Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antimicrobial susceptibility of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, Bordetella bronchiseptica, Pasteurella multocida, and Streptococcus suis isolated from diseased pigs in the United States and Canada, 2016 to 2020

Objective: To report the in vitro susceptibility to veterinary antimicrobial agents of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, Bordetella bronchiseptica, Pasteurella multocida, and Streptococcus suis isolated from diseased pigs in the United States and Canada from 2016 to 2020. Materials and methods: In vitro broth microdilution susceptibility testing for minimal inhibitory concentration values were performed using ten antimicrobial agents (ampicillin, ceftiofur, danofloxacin, enrofloxacin, florfenicol, penicillin, tetracycline, tilmicosin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, and tulathromycin) with A pleuropneumoniae (n = 250), B bronchiseptica (n = 602), P multocida (n = 874), and S suis (n = 1223) following methods and susceptibility breakpoints approved by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Results: Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae isolates were 100% susceptible to ceftiofur, florfenicol, and tulathromycin and P multocida isolates were 100% susceptible to ceftiofur. High rates of susceptibility (95% to > 99%) were observed for A pleuropneumoniae to tilmicosin; for P multocida to ampicillin, enrofloxacin, florfenicol, penicillin, tilmicosin, and tulathromycin; for S suis to ampicillin and florfenicol; and for B bronchiseptica to tulathromycin. Tetracycline exhibited low susceptibility rates against A pleuropneumoniae (0% to 10.6%), P multocida (23.2% to 38.2%), and S suis (0.8% to 2.1%). No susceptibility of B bronchiseptica to ampicillin (0%) and low rates of susceptibility to florfenicol (3.9% to 15.2%) were also observed. Implications: Under the conditions of this study, the predominant pathogens associated with swine respiratory disease in the United States and Canada, A pleuropneumoniae, B bronchiseptica, P multocida, and S suis collected during 2016 to 2020, display high rates of susceptibility to most veterinary antimicrobial agents.
Flipped Classroom and Gamification Approach: Its Impact on Performance and Academic Commitment on Sustainable Learning in Education

The onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic has negatively impacted sustainable learning in education (SLE). During city lockdowns, higher education institutes (HEIs) have transitioned from adopting solely traditional didactic classroom teaching to including innovative, flexible learning approaches such as flipped classrooms. Gamification is a new techno-pedagogy that has been integrated into flipped classrooms to promote learner achievement and engagement. Grounded in self-determination theory, the objectives of this exploratory study were to analyse the influence of the flipped classroom and gamification on SLE concerning learner achievement and engagement. Participants were recruited from postgraduate business education programmes in China, and three instructional interventions were applied for a semester of 10 weeks. The three instructional interventions applied were: gamified flipped classroom (n = 25), non-gamified flipped classroom (n = 24) and gamified traditional classroom (n = 19). A mixed-methods approach was used, and both quantitative and qualitative data were analysed. The results indicated gamified traditional classrooms promote learner achievement, and the gamified flipped classrooms promote learner engagement. Furthermore, learning culture, such as teacher-dependency, also influence learner achievement and engagement. The class observation reports and learner interviews suggested that both gamified flipped classrooms and gamified traditional classrooms support SLE in the time of academic uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biogas technology adoption and its potential of replacing biomass fuels, kerosene, and chemical fertilizer in rural Gonder, Northern Ethiopia

ABSTRACT The depletion of bioenergy sources has caused significant deforestation, low agricultural production, and energy crisis. This study evaluates factors associated with biogas technology adoption and the amount of biomass fuels, kerosene, and chemical fertilizer that can be replaced or saved upon adoption by rural households. Questionnaire household survey, key informant interview, focus group discussion and field obervation were used for data collection. Biogas technology adoption reduced the use of firewood, charcoal, dung cake, and kerosene consumption by 58%, 36%, 71%, and 74%, respectively. It also reduced the use of chemical fertilizer by 94% and the combined use of chemical fertilizer and manure by 91%. Adoption turned the majority of households (65.4%) to use a combination of bio-slurry and chemical fertilizer as well. It helped the majority (89.95%) of adopters to construct and connect toilets to biogas operational system. In doing so, the adoption reduced defecation in the field and improved environmental sanitation and human health. It further enabled saving of about 38% of adopters’ time, which otherwise would be expended for firewood and dung collection. It similarly enhanced adopters’ income through decreasing expenses for chemical fertilizer, kerosene, and other fuel sources. Biogas technology has huge potential of replacing traditional fuel sources for domestic consumption, and of reducing the consumption of kerosene and chemical fertilizers as well as of increasing income and decreasing labor for biofuel collection. The adoption of biogas technology could also reduce deforestation rate, improve agricultural production and improve energy supply of rural households.
Middle Ordovician (Whiterockian) gastropods from central Sonora, Mexico: affinities with Laurentia and the Precordillera

