Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of publicly co-funded industry-science collaboration on scientific production

We quantify the impact of publicly co-funded industry-science collaborations on science output. Such “duo programs” encourage scientists to co-develop innovation projects with firms, combining the attributes of competitive research funding with those of science commercialization programs. Their focus on commercialization leads them to require more time and effort from scientists than traditional science funding programs and might also lead applicants to adopt projects with higher commercial potential. The question thus arises whether such programs, which are becoming increasingly popular, impose a cost in terms of scientific productivity or the direction of science. We investigate the effect of participation in one such program, a European Joint Programming Initiative that encourages cross-border research collaboration to commercial ends. To ensure causality, we use plausibly exogenous variation in funding decisions that results from restrictions in the program’s budgetallocation rules. We find no evidence that co-funded industry-science collaborations negatively impact science. On the contrary, our results indicate that they increase the number of top publications by participating scientists, in particular jointly with coauthors from industry, while the direction of scientists’ research agendas remains unaffected.
Onion Production and Nitrogen Uptake in Response to Different Doses of Urea Fertilizer at Two Different Plant Populations

Two field experiments were conducted during the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 growing seasons in the Agriculture Research Station of Jordan University, to study the response of 3 onion cultivars from Texas Early Grano 502 (lot No. 222181 from Royal Sluis, lot No. 7A9062/1 from Bakker Brothers and lot No. 96367- 73100 from Amsa Seed.moss. main selection) to 6 nitrogen doses and 2 different plant populations in terms of dry qualified yield and nitrogen absorption (kg/ha). The impact of nitrogen waste (kg/ha) in relation to each dose on the environment was also examined. The two plant populations (i.e., 67 and 83 plants/m 2 ) were interacted with the 6 nitrogen doses (i.e., 100, 120, 140, 160, 180 and 200 kg/ha) and with the 3 onion cultivars. Both plant densities produced almost comparable results for almost all dry production components. But, for ecological considerations, the 67 plants/m 2 showed better nitrogen absorption and, consequently, showed less impact on the environment as nitrogen waste quantity. This could be also beneficial in reducing the production cost. The 140 kg N/ha showed the highest potential in producing dry yield especially the marketable (1 st + 2 nd categories) in both seasons. Also, it showed the lowest waste global nitrogen quantity (51 kg/ha). The 150 kg N/ha dose was found to be the closest one to the optimum dose, since the 140 kg N/ha dose gave the best results, but the onion plants still needed 11 kg N/ha, while at 160 kg N/ha about 25 kg N/ha were wasted. For higher doses, the wasted nitrogen space increased as more nitrogen is added and the impact on the environment became heavier.
Perioperative myocardial injury and clinical outcome of arterial switch operation for transposition of the great arteries in neonates

Objective To assess the perioperative myocardial injury and clinical outcome of the primary aarterial switch operation(ASO)for transposition of the great arteris(D-TGA)in nennates.Metbods Twenty-one neonates with D-TGA who underwent ASO were enrolled.The age at the peration ranged from 2 to 28 days,and body weight ranged from 2.90 to 4.12 kg.They were divided into emergency peration group and elective operation group according to their preperative condition.Serum cardiac tropomin I (cTnI)and creatine kinase-MB(CK-MB)levels were measured at the following time points:T1(before operation),T2(10 minites after aortic opening),T3(after operation),T4(24h after peration),T5(48h after operation)and T6(72h after pqeration)reapectively.The date of perioperative clinical outcome were also collected.Results There was no postoperative mmortality.One neonate in emergency operation group who developed multiple grgan failure(MOF)refused treatment afterwards.The cTnI levels at T1,T2 and T3 in emergency operation group were higher than thtat in elective operation group.As tor the CK-MB levels,ther were no statistical difference between the two grorp.The cTnI level at 10 minutes after aortic opening correlated with the aortic clamping time(r=0.647,P＜0.01)while there were no relationship between CK-MB levels and the aortic clamping time.Ther were significantly differences in ventialtion duration[(167.78±66.94)h versus(75.25±46.11)h],ICU stay[(11.67±4.30)d versus(7.67±3.33)d]and postoperative stay[(16.56±5.36)h versus(11.92±3.60)h]between emergency operation group and elective operation group.Conclusion The effect of ASO on treatment of D-TGA in neonates was well accepted.Early diagnosis,correcting of acidosis,keeping PDA patent before operation,and improving of baby condition actively and avoiding emergency operation possibly can rducde postoperative ventilation duration,ICU stay and postoperative hospital stay,thus improve postoperative recovery.The levels of cTnI and CK-MB are markers for myocardial injury,but cTnI is more sdensitice.To some extend,cTnI can be used in assessing or predicting outcome during the postoperative period. Key words: Transpostition of great; vessels
Corporate Governance Quality and Financial Performance of Retail Firms: Evidence Using South African Data

