Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Attention Fusion Network in Wavelet Domain for Demoireing

When taking pictures of electronic screens or objects with high-frequency textures, people often run across colorful rainbow patterns that are known as “moire”, seriously affecting the image quality and subsequent processing. Current methods for removing moire patterns mostly extract multiscale information by downsampling pooling layers, which may inevitably cause information loss. To address this issue, this paper proposes a demoireing method in the wavelet domain. By employing both discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and inverse discrete wavelet transform (IDWT) instead of traditional downsampling and upsampling, this method can effectively increase the network receptive field without information loss. In addition, to further reconstruct more details of moire patterns, this paper proposes an efficient attention fusion module (EAFM). With a combination of efficient channel attention, spatial attention and local residual learning, this module can self-adaptively learn various weights of feature information at different levels and inspire the network to focus more on effective information such as moire details to improve learning and demoireing performance. Extensive experiments based on public datasets have shown that this suggested method can efficiently remove moire patterns and has a good quantitative and qualitative performance.
High Availability Deployment of Virtual Network Function Forwarding Graph in Cloud Computing Environments

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) stands out quickly as a promising innovation in telecommunication networks. It leverages the concept of cloud technology and virtualization techniques. However, the continuity of cloud network services has become an essential availability requirement for NFV. Failure of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) may cause critical quality assurance problems for such network services. VNF chaining and placement can be considered as the VNF Forwarding Graph (VNF-FG) mapped on a cloud provider infrastructure, also called NFV Infrastructure (NFVI). This mapping is addressed while neglecting the massive link utilization and bandwidth consumption that can be encountered during VNF recovery phase. In this paper, an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) approach is developed to model VNF-FG deployment problem while guaranteeing high availability against node/VM failures. Then, the Redundant VNF-FG Deployment (RVNF-FGD) heuristic algorithm is proposed that takes VNF migration into consideration. RVNF-FGD algorithm attempts to find a near-optimal solution that achieves a trade-off between availability and scalability with a reasonable convergence time. Thus, facilitating the practical deployment of the proposed approach. Simulation results confirm that RVNF-FGD algorithm is capable of simultaneously reducing link utilization and bandwidth consumption across the core layer of the cloud network. In addition, it reduces VNF-FG communication cost and overall energy consumption. The convergence time of RVNF-FGD algorithm is assessed by applying it to broader cloud network architectures. This assessment indicates the viability of the proposed approach in responding quickly to failures.
The prevalence of autoimmune diseases in patients with multiple sclerosis: A cross-sectional study in Qom, Iran, in 2018

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of the most common autoimmune diseases worldwide and various autoimmune comorbidities are reported with MS. The objective of this study is to estimate the prevalence of the autoimmune diseases’ comorbidity in patients with MS. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we investigated a group of patients with MS in terms of age, gender, duration of MS, presence of simultaneous autoimmune diseases, such as Graves’ disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM), and systemic lupus erythematous (SLE). Results: This study included 1215 patients with MS, of which 70.8% were women. The mean age of participants was 33.70 ± 27.63 years. 55 patients (4.5%) had at least one autoimmune disease. The most common comorbidity was for Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (30 patients). The frequency of simultaneous autoimmune disease was higher in women. Mean age (P = 0.01), mean duration of MS (P = 0.03), and mean age on MS diagnosis (P = 0.02) were significantly higher in simultaneous MS and other autoimmune diseases. Conclusion: Our study revealed that the probability of autoimmune diseases co-occurrence in patients with MS could be higher in older patients, in longer duration of disease, and also in patients with higher age at time of MS diagnosis.
An Inquiry into the Self-Evaluation of Star Teacher Characteristics Necessary for Successful Urban Teaching

This study examines the degree of agreement between three Haberman Foundation-trained facilitators’ interviews and pre-service teachers’ self-evaluations of behavioral attributes associated with successful urban teaching. Using a quasi-experimental design research approach, data for this investigation was collected from 17 subjects who are all pre-service teacher candidates enrolled in an urban, metropolitan, co-educational research university. The Star Teacher Selection Interview and the Urban Teacher Behavioral Self-Evaluation Assessment served as the assessment instruments. Overall, findings revealed that the trained interviewers rated the pre-service teacher participants much lower on many of the behavioral attributes associated with successful urban teaching than did the subjects themselves.
A qualitative study of understanding depression and help-seeking behavior among rural school-going adolescents in India

