Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic diversity of pvcsp and pvs25 in Plasmodium vivax isolates in malaria-endemic areas in Asia, Africa, and America: A systematic review

Analysis of genetic diversity is an important tool for evaluating Plasmodium vivax drug resistance, relapse patterns, and vaccine development. P. vivax circumsporozoite protein ( pvcsp ) is involved in sporozoite binding to liver cells. The three pvcsp patterns, i.e . , VK210, VK247, or P. vivax -like types, are indentified in P. vivax isolates, which are characterized by repeated sequences. The VK210 pattern is a major pvcsp genetic diversity distributed worldwide, demonstrating P. vivax variation. Moreover, the circumsporozoite proteins play an essential role in parasite transformation in mosquito development. Among various P. vivax sexual stage antigens, pvs25 is an important antigen for transmission-blocking vaccine (TBV) development. This systemic review focuses on the analysis of current information on the genetic diversity of pvcsp and pvs25 in P. vivax isolates from different malaria-endemic areas. The prevalence and patterns of pvcsp and pvs25 reported from various studies depend on geographical distribution and the time of sample collection. The information might facilitate further vaccine development and P. vivax control and elimination.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING SKILLS TEST IN ENZYME FOR UNDERGRADUATE CHEMISTRY STUDENTS

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a test of studentsâ€™ critical and creative thinking skills on enzyme. This study was conducted using development and validation methods through six steps, i.e. (1) defining the construct and formulating objectives, (2) formatting items, (3) constructing items, (4) creating a scoring guide, (5) Judging items by experts, and (6) calculating validity, reliability, level of difficulty and discrimination by empirical study. This test was constructed two-tier test, which consists of the first tier as a multiple choice and the second tier as the reason from the first tier option. The participants were 61 undergraduate chemistry students who studied enzyme in a chemistry department. The results showed that item CVI value was 0.86 and item Cronbachsâ€™ Alpha value was 0.843 (very high category). Item difficulty index (P) was 0.501, and Item discrimination index (D) was 0.328 which showed that the level of difficulty item in the medium category and level of discrimination in the good category. Out of initial 14 items, 3 items were excluded after the analysis of CVI, item difficulty index and item discrimination index. The revised 11-item test was found to have sufficient validity, reliability, item difficulty index and item discrimination index to measurement of enzyme concept mastery, critical thinking skills, and creative thinking skills.
2D Dirac electrons in 3D materials

Quantum materials pack the spooky properties of quantum mechanics into real-life materials you can make, pick up with tweezers and study in the lab. Those of interest to us show special electronic properties of great fundamental interest and have applications potential for future computer and electronics technologies. This thesis studies quantum materials in which the electronic states possess a special kind of twist, giving them a different topology to their regular electronic material cousins. Picturing the difference between a Mobius strip and a regular loop helps us get the idea of objects with differing topology. The research presented investigates the electronic states directly, using the photoelectric effect in angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiments, and was carried out on the candidate quasi-2D Dirac semimetal - SrMnSb2, a trio of rare earth hexaboride compounds, namely SmB6, YbB6 and CeB6, and on Bi-based 3D topological insulators. All of these materials families are predicted to be of the topological, twisty kind, and the final score from our experimental results from ARPES, combined with a varying mix of transport measurements in high magnetic fields, scanning tunneling microscopy and theoretical calculations of the electronic states is as follows. For SrMnSb2 the answer is no (= regular loop), for the hexaborides the jury is still out and for the Bi-based topological insulators the answer is definitely yes (= Mobius strip), whereby interesting effects involving extreme ultraviolet illumination offer new methods to understand and tune the twisty electronic states at the surface of these systems.
SHAPING THE FUTURE FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD: PERSPECTIVES OF WOMEN LEADERS FROM COMMONWEALTH OPEN LEARNING INSTITUTIONS

