Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Makirina bay peloid (N Dalmatia, Republic of Croatia) – its potential use in balneotherapy

Recent marine sediments from Makirina bay are according to their organoleptic properties, treated as peloid or healing mud, already frequently used by local people and tourists as pomades. The application of peloids in balneotherapy is mainly intended for therapeutic treatment generally related to muscle-bone skin pathologies and purposes of wellness and relaxation. Recent studies point out that one of the main factors determining the final characteristics of peloids are grain size distribution, mineralogy, cation exchange capacity (CEC), elemental and microbiological composition of initial »geological material«. As reported by previous studies Makirina Bay peloid is represented mostly by sandy silt with relatively high CEC value (63.82 meq/100g). Peloid mineral composition is dominated by dolomite and quartz, followed by illite/muscovite, aragonite, halite, calcite, and pyrite. The average concentrations of potentially toxic elements (PTE) in Makirina bay peloid determined in this research are: As (17.6 mg/kg), Cr (92.09 mg/kg), Cu (44.5 mg/ kg), Mo (31.8 mg/kg), Pb (28.9 mg/kg) and Zn (69.2 mg/kg) and are comparable to previous results. PTE contents in benthic algae Codium bursa (C. bursa) are: As (8.8 mg/kg), Cr (15.7 mg/kg), Cu (5.6 mg/kg), Mo (0.7 mg/kg), Pb (3.6 mg/ kg) and Zn (16.3 mg/kg). Calculated Transfer factors (TF) from surficial peloid (0-5 cm) to benthic algae C. bursa are <1 for all analysed PTE, indicating no PTE transfer or bioaccumulation of PTE in C. bursa. Results of microbiological research correspond to previous studies and showed no coliforms and E. coli presence in Makirina bay peloid. Our studies have shown the adequate comparability of Makirina Bay peloid with peloids already successfully used in various spa centres around the world in purposes related to wellness and therapy, but additional researches (determination of Cr and Mo mobilities) are necessary before potential use of Makirina bay peloid. 168 Darja KOMAR et al.
Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946-1368 (review)

seeking the proximate causes of scurvy or other maladies, and then by inventing or adapting remedies. But nearly all of these energetic innovators were hampered by what Wylie calls cultural racism—stereotypically held and expressed views of why Africans ate what they ate, had to live as they did, and ended up malnourished, badly housed, and uneducated. Wylie makes her case for racism effectively, but she does not sufaciently explore the political economy or scientiac reality of starvation, hunger, and disease, especially with regard to South Africa’s recurrent famines. Likewise, her short sketches of the social and medical scientists who grasped the dimensions of South Africa’s deeply constructed malaise are fascinating and valuable. But none assesses the lasting impact on South African self-awareness of such meliorists as Margaret Ballinger, John Fleming Brock, Frank Drewe, Frank Gluckman, Ellen Hellman, Gertrude Kark, Eileen Krige, and Ray Phillips. Were they fully effective in attempting to better the lives of Africans within the context of segregation and apartheid? Could each have done more to educate him/herself and his/her society? Wylie’s book is a sophisticated, if in method not notably interdisciplinary, meditation on cultural attitudes in and across a sharply bifurcated nation. More crossing into cognate disciplines would have enriched the author’s history of how white South Africa confronted and constructed its responses to the welfare of the country’s deprived majority. More attention to the social consequences of cultural racism would also have enlarged the signiacance of this sensitive book.
Common Property Resources Synergy and Perspectives of Sustainable Management in Garurganga Watershed, Indian Central Himalaya

Abstract Keeping in view the pivotal role of common property resources in hill farming system an effort was made to review the ongoing resources management of three major Common property resources (land, water and forest) in the representative villages of Bhetagad-Garur Ganga watershed, Indian central Himalayas. Based on field experiences and review of the resources synergy, it is strongly advocated that the management and conservation of common property resources must be framed, implemented and evaluated in the light of area specific needs, socioeconomic characteristics, bio-physical attributes and the influence of external forces. Thus it is urgently required that the management of common property resources could be ensured by maintaining harmony between man and nature.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUDIOVISUAL SPEECH PERCEPTION IN MANDARIN-SPEAKING CHILDREN

Existing findings suggest that the developmental shift of audiovisual speech perception is subject to cultural variation, and previous studies failed to observe it in Mandarin-speaking children. The current study revisits this issue by performing the McGurk paradigm on a large sample consisting of 61 children aged 3–4 (n = 20), 5–6 (n = 21), 7–8 (n = 20) years and 26 adults aged 18–22 years. Results revealed a dramatic shift occurring at around five as 3–4-year-olds made significantly more “Ba” (auditory) and fewer “Da” (audiovisual) responses in incongruent trials (AbVg) than older groups. Spearman’s correlation showed that age negatively correlated with “Ba” but positively with “Da” responses. Results supported that Mandarin-speaking children undergo a developmental shift from biasing unimodal auditory information to integrating audiovisual information in speech perception at an earlier age rather than not necessarily undergoing the shift.
3-D inversion of gravity and magnetic data with depth resolution

