Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-resolution spectral analysis of long single-frequency pulses generated by a self-sweeping Yb-doped fiber laser

Continuous wave self-sweeping operation is demonstrated in a classical ring cavity configuration of Yb-doped fiber laser with a saturable absorber, which is usually used to obtain single-frequency lasing. Using heterodyne-based high-resolution spectral analysis we demonstrate that the laser generates a series of long (up to 1 ms) rectangular pulses consisting of single frequency radiation (the linewidth <0.7 MHz). At the same time, the lasing frequency changes between pulses regularly in a stepwise manner by one intermode beating frequency within a self-sweeping range of 100 pm. The effect of cavity configuration on pulse parameters (duration and chirp) is investigated. We also demonstrate that saturable absorbing mirrors design can be used to control the self-sweeping direction and value of the frequency jump.
Spatial-temporal patterns of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and black carbon (BC) pollution in Accra

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is rapidly urbanizing, and ambient air pollution has emerged as a major environmental health concern in growing cities. Yet, effective air quality management is hindered by limited data. We deployed robust, low-cost and low-power devices in a large-scale measurement campaign and characterized within-city variations in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and black carbon (BC) pollution in Accra, Ghana. Between April 2019 and June 2020, we measured weekly gravimetric (filter-based) and minute-by-minute PM2.5 concentrations at 146 unique locations, comprising of 10 fixed (∼1 year) and 136 rotating (7 day) sites covering a range of land-use and source influences. Filters were weighed for mass, and light absorbance (10−5m−1) of the filters was used as proxy for BC concentration. Year-long data at four fixed sites that were monitored in a previous study (2006–2007) were compared to assess changes in PM2.5 concentrations. The mean annual PM2.5 across the fixed sites ranged from 26 μg m−3 at a peri-urban site to 43 μg m−3 at a commercial, business, and industrial (CBI) site. CBI areas had the highest PM2.5 levels (mean: 37 μg m−3), followed by high-density residential neighborhoods (mean: 36 μg m−3), while peri-urban areas recorded the lowest (mean: 26 μg m−3). Both PM2.5 and BC levels were highest during the dry dusty Harmattan period (mean PM2.5: 89 μg m−3) compared to non-Harmattan season (mean PM2.5: 23 μg m−3). PM2.5 at all sites peaked at dawn and dusk, coinciding with morning and evening heavy traffic. We found about a 50% reduction (71 vs 37 μg m−3) in mean annual PM2.5 concentrations when compared to measurements in 2006–2007 in Accra. Ambient PM2.5 concentrations in Accra may have plateaued at levels lower than those seen in large Asian megacities. However, levels are still 2- to 4-fold higher than the WHO guideline. Effective and equitable policies are needed to reduce pollution levels and protect public health.
Economic Uncertainty and Fertility Intentions: The Causal Effect of Narratives of the Future

In recent years, fertility rates have declined in most middle-high income countries, and explanations have tended to focus on the rise of economic uncertainty. We contribute to this debate by arguing that, under uncertain conditions, narratives of the future—i.e. socially conveyed imagined futures— play a potent role in directing individuals’ decision-making about childbearing. To assess this role, we conducted—for the first time in fertility intention research—a controlled laboratory experiment in two contrasting settings: Florence (Italy, N = 814) and Oslo (Norway, N = 876). Individuals were randomly exposed to a specific positive or negative future economic scenario (treatments) and compared with individuals who were not exposed to any scenario (control group). Then, each respondent was asked whether he/she intended to have a child in the next three years. Results showed a clear causal impact of narratives of the future on fertility intentions. Moreover, when the actual condition at the macro (country context) or micro (labor-market status and characteristics) level was better-off, negative narratives of the future were most crucial; conversely, when the actual conditions were less favorable, positive narratives of the future proved especially important. We conclude that, in the era of uncertainty, individuals respond to more than their actual economic situation and constraints: narratives of the future create a distance experience from the daily routine that plays a potent role by inhibiting or facilitating fertility decision-making.
Meat qualitative traits of wild boar (Sus scrofa) and fallow deer (Dama dama) hunted in Central Italy