Women are crucial in shaping the future of a sustainable world as they have valuable ideas, experiences, and stories on leadership and change. This qualitative study explores the perspectives of 19 women leaders from 14 Commonwealth open learning institutions regarding women's leadership and a sustainable future. The findings indicate that women leaders are aware of their crucial role and the need to encourage other women to take up leadership or decision-making positions. However, there is sometimes a disconnect between envisioning a sustainable future and translating that vision into reality. Key constructs to advance women in leadership positions are revealed as having a mentor, building powerful networks, empowering women in ICT, and championing climate change.
Competitiveness of a clinical laboratory within the Fourth Industrial Revolution

desired future state of the laboratory (Mhlanga 2022; Porter 1990). This analysis provided the foundation for conducting this research on a clinical laboratory in South Africa. However, the literature seems to be silent on the topic of competitiveness of a clinical laboratory based on utilising the technological advancements brought about by the 4IR (Heaton 2020; Moon et al. 2014). Orientation: A clinical laboratory supports research for drugs, vaccine and device development. These laboratories in developing countries seem not to fully use technology arising from the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) to enhance their competitiveness and, consequently, market share. Research purpose: The purpose was to explore how a clinical laboratory in a developing country may become more competitive by implementing strategies in support of 4IR advancements. Motivation for the study: This study attempted to reflect literature on the topics of 4IR and competitiveness and also to acquire an understanding of how a clinical laboratory in a developing country can use 4IR technology to improve its competitiveness. Research design, approach and method: This study followed an interpretive paradigm and a qualitative enquiry, supported by a case study strategy. Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews with 20 purposively selected stakeholders from the clinical laboratory. Conventional content analysis was applied to create codes, groups and themes. Main findings: It was found that a clinical laboratory in a developing country can be competitive within the 4IR environment, and a link was established between strategy, 4IR and the improvement of competitiveness of the clinical laboratory. Practical/managerial implications: The clinical laboratory has to build a strategy around the latest technology to ensure competitiveness and growth in its operations. The 4IR will also require continuous upgrades of new technology, and staff should be made part of this process. Contribution/value-add: The developing world has to catch up with the advanced economies. To assist in this, this study concludes that strategies supporting 4IR technology advancements can improve the competitiveness and sustainable growth of a clinical laboratory.
Factors associated with the premarital sex among adolescents and the need for introduction of functional sex-education in secondary schools in Ebonyi state, Nigeria

Abstract The rate of premarital sexual activities among adolescent students of secondary schools especially in developing nations like Nigeria is alarming and has continued to generate public attention. Many students have dropped out of school, while others have either become teenage parents or lost their lives owing to early and unintended pregnancy and complications arising from unsafe abortion. This study aims at examining the factors associated with premarital sexual activities among adolescent students in Ebonyi state. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study using unstructured in-depth interviews to collect data from 24 purposively selected respondents and analyzed thematically. Findings show that poverty, peer group influence, pornography, and desire for pleasure were some of the causes of premarital sex among students; while unintended pregnancy, abortion, poor academic performance, school dropout, and early marriage were identified as some of its consequences. The study recommended mass sensitization campaigns and the introduction of sex education as a remedy to the ugly practice. Social workers should be involved in enlightenment campaigns on the dangers associated with the lack of sex education, and premarital sex activities by the students.
Transaction costs in healthcare: empirical evidence from Portuguese hospitals

