Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) to treat biogas effluent of a tapioca industry wastewater treatment system

This research aims to evaluate performance of a water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes (Mart) Solms) pond used to treat biogas effluent of a tapioca industry wastewater treatment system. The water hyacinth pond which treats biogas effluent has been monitored for about two months. Wastewater samples were taken from influent and effluent of the water hyacinth pond. Parameters to be observed included wastewater quality parameters (pH, temperature, turbidity, BOD5, ammonia, solids, evapotranspiration, discharge, and hydraulic retention time) and water hyacinth parameters (growth, population density, moisture, ash, nutrient contents). The results showed that water hyacinth improved some parameters of the biogas effluent to some extent. Within hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 53 days, pH increased from 7.0 to 7.2 and some reductions of turbidity by 27.1%, BOD5 by 3.2%, ammonia by 10.5%, total solid (TS) by 13.1%, total filterable solid (TFS) by 11.4%, total suspended solid (TSS) by 35.2%. With water hyacinth population of 10.17 kg m-2, evapotranspiration was 5.48 mm d-1. The water hyacinth grew from 415 g m-2 to 3375 g m-2 within 41 days, meaning that daily increase rate of 72.2 g d-1 and relative growth rate of 5% d-1. The doubling time of water hyacinth was 13.56 days. Annual nutrient uptake for carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphor (P), and potassium (K) by water hyacinth was found to be 7800, 699, 701, and 333 kg ha-1, respectively.
BAAnet: an efficient Deep Neural Network for automatic Bone Age Assessment

Pereira, Lucas Araujo. BAAnet: an efficient Deep Neural Network for automatic Bone Age Assessment. Goiânia, 2020. 55p. MSc. Dissertation, Instituto de Informática, Universidade Federal de Goiás. The task of bone age assessment is constantly performed by radiologists worldwide to aid in the diagnosis of metabolic and endocrine disorders in children. Currently, the most used methods to perform such task are manual methods based on image comparison developed between the 1950s and 1960s. These methods make the evaluation process long, tedious and costly, besides presenting high variability and uncertainty between examinations and also among examiners. This work starts describing the characteristics of the bone age evaluation problem. It then presents some automatic solutions proposed in the last decades. Later it describes the paradigm shift in the field of computer vision with the development of convolutional neural networks and automatic feature extraction strategies, but also points out the high computational cost of newly published neural networks when applied to high resolution images such as the ones from medical imaging applications. Finally, it proposes a novel convolutional neural network to perform the task of bone age assessment in a computationally efficient manner. This network is named BAAnet and it introduces a novel convolutional module called the Incremental Convolutional Estimation (ICE) module. We evaluate the module against two standard benchmarks and see an average relative improvement of approximately 10% in performance. We also submitted an ensemble of BAAnet models for a competition organized by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) with the goal to obtain the lowest mean absolute error in a dataset of 14236 images collected for the event. Our submission finished third and had a mean absolute error of 4.38 months (less than 3% lower than the first place) in a dataset of 200 images used exclusively for final evaluation of the competing models. BAAnet achieved this performance with a number of parameters and computational cost an order of magnitude smaller than the models in first and second places.
Extracting Strong Policies for Robotics Tasks from Zero-Order Trajectory Optimizers

Solving high-dimensional, continuous robotic tasks is a challenging optimization problem. Model-based methods that rely on zero-order optimizers like the crossentropy method (CEM) have so far shown strong performance and are considered state-of-the-art in the model-based reinforcement learning community. However, this success comes at the cost of high computational complexity, being therefore not suitable for real-time control. In this paper, we propose a technique to jointly optimize the trajectory and distill a policy, which is essential for fast execution in real robotic systems. Our method builds upon standard approaches, like guidance cost and dataset aggregation, and introduces a novel adaptive factor which prevents the optimizer from collapsing to the learner’s behavior at the beginning of the training. The extracted policies reach unprecedented performance on challenging tasks like making a humanoid stand up and opening a door without reward shaping. Figure 1: Environments and exemplary behaviors of the learned policy using APEX. From left to right: FETCH PICK&PLACE (sparse reward), DOOR (sparse reward), and HUMANOID STANDUP.
Dynamic Structural and Functional Reorganizations Following Motor Stroke

