Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human-Computer Interaction: Designing for Diverse Users and Domains

Hailed on first publication as a compendium of foundational principles and cutting-edge research, The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook has become the gold standard reference in this field. Derived from select chapters of this groundbreaking resource, Human-Computer Interaction: Designing for Diverse Users and Domains emphasizes design for users as such as children, older adults, and individuals with physical, cognitive, visual, and hearing impairments. It also discusses HCI in the context of specific domains including healthcare, games, and the aerospace industry. Topics include the role of gender in HCI, information technology and older adults, motor vehicle driver interfaces, and user-centered design in games. While human-computer interaction may have emerged from within computing, significant contributions have come from a variety of fields including industrial engineering, psychology, education, and graphic design. No where is this more apparent then when designing solutions for users as diverse as children, older adults, and individuals with physical, cognitive, visual, or hearing impairments.
Risk Identification and Impact Analysis of Early Involvement of Contractors in the Melbourne Construction Industry

A majority of construction projects never get completed on time. Delays and cost overruns are the major problems that construction industry around the world face. Construction delays have big implications on the society and its economy which disturbs the process of development. Australia has not been prone to this problem either. This paper aims to identify critical risk factors responsible for project delays and cost overrun and, explore the possibility of mitigation of risk by Early Involvement of Contractor. A literature review is done to identify common factors of project delays and cost overruns. Based on the common findings of the literature 15 factors were identified and a questionnaire set was designed around these factors. Data was collected from 42 respondents who represent project owners, consultants, contractors and other practitioners in the construction industry in Melbourne, Australia. Data was analyzed using relative importance index (RII) as this tool has been widely used in the literature. The analysis indicates that majority of the delay factors originate from the clients and consultants with few from contractors and external forces. Findings also suggest that Early Contractor Involvement can lead to minimization of risks by huge percentages due to better integration of Design and Construction. Index Terms Construction Delays, Risk Factors, Early Contractor Involvement (ECI), Relative Importance Index (RII).
KoMen: Domain Knowledge Guided Interaction Recommendation for Emerging Scenarios

User-User interaction recommendation, or interaction recommendation, is an indispensable service in social platforms, where the system automatically predicts with whom a user wants to interact. In real-world social platforms, we observe that user interactions may occur in diverse scenarios, and new scenarios constantly emerge, such as new games or sales promotions. There are two challenges in these emerging scenarios: (1) The behavior of users on the emerging scenarios could be different from existing ones due to the diversity among scenarios; (2) Emerging scenarios may only have scarce user behavioral data for model learning. Towards these two challenges, we present KoMen, a Domain Knowledge Guided Meta-learning framework for Interaction Recommendation. KoMen first learns a set of global model parameters shared among all scenarios and then quickly adapts the parameters for an emerging scenario based on its similarities with the existing ones. There are two highlights of KoMen: (1) KoMen customizes global model parameters by incorporating domain knowledge of the scenarios (e.g., a taxonomy that organizes scenarios by their purposes and functions), which captures scenario inter-dependencies with very limited training. (2) KoMen learns the scenario-specific parameters through a mixture-of-expert architecture, which reduces model variance resulting from data scarcity while still achieving the expressiveness to handle diverse scenarios. Extensive experiments demonstrate that KoMen achieves state-of-the-art performance on a public benchmark dataset and a large-scale real industry dataset. Remarkably, KoMen improves over the best baseline w.r. t. weighted ROC-AUC by 2.14% and 2.03% on the two datasets, respectively. Our code is available at: https://github.com/Veronicium/koMen.
Development of a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Method and a Near Infrared Calibration Model for the Rapid Determination of Lipid Content in the Field Pea (Pisum sativum)

Pisum sativum is a leguminous crop suitable for cultivation worldwide. It is used as a forage or dried seed supplement in animal feed and, more recently, as a potential non-traditional oilseed. This study aimed to develop a low-cost, rapid, and non-destructive method for analyzing pea lipids with no chemical modifications that would prove superior to existing destructive solvent extraction methods. Different pea accession seed samples, prepared as either small portions (0.5 mm2) of endosperm or ground pea seed powder for comparison, were subjected to HR-MAS NMR analyses and whole seed samples underwent NIR analyses. The total lipid content ranged between 0.57–3.45% and 1.3–2.6% with NMR and NIR, respectively. Compared to traditional extraction with butanol, hexane-isopropanol, and petroleum ether, correlation coefficients were 0.77 (R2 = 0.60), 0.56 (R2 = 0.47), and 0.78 (R2 = 0.62), respectively. Correlation coefficients for NMR compared to traditional extraction increased to 0.97 (R2 = 0.99) with appropriate correction factors. PLS regression analyses confirmed the application of this technology for rapid lipid content determination, with trends fitting models often close to an R2 of 0.95. A better robust NIR quantification model can be developed by increasing the number of samples with more diversity.
Correlation between N-Acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) Polymorphism Genotype with Plasma Isoniazid (INH) Concentration in MDR TB Patients Receiving Short Regimen in West Sumatera