Abstract. The Lower–Middle Ordovician (Ibexian, Whiterockian) sedimentary rocks exposed at Rancho Las Norias includes the informally named Las Norias formation, which consists of an intercalation of carbonate and clastic sediments with abundant marine fauna. These deposits occur as the most austral sedimentary rocks of Ordovician age for Laurentia, providing a critical link to understand the distribution of Ordovician marine faunas of North America. An investigation of the gastropod fauna from the upper portion of the Las Norias formation, Sonora, Mexico, is undertaken for the first time. The gastropod assemblage includes Maclurites acuminatus, ? Monitorella sp. , Lecanospira sp. , Malayaspira aff. M. rugosa, Lophospira perangulata, and Hormotoma? sp. This assemblage indicates a paleogeographic relationship with Laurentia, including the USA (Nevada), Canada (British Columbia, Newfoundland), Greenland, and the Argentine Precordillera.
Dam Reservoir Extraction From Remote Sensing Imagery Using Tailored Metric Learning Strategies

Dam reservoirs play an important role in meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs) and global climate targets. However, particularly for small dam reservoirs, there is a lack of consistent data on their geographical location. To address this data gap, a promising approach is to perform automated dam reservoir extraction based on globally available remote sensing imagery. It can be considered as a fine-grained task of water body extraction, which involves extracting water areas in images and then separating dam reservoirs from natural water bodies. A straightforward solution is to extend the commonly used binary-class segmentation in water body extraction to multiclass. This, however, does not work well as there exists not much pixel-level difference of water areas between dam reservoirs and natural water bodies. We propose a novel deep neural network (DNN)-based pipeline that decomposes dam reservoir extraction into water body segmentation and dam reservoir recognition. Water bodies are first separated from background lands in a segmentation model and each individual water body is then predicted as either dam reservoir or natural water body in a classification model. For the former step, point-level metric learning (PLML) with triplets across images is injected into the segmentation model to address contour ambiguities between water areas and land regions. For the latter step, prior-guided metric learning (PGML) with triplets from clusters is injected into the classification model to optimize the image embedding space in a fine-grained level based on reservoir clusters. To facilitate future research, we establish a benchmark dataset with Earth imagery data and human-labeled reservoirs from river basins in West Africa and India. Extensive experiments were conducted on this benchmark in the water body segmentation task, dam reservoir recognition task, and the joint dam reservoir extraction task. Superior performance has been observed in the respective tasks when comparing our method with state-of-the-art approaches. The codes and datasets are available at https://github.com/c8241998/Dam-Reservoir-Extraction.
Why do We Play? Towards a Comprehensive Player Typology

The video games industry has been growing constantly for the past several decades, but there is no empirically validated industry standard for measuring motivation of play. Although there have been a number of player typologies, they display sizable deviations in the player types described, many of which are insufficiently supported by validation studies. The literature thus far lacks an attempt to test these deviations by bringing differences in the specifics on the same scale. A survey (n = 1090) across 440 different games using an 80-item questionnaire found eleven motivations of play: Social, Social Competition, Challenge, Escapism, Role-Playing, Power Fantasy, Creation, Exploration, Completion, Griefing, and Competitive Team-Play. These results map onto some established types, add some new ones that are not as embedded in the literature, and re-contextualize others such as immersion which, while highly present in the literature, were not found to be distinct motivations of play.
Research on the Impact of Corruption on a Country's Trade Flows — Based on the Extended Trade Gravity Model

According to Transparency International, the level of corruption in Indonesia has been high. Based on the traditional gravity model, this paper introduces CPI and its secondary items as explanatory variables, and constructs a balanced panel data to explore the impact of corruption on the import in Indonesia. GMM estimates show that the corruption in Indonesia has an inverted U-shaped relationship with its foreign imports, and the corruption of Indonesia and its trading partners will lead to the growth of bilateral trade flows in the short term, but that will not achieve the sustained and healthy development of Indonesia’s trade. In order to promote the prosperity and development of China’s external trade, China should on the basis of its actual situation to propel the reform of the legal system and the construction of anti-corruption, clarify the powers and responsibilities of its governments, and standardize foreign trade procedures.
The effects of beliefs, knowledge, and attitude on herbal medicine use during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional survey in Indonesia

