Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growth and Yield of Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) as Influenced by the Residual Effects of Guano-Char

Biochar is one of the most important strategy to sequester much carbon in the soil. Biochar in the form of guano is not known to the farmers in the Philippines. Most of its several findings relate directly as soil amendments and little or no findings so far investigated for its residual effects on lettuce. Thus, this study aimed to determine the residual effects of guano-char (GC) on the growth and yield performance of lettuce as influenced by the remnant’s material from corn. Pot experiment was laid out in a single-factorial experiment and arranged in RCBD with the following treatments: T1-control, T2commercial nutrient solution (CNS), T3-75g GC, T4-150g GC, T5-300g GC, T6600g GC. Parameters for plant height; diameters, length and, number of leaves; volume and length of root; foliage fresh and dry weight; and yield were gathered. The results of the study indicated that GC as residue have significantly influenced the plant height; diameter, length and number of leaves; fresh and oven-dried weight of roots; and yield of lettuce 25 days after planting. The residue of 300 grams GC was found to be the optimum level because it is economically more efficient that significantly improved the lettuce growth and yield performance, though comparable with the 600 grams of GC. It considerably surpasses the effect brought about by CNS (inorganic) for almost all parameters, except; for root length and volume of lettuce. The yield achieved by 300 and 600 grams of GC is twice higher than that of CNS.
The Scale of Population Structure in Arabidopsis thaliana

The population structure of an organism reflects its evolutionary history and influences its evolutionary trajectory. It constrains the combination of genetic diversity and reveals patterns of past gene flow. Understanding it is a prerequisite for detecting genomic regions under selection, predicting the effect of population disturbances, or modeling gene flow. This paper examines the detailed global population structure of Arabidopsis thaliana. Using a set of 5,707 plants collected from around the globe and genotyped at 149 SNPs, we show that while A. thaliana as a species self-fertilizes 97% of the time, there is considerable variation among local groups. This level of outcrossing greatly limits observed heterozygosity but is sufficient to generate considerable local haplotypic diversity. We also find that in its native Eurasian range A. thaliana exhibits continuous isolation by distance at every geographic scale without natural breaks corresponding to classical notions of populations. By contrast, in North America, where it exists as an exotic species, A. thaliana exhibits little or no population structure at a continental scale but local isolation by distance that extends hundreds of km. This suggests a pattern for the development of isolation by distance that can establish itself shortly after an organism fills a new habitat range. It also raises questions about the general applicability of many standard population genetics models. Any model based on discrete clusters of interchangeable individuals will be an uneasy fit to organisms like A. thaliana which exhibit continuous isolation by distance on many scales.
Credit Supply Driven Boom-Bust Cycles

Can shifts in the credit supply generate a boom-bust cycle similar to the one observed in the US around 2008? To answer this question, we develop a general equilibrium model that combines a rich heterogeneous agent overlapping-generations structure of households who make housing tenure decisions and borrow through long-term mortgages, firms that finance their working capital through short-term loans from banks, and banks whose ability to intermediate funds depends on their capital. Using a calibrated version of this framework, we find that shocks to banksâ€™ leverage can generate sizable boom-bust cycles in the housing market, the banking sector, and the rest of the macroeconomy, which provides strong support for the credit supply channel. The deterioration of bank balance sheets during the bust, the existence of highly leveraged households, and the general equilibrium feedback from the credit supply to household labor income significantly amplify the bust. Moreover, mortgage credit growth across the income distribution is consistent with recent findings that were otherwise argued to be against the credit supply channel. A comparison of the model outcomes across credit supply, house price expectation, and productivity shocks suggests that housing busts accompanied by severe banking crises are more likely to be generated by credit supply shocks.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CAGE AQUACULTURE IN GHANA: A CASE STUDY OF LAKE VOLTA AT ASUOGYAMAN DISTRICT

