Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deactivation properties of a high-productive vanadia-titania catalyst for oxidation of o-xylene to phthalic anhydride

The behavior of a high-productive V2O5-TiO2 (anatase) supported O 4-28 catalyst for oxidation of o-xylene to phthalic anhydride was investigated in the first three years of its exploitation in industry. By using a suitable mathematical model, an identification problem was solved and activation profiles of the catalyst along a fixed bed located in the tubes of an industrial reactor were determined. Experimental temperature regimes and yields of the main and side products for different periods of the catalyst life were used. The proper technological regimes providing for a maximum yield according to the requirements of the catalyst producer company were defined.
Albedo climatology for European land surfaces retrieved from AVHRR data (1990–2014) and its spatial and temporal analysis from green‐up to vegetation senescence

Satellite‐based, long‐term records of surface albedo characterization that accurately capture spatial and temporal patterns are essential to develop climate models and to monitor the impact of land use changes on the terrestrial energy and water balance. This study presents the first Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) and albedo data set derived from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Local Area Coverage reflectance data acquired on board National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Meteorological Operational platforms from 1990 to 2014 over Europe. The objectives of this paper are to describe the data set's surface albedo climatology and anomalies in the visible, near‐infrared, and shortwave broadbands for the growing season months of May to September in order to facilitate utilization of the data by the climate modeling communities. The results demonstrate that the AVHRR BRDF and albedo data have temporal and spatial patterns that are appropriate for the underlying predominant land cover type and accurately reflect the associated climate variation. Visible and near‐infrared broadband albedo anomalies are found to be contrasting in most years, and their spatial distributions depict responses of vegetation to climate events (e.g., heat waves). Visible albedo of crops and near‐infrared albedo of pastures show a higher interannual variation than respective albedos of other snow‐free land covers, while the interannual standard deviations are found to be lower than 0.015. Our findings indicate the importance of taking into account the spectrally distinct variability of surface albedo when analyzing its complex spatiotemporal dynamics in climate‐related research.
Motivations and Constraints of Meat Avoidance

Reducing the consumption of meat can make a significant contribution to sustainable development. However, at least in Western societies with their already rather high levels of per-capita meat consumption, only a minority of consumers reduces meat intake by following a vegetarian or plant-based diet. To arrive at a differentiated understanding of the conditions of meat avoidance, we empirically assess the importance of a broad set of specific motivations and constraints previously discussed in the literature, including specific benefits, particular constraints, social norms, and a vegetarian self-identity. The analysis is based on a random sample of students at the university of Zurich (Switzerland)—a social group exhibiting a rather high prevalence of plant-based diets and vegetarianism. Researching this young and educated population sheds light on the motivational underpinnings of consumer segments especially willing to reduce meat intake. Data were collected in November and December 2016. We found that a vegetarian self-identity, both injunctive and descriptive social norms, and convenience are the most important direct determinants of meat avoidance among this young and highly educated consumer segment. Furthermore, the results suggest that a vegetarian self-identity mediates the effects of ethical, health-related, and environmental benefits, taste as a constraint and partially the injunctive norm. Pecuniary costs of a vegetarian diet are not significantly correlated with meat avoidance.
The role of gut microbiota in selected neuropsychiatric disorders

The gut microbiota consists of multiple microorganisms including bacteria, viruses and fungi and is referred to as the largest organ of the human body. The relationship between the host and its microbiota is of a mutualistic kind. In physiological conditions, microbiota produce vitamins, enable harvesting energy from undigested carbohydrates and ensure valid functioning of host immunity. The complicated network of connections and signalling, the so called cross-talk, warrants the metabolic and immunological homeostasis of the host. There is emerging evidence that the microbiota is the key component of the gut-brain axis, and its composition provides undisturbed functioning of the central nervous system (CNS) through various mechanisms, including neuronal pathways, production of bacterial metabolites and immune mediators. Alteration in gut microbiota has been linked to an occurrence of various neuropsychiatric disorders, i.e. autism, schizophrenia and depression. The gut-brain axis is the subject of many preclinical and clinical studies, as it is assumed that the insight into the underlying mechanisms of these complex interactions could be beneficial in development of novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of neuropsychiatric conditions. This review summarizes literature regarding the gut-brain axis, its functioning and its role in the pathogenesis of selected neuropsychiatric illnesses as well as describes possible therapeutic approaches.
PROFESSIONAL PROFILES AND PERSONALITY TRAITS TOWARDS SOCIAL NETWORK TEAM BUILDING