Background: Isoniazid (INH) is one of the most potent TB drug. High dose INH is used in short regimen MDR TB drugs. The genetic polymorphism of NAT2 affects the acetylation status. Awareness of the patients’ acetylator status is important to determine the risk of toxicity, treatment failure and drug resistance. The aim of this study was to demonstrate NAT2 genotype association with INH plasma concentration after 2 hours of oral INH therapy. Methods: This was a cross sectional study of MDR TB patients who received short term combination therapy at RSUP Dr. M.Djamil Padang, Achmad Muchtar Hospital Bukittinggiand West Sumatra Pulmonary Hospital from September 2019 to February 2020. Patients were examined for NAT2 genotype and plasma INH concentration. The results of the plasma INH concentrations obtained were evaluated based on the NAT2 acetylator phenotype group.Results: The majority of the subjects weremen (62.5%), aged 40-64 years (50%), had the most common comorbid of diabetes mellitus (31.25%), were normoweight (75%) and had negative HIV status (93.8%). A total of 7 alleles consisting of 7 SNPs and 7 variations of the NAT2 genotype were found in MDR TB patients who received short-term therapy. The NAT2*12A alleles (56.25%) was the most common allele and was a fast acetylator. Based on the bimodal distribution, the median concentration of INH in the fast and slow acetylator were 1.25 µg/ml and 5.24 µg/ml, respectively. The median values of INH concentration based on the trimodal distribution for fast, intermediate, and slow acetylators were 1.25 µg/ml, 2.17 µg/ml and 5.24 µg/ml. Conclusion: There were no correlations between the type of NAT2 acetylator phenotype and plasma INH concentrations.
Mesophase behavior of four ring ester/azomethine/ester liquid crystals in pure and mixed states

ABSTRACT New four-ring ester/azomethine/ester liquid crystal series, 4-alkoxybenzoyloxy 4’-phenylazomethine phenyloxy 4”-alkoxybenzoate I n, were prepared, and their thermal stability and mesomorphic activity were investigated. The two wing carboxylic units were used aiming to achieve new mesomorphic properties for the prepared materials. The two ester linkages and the two terminal alkoxy chains were incorporated to modify the molecular structure. The chemical structures of the synthesised compounds were confirmed via FT-IR, NMR and elemental analysis. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and polarising optical microscopy were applied to determine the mesomorphic features of the designed homologues. All of the studied homologous were shown to exhibit superior thermal stability and enormous mesomorphic temperature ranges. Moreover, enantiotropic smectic A and nematic phases were shown to cover all of the homologues. The influence of inclusion the di-ester moieties on the mesophase behaviour was investigated through a comparison with the previously investigated three-ring series bearing only one ester linkage. Two binary phase diagrams were constructed and addressed in terms of the smectic and nematic temperature ranges.
Transcending Blood—Opportunities for Alternate Liquid Biopsies in Oncology

Simple Summary Cell-free DNA—DNA that has been expelled from cells and can be isolated from blood plasma and other body fluids—is a useful tool in medicine, with applications as a biomarker in diagnosis, prognosis, disease profiling, and treatment selection. In oncology, the ease of access to the tumour genome is a major advantage of cell-free DNA, but while this has led to significant research in blood, other body fluids have not received equal attention. This review article summarises the current research into cell-free DNA in non-blood body fluids, highlighting its values and limitations, and suggesting the direction of future studies. We conclude that cell-free DNA from non-blood body fluids may provide additional information to supplement traditional biopsies, allowing informative and improved patient care across many cancer types. Abstract Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is a useful molecular biomarker in oncology research and treatment, but while research into its properties in blood has flourished, there remains much to be discovered about cfDNA in other body fluids. The cfDNA from saliva, sputum, cerebrospinal fluid, urine, faeces, pleural effusions, and ascites has unique advantages over blood, and has potential as an alternative ‘liquid biopsy’ template. This review summarises the state of current knowledge and identifies the gaps in our understanding of non-blood liquid biopsies; where their advantages lie, where caution is needed, where they might fit clinically, and where research should focus in order to accelerate clinical implementation. An emphasis is placed on ascites and pleural effusions, being pathological fluids directly associated with cancer. We conclude that non-blood fluids are viable sources of cfDNA in situations where solid tissue biopsies are inaccessible, or only accessible from dated archived specimens. In addition, we show that due to the abundance of cfDNA in non-blood fluids, they can outperform blood in many circumstances. We demonstrate multiple instances in which DNA from various sources can provide additional information, and thus we advocate for analysing non-blood sources as a complement to blood and/or tissue. Further research into these fluids will highlight opportunities to improve patient outcomes across cancer types.
New Glycosylated Polyene Macrolides: Refining the Ore from Genome Mining

