Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detection and Public Health Risk of Salmonella Species Contaminating Different Water Sources in Keffi, Nigeria

This study was carried out to detect Salmonella species and evaluate the public health implications from different water sources in Keffi, Central Nigeria. A total of 100 water samples, 25 each of well, public borehole, tap and sachet water were collected from different locations within the Metropolis and analysed using standard microbiological techniques. Of which 38(38.0%) of the samples were contaminated with Salmonella species. The frequency of isolation shows that well water is the most contaminated, 18(72.0%), followed by borehole water, 10(40.0%), tap water, 7(28.0%), while sachet water is the least contaminated with an isolation rate of 3(12.0%). The total bacterial count ranged between 1.0–6.2 ×103 cfu/ml, while the Salmonella/Shigella count ranged from 0.2–2.8×103 cfu/ml. The total bacterial count of 6.2×103 cfu/ml was recorded for well water, 2.2×103 cfu/ml for borehole water, 1.2×103 cfu/ml for tap water and 1.0×103 cfu/ml for sachet water, while highest Salmonella/Shigella count of 2.8×103 cfu/ml was recorded for well water. The pH for well and borehole water were slightly acidic, although that of tap (7.0) and sachet water (7.5) were within permissible limits. The temperature for the water samples were between 25°C–28°C. Meanwhile, turbidity was highest for well water (0.36NTU), in the same vain, total dissolved solid was highest for well water (16.12 mg/l) and lowest for sachet water (0.02 mg/l); while hardness of water was highest amongst the well water samples analysed with a measurement of 48.14 mg/l. The chemical properties of the water samples analysed showed the highest measurements of 6.80 mg/l, 0.78 mg/l and 3.48 mg/l of magnesium, iron and sulphate for well water respectively. Consequently, the presence of microbial contaminants particularly enteric pathogens is indicative of faecal contamination and this can lead to adverse health effects, including gastrointestinal illness and typhoid fever. Therefore, water in Keffi should be properly treated before consumption while boreholes and wells should be dug far away from latrines and septic tanks so as to avoid cross-contamination by faecal materials.
Applying blended synchronous teaching and learning for flexible learning in higher education: an action research study at a university in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Due to the challenges of all-round development, higher-education students are increasingly demanding more flexible learning that goes beyond the on-campus/online dichotomy. However, university students miss learning opportunities because of the conflict of time and space. Blended learning is an effective way to create more learning opportunities and support university students’ flexible learning, but its implementation varies across contexts. This study proposed an alternative blended teaching and learning approach to solve practical problems defined in the context of a traditional classroom in a university in Hong Kong when students pursue flexible learning and global learning. A three-round action research approach was used to improve the effects of blended synchronous teaching and learning. Data collection and analysis in each round showed that the students positively rated the implementation of blended learning according to their needs, the quality of the technologies adopted, and the benefits gained. This blended synchronous teaching and learning mode was structured based on the implementation of different actions in three rounds, bridging the gap between research and practice in blended synchronous learning.
Brain Aging in HIV-1 Infection

It has been shown that patients carrying HIV-1 accumulate damage to cells and tissues that are not directly infected by the virus itself (e.g., neurons). Importantly, these include changes known as HIV-Associated Neurodegenerative Disorder (HAND) leading to the loss of neuronal functions. HAND is an outstanding problem in the clinical management of HIV-1 patients because suppression of infectious virus by c-ART does not completely block neurodegenerative changes. Neuropsychological studies disclose cognitive alteration (such as loss of Spatial and Declarative Memory) in a substantial proportion of HIV-1 infected patients, and analysis of post-mortem brain tissues isolated from HIV-1 patients treated with c-ART show signs of neurodegeneration. In the absence of HIV-1 infection of neurons, several mechanisms have been proposed for HAND, including indirect inflammatory effects in the CNS and direct effects of viral proteins (e.g., gp120) shed from activated HIV-1-infected cells. The fact that these viral proteins enter the neurons through several pathways suggests the presence of many competing mechanisms that can contribute to HAND, each of which has its advocates. Their relative contributions to clinical disease in vivo remain to be sorted out, and this is an outstanding problem in HIV research. This chapter will shed some light on the mechanisms used by HIV-1 leading to memory impairments and premature brain aging.
Comparisons of echo-integration performance from two multiplexed echosounders

