Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
User-specific touch interfaces: a viable solution for an aging society?

ABSTRACT Touch interaction has established a dominating role in the realisation of Human–Machine Interfaces. However, to be able to use touch effectively and efficiently, users have to comply with particular prerequisites. Due to age-related changes, such as the decline of tactile accuracy and speed, especially elderly users often struggle with the touch modality. Interfaces that adapt to specific user characteristics could be a promising solution to overcome this problem. Notwithstanding the advantages of adaptive systems, perceived changes in the user interface can reduce the system's predictability and transparency. The present study compares three approaches concerning the adaptation of touch button sizes: no adaptation and adaptation with visible and invisible feedback. Results show that especially elderly users substantially benefit from an adaptive approach. Furthermore, data shows that the type of adaptation supports different usage goals. While adaption with visual feedback enables a higher interaction speed, invisible adaptation leads to a higher degree of accuracy.
Associations between Religion/Spirituality, Family Characteristics, and Mental Health among Parents with Children with Developmental Delay

ABSTRACT Introduction: Parenting children with intellectual and developmental disabilities can be stressful; however, families with religious beliefs may have positive ways of viewing their family. This study explored the associations between religious and spiritual involvement (RSI), family characteristics, parent mental health, and child adaptive and problem behaviors among 180 primary caregivers and their 3-year-old children with developmental delay (DD). Method: This study investigated if RSI was related to family characteristics, parent depression and stress, and if RSI predicted parent mental health after accounting for child and family characteristics. Results: Associations between RSI, family characteristics (parent age, education, income) and parenting stress, but not depression, were found. RSI did not predict parent mental health after accounting for relevant child and family characteristics. Conclusion: RSI may play an important role in the mental health of parents of children with developmental delay; however, other child and contextual factors relate strongly to parent wellbeing.
Overview of the isotope effects in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak

In recent years, measurements on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak and modelling performed for plasmas with hydrogen (H) and deuterium (D) as the main gas have improved our understanding of the ion mass dependencies in fusion plasmas. The observed isotope effects can be explained with established physics processes which highlight the importance of treating heat transport with coupled electron and ion heat channels. In the core of electron heated L-mode plasmas, the mass dependence of the electron–ion equipartition results in a reduction of qi/qe with increasing ion mass. Combined with higher profile stiffness in the ions compared to the electrons, this results in improved core confinement for higher ion masses. At the edge of L-mode plasmas where a higher collisionality is observed, parallel electron dynamics is fundamental for turbulence. The parallel electron dynamics term in the gyrokinetic equations directly depends on mi/me , resulting in a different kinetic response with different ion mass. Higher turbulent fluxes are expected with lower ion mass. This is consistent with the difference in Lne observed in the experiment. The mass dependence of turbulent transport in the L-mode edge has direct consequences for the L–H transition. More heating power is required to enter the H-mode at lower mass ( PL-HH∼2PL-HD ). This is expected if the critical E × B shearing rate γE×B is important for the transition from L to H mode. In the H-mode pedestal, γE×B remains important to regulate the turbulent transport. The electrons do not contribute to γE×B and the enhanced equipartition for lower ion masses causes a shift from the ion channel to the electron channel in the absolute heat fluxes. Consequently, the inter edge localised mode (ELM) transport is found to be higher with lower isotope mass. This enhanced transport in H can prevent the pedestal from reaching the peeling–ballooning stability boundary with engineering parameters where D plasmas are peeling–ballooning unstable. Increasing the triangularity reduces the inter ELM transport in H stronger than in comparable D plasmas. For matched pedestal top and matched heat sources, the core heat transport is found to be similar for H and D when the fast-ion content is low. When ion temperature gradient turbulence stabilisation by fast ions becomes relevant, the mass dependent fast-ion slowing down results in higher fast-ion content in D and therefore in a reduction of ion heat transport in the core. Then, even for matched pedestals τED>τEH .
Rural Small-Scale Women Farmers and Preference for Family Size in South-East Nigeria