Today’s increasing hurriedness in our way of life along with technology advances demand from businesses to react always in a faster mode, while maintaining or, better yet, improving the quality of their products and services. Towards that objective, businesses can gain benefits by employing redefined team-building processes through which teams will be generated in a more cohesive and efficient manner. Aiming at forming productive and effective teams, we present PROTEAS, a framework where professional profiles and personality traits are both taken into account in the teambuilding process. The professional portrait of users is drawn from their LinkedIn accounts, while hints for their personality are obtained by a well-defined questionnaire based on the Big Five Factor Model. The significance of personality is substantiated by recent research work where it has been proven that personality traits can play a vital role in group dynamics. Motivated by the latter, PROTEAS defines a series of variables where characteristics of team members (e.g. skills, education) are combined with personality traits towards identifying candidate teams. All candidates are evaluated via a weight-based algorithm which calculates pair-wise similarities among teams’ members and ranks the teams accordingly at the end. To assess the effectiveness of PROTEAS an academic setting has been chosen and through the experimentation a number of interesting observations occurred which are analogous to those of similar researches, confirming the significance of personality and professional compatibility between team members.
Revealing the grain structure of graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition

The physical processes occurring in the presence of disorder: point defects, grain boundaries, etc. may have detrimental effects on the electronic properties of graphene. Here we present an approach to reveal the grain structure of graphene by the selective oxidation of defects and subsequent atomic force microscopy analysis. This technique offers a quick and easy alternative to different electron microscopy and diffraction methods and may be used to give quick feedback on the quality of graphene samples grown by chemical vapor deposition.
Keep it simple: estimation strategies for ordered response models with fixed effects

By running Monte Carlo simulations, we compare different estimation strategies of ordered response models in the presence of non-random unobserved heterogeneity. We find that very simple binary recoding schemes deliver parameter estimates with very low bias and high efficiency. Furthermore, if the researcher is interested in the relative size of parameters the simple linear fixed effects model is the method of choice.
Effects of Supplementation with Increasing Levels of Energy Concentrate on the Productive Response and Ruminal Digestion of Dairy Cows Grazing Lucerne Pasture

The aim of the study was to determine the effect of three levels of energy concentrate intake on dry matter (DM) and energy intake, milk yield and composition, rumen environment and pasture neutral detergent fiber (NDF) digestion. Twelve Holstein multiparous cows in early lactation (69.0 ± 5 days postpartum) producing 32.8 (±4.0) kg milk were assigned to three treatments at (kg/cow day) 3.5 (T3.5), 7.0 (T7.0) and 10.5 (T10.5) kg concentrate in a 3 × 3 Latin Square design. Parameters of ruminal environment and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) digestion were obtained using 3 additional rumen cannulated cows. Concentrate was composed (as fed) by corn grain (68%), soybean meal (22%), wheat bran (8%) and a vitamin-mineral premix including monensin and thoroughly consumed. Yields (kg/cow day-1) of milk, 4% fat corrected milk (4% FCM 4%) and energy corrected milk (ECM) resulted higher (p < 0.05) in T7.0 (29.6, 26.1 and 25.7) compared to T3.5 (27.7, 24.5 and 24.2) but similar to those obtained in T10.5 (30.6, 26.2 and 26.0). Milk protein yield increased linearly (p < 0.01) from 0.82 to 0.92 kg/cow day-1 without effects on yield of milk fat. Concentrations (g/100 g) of milk fat (3.19), protein (2.97), total solids (11.75), non-fat solids (8.60) and casein (2.40) did not differ. Milk lactose content (g/100 g) was linearly increased (p < 0.02) from 4.91 to 4.98 whereas milk urea decreased (p < 0.01) from 0.048 to 0.043. Intakes of DM and energy increased with concentrate level without effects on conversion efficiency. Changes in live weight (LW), body condition score (BCS) and concentrations of plasma non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA), glucose, insulin, somatotrophin (GH) and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-I) were not affected. Plasma urea levels resulted lower (p < 0.05) in T10.5. Ruminal pH and ammonia nitrogen (N-NH3) resulted lower (p < 0.05) in T10.5 compared to T3.5. Concentration of total volatile fatty acids (VFA) was higher (p < 0.05) in T3.5 due to the increase in acetate and butyrate while the acetate: Propionate ratio remained unchanged. Pasture NDF digestion was affected as concentrate intake increased. To increase milk protein yield and reduce concentrations of N-NH3 in rumen and milk, feeding an energy concentrate at 41% of total DM intake resulted an effective tool.
UNSTEADY NATURAL/MIXED CONVECTION IN CAVITY WITH FIXED AND MOVING RIGID BODY USING ISPH METHOD