A time-series of acoustically derived aquatic biomass estimates relies on the acoustic equipment maintaining the same performance throughout the time-series. This is normally achieved through a regular calibration process. When the acoustic equipment changes it is necessary to verify that the new equipment produces a similar result to the old equipment, otherwise an unknown bias can be introduced into the time-series. The commonly used Simrad EK60 echosounder has been superseded by the Simrad EK80 echosounder and the performance of these two scientific echosounder systems was compared using interleaved pinging through the same transducer. This was repeated for multiple transducer frequencies (18, 38, 70, 120, and 200 kHz) and from two vessels (Norway’s G.O. Sars in the North Sea and The Netherlands’ Tridens in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean). The broadband facility of the EK80 was not used. Regressions of the grid-integrated backscatter from the two systems were highly linear. The difference in area backscattering coefficients in typical survey conditions was less than 0.6 dB (12%) at the main survey frequency of 38 kHz. In most conventional fish acoustic surveys, the observed differences are less than other sources of survey bias and uncertainty.
Investigating Pedagogical Digital Game-Based Phrasal Verb Learning Formally vs. Informally Among Iranian EFL Learners

The present study investigated formal versus informal implementation of pedagogical digital games to improve phrasal verb knowledge. One hundred and one intermediate students took part in this mixed-method, quasi-experimental research. The sample was divided into two treatment groups. ANCOVA was used for quantitative data analysis. Qualitative data analysis was based on students’ questionnaire data. The results revealed that digital game play for 6 weeks within formal classroom setting outperformed informal learning where students had to apply their extended degree of autonomous play and the relevant skills. The mean score difference is 3.45. The majority of students from formal and informal groups prefer formal context of learning. Interaction with peers is more productive between peers, higher levels of satisfaction when they encountered difficulties and significantly constructive in the formal context. Moreover, contrary to previous findings, no significant difference was found between Post Literal and Post Figurative mean scores. Thus both literal and figurative phrasal verb categories improve evenly in a digital game play context and it fosters the interpretation of the previously difficult to comprehend figurative verbs in traditional learning context and mean score for play was considerably higher in formal group and performed better compared to the informal game group.
The SEDIGISM survey: molecular clouds in the inner Galaxy

We use the 13CO (2–1) emission from the SEDIGISM (Structure, Excitation, and Dynamics of the Inner Galactic InterStellar Medium) high-resolution spectral-line survey of the inner Galaxy, to extract the molecular cloud population with a large dynamic range in spatial scales, using the Spectral Clustering for Interstellar Molecular Emission Segmentation (scimes) algorithm. This work compiles a cloud catalogue with a total of 10 663 molecular clouds, 10 300 of which we were able to assign distances and compute physical properties. We study some of the global properties of clouds using a science sample, consisting of 6664 well-resolved sources and for which the distance estimates are reliable. In particular, we compare the scaling relations retrieved from SEDIGISM to those of other surveys, and we explore the properties of clouds with and without high-mass star formation. Our results suggest that there is no single global property of a cloud that determines its ability to form massive stars, although we find combined trends of increasing mass, size, surface density, and velocity dispersion for the sub-sample of clouds with ongoing high-mass star formation. We then isolate the most extreme clouds in the SEDIGISM sample (i.e. clouds in the tails of the distributions) to look at their overall Galactic distribution, in search for hints of environmental effects. We find that, for most properties, the Galactic distribution of the most extreme clouds is only marginally different to that of the global cloud population. The Galactic distribution of the largest clouds, the turbulent clouds and the high-mass star-forming clouds are those that deviate most significantly from the global cloud population. We also find that the least dynamically active clouds (with low velocity dispersion or low virial parameter) are situated further afield, mostly in the least populated areas. However, we suspect that part of these trends may be affected by some observational biases (such as completeness and survey limitations), and thus require further follow up work in order to be confirmed.
Enhancing Chickpea Productivity through Cluster Frontline Demonstration

