Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
vMOBilize: Gamifying Civic Learning and Political Engagement in a Classroom Context

Abstract This study presents the results of a quasi-experiment (N = 254) conducted over the course of ten weeks in Spring 2016 to assess the effectiveness of a game platform designed to facilitate political engagement, attention, efficacy, knowledge, and participation among college students. Results indicate positive effects of game play on several key dimensions of political engagement, including voter registration, virtual political participation (following a candidate on Twitter, liking a candidate on Facebook, and watching debates), and consumption of public affairs information (including National Public Radio (NPR), non-NPR political talk radio, and online news aggregator sites). In addition, game play provided significantly greater benefits to students with the lowest rates of political knowledge and engagement at baseline. Overall, participants reported high rates of game satisfaction, with 79% of participants reporting being very to somewhat pleased if they were asked to play the game again. These results are discussed in terms of the implications for civics education, pedagogy, and political engagement among young people.
Can Monetary Incentives Increase UGC Contribution? The Motivation and Competition Crowding Out

Monetary incentives are often introduced by UGC platforms to encourage content contribution, following the conventional economic intuition of “price effect. ” However, literature also finds that monetary incentive can negatively affect contribution in prosocial behavior. We build an analytical model to study the impact of monetary incentives on UGC contribution, where contributors are differentiated by their intrinsic motivation and ability to promote their content. Our model offers explanation to the previous “contradictory” results by consider both “motivation crowding out” and “competition crowding out” effects. We find that introducing a small monetary incentive can either increase or reduce the overall content contributed, which exhibits a motivation crowding in or out effect; however, a high enough monetary incentive will increase the overall market contribution. Moreover, monetary incentives do not always enhance the overall quality of contribution. The conditions of the counterintuitive results are analyzed and discussed.
BOREHOLE IMAGE LOG AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF FOH-3D, FALLON NAVAL AIR STATION, NV

Formation Micro-Scanner (FMS) and Acoustic Borehole Televiewer (BHTV) image logs from borehole FOH-3D in the volcanic and metavolcanic rock of the Fallon Naval Air Station, NV were analyzed to identify natural fractures and constrain the stress field acting on the fractures proximal to the borehole and to the geothermal system. Abundant natural fractures are revealed in these logs, defining two conjugate fracture sets, which strikes ~010° and dips at ~58° to the E and W respectively. The average azimuth of Shmin ± one standard deviation revealed by extensive borehole wall breakouts and tensile fractures, as well as petal-centerline fractures, is 097±12° for the near vertical portion of the borehole. Spectral analysis of the depth variation of the horizontal principal stress azimuth revealed in the BHTV image indicates that rotations of these stress components about the vertical axis yield a linear spectral slope of -3.03±0.2 log (deg 2 *m)(m) in a frequency range of from 10 -2.4 to 10 -1.35 m -1 . This spectral slope is consistent with a stable, fractal dependence of stress rotations on length-scale and characterizes the inherent heterogeneity of the principal stress directions in the volume traversed by
Fenticonazole for the treatment of Candida albicans infections

Background/Purpose. This review discusses the treatment of cutaneous and vulvovaginal candidosis with topical fenticonazole, an imidazole derivative with a wide spectrum of activity against dermatophytes and yeasts. Data sources and study selection. Review of publishes studies. Data synthesis. The main mechanism of action of fenticonazole is based on the inhibition of the synthesis of aspartate acid proteinase, a virulence enzyme of Candida albicans correlated with the adherence of the yeast to epithelial cells. This activity is quite peculiar as it was not observed with fluconazole, ketoconazole and miconazole. Topical treatment (1 application/day for 4 weeks) is recommended, while in widespread or everlasting mycotic infections, fenticonazole must be associated with an oral antimycotic. Fenticonazole in monotherapy is also effective in treating vulvovaginal candidosis (ovules, cream or douche; 1 application/day for 7 days). In addition, all pharmaceutical formulations of fenticonazole are well tolerated. Limitations. Although fenticonazole is one of the earliest imidazoles developed in Europe, no experimental and clinical data on development of Candida albicans resistance have been published. Conclusions. Literature data demonstrated that fenticonazole is effective in Candida albicans infections of the skin and female genitalia.
The Presence and Survival of Soft Rot (Erwinia) in Flower Bulb Production Systems

