorts in high-survival years and for surviving cohorts in all years indicate that pink salmon are food limited in Prince William Sound and the coastal Gulf of Alaska during their first summer at sea.
Diffraction Imaging with Cross-well Seismic Data

Scattering objects (diffractors), such as faults or salt inclusions, are of great interest for exploration. But the scattered wave amplitude may be so weak that it is difficult to see those objects in usual reflection images. The location of scattering objects requires special data pre-processing and/or imaging. We have developed the reflection and diffraction imaging methodology for cross-well data. It is based on the vector Kirchhoff migration with special weighting functions that allow us to discriminate reflecting interfaces and diffractors. We apply the noise imaging diagnostics to discriminate between signal and noise in the cross-well reflection and diffraction images. We verify the validity of reflectors and diffractors by building the Common Image Gathers (CIGs).
Discussion Paper Series Estimation of Spatial Autoregressions with Stochastic Weight Matrices

We examine a higher-order spatial autoregressive model with stochastic, but exogenous, spatial weight matrices. Allowing a general spatial linear process form for the disturbances that permits many common types of error specifications as well as potential ‘long memory’, we provide sufficient conditions for consistency and asymptotic normality of instrumental variables and ordinary least squares estimates. The implications of popular weight matrix normalizations and structures for our theoretical conditions are discussed. A set of Monte Carlo simulations examines the behaviour of the estimates in a variety of situations and suggests, like the theory, that spatial weights generated from distributions with ‘smaller’ moments yield better estimates. Our results are especially pertinent in situations where spatial weights are functions of stochastic economic variables. JEL classifications : C21, C31, C36
Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis and proposed a folding-in techniques for a topic adaptation under an evolving vocabulary

The ontology engineering research community has focused for many years on supporting the creation, development and evolution of ontologies. Ontology forecasting, which aims at predicting semantic changes in an ontology, represents instead a new challenge. In this paper, we want to give a contribution to this novel endeavour by focusing on the task of forecasting semantic concepts in the research domain. Indeed, ontologies representing scientific disciplines contain only research topics that are already popular enough to be selected by human experts or automatic algorithms. They are thus unfit to support tasks which require the ability of describing and exploring the forefront of research, such as trend detection and horizon scanning. We address this issue by introducing the Semantic Innovation Forecast (SIF) model, which predicts new concepts of an ontology at time t+ 1, using only data available at time t. Our approach relies on lexical innovation and adoption information extracted from historical data. We evaluated the SIF model on a very large dataset consisting of over one million scientific papers belonging to the Computer Science domain: the outcomes show that the proposed approach offers a competitive boost in mean average precision-at-ten compared to the baselines when forecasting over 5 years.
Endangered species management: The US experience

To many people around the world, the conservation of endangered species is synonymous with the conservation of biodiversity. Ecologists, of course, understand that biodiversity encompasses far more than endangered species, but it is nonetheless true that endangered species are among the most visible and easily understood symbols of the ongoing loss of biodiversity (see Chapter 10). The protection of such species is a popular and important part of efforts to sustain the earth’s natural diversity (see Box 12.1). The process of conserving endangered species can be divided into three phases: (i) identification—determining which species are in danger of extinction; (ii) protection—determining and implementing the short-term measures necessary to halt a species’ slide to extinction; and (iii) recovery—determining and implementing the longer-term measures necessary to rebuild the population of the species to the point at which it is no longer in danger of extinction. Many countries today have laws or programs designed to protect endangered species, although the efficacy of these efforts varies widely. Most follow the identification/protection/recovery paradigm. One of the oldest and strongest laws is the United States’ Endangered Species Act (ESA), which was passed in 1973 and has served as a template for many other nations. In this chapter, I shall focus on the three phases of endangered species management, emphasizing the US experience. My reason for emphasizing the US is not because I believe it has done a better job of protecting its endangered species than other countries. Rather, I am most familiar with conservation efforts in the US. Moreover, because the US has one of the oldest and strongest laws on the books to protect endangered species, it provides a useful case history. My discussion is admittedly incomplete and, to some extent, idiosyncratic. Endangered species programs, especially those that impose restrictions on human activities, are invariably controversial, and that controversy results in much discussion and debate. The ESA, for example, has been the subject of many books, scientific articles, and popular articles; it has been debated in the halls of Congress and in town halls across the nation; and it has been litigated numerous times in the courts. Complete coverage of all of the issues associated with endangered species in the US or any other large country is simply not possible in a single book chapter. For that reason, I have chosen to review a subset of issues that are likely to be of interest to both scientists and decision-makers in countries with active programs to conserve endangered species.
Studies on Rejuvenation of Futala Lake, Nagpur