Among other things, fertility control in Nigeria may not be feasible without recourse to socioeconomic issues such as micro-occupation classifi cation and dominant family cultural traditions facing women and their relationship to fertility behaviour. Rural small-scale women farmers are a relatively closed group with some uniqueness for the understanding of the value of children (VOC) in socioeconomic and cultural contexts and its relationship with fertility behaviour in developing nations. This study, guided by the VOC model, focuses on determining factors for preference for family size (0-4 children) among rural small-scale women farmers in Eha-Amufun in Enugu state. 200 married women (mean age = 33.9; mean age at marriage = 24.5) from 20 agricultural co-operative societies were selected for the study. The study adopted a survey and quantitative research design. Besides the sociodemographic information of the study participants, the study elicited from the respondents information on their choice of family size, the connection of family size with their occupation and the circumstances surrounding son preference and son adoption in the family and rural contexts. The collected data were analysed using the ordinal logistic regression model. The fi ndings show that economic independence, son preference and male child adoption negates limiting family sizes to 0-4 (p<.05) however, age, formal education, children as source of labour and economic independence were positively correlated with the desire for a family size of 4 children and above. In view of the limitations of the study and the ability of the VOC model to unveil spurious factors for fertility behaviour among women, there is a need for comparative studies of rural closed groups in developing nations and their fertility behaviour.
The Effects of Biotic and Abiotic Factors on the Community Dynamics in a Mountain Subtropical Forest

From supporting wood production to mitigating climate change, forest ecosystem services are crucial to the well-being of humans. Understanding the mechanisms that drive forest dynamics can help us infer how to maintain forest ecosystem services and how to improve predictions of forest dynamics under climate change. Despite the growing number of studies exploring above ground biomass (AGB) dynamics, questions of dynamics in biodiversity and in number of individuals still remain unclear. Here, we first explored the patterns of community dynamics in different aspects (i.e., AGB, density and biodiversity) based on short-term (five years) data from a 25-ha permanent plot in a subtropical forest in central China. Second, we examined the relationships between community dynamics and biodiversity and functional traits. Third, we identified the key factors affecting different aspects of community dynamics and quantified their relative contributions. We found that in the short term (five years), net above ground biomass change (ΔAGB) and biodiversity increased, while the number of individuals decreased. Resource-conservation traits enhanced the ΔAGB and reduced the loss in individuals, while the resource-acquisition traits had the opposite effect. Furthermore, the community structure contributed the most to ΔAGB; topographic variables and soil nutrients contributed the most to the number of individuals; demographic process contributed the most to biodiversity. Our results indicate that biotic factors mostly affected the community dynamics of ΔAGB and biodiversity, while the number of individuals was mainly shaped by abiotic factors. Our work highlighted that the factors influencing different aspects of community dynamics vary. Therefore, forest management practices should be formulated according to a specific protective purpose.
An Introduction to Patterns for the Internet of Robotic Things in the Ambient Assisted Living Scenario

The Internet of Things paradigm envisions the interoperation among objects, people, and their surrounding environment. In the last decade, the spread of IoT-based solutions has been supported in various domains and scenarios by academia, industry, and standards-setting organizations. The wide variety of applications and the need for a higher level of autonomy and interaction with the environment have recently led to the rise of the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT), where smart objects become autonomous robotic systems. As mentioned in the recent literature, many of the proposed solutions in the IoT field have to tackle similar challenges regarding the management of resources, interoperation among objects, and interaction with users and the environment. Given that, the concept of the IoT pattern has recently been introduced. In software engineering, a pattern is defined as a general solution that can be applied to a class of common problems. It is a template suggesting a solution for the same problem occurring in different contexts. Similarly, an IoT pattern provides a guide to design an IoT solution with the difference that the software is not the only element involved. Starting from this idea, we propose the novel concept of the IoRT pattern. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt at pattern authoring in the Internet of Robotic Things context. We focus on pattern identification by abstracting examples also in the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) scenario. A case study providing an implementation of the proposed patterns in the AAL context is also presented and discussed.
Service Learning with a Gender Perspective: Reconnecting Service Learning with Feminist Research and Pedagogy in Sociology