A great deal has been written about corporate governance over the last few decades. Notwithstanding, in the wake of the re-emergence of corporate scandals, environmental sustainability concerns and globalisation of firms, have necessitated that further research be conducted on the corporate governance practices of firms. Against this backdrop the primary aim of this paper is to determine if the corporate governance practices of retail firms in South Africa have an impact on their financial performance. The choice of the retail industry in South Africa as a unit of analysis was motivated by virtue of the fact that the wholesale and retail sector accounts for a large portion of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product. The study employed a panel of 18 South African firms in the wholesale and retail sector for the period ranging from 2010 to 2019. Panel data techniques, namely the pooled ordinary least squares (POLS), fixed effects (FE) and random effects (RE) models were estimated. The study documented that board size were negatively related to financial performance. In addition, the study found that board independence and firm size were positively related to financial performance. Overall, the relationship between corporate governance and financial performance is not very strong among retail firms in South Africa. This could be due to firms not following the guidelines and regulations very strictly during the sample period.
Adaptation to climate change in international river basins in Africa: a review

Cet article passe en revue les connaissances actuelles des impacts potentiels du changement climatique sur les ressources en eau en Afrique, ainsi que les limites et opportunites d' adaptation au changement climatique des bassins fluviaux internationaux. Avec une capacite institutionnelle generalement faible, l'Afrique fait face a d'importants defis concernant la forte variabilite des ressources en eau et les penuries regionales. La gestion est d'autant plus compliquee en raison de la nature transfrontaliere de plusieurs de ces bassins fluviaux. Malgre les incertitudes vis-a-vis des impacts precis du changement climatique sur les ressources en eau, il est probable qu'il exacerbe plusieurs de ces defis. Les bassins fluviaux ainsi que les etats riverains qui se les partagent different par leurs capacites d'adaptation. Sans une cooperation appropriee, les moyens d'adaptation peuvent etre limites et inegaux. Des recherches approfondies sont proposees, qui examineraient les facteurs et procedes fondamentaux pour une cooperation efficace en termes de resultats d'adaptation et d'une plus grande capacite d'adaptation des institutions de gestion des ressources en eau.
Spatial Attention Improves Iterative 6D Object Pose Estimation

The task of estimating the 6D pose of an object from RGB images can be broken down into two main steps: an initial pose estimation step, followed by a refinement procedure to correctly register the object and its observation. In this paper, we propose a new method for 6D pose estimation refinement from RGB images. To achieve high accuracy of the final estimate, the observation and a rendered model need to be aligned. Our main insight is that after the initial pose estimate, it is important to pay attention to distinct spatial features of the object in order to improve the estimation accuracy during alignment. Furthermore, parts of the object that are occluded in the image should be given less weight during the alignment process. Most state-of-the-art refinement approaches do not allow for this fine-grained reasoning and can not fully leverage the structure of the problem. In contrast, we propose a novel neural network architecture built around a spatial attention mechanism that identifies and leverages information about spatial details during pose refinement. We experimentally show that this approach learns to attend to salient spatial features and learns to ignore occluded parts of the object, leading to better pose estimation across datasets. We conduct experiments on standard benchmark datasets for 6D pose estimation (LineMOD and Occlusion LineMOD) and outperform previous state-of-the-art methods.
Modeling land susceptibility to wind erosion hazards using LASSO regression and graph convolutional networks

Predicting land susceptibility to wind erosion is necessary to mitigate the negative impacts of erosion on soil fertility, ecosystems, and human health. This study is the first attempt to model wind erosion hazards through the application of a novel approach, the graph convolutional networks (GCNs), as deep learning models with Monte Carlo dropout. This approach is applied to Semnan Province in arid central Iran, an area vulnerable to dust storms and climate change. We mapped 15 potential factors controlling wind erosion, including climatic variables, soil characteristics, lithology, vegetation cover, land use, and a digital elevation model (DEM), and then applied the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression to discriminate the most important factors. We constructed a predictive model by randomly selecting 70% and 30% of the pixels, as training and validation datasets, respectively, focusing on locations with severe wind erosion on the inventory map. The current LASSO regression identified eight out of the 15 features (four soil property categories, vegetation cover, land use, wind speed, and evaporation) as the most important factors controlling wind erosion in Semnan Province. These factors were adopted into the GCN model, which estimated that 15.5%, 19.8%, 33.2%, and 31.4% of the total area is characterized by low, moderate, high, and very high susceptibility to wind erosion, respectively. The area under curve (AUC) and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) of game theory were applied to assess the performance and interpretability of GCN output, respectively. The AUC values for training and validation datasets were estimated at 97.2% and 97.25%, respectively, indicating excellent model prediction. SHAP values ranged between −0.3 and 0.4, while SHAP analyses revealed that the coarse clastic component, vegetation cover, and land use were the most effective features of the GCN output. Our results suggest that this novel suite of methods is highly recommended for future spatial prediction of wind erosion hazards in other arid environments around the globe.
Copying Can Be Good: How Students View Imitation as a Tool in Learning to Program