Magnetization and density models with depth resolution are obtained by solving an inverse problem based on a 3-D set of potential field data. Such a data set is built from information on vertical and horizontal variations of the magnetic or gravity field. The a priori information consists of delimiting a source region and subdividing it in a set of blocks. In this case, the information related to a set of field data along the vertical direction is not generally redundant and is decisive in giving a depth resolution to the gravity and magnetic methods. Because of this depth resolution, which derives solely from the potential field data, an unconstrained and joint inversion of a multiobservation-level data set is shown to provide surprising results for error-free synthetic data. On the contrary, a single-observation level data inversion produces an incorrect and too shallow model. Hence, a good depth resolution is likely to occur for the gravity and magnetic methods when based on the information along the vertical direction. This is also evidenced by an analysis of the kernel function versus the field altitude level and by a singular value analysis of the inversion operators for both the single and multilevel cases. Errors connected to numerical upward continuation do not affect the quality of the solution, provided that the data set extent is larger than that of the anomaly field. Application of the method to a 3-D magnetic data set relative to Vesuvius indicates that the method may significantly improve interpretation of potential fields.
Relationships between silicic plutonism and volcanism: geochemical evidence

ABSTRACT Field associations (voluminous ash flow deposits, rhyolitic stocks and dykes, ring complexes), evidence of repeated influxes of mafic magma, and thermal constraints indicate that many high-level silicic plutons (magma chambers) acted as open systems for considerable parts of their history. The long thermal lifetime, as well as other evidence from the volcanic record, suggests that some such systems reached a quasi-steady state in which magma input was balanced by magma output for times longer than those required for crystallisation. Reconstruction of the evolution of large, long-lived caldera-forming systems, such as that of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico, indicates that many chambers have lost a highly fractionated silicic cap, in some cases cyclically. Crystallised plutons may contain no obvious record of this evolutionary phase. Geochemical data from silicic ash flow deposits can be used to reconstruct the volcanic stage of pluton development. Many silicic systems, especially of alkaline affinity, apparently pass from a stage in which melt evolution is dominated by crystal-liquid processes to one in which other processes may also contribute to differentiation. Apparently, the transition is most readily achieved in volatile-rich, alkaline silicic systems emplaced in complex, ancient sialic crust of the cratons. Once established, the preservation of highly fractionated caps on magma chambers requires a balance between thermal input and cooling-induced crystallisation. If heat enters the system too quickly, the cap may get stirred into the dominant magma volume by convection. If heat input is too slow, the magma body will crystallise inward from the margins, and the plutonic-consolidation stage will begin.
CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING REPORTS

Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) are generally considered as vital methods for achieving climate goals. To limit the rise in the global average temperature below 2 °C, a large number of countries that participated in the Paris agreement was virtually unanimous about the effective collaboration among members for the reduction of CO2 emissions throughout this century. NETs on the ground that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, provide an active option to achieve this goal. In this contribution, we compare limiting factors, cost, and capacity of three different NETs, including bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), absorption and adsorption. Although there are several advantages for capturing CO2, still some constraints regarding the high operational cost of NETs and industrial condition of these technologies as a method of climate change mitigation is not clear. Thereby no single process can be considered as a comprehensive solution. Indeed, any developed technologies, in turn, have a contribution to the reduction of CO2 concentration. Extensive research needs to be done to assess and decrease NETs costs and limitations. 1 Process Engineer, Energy and Environment Research Center of Niro Research institute (NRI), Tehran, Iran; e-mail: talei.saeed66@gmail.com 100 Saeed TALEI, Zahra SOLEIMANI
The dos and don'ts of leadership in sequential public goods experiments

We study the effects of leadership in the provision of public goods by examining (i) the relative importance of reward and punishment as leadership devices, (ii) whether endogenous leadership is more efficient than exogenously enforced leadership, and (iii) whether leaders contributing last, instead of first, also increase contributions. The experimental results are: (i) Reward options yield lower contributions than punishment through exclusion. (ii) Endogenous leadership is much more efficient than exogenously imposed leadership. (iii) Sequentiality itself is not beneficial for contributions since groups where the leader contributes as the last member do not contribute more than groups without a leader.
The poloidal geomagnetic ﬁeld in a differentially rotating upper core layer