In this study, we simulated unsteady natural/mixed convection in different boundary conditions for square cavity with rigid body motion using an incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (ISPH) method. Here, ISPH tool showed a good performance for simulating fixed and movingrigid body inside cavity with different boundary conditions. In the natural convection case, we investigated the effects of the inner sloshingbaffle, fixed and moving circular cylinder on the heat transfer and fluid flow. In the mixed convection case, free falling of circular cylinder in free surface cavity and circular cylinder inside cavity are simulated. The results from this investigation show that the presence of fixed or moving rigid body inside cavity results clear effects on the heat transfer rate and fluid flow.The heated sloshing baffle have clear effects on the heat transfer rate compared to cooled sloshing baffle and its effects appeared clearly at high Rayleigh number Ra ≥ 10 . It is found that the flow pattern and rate of heat transfer inside the cavity are affected by the current physical parameters such as Grashof number, Reynolds number and Richardson parameter in mixed convection case and Rayleigh number in natural convection case. We validated the numerical results with previous published work with a reasonable agreement. KeywordsCircular Cylinder, ISPH, Natural Convection,Mixed Convection, Square Cavity, Rigid body.
Examining Souvenir Shopping Tourists' Behaviour Across Cultures

Tourists shopping behaviour during vacation is considerably different from their daily shopping activities. Tourists perceived their shopping experience more hedonic and novel, while ordinary purchase is more utilitarian. Most tourists purchase for souvenirs when they do shopping. The objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of tourists’ behaviour for souvenir shopping across culture groups of Asian, non Asian, and Indonesian with respect to their souvenirs product category, preferred souvenirs and souvenirs selection criteria. Questionnaires were distributed to domestic and international shopping tourists in Bandung and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. 604 respondents were valid for the data analysis. The Chi-squared test indicates that there are some differences in souvenir product category and in most interesting souvenirs selected by tourists across three cultural groups. The result of multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) shows differences existed among three groups with respect to souvenir selection criteria. This finding may help Indonesian souvenir industry to supply the right souvenirs to different tourist groups. Keywords—souvenir, shopping, category, criteria, selection, culture
Role of immunotherapy in stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer: a narrative review

