Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CONTEXT MATTERS: STUDENT EXPERIENCES OF INTERACTION IN OPEN DISTANCE LEARNING

An important factor in online learning is how students are afforded opportunities for interactions to create their own knowledge and attain high levels of student satisfaction. In open distance learning, three types of interaction were initially distinguished: interaction with content, with the lecturer and with fellow students. As technology plays an essential role in online learning, interaction with technology was added. This study was conducted at an open distance learning institution using a blended learning approach. Since it was the first fully online course for first-year Education students, the purpose of the study was to determine students’ experiences of their learning in order to consider how offering the course online might affect their satisfaction and academic success. Within a connectivist paradigm, the research used a case study involving questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions. Findings confirmed the value of interaction on all levels and pointed towards the challenges in interaction with technology. Based on these findings, the study suggests that lecturers should consider the contexts of students when planning and designing online courses. As a result, it remains the university’s responsibility to put systems in place to support and prepare students.
Therapeutic Outcomes of HPV Positive and HPV Negative Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinomas

Background & Objectives: HPV associated (HPV+) oropharyngeal cancers, compared with HPV non-associated ones (HPV? ) have different characters and significantly better outcomes. HPV and cancer characteristics differ among countries and few data is available in Indian population regarding this issue. Thus, we attempted to determine the treatment response and survival rates between HPV+ versus HPV negative oropharyngeal cancers in Indian population. Methods: This prospective observational study was conducted from December 2016 - October 2018 in patients with stage III/IV oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) (n = 65). The patients received induction chemotherapy with Docetaxel, Cisplatin, 5-Fluorouracil × 3 cycles, followed by concurrent chemoradiation 66 Gy as 33 fractions along with cisplatin 40 mg/m2 weekly. The primary outcome was treatment response rate, which was defined as per Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours (RECIST) criteria. Secondary outcomes were clinico-pathological differences between two groups, overall survival (OS), progression free survival (PFS). Results: Of the 65 patients included in the study, 17 were HPV positive and 48 patients were HPV negative. Median age in HPV positive arm is 48 years and HPV negative arm is 59 years. HPV positive patients presented with early T stage and advanced nodal (N) stage. Most common histopathology in both arms was moderately differentiated squamous cell carcinomas followed by well differentiated squamous cell carcinomas. HPV+ vs HPV? showed the following, treatment response 82.4% vs 52.1% (p-0.029). 1 year progression free survival (PFS) of 76.5% vs 52.1% in HPV negative arm (p-0.08) & 1 year overall survival was 82.4% vs 70.8% (p-0.353). Grade 3 or 4 toxicities did not differ significantly between HPV positive and HPV negative arms. Conclusion: HPV positive oropharyngeal SCC patients showed significantly better treatment response than HPV negative ones. Progression free survival, overall survival and toxicity profile did not differ significantly between the two groups. Although due to small size, we did not compare data stratified by the cancer characteristics, the data is worthy to further characterize this tumour especially as HPV positive versus HPV negative.
Placing products in humorous scenes: its impact on brand perceptions

Purpose: This study extends the literature on marketing communications by exploring the effect of placing products in humorous scenes. It aims to ascertain the prevalence of placement scenes associated with humor in television programs and the effect of humor on brand persuasiveness. Design/methodology/approach: The study used a two-phase research process. A content analysis of prime-time television programing was conducted to map the relative prevalence of brands placed in humorous contexts and for the selection of research stimuli. This was followed by a large-scale experimental study of 1100 television viewers in Hong Kong with real stimuli that had been digitally manipulated. Findings: The study found that a humorous context did enhance recall of placed brands but its effect on brand attitudes was mediated by audience involvement in the viewing and moderated by psychological trait reactance. Interestingly, and in contrast to conventional advertising, placing brands in a humorous context led to lower involvement in the viewing which in turn resulted in lower brand attitudes. Individuals with low trait reactance were more positive toward brands placed in a non-humorous context than individuals with high trait reactance while individuals with high trait reactance were more positive toward brands placed in a humorous context, though the difference was less prominent. Research implications: The findings help to illustrate when and how a humorous context contributes to the recall of and attitudes toward placed brands. The results also facilitate marketers and program producers to choose the best placement context and design more effective placement strategies. Originality/value: This research is the first to empirically examine the effect of a humorous context on the unaided recall of and attitudes toward brands placed in television programs.
Risk Analysis of dengue Fever Occurrence in bone Province Sulawesi South using Temporal Spatial geostatistical Model