Soft rot is causing increasing damage in the flower bulb industry. Bulbous ornamentals such as Hyacinthus, Dahlia, Iris, Muscari, Freesia and Zantedeschia can be infected. Soft rot in flower bulbs is mainly caused by Dickeya spp. (Dickeya spp.) and Erwinia carotovora subsp. carotovora (Pectobacterium carotovorum spp. carotovorum). To identify and detect these soft rot bacterial species in several bulbous ornamentals, standard PCR methods were used. During the last four years, research was directed to optimalize cultural practises in especially Hyacinthus to avoid or minimize bacterial soft rot. To evaluate the incidence and infection route of Erwinia spp. in the production chain of hyacinth bulbs, field plots were infected by planting diseased hyacinth, iris and Zantedeschia bulbs. Subsequently, crop rotation with different flower bulb species was applied on these field plots during two growing seasons. Harvested bulbs were analysed during the handling and storage of the bulbs for Erwinia spp. by assessing symptoms as well as by using bacterial culturing- and PCR techniques. The survival of Erwinia in water and on materials, used in flower bulb handling, was studied. Results concerning the optimalization of bulb handling during the production chain to avoid or to minimize the incidence of bulb soft rot are also presented.
The Lipophosphoglycan ofLeishmania donovaniUp-Regulates HIV-1 Transcription in T Cells Through the Nuclear Factor-kB Elements

We have recently demonstrated that the parasiteLeishmania donovaniand its surface molecule, lipophosphoglycan (LPG), can activate HIV-1 replication in monocytoid cells. Our present interest was to determine whether LPG could also up-regulate HIV-1 transcription in T cells. Using a CD4-positive human lymphoid T cell line (1G5) containing a stably integrated HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR)-luciferase construct, we found that LPG is a potent inducer of HIV-1 LTR activity. Treatment of 1G5 cells with signaling antagonists revealed that protein tyrosine kinaseand protein kinase A-dependent pathways were actively participating in the LPG-induced enhancement of HIV-1 LTR-driven activity. Transfection of Jurkat E6.1 cells with plasmids containing wild-type and nuclear factor-kB (NF-kB)-mutated HIV-1 LTR-luciferase constructs has suggested a role for NFkB binding sites in the LPG-mediated induction of HIV-1 LTR activity. An LPG-induced binding factor specific to the NFkB consensus sequences could be observed using electrophoretic mobility shift assay. Finally, transfection experiments performed with a vector containing HIV-1 kB binding sites only showed similar LPG-mediated induction, which was abrogated by sodium salicylate, a known NFkB inhibitor. We thus demonstrate that the LPG-mediated induction of HIV-1 LTR activity in T cells involves several second messengers culminating in activation of HIV-1 LTR-driven transcription via NF-kB-binding consensus sequences. In conclusion, these results reinforce the idea thatL. donovani is a putative cofactor in HIV-1 pathogenesis. The Journal of Immunology,1998, 160: 2881–2888.
Audience-Congruent Biases in Eyewitness Memory and Judgment Influences of a Co-Witness' Liking for a Suspect

In studies on biased eyewitness memory, the biasing information about the witnessed event is typically detailed and specific. We investigated the influence of global biasing information, such as a co-witness' impression of a suspect. Student participants watched a video depicting a bar-brawl involving a male target person. After retelling the incident to a generic fellow student who presumably disliked (vs. liked) the target person, participants exhibited audience-congruent biases in memory and judgment: They remembered more negative information about the target, believed he was more responsible, and assigned him longer penalties. No such effects were found when participants were less motivated to create a shared view about the incident (with the audience being a student from a different study field).
Prevalence of Concurrent Wasting and Stunting among Children 6-59 Months of Age: A Meta- Analysis of Demographic and Health Survey in G5 Sahel Countries

