Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring online study behaviors of adult learners: A case study focusing on teachers’ professional development program

It requires a lot of energy to support the adoption of online learning by adult learners. Thus, the question of how online learning intersects with adult learning may provide meaningful pathways to understanding online learning per se. This study aims to understand the online study behaviors of teachers enrolled in an online Educational Technology Master’s program. This case study involved a Research Methods course, which was part of an online project for teachers. An online control list form and interviews were used as data collection tools. The results indicated that sharing, problem solving, product development, monitoring, and research were prominent activities that shape the study behaviors. While some of the behaviors in these activities indicated the reshaping of previous study behaviors, other behaviors newly appeared during the program. Characteristics of adult learners, online setting features, and the context of the projects were the main factors that influenced study behaviors. Finally, the implications for better online adult learning experiences are addressed.
FAPI-04 Uptake in Healthy Tissues of Cancer Patients in 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET/CT Imaging

Objective The aim of this study is to investigate the uptake of 68Ga-FAPI-04 in normal tissues and calculate standardized uptake values (SUVs) for various organs in the body. Methods A total of 49 patients who underwent 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET/CT were included in our study. The following organs were identified on CT images: brain, parotid, and submandibular glands, palatine tonsils, thyroid, lymph nodes (if present), breasts, lungs, thymus, left ventricle walls, mediastinal blood pool, vertebral bone marrow, liver, spleen, pancreas, stomach, small and large intestines, adrenal glands, kidneys, uterus, testes, and prostate. Median, minimum, and maximum values (max) and average (avg) values of standard uptake value (SUV) of tissues and organs were calculated. Results The accumulation of 68Ga-FAPI in normal organs showed variations. The cerebral/cerebellar cortex exhibited no 68Ga-FAPI uptake, while the scalp showed low uptake. Low uptake was also observed in the lung parenchyma, esophagus, left ventricle walls, nipple, and glandular breast tissue. In the abdominopelvic area, the pancreas exhibited low uptake, which was higher in the tail region. Low uptake was observed in the renal cortex. Intense 68Ga-FAPI uptake was observed throughout the uterus, which was higher in the corpus. There was no uptake of 68Ga-FAPI in the bone cortex and medulla. Conclusion We determined the physiological uptake and SUVmax of FAPI-04 in different tissues and organs and created a guide for researchers.
The Progress of Medical Image Semantic Segmentation Methods for Application in COVID-19 Detection

Image medical semantic segmentation has been employed in various areas, including medical imaging, computer vision, and intelligent transportation. In this study, the method of semantic segmenting images is split into two sections: the method of the deep neural network and previous traditional method. The traditional method and the published dataset for segmentation are reviewed in the first step. The presented aspects, including all-convolution network, sampling methods, FCN connector with CRF methods, extended convolutional neural network methods, improvements in network structure, pyramid methods, multistage and multifeature methods, supervised methods, semiregulatory methods, and nonregulatory methods, are then thoroughly explored in current methods based on the deep neural network. Finally, a general conclusion on the use of developed advances based on deep neural network concepts in semantic segmentation is presented.
Implementation of accrual accounting by the Indonesian central government: An investigation of social factors

Public sector accounting reforms have resulted in crucial changes in accounting reporting by the government, namely the adoption of accrual accounting in the public sector. This study looks into the social factors that led to the Indonesian central government implementing accrual accounting reform. This study adopted a quantitative approach using purposive sampling. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with PLS version 3.0 was used to analyze the data. The information for this study was gathered using a Google Form, which was used to send 70 questionnaires to government finance officials, chief accountants and auditors, and heads of accounting and auditing divisions in the Ministry of Finance. Seeing these social factors is expected to increase the effectiveness of the administration of accrual accounting implementation. The results showed that pressure from donors, pressure from the National Board of Accountants and Auditors (NBAA), political will, and audit process had an impact on the effectiveness of accrual accounting application (AAA). However, management change, regulatory matters, and a culture of transparency have no effect. In addition, the effective administration of AAA affects managerial accountability. This study implies that the effective application of accrual accounting depends on human-related concerns and culture. It is important to note that accrual accounting is more of a management reform that entails changes to bigger areas of institutional and accountability systems than merely adopting a new accounting technology.
Flap-Lag-Torsion Stability in Forward Flight

