Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring neighbourhood sustainability : a comparative analysis of residential types in Malaysia

The expansion of city-regions, the increase in the standard of living and changing lifestyles have collectively led to an increase in housing demand. New residential areas are encroaching onto the city fringes including suburban and green field areas. Large and small developers are actively building houses ranging from a few blocks to master-planned style projects. These residential developments, particularly in major urban areas, represent a large portion of urban land use in Malaysia, and, thus, have become a major contributor to overall urban sustainability. There are three main types that comprise the mainstream, and form integral parts to contemporary urban residential developments, namely, subdivision developments, piecemeal developments, and master-planned developments. Many new master-planned developments market themselves as environmentally friendly, and provide layouts that encompass sustainable design and development. To date, however, there have been limited studies conducted to examine such claims or to ascertain which of these three residential development layouts is more sustainable. To fill this gap, this research was undertaken to develop a framework for assessing the level of sustainability of residential developments, focusing on their layouts at the neighbourhood level. The development of this framework adopted a mixed method research strategy and embedded research design to achieve the study aim and objectives. Data were collected from two main sources, where quantitative data were gathered from a three-round Delphi survey and spatial data from a layout plan. Sample respondents for surveys were selected from among experts in the field of the built environment, both from Malaysia and internationally. As for spatial data, three case studies – master-planned, piecemeal and subdivision developments representing different types of neighbourhood developments in Malaysia have been selected. Prior to application on the case studies, the appropriate framework was subjected to validation to ascertain its robustness for application in Malaysia. Following the application of the framework on the three case studies the results revealed that master-planned development scored a better level of sustainability compared to piecemeal and subdivision developments. The results generated from this framework are expected to provide evidence to the policy makers and development agencies as well as provide an awareness of the level of sustainability and the necessary collective efforts required for developing sustainable neighbourhoods. Continuous assessment can facilitate a comparison of sustainability over time for neighbourhoods as a means to monitor changes in the level of sustainability. In addition, the framework is able to identify any particular indicator (issue) that causes a significant impact on sustainability.
Improving the design of knowledge transfer strategies by understanding farmer attitudes and behaviours

Introduction There is a widespread view that new technology and the research-based knowledge from which it is derived are not being taken up at an appropriate rate by UK livestock farmers. At the supply end of the process, this view is manifest in questions over value for money invested in scientific research. At the demand end, it has raised questions over the efficiency of the mechanisms in place for linking farmers with new knowledge and technology (Garforth, et al., 2003). Recorded differences in financial performance of livestock farms suggest a “potential payback to improved knowledge transfer, not only to bring the bottom third up to average performance, but also to ensure that the top third performers continue to exploit scientific and technological advances” (ADAS, et al., 2002). Concern has prompted action. The government’s Action Plan for Farming (MAFF, 2000) committed one million pounds over 18 months “for knowledge transfer to improve the flow of outputs from research to the agricultural industry”. The Action Plan had short-term objectives of bringing relief to the sectors most severely affected by the economic crisis hitting the industry at the time and a longer-term objective of supporting adaptation and restructuring. Enhancing knowledge transfer was seen as contributing to both. Three Knowledge Transfer Initiatives (KTIs) were set up, including one for the livestock sectors (ADAS, et al., 2002), which ran from January 2001 to May 2002. The Livestock KTI consulted widely within the industry and distributed factsheets on 67 priority topics, which were well publicised through shows, meetings, intermediaries such as veterinary practices and the farming press. Despite these efforts, awareness of the KTI among livestock farmers was limited and very few accessed the factsheets (Iles, 2003). More recently, a Demonstration Farm pilot project (Defra, 2002) has been set up as part of a Learning, Skills and Knowledge programme within the English Rural Development Programme, which seeks to build on the perceived success of the Monitor Farm Programme in New Zealand (Riddell, 2001). Defra (The
Decentralization of Government Functions, a European Principle of the Albanian Modernization Process: A libertarian approach to territorial issues