INTRODUCTION Aquaculture has been practiced in Ghana since the 1950’s but it is in the last two decades that it has proven to be very successful with the introduction of cage culture. Although production is undertaken in ponds, pens and cages, cage culture has become increasingly important, currently accounting for more than 80% of aquaculture fish production in Ghana (MoFAD, 2014). Cage culture is believed to have the capacity to contribute considerably to the total fish production and food security in Ghana by providing employment, income, revenue and livelihood to the public, government and the surrounding communities (FAO, 2005).
Synthesizing lesions using contextual GANs improves breast cancer classification on mammograms

Data scarcity and class imbalance are two fundamental challenges in many machine learning applications to healthcare. Breast cancer classification in mammography exemplifies these challenges, with a malignancy rate of around 0.5% in a screening population, which is compounded by the relatively small size of lesions (~1% of the image) in malignant cases. Simultaneously, the prevalence of screening mammography creates a potential abundance of non-cancer exams to use for training. Altogether, these characteristics lead to overfitting on cancer cases, while under-utilizing non-cancer data. Here, we present a novel generative adversarial network (GAN) model for data augmentation that can realistically synthesize and remove lesions on mammograms. With self-attention and semi-supervised learning components, the U-net-based architecture can generate high resolution (256x256px) outputs, as necessary for mammography. When augmenting the original training set with the GAN-generated samples, we find a significant improvement in malignancy classification performance on a test set of real mammogram patches. Overall, the empirical results of our algorithm and the relevance to other medical imaging paradigms point to potentially fruitful further applications.
The NicIcon Database of Handwritten Icons for Crisis Management

The goal of this paper is to announce the NicIcon collection of handwritten sketches containing iconic gestures. These data have recently been collected in our group with the goal to develop and assess pen input recognition technologies for the domain of crisis management. In our envisaged scenarios, users can use the pen to enter, e.g., information about the location of certain objects or the occurrence of certain events, on a depicted photograph or digital map. Typically, these sketches contain representations of drawings that are not contained in publicly available databases, which mainly contain handwritten texts. We report on our classification performances achieved for these data and make the data freely available to the handwriting recognition community.
Non-Gaussian BLE-Based Indoor Localization Via Gaussian Sum Filtering Coupled with Wasserstein Distance

With recent breakthroughs in signal processing, communication and networking systems, we are more and more surrounded by smart connected devices empowered by the Internet of Thing (IoT). Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is considered as the main-stream technology to perform identification and localization/tracking in IoT applications. Indoor localization applications within smart cities, typically, start by observing messages transmitted by BLE beacons and then utilization of Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) to provide location estimates. RSSI signals are, however, prone to significant fluctuations. The main challenge is that multipath fading and drastic fluctuations in the indoor environment result in complex non-Gaussian RSSI measurements, necessitating the need to smooth RSSIs for development of BLE-based localization applications. In contrary to existing solutions, where RSSIs are assumed to have normal statistical properties, in this paper, a Gaussian Sum Filter (GSF) approach is designed to more realistically model the non-Gaussian nature of RSSIs. To maintain acceptable computational load, the number of components in the GSF is collapsed into a single Gaussian term with a novel Wasserstein Distance (WD)-Based Gaussian Mixture Reduction (GMR) algorithm. The simulation results based on real collected RSSI signals confirm the success of the proposed WD-based GSF framework compared to its conventional counterparts.
PHOTOSTABILITY OF ACETYLATED WOOD COATED WITH NANO

Chemical modification with acetic anhydride is an effective method to stabilise wood against dimensional movement and improve decay resistance of wood. It has also been reported to retard UV light induced color darkening on wood surface. Coatings of wood surfaces with certain nano metal oxides have also shown promise as UV screening agent. In this work, we have evaluated synergistic effect of acetylation of wood and application of nano material on wood surfaces to enhance their UV stability. Photo-stability of acetylated Wrightia tinctoria wood coated with zinc oxide (ZnO) nanodispersion was evaluated by irradiating these wood specimens to UV radiation in an accelerated weathering tester. Acetylation of wood with acetic anhydride exhibited photo-bleaching and inhibited light-induced color darkening observed in unmodified wood. Coating of unmodified and modified wood surfaces with ZnO nanodispersion reduced photo-discolouration and degradation of wood polymers. The photo-bleaching observed in chemically modified wood upon light irradiation was further enhanced by application of nano coating on wood surfaces.
Epidemiological and histopathological characteristics of head and neck cancers in Bhutan from 2011 to 2017: a retrospective descriptive study