An aeroelastic stability of three-degree flap-lag-torsion blade in forward flight is examined. Quasisteady aerodynamics with a dynamic inflow model is used. The nonlinear time dependent periodic blade response is calculated using an iterative procedure based on Floquet theory. The periodic perturbation equations are solved for stability using Floquet transition matrix theory as well as constant coefficient approximation in the fixed reference frame. Results are presented for both stiff-inplane and soft-inplane blade configurations. The effects of several parameters on blade stability are examined, including structural coupling, pitch-flap and pitch-lag coupling, torsion stiffness, steady inflow distribution, dynamic inflow, blade response solution and constant coefficient approximation.
Structural Integrity of Buckled Steel Pipes

Local distortions on steel pipeline wall in the form of buckles may constitute a threat for the structural integrity of the steel pipeline. In the present paper, experimental research supported by numerical simulation is reported to investigate the structural integrity of buckled steel pipes. A series of six (6) full-scale experiments has been carried out on 6-inch X52 pipes, followed by finite element simulations. The buckled steel pipes are subjected to cyclic loading (bending or pressure) in order to estimate their residual strength and remaining fatigue life. The finite element analysis simulates the experimental procedure for each type of deformation and loading case, in order to estimate the local strain distributions at the buckled region. Based on the numerical results, fatigue life is predicted and compared with the experimental results using an appropriate defined damage factor. The results of the present study are aimed at evaluating existing guidelines and methodologies towards appropriate assessment of local wall distortions in steel pipelines.Copyright © 2015 by ASME
Worth a Thousand Words? The Usefulness of Immersive Virtual Reality for Learning in Cultural Heritage Settings

The goal of this paper is to investigate whether immersive virtual reality is suitable for learning about archaeology and the past in cultural heritage settings. To that end it presents the conclusions related to learning from the visitors' survey undertaken in 2007 by the Museology Laboratory of the University of the Aegean at the Hellenic Cosmos (the exhibition centre of the Foundation of the Hellenic World) in Athens, and contrasts these with other similar studies. This project was aimed at comparing the learning outcomes, perception and use by audiences of two different virtual reality systems and a related exhibition. It included qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data gathered through in situ observations, interviews with museum educators and face-to-face questionnaires with visitors. The results confirmed that, as previous studies have shown, virtual reality systems allow a different kind of learning, but also questioned the common believe about their advantage for children in comparison with other interpretation methods.
Heat, air and moisture transport modelling in ventilated cavity walls

Cavity walls are a widely used external wall type in north-western Europe with a good moisture tolerance in cool humid climates. In this work, a cavity wall configuration with a brick veneer outside leaf and a wood fibre board inside leaf is analysed with a newly developed coupled computational fluid dynamics–heat, air and moisture model. Drying of the outside or inside cavity leaf, both for summer and winter conditions was analysed. The new model was compared with a widely used simulation tool for building envelope analysis (WUFI®) that uses a simplified modelling approach for the convection in the cavity. The study showed that the simplified model overestimated the drying and moistening rates of the cavity wall compared to the detailed model. For both models the drying of the outer leaf was mainly determined by the outside conditions, and the outside leaf dried out mainly to the outside and not to the cavity. For the inside leaf, however the cavity ventilation was of major importance in drying. The study revealed that the simplified model could not be used to evaluate the drying potential of a ventilated cavity because it overestimated the ventilation effect systematically. The simplified model would in such case indicate lower moisture contents than in reality and consequently lower risk for mould growth, wood rot or other structural damage. Only detailed modelling of the convection in the cavity, as in the new model, leads to a correct evaluation of ventilated cavity walls.
Outcomes of Total Surgical Correction for Tetralogy of Fallot in Benghazi