Abstract Albania, for 30 years, has entered the phase of transition from a society organized into a one-party central governing regime to a democratic society of a free market economy. But the pace of moving in this direction and modernizing the country is not the expected one, because the centralized proclamations of the political elite and expertise have not allowed liberal approaches to enter Albanian legislation and governing practices. This has been the case in particular in the sector of territorial planning, where central governments have aimed and managed to not allow the actual decentralization of the governing function of drafting and adopting local territorial planning instruments. This has resulted in a shortage of local instruments, in general, but even when managed to ensure they are presented far beyond the needs, problems and objective local imbalances. This is because their distance mapping from the actual municipality for which they were designed failed to recognize the specifics and characteristics of each of them. The result has been evident; in both cases, planning has been inexistent to drive sustainable, smart and inclusive urban development processes. In this paper we aim to build another approach for future development in Albania, a country which aims at integration into the European Union. This path should be development based on previously adopted territorial planning instruments, drawn up in democratic and parliamentary processes as a local political activity. Central government must understand and accept the new and different role than the one it played 30 years ago in territorial development issues, and that the process of drafting and adopting local territorial planning instruments should be a function of local government itself.
Dynamic Properties of a Sporadic Sodium Layer Revealed by Observations Over Zhongshan, Antarctica: A Case Study

A sodium Doppler lidar system with three‐directional measurements of sodium density, atmospheric wind field, and temperature was established at Zhongshan (69.4°S, 76.4°E), Antarctica. On November 14, 2019, a sporadic sodium layer (SSL) was observed at an altitude range of 93–103 km. The temporal/spatial sodium density variations of this SSL are associated with a strong sporadic E (Es) layer at nearly the same height, which is modulated by the convective electric field. By considering the structures and the time lags of the SSL's growth at three positions, the SSL appears to have a horizontal advection in an approximately westward direction with a velocity of the order of 80 m/s. This is consistent with the zonal wind velocity derived from the lidar system itself. The temporal/spatial sodium density variations strongly indicate that the formation and perturbation of SSLs are related to the evolution of ES layers due to varied electric fields and atmospheric gravity waves, while it is advected by the horizontal wind.
ArabGlossBERT: Fine-Tuning BERT on Context-Gloss Pairs for WSD

Using pre-trained transformer models such as BERT has proven to be effective in many NLP tasks. This paper presents our work to fine-tune BERT models for Arabic Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD). We treated the WSD task as a sentence-pair binary classification task. First, we constructed a dataset of labeled Arabic context-gloss pairs (~167k pairs) we extracted from the Arabic Ontology and the large lexicographic database available at Birzeit University. Each pair was labeled as True or False and target words in each context were identified and annotated. Second, we used this dataset for fine-tuning three pre-trained Arabic BERT models. Third, we experimented the use of different supervised signals used to emphasize target words in context. Our experiments achieved promising results (accuracy of 84%) although we used a large set of senses in the experiment.
Cultural Diversity and Its Influence on Role Players in a Full-Service School in Soshanguve: A Wellness Perspective

Abstract The purpose of the study was to explore the role cultural diversity plays in a Full-Service School in Soshanguve by means of a wellness perspective lens. The phenomenon at hand was the way that cultural diversity influences role players within a Full-Service School. The study was underpinned by three theories, namely Hettler’s Wellness Theory, Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and Ubuntu to generate a comprehensive insight into the role of cultural diversity on role players within a Full-Service School in Soshanguve. The study was premised on a qualitative philosophy using an interpretive paradigm, an ethnographic case study and using various qualitative methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation of data. Only one school participated in this research study as the goal of this research study was understanding the phenomenon from the participants’ perspective. The study employed a purposive sampling approach to select diary entries from educators who participated in the semi-structured interviews. Data collection and analysis were precise as the data was collected and transcribed as soon as it was recorded. The researcher consequently decided to use thematic analysis to draw on the theoretical framework of this study. Thematic analysis refers to the identification of themes and patterns of meaning throughout the data in correlation to the research question. Thus, the researcher analysed content by coding specific themes as directed by the research project’s theoretical framework. Among the findings was that role players identified that cultural diversity influences the wellness dimensions holistically. One of the recommendations is to establish a cultural awareness model in collaboration with the community within a Full-service school.
Future Changes in Snowpack, Snowmelt, and Runoff Potential Extremes Over North America

Snowpack and snowmelt‐driven extreme events (e.g., floods) have large societal consequences including infrastructure failures. However, it is not well understood how projected changes in the snow‐related extremes differ across North America. Using dynamically downscaled regional climate model (RCM) simulations, we found that the magnitudes of extreme snow water equivalent, snowmelt, and runoff potential (RP; snowmelt plus precipitation) decrease by 72%, 73%, and 45%, respectively, over the continental United States and southern Canada but increase by up to 8%, 53%, and 41% in Alaska and northern Canada by the late 21st century. In California and the Pacific Northwest, there is a notable increase in extreme RP by 21% contrary to a decrease in snowmelt by 31% by the late century. These regions could be vulnerable to larger rain‐on‐snow floods in a warmer climate. Regions with a large variability among RCM ensembles are identified, which require further investigation to reduce the regional uncertainties.
Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Processes for Damage State Assessment of Arch Masonry Bridge