Service learning (SL) is growing in our universities and in Spain. However, still much action and research are needed with a gender perspective. This article aims to evaluate an SL project that consisted of workshops in schools on gender and technology. We evaluated the experience with a mixed-methods approach and a gender perspective. This includes qualitative self-reports of 19 university students of sociology of gender as well as quantitative surveys completed by the 284 school students and 13 of their teachers. Our results indicate a great satisfaction among university students as well as the schools. This SL experience helped our university students to acquire specific knowledge regarding gender and social issues as well as several skills, especially communication, organization, empathy, critical thinking, and social and gender awareness and responsibility. Therefore, we conclude that such experiences show a great potential for learning as well as for social and gender transformations.
Effect of Grafting Methods and Dates on the Graft Take Rate of Persian Walnut in Open Field Condition

A field-based experiment was carried out in Rukum (East), Nepal, from February to June 2020, to assess the effect of different methods and dates of grafting on the graft take rate of Persian walnut (Juglans regia L.) in field condition. The experiment comprised ten treatments with combination of two factors. The two factors included the grafting dates including: 13th, 19th, and 26th of February, 4th and 11th of March and grafting methods including: outdoor grafting and bench grafting (tongue grafting in both). The experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. The findings revealed that bench grafting resulted in significantly better outputs than outdoor method for length of scion (at 30 and 60 days after grafting) and graft take rates. Bench grafting showed 44% graft take followed by outdoor grafting (38% graft take). Plants grafted on 13th and 19th of February showed statistically better results for growth performance over the other dates. Plants grafted on 19th of February showed 67% graft take with 53% saleable plants, but statistically similar to the plants grafted on 13th and 26th of February. The earliest bud burst was observed in plants grafted on 13th and 19th of February in 31 and 33 days, respectively. Bench grafting on 19th February showed significantly higher length of scion (16.4 cm) at 60 days after grafting. However, non-significant results were seen for other parameters due to the interaction. Therefore, bench grafting on 13th,19th and 26th of February led to the best graft take in Persian Walnut.Abbreviations: CV: Coefficient of Variation, LSD: Least Significant Difference, ha: hectare, mt: Metric tons, PMAMP: Prime Minister Agriculture Modernization Project, RCBD: Randomized Complete
Semi-Minimal-Pruned Hedge (SMPH) as a Climate Change Adaptation Strategy: Impact of Different Yield Regulation Approaches on Vegetative and Generative Development, Maturity Progress and Grape Quality in Riesling

The training system Semi-Minimal-Pruned Hedge (SMPH) blends features of traditional Vertical Shoot Positioning-type (VSP) trellising systems with the concept of minimal pruning. While saving labor, this training system results in relatively high crop load and a poor leaf area to fruit weight-ratio (LFR), and thus, needs to be able to ripen grapes in a cool to moderate climate. For these reasons the impact of yield regulation strategies, including (i) shoot thinning (Darwin-Rotor), (ii) biotechnological thinning (Gibberellic acid), and (iii) bunch thinning (harvest machine) were trialed in a three year study at Geisenheim, Germany between 2017 and 2019 using Riesling (Vitis vinifera L.). The average yield per vine in SMPH (5.34 ± 1.10 kg) was 61.1% higher with a narrower LFR (14.01 cm2 g−1), compared with VSP (3.32 ± 1.02 kg, LFR: 16.99 cm2 g−1). The yield was successfully reduced and LFR simultaneously increased with shoot thinning (−33.1%, LFR: 19.04 cm2 g−1), biotechnological thinning (−18.3%, LFR: 16.69 cm2 g−1) and bunch thinning (−37.3%, LFR: 21.49 cm2 g−1). Ripening was delayed in SMPH. On average, two maturity thresholds (14.1 °Brix and 18.2 °Brix) were achieved 129 GDD (seven days according to the recorded daily mean temperatures, respectively) and 269 GDD (16 days) later in non-thinned SMPH, compared to VSP. All thinning treatments accelerated maturity progress ranging from 27 GDD (two days) to 58 GDD (three days) for 14.1 °Brix and 59 GDD (three days) to 105 GDD (six days) for 18.2 °Brix. Apart from immediate benefits on the economic efficiency, the adaption of the leaf area to fruit weight ratio using SMPH holds high potential to, (i) produce grapes targeting specific wine profiles and/or (ii) reducing the velocity of ripening under conditions of climatic change.
Wearing the Pants(suit)? Gendered Leadership Styles, Partisanship, and Candidate Evaluation in the 2016 U.S. Election

