Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Moderating Role of Consumer Characteristics on E-Loyalty in E-banking business: A Multigroup Analysis

Noticing the recent development in internet banking in different parts of the world has resulted in increasing online transactions without visiting the bank. Thus, this study investigates the importance of antecedents of e-loyalty—shared value, information quality, system quality, service quality, trust, attraction, and satisfaction— in using e-banking services and the role of consumer characteristics (gender, age, and level of education) as a moderator was analyzed as well. A survey questionnaire was distributed conveniently via online and face-to-face to customers in Muscat and Nizwa to gain important insights on how customer loyalty in the e-banking business is constructed. A total of 228 usable questionnaires were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, multigroup analysis, and structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses. Results of the analyses indicated that e-loyalty is found to be positively influenced by satisfaction, which later influenced by trust, attraction, shared value, information quality, system quality, service quality. The moderating role of gender, age, and level of education was supported by the data. The paper concludes some implications and limitations of the results are discussed. Besides, investigating which factors are important in driving customers using online banking, this study provides a deeper understanding of keeping customers online and loyal to a particular service provider. Specifically, the service providers need to focus on the importance of gender, age, and level of education in moderating the construction of e-loyalty in using e-banking services. This study provides new insights by adding attraction as an antecedent of customer satisfaction and the moderating role of consumer characteristics in using e-banking services.
Understanding and explaining pedagogical problem solving: a video-based grounded theory study of classroom pedagogy

ABSTRACT Background during school lessons participants can face challenging pedagogical problems such as when science and religion topics interact. Potential types of pedagogical problem and what participants can do in response are unclear. Research designs exploring pedagogical problem solving should investigate teachers’ thinking processes and include pupil interpretations. Purpose This theoretical paper builds on the Pedagogy Analysis Framework by integrating it with pedagogical problem-solving theory, illustrating the resultant extended Pedagogy Analysis Framework and Pedagogical Problem Typology using data from a video-based study of one science and one Religious Education (RE) lesson. The research design also builds on previous work by exploring primary school and RE pedagogy. Sample One class of thirty 7-year-old pupils, and another class of 10-year-olds, each with their class teacher and teaching assistants. Design and Method Four research methods were used (lesson video analysis, teacher verbal protocols, pupil group verbal protocols and individual teacher interviews). Data were video recorded (managed using NVivo). Six hours of video data were analysed using grounded theory methods by two educational researchers, the class teacher and two groups of pupils (three girls and three boys). The interpretivist theoretical perspective (symbolic interactionism) was underpinned by a social constructionist epistemology (hence the methodology is Straussian grounded theory). Appropriate criteria for evaluating the emergent grounded theory were used. Data were recorded in 2019. Results This paper presents an extended Pedagogy Analysis Framework and a Pedagogical Problem Typology both illustrated with examples. Conclusion The Extended Pedagogy Analysis Framework and Pedagogical Problem Typology can help during pedagogy analysis to identify, understand and explain common and less common types of pedagogical problem. Novice-expert strategic dialogue can struggle for want of a shared vocabulary. This research design works with younger and older children.
Correlations Between Panoramic Imagery and Gamma-Ray Background in an Urban Area

When searching for radiological sources in an urban area, a vehicle-borne detector system will often measure complex, varying backgrounds primarily from natural gamma-ray sources. Much work has been focused on developing spectral algorithms that retain sensitivity and minimize the false-positive rate even in the presence of such spectral and temporal variability. However, information about the environment surrounding the detector system might also provide useful clues about the expected background, which if incorporated into an algorithm, could improve performance. Recent work has focused on extensive measuring and modeling of urban areas with the goal of understanding how these complex backgrounds arise. This work presents an analysis of panoramic video images and gamma-ray background data collected in Oakland, California, by the radiological multisensor analysis platform (RadMAP) vehicle. Features were extracted from the panoramic images by semantically labeling the images and then convolving the labeled regions with the detector response. A linear model was used to relate the image-derived features to gamma-ray spectral features obtained using nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) under different regularizations. We find some gamma-ray background features correlate strongly with image-derived features that measure the response-adjusted solid angle subtended by sky and buildings, and we discuss the implications for the development of future, contextually aware detection algorithms.
3D Lightweight Network for Simultaneous Registration and Segmentation of Organs-at-Risk in CT Images of Head and Neck Cancer

Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) is the most effective treatment for head and neck cancer. The successful implementation of IGRT requires accurate delineation of organ-at-risk (OAR) in the computed tomography (CT) images. In routine clinical practice, OARs are manually segmented by oncologists, which is time-consuming, laborious, and subjective. To assist oncologists in OAR contouring, we proposed a three-dimensional (3D) lightweight framework for simultaneous OAR registration and segmentation. The registration network was designed to align a selected OAR template to a new image volume for OAR localization. A region of interest (ROI) selection layer then generated ROIs of OARs from the registration results, which were fed into a multiview segmentation network for accurate OAR segmentation. To improve the performance of registration and segmentation networks, a centre distance loss was designed for the registration network, an ROI classification branch was employed for the segmentation network, and further, context information was incorporated to iteratively promote both networks’ performance. The segmentation results were further refined with shape information for final delineation. We evaluated registration and segmentation performances of the proposed framework using three datasets. On the internal dataset, the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of registration and segmentation was 69.7% and 79.6%, respectively. In addition, our framework was evaluated on two external datasets and gained satisfactory performance. These results showed that the 3D lightweight framework achieved fast, accurate and robust registration and segmentation of OARs in head and neck cancer. The proposed framework has the potential of assisting oncologists in OAR delineation.
Patients’ Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccine: Implications for Patients with Chronic Disease in Low-Resource Settings

Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a major global health challenge, with high morbidity and mortality. Despite different vaccines being produced around the globe, the spread of the virus is still uncontrolled. In particular, the shortage of vaccines in low-income countries is one of the key factors hindering efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. Even though evidence has been provided by different responsible bodies, there are still multiple beliefs and misconceptions about COVID-19 vaccination that have not yet been addressed. Nowadays, vaccine hesitancy is one of the top ten threats to global health, arising from the unwillingness of chronic patients to receive the vaccine. Chronic disease patients in low-resource settings are fearful of taking the vaccine because of a shortage of information about the COVID-19 vaccine. Therefore, the acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine among chronic disease patients should be studied more widely in low-resource settings.
Progressive Seed Generation Auto-encoder for Unsupervised Point Cloud Learning

With the development of 3D scanning technologies, 3D vision tasks have become a popular research area. Owing to the large amount of data acquired by sensors, unsupervised learning is essential for understanding and utilizing point clouds without an expensive annotation process. In this paper, we propose a novel framework and an effective auto-encoder architecture named "PSG-Net" for reconstruction-based learning of point clouds. Unlike existing studies that used fixed or random 2D points, our framework generates input-dependent point-wise features for the latent point set. PSG-Net uses the encoded input to produce point-wise features through the seed generation module and extracts richer features in multiple stages with gradually increasing resolution by applying the seed feature propagation module progressively. We prove the effectiveness of PSG-Net experimentally; PSG-Net shows state-of-the-art performances in point cloud reconstruction and unsupervised classification, and achieves comparable performance to counterpart methods in supervised completion.
Proton-induced charge transfer degradation in CCDs for near-room temperature applications

An optical technique for measuring charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) in CCDs, operated under near-room temperature, high readout rate conditions, is described. It is possible to measure trap emission times and CTI dependence on signal size, background charge and clock waveform shape to high accuracy, both for serial and parallel transfers. It is shown that the presence of background charge (or "fat zero") can substantially improve charge transfer efficiency. >
Shape features for identifying young weeds using image analysis

Shape feature analyses were performed on binary images originally obtained from color images of 10 common weeds, along with corn and soybeans, found in the Midwest. Features studied were roundness, aspect, perimeter/thickness, elongatedness, and seven invariant central moments (ICM), for each plant type and age up to 45 days after emergence. Shape features were generally independent of plant size, image rotation, and plant location within most images. The ability to discriminate between monocots and dicots was most evident between 14 and 23 days using these features. Shape features that best distinguished these plants were aspect and first invariant central moment (ICM1), which classified 60 to 90% of the dicots from the monocots. Using Analysis of Variance and Tukey’s multiple comparison tests, shape features did not change significantly for most species over the study period. This information could be very useful in the future design of advanced spot spraying applications.
Exploring Motor Network Connectivity in State-Dependent Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Proof-of-Concept Study