This paper deals with the inverse solution of the induction equation accounting for moving core material. In a layer of the ﬂuid outer core we prescribe the associated velocity ﬁeld by a differential rotation. The angular velocity near the core–mantle boundary (CMB) corresponds to the mean westward drift of the geomagnetic ﬁeld. We solve the induction equation for the poloidal magnetic ﬁeld in both the mantle and the ﬂuid outer-core layer using the magnetic ﬁeld as the boundary value at the Earth’s surface and the assumed velocity ﬁeld as the prescribed model parameter. The numerical solution of the induction equation is based on a modiﬁed Tikhonov regularization of an integral equation approach described in a previous paper by Ballani et al. . This numerical experiment shows both the scope of our method with respect to highly conducting material and the effect of the motion of the conducting material on the penetration behaviour of ﬁeld variations. The results indicate that the downward continuation of the ﬁeld by our method is possible to about 100 km below the CMB in the decadal time scale. The penetration depth mainly depends on the high conductivity, while the effect of the relative rotation is marginal in the uppermost 25 km and becomes more signiﬁcant in deeper parts. Solutions become more unstable for depths of the outer core below 100 km, and no relevant solution ﬁtting the data within 10 per cent can be reached, i.e. decadal ﬁeld variations at these depths cannot be fully causally related to those observed at the Earth’s surface.
Learning Efﬁcient Correlated Equilibria

—The majority of distributed learning literature focuses on convergence to Nash equilibria. Correlated equilibria, on the other hand, can often characterize more efﬁcient collective behavior than even the best Nash equilibrium. However, there are no existing distributed learning algorithms that converge to speciﬁc correlated equilibria. In this paper, we provide one such algorithm which guarantees that the agents’ collective joint strategy will constitute an efﬁcient correlated equilibrium with high probability. The key to attaining efﬁcient correlated behavior through distributed learning involves incorporating a common random signal into the learning environment.
Aberystwyth University Extending the Global Sensitivity Analysis of the SimSphere model in the Context of its Future Exploitation by the Scientific Community

: In today’s changing climate, the development of robust, accurate and globally applicable models is imperative for a wider understanding of Earth’s terrestrial biosphere. Moreover, an understanding of the representation, sensitivity and coherence of such models are vital for the operationalisation of any physically based model. A Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) was conducted on the SimSphere land biosphere model in which a meta-modelling method adopting Bayesian theory was implemented. Initially, effects of assuming uniform probability distribution functions (PDFs) for the model inputs, when examining sensitivity of key quantities simulated by SimSphere at different output times, were examined. The development of topographic model input
Childhood Social Factors and their Impact on Young Adulthood Childhood Social Factors and their Impact on Young Adulthood Obesity Obesity

Obesity is a growing concern in the United States, particularly among children and adolescents. This study aimed to ascertain what factors including school/peer influences, culture, family lifestyle, and neighborhood environment, during individuals’ adolescence, impact their weight as young adults. The researcher conducted a survey that was given to students at a private catholic college in southern New England. A survey instrument was developed and distributed as a Facebook event restricted to college students at the specific institution, and additionally was distributed to one social work undergraduate course. The findings indicated that participant’s weight was most influenced by family lifestyle and school environment factors. By learning this information the researcher was able to make implications for practice, policy, and research.
Time-memory Trade-oﬀs for Near-collisions

In this work we consider generic algorithms to ﬁnd near-collisions for a hash function. If we consider only hash computations, it is easy to compute a lower-bound for the complexity of near-collision algorithms, and to build a matching algorithm. However, this algorithm needs a lot of memory, and makes more than 2 n/ 2 memory accesses. Recently, several algorithms have been proposed without this memory requirement; they require more hash evaluations, but the attack is actually more practical. They can be divided in two main categories: some are based on truncation, and some are based on covering codes. In this paper, we give a new insight to the generic complexity of a near-collision attack. First, we consider time-memory trade-oﬀs for truncation-based algorithms. For a practical implementation, it seems reasonable to assume that some memory is available and we show that taking advantage of this memory can signiﬁcantly reduce the complexity. Second, we show a new method combining truncation and covering codes. The new algorithm is always at least as good as the previous works, and often gives a signiﬁcant improvement. We illustrate our results by giving a 10-near collision for MD5: our algorithm has a complexity of 2 45 . 4 using 1TB of memory while the best previous algorithm required 2 52 . 5 computations.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Semiring Programming: A Semantic Framework for Generalized Sum Product Problems

To solve hard problems, AI relies on a variety of disciplines such as logic, probabilistic reasoning, machine learning and mathematical programming. Although it is widely accepted that solving real-world problems requires an integration amongst these, contemporary representation methodologies offer little support for this. In an attempt to alleviate this situation, we position and motivate a new declarative programming framework in this paper. We focus on the semantical foundations in service of providing abstractions of well-known problems such as SAT, Bayesian inference, generative models, learning and convex optimization. Programs are understood in terms of ﬁrst-order logic structures with semiring labels, which allows us to freely combine and integrate problems from different AI disciplines and represent non-standard problems over unbounded domains. Thus, the main thrust of this paper is to view such well-known problems through a uniﬁed lens in the hope that appropriate solver strategies (exact, approximate, portfolio or hybrid) may emerge that tackle real-world problems in a principled way.
Blow-up in a p -Laplacian mutualistic model on graphs