Abstract Transaction Cost Economics has been used in the healthcare context to discuss the make-or-buy dichotomy, focusing on minimizing production or governance costs, respectively. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that there are other relevant costs, which influence these decisions in health care. Thus, the purpose of this research project was to study such additional variables which may significantly influence the dynamics of transaction costs in hospitals. Semi-structured interviewing was used to collect the data, complemented by some document analysis and observation in the visits made to the hospitals studied. The interviews were conducted during a period of three months, with directors and administrators of four Portuguese hospitals. A deeper study was developed in one of the hospitals where it was possible to get information from additional interviews and documents. Two important findings should be highlighted. Firstly, the internal transaction costs derived from the hospital’s own internal contracting process which generates retention costs of medical personnel and costs of control of the internal contract itself. Secondly, they were studied the intangible costs, particularly those related to the decision of carrying out a process that could deteriorate the patient’s health or her/his critical situation, making the total cost, including treatment and possible re-hospitalizations higher than the cost of having treated the patient internally since the initial cost was considered greater than treating the patient outside hospital facilities. These variables should be considered when studying or using TCE in hospitals, complementing and extending the traditional framework as it is discussed here.
Peak Energy Correlations for Gamma-Ray Bursts

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions in the universe. Over the past two decades, several GRB energy and luminosity correlations were discovered. These correlations typically involve an observable parameter, like the observed peak energy, Ep,obs, and a non-observable quantity, like the equivalent isotropic energy, Eiso. This paper provides a brief review of GRB peak energy correlations. Specifically, it focuses on the Amati relation, which correlates Ep,obs and Eiso, and the Ghirlanda relation, which correlates Ep,obs and Ey, the total energy corrected for beaming. The paper also discusses the physical interpretation of these relations in the context of the internal shock model.
Respiração microbiana do solo relacionada ao conteúdo de água no solo e a temperatura do solo, na época do Equinócio de primavera, em Olho D’Água do Casado, Semiárido de Alagoas

A respiração microbiana do solo é a absorção de O2 ou liberação de CO2 para a atmosfera, através das trocas gasosas produzidas pelo metabolismo dos organismos que vivem no solo. Objetivou-se avaliar a respiração microbiana do solo relacionada ao conteúdo de água no solo e a temperatura do solo, na época do Equinócio de primavera, em Olho D’Água do Casado, Semiárido de Alagoas. A pesquisa foi executada no munícipio de Olho D’Água do Casado-Alagoas. Foram definidos 10 pontos de coleta, totalizando 20 pontos, perfazendo 10 amostras no turno noturno (17h às 5 h) e 10 no turno diurno (5 às 17 h). As emissões de CO2 liberado do solo foram determinadas com solução de KOH 0,5 N e titulada com HCl 0,1 N. Como indicador foi utilizado a fenolftaleina e alaranjado de metila a 1%. Para medição do CO2, os recipientes de vidros com a solução de 10 mL de KOH a 0,5 N, foram rapidamente destampados e cobertos com os baldes plásticos de 22L de formato cilíndrico, cobrindo o solo a uma área de 697,46 cm², onde foram enterrados a 3 cm no solo, evitando as trocas gasosas com a atmosfera. No processo de distribuição da solução nos recipientes de vidros, foram utilizados frascos testemunhos, mantidos hermeticamente fechado, que também foram submetidos à titulação. Logo após o período de 12 horas de permanência no local, nos turnos noturno e diurno, os baldes foram retirados e em seguida, os recipientes de vidros contendo a solução de absorção, foram rapidamente tampados e levados para serem titulados. Foram realizadas medidas de temperatura do solo (°C) na profundidade de 10 cm e na mesma profundidade, também foram coletadas amostras de solo para a determinação do conteúdo de água do solo. Os elementos climáticos, conteúdo de água do solo e temperatura do solo influenciam na dinâmica da respiração do solo, havendo menor desprendimento de CO2 nos pontos de menor teor de conteúdo de água do solo; Os maiores valores de respiração do solo (CO2) ocorreram no turno noturno, independente dos pontos de coleta, quando houve menor temperatura do solo; A época de análise e o estado de conservação da área influencia diretamente a dinâmica da respiração do solo.
Efficient secure aggregation for privacy-preserving federated learning based on secret sharing