Background Head and neck cancers are among the commonest cancers in the developing world. Personal habits, such as the use of tobacco, betel nut and alcohol are strongly associated with the development of head and neck cancers at certain sites. Therefore, they are among the preventable cancers. In Bhutan, there has not yet been a study conducted on head and neck cancers. Objective To describe baseline epidemiological and histopathological characteristics of head and neck cancers in Bhutan. Methods This is a 7-year descriptive study of all cases of head and neck cancers presented at the Jigme Dorji Wangchuk National Referral Hospital from 2011 to 2017. The data were collected from the hospital’s medical records section, histopathology records, patient referral unit and some treatment centres in India. Prior approval was sought from the Research and Ethics Board for Health, the Ministry of Health and the hospital management. Results There were a total of 515 cases of head and neck cancers from 2011 to 2017. The crude incidence rate was 10 per 100,000 and the overall age adjusted rate was 12.3 (95% CI 9.5–15.1) per 100,000 population. The prevalence during this 7-year period was 69.1 per 100,000 population. The commonest cancers are thyroid, oral cavity, hypopharyngeal, laryngeal and nasopharyngeal cancer in decreasing order. Head and neck cancers are more common in males than females in the majority of sites except thyroid, salivary gland and sinonasal malignancies. Thyroid cancers and nasopharyngeal cancers are found to affect younger age groups. Tashigang (48) followed by Paro (43) recorded the highest number of cases. Squamous cell carcinoma is the commonest histopathology type in almost all the cases, while papillary carcinoma is the commonest among thyroid cancers. Personal habits, such as smoking, chewing tobacco, betel nut and alcohol consumption, were found to be more common among patients suffering from oral cavity, laryngeal, hypopharyngeal and oropharyngeal cancers. Conclusion Head and neck cancers are the third most common cancer in Bhutan after stomach cancer and cervical cancer. Thyroid, oral cavity and hypopharynx are the top three anatomical sites for head and neck cancers in Bhutan. The current epidemiological and histopathological profile of head and neck cancers will form a baseline of information and basis for further research on head and neck cancers in Bhutan.
Classiﬁcation of Movie Posters to Movie Genres

The poster of a movie is an essential tool in the ﬁlm industry and a well-designed poster can be pivotal towards the success of a movie. To ensure that a movie poster is designed to attract the correct audience, we built a deep learning model that identiﬁes the movie genre conveyed by a movie poster. To ﬁnd an optimum model, we implemented customised versions of three standard deep learning architectures for image classiﬁcation: ResNet-50, VGG-16, and DenseNet-169. DenseNet-169 gave us the best results, outperforming the other two models and models designed in previous attempts at the problem. Although the results were positive and a step forward from previous studies, there still remains room for improvement. We forecast that this improvement could come through a number of techniques, the most probable being, the use of an object identiﬁer algorithm such as YOLO, collection of better data, and application of other convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures to the problem.
Features for mode detection in natural online pen input

When the user is free to write anything, like handwriting, drawings, or gestures, techniques are required to distinguish between modes. Mode detection, preceding recognition, can be an important aid in applications that invite natural pen input. In this paper, a large amount of data, acquired in different contexts, is used to assess eight features on their suitability for mode detection. Six global features: length, area, compactness, eccentricity, circular variance, and closure, and two structural features: curvature, and perpendicularity, have shown to be particularly useful for determining whether a pen trajectory contains handwriting, lines, arrows, or geometric shapes. Using these eight features an overall performance on unseen data was achieved of 98.7%, using a KNN classifier. According to the principal components analysis of the data, the most important features were closure, curvature, perpendicularity, and eccentricity. The results of this study are employed in two large research projects on natural multi-modal interaction that pursue design, route map, and map annotation scenarios.
Chapter 5 EXPLAINING COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN MULTI-ETHNIC CLASSES; THE LIMITED ROLE OF STUDENTS’ ETHNOCULTURAL BACKGROUND