: In this paper, a p -Laplacian ( p > 2) reaction-diﬀusion system on weighted graphs is introduced to describe a network mutualistic model of population ecology. After overcoming diﬃculties caused by the nonlinear p -Laplacian, we propose a new strong mutualistic condition , and it is proved that the solution of this system blows up for any nontrivial initial data under this condition. In this sense, we extend the blow-up results of models with graph Laplacian ( p = 2) in [6] to general graph p -Laplacian.
A Closer Look at the Tax Incidence of Instant Lottery Games: An Analysis by Price Point

The tax incidence of different price-point instant lottery games is examined. Theoretical reasons exist for expecting higher-priced instant lottery games to be less regressive than lower-priced instant games. Using game-level data from a sample of states, the empirical results show that higher-priced instant games are significantly less regressive than lower-priced games. For some games, regressivity is rejected in favor of proportionality. In addition, the tax incidence of individual instant games is quite different than that for all instant games combined. This suggests that large differences in individual instant-game tax incidence are masked if aggregated sales data are used.
Comparative Study of Various Cloud Architectures

: Computing needs number of equipment and programming assets which are changing or getting updated in this way requiring clients to reliably pump in speculations to overhaul their infrastructure. This obliged specialists to land at an answer where clients would have entry to most recent renditions of equipment and programming without requiring new speculations. This prompted the very idea of Cloud computing where a client pays just for the administration as opposed for the item. In this paper we are exhibiting cloud testing measures and near examination between the three structures to be specific private, public and p2p on the premise of security, protection, accessibility and respectability.
Instability of a tidal mixing front in the presence of realistic tides and mixing

Instability and lateral eddy fluxes associated with a tidal mixing front are studied using idealized primitive equation numerical model runs. The front itself develops as a result of turbulence associated with imposed tidal currents over a sloping bottom. Thus, the model includes realistic levels of turbulence and time-dependence in the base-state conditions. In all of the 21 configurations considered, the front is unstable to fluctuations that usually draw energy primarily from the potential energy pool. Scalings are developed to parameterize a) the location of the tidal mixing front; b) the eddy kinetic energy; and c) the lateral eddy coefficients. In all cases, baroclinic instability enhances the lateral mixing relative to the two-dimensional case, but the extent of enhancement varies with the input parameters. Preliminary model runs that include a simple nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplanktondetritus biological model do not suggest any substantial ecological effect of the baroclinic instabilities. The lack of a strong biological effect, despite the enhanced eddy transports, occurs because of the near cancelation of oppositely directed cross-isobath eddy fluxes in the upper and lower parts of the water column. Similarly, shallow and deep cross-frontal eddy heat fluxes also nearly balance: this cancelation appears to help explain how the classical one-dimensional potential energy criterion for frontal location can work so well in a complex ocean.
RISK ASSESSMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN A DEVELOPING ECONOMY: EVIDENCE FROM AKURE NIGERIA

Effective management of risk and uncertainty in a business enterprise has been identified as one of the challenges faced by an entrepreneur for business development and sustainability. An Entrepreneur who is being regarded as a risk manager has to carry out proper risk analysis that will ensure the success of his or her business through proper identification, assessment, evaluation of risks and uncertainties. Many business enterprises in emerging economies such as Nigeria are prone to higher risks and uncertainties such as environmental risk, financial risk, market risk, production risk and supply risk which have relatively slow down entrepreneurship development. The minimisation of risk through a decrease in financial stake in an enterprise by many business angels in order to lower the rate of risk and uncertainty in an unstable business environment had reduced entrepreneurship development in a developing economy. This paper seeks to identify and analyse some of the risks associated with entrepreneurship development and sustainability in the emerging economy. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources for the study by employing a descriptive approach and developing a conceptual framework in analysing risk and uncertainty in entrepreneurship development. Hypotheses were developed to test the effect of risk and uncertainty on the development of entrepreneurship with data collection from 105 business enterprises in pharmaceutical industry from States in South West Nigeria and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) Regression method was adopted to estimate the relationship between the variables. Results from the study revealed a positive relationship between the independent (risk) and dependent (Entrepreneurship development) variables. Policy recommendations were made especially on some strategies that can be adopted against risk, such as efficient insurance policy and adequate support of the government and other financial and non-financial institutions to minimise risks encountered by entrepreneur.