Tetrology of Fallot (TOF) is the most common cyanotic congenital heart disease, accounting for 10% of all types of congenital heart disease. Despite decreased mortality rates by improvement in surgery and post-cardiac intensive care, there continues to be late postoperative complications. This study aimed to evaluate the outcomes after total repair of tetralogy of Fallot, including 44 children who underwent complete surgical repair between 2000 to 2018. Data were collected from medical records and directly from patients during their visit to the clinic, that included: history, clinical examination, gender, age at operation, results of ECG, Holter monitoring, echocardiography, cardiac catheterization, cardiac CT scan. Follow-up ranged from 6 months to18 years. Results revealed that the M/F ratio was 1.4:1. Also, two patients had a previous palliative systemic artery to PA shunt. A TAP was inserted in 22 (50%) patients. Postoperative complications were: severe PR 29%, small residual VSD 18.1%, and two patients had significant VSD which needed surgical intervention, residual RVOT 8.1%, RBBB 97.7%, There was three death (6.8%), and 36.3% of patients will need surgical intervention in the future. It was concluded that follow-ups up to adulthood to monitor potential complications are necessary. QRS duration is used for monitoring ventricular arrhythmia and sudden death. Echocardiography is a non-invasive tool in diagnosis, before and at the time of surgery, as well as in follow-ups.
Factors Influencing the Intention of MSM to Use the PrEP Intelligent Reminder System

Purpose Low adherence to medication is an important reason why pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is not effective at reducing the rate of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections among men who have sex with men (MSM). The intelligent reminder system (IRS) has been designed to improve user compliance, but the intention of MSM to use the IRS remains unclear. This study establishes a theoretical model to analyze the factors influencing their intention to use the IRS. Patients and Methods Non-probability sampling was used to recruit MSM volunteers in Chongqing and Sichuan, China, and the data were collected from MSM who had used the IRS. A model based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) was established for the data through a structural equation model, and the perceived privacy risk was considered to explore the subjects’ behavior intention. Results A total of 111 volunteers who had used the IRS filled out a questionnaire. Social influence had the greatest impact on behavior intention (β = 0.360, P < 0.001), followed by performance expectancy (β = 0.331, P < 0.001), and perceived privacy risk had a negative impact on behavior intention (β = −0.151, P = 0.040). In addition, social influence had an indirect effect on behavior intention (β = 0.182, P = 0.003) and performance expectancy played a mediating role in this indirect effect. Conclusion Developments in the IRS are required to improve its usefulness and adequately explain its role when recommending it to MSM. It is also important to improve the system’s ability to protect user privacy. Clinical evidence for the effectiveness of the IRS is conducive to its widespread use.
Optimization of transistor structure for transistor-stabilized field emitter arrays

Reliability of the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET)-stabilized field emitters at high-field operation has been assessed by comparing two different MOSFET structures. Electrical characteristics and behavior of carriers in the device structure have been investigated by means of device simulation. One structure, which is referred to as the externally connected-MOSFET emitter, exhibits an anomalous increase in drain current, which is induced by impact ionization at the drain edge. Upon evaluating the emission characteristics, it was clarified that the anomalous current increase induced by the impact ionization degraded stability and controllability of the emission current significantly. The other structure, which is referred to as the MOSFET-structured emitter, shows higher reliability with negligible effect of impact ionization.
Detecting Stealthy Malware Using Behavioral Features in Network Traffic