State-dependent non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) informed by electroencephalography (EEG) has contributed to the understanding of NIBS inter-subject and inter-session variability. While these approaches focused on local EEG characteristics, it is acknowledged that the brain exhibits an intrinsic long-range dynamic organization in networks. This proof-of-concept study explores whether EEG connectivity of the primary motor cortex (M1) in the pre-stimulation period aligns with the motor network (MN) and how MN state affects responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of M1. One thousand suprathreshold TMS pulses were delivered to left M1 in 8 subjects at rest, with simultaneous EEG. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were measured from the right hand. Source-space functional connectivity of left M1 to the whole-brain was assessed using the imaginary part of the Phase Locking Value at the frequency of the sensorimotor µ-rhythm in a 1-second window before the pulse. Group-level connectivity revealed functional links between left M1, left supplementary motor area, and right M1. Also, pulses delivered at high MN connectivity states result in a greater MEP amplitude compared to low connectivity states. At single-subject level, this relation is more expressed in subjects that feature an overall high cortico-spinal excitability. In conclusion, this study paves the way for MN connectivity based NIBS. Highlights EEG pre-stimulus connectivity of left M1 largely corresponds to the motor network Stronger motor network (MN) connectivity corresponds to greater MEP amplitudes Linear regression models based on MN connectivity predicts MEP amplitude
Automobile-Speed Estimation Using Movie-film Simulation

A silent movie film made by shooting through the windscreen of a car driven at different constant speeds was shown in an auditorium, and subjects asked to estimate the speed of the car. Of the 70 subjects who participated, 35 sat at the front and the remainder at the back. The speed estimates of those seated at the back were, on average, some 11 per cent higher than those at the front. An explanation for this effect is given. It is shown that those at the correct perspective distance from the screen ( in the present case, those at the front) will receive an impression of speed which most closely resembles the actual speed of the car. The speed estimates from the front of the auditorium most closely resembled those observed in an earlier field experiment when the subjects' hearing was diminished. It is concluded that the movie technique provides a good simulation of the task in the field experiment if the following two qualifications are made. First, the movie must be viewed from close to the correct persp.
The curve kick of a football I: impact with the foot

The purpose of this study is to assess the fundamental characteristics which cause a football to spin in a curve ball kick. The ball impact process was analysed initially with a high speed video camera running at 4500 frames per second to obtain the basic data for a computer simulation model. This simulation model showed suitable agreement although it slightly deteriorated during the latter half of impact. It was noted that rotation of the ball occurs, even if the kinetic coefficient of friction is nearly equal to 0 because of local deformation of the ball during impact around the foot allowing forces to be transmitted to the ball around its axis. The spin of the ball was found to increase with the offset distance between the foot and the axis of the ball and as the kinetic coefficient of friction was increased. The offset distance between the foot and the axis of the ball affects the spin more than the coefficient of friction. Varying the coefficient of friction from 0.0 to 1.0 produces an increase in spin of 13 rad s )1 at most. It was suggested that the most suitable offset distance, which makes the largest ball rotation was around 100 mm. A trade-off was found between the ball speed and spin, for different offset distances.
Reliability and failure analysis of RF-MEMS switches for space applications

The aim of this thesis is to perform an electrical characterization and several reliability tests on different kind of RF-MEMS switches in order to analyze which are the weaknesses and the strengths of this new technology. Electrical characterizations have been done using two different measurement systems. The first, based on a vector network analyzer and a power supply, has been used to test the RF performances of the devices and to extract the best actuation and deactuation voltages. The second set up, based on the internal RF signal generator of the VNA, and an 8-GHz digital signal oscilloscope, has been used to characterize the electrical performances like actuation time, release delay. Cycling stress, one of the most common test used to understand the robustness of this kind of devices, has been per- formed on different topologies of switch in order to better understand how some parameters, such as the shape of the beams or the actuation voltage, impact on the reliability of the device. Furthermore, the influence of continuous actuation stress on the reliability of dielectric-less switches has been investigated, comparing different designs and studying the variation of the main electrical parameters induced by the stress and the successive recovery phase. Other two critical issues investigated in this thesis are the sensitivity to EOS/ESD events of RF-MEMS switches under actuated and not-actuated conditions and their sensitivity to different kind of radiation, protons and X-rays. The sensitivity to EOS/ESD has been studied between RF-OUT and ground with no bias voltage applied (up-state membrane), and between RF-OUT and GND at different voltages (fully actuated / partially bended membrane). Moreover, the same devices have been characterized under HBM regime in order to study if any correlation between TLP tests and the Human Body Model exists for these devices. Concerning the radiation effects, the impact of 2MeV protons and l0keV x-rays radiation stresses has been analyzed at increasing radiation dose and during subsequent annealing at room temperature.
Pressurized water reactor core thermal-hydraulics model for flow coastdown transient