Student ‘copying’ is often considered negatively as thoughts of plagiarism come to mind. Previously, we investigated the ways that instructors expect to use copying and imitation positively in their teaching. In this paper, we follow up that study by focusing on the student perspective and explore the ways in which students see copying and imitating as positive tools in learning to program (both at an introductory level and through more advanced learning of algorithms, etc.). In a qualitative research study, using semi-structured interviews, students were asked about how they use copying positively - their goals when they copy, how they go about it, how they view the experience of copying, and results beyond simply fulfilling their immediate goals.When comparing student results with the previous study, it was noted that there is some level of agreement between instructors and students about how copying can be useful for learning to program. There is also some degree of mismatch between instructor and student views. Students did not report imitating instructors’ approaches to learning and sometimes were unsure about whether they were supposed to copy the materials that they were given. This leads to some teaching suggestions in terms of instructors being more explicit in their attitude to this type of ‘legitimate’ copying and imitation.
The nearby astrometric-spectroscopic binary star Hip 68682

The nearby astrometric-spectroscopic binary star Hip 68682 has an orbital period of ∼ 9.88 yr. The dynamical state (component masses and kinematic parameters) of this system is redetermined by fitting all the observational data available to us, including the radial velocity data (RVD), the relative position data (RPD), and the Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data (HIAD). The precision-weighted sum of squared residuals calculated from our results is significantly smaller than the previous ones. With the simulated data based on Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST), the relative orbit could be improved further. Based on the known apparent magnitude information and the fitted parallax 60.59 ± 0.36 mas, we derive the absolute V magnitudes of the two components as 5.21 mag and 8.91 mag, respectively. The component masses are determined to be 0.946 ± 0.024M ⊙ and 0.526 ± 0.014M ⊙. These improved dynamical masses are helpful to constrain the stellar empirical mass–luminosity relation (MLR) for low mass stars. However, significant improvement of mass–luminosity relation for this mass region still needs more data.
Characteristics of Traumatic Brain Injury in Sanglah Hospital, Bali, Indonesia: A Retrospective Study

Traumatic head injury is the most common trauma found in the emergency department, and the most significant cause of morbidity as well. There are many traumatic head injuries in Sanglah Hospital which caused by traffic accidents. Epidemiological studies of traumatic head injuries are still limited. The purpose of this study is to describe the characteristics of traumatic head injury patients at Sanglah Hospital. This study is a retrospective study centered at Sanglah Hospital (single-centered). The data used are secondary data based on medical records from January to December 2017. Data were analyzed with SPSS version 21.0. Multivariate regression analysis was performed to determine the predictive variable for the first 24-hour mortality of traumatic head injury. From January to December 2017, a total of 525 samples were collected. Most of the samples are males (68.2%), with no significant differences in gender variable. The data also showed that mostly aged 19-40 years (47.6%), traffic accidents (86.3%), have a history of unconsciousness (74.1%), duration of unconsciousness <10 minutes (32.8%), time interval to hospital <1 hour (49.1%), GCS admission 13-15 (55.8%), blunt head injury (78.7%), 1 intracranial hemorrhage (43.2%). Multivariate regression analysis showed increased age, increased time to the hospital, decreased GCS scores, airway disturbance, decreased oxygen pressure in the blood, and increased types of intracranial hemorrhage significantly associated with first 24hour mortality. Having data on head injury incidents in Bali is an important key to know the characteristics of head injury cases that can intervene in the future in the form of public health and prevention. Further research is needed to be able to represent the characteristics and to give appropriate management for traumatic head injury patient in order to decrease the mortality and morbidity especially for oxygen and airway management that are found to be significant risk of death in this study.
Experiences of Assessment in Introductory Programming From the Perspective of NonComputer Science Majors

This Research, Full Paper presents a study of how engineering students, non-computer science (CS) majors, experienced the assessments during their first programming course (CS1). Naturally, we as instructors and course designers would like to facilitate learning among our students and make fair assessments. During the CS1 courses given for non-CS majors at our university, the students would be assessed on their programming skills and concept knowledge on multiple occasions. Typically, students need to complete 4-6 lab assignments, pass an exam, and complete an individual project. The instructor in charge of each course, the course coordinator, design all assignments as well as the grading criteria and is typically also responsible for the assessment of students’ skills and knowledge. However, since these courses have a large number of students (~200) the assessments are mainly done by teaching assistants (TAs). The purpose of this paper is to explore how students experience the assessment situations in CS1 courses.Eleven semi-structured interviews were performed with engineering students who enrolled in one of four CS1 courses. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. The results indicate that the students experienced the individual project to be authentic, a fair and reasonable way to assess their programming skills. By contrast, the exam was experienced as inauthentic and focusing on less important skills such as knowing syntax by heart. The students put lots of trust in their TAs, but experienced that the grading and amount of feedback they received, differed depending on the TA. The hierarchy, in which the course coordinator instructed the TAs on how to conduct the assessment, was not clearly visible and some students even viewed their TAs to be more qualified to grade their assignments than the course coordinators. It was, however, clear to the students that the course coordinator was also the course designer and the one who constructed the exam.
Teaching Cyber-Security for Distance Learners: A Reflective Study