Background: Depression is a common mental illness experienced by a high percentage of Indian adolescents but, a little is known on their knowledge of and help-seeking behavior for depression. Aim: To investigate the school-going adolescents' attitudes towards and help-seeking strategies for dealing with depression. Methods: In this exploratory qualitative study, data were collected through twelve focus group discussions with one hundred adolescent boys and girls (aged 15−18 years) from six government-run secondary schools of Nalanda district of Bihar, India. Group discussions generated responses on adolescents’ understanding and causes of depression, and available help and treatment for depression in their communities. Coding of prominent themes and words from transcribed discussions were entered in NVivo 10 for analysis. Results: Four themes emerged: (1) adolescents' description of depression, (2) beliefs about adolescent depression; (3) impact of depression; and (4) help-seeking and treatment for adolescent depression. Adolescents used local language terms to describe depression including negative emotions and behavior such as sadness, grumpiness, social withdrawal, and lack of concentration. Both boys and girls agreed that girls experience more depression than boys. Students reported that the first point of contact is mostly the family member followed by a
The morphosyntax of the exhaustive focus

The study explores na‘focus’ constructions in Cameroon Pidgin English. The data are drawn from existing literature on the language and my own intuitions about grammaticality, given that I am a speaker of the language. Some of the sentences were also submitted to selected speakers of the language for judgments on grammaticality. I begin the discussion with a cross-examination of constructions in which na has been analysed as a copula in the literature. I argue in line with Yakpo (2019) that in copula na-constructions, na remains a ‘focus’ (exhaustive) particle that helps identify its copula complement as focus. As such, I propose an analysis that gives them a pseudo-cleft account in with na has EPP features. The analysis of foci is done within the purview of Horvath’s (2010) Strong Modularity Hypothesis for Discourse Features, according to which the interaction between Information Structure (IS) and syntax is indirect and accounted for by interface considerations in the spirit of Reinhart (1995, 1997, 2006). I show that na‘focus’ is necessarily associated with an exhaustive interpretation that identifies an entity (the focus) as maximal from the set of alternatives triggered by the process of focalisation. In terms of syntactic distribution, I propose that na-‘focus’ should be given a cleft-like interpretation in which case it heads an Exh(austive)P(hrase) and the element in focus is part of its complement. As such, foci occur inside TP in post-verbal na-‘focus’ constructions and in Spec-RelP in preverbal na-focus constructions. In both cases, na has EPP features following the uniformitarian analysis of particle-type languages. The only difference with other particle-type languages such as Gungbe, Duala and Tuki is that these features are checked at LF. I provide an account of predicate focus that is in line with Aboh’s (2006) and Aboh and Dyakonova’s (2009) parallel chains analysis in that both copies of the verb move and form two chains; one in the A’-position (V’F and V) and the other in the A-position (VAsp and V).
Job satisfaction and employee performance – Determination by discipline, organization culture, and competence

The existence of HRM requires strategic planning. Regarding HRM development, companies must focus on the sustainability of their systems and practices. The focus of this paper is based on job satisfaction and employee performance, so we limit the determinants of discipline, culture, and competence to that. The method requires in-depth exploration through surveys or direct interviews with respondents with 59 employees at PT Trimanunggal Nugraha Samarinda. Then, the data were processed from a questionnaire instrument and seven hypotheses tested with multivariate analysis or SEM-PLS. There are two stages of presentation, namely assessing the measurement model and the structural model. In the first structure, we find that discipline, organizational culture, and competence have a positive-significant effect on job satisfaction. For the second structure, only one hypothesis can be accepted with the explanation that competence has a positive-significant effect on employee performance. Meanwhile, discipline and job satisfaction have a positive-insignificant effect on employee performance, but organizational culture actually has a negative impact on employee performance because the results are negative-insignificant. The contribution and added value of this empirical study can be used as benchmarks for the right decision-makers such as the main director, special divisions, and planning boards.
Intention of adoption of social media in projects

The use of social media tools can offer benefits to organizations and for project management. It is known that before the actual behavior of adopting a technology, there is a step of intention formation, but, what seems not to be well known is what factors can influence such intention, specifically in the context of projects. To fill this gap we developed this study with the objective of identifying which factors influence the intention of adopting social media in projects. A survey was distributed to project professionals in 24 countries and 5 continents (n=171). After execution of PLS technique, we found three factors that influence the intention of adopting social media in projects (performance expectance, social factor and perceived ease of use), so professionals who want to adopt social media technologies in their project tasks should pay attentions and invest their efforts in these aspects. We also observed that contextual factors could make correlations with the intention of adoption less significant than originally proposed for compatibility and testability dimensions in seminal studies.
Symptoms of post-traumatic stress in children and adolescents exposed to a natural disaster in Chile