Background: Undernutrition is a major public health among children under five especially in Sahel region. Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger, are four countries of "G5 Sahel" which is a group of five Sahel countries including Mauritania. The Four countries are landlocked and face challenges of development, demographic, immigration, climate change, food security and terrorism. Wasting and stunting are two forms of undernutrition prevented and/or treated separately. Children presenting concurrently the two forms of malnutrition increased greatly the risk of mortality. The main aim of the present study is to assess the prevalence of children aged 659months concurrently wasted and stunted, and secondly to evaluate prevalence of concurrent wasting and stunting by age group and gender. Methods: Data from Demographic and Health Survey from four countries were analyzed. Pooled prevalence of wasting, stunting, underweight, and concurrent wasting and stunting prevalence among children aged 6-59 months was computed. The pooled prevalence of concurrent wasting and stunting was calculated by age group and gender with 95% confidence interval. Heterogeneity was explored with high inconsistency ( I>50%). Results: A total of 04 surveys met our criteria, with no surveys from Mauritania. Significant heterogeneity was found (I2>50%). The pooled prevalence of stunting was 41.8% (95%CI: 37.8%-46.0%), wasting: 14.0% (95% CI :11.9%-16.4%), and underweight: 30.4% (95% IC: 25.4%-35.6%). The pooled prevalence of children concurrently wasted and stunted was 5. 5%, (95% CI: 4.2%, 7.1%) P value =0. 00. Ranging from 4.4%, (95% CI: 3.8% , 5.0%) in Mali to 8.1% ,( 95% CI :7.%, 8.9%) in Niger. Prevalence of children aged 12-23 months concurrently wasted and stunted was 9.4%,(95% IC: 8.6% , 10.2%). Compared to girls, boys were higher at risk with 6.6%, (95% CI: 6.2%-7.1%) while the prevalence for the girls was 4.4% (95% CI: 4.0, 4.7%). Conclusion: Concurrent wasting and stunting was above 5% in Sahel countries among children aged 6-59 months. Children aged 12-23 months were at higher risk. The children concurrently wasted and stunted have a similar risk of mortality with those who are suffering of severe acute malnutrition, it sound important to give more attention to concurrent wasting and stunting children in designing nutrition program and in current program implementing.
Barriers to Innovation and Performance: The Mexican SMEs Context

The twenty first century is recognized for its high economy globalization, competitiveness and uncertainty in the business environment, where essentially Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) have to constantly adapt strategies to remain in market. Innovation is considered in the literature as a strategy that allows firms to keep them in market position and to enhance its performance level. However, SMEs have a number of barriers that prevent innovation activities, basically because these enterprises generally make few investments on research and development. This paper presents an analysis of innovation in SMEs performance, operating in Aguascalientes state, México, using a sample of 400 companies. The results obtained show how barriers to innovation significantly affect SMEs performance levels.
Affect-and Cognition-based Trust in Different Knowledge-sharing Processes

T his article examines the differential effects of two types of trust (affect based and cognition based) and two types of feelings (ganqing and jiaoqing) on different knowledge-sharing processes (seeking, transfer, and adoption) among Chinese employees. The influences of these different types of trust and feelings on Chinese employees’ propensities to seek, transfer, and adopt explicit and tacit knowledge are also analyzed and discussed. The analysis shows affectbased trust increases knowledge transfer, while cognition-based trust is more important to knowledge seeking and adoption. Affect-based trust alone can facilitate the different processes of sharing explicit knowledge. Effective sharing of tacit knowledge, on the other hand, requires the simultaneous support from affect-based trust and cognition-based trust. Ganqing and jiaoqing are also important in knowledge transfer and adoption. Either feeling may increase the likelihood to seek, transfer, and adopt explicit knowledge by itself. The influences of both feelings on tacit knowledge seeking, transfer, and adoption hinge on the presence of cognition-based trust.
Efficiency of Milk Production in Pondicherry : A Frontier Production Approach