The number of distance learning degrees has increased dramatically over the last decade. Yet, despite this increase, teaching computer security subjects for online students remains challenging. Online classes often need a special infrastructure such as devices with specific tools, or hardware requirements. It is also a challenge to design a course that is pedagogically sound, engaging and fun for students who may come from a wide spectrum of educational backgrounds. The quality of the education delivered also differs from one institution to another. To provide a sense of accreditation and regulation, the National Cyber-security Centre, which is a part of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the United Kingdom (UK) has certified only two online (i.e. distance learning) cybersecurity MSc degrees in the country.This paper presents an innovative way of designing capstone projects (i.e. case studies) along with the impact of it on retention, completion, and success rates in a world-class distance learning degree at the University of Liverpool (UoL) over the last ten years. The Chartered Institute for IT (i.e. BSC) is the accreditation body of the degree program studied in this research1.
Opioid-Free Anesthesia Plus Postoperative Management Focused on Anti- Hyperalgesia Approach in Patients with Joint Hypermobility Syndrome Undergoing Occipital-Cervical Fixation: A Narrative Review and Authors' Perspective

Cranio-cervical instability has been well identified in diseases with connective tissue like Ehlers-Danlos SyndromeHypermobility Type/Joint Hypermobility Syndrome. It is frequently associated with functional gastrointestinal disturbances, mast cell activation syndrome, and autonomic symptoms as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. These patients suffer from chronic fatigue, and severe widespread pain of exceedingly difficult management and poor control with opioids. Chronic neuroinflammation, opioid-induced hyperalgesia, and Central Sensitization phenomena may explain this complex and painful condition. The aim of this narrative review is to present updated information on the peri-operative considerations of patients with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome-Hypermobility Type/Joint Hypermobility Syndrome and cranio-cervical instability who are undergoing Occipital-Cervical Fixation/Fusion. Our protocol of opioid-free total intravenous anesthesia will also be described. Acute post-operative pain management includes the use of a combination of anti-hyperalgesic coadjuvants (lidocaine, ketamine and dexmedetomidine) with an opioid-sparing effect.
Relationships between winter wheat yields and soil carbon under various tillage systems

Soil quality and fertility are associated with its productivity, and this in turn is connected to the soil biological activity. To study these effects, well designed long-term field experiments that provide comprehensive data sets are the most applicable. Four treatments (tillage methods) were set up: (1) conventional tillage (CT); (2) no tillage (NT); (3) minimum tillage + straw (MTS), and (4) no tillage + mulch (NTM). Our objective was to assess the relationships between soil microbial characteristics and winter wheat yields under these different techniques of conser vation tillage within a field experiment, originally established in 1995. The differences in average grain yields over time period 2002–2009 between the variants were not statistically significant. Organic carbon in the topsoil was higher in plots with conservation tillage (NT, MTS, and NTM), than in the conventional tillage plots. There was a statistically significant correlation ( P ≤ 0.01) between the grain yields and organic C content in topsoil.
The Effect of Humidity on a Corona Discharge in Air

Abstract : The effect of humidity on a corona discharge in air is investigated and found to produce a decrease in discharge current of about 20% for a change in humidity from dry to saturated conditions at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. It is suggested that this effect can be used to measure humidity in applications where rapid response is essential and the need to compensate for moderate temperature and pressure changes can be tolerated.
ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF ARTEMISIA PERSICA AGAINST PAEDIATRIC PATHOGENIC BACTERIA

Artemisia persica belongs to the family of Asteraceae. The genus Artemisia is approximately 400 species. Many species and varieties of this plant grow wild or are cultivated in many parts of Asia and Europe. This perennial herb, which is distributed in different regions of Iran and China, has been of great interest to Iranian and Chinese folk medicine. The objectives of this study were to investigate the antimicrobial activity of the subfraction of the methanol extract from A persica. The antimicrobial activity was determined by using agar well diffusion and micro broth dilution methods on Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus Gram-positive bacterial infection in paediatrics. The non-polar subfraction of this plant showed good antibacterial activity against S aureus. The maximal inhibition zones and MIC values for S aureus, which were sensitive to the non-polar extracts of A persica were 16 mm and 12.5 μg/ml, and 14 mm and 6.25 mg/ml, respectively.