Background The combined effects of bilateral corticospinal tract (CST) reorganization and interhemispheric functional connectivity (FC) reorganization on motor recovery of upper and lower limbs after stroke remain unknown. Material/Methods A total of 34 patients underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination at weeks 1, 4, and 12 after stroke, with a control group of 34 healthy subjects receiving 1 MRI examination. Interhemispheric FC in the somatomotor network (SMN) was calculated using the resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI). Fractional anisotropy (FA) of bilateral CST was recorded as a measure of reorganization obtained from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). After intergroup comparisons, multiple linear regression analysis was used to explore the effects of altered FA and interhemispheric FC on motor recovery. Results Interhemispheric FC restoration mostly occurred within 4 weeks after stroke, and FA in ipsilesional remained CST consistently elevated within 12 weeks. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that the increase in both interhemispheric FC and ipsilesional CST-FA were significantly correlated with greater motor recovery from week 1 to week 4 following stroke. Moreover, only increased FA of ipsilesional CST was significantly correlated with greater motor recovery during weeks 4 to 12 after stroke compared to interhemispheric FC. Conclusions Our results show dynamic structural and functional reorganizations following motor stroke, and structure reorganization may be more related to motor recovery at the late subacute phase. These results may play a role in guiding neurological rehabilitation.
Interpersonal Forgiveness and Meaning in Life in Older Adults: The Mediating and Moderating Roles of the Religious Meaning System

Forgiving others may play an important role in achieving meaning in life as it offers a valuable platform for deliberate moral acts of acceptance of positive affect, behaviour, and cognition towards a transgressor. The aim of this paper was to analyse the relationship between forgiveness and presence, and the search for meaning in life, as well as the mediating role of the religious meaning system in this relationship among older adults. A total of 205 older adults, 112 women and 93 men, participated in the study. The mean age was 72.59. The Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Scale, the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, and the Religious Meaning System Questionnaire were employed in the research; revenge and avoidance revealed negative correlations with presence, whereas benevolence showed positive correlations, but not with the search for meaning in life. The religious meaning system was confirmed as a mediator in the relationships between forgiveness (revenge, avoidance, and benevolence) and both presence and the search for meaning. The findings point to the significant role played by religious beliefs and behaviour in the domain of purpose and goals. Additionally, testing the mediation and moderation effects sheds new light on the interaction of compassion- and goal-oriented mechanisms in older adults’ meaning in life.
Assessing the Effects of Education Service Quality, Value and Satisfaction on Student Customer Intentions and Behaviour. Abstract

Traditional avenues of accreditation, module review and teaching evaluations are not the only ways to assess education service quality and related issues. In order to evaluate the education service provided by a private university in Ireland, this investigation utilized an extension of Cronin, Brady and Hult’s (2000) model examining the effects of quality, value and customer satisfaction on customer intentions and behaviour. The model predicts that positive perceptions of quality, value and satisfaction in relation to the education service encounter will lead to positive word of mouth, and future intention to use the service again. The Arts undergraduate student sample size was 260. The perception of a high price for the education service provided did not translate to high service value, and service quality was only shown to have an indirect effect on satisfaction, word of mouth behaviour and intentions to return to the university. Despite a slight majority stating that the service quality was above average, and the majority stating they were satisfied overall, only a minority indicated that they would use the service again. The underlying reasons for and implications from these findings and others are discussed.
Sustainable Consumption Behaviour in Colombia: An Exploratory Analysis

Sustainable consumption has positioned itself as an alternative for economic growth and social development because of its ability to deal with the future scarcity of natural resources and the prevention and mitigation of climate change, among other things. In this sense, the role of the consumer is preponderant, due to the fact their consumption behaviour has a direct effect on the environment; hence the importance of analysing their habits from different perspectives and social realities. Accordingly, the aim of this work is to explore the low-impact sustainable consumption behaviour in Colombia and the convergence and divergence of this type of consumer behaviour in the country. To achieve this, an exploratory, quantitative, and transversal methodology was used. The latter was based on a sample of 393 consumers to whom a self-report scale was applied in order to evaluate behaviours linked to quality of life, care for the environment, and resources for future generations. With the data collected, the following step to follow was to identify how consumers are grouped (hierarchical cluster analysis), what the differences are (single-factor ANOVA), the behaviours (descriptive statistics), as well as the relationship among them (Pearson correlation statistics). Results show that there are two consumer profiles with different levels of awareness of sustainable consumption behaviour. The principal outcome of the study was that Colombian consumers have embraced the behaviour of quality of life and resources for future generations; however, those consumers related to environmental care have been less involved, especially due to the influence of economic variables as such the cost of products and speculation in the prices of environmentally friendly products.
READINESS ASSESSMENT OF PATIENTS WITH ARTERIAL HYPERTENSION TO THE APPLICATION OF TELEMEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES

This article presents original data on patients' awareness of arterial hypertension and their readiness to use telemedicine technologies. The aim: to study the factors that may affect the effectiveness of diagnosis and treatment of patients with arterial hypertension (AH) through the use of telemedicine technologies. Materials and methods: this study involves 336 outpatients and indoor patients diagnosed with arterial hypertension. Anonymously, using a questionnaire, were assessed patients' awareness of their diagnosis, access to the Internet, and the ability to remotely control of blood pressure. Results: only about a third of all respondents systematically took the recommended antihypertensive therapy daily. Among them, the vast majority were indoor patients (82 %). We found a direct dependence between the regularity to use the antihypertensive therapy and the interest in the use of telemonitoring of blood pressure (Spearman correlation coefficient +0.59). There is a low awareness of patients about the possibilities of remote monitoring of blood pressure (only 11 %), the vast majority of patients (60 %) for the first time learned about such technologies. Among our respondents, a statistically significant dependence was found between the age of patients and interest in telemonitoring blood pressure at a significance level of p<0.01 (χ2 – 26.119, and the critical value of χ2 significance level p=0.01 is 9.21). Conclusions: the main sources of information for patients with arterial hypertension are primary care physicians (family doctors, therapists) and the Internet. Limited access of patients to the Internet can negatively affect over introduction of telemedicine technologies for the management of arterial hypertension, despite the great interest of patients and society.
Determination of nitrogen and ash contents in total herbage and botanical components of grassland systems with near infra‐red spectroscopy

Near infra-red reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) was used to develop calibration equations to measure nitrogen and ash contents in grassland samples. Four populations of samples were collected or prepared: total herbage, with a heterogeneous and complex botanical composition, and its botanical components (grasses, legumes and forbs). A set of samples from each population was selected to develop the specific calibration equations using three mathematical data treatments (log 1/R, first and second derivative). Six and seven wavelengths were selected by multiple regression to predict nitrogen and ash contents, respectively. Calibration equations were evaluated by comparing the values obtained by reference methods (Kjeldahl test and dry ashing measurements) with those predicted by NIRS. The three data treatments generally provided similar results as regards estimations of nitrogen contents. The correlation coefficients varied from 0.94 to 0.98, and the standard errors of prediction ranged from 1.10 to 1.49 g kg -1 (total herbage), from 0.73 to 0.98 g kg -1 (grasses), from 0.99 to 1.30 g kg -1 (legumes) and from 0.76 to 0.80 g kg -1 (forbs). The most suitable treatments to predict ash contents were log 1/R and the first derivative. The best performance was obtained for legumes, using log 1/R, with a correlation coefficient of 0.95 and a standard error of prediction of 3.54 g kg -1 . The calibration equations became more accurate as the components of the sets of samples became botanically simpler. Prediction accuracy was greater when the specific calibration equations for each population of samples were used.
COMPARISON OF MALARIA RAPID DIAGNOSTIC TESTS AT HEALTH FACILITIES AND COMMUNITY LEVEL IN SIAYA COUNTY KENYA

Malaria remains a major public health problem affecting an estimated 40% of the world’s population and resulting in more than 650,000 deaths worldwide every year. The emergence and rapid spread of parasite resistance to affordable, easy to use and widely available anti-malarial drugs such as chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) has prompted many countries in endemic areas to switch to the more effective artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). To mitigate against the emergence of resistance and improve patient care, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends parasitological confirmation by microscopy or Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs) before treatment. Malaria diagnosis by microscopy has many challenges including need for electricity, well trained staff and high quality reagents which are often lacking in areas where malaria is endemic. In such areas RDTs provide an alternative diagnostic method since they do not require highly trained personnel and can be performed by the community health workers. However, there is limited information in the performance characteristics (sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values) of RDTs when performed in health facilities or in the community. In this study, the performance characteristics of SD Bioline malaria Ag P.f/ pan RDT in a cross-sectional survey was compared to that from four health facilities in an area of high malaria transmission of Siaya County, western Kenya. Expert microscopy was used as a gold standard and factors affecting their accuracy were explored using statistical analysis software (SAS) version 9.2. A total of 1223 children below five years; 604 from cross sectional survey and 619 attending four health facilities (HFs), were included in the study. Sensitivity and specificity of RDTs in the cross sectional survey were 96.2% and 48.1% respectively giving positive predictive value 49.9 and negative predictive value of 99%. The health facility study had a sensitivity of 99.5% and specificity of 54.4% with positive predictive value and negative predictive value of 84% and 98% respectively. The difference in RDT sensitivity and specificity between cross sectional survey and at HFs was statistically significant (p=0.001). The health facility prevalence of Plasmodium spp. infection was 70.60% by microscopy and 83.68% by RDT while in the cross sectional survey the prevalence was 34.93 % by microscopy and 67.38 % by RDT. The result of this study showed that there was a difference in the performance characteristics of RDTs carried out in health facilities and at the cross sectional survey. However, when the analysis of sensitivity is based on parasite density, the performance of RDTs in both health facility study and during cross sectional survey is comparable to expert microscopy. Deployment of RDTs, coupled with supportive supervision can potentially reduce misdiagnosis of malaria as a result of either over diagnosis or under-diagnosis.
EFFECT OF HEN EGG PRODUCTION AND PROTEIN COMPOSITION ON TEXTURAL PROPERTIES OF EGG ALBUMEN GELS