Federated learning allows multiple mobile participants to jointly train a global model without revealing their local private data. Communication-computation cost and privacy preservation are key fundamental issues in federated learning. Existing secret sharing-based secure aggregation mechanisms for federated learning still suffer from significant additional costs, insufficient privacy preservation, and vulnerability to participant dropouts. In this paper, we aim to solve these issues by introducing flexible and effective secret sharing mechanisms into federated learning. We propose two novel privacy-preserving federated learning schemes: federated learning based on one-way secret sharing (FLOSS) and federated learning based on multishot secret sharing (FLMSS). Compared with the state-of-the-art works, FLOSS enables high privacy preservation while significantly reducing the communication cost by dynamically designing secretly shared content and objects. Meanwhile, FLMSS further reduces the additional cost and has the ability to efficiently enhance the robustness of participant dropouts in federated learning. Foremost, FLMSS achieves a satisfactory tradeoff between privacy preservation and communication-computation cost. Security analysis and performance evaluations on real datasets demonstrate the superiority of our proposed schemes in terms of model accuracy, privacy preservation, and cost reduction.
Uniform ball condition and existence of optimal shapes for geometric functionals involving boundary-value problems

In this article, we are interested in shape optimization problems where the functionals are defined on the boundary of the domain, involving the geometry of the associated surface and the boundary values of the solution to a state equation posed on the inner domain enclosed by the shape. Hence, we pursue here the study initiated in a previous work by considering a specific class admissible shapes. Given $\varepsilon > 0$ and a fixed non-empty large bounded open hold-all $B \subset \mathbb{R}^{n}$, $n \geqslant 2$, we define $\mathcal{O}_{\varepsilon}(B)$ as the class of open sets $\Omega \subset B$ satisfying a $\varepsilon$-ball condition, which has an equivalent characterization in terms of uniform $C^{1,1}$-regularity of the boundary $\partial \Omega$. The main contribution of this paper is to prove the existence of a minimizer in the class $\mathcal{O}_{\varepsilon}(B)$ for problems of the form: \[ \inf_{\Omega \in \mathcal{O}_{\varepsilon}(B)} \int_{\partial \Omega} j \left[ u_{\Omega} \left( \mathbf{x} \right), \nabla u_{\Omega} \left( \mathbf{x} \right), \mathbf{x}, \mathbf{n} \left( \mathbf{x} \right), H \left(\mathbf{x} \right) \right] dA \left( \mathbf{x} \right) , \] where $u_{\Omega}$ denotes to the solution of the Dirichlet Laplacian posed on the domain $\Omega$ or to the one associated with a Neumann or Robin boundary condition, where $\mathbf{n}$ is the unit outward normal vector, and where $H$ can refer either to the the scalar mean curvature, to the Gaussian curvature, or more generally to any of the symmetric polynomials in the principal curvatures. We only assume here the continuity of $j$ with respect to the set of variables, convexity with respect to the last variable, and quadratic growth regarding the first two variables. We give various applications in the field of partial differential equations such as existence for: \[ \inf_{\Omega \in \mathcal{O}_{\varepsilon}(B)} \int_{\Omega} j \left[ \mathbf{x}, u_{\Omega} \left( \mathbf{x} \right) , \nabla u_{\Omega} \left( \mathbf{x} \right) , \mathrm{Hess}~u_{\Omega} \left( \mathbf{x} \right) \right] dV \left( \mathbf{x} \right), \] and boundary shape identifications in the area of inverse and control problems: \[ \inf_{\substack{\Omega \in \mathcal{O}_{\varepsilon}(B) \\ \Gamma_{0} \subseteq \partial \Omega}} \int_{\Gamma_{0}} \left[ \left( \partial_{n}u_{\Omega} - f_{0} \right)^{2} + \left( u_{\Omega} - g_{0} \right)^{2} \right] dA. \]
Breaking barriers and building sustainability: The importance of board feminization in ESG disclosures