An attempt was made to estimate the levels of efficiency in milk production for local and crossbred cows in the Union Territory of Pondicherry. Information relating to various aspects of dairy farming was collected from selected farmers by survey method with a well-designed and pre-tested interview schedule from 120 sample dairy farmers belonging to various categories selected by stratified random sampling method. The stochastic frontier function analysis was employed to find out the level of efficiency in milk production. The results of the analysis revealed that the mean technical efficiency of the sample farms was 82.28 per cent, and approximately 18 per cent of their technical abilities were not realized. The estimate of the variance ratio (γ) showed that the farm specific variability contributed more to the variation in yield among the dairy farmers, indicating that 80 per cent of the differences between observed and the maximum production frontier output were due to difference in farmer's level of technical efficiency by adopting different management practices. These factors were under the control of the farm and the influence of which could be reduced to enhance technical efficiency of the dairy farmers in Pondicherry Union Territory.
Characterizations of countably $n$-rectifiable radon measures by higher-dimensional Menger curvatures

In the late `90s there was a flurry of activity relating $1$-rectifiable sets, boundedness of singular integral operators, the analytic capacity of a set, and the integral Menger curvature in the plane. In `99 Leger extended the results for Menger curvature to $1$-rectifiable sets in higher dimension, as well as to the codimension one case. A decade later, Lerman and Whitehouse, and later Meurer, found higher-dimensional geometrically motivated generalizations of Menger curvature that yield results about the uniform rectifiability of measures and the rectifiability of sets respectively. In this paper, we provide an extension of Meurer's work that yields a characterization of countably $n$-rectifiable measures in terms of $\sigma$-finiteness of the integral Menger curvature. We also prove that a finiteness condition on pointwise Menger curvature proves rectifiability of Radon measures. Finally, motivated by the partial converse of Meurer's work by Kolasinski we prove that under suitable density assumptions there is a comparability between pointwise-Menger curvature and the sum over scales of the centered $\beta$-numbers at a point.
Gender Differences in Executive Compensation and Job Mobility

Fewer women than men become executive managers. They earn less over their careers, hold more junior positions, and exit the occupation at a faster rate. We compiled a large panel data set on executives and formed a career hierarchy to analyze mobility and compensation. We find, controlling for executive rank and background, that women earn higher compensation than men, experience more income uncertainty, and are promoted more quickly. Among survivors, being female increases the chance of becoming chief executive officer. The unconditional gender pay gap and job-rank differences are primarily attributable to female executives exiting the occupation at higher rates than men.
Harmonization of Landsat and Sentinel 2 for Crop Monitoring in Drought Prone Areas: Case Studies of Ninh Thuan (Vietnam) and Bekaa (Lebanon)

Proper satellite-based crop monitoring applications at the farm-level often require near-daily imagery at medium to high spatial resolution. The combination of data from different ongoing satellite missions Sentinel 2 (ESA) and Landsat 7/8 (NASA) provides this unprecedented opportunity at a global scale; however, this is rarely implemented because these procedures are data demanding and computationally intensive. This study developed a robust stream processing for the harmonization of Landsat 7, Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 in the Google Earth Engine cloud platform, connecting the benefit of coherent data structure, built-in functions and computational power in the Google Cloud. The harmonized surface reflectance images were generated for two agricultural schemes in Bekaa (Lebanon) and Ninh Thuan (Vietnam) during 2018–2019. We evaluated the performance of several pre-processing steps needed for the harmonization including the image co-registration, Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions correction, topographic correction, and band adjustment. We found that the misregistration between Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 images varied from 10 m in Ninh Thuan (Vietnam) to 32 m in Bekaa (Lebanon), and posed a great impact on the quality of the final harmonized data set if not treated. Analysis of a pair of overlapped L8-S2 images over the Bekaa region showed that, after the harmonization, all band-to-band spatial correlations were greatly improved. Finally, we demonstrated an application of the dense harmonized data set for crop mapping and monitoring. An harmonic (Fourier) analysis was applied to fit the detected unimodal, bimodal and trimodal shapes in the temporal NDVI patterns during one crop year in Ninh Thuan province. The derived phase and amplitude values of the crop cycles were combined with max-NDVI as an R-G-B false composite image. The final image was able to highlight croplands in bright colors (high phase and amplitude), while the non-crop areas were shown with grey/dark (low phase and amplitude). The harmonized data sets (with 30 m spatial resolution) along with the Google Earth Engine scripts used are provided for public use.
Quarantining Weakness (Extended Abstract) Compositional Reasoning Under Relaxed Memory Models?