Background: Herbal medicines are gaining a greater degree of popularity as complementary and alternative medicines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, there is a lack of data concerning the rationale for and factors influencing their use. Methods: A cross-sectional community-based online study involving 1,621 participants was conducted to explore the effects of magical health beliefs, holistic health beliefs, knowledge, and pro- complementary alternative medicine (CAM) attitudes on herbal medicine use in the Indonesian population. Results: Logistic regression findings showed that knowledge about herbal medicines was independently and positively associated with herbal medicine use to a greater extent than herbal medicine non-use (adjusted odds ratio; AOR = 1.20; 95% confidence interval; CI = 1.16 to 1.24). The participants who used herbal medicines had a greater magical health belief score than herbal medicine non-users, with AOR = 1.03 and 95% CI = 1.00 to 1.06. Moreover, holistic health beliefs and pro-CAM attitudes were also found to be independently associated with herbal medicine use. Conclusion: Magical health beliefs, holistic health belief, knowledge, and attitudes are key factor in determining the herbal medicine use. Our findings offer crucial implications for health policymakers to encourage the use of herbal medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Glatiramer Acetate Immunomodulation: Evidence of Neuroprotection and Cognitive Preservation

Novel, neuroprotective uses of Copaxone (generic name: glatiramer acetate—GA) are being examined, primarily in neurological conditions involving cognitive decline. GA is a well-studied synthetic copolymer that is FDA-approved for immune-based treatment of relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). Clinical studies have explored the potential mechanism of action (MOA) and outcomes of GA immunization in patients. Furthermore, results from these and animal studies suggest that GA has a direct immunomodulatory effect on adaptive and innate immune cell phenotypes and responses. These MOAs have been postulated to have a common neuroprotective impact in several neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. Notably, several clinical studies report that the use of GA mitigated MS-associated cognitive decline. Its propensity to ameliorate neuro-proinflammatory and degenerative processes ignites increased interest in potential alternate uses such as in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Preclinical studies are exploring less frequent subcutaneous administration of GA, such as once weekly or monthly or a single dosing regimen. Indeed, cognitive functions were found to be either preserved, reversed, or improved after the less frequent treatment regimens with GA in animal models of AD. In this systematic review, we examine the potential novel uses of GA across clinical and pre-clinical studies, with evidence for its beneficial impact on cognition. Future investigation in large-size, double-blind clinical trials is warranted to establish the impact of GA immunomodulation on neuroprotection and cognitive preservation in various neurological conditions.
Electromyographic Findings in Guillain-Barré Syndrome Patients

Objective: To determine electromyographic findings in Guillain-barré syndrome patients. Setting and Duration Study: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in the Neuromedicine departments of tertiary care Hospital JPMC, from1st February 2020 to 30th July 2021. Materials and Methods: GBS was diagnosed according to the diagnostic criteria from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) in 1990. All patients gave consent to and underwent electromyographic assessment with a Keypoint evoked muscle potential equipment at admission and 2, 3, and 6 months post disease onset. The records of the patients were anonymized and deidentified before analysis. Results: The Age range in this study was from 13 to 70 years with a mean age of 36.58±16.0 years. 63% of patients were of male gender and 37% of patients were female. The frequency of Electromyographic findings were acute demyelinating polyneuropathy in 73% of cases, acute sensorimotor axonal polyneuropathy 14% of cases, acute motor xonal polyneuropathy 12% of cases and acute sensory polyneuropathy 1% case. Conclusion: The electromyography plays a role to diagnose GBS but along with this NCV and CSF analysis are also helpful in diagnosis and prognosis prediction.
Energy performance of diaphragm walls used as heat exchangers

The possibility of equipping diaphragm walls as ground heat exchangers to meet the full or partial heating and cooling demands of overlying or adjacent buildings has been explored in recent years. In this paper, the factors affecting the energy performance of diaphragm walls equipped as heat exchangers are investigated through finite-element modelling. The numerical approach employed is first validated using available experimental data and then applied to perform parametric analyses. Parameters considered in the analysis include panel width, the ratio between the wall and excavation depths, heat transfer pipe spacing, concrete cover, heat carrier fluid velocity, concrete thermal properties and the temperature difference between the air within the excavation and the soil behind the wall. The results indicate that increasing the number of pipes by reducing their spacing is the primary route to increasing energy efficiency in the short term. However, the thermal properties of the wall concrete and the temper.
Multisensor Scheduling for Remote State Estimation Over a Temporally Correlated Channel