This study explored cooperative learning in multi-ethnic classes. We explored what combination of student characteristics and student appraisals of the school context was related to higher levels of the quality of cooperative learning and whether these varied by ethnocultural group. Eighteen hundred students were clustered into four profiles specifying the characteristic levels of language proficiency, goal preferences, social resources and school/ peer identification/alienation. Four student profiles were identified; a schooldisaffected, a weak communication/school bonding, a school-adjusted and a frustrated profile. Students that were grouped in the school-adjusted profile showed the highest scores on CL. This profile was characterized by clear goals, high perceived availability of social support and high scores on school and peer identification. The school-disaffected profile had the lowest scores on CL. This profile was characterized by no clear goals, a lack of social resources and peer/school identification. Students from different backgrounds were disproportionately distributed. The weak communication profile was characteristic of Caribbean students and the school-adjusted profile was characteristic of the Dutch.
Some Physicochemical Properties of Cashew Nut (Anacardium Occidentale) and Palm Kernel (Elaeis Guineensis) Oil using Straight Run Gasoline

In this study, vegetable oil were extracted from cashew nut and palm kernel seeds using straight run gasoline and the oil was assessed for some physicochemical properties. The official standard methods of analysis gave the following results for both cashew nut and palm kernel oil respectively: Colour (24.6Y, 6.7R, 0.7B, 21.0Y, 5.0R 1.4B), specific gravity (0.96, 0.91), melting point (320C, 260C) moisture content (0.00%, 0.55%) fatty acid (5.4% Oleic, 5.9% lauric acid), acid value (10.7% Oleic acid, 10.7% lauric acid), saponification value (137mg KOH/g oil, 249mg KOH/g oil) peroxide value (7.95meq Peroxide/kg, 4.36 meq peroxide/kg) and iodine value (41.3mg iodine/100g. 20.6mg iodine/100g). The results showed that straight run gasoline can compete favorably with other solvents used in the extraction of vegetable oils. KeywordsCashew nut, palm kernel, straight run gasoline.
DINKS, DEWKS & Co. Marriage, Fertility and Childlessness in the US∗

Along with modern family lifestyles, came given caricaturing names: couples choosing to be childless have been denoted as DINKS, for “double incomes no kids”, and couples with children as DEWKS, for “dually employed with kids”. In our theory, we distinguish the decision to have children from the choice of the number of children, and explain marriage, childlessness, and fertility as a function of men’s and women’s wages. The deep parameters of the model are identified from the 1990 US Census. The quantitative model allows to measure voluntary and involuntary childlessness from the data, and to understand the following facts: first, single women are more childless than married but, when mothers, their fertility is close to the one of married mothers, second, childlessness exhibits a U-Shaped relationship with education for both single and married women, and third, there is a hump-shaped relationship between marriage rates and education levels.
Variabilidad iónica y características tróficas del embalse de Abreus, Cuba

Ionic variability and trophic characteristics of the Abreus reservoir, Cuba The Abreus reservoir is located in the Cienfuegos province, in mid-southern Cuba. It was built in 1986 for irrigation purposes but at present it is also used for industrial purposes. It is affected by agricultural, human and industrial wastes. In order to investigate the ionic variation, a temporal series of main compounds taken from a database generated from 1987 to 2005 was used. The descriptive statistics, seasonal behavior, and the relationship among variables were evaluated, and a principal component analysis was performed for data reduction. Water was slightly saline and very hard, with a high correlation among variables, which allowed them to be grouped in a new variable called “mineralization”. This new variable had a marked
Comparative Water Quality Assessment of Nembe, Bonny and Iwofe Ferry terminals in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