Glycosylated polyene macrolides include effective antifungal agents, such as pimaricin, nystatin, candicidin, and amphotericin B. For the treatment of systemic mycoses, amphotericin B has been described as a gold-standard antibiotic because of its potent activity against a broad spectrum of fungal pathogens, which do not readily become resistant. However, amphotericin B has severe toxic side effects, and the development of safer alternatives remains an important objective. One approach towards obtaining such compounds is to discover new related natural products. Advances in next-generation sequencing have delivered a wealth of microbial genome sequences containing polyene biosynthetic gene clusters. These typically encode a modular polyketide synthase that catalyzes the assembly of the aglycone core, a cytochrome P450 that oxidizes a methyl branch to a carboxyl group, and additional enzymes for synthesis and attachment of a single mycosamine sugar residue. In some cases, further P450s catalyze epoxide formation or hydroxylation within the macrolactone. Bioinformatic analyses have identified over 250 of these clusters. Some are predicted to encode potentially valuable new polyenes that have not been uncovered by traditional screening methods. Recent experimental studies have characterized polyenes with new polyketide backbones, previously unknown late oxygenations, and additional sugar residues that increase water-solubility and reduce hemolytic activity. Here we review these studies and assess how this new knowledge can help to prioritize silent polyene clusters for further investigation. This approach should improve the chances of discovering better antifungal antibiotics.
Teachers’ Beliefs About Literacy Teaching in Japanese Elementary Schools from the Perspective of Special Needs Education

Teachers’ beliefs influence their practices. Furthermore, their pedagogical beliefs play a crucial role in shaping their teaching practices. Furthermore, teachers’ beliefs have a significant effect on students’ learning, especially literacy learning. Accordingly, in this study, teachers’ beliefs about literacy teaching for elementary school students were examined from the perspective of special needs education. The purpose of the study was to develop the Literacy Belief Scale to measure Japanese elementary school teachers’ beliefs about literacy instruction in general education classes. The participants, who included 179 Japanese elementary school teachers with a range of teaching experience across both general and special education classes, completed a questionnaire. Factor analysis was performed and three belief dimensions regarding literacy in general education classes were extracted. The results revealed that teachers’ beliefs toward pedagogical approaches are dependent on individual practice and experience.
Die Stacking is Happening in Mainstream Computin

Die stacking has proven effective in MEMs and FPGA solutions but has yet to impact mainstream computing CPUs and GPUs. This talk will walk through how die stacking will enter mainstream computing and how it will change the industry in the future Operating 100kV downhole neutron tube power supplies at temperatures above 150 °C yield low operating efficiency due to excessive diode leakage in the series Cockroft - Walton multipliers typically used. Such circuits are usually limited to less than twelve stages due to N3 voltage regulation effects resulting in immoderate potentials across the switching rectifiers. This paper discusses the merits of using parallel multipliers with 30 stages or more to achieve higher conversion efficiencies at elevated temperatures in tools with 1.3 inch (32mm) diameters. By minimizing the per-stage voltage, definite improvements are realized due to reductions in reverse current leakage per device. Efficiencies of up to 50% may be achieved at 175 °C operating temperature by this .
Mediators between Positive and Negative Parenting and Child Depressive and Anxious Symptoms: Findings from a Diverse, At-Risk Sample

Background: Although children’s depressive and anxious symptoms have been broadly construed as internalizing problems, the current study sought to identify factors that may differentially contribute to these two mental health problems in a high-risk sample. Prior research has not adequately tested both depressive versus anxious symptoms simultaneously, nor has it adequately considered the role of negative versus positive parenting simultaneously, thereby neglecting the potential overlap in both sets of constructs. Overlooking such potential statistical overlap obfuscates how factors may differentially contribute to either depressive versus anxious symptoms. Existing research has also focused on lower-risk community samples. Method: The present study investigated whether children’s negative self-concept or maladaptive attributional style mediated the link between both negative and positive parenting in a racially diverse, at-risk sample of 65 primary school-age children recruited from mental health agencies. Results: When tested together, more negative parenting, but not less positive parenting, retained direct effects on both depressive and anxious symptoms. Both negative self-concept and maladaptive attributional style fully mediated the association between less positive parenting and children’s depressive symptoms, whereas positive self-concept, but not attributional style, mediated between less positive parenting and anxious symptoms. Conclusions: The current findings underscore potential differential intervention targets for these two internalizing problems and highlight the need for future research to consider both depressive and anxious symptoms, and related predictors, simultaneously to control for their shared variance.
Latent Space Virtual Adversarial Training for Supervised and Semi-Supervised Learning