The purpose of this research is to get the best model prediction of dengue fever risk in Bone District using spatial temporal geostatistical model. Time series model is used to describe the dynamics of dengue fever changes with stages: Identification of data, Model identification, model estimation, model assumption check, best model selection and forecasting stage. Implementation of time series model in Bone District incident data and climatic factors shows that the model obtained has a good accuracy. The results showed that: The prediction model of dengue fever occurrence in Tanete Riattang Barat, China, and Mare sub district using ARIMAX model. Dengue prediction model for Ajangale District, Barebbo, Bengo, Two Boccoe and Tellusiattingge using MAX model. Rainfall is an exogenous variable that affects the incidence of dengue fever. Humidity, temperature and wind speed have no effect on the occurrence of dengue fever.
A simplified field protocol for genetic sampling of birds using buccal swabs

ABSTRACT DNA sampling is an essential prerequisite for conducting population genetic studies. For many years, blood sampling has been the preferred method for obtaining DNA in birds because of their nucleated red blood cells. Nonetheless, use of buccal swabs has been gaining favor because they are less invasive yet still yield adequate amounts of DNA for amplifying mitochondrial and nuclear markers; however, buccal swab protocols often include steps (e.g., extended air-drying and storage under frozen conditions) not easily adapted to field settings. Furthermore, commercial extraction kits and swabs for buccal sampling can be expensive for large population studies. We therefore developed an efficient, cost-effective, and field-friendly protocol for sampling wild birds after comparing DNA yield among 3 inexpensive buccal swab types (2 with foam tips and 1 with a cotton tip). Extraction and amplification success was high (100% and 97.2% respectively) using inexpensive generic swabs. We found foam-tipped swabs provided higher DNA yields than cotton-tipped swabs. We further determined that omitting a drying step and storing swabs in Longmire buffer increased efficiency in the field while still yielding sufficient amounts of DNA for detailed population genetic studies using mitochondrial and nuclear markers. This new field protocol allows time- and cost-effective DNA sampling of juveniles or small-bodied birds for which drawing blood may cause excessive stress to birds and technicians alike. Received 28 June 2016. Accepted 4 January 2017.
Alcohol use among older adults: A comparative study across four European countries

Aims: (i) To examine whether mean consumption and prevalence of at-risk drinking are highly correlated across samples of older adults, and (ii) to explore whether sociodemographic and health characteristics of alcohol use differ across countries. Method: Cross-sectional surveys were conducted in four European countries, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and Portugal, applying identical data collection methods and survey instruments in general population samples of older adults aged 60 to 75 years. Alcohol consumption was measured as units of alcohol per week, which provided the basis for categorising the two outcome measures: abstention (0 units/week) and at-risk drinking (8+ units/week). Cross-tabulations and logistic regression models were estimated to examine associations between sociodemographic and health characteristics on the one hand and alcohol abstention and at-risk drinking on the other. Results: Prevalence of abstention was highest in Portugal and lowest in Denmark, whereas at-risk drinking was more prevalent in Denmark and Belgium compared to Norway and Portugal. Among country- and gender-specific samples of drinkers, there was a strong positive correlation between mean consumption and prevalence of at-risk drinkers. Female gender characterised abstention, whereas male gender characterised at-risk drinking in all four countries. Other sociodemographic characteristics and indicators of health and wellbeing were differently associated with abstention and at-risk drinking across the four countries. Conclusions: A strong regularity in the distribution of alcohol consumption was observed in the samples of older adults. Gender was the only common factor associated with drinking behaviour across the four countries.
Temporal dynamics of large-scale structures for turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection in a moderate aspect-ratio cylinder

Abstract We investigate the spatial organization and temporal dynamics of large-scale, coherent structures in turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection via direct numerical simulation of a 6.3 aspect-ratio cylinder with Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers of $9.6\times 10^7$ and $6.7$, respectively. Fourier modal decomposition is performed to investigate the structural organization of the coherent turbulent motions by analysing the length scales, time scales and the underlying dynamical processes that are ultimately responsible for the large-scale structure formation and evolution. We observe a high level of rotational symmetry in the large-scale structure in this study and that the structure is well described by the first four azimuthal Fourier modes. Two different large-scale organizations are observed during the duration of the simulation and these patterns are dominated spatially and energetically by azimuthal Fourier modes with frequencies of 2 and 3. Studies of the transition between these two large-scale patterns, radial and vertical variations in the azimuthal energy spectra, as well as the spatial and modal variations in the system's correlation time are conducted. Rotational dynamics are observed for individual Fourier modes and the global structure with strong similarities to the dynamics that have been reported for unit aspect-ratio domains in prior works. It is shown that the large-scale structures have very long correlation time scales, on the order of hundreds to thousands of free-fall time units, and that they are the primary source for a horizontal inhomogeneity within the system that can be observed during a finite, but a very long-time simulation or experiment.
Support Vector Machine (SVM) for Colorization the Grayscale Image