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important cool season pulse crop cultivated during rabi season under black soils. Its grain contains protein (22 %), carbohydrate (63 %), fat (4.5%) and appreciable quantity of minerals such as calcium and iron (Miao et al., 2009). Being a legume crop, it improves soil fertility by fixing the atmospheric nitrogen upto 100 kg/ha in the root nodules through the process of symbiotic nitrogen fixation (Schwenke et al., 1998). It serves as a good fodder and green manure crop (Namvar et al., 2011). In India it is cultivated in an area of about 106 lakh hectares with an annual production of 11.1 lakh tonnes and the productivity of 918 kg/ha (Anonymous, 2016-17). It contributes 47% of the total pulse production and about 40% of total pulse growing area in the country. In Tamil Nadu it is cultivated in an area about 0.07 lakh hectares with the production of 0.04 lakh tonnes and with the average productivity of 649 kg/ha. International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 9 Number 5 (2020) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes and practices in a conflict affected area of the South West Region of Cameroon

Introduction since December 2019, the world is experiencing, the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the Virus SARS-CoV-2. It is feared that the pandemic maybe more devastating in conflict affected areas in the world. This study assessed the knowledge, attitudes and practices with regard to the COVID-19 in Buea municipality, Cameroon. Methods this was a cross-sectional study carried out in communities selected from 5 health areas of the Buea Health District. A questionnaire was administered to collect data on the knowledge, attitudes and practices on COVID-19. The knowledge was measured using a 26-points Liker scale on awareness, mode of transmission, clinical manifestation, site of the infection and prevention. The data was analyzed in SPSS version 25. Results of the 545 particpants who consented, 21.9% had a correct knowledge of COVID-19, 43.8% had intermediate knowledge, 34.4% had poor knowledge and 11.93% had no knowledge. Majority of the participants (73.3%) knew they were at risk of contacting the infection. They were aware that cleaning and disinfecting the environment (78.8%), reducing contact with animals (56.3%) could help prevent the infection. Even though participants knew about the face mask (93.5%) and hand sanitizers (88.8%), only 21.7% and 32.9% had purchased them respectively. Few participants reported that they will go to a man of God (6.0%), native doctor (3.5%) and auto-medication (25.8%) if infected. Conclusion There is still a knowledge gap in the Buea population with respect to COVID-19. The population is aware of the disease and preventive measures, but few have taken steps to procure essential tools for the prevention. There is need to intensify sensitization to fill the knowledge gap the population has with regards to COVID-19.
Skin Lesion Classification Via Combining Deep Learning Features and Clinical Criteria Representations

Skin lesion is a severe disease globally. Early detection of melanoma in dermoscopy images significantly increases the survival rate. However, the accurate recognition of skin lesion is extremely challenging manually visualization. Hence, reliable automatic classification of skin lesions is meaningful to improve pathologists’ accuracy and efficiency. In this paper, we proposed a two-stage method to combine deep learning features and clinical criteria representations to address skin lesion automated diagnosis task. Stage 1 - feature encoding: Modified deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs, in this paper, we used Dense201 and Res50) were fine-tuned to extract rich image global features. To avoid hair noisy, we developed a lesion segmentation U-Net to mask out the decisive regions and used the masked image as CNNs inputs. In addition, color features, texture features and morphological features were exacted based on clinical criteria; Stage 2 - features fusion: LightGBM was used to select the salient features and model parameters, predicting diagnosis confidence for each category. The proposed deep learning frameworks were evaluated on the ISIC 2018 dataset. Experimental results show the promising accuracies of our frameworks were achieved.
Pengembangan Multimedia Interaktif Berbasis Pendekatan SETS Untuk Meningkatkan Kemampuan Berpikir Kritis Siswa Sekolah Dasar