SUMMARY Virtual Adversarial Training (VAT) has shown impressive results among recently developed regularization methods called consistency regularization. VAT utilizes adversarial samples, generated by injecting perturbation in the input space, for training and thereby enhances the generalization ability of a classiﬁer. However, such adversarial samples can be generated only within a very small area around the input data point, which limits the adversarial e ﬀ ectiveness of such samples. To address this problem we propose LVAT (Latent space VAT), which injects perturbation in the latent space instead of the input space. LVAT can generate adversarial samples ﬂexibly, resulting in more adverse e ﬀ ect and thus more e ﬀ ective regularization. The latent space is built by a generative model, and in this paper we examine two di ﬀ erent type of models: variational auto-encoder and normalizing ﬂow, speciﬁcally Glow. We evaluated the performance of our method in both supervised and semi-supervised learning scenarios for an image classiﬁcation task using SVHN and CIFAR-10 datasets. In our evaluation, we found that our method outperforms VAT and other state-of-the-art methods. key words: consistency regularization, adversarial training, image classi-ﬁcation, semi-supervised learning, and unsupervised learning
f -Mutual Information Contrastive Learning

Self-supervised contrastive learning is an emerging ﬁeld due to its power in providing good data representations. Such learning paradigm widely adopts the In-foNCE loss, which is closely connected with maximizing the mutual information. In this work, we propose the f -Mutual Information Contrastive Learning framework ( f -MICL), which directly maximizes the f -divergence-based generalization of mutual information. We theoretically prove that, with mild assumptions, our f -MICL naturally attains the alignment for positive pairs and the uniformity for data representations, the two main factors for the success of contrastive learning. We further provide theoretical guidance on designing the similarity function and choosing the effective f -divergences for f -MICL. Using several benchmark tasks, we empirically verify that our novel method outperforms or performs on par with state-of-the-art strategies.
Aging and hypertension among the global poor—Panel data evidence from Malawi

Hypertension is a rapidly growing disease burden among older persons in low-income countries (LICs) that is often inadequately diagnosed and treated. Yet, most LIC research on hypertension is based on cross-sectional data that does not allow inferences about the onset or persistence of hypertension, its correlates, and changes in hypertension as individuals become older. The Mature Adults Cohort of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH-MAC) is used to provide among the first panel analyses of hypertension for older individuals in a sub-Saharan LIC using blood pressure measurements obtained in 2013 and 2017. We find that high blood pressure is very common among mature adults aged 45+, and hypertension is more prevalent among older as compared to middle-aged respondents. Yet, in panel analyses for 2013–17, we find no increase in the prevalence of hypertension as individuals become older. Hypertension often persists over time, and the onset of hypertension is predicted by factors such as being overweight/obese, or being in poor physical health. Otherwise, however, hypertension has few socioeconomic predictors. There is also no gender differences in the level, onset or persistence in hypertension. While hypertension is associated with several negative health or socioeconomic consequences in longitudinal analyses, cascade-of-care analyses document significant gaps in the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. Overall, our findings indicate that hypertension and related high cardiovascular risks are widespread, persistent, and often not diagnosed or treated in this rural sub-Saharan population of older individuals. Prevalence, onset and persistence of hypertension are common across all subgroups—including, importantly, both women and men. While age is an important predictor of hypertension risk, even in middle ages 45–55 years, hypertension is already widespread. Hypertension among adults aged 45+ in Malawi is thus more similar to a “generalized epidemic” than in high-income countries where cardiovascular risk has strong socioeconomic gradients.
High-fidelity imaging of amyloid-beta deposits with an ultrasensitive fluorescent probe facilitates the early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

Background: Imaging amyloid-beta (Aβ) deposits with high fidelity in naturally aging brains is crucial for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, this is impeded by the lack of highly sensitive probes. Methods: By conducting computational modelling to quantitatively fine-tune the twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) tendency of Thioflavin T (ThT) analogues, we developed an ultrasensitive probe AH-2. AH-2 retained the binding affinity and binding mode of ThT towards Aβ deposits, and exhibited ca 10-fold less background fluorescence and 5-10 folds of improved signal-to-background contrast upon binding Aβ deposits. These desirable features endowed AH-2 the sensitivity to detect Aβ deposition in naturally aging wild-type mice. Results: AH-2 imaging revealed that Aβ puncta signals appeared near the nuclei in young mice and spread through the intracellular and extracellular compartments in older mice. Moreover, Aβ deposits were observed to emerge earlier in mice cerebral cortex than in the hippocampus region. Given this desirable sensitivity and good spatiotemporal resolution, AH-2 was successfully applied in the preclinical evaluation of Aβ-targeted treatment by melatonin. Conclusions: We expect that AH-2 is promising for early diagnosis of AD and will serve as a sensitive tool for studying Aβ-related AD pathology.