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most common consequences of exposure to natural disasters. The aim of the study is to describe the post-traumatic symptoms in children and adolescents exposed to an earthquake in 2015 in the city of Los Vilos, Chile (Coquimbo Region). The Childhood Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale (CPSS), a questionnaire of severity of exposure to a traumatic event, and a sociodemographic questionnaire were applied to 105 participants aged 12 to 16 years, 12 months after the event occurred. The total probable rate of PTSD was 29.5% with a higher incidence in women and younger children. Exposure to disaster and the perception of significant threats to their integrity, increases levels of PTSD. The results show the importance of implementing preventive programs and designing intervention strategies that contribute to face the consequences of a natural disaster in children and adolescents.
Octyl 2-cyanoacrylate versus conventional suturing of port site skin closure in laparoscopic appendicectomy: a prospective study

Background: With rapidly developing minimally invasive surgery, the laparoscopic appendectomy has become a preferred method for appendicectomy. Tissue adhesives have become an ideal alternative to conventional sutures and could possibly become the preferred standard of care in many procedures. However, this concept remains unexplored due to scanty data comparing the use of adhesive glues and sutures. The present prospective study was done to compare octyl-2-cyanoacrylate with conventional suturing of port site wound closure in laparoscopic appendicectomy in terms of wound complications, time taken for wound closure and cosmetic outcome.Methods: 60 patients diagnosed to have appendicitis (acute, chronic and recurrent) undergoing laparoscopic appendicectomy were divided into two groups (group A-octyl-2-cyanoacrylate) and (group B- conventional sutures) with 30 in each group. Time taken for wound closure, Wound complications and cosmetic outcome were compared in both groups.Results: Patient demographics were comparable in both the groups. The complications were significantly lower in group A compared to group B. Mean surgical time for wound closure in group A was less compared to group B (p<0.001). Wound closure using octyl-2-cyanoacrylate had lower rate of complications compared to conventional suturing but results obtained were not statistically significant. No significant difference in cosmetic outcome was noted in both groups.Conclusions: Wound closure using octyl-2-cyanoacrylate required significantly less time for skin closure compared to conventional suturing in patients undergoing laparoscopic appendicectomy. However, wound complications and cosmetic outcome using octyl-2-cyanoacrylate did not show statistically significant results compared to conventional suture.
LIQUIDITY RISK AND STOCK RETURN IN LATIN AMERICAN EMERGING MARKETS RIESGO DE LIQUIDEZ Y RENTABILIDAD DE LAS ACCIONES EN LOS MERCADOS EMERGENTES DE AMÉRICA LATINA

This study analyzes the impact of liquidity risk on stock returns in four Latin American markets (Chile, Columbia, Mexico, and Peru) between January 1998 and July 2018. Several previous studies have focused on measuring this effect in developed markets and a few in emerging markets, such as Latin American stock markets. In the present study, five liquidity risk measures with a multiple regression model; three have been widely used in previous studies and two were from recently proposed measures. We found evidence of an inverse relationship between liquidity risk and stock performance, which indicates that there exist rewards for investing in less liquid positions and therefore originate new investment strategies. In general, lesser developed or smaller markets have a disadvantage for this type of study, due to lack of access to historical information on stock purchase and sales.
A New Exclusive Breastfeeding Booklet to Improve Self-Efficacy

Breastfeeding self-efficacy is defined as the mother’s belief in their ability to breastfeed the baby. Health education is important to increase the mother’s confidence. The purpose of this study was to test the effect of an exclusive breastfeeding booklet to increase breastfeeding self-efficacy in prenatal mothers until the postnatal period. This study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design. The results showed that providing a booklet for mothers increased self-efficacy towards exclusive breastfeeding with the mean after intervention was 60.97, p<0.005. Our study suggests health care professionals provide health education and motivate mothers to improve their confidence with regards to breastfeeding for at least six months.
Regional Disparities of Small and Medium Enterprises in Slovakia

Small and medium enterprises are mostly considered as key elements of a market economy. Their share is 99% of a total number of all enterprises in Slovakia on average. The aim of the paper is to identify regional disparities of the SMEs development in Slovakia. As methods, we used chain indexes to compare the changes among numbers of small, medium and large enterprises, time series analysis, non-parametric method for investigation of the statistically significant differences and correlation analysis. According to the results we expect increasing numbers of SMEs in Slovakia in the next four years, mainly an increasing of small enterprises. The development of SMEs is very different in particular regions of Slovakia. The number of enterprises in remote rural areas grow less rapidly then the number of those in more accessible rural areas of Slovakia. The strong correlation between SMEs and large enterprises indicates suitable conditions for doing business in rural areas for SMEs as well as for large enterprises. The support policy of SMEs should be more intensive, especially in the rural areas that are not suitable for a large scale business.
Hydrocephalus after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage: Epidemiology, Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Management