In sequential computing, every method of an object can be described in isolation via preconditions and postconditions. However, reasoning in a concurrent setting requires a characterization of all possible interactions across method invocations. Herlihy and Wing [1990]’s notion of linearizability simplifies such reasoning by intuitively ensuring that each method invocation “takes effect” between its invocation and response events. This approach had two basic shortcomings. Firstly, in Herlihy and Wing’s definition of linearizability, the interfaces are not expressive enough to codify external calls emanating from the component. Thus, objects are closed and passive. Secondly, the definitions are for a memory model with a global total order on memory operations, thus satisfying sequential consistency (SC). SC is not realized by all architectures or runtime systems [Adve and Gharachorloo 1996; Adve and Boehm 2010], motivating models of relaxed memory in hardware, such as TSO [Sewell et al. 2010], PSO [SPARC, Inc. 1994], Power [Sarkar et al. 2011], and runtime systems, such as Java [Manson et al. 2005; Sevcík 2008] and C++ [Boehm and Adve 2008; Batty et al. 2011]. This has motivated recent definitions of linearizability specific to the TSO [Burckhardt et al. 2012; Gotsman et al. 2012] and C11 [Batty et al. 2013] memory models. We propose new definitions to address both of these limitations. Our methodology aims to keep the interfaces free of the intricacies of particular relaxed memory models. Our approach has the following characteristics. (1) We model calls to component functions process-algebraically. This allows us to treat callbacks and to give a symmetric definition of composition between clients and libraries. Thus, our definitions encompass active components (that can evolve autonomously even without input from the environment) and open components (that invoke methods on components provided by the environment) and environment assumptions (pre/postconditions and the permitted sequences of method calls to a component). (2) Our definitions are not specific to a particular memory model. Rather, we identify the criteria that a relaxed memory model needs to satisfy in order to fit into our framework: the examples that satisfy our criteria include SC, TSO, PSO and a variant of the Java Memory Model (JMM). We establish an abstraction theorem: a component can safely be substituted for its interface in a non-interfering program. Moreover, for special classes of programs, we simplify the reasoning further by quarantining the effects of relaxed memory, allowing
Profiling Bacterial Diversity and Potential Pathogens in Wastewater Treatment Plants Using High-Throughput Sequencing Analysis

Next-generation sequencing provides new insights into the diversity and structure of bacterial communities, as well as the fate of pathogens in wastewater treatment systems. In this study, the bacterial community structure and the presence of pathogenic bacteria in three wastewater treatment plants across Gauteng province in South Africa were studied. The physicochemical results indicated that the quality of wastewater varies considerably from one plant to the others. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, and Chloroflexi were the dominant phyla across the three wastewater treatment plants, while Alphaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacilli, and Clostridia were the dominant classes. The dominant bacterial functions were highly associated with carbohydrate, energy, and amino acid metabolism. In addition, potential pathogenic bacterial members identified from the influent/effluent samples included Roseomonas, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Clostridium, Mycobacterium, Methylobacterium, and Aeromonas. The results of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) effect size analysis also confirmed that these bacterial pathogens were significantly abundant in the wastewater treatment systems. Further, the results of this study highlighted that the presence of bacterial pathogens in treated effluent pose a potential contamination risk, transmitted through soil, agriculture, water, or sediments. There is thus a need for continuous monitoring of potential pathogens in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in order to minimize public health risk.