Abstract Do messages that evoke a gendered leadership style affect attitudes toward well-known candidates? If so, among what sorts of voters? I show that voters’ evaluations of national politicians, including Hillary Clinton, can be influenced by presenting candidates as stereotypically masculine or feminine leaders. In two survey experiments of California registered voters (n = 1,800 each) conducted at the height of the 2016 presidential election campaign, I find that, on average, voters seemed to prefer both male and female politicians more when they were described as having feminine leadership styles. However, clear heterogeneous treatment effects occurred: Democrats, liberals, and women from all parties evaluated politicians more favorably when they were described as feminine; Republicans, conservatives, and voters for Donald Trump evaluated the same candidates less favorably when described as feminine. The findings have implications for scholarship that links gender stereotyping, partisanship, and ideology to voter behavior.
Back to School: The Effect of School Visits During COVID-19 on COVID-19 Transmission

Schools across the United States and the world have been closed in an effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. However, the effect of school closure on COVID-19 transmission remains unclear. We estimate the causal effect of changes in the number of weekly visits to schools on COVID-19 transmission using a triple difference approach. In particular, we measure the effect of changes in county-level visits to schools on changes in COVID-19 diagnoses for households with school-age children relative to changes in COVID-19 diagnoses for households without school-age children. We use a data set from the first 46 weeks of 2020 with 130 million household-week level observations that includes COVID-19 diagnoses merged to school visit tracking data from millions of mobile phones. We find that increases in county-level in-person visits to schools lead to an increase in COVID-19 diagnoses among households with children relative to households without school-age children. However, the effects are small in magnitude. A move from the 25th to the 75th percentile of county-level school visits translates to a 0.3 per 10,000 household increase in COVID-19 diagnoses. This change translates to a 3.2 percent relative increase. We find larger differences in low-income counties, in counties with higher COVID-19 prevalence, and at later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Toward resolving disparate accounts of the extent and magnitude of nitrogen fixation in the Eastern Tropical South Pacific oxygen deficient zone

Examination of dinitrogen (N2) fixation in the Eastern Tropical South Pacific oxygen deficient zone has raised questions about the range of diazotrophs in the deep sea and their quantitative importance as a source of new nitrogen globally. However, technical considerations in the deployment of stable isotopes in quantifying N2 fixation rates have complicated interpretation of this research. Here, we report the findings of a comprehensive survey of N2 fixation within, above and below the Eastern Tropical South Pacific oxygen deficient zone. N2 fixation rates were measured using a robust 15N tracer method (bubble removal) that accounts for the slow dissolution of N2 gas and calculated using a conservative approach. N2 fixation was only detected in a subset of samples (8 of 125 replicated measurements) collected within suboxic waters (< 20 μmol O2 kg−1) or at the oxycline. Most of these detectable rates were measured at nearshore stations, or where surface productivity was high. These findings support the hypothesis that low oxygen/high organic carbon conditions favor non‐cyanobacterial diazotrophs. Nevertheless, this study indicates that N2 fixation is neither widespread nor quantitatively important throughout this region.
K–Ar geochronology of orogenic gold mineralization in the Vangtat gold belt, southeastern Laos: Effect of excess argon in hydrothermal quartz