This article studies multisensor scheduling for remote state estimation in cyber-physical systems. We consider that each sensor monitors a dynamic process and sends its data to the remote end. This article focuses on minimizing remote estimation errors over a temporally correlated communication channel. The problem is formulated as the Markov decision process (MDP) with finite-horizon cost criterion. The optimal structured policies are derived for both Markov packet dropout and finite-state Markov channel models, which can reduce computation overhead. For the infinite-horizon case, we design algorithms to address the issues of unknown channel statistics and the curse of dimensionality in the MDP, respectively. Particularly, a heuristic algorithm with linear complexity is proposed to schedule multisensor in a decentralized manner. Simulation examples are provided to verify the theoretical results.
Diner’s Sustainable Behavior: Differences between Sustainable Behaviors of Casual and Fine Dining Consumers

ABSTRACT Food waste being an important aspect of sustainability continues to be examined. Sustainability in diner’s behavior is the gap this study addresses. This study scrutinizes behavior related to casual/fine dining with two density themes (built and human) that have yet to be addressed. A survey was conducted to test the hypotheses. Structural Equational Modeling (SEM) was used to test for multi-group differences. Results addressed waste characteristics in developing sustainable diner behavior, further leading to explaining loyalty toward restaurant dining. It exclusively analyzes diner’s behavior in two restaurant types (fine and casual), indicated that diner’s characteristics (guilt feeling and food surplus) significantly affect developing sustainable diner attitude, leading to diner sustainable behavior (waste reduction practices and loyalty). Moderation analysis revealed that ambiance amplifies the existing relationship between the diner’s characteristics and his sustainable attitude. Multi-group analyses revealed that diners produce less waste when dining in casual restaurants with less built and human densities. This study offers practical contributions to diner’s behavior in different restaurant themes and in hospitality settings. Notably, diner’s sustainable behavior is examined, which was previously limited to general consumer behavior. Practical findings of this study have important implications for restaurant designers, owners, managers, and marketers, where they can not only actively design restaurant settings to be eco-friendly but also implement sustainable practices within.
Comparison of efficacy of single dose versus split dose prednisolone therapy in achieving remission in patients with nephrotic syndrome in children

Background: Nephrotic syndrome is a medical problem clinically characterized by proteinuria, generalized body edema and hypercholesterolemia. We did this study to compare the effectiveness of single dose versus split dose prednisolone in achieving remission in patients with nephrotic syndrome in children.Patients and methods: This open-ended randomized control trial was done in pediatric unit of tertiary care hospital from January to December 2019.We included one hundred Patients of nephrotic syndrome in the study who met the inclusion criteria. We divided total Patients into 2 groups (group A & B) 50 patients in each group. Group A was given single dose prednisolone, while group B was given split dose prednisolone therapy. Both groups were compared with respect of achievement of remission.Results: Out of 50 patients of group A who were given single dose prednisolone 37 (74%) were male, while in group B who were given split dose prednisolone 22 (44%) were male (p-value=0.137). Mean age of patients of study group A and B was 4.5 ±1.67 years and 4.9 ±1.49 years respectively (p-value=0.1876). Mean serum creatinine level in study group A and B was 0.744±0.189 and 0.736±0.167 (p-value=0.823). Similarly mean serum albumin level in study group A and B was 2.34±0.358 and 2.39±0.33 (p-value=0.473). When both groups were compared with regard to response to treatment, in group A mean remission duration was 16.48 ±3.69. In group B mean remission duration was 19.42 ±3.11 days (p-value<0.05). Conclusion: From our study we concluded that single dose prednisolone is more effective in achieving remission in steroid sensitive nephrotic syndrome as compared to split dose prednisolone.
A circularly polarized patch antenna with a slotted parasitic loop

In the letter, a circularly polarized (CP) patch antenna is proposed, which consists of a slotted radiation patch, a slotted parasitic loop with a short pin, and a ground plane. The slot with one open and one circular end is etched in the radiation patch, and the current distribution of the radiation patch is disturbed to excite the first CP mode. The currents distributed on the slotted radiation patch and parasitic loop can superimpose or cancel each other to produce the second CP mode. Impedance matching and the performance of the first CP can be improved by the two slots and short pin introduced into the parasitic loop, but without effect on the second CP mode. A prototype is designed, and a −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 21.3% (3.10–3.84 GHz), a 3‐dB axial‐ratio bandwidth of 10.1% (3.29–3.64 GHz), an in‐band radiation efficiency of 75%, and unidirectional left‐hand circular‐polarized radiation pattern with in‐band gain of 8.0 dBi are realized.