Meat composition, as well as its physicochemical properties, undergoes significant changes during cooking, affecting the final characteristics of meat products, mainly water loss and fatty acid content, and modifying the nutritional value of cooked products if compared to raw samples. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of grill treatment on physical quality, colour, fatty acid composition an lipid oxidation of longissimus thoracis from 10 wild boars, hunted in some areas of the Province of Rome. Results indicate that cooking induced a significant loss of water and, consequently, the cooked meat showed significantly higher protein, ash and fat contents than raw samples. The protein and myoglobin degradation, consequent to heat treatment, changed the colour parameters of meat, showing higher lightness (58.59 vs 38.94, P<0.001) and yellowness value (14.71 vs 11.67, P<0.001) and lower redness value (3.90 vs 6.94, P<0.01) than raw meat. Cooked meat showed a lower content of saturated (30.47 vs 32.13 %, P<0.01) and a higher level of polyunsaturated fatty acids compared to raw meat (27.02 vs 23.03 %, P<0.05). This is probably due to the prominent presence of saturated fatty acids in neutral lipids that are more prone to migration during cooking. From the
Natural extensions and entropy of $\alpha$-continued fraction expansions with odd partial quotients

In an article (which we will refer to as [BM]) of Boca and the fourth author of this paper, a new class of continued fraction expansions with odd partial quotients, parameterized by a parameter $\alpha\in [g,G]$, where $g=\tfrac{1}{2}(\sqrt{5}-1)$ and $G=g+1=1/g$ are the two golden mean numbers is introduced. In this article, by using operations called singularizations and insertions on the partial quotients of the odd continued fraction expansions under consideration, the natural extensions from [BM] are obtained, and it is shown that for each $\alpha,\alpha^*\in [g,G]$ the natural extensions from [BM] are metrically isomorphic. An immediate consequence of this is, that the entropy of all these natural extensions is equal for $\alpha\in [g,G]$, a fact already observed in [BM]. Furthermore, it is shown that this approach can be extended to values of $\alpha$ smaller than $g$, and that for values of $\alpha \in [\tfrac{1}{6}(\sqrt{13}-1), g]$ all natural extensions are still isomorphic. In the final section of this paper further attention is given to the entropy, as function of $\alpha\in [0,G]$. It is shown that in any neighborhood of $0$ we can find intervals on which the entropy is decreasing, intervals on which the entropy is increasing and intervals on which the entropy is constant. In order to prove this we use a phenomena called matching.
An on-site and remote study during the COVID-19 pandemic on virtual hand appearance and tactile feedback

ABSTRACT A virtual reality (VR) study was conducted both in our lab setting and remotely to investigate the effects of virtual hand appearance and tactile feedback on ownership, external appearance, and tactile sensation embodiment dimensions when participants were instructed to perform an assembly task in a virtual environment. Six experimental conditions that combine hand appearances (abstract, mannequin, and realistic) and tactile feedback (tactile and no tactile) levels were examined. The results of our study indicated that: (1) the more realistic hand had a stronger effect on tactile sensation and external appearance, while the mannequin hand was associated with a greater ownership effect; (2) tactile feedback was associated with a stronger effect on external appearance compared to no tactile feedback; (3) the realistic hand model in conjunction with tactile feedback significantly affected the tactile sensation of the participants; (4) the participants in the lab setting rated the external appearance of the realistic hand model higher than the remote participants; (5) the participants exposed for less than one hour per week to VR rated the tactile sensation in the presence of tactile feedback higher, while they similarly rated the external appearance of the virtual hand model in the presence of a realistic hand model higher when compared to those who were exposed for more than one hour per week to VR; and finally, (6) the younger participants rated the tactile sensation higher than the older participants in the presence of the realistic hand model. In this paper, we discuss our findings and provide design considerations for virtual reality applications that consider virtual hands and tactile feedback.
A Three Year (2017–2019) Review of Hypertension in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH)

Aims: Include determining the prevalence of hypertension in UPTH from January 2017 to December 2019, to describe the risk factors associated with hypertension, to describe the demographic distribution of patients with hypertension and to determine the outcome of hypertension in UPTH. Study design: The study is a descriptive cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: The research was carried out at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital between January and June, 2020. Methodology: A multi-stage random sampling method was used in selecting the records of all patients admitted to the medical wards of the UPTH (between January 2017 – December 2019), with essential hypertension. The first stage involved the use of disproportionate sampling method (where each of the years, 2017-2019 constituted a stratum) to select all the hypertensive cases admitted in each of the years. Simple random sampling was then used in the second stage to select 70 samples from each year, to make up the 210 sample size. This was generated through the use of random numbers. The data were analyzed manually by sorting, tallying and collated into data sheet. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: There were a total of 3,200 medical admissions during the period under review (2017-2019), and the prevalence of hypertension was 16.8% (537). The records of 210 (6.6%) hypertensive patients were reviewed and analyzed. There were 109 (51.9%) males and 101 (48.1%) females with a male: female predilection of 1.1:1. The mean age was 55.7 ± 4.5 years with a mode of 62 years. Urban dwellers were 63.3% while 36.7% were rural dwellers. Also, 57.1% of these patients were in social class V (unskilled workers, farmers, traders and housewives); and only 2.9% in social class I (professionals). More so, chronic alcohol intake accounted for 16.7% of the admitted cases, followed by diabetes mellitus with 12.4%. Smoking and obesity were 1.9% each. Heart failure was the commonest complication of hypertension (39.5%), while stroke was the commonest cause of fatality (25.0%). Conclusion: Hypertension is an important health problem in the world over. Hence emphasis should be placed on the primary prevention of hypertension through intensive campaigns on lifestyle modifications and regular blood pressure checks. In addition, efficient record keeping and the establishment of a stroke registry would help in the management of hypertension.
Efficient second-order methods for model compression