Futala Lake is situated near Telankhedi garden on Amaravati road in Nagpur city. Discharge of domestic sewage and effluents from upstream and surrounding residential areas, run-off from the catchment area has significantly contributed to the pollution of the lake. Water quality and sediment analysis for various physicochemical and biological parameters in Futala lake water, conducted by NEERI, revealed that there is degradation in the ecological health and biological wealth of the lake. The lake is in mesotrophic condition and ecotechnological measures are needed to rejuvenate the lake. The measures suggested are construction of sediment basins in the inlets of the lake followed by construction of wetland. A number of species viz. Bulrushes, Sedge, Cattails (Typha) etc. have been identified for wetland construction. This paper emphasis on the management and conservation methods needed to be employed in restoring the Futala Lake.
: evidence from the

: In this paper a rich and innovative dataset, the International Adult Literacy Survey, is used to examine the impact of functional literacy on earnings. The IALS surveys 12 OECD countries and sub-regions via a consistent questionnaire and includes a number of tests of numeracy and literacy, as well as basic labour market information. This paper examines the effect of these skills on labour market earnings for the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and for Great Britain. The estimates suggest that while ability has a role in determining earnings the dominant factor remains formal education. It is shown that, particularly for Great Britain, there is a positive interaction between the test score and education in determining earnings.
Hydrology and Soil Erosion

We review research on surface water hydrology and soil erosion at the Santa Rita Experimental Range (SRER). Almost all of the research was associated with eight small experimental watersheds established from 1974 to 1975 and operated until the present. Analysis of climatic features of the SRER supports extending research findings from the SRER to broad areas of the Southwest with similar climates. Conceptual models for annual water balance and annual sediment yield at the SRER were developed and supported by data from four very small experimental watersheds. The impacts of rotation and yearlong grazing activities, and of mesquite removal were analyzed using data from four small experimental watersheds. The analyses suggested that mesquite removal reduced runoff and sediment yield, but differences in hydrologic response from paired watersheds due to soil differences dominated grazing and vegetation management impacts. The 28 years of monitoring under the same experimental design on the four pairs of watersheds provides us with a long period of "pretreatment" data on the paired watersheds. New treatments could now be adapted and designed based on lessons learned from monitoring over nearly three decades. There is a unique opportunity to institute long-term adaptive management experiments on these experimental watersheds.
Applying mSpace interfaces to the Semantic Web - working paper

Ontologies can represent large, multidimensional spaces: classical music, research in computer science in the UK, health care for breast cancer are examples of rich domains. There have been no easy ways to represent meaningful slices through these multidimensional spaces to privilege the parts of the domain that are of interest to a given user. mSpace, an interaction model we describe here, is particularly suited to ontology-based interaction because it is designed to expose and support exploration of relations in a domain. In this paper we propose the formalism for this interaction model to support mapping this kind of userdetermined interaction onto a high dimensional space represented by an ontology. The model provides semantic web designers with a means for rapidly prototyping and interrogating the data represented by an ontology. It also and provides a fast, effective UI alternative to keyword search and browsing for users to explore the domain space while maintaining domain context.
Sovereign Debt Crises and Credit to the Private Sector