Recently, there have been several automatic approaches to color grayscale images, which depend on the internal features of the grayscale images. There are several scales which are considered as a prominent key to extract the corresponding chromatic value of the gray level. In this aspect, colorizing methods that rely on automatic algorithms are still under investigation, especially after the development of neural networks used to recognize the features of images. This paper develops a new model to obtain a color image from an original grayscale image through the use of the Support Vector Machine to recognize the features of grayscale images which are extracted from two stages: the first stage is Haar Discrete Wavelets Transform used to configure the vector that combines with six of Statistical Measurements: (Mean, Variance, Skewness, Kurtosis, Energy and Standard Deviation) extracts from the grayscales image in the second stage. After the Support Vector Machine recognition has been done, the colorization process uses the result of Support Vector Machine to recover the color to greyscale images by using YCbCr color system then it converts the color to default color system (RGB) to be more clear. The proposed model will be able to move away from relying on the user to identify the source image which matches in color levels and it exceeds the network determinants of image types with similar color levels. In addition, Support Vector Machine is considered to be more reliable than neural networks in classification algorithms. The model performance is evaluated by using the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) in measuring the success of the assumed modal of matching the coloring (resulting) images and the original color images. So, a reality-related result has been obtained at a good rate for all the tested images. This model has proved to be successful in the process of recognizing the chromatic values of greyscale images then retrieving it. It takes less time complexity in trained data, and it isn’t complex in working.
Contact-tracing apps and alienation in the age of COVID-19

ABSTRACT Using a core idea of critical social theory, alienation, we interrogate the failure in the design and adoption of a Stop-COVID app in France. We analyse the political and scientific discourse, to develop an understanding of the conditions giving rise to this failure in this unprecedented moment. We argue that the digital-first solutionist approach taken by the government failed because, as in all Western countries, most stakeholders were alienated from the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and lacked concrete knowledge of it. Furthermore, the French government and its COVID-19 council excluded relevant scientific experts in favour of quantitative modelling based on abstract partial knowledge. This along with coercion and lack of transparency about the app, reinforced alienation, undermined effectiveness in managing the crisis and resulted in the digital design failure. We suggest that such alienation will prevail in the COVID-19 era characterised by regimes of control, rampant abusive location tracking, and data collection, and where public officials are more concerned with managing effects than seeking causal explanations. The digital-first solutionist approach was adopted, not because digital solutions (to contact tracing) are superior to traditional ones, but by default due to alienation and lack of interdisciplinary cooperation.
Colorimetric detection of UCHL1 using gold nanoparticles for rapid diagnosis of brain injury

Ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-1 (UCH-L1), an endoprotease that cleaves the specific peptide bond between the ubiquitin molecules, is released in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) following severe brain injury. The level of UCHL1 in serum and CSF is inversely proportional to the chance of survival and therefore an important biomarker for brain injury. We developed a sensitive and accurate colorimetric assay using gold nanoparticles (30nm) based on surface plasmon resonance-dependent absorption of visible light at 520nm. Synthesising a specific ubiquitin polypeptide substrate for UCHL1 with two terminal thiol groups, we allowed gold nanoparticles to interact. This resulted blue colour aggregation of substrate polypeptide and nanoparticles with an absorption maxima of 600nm. On addition of UCHL1 to these aggregate, substrate polypeptide molecules was cleaved at the specific position and clustered gold nanoparticles became dispersed resulting the absorption maxima shifting to 520nm and changing the blue colour to red. Presently severity of brain injury is diagnosed using neuro-imaging such as CT scanning and MRI. Simple and inexpensive biochemical assay that we developed might help the physicians to quickly determine severity of the damage, monitor the progress of the treatment and ultimately predict the risk of death of individual patients.
Clinicopathological profile of sinonasal masses-a tertiary care centre study in rural India