Second-order information, in the form of Hessianor Inverse-Hessian-vector products, is a fundamental tool for solving optimization problems. Recently, there has been a tremendous amount of work on utilizing this information for the current compute and memory-intensive deep neural networks, usually via coarse-grained approximations (such as diagonal, blockwise, or Kronecker-factorization). However, not much is known about the quality of these approximations. Our work addresses this question, and in particular, we propose a method called ‘WoodFisher’ that leverages the structure of the empirical Fisher information matrix, along with the Woodbury matrix identity, to compute a faithful and efficient estimate of the inverse Hessian. Our main application is to the task of compressing neural networks, where we build on the classical Optimal Brain Damage/Surgeon framework (LeCun et al., 1990; Hassibi and Stork, 1993). We demonstrate that WoodFisher significantly outperforms magnitude pruning (isotropic Hessian), as well as methods that maintain other diagonal estimates. Further, even when gradual pruning is considered, our method results in a gain in test accuracy over the state-of-the-art approaches, for standard image classification datasets such as CIFAR-10, ImageNet. We also propose a variant called ‘WoodTaylor’, which takes into account the firstorder gradient term, and can lead to additional improvements. An important advantage of our methods is that they allow us to automatically set the layer-wise pruning thresholds, avoiding the need for any manual tuning or sensitivity analysis.
Modeling residential relocation choices: An egalitarian bargaining approach and a comparative study

Accompanying the rapid urban expansion and fast population growth is a progressive trend of residential relocation in developing countries, which necessitates a thorough understanding of households’ relocation decisions. Previous studies generally treated home relocation as an individual or unitary household decision, ignoring the interactive and collaborative decision-making mechanisms that household members may adopt when making group decisions. In view of this research gap, this study examines the feasibility of applying the egalitarian bargaining approach to simulating households’ group decisions concerning residential relocation and further compares its performance with the Nash bargaining and the conventional utilitarian approach. Moreover, the study experiments with the possibility of accommodating three possible group decision-making mechanisms using the latent class modeling framework. The proposed modeling approaches are applied to an empirical case study in Beijing. Results show that models based on the egalitarian and Nash bargaining principles have better model fits than the utilitarian principle, suggesting the importance of considering egalitarianism when modeling household members’ collaborative choice on residential relocation. Moreover, the model based on Nash bargaining has the best model fit, indicating that instead of merely seeking egalitarianism or utilitarianism, household members are more likely to strike a balance between fairness and efficiency.
CrossFit: A Tool for Developing Social Capital in Post-Violent Conflict Nations?

More than twenty years since the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains a nation divided. Critically deficient in social trust, the country is experiencing an imbalance in the various forms of social capital precluding development of diverse horizontal and vertical relationships. Grassroots organisations, in particular sporting ones, have proven a useful avenue in helping build such relationships by uniting diverse groups over a common point of interest. However, one sport remains hereto explored for this potential—CrossFit. Remedying this deficiency, this project relies on CrossFit Sarajevo as a case study and seeks to explore whether this community has generated social capital and if so, what types. Relying on semistructured interviews with thirteen of the club‘s members, it shows that CrossFit can indeed build high levels of social capital and thereby contribute to development of diverse relationships in post-violence contexts. It also highlights the importance of encouraging behavior conducive to the development of inclusive norms and the need for vigilance against a recurring slide towards imbalance in social capital. Ultimately, these findings suggest further studies of grassroots organisations harboring potential for social capital generation—such as CrossFit clubs—and urge more-robust exploration of their permeability and influence across post-violent conflict societies.
Influence of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Psychological Wellbeing and Ego-Resiliency in Type 2 Diabetes Patients in Sabzevar

ype 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is considered as a complex disorder regarding self-management and management of the disease (1), inducing psychological outcomes for the patient. Based on reports of International Diabetes Federation T 1. Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Sabzevar, Iran. 2. Clinical Psychologist, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e-Jam Branch, Torbat-eJam, Iran. 3. Assistant Professor of Health Psychology, Department of Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Torbat-e-Jam Branch, Torbat-eJam, Iran. 4. Associate Professor, School of Medicine, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Sabzevar, Iran. 5. Department of Midwifery, Nursing and Midwifery School, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Sabzevar, Iran. 6. MSc in Midwifery, Iranian Research Center on Health Aging, School of Nursing and Midwifery.
Assessing Nutrient Management Strategies to Control Harmful Algal Blooms in Lake Erie