We argue that, through its effect on aggregate demand and country risk premia, sovereign debt restructuring can adversely affect the private sector's access to foreign capital markets. Using fixed effect analysis, we estimate that sovereign debt rescheduling episodes are indeed systematically accompanied by a decline in foreign credit to emerging market private firms, both during debt renegotiations and for over two years after the agreements are reached. This decline is large (over 20%), statistically significant, and robust when we control for a host of fundamentals. We find that this effect is different for financial sector firms, for exporters, and for nonfinancial firms in the non-exporting sector. We also find that the effect depends on the type of debt rescheduling agreement.
Detecting and blocking P2P botnets through contact tracing chains

Peer-to-peer (P2P) botnets have recently become serious security threats on the internet. It is difficult to detect the propagation of P2P botnets by isolated monitoring on individual machines due to its decentralised control structure. In this paper, we propose a contact tracing chain-based framework to detect and block P2P botnets by tracing contact behaviours among peers. In the proposed framework, the contacts of peers with suspicious symptoms are traced and tracing chains are established to correlate contacts among peers with their abnormal symptoms. Peers are confirmed with infections when the length of contact tracing chain that they belong to reaches a preset threshold. Under this framework, we develop different detection, tracing and immunisation strategies. Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed contact tracing framework can quickly detect and block the propagation of P2P botnets.
RESEARCH ARTICLE α2 -HEREMANS SCHMID GLYCOPROTEIN (AHSG) GENE Thr256Ser POLYMORPHISM IN TYPE 2 DIABETES AMONG SOUTH INDIANS

Alpha 2-Heremans-Schmid glycoprotein (AHSG) is a negative acute-phase reactant and extra osseous calcification inhibitor. Decreased serum concentration of AHSG is independently related to insulin resistance. To identify the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) of AHSG gene and assess their association with Type 2 diabetes in South Indian population. The study included 110 normal healthy volunteers, (68 M: 42 F) and 101 T2DM subjects (65 M: 36 F) of M.V. Hospital for Diabetes, Chennai, India. Anthropometric and biochemical parameters were measured. Polymerase Chain Reaction was carried out in the genomic DNAs using primers 5’-GTA AGG CAA CAC TCA GTG A-3’ and 5’-TCA TCA CTG CCA TGT CTA G-3’. PCR-RFLP was performed with the amplicon of 731 bp; using the restriction enzyme SacI that cleaves between T and C (GAGCT*C) and produces 709 and 22 bps bands in agarose gel electrophoresis. Results from our study shows that 98 (89.09 %), 12 (10.91%) and no controls had, CC (Thr/Thr), CG (Thr/Ser) and G/G (Ser/Ser) polymorphism respectively. 68 (67.32 %), 32 (31.68 %) and 1 (0.99%) T2DM patients had CC (Thr/Thr), CG (Thr/Ser) and GG (Ser/Ser) polymorphism respectively. This is statistically significant (p< 0.001). AHSG gene Thr256Ser SNP was significantly associated (p< 0.001) with T2DM among south Indian population.
WHALE WATCH PASSENGERS' PREFERENCES FOR TOUR ATTRIBUTES AND MARINE MANAGEMENT IN MAUI, HAWAII

This research project examines whale watch passengers' preferences for tour attributes and marine management strategies in the Hawaiian Island Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. Surveys were distributed to passengers on whale watching vessels during the winter season of 2005, in Maui Hawaii. The survey utilized both Likert and discrete choice question formats. Follow up key informant interviews were conducted with two operators and the state advisor to the marine sanctuary. The sample population of whale watch passengers in Maui was fairly homogenous, exhibiting an overall environmental sentiment. Differences were examined between Hawaiian residents and visitors, as well as between passengers on an ecotour and a regular whale watch. Passengers on the ecotour expressed slightly higher rates of satisfaction with their tour. The Hawaii residents expressed more concern about the current level of protection for humpback whales in Hawaii. Overall the passengers were in support of implementing: speed limits for all boats, tougher regulations and increased penalties, sewage disposal at the harbours, and on-board education including a naturalist and hydrophone. The passengers showed a positive willingness to pay for all of these