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kelayakan multimedia interaktif berbasis pendekatan SETS untuk meningkatkan kemampuan berpikir kritis siswa kelas IV sekolah dasar yang meliputi kevalidan, kepraktisan dan keefektifan. Penelitian ini menggunakan model 4D. Model pengembangan ini terdiri dari empat tahapan; pendefinisian (define), perancangan (design), pengembangan (develop), dan penyebaran (disseminate). Subjek penelitian ini adalah 20 siswa kelas IV SDN Klakahrejo I/578 Kota Surabaya. Uji coba dilakukan dengan menggunakan One Group Pretest-Posttest Design. Pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui validasi, pengamatan, tes, dan angket respon siswa. Data hasil penelitian yang diperoleh sebagai berikut: (1) kevalidan multimedia interaktif berbasis SETS yang dikembangkan mendapat skor rata-rata 3,75 dengan kategori sangat valid; (2) kepraktisan multimedia interaktif berbasis SETS dapat dilihat dari keterlaksanaan RPP dengan skor rata-rata keterlaksanaan RPP sebesar 3,70 berkategori sangat baik dan aktivitas siswa yang mengalami peningkatan dari pertemuan ke pertemuan. ; (3) keefektifan multimedia interaktif berbasis SETS dapat dilihat dari respon siswa yang positif dan sebagian besar skor N-Gain yang diperoleh menunjukkan kategori tinggi. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian, dapat disimpulkan bahwa multimedia interaktif berbasis pendekatan sets untuk meningkatkan kemampuan berpikir kritis siswa kelas IV sekolah dasar telah valid, praktis, dan efektif.
Increasing of Posture Changes as Indicator of Imminent Calving in Dairy Cows

The careful monitoring of cows helps minimise pain and distress during calving; moreover, knowing the exact time of birth is important to ensure timely assistance and the adequate ingestion of colostrum by the calf. However, direct visual observation is time-consuming, and the continuous presence of an observer during stage two of calving can disturb cows. Video cameras or accelerometers recording the behaviour of cows can be integrated in systems using image analysis or locomotive activity to alert the farmer as to when calving is imminent. However, alerting systems require the input of benchmark information about behaviours and changes in behaviours that can be predictive of the time of calving. Eight cows in a calving barn were continuously video-monitored. The recordings of the 24 h before delivery were analysed by instantaneous time sampling to identify the behaviours associated with an imminent birth. The same were collected in an ethogram including lying, standing, walking, turning the head towards the abdomen, eating, ruminating, drinking, sniffing the ground, allogrooming, self-grooming, and posture-changing. In our conditions, the only behaviour that was significantly influenced by the distance to delivery was posture-changing (p < 0.0001). Two h before the delivery, the proportion of posture changes was different from all of the hourly proportions measured from −24 to −3 h relative to delivery (p < 0.005), resulting in 3.6 times the average of the previous 22 h relative to delivery. An increase of posture changes may be an indicator of calving approaching, but further studies are needed to input benchmark values in alerting systems.
Prevalence of autoimmune thyroiditis in patients with Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 (DMT2) in Wasit Province, Iraq

This study aims for estimate the association between diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2) and thyroid dysfunction (TD). For this purpose, a total of 161 diabetic patients [mellitus-type 2 (diabetic group)] and 40 healthy adults (control group), attended to the Al-Zahra Teaching Hospital (Al-Kut, Wasit, Iraq) during January to March 2020, were subjected for data collection and blood draining. Concerning to demographic data (sex, age, familial history, hypertension, residence, and time since diagnosis) respectively, there a higher significance (P 50 years than groups of 30-40 and 40-50 years, families having a history to diabetes than families without, non-hypertension group hypertension group, diabetic urban than rural patients, and moderately diagnosed diabetic patients than newly and elderly diabetic patients. To estimate the parameters of blood glucose and thyroid gland in newly diagnosed diabetic patients, significant increases (P 0.05) T3, T4, TSH, and Tg-Ab. In moderately diabetic patients, there significant elevation (P 0.05) were detected in T3 and TSH. For elderly patients, diabetic significant increases (P 0.05) in T3, T4, and TSH. Among the diabetic groups, FBS value of newly diabetic patients was appeared more significance (P 0.05) was detected between the values of HbA1c, T3, and TSH parameters of newly, moderately, and elderly diabetic patients.
Phylogenetic and spatial analyses suggest minimum temperature as an environmental filter for turtle communities