Hydrocephalus is one of the most common complications of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH), which seriously affects the quality of life and shortens the survival time of affected patients. By reviewing the recent studies on the risk factors of aSAH-associated hydrocephalus, we aimed to explicitly present the pathogenesis of acute and chronic hydrocephalus after aSAH and make a comprehensive list of the associated risk factors of aSAH-associated hydrocephalus and shunt-dependent hydrocephalus. It would help us to better explain the occurrence of hydrocephalus after aSAH, especially hydrocephalus caused by inflammation after bleeding. Many studies have recently suggested that high mobility group box 1 may be an early upstream promoter of inflammatory response after aSAH, which also provides important ideas for us to look for potential drug treatments. The surgery, such as external ventricular drain and lumbar drainage, is the most common and effective treatment. Yet, there are often complications, such as rebleeding and intracranial infection, and the optimal timing of intervention is controversial. Besides, this is also a systematic review of the recent advances in epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, and management of aSAH-associated hydrocephalus.
Axial torsion of a giant Meckel’s diverticulum

Introduction: Meckel’s diverticulum (MD) is an outpouching in the terminal ileum formed due to the persistence of the omphalomesenteric duct. Usually asymptomatic, only about 5% of the cases develop complications such as hemorrhage and perforation. Axial torsion, which occurs when the diverticulum twists around its base, is the rarest complication reported. We report the case of axial torsion of MD which was managed laparoscopically. Case Report: We discuss the case of a 49-year-old male who presented with 12 hours of sudden right lower quadrant pain, and decreased appetite. As part of his workup, radiographic imaging showed a complex cystic mass in the right lower quadrant but was unable to establish the diagnosis. Due to persistent symptoms, he was emergently taken for a diagnostic laparoscopy which revealed a torsion of a giant MD. The diverticulum was laparoscopically resected and the patient did well postoperatively with resolution of his symptoms. Conclusion: Torsion is a rare complication of MD. Preoperative diagnosis is challenging and usually necessitates surgical intervention for both confirmation and management. We present a unique case of torsion of a giant diverticulum that was approached and managed using minimally invasive techniques.
Social Representations of Covid-19 in the Framework of Risk Psychology

Social representations theory offers a useful framework to analyse the construction of lay explanations of social risks The current study used this theoretical framework to investigate lay explanations of the COVID-19 outbreak Risk psychology generally focuses on individual perceptions and cognitive errors or the notion of the fallibility of human information processing According to Moscovici, society is not a source of information, but of meanings People, on topics of interest, construct questions and look for answers, rather than merely perceiving and processing obtained information Social psychologists, therefore, cannot be interested in risk responses as erroneous or correct, nor as false, deficient, or biased Instead, they must be concerned with how social awareness of risk is built, in other words, how and why people need to co-construct social representations of such a risk To identify the structure and content of COVID-19 SRs, we used a non-probabilistic sample composed by social sciences and humanities and life sciences students (N = 124) To access the structure of COVID-19 SRs, we employed the method of hierarchical evocation The free association task was completed by participants' justification of their association choices to avoid the lexical ambiguity that could come from this kind of data To access the content of COVID-19 SRs, we utilized both open and closed questions made up starting from the following dimensions: informative sources and participants' networks of interaction;anchoring and objectivation processes;expectations and emotions related to the object
Correlation between blood lead level and anemia in hemodialysis patients

Introduction: Studies show that blood lead level (BLL) is higher in hemodialysis patients than in healthy people. Lead can disrupt iron metabolism and hemoglobin synthesis and therefore it is regarded as a cause of anemia. Objectives: This study investigated the relationship between BLL and anemia in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) undergoing maintenance hemodialysis Patients and Methods: This case-control study was conducted on 70 patients who had received hemodialysis at least for three months. The participants were selected randomly among eligible patients considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Based on their hemoglobin levels, the participants were divided into two groups, namely patients with anemia (case) and those without anemia (control). Results: The mean age of the participants in the case and control groups were 63.8±11.02 and 55.4±13.34 years, respectively. There were significant differences between two groups regarding hemoglobin, C-reactive protein (CRP) and erythropoietin (EPo) levels (P < 0.05). There was a significant correlation between hemoglobin and ferritin levels in the case group and between the length of dialysis and serum iron level in the control group without anemia (P < 0.001). Conclusion: Our results showed no correlation between BLL and anemia, however the BLL was higher in those undergoing long-term maintenance hemodialysis. Our findings require further investigation with larger studies.