The Thongkai‐Ok gold deposit is one of several actively mined deposits in a newly discovered orogenic gold belt in southeastern Laos. At a district scale, gold mineralization occurs within the Vangtat shear zone, one of the tectonic structures of the Poko suture zone that marks the collision between the Indochina Terrane and the Kontum Massif in southern Laos‐central Vietnam. High grade gold mineralization is associated with quartz–pyrite–white mica veins and silicified zones up to 10 m thick, hosted by strongly deformed and sheared pelitic schist. Lower‐grade gold mineralization occurs in a graphite–carbonate–quartz–sulfide hydrothermal alteration envelope that grades into sub‐economic/barren altered pelitic schist. The objective of this study is to establish the age of mineralization in the Vangtat orogenic gold belt by K–Ar dating of hydrothermal white mica in the gold‐bearing quartz‐sulfide veins in order to better understand its spatial and temporal relation to other gold deposits in Southeast Asia and to regional tectonic events. Three‐white mica bearing quartz–pyrite samples were collected from the open pit at Thongkai‐Ok. The dominant white mica phase in the samples is 2M1 muscovite and the K2O content measured by electron microprobe techniques in individual white mica crystals ranged between 8.61 and 9.79 wt%. Two of the three vein samples were separated by gravity settling into four size fractions, <2, 2–4, 4–10, and 10–40 μm, respectively. The results of potassium measurements by flame photometry in the K–Ar sample aliquots show a range in potassium content which reflects the amount of quartz present in each sample as an impurity. With one exception, a correlation was observed between potassium concentration in the samples, including the size fraction separates, and the calculated K–Ar age. The large range of calculated ages, from 348 to 206 Ma, is interpreted to reflect excess argon contained in fluid inclusions in the hydrothermal quartz present in the analyzed samples. We interpret the youngest age of the quartz‐free samples, 206 ± 4 Ma, as closest to the age of mineralization in the Vangtat gold belt. The age could be as young as ~170 Ma if the age versus potassium content relation is extrapolated to the average potassium content of white mica in the samples analyzed.
A Holocene history of monkey puzzle tree (pehuén) in northernmost Patagonia

Although it is established that climate and fire have greatly influenced the long‐term ecosystem dynamics of Patagonia south of 40°S, the environmental history from northernmost Patagonia (37–40°S), where endemic and endangered monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) occurs, is poorly known. Here we ask: (a) What is the Holocene vegetation and fire history at the north‐eastern extent of A. araucana forest? (b) How have climate and humans influenced the past distribution of A. araucana?
Examining Students’ Intention to Use Augmented Reality in a Project-Based Geometry Learning Environment

The aim of this study is to examine factors that affect secondary students’ behavioural intention to use GeoGebra Augmented Reality to support a project-based geometry learning environment. To achieve this purpose, we adopted technology acceptance model (TAM). A total of 54 students from two lower secondary schools in Indonesia were involved in this study. The students enrolled in secondary mathematics classes and attended six lessons of a project-based geometry learning assisted with GeoGebra Augmented Reality. Descriptive analysis, multiple regression and independent T-test were employed to analysed data. The findings of this study suggested that GeoGebra Augmented Reality was well accepted by the secondary school students. It was found that perceived of usefulness (PU) is the strongest factor of students’ behavioural intention (BI). Contrary to the previous studies, this study showed that attitude toward using (AT) has no direct effect on behaviour intention (BI). We elaborate how the findings of this study could improve the understanding of AR acceptance by students and highlight important guideline for educational AR developers, researchers, and educators.