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is one of the main leading causes of death by cancer worldwide. Approximately one third of cases are diagnosed at stage III, whose therapeutic strategy based on multimodal treatment has reached a plateau of effectiveness. Treatment with anti-PD-1/PD-L1 [antiPD-(L)1] antibodies have been stablished in advanced stages due to their improved clinical benefit and acceptable profile of related adverse events. Lately, numerous clinical trials have been designed with diverse approaches to introduce immunotherapy into stages IIIA. The objective of this review is to discuss the different strategies that are being taken in the ongoing clinical trials, taking into account the peculiarities of stage IIIA and the tumor microenvironment. PubMed, major international conferences and clinicaltrials. gov databases were searched from Jan 1, 1990, to May 11, 2020 using the terms NSCLC, stage III, resectable, unresectable, immunotherapy, checkpoint inhibition, neoadjuvant and adjuvant. In this review we describe, in the context of stage IIIA disease, the impact of anti-PD-(L)1 and conventional therapies on the tumor microenvironment. Moreover, we describe the role of immunotherapy, through the heterogeneous landscape of stage IIIA NSCLC, summarizing ongoing clinical trials in incidental, potentially resectable, and unresectable tumors. We finally discuss the potential of PD-L1, TMB, and TCR repertoire analysis as predictive biomarkers in stage IIIA NSCLC. Initial results seem to favor neoadjuvant over adjuvant treatment, with chemoimmunotherapy combination standing out. Ongoing trials will answer whether immunotherapy can transform stage IIIA from lethal to a curable disease. Additionally, higher pathological response rates observed, open the possibility to establishing it as survival surrogate, speeding up the potential immunotherapy implementation in stage IIIA NSCLC.
What drives risk disclosure in Islamic and conventional banks? An international comparison

This paper examines and compares the relationship between risk disclosure and corporate attributes in Islamic and conventional banks. Using a comprehensive risk disclosure index covering nine dimensions, we analyse the level of risk-related disclosure (RRD) in a sample of 72 Islamic banks and 97 conventional banks across 11 countries. The RRD index shows that Islamic banks disclose less information about risk comparing to conventional banks. Listed banks, larger banks and aged bank disclose more information about risk than the others. Block holders, foreign ownership and board size affect negatively risk disclosure. However, board independence and the percentage of foreign directors in the board affect positively risk disclosure. Moreover, banks with higher Tier 1 ratio disclose less information about risk. Our results encourages regulators to improve corporate governance mechanisms in their banking systems through the optimization of ownership structure (dispersed ownership) and the board's composition in order to promote higher level of transparency and RRD.
Parameterized Rate-Distortion Stochastic Encoder

We propose a novel gradient-based tractable approach for the Blahut-Arimoto (BA) algorithm to compute the rate-distortion function where the BA algorithm is fully parameterized. This results in a rich and ﬂexible framework to learn a new class of stochastic encoders, termed PArameterized RAte-DIstortion Stochastic Encoder (PARADISE). The framework can be applied to a wide range of settings from semi-supervised, multi-task to supervised and robust learning. We show that the training objective of PARADISE can be seen as a form of regularization that helps improve generalization. With an emphasis on robust learning we further develop a novel posterior matching objec-tive to encourage smoothness on the loss function and show that PARADISE can signiﬁcantly improve interpretability as well as robustness to adversarial attacks on the CIFAR-10 and ImageNet datasets. In particular, on the CIFAR-10 dataset, our model reduces standard and adversarial error rates in comparison to the state-of-the-art by 50% and 41%, respectively without the expensive computational cost of adversarial training.
Two-component gravitational instability in spiral galaxies

We applied a criterion of gravitational instability, valid for two-component and infinitesimally thin discs, to observational data along the major axis for 7 spiral galaxies of early types. Unlike most papers, the dispersion equation corresponding to the criterion was solved directly without using any approximation. The velocity dispersion of stars in the radial direction $\sigma_R$ was limited by the range of possible values instead of a fixed value. For all galaxies, the outer regions of the disc were analyzed up to $R < 130^{"}$. The maximal and sub-maximal disc models were used to translate surface brightness into surface density. The largest destabilizing disturbance stars can exert on a gaseous disc was estimated. It was shown that the two-component criterion differs a little from the one-fluid criterion for galaxies with a large surface gas density, but it allows to explain large-scale star formation in those regions where the gaseous disc is stable. In the galaxy NGC 1167 star formation is entirely driven by the self-gravity of the stars. A comparison is made with the conventional approximations which also include the thickness effect and with models for different sound speed $c_\mathrm{g}$. It is shown that values of the effective Toomre parameter correspond to the instability criterion of a two-component disc $Q_\mathrm{eff}<1.5-2.5$. This result is consistent with previous theoretical and observational studies.
Acute toxicity of potassium permanganate to fingerlings of the Indian stinging catfish, Heteropneustes fossilis (Bloch, 1794)