The present work proposes a fuzzy analytical hierarchy approach for decision making in the maintenance programming of masonry arch bridges. As a practical case, we propose to classify the degradation state of the Mohammadia masonry bridge. A large number of criteria and sub-criteria are combined to classify this type of bridges through visual inspections. The main criteria (level 1) considered in this work are the history of the bridge, the environmental conditions, the structural capacity and the professional involvement of the bridge. In addition, these criteria are subdivided into several sub-criteria (level 2) which are, in turn, subdivided into sub-criteria (level 3). Considering these criteria and sub-criteria, weights Wiare calculated by fuzzy geometric mean method of Buckley. Subsequently, expert scores were assigned to calculate the overall score CS reflecting the degradation of the considered infrastructure. Thereafter, the masonry arch bridges are classified respecting the French IQOA scoring system using the overall scores value CS. The proposed classification method gave similar results provided by an expert’s study realized previously as part of a national patrimony preservation policy. The obtained results are in good agreement, which makes this method an effective scientific tool for decision-making in view of prioritization of the maintenance after systematic inspection of masonry bridges such as the bridge studied in this work. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091770 Full Text: PDF
EXAMINING THE FACTORS AFFECTING CO2 EMISSIONS FROM ROAD TRANSPORTATION IN MALAYSIA

Increased economic growth and transportation have led to a great increase in carbon emission in Malaysia. This paper investigates the factors such as distance travel (DT), fuel efficiency (FE), fuel price (FP) and fuel consumption as determinants of carbon emission from road transportation in Malaysia for the period 1990 to 2019. The results indicate that DT, FP, and FE are the main determinants of carbon emission. The study concludes that to reduce carbon emission in Malaysia, policies causing structural adjustments in the road transport sector of Malaysia must be implemented.
Socioeconomic Status and Medical Assistance in Dying: A Regional Descriptive Study

Objective: Concerns that medical assistance in dying (MAiD) may harm vulnerable groups unable to access medical treatments and social supports have arisen since the legalization of MAiD on June 17, 2016; however, there is little research on the topic. The purpose of this study is to investigate the socioeconomic status (SES) of patients who request MAiD at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). Methods: A retrospective analysis of patients from the LHSC MAiD database between June 6, 2016 and December 20, 2019 was conducted. Patients were linked to income data from the 2016 Canadian Census, and their corresponding income quintile was a proxy for SES. Geographic information system (GIS) mapping software was used to visualize the distribution of income and MAiD requests. Results: 39.4% of the LHSC catchment area was classified as low SES. Two hundred thirty-seven (58.1%) MAiD requests came from low SES patients and 171 (41.9%) requests came from high SES patients. Two hundred fifty-nine (63.5%) patients who requested a MAiD assessment did not receive MAiD following their request. Of the 237 lower SES patients, 150 (63.3% [95% CI 57.2-69.3]) did not receive MAiD. Of the 171 higher SES patients, 109 (63.7% [95% CI 56.5-70.9]) did not receive MAiD. Conclusion: A disproportionate number of requests for a MAiD assessment at LHSC came from lower SES patients; however, similar proportions of patients who requested MAiD from each SES group received aid in dying. Future research should explore why a disproportionately high number of low SES patients request MAiD at LHSC.
Genistein protects epilepsy-induced brain injury through regulating the JAK2/STAT3 and Keap1/Nrf2 signaling pathways in the developing rats.