This research examines the nexus between board feminization and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures in listed Kenyan firms. The positivist paradigm informed the study's research design. The dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) was applied to eliminate endogeneity bias, omitted variables bias, measurement error, and firm-specific heterogeneity. Panel data regressions were applied on 467 firm‐year observations from 36 firms listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) from 2006–2019. The results showed that board feminization positively affects firms’ overall ESG disclosure measures. However, a component-level analysis revealed substantial heterogeneity in the findings among the different ESG pillars. This research attempts to address a gap in the existing knowledge by examining the relationship between female board presence and ESG reporting in emerging economies. The research supports regulators' efforts to enforce women's participation on boards and sustainable performance. This paper is among the first to provide in-depth empirical evidence on the link between board feminization on overall ESG disclosure and the different ESG pillars in Kenya. This research also adds to the expanding literature on ESG disclosure and board feminization in developing markets.
Diversity and role of woody non-timber forest products in Doba District, Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract. Abebaw AF, Damme PV. 2023. Diversity and role of woody non-timber forest products in Doba District, Eastern Ethiopia. Nusantara Bioscience 15: 38-47. Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP) play a pivotal role as local sources of medicine, household paraphernalia, and fodder and offer income opportunities that can mitigate poverty. This study was conducted in Doba District, West Hararghe Zone, Eastern Ethiopia, to analyze the diversity and economic contribution of non-timber forest products. Both ethnobotanical and vegetation data were cross-sectionally collected from February 2020 up to June 2021. A total of 422 informants selected randomly from forest inhabitants were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires to explore NTFP utilization and their economic contributions. Vegetation data were collected from 56 sample plots of each 20m x 20m (400m2) along transects lines. Vegetation data collected were analyzed for the relative density of species, Shannon-Wiener index, species evenness, and relative frequency. From the household survey, 58 plant species categorized in 55 genera and 35 families were identified as NTFP-bearing species. Analysis of the socio-economic data shows that NTFP collection is a day-to-day activity of the local communities. These communities use NTFPs in different types of use categories, namely medicinal plants (32, 55.17%), melliferous species (20, 34.48%), wild food and condiment species (22, 37.93%), farm implements (7, 12.06%), wood and flavoring (6, 10.34%), source of energy (20, 35.71%), and household utensils and construction materials (30, 51.72%). The market survey analysis showed that NTFPs account for about 15.77% of the annual household income. The vegetation survey showed that Ades Forest has a good status with an average density of 1,450 plants ha-1, high Shannon-Wiener index (H =3.299), and species evenness (E = 0.81). Ades Forest harbors a diverse number of NTFP-bearing species used for several categories. The study reveals the real experiences of the local communities in utilizing NTFPs for their livelihood. Forest dependency rates tend to be higher among poor households. However, further study on production potential and market chain analysis should be done together with awareness creation activities to get a sustainable product for the community and conserve the forest resource.
Development of Green Housing Willingness to Pay Conceptual Model on Jabodetabek Community

The need for housing for Indonesian people is increasing yearly due to the high population growth rate. This fact can gradually trigger global warming. There is a need for intervention in the residential sector to minimize the resulting negative impacts by developing a green building concept. This study uses an extended Theory of Planned Behavior to identify the factors influencing purchase intention and willingness to pay for green housing (GH) in the Jabodetabek community. The study collected 347 valid responses through a survey with a purposive sampling method and used structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. The factors raised in this study are attitudes, perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, environmental concern, subjective knowledge, policy, perceived risks, green communication, green purchase intentions (GPI), and willingness to pay (WTP). This research proves that attitude, policy, and subjective knowledge factors significantly directly affect GPI. Meanwhile, environ­mental concerns and subjective knowledge can also significantly and indirectly affect GPI. This study also proves a significant influence between GPI and WTP for GH in the Jabodetabek community. Perceived risk has a significant negative impact on the GPI. Additionally, developers can employ a strategy that combines attitude, subjective knowledge, and environmental concern to design programs that address consumers' cognitive and affective aspects. The government can also play a role in promoting the use of GH through incentives related to green construction.