Harmful algal blooms (HAB) have impaired Lake Erie’s western basin water quality since the 1960s. Drivers of HABs are still the subject of debate and are likely the result of interactions among several biotic and abiotic factors. The problem is twofold: (1) uncertainty in the specific causes of HABs leads to inapt management solutions; and (2) managing a cross-boundary watershed requires collaboration and agreement on apt solutions from multiple stakeholders as well as many U.S. states and Canadian provinces. In this study, we use Bayesian hierarchical modeling (BHM) to investigate the relationships between nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) and phytoplankton biomass, cyanobacterial biomass, and microcystin concentration. We used both a within-lake and an across-lake approach and examined whether the inferences from western Lake Erie differ from the ones using multiple lakes across the country. We found that while P is still the primary driver of HABs in Western Lake Erie (WLE), the great variability between stations and months suggests that even within-lake, there may not be a single relationship characterizing phosphorus effects on HABs. We also interviewed 29 stakeholders actively involved in western Lake Erie’s watershed. We analyzed the stakeholders’ values, attitudes, and policy preferences to understand their differences or similarities and their effects on management decisions. We found that although stakeholders agree on the urgency of the problem, the different opinions and preferences of each interviewee may complicate the decision-making process in a highly collaborative watershed.
Polymer blend: a new approach for eliminating curing effect of aqueous dispersion coatings

The aim of present work was to investigate blends of Eudragit® NE 30D with Aquacoat® ECD using different ratios to eliminate curing effect associated with individual polymers. Propranolol HCl 10% w/w was layered onto sugar cores using 5% w/w HPMC as a binder. Drug-layered-cores were coated either with pure or blends of Aquacoat® ECD: Eudragit® NE 30D in a fluidized bed coater to obtain 20% w/w coating level. Talc 35% w/w was used as anti-tacking agent. The pellets were characterized for in vitro dissolution studies, morphology, water uptake-weight loss, osmolality and adhesion of coating after curing at 60 °C or 60 °C/75% RH for 24 h. The findings revealed that Aquacoat® ECD coated pellets showed curing effect due to further gradual coalescence of polymeric particles which resulted into better film formation upon curing. In contrast, the curing effect of Eudragit® NE 30D coated pellets was caused by decrease in adhesion of coatings after curing which provided entirely different swelling behavior of uncured (localized swelling) and cured (uniform swelling) pellets. The undesired curing effect of individual polymers was eliminated by using their blends in appropriate ratio.
Preparation and characterization of naftifine-loaded poly(vinyl alcohol)/sodium alginate electrospun nanofibers

In this study, naftifine (a topical antifungal drug) loaded poly(vinyl) alcohol (PVA)/sodium alginate (SA) nanofibrous mats were prepared using the single-needle electrospinning technique. The produced nanofibers were crosslinked with glutaraldehyde (GTA) vapor. The morphology and diameter of the electrospun nanofibers were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). SEM images showed the smoothness of the nanofibers and indicated that the fiber diameter increased with crosslinking and drug loading. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) images confirmed the uniform production of the scaffolds, and elemental mapping via energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) showed the uniform distribution of the drug within the nanofibers. An attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy study demonstrated that naftifine has sufficient secondary interactions with the polymer blend. The crosslinking treatment decreased the burst drug release effectively and the release mechanism followed Korsmeyer-Peppas Super Case-II transport. Overall, these findings suggest the potential use of naftifine-loaded PVA/SA nanofibers as a topical antifungal drug delivery system.
Invariance-based approach: general methods and pavement engineering case study

In many application areas such as pavement engineering, the phenomena are complex, and as a result, we do not have first-principle models describing the corresponding dependencies. Luckily, in many such areas, there is a lot of empirical data and, based on this data, many useful empirical dependencies have been found. The problem is that since many of these dependencies do not have a theoretical explanation, practitioners are often hesitant to use them: there have been many cases when an empirical formula stops being valid when circumstances change. To make the corresponding empirical formulas more reliable, it is therefore desirable to look for theoretical foundations of these formulas. In this paper, we show that many of such dependencies can be naturally explained by using invariances. We illustrate this approach on the example of pavement engineering, but the approach is very general, and can be applied to other systems as well.