BACKGROUND Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disease. Recurrent seizures can cause irreversible brain damage. This study aimed to explore the regulation of Genistein on JAK2/STAT3 and Keap1/Nrf2 signaling pathway and the protective effects on brain injury after epilepsy. METHODS Pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) was used to induce epilepsy in developing rats and Genistein was used for pretreatment of epilepsy. The seizure latency, grade scores and duration of the first generalized tonic-clonic seizure (GTCs) were recorded. Hippocampus tissue was sampled at 24 h post-epilepsy. Immunofluorescence staining was used to observe mature neurons, activated microglia and astrocytes in the hippocampal CA1 region. Western blot and qRT-PCR were used to determine the protein and mRNA levels of JAK2, STAT3, TNF-α, IL-1β, Keap1, Nrf2, HO-1, NQO1, caspase3, Bax and Bcl2 in the hippocampus. RESULTS Immunofluorescence showed that the number of neurons significantly decreased, and activated microglia and astrocytes significantly increased after epilepsy; Western blot and q-PCR showed that the expressions of JAK2, STAT3, TNF-α, IL-1β, Keap1, caspase3 and Bax significantly increased, while Nrf2, HO-1, NQO1 and Bcl-2 were significantly reduced after epilepsy. These effects were reversed by Genistein treatment. Moreover, Genistein was found to prolong seizure latency and reduce seizure intensity score and duration of generalized tonic-clonic seizures(GTCs) CONCLUSIONS: Genistein can activate the Keap1/Nrf2 antioxidant stress pathway and attenuate the activation of microglia and astrocytes. Genistein also inhibits the JAK2-STAT3 inflammation pathway and expression of apoptotic proteins, and increases the number of surviving neurons, thus having a protective effect on epilepsy-induced brain damage.
The Frequency of Emotions and Emotion Variability in Self-regulated Learning: What Matters to Task Performance?

Emotion variability and its relationship to performance is an underexplored area of research both inside and outside the realm of medical education. We address this gap by examining the relative importance of the frequency of emotions and emotion variability that occurred in specific phases of self-regulated learning (SRL) in predicting students’ performance. Specifically, 23 medical students were recruited to complete the task of diagnosing a virtual patient in a hospital-simulated environment. Students’ facial expressions were video-recorded and were classified into basic emotions. We calculated the frequency of emotions and emotion variability at each SRL phase: forethought, performance, and self-reflection. Findings revealed that both the frequency of emotions and emotion variability influenced clinical reasoning performance, but they functioned differently in different SRL phases. Moreover, emotion variability negatively predicted performance regardless of which SRL phases it was tied to. This study helps shift the focus of research from the effect of emotions on performance to the joint effect of emotion and emotion variability, which has the potential to address the inconsistency in emotion-related research findings. Although we situate the study in the context of clinical reasoning, findings from this research inform the research of emotion in learning and instruction for other domains. Furthermore, this study lays the foundation for future advances in emotion-related study designs since the introduction of emotion variability leaves many questions unanswered and shows promise for new research directions.
The Impact of Female Directors on Board, and Female CEO on Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from Emerging Economy

Purpose: As per agency theory prospective, board gender diversity enhances the corporate leadership structure which mitigates agency conflicts among stakeholders. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of female directors on board, and female CEOs on firm performance. We also uses board size, and board independence as board level control, while leverage, firm size, capital expenditure & tangibility as firm level control. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study uses a panel data starting from 2005 to 2020 on annual basis. To resolve endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity problems in panel data analysis, study uses static (fixed effect, & random effect) and dynamic (GMM) estimation techniques in Pakistan. Findings: Result shows the positive impact of female directors on board and female CEOs on firm performance. These findings are robust under alternative measures of firm performance. Implications/Originality/Value: The study suggests that female representation and female CEOs are the important attributes to enhance firm performance. Additionally, females are performing a significant role through monitor and control for excellent corporate leadership structure. Furthermore, this is the first study of its kind which analyzes this relationship in the emerging equity market of Pakistan.
Issues and solutions for running a full year software engineering project for computing majors

This paper identifies the issues in running a full year software engineering project (SE project) for the total cohort of students in the third year and proposes solutions for the problems raised. Mounting such a course requires careful preparation of the project handbook, lecture materials, supporting tutorials, practical lab classes, consultations, and weekly supervision, as well as clearly defined continuous assessment. The response from employers and graduates to the software engineering project has been very positive.
Methods for bibliometric analysis of research : renewable energy case study

This paper presents methods and software implementation for analyzing a field of research through the use of bibliometrics, i.e., information about published journal articles. Online publication search engines are queried, and their search results are extracted and analyzed, to help inform a researcher of the state of his or her field. Our methodology consists of three components: extraction of terms relevant to the research field, analysis of the growth in prevalence of these terms over time, and identification of interrelationships among these terms using a technique known as Latent Semantic Analysis. These methods are applicable to the analysis of any research field, but this paper presents results from a case study on the field of renewable energy. Thesis Supervisor: Stuart Madnick Title: Professor of Information Technology