Background: A variety of mass lesions occur within the paranasal sinus (PNS) and nasal cavity and thus it becomes mandatory for otorhinolaryngologist to elicit detailed history and thorough examination before reaching a final diagnosis. This is retrospective study of all sinonasal masses who were undergone surgical management in the institute of rural India and so in the environment.Methods: This is a retrospective observational study of 70 patients with sinonasal masses treated at a rural tertiary care hospital in rural western Maharashtra from period of Jan 2016 to May 2018. History, clinical assessment and histopathological examination (HPE) was done in all cases as per hospital record supplemented by radiological investigation as per requirement. The patients were grouped as per their histopathological diagnosis as non-neoplastic/inflammatory and neoplastic.Results: A total of 70 patients were analysed age ranging (11-70 years). Majority of the patients were in the age groups 21-40 years (47%). There were 43 (61%) male and 27 (39%) female with M:F ratio 1.6:1. On HPE, 50 (71%) cases were non neoplastic/inflammatory and 20 (29%) cases were neoplastic lesions. HPE revealed that 50 (71%) cases were non neoplastic and 20 (29%) cases were neoplastic lesions.Conclusions: Sinonasal masses have various differential diagnoses. They are fairly common with male predominance. Benign conditions show a peak during 2nd to 4th decade of life while malignancy increasing with the age after 4th decade. In non-neoplastic lesion, Allergic nasal polyp is the commonest histological pattern seen while in malignant lesions squamous cell carcinoma is noted with 100% male predominance.
A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents of Career Commitment

Career commitment refers to one’s emotional attachment to one’s career rather than to one’s current working organization. While career commitment has been studied for decades as an important construct in applied psychology research, robust conclusions about its antecedents have not been drawn by empirical research. To address this issue, this research presents the results of a meta-analytic review of the antecedents of career commitment based on data from 156 individual studies (N = 58,651) conducted between 1980 and 2019. A total of 52 latent antecedents were captured and categorized into five different groups, and the strength, direction and heterogeneity of the relations between career commitment and its antecedents were meta-analytically investigated. Our findings revealed that while individual attributes (e.g. age) alone were weak predictors of career commitment, psychological (e.g. job satisfaction) and organizational factors (e.g. organizational career growth) exhibited medium effect sizes. In addition, among job-related factors, autonomy demonstrated a relatively strong influence on career commitment. The implications are elucidated for researchers and practitioners in the light of these key findings.
Serum TNF-α levels and Helicobacter pylori cagA and vacA genes

Helicobacter pylori is associated with higher virulence. TNF-α has an important role in host defense against H. pylori infection. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between TNF-α serum levels with cagA and vacA genes in H. pylori infection. This was a cross-sectional study involving 80 patients that consecutively admitted to endoscopy unit. Diagnosis of H. pylori infection was based on rapid urease test. Serum samples werecollected to determine circulating TNF-α level. Polymerase chain reaction was done to examine H. pylori vacA and cagA genes. Data analysis was carriedout using SPSS version 22 with 95%CI and p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. About 45 (56.3%) patients infected with Helicobacter pylori. There were 33 (73.3%) patients with H. pylori cagA positive. Serum TNF-α levels in patients with the H. pylori positive were significantly higher compared to H. pylori negative. Serum level of TNF-α was significantly higher in cagA positive than negative. Subjects with H. pylori cagA gene positive were more likely to have ahigher level of serum TNF-α than H. pylori cagA gene negative.
Comparison of the recognition scores of stop and fricative consonants in babble noise between musicians and non-musicians

Everyday communication mostly occurs in the presence of various background noises and competing talkers. Studies have shown that musical training could have a positive effect on auditory processing, particularly in challenging listening situations. To our knowledge, no groups have specifically studied the advantage of musical training on perception of consonants in the presence of background noise. We hypothesized that musician advantage in speech in noise processing may also result in enhanced perception of speech units such as consonants in noise. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the recognition of stops and fricatives, which constitute the highest number of Persian consonants, in the presence of 12-talker babble noise between musicians and non-musicians. For this purpose, stops and fricatives presented in the consonant-vowel-consonant format and embedded in three signal-to-noise ratios of 0, −5, and −10 dB. The study was conducted on 40 young listeners (20 musicians and 20 non-musicians) with normal hearing. Our outcome indicated that musicians outperformed the non-musicians in recognition of stops and fricatives in all three signal-to-noise ratios. These findings provide important evidence about the impact of musical instruction on processing of consonants and highlight the role of musical training on perceptual abilities.