This study aims to evaluate phylogenetic structure of turtle communities and their potential correlates on a global scale. More specifically, we tested whether cold temperatures and low precipitation could act as potential environmental filters of turtle communities and whether the dispersal limitation caused by altitudinal range could generate phylogenetic clustered patterns in these communities.
Effect of Arachis glabrata Levels in the Diet on Reproduction and Pre-Weaning Growth Performance of Guinea Pigs ( Cavia porcellus L) Fed on Panicum maximum

In order to evaluate the level of inclusion of Arachis glabrata in the diet of Guinea pig (Cavia porcellus L.) fed to Panicum maximum on the reproduction and pre-weaning growth performance, trials were conducted at the Laboratory of Animal Production and Nutrition (LAPRONAN) (FASA) of the University of Dschang between December 2016 and April 2017. For this purpose, 56 adult guinea pigs of local breed including 48 females and 8 males all 5 months old about and weighing on average 400 ± 50g were used. These animals were randomly distributed into 4 homogeneous lots of 12 animals and crossed with a ratio of 2 males for 12 females in a factorial design. Animals were submitted to iso-nitrogen rations (17% protein) associated with P. maximum. The animals in the control group received P. maximum at will and one concentrated food not containing Arachis glabrata (PMA0), while those of the other lots received in addition to P. maximum a concentrated food containing respectively 10 (PMA10), 15 (PMA15) and 20% of Arachis glabrata (PMA20). The results of this study show that the inclusion of the increasing level of Arachis glabrata had no significant effect (P> 0.05) on litter size. The rate of stillbirth was 9.10% in the animals receiving the ration containing 20% of Arachis glabrata compared to 0% for the other diets. The highest pre- and post-weaning mortality rates (30 and 33.33%, respectively) were recorded in animals receiving 20% and 10% rations of Arachis glabrata, respectively. The ration containing 10% of Arachis glabrata yielded the best fertility (75%), and net fertility (108.33%). Inclusion of 20% of Arachis glabrata in the diet resulted in the highest mean weights (P <0.05) in lactating females from birth to weaning. At birth and weaning, the highest average weight of piglets was obtained in control batch of animals. In terms of total gain (TG) and average daily gain (ADG), the ration containing 20% of Arachis glabrata recorded the most significant (P <0.05) values (105.36g and 5.20g / d respectively) at weaning. Thus, Arachis glabrata can be included up to 20% in the ration as a source of protein for improving production performances of guinea pigs in a farm environment.
A Comparison of Cuff-less Blood Pressure Estimation Between Pulse Arrival Time and Pulse Transit Time Using Photoplethysmography

Nowadays, there are various continuous cuffless methods to measure blood pressure (BP) and currently being interested in numerous researches. One intriguing approach is pulse arrival time (PAT) and pulse transit time (PTT) based technique. In this study, we aim to observe and compare the systolic blood pressure (SBP) prediction potential between PAT and PTT. PAT measurement was carried out using an electrocardiogram (ECG) and a finger photoplethysmogram (PPG). PTT was measured by the time interval between the peak of two-channel PPG, one placing above the elbow and another is at the index finger. Four volunteers were asked to perform a running exercise to raise the blood pressure, which causes PAT and PTT variation. The results show that PAT is closely related to SBP from three out of four subjects, giving MAD accuracy level < 7 mmHg according to IEEE std 1708™-2014. However, PTT shows a weak relationship with SBP. In conclusion, cuff-less PAT-based BP estimation shows a promise for clinical applications and could be used widely in the future with further developments.