The flow coastdown transient analysis is crucial for the design and safety analysis of a nuclear reactor because, in such an event, the core cooling depends upon flywheel inertia of reactor coolant pumps. In this paper, the results of real time flow coastdown transient initiated by power failure to the reactor coolant pumps on the CHASHMA Nuclear Power Plant Unit-2 (CHASNUPP-2) are presented. To examine the effect of thermal-hydraulics parameters, a mathematical model of core thermal-hydraulics for the flow of coastdown transient has been developed. The resulting equations are solved analytically for a pressurized water reactor. The accuracy of the model depends on the core time constant τ, which has been computed to be 9.28 s for CHASNUPP-2, the calculation methodology is described in the paper. The results are compared with the transient data, good agreement is found between the model prediction and the flow coastdown transient data. It is inferred that the coastdown flow rate is effective in removing the stored heat in the core.
Governance of Public Investment Projects in Ethiopia

The purpose of this article is to map and review the governance of public investment projects in Ethiopia and to identify the most important front-end challenges of public investment projects in the country. The research focuses on the front-end governance of major construction projects. The findings of the research indicate that the top-down project approach, lack of mandatory control gateways at the front-end project preparation and decision-making stages, and weak links between project stakeholders affected the effectiveness of the project governance system. In additon to this, the most important factors that could affect the relevance and sustainability of public investment projects are identified.
Characteristics of load resonant converters operated in a high power factor mode

The performance of the parallel resonant converter and the combination series/parallel resonant converter (LCC converter) when operated above resonance in a high power factor mode are determined and compared for single-phase applications. When the DC voltage applied to the input of these converters is obtained from a single-phase rectifier with a small DC link capacitor, a relatively high power factor inherently results, even with no active control of the input line current. This behaviour is due to the pulsating nature of the DC link and the inherent capability of the converters to boost voltage during the valleys of the input AC wave. With no active control of the input line current, the power factor depends on the ratio of operating frequency to tank resonant frequency. With active control of the input line current, near unity power factor and low input harmonic currents can be obtained. <<ETX>>
Oncogenes and Tumor Suppressors p53 Maintains Baseline Expression of Multiple Tumor Suppressor Genes

TP53 is the most commonly mutated tumor suppressor gene and its mutation drives tumorigenesis. Using ChIP-seq for p53 in the absence of acute cell stress, we found that wild-type but not mutant p53 binds and activates numerous tumor suppressor genes, including PTEN, STK11(LKB1), miR-34a, KDM6A(UTX), FOXO1, PHLDA3, and TNFRSF10B through consensus binding sites in enhancers and promoters. Depletion of p53 reduced expression of these target genes, and analysis across 18 tumor types showed that mutation of TP53 associated with reduced expression of many of these genes. Regarding PTEN, p53 activated expression of a luciferase reporter gene containing the p53-consensus site in the PTEN enhancer, and homozygous deletion of this region in cells decreased PTEN expression and increased growth and transformation. These findings show that p53 maintains expression of a team of tumor suppressor genes that may together with the stress-induced targets mediate the ability of p53 to suppress cancer development. p53 mutations selected during tumor initiation and progression, thus, inactivate multiple tumor suppressor genes in parallel, which could account for the high frequency of p53 mutations in cancer. Implications: In this study, we investigate the activities of p53 under normal low-stress conditions and discover that p53 is capable of maintaining the expression of a group of important tumor suppressor genes at baseline, many of which are haploinsufficient, which could contribute to p53-mediated tumor suppression. Mol Cancer Res; 15(8); 1051–62. 2017 AACR.
Drag coefficients of lattice masts from full-scale wind-tunnel tests

In this paper, the drag coefficients obtained from a series of full-scale section model wind-tunnel tests of several lattice mast configurations are presented and compared to those provided in Eurocode 3 and ESDU. The drag coefficients provided in Eurocode are conservative interpretations of 1:5 scale section model tests performed at the National Physics Laboratory and the National Maritime Institute in the UK in the 1970´s. ESDU provides velocity-dependent drag coefficients equivalent to those obtained from the same series of tests. In all cases, the mast legs and diagonals are comprised primarily of circular hollow sections, putting into question the validity of the scaled tests from the 70’s. The results of the full-scale tests show that the drag coefficients of the masts have lower values than those obtained from the scaled tests for turbulent wind and higher for winds with low turbulence.