The study was carried out to investigate the levels of some physicochemical parameters, nutrients and trace metals in water from Iwofe, Bonny and Nembe ferry terminals. The physicochemical parameter of water (temperature, pH, salinity, conductivity, TDS and DO) were checked in-situ while the trace metals (Pb, Fe, Cd and Cr) were analysed using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS) after acid digestion. The values of trace metals (mg/L) in Bonny were 0.41 (Cd); <0.001 (Cr); 0.012 (Ni) and 0.24 (Pb)]; Iwofe were 0.13 (Cd); <0.001 (Cr), <0.001 (Ni) and 0.31(Pb)] and Nembe, were 0.43 (Cd), <0.001 (Cr), <0.001(Ni) and 0.36 (Pb). The nutrients (mg/L) in water from Iwofe: Nitrate was 2.7, Phosphate was 0.2and Sulphate was 115.5. In Bonny, Nitrate was 4.6, Phosphate was 0.6 and Sulphate was 185.2. In Nembe, Nitrate was 3.3, Phosphate was 1.5 and Sulphate ion was 187.5. The levels of cadmium and lead were higher than the permissible limits recommended by World Health Organisation (WHO) and may probably be due to municipal waste, transportation and commercial activities. Therefore, the consumption of fish and water usage from such water body may pose threat to human health.
Work Engagement of Staff Nurses and its Relation to Psychological Work Stress

Background: Working in hospitals is increasingly complex and is inherently stressful. Nurses often work in stressful and problematic practice environments that can adversely decrease their work engagement. The study aimed to assess the relationship between work engagement and psychological stress of work among hospital nurses at University and Teaching hospitals. Design: A descriptive-correlation research design was utilized. Setting: Conducted at different clinical units and departments at University and Teaching Hospitals. Subjects: A convenience sample consisted of 412 nursing staff who is working in the previous setting. Tools: A questionnaire composed of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (17item), and Psychological Work Stress Questionnaire (27item). Results: There was a negative correlation between total work engagement and total psychological work stress variable (r = -0.331 < 0.001). Conclusions: There was highly statistical difference which moderate work engagement was significantly associated with moderate psychosocial stress. There was no statistical difference between nurses working at the university hospital and teaching hospital mean scores in all parameters of work engagement and work stressors, while the only statistically significant difference was found between absorption parameter of work engagement and nurses working at two hospitals. Recommendations: It is recommended that hospital administrators must create an attractive work environment in an attempt to reduce the stress levels of work among nursing staff to increase their work engagement.
Real-Time Object Detection on an Edge Device (Final Report)

The large model size of modern Deep Learning tasks such as object detection presents challenges for model deployment on edge devices due to signiﬁcant resource constraints of the embedded hardware. In this project, we explored techniques such as loop fusion and post-training quantization in an effort to achieve real-time performance while maintaining prediction accuracy under limited computational resources. We started with a baseline model of YOLOv3 pretrained on COCO dataset and measured its prediction metrics using mean average precision(mAP) and inference time. Next, we applied transfer learning to a smaller dataset to make a comparison. Lastly, we provide a detailed analysis of experiment results, measured both on Desktop and edge environment
An Inherited Heteroplasmic Mutation in Mitochondrial Gene COI in a Patient with Prostate Cancer Alters Reactive Oxygen, Reactive Nitrogen and Proliferation

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations have been found in many cancers but the physiological derangements caused by such mutations have remained elusive. Prostate cancer is associated with both inherited and somatic mutations in the cytochrome c oxidase (COI) gene. We present a prostate cancer patient-derived rare heteroplasmic mutation of this gene, part of mitochondrial respiratory complex IV. Functional studies indicate that this mutation leads to the simultaneous decrease in cytochrome oxidation, increase in reactive oxygen, and increased reactive nitrogen. These data suggest that mitochondrial DNA mutations resulting in increased reactive oxygen and reactive nitrogen generation may be involved in prostate cancer biology.