The effect of hen age, strain and dietary amino acid intake on the egg albumen gel textural properties was studied in two experiments by textural profile analysis (TPA) and uniaxial compression (UC) tests. In experiment 1, eggs from 4 different hen flocks were heat processed industrially. Egg rejection due to poor albumen gelling was correlated to hen age (r = 0.502), albumen dry matter (r = -0. 632), gel hardness of 1 st compression (r = -0. 765), and gel work of 1 st compression (r = -0.740) in TPA. In experiment 2 two hen strains, representing two levels of egg production, were fed diets with supplementation of L-lysine, methionine or both amino acids compared to a control diet. The lysine intake ranged from 818-1272 mg/hen/day and methionine intake from 377-575 mg/hen/day among hen groups, but without significant effect on the albumen gel texture parameters. The hen strains differed significantly in egg production (P Les effets de l'âge de la poule et du taux d'aminoacides dans son alimentation sur la texture des gels de blancs d'oeufs sont etudies. Quand l'âge de la poule augmente, la teneur en proteine du blanc diminue et les proprietes texturales du blanc egalement. La lignee commerciale Lohmann SL a une production superieure et les blancs ont une meilleure texture en gel. La composition de l'alimentation en lysine et methionine n'a pas d'influence sur la texture du gel et la teneur en matiere seche du blanc. L'ovotransferrine joue un role important dans la texture des gels de blancs d'oeuf.
Barriers to Global Capital Allocation

We quantify the impact of barriers to international investment, using a novel multi-country over- lapping generations model with heterogeneous investors and imperfect capital mobility. Our model yields a gravity equation for foreign asset demand. We estimate this gravity equation using recently- developed foreign investment data that has been restated to account for the presence of offshore investment and financing vehicles. We show that a parsimonious implementation of the model, with four barriers (capital controls, geographic distance, institutional distance and cultural distance) can account for a large share of the observed variation in bilateral Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI) positions. Our model predicts a significant home bias and higher rates of return on capital in emerging markets. In our benchmark calibration, we estimate that capital misallocation induced by these barriers reduces World GDP by 8.8%, compared to a situation without barriers. We also find that barriers to global capital allocation contribute significantly to cross-country inequality: the standard deviation of log capital per employee is 70% higher than it would be in a world without barriers to international investment, while the dispersion in output per employee is 39% higher.
Assessment of polygenic character’s association with yield in chickpea genotypes

Chickpea is one of the important pulse crop in Asia with special concern to India. Productivity of chickpea is low as compared to wheat in India. For this concern, the analysis of the relationships among yield attributing characters and their associations with seed yield is essential to establish selection criteria. The experimental material used in the present study comprised of forty genotypes including standard checks. The characters viz., 100-seed weight, biological yield per plant, harvest index, number of pods per plant and number of seeds per plant recorded positive correlation coefficient with seed yield both at genotypic and phenotypic level. Path coefficient analysis revealed a higher and positive direct effect viz., number of seeds per plant, lowest branch height, number of primary branches per plant, harvest index and number of seeds per pod on seed yield per plant. The result obtained from genotypic correlation coefficients and path analysis indicated that the characters namely; number of seeds per plant and harvest index exhibited strong positive correlation coefficient and high magnitude of positive direct effects on seed yield. Hence, it is suggested that while exercising selection index due weightage should be given to number of seeds per plant and harvest index as these were important components influencing seed yield of chickpea.
Financial Development and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Eurozone

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between financial development and economic growth, within a panel framework that also accounts for trade openness, for the case of Eurozone using data covering the period 1990-2018. We explore this relationship using panel analysis techniques, robust to cross sectional dependence , in order to investigate the presence of causality between the variables. The cointegration results suggested that there is one cointegrated vector between the functions of economic growth, financial development and trade openness. In addition, the causality results of the study revealed, both in the short and long-run, that there is a unidirectional causal relationship between financial development and economic growth with direction from economic growth to financial development, as well as a unidirectional causality running from trade openness to financial development.