The acute toxicity of KMnO4 to various fish species has been studied. A limited amount of information is available about the toxicity of KMnO4. However, there are very scanty or no data for stinging cat fish species. The present study was undertaken to ascertain the changes in hydrological parameters as well as the lethal toxicity effect on Heteropneustes fossilis fingerlings with response to Potassium Permanganate (PP) after every one hour of exposure period. Live and healthy fingerlings of Heteroneustes fossilis (mean weight, 3.7±1.30 g and mean length, 7.32±1.53 cm) and rohu, Labeo rohita (mean weight, 5.5±0.88 g and mean length, 5.36±1.0 cm) of either sex were procured from local fish market located at Naihati of West Bengal, India. They were transported in separate oxygenated polythene bags to the laboratory for experiment and were maintained in the laboratory for a minimum period of 14 days & fed with commercial pelleted feed of size 2 mm. Approximately 20 % of Water exchange was done on daily basis. Mortality during the period of acclimatization was observed which is less than two percent. The toxicity bioassays of Potassium Permanganate was conducted separately for 2h, 3h, and 4 h of exposures to the fingerlings of Heteropneustes fossilis in controlled laboratory conditions following the methods of APHA (2002) to get the 100% mortality of the test fish. Lethal Concentrations of this toxicant at which the test organisms died (LC5 to LC95) calculated by the method of Probit Analysis (Finney, 1971). Impacts of Potassium Permanganate on different hydrological parameters like Temperature, pH, Conductivity and Dissolved oxygen of test water were assessed following the methods of (APHA, 2002) during this Experiment. Data generated from the estimation of water quality parameters were analyzed statistically following the methods of (Gomez and Gomez, 1984) using Statistical Software’s (SPSS and MS Excel). Effects of Potassium Permanganate on Hydrological Parameters were also observed. In the present investigation, the role of the KMnO4 as piscicides was evaluated. It was observed that about 95% hardy fingerlings of Heteropneustes fossilis could be removed at the concentration of only 20-25mg/l KMnO4 only for 4h. From the analysis it was found out that the lethal dose of KMnO4 is comparatively very high. In addition, the toxic effect of KMnO4 retains up to several days. Therefore, it should not be recommended as an ideal Piscicide. However, it is strongly encouraged to use KMnO4 as disinfectant, therapeutants and prophylactic.
Development of a hybrid framework to characterize red lesions for early detection of diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the driving reasons for visual deficiency, affecting people globally. Currently, the ophthalmologists need to inspect enormous number of images with a specific end goal to perform mass screening of Diabetic retinopathy. In this paper, an efficient Computer aided system based on a Hybrid framework is proposed for the early diagnosis of DR by extracting the early DR lesions such as microaneurysms and hemorrhages. The development of such a screening system would decrease the workload of the ophthalmologists, as they now need to look at those retinal images that are analyzed by the system, as irregularities. The retinal images obtained from standard retinal databases and Hospitals are pre-processed followed by the detection and elimination of blood vessels, optic disk and exudates. Quick propagation Neural Network is used for training and testing of the retinal fundus images since it has the fastest execution time. Linear Classification and Multi class classification of retinal fundus images are performed for the classification and grading of retinal fundus images into normal and abnormal using Alyuda Neuro-Intelligence software. A patient database is created using MySQL to store the required details of the patient and a graphical user interface is developed for an efficient usage of the system. The execution time of the system is found to be 7-9 seconds and is tested on 270 retinal fundus images. The precision and accuracy of the algorithm is 92.5% and 93.9%, respectively.