It is clearly in the interest of network administrators to detect hosts within their networks that are infiltrated by stealthy malware. Infected hosts (also called bots) can exfiltrate sensitive data to adversaries, or lie in wait for commands from a bot-master to forward spam, launch denial-of-service attacks, or host phishing sites, for example. Unfortunately, it is difficult to detect such hosts, since their activities are subtle and do not disrupt the network. In this thesis, we hypothesize that malware-infected hosts share characteristics in their network behaviors, which are distinct from those of benign hosts. Our approach works by aggregating “similar” network traffic involving multiple hosts. We identify key characteristics that capture basic properties of botnet operation, and that can be observed even within coarse network traffic summaries, i.e., flow records. Using network traffic collected at the edge routers of the Carnegie Mellon University campus network, and network traffic generated from real bot instances in virtual machines and honeynets running in the wild, we demonstrate that this approach can reliably detect infected hosts with very few false positives. In addition to identifying relevant behavioral features within hosts’ network activities, another contribution of this thesis is in developing efficient algorithms for analyzing network traffic. Our algorithms utilize methods from diverse areas, including statistics, data mining, machine learning, and metric embeddings. We also introduce a technique to passively infer the application implementation on a host given only anonymized traffic summaries. This technique enables us to detect malware that is browser-dependent, and can also be applied to improve the accuracy of traffic deanonymization, i.e., identifying the web sites in anonymized flow records. To complement empirical analyses, we apply analytical models from network theory to study peer-topeer botnets. We focus on a structural property of networks, which characterizes the tendency for edges to exist between “similar” nodes, and examine its effect on network resiliency and the network’s ability to recover after a fraction of the nodes are removed. We show that previous works may have over-estimated the power of certain botnet takedown strategies, and identify an alternative strategy that is more effective than those explored previously.
Long-term decreased cannabinoid type-1 receptor activity restores specific neurological phenotypes in the Ts65Dn mouse model of Down syndrome

Intellectual disability is the most prevalent and limiting hallmark of Down syndrome (DS), without any pharmacological treatment available. Neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation are relevant neurological features of DS reaching to early development of Alzheimer’s disease. Preclinical evidence suggests that the endocannabinoid system, an important neuromodulator on cognition and neuroinflammation, could act as beneficial target in DS. Indeed, cannabinoid type-1 receptor (CB1R) activity was enhanced in the hippocampus of young-adult trisomic Ts65Dn mice, a well-characterized surrogate model of DS. In previous studies, inhibition of CB1R, was able to restore key neurological deficits in this mouse model. To determine the possible clinical relevance of this target, it is mandatory to evaluate the long-term consequences of attenuated CB1R activity and to minimize the possible side-effects associated to this mechanism. We found that CB1R expression was significantly enhanced in the hippocampus brains of aged DS subjects. Similarly, middle-aged trisomic mice showed enhanced CB1R expression. Long-term oral administration of a low dose of the CB1R specific antagonist rimonabant was administered to male and female Ts65Dn trisomic and wild-type mice from the time of weaning to 10 months, an age when signs of neurodegeneration have been described in the model. CB1R inhibition resulted in significant cognitive improvement in novel object-recognition memory in trisomic male and female mice, reaching a similar performance to that of wild-type littermates. Interestingly, this long-term rimonabant treatment modify locomotor activity, anxiety-like behavior, body weight or survival rates. Brain analysis at 10 months of age revealed noradrenergic and cholinergic neurodegeneration signs in trisomic mice that were not modified by the treatment, although the alterations in hippocampal microglia morphology shown by vehicle-treated trisomic mice was normalized in trisomic mice exposed to rimonabant. Altogether, our results demonstrate a sustained pro-cognitive effect of CB1R inhibition at doses that do not produce major side effects that could be associated to an anti-inflammatory action, suggesting a potential interest in this target of to preserve cognitive functionality in DS.
Hot-carrier degradation mechanism and promising device design of nMOSFETs with nitride sidewall spacer

We investigated the HC reliability of deep submicron LDD nMOSFETs with nitride sidewalls, and found a unique stress bias dependence of HC degradation under lower stress bias conditions. This means lifetime estimations are inconclusive because of deviations from the empirical law. Moreover, we succeeded in improving HC reliability in nitride sidewall devices by shifting the location of the HC injection.
Analytical Modeling of On-Chip Hotspot Cooling Using Silicon Thermoelectric Microcoolers

Thermal management of microprocessors has become an increasing challenge in recent years because of localized high flux hotspots which can not be effectively removed by conventional cooling techniques. This paper describes the novel use of the silicon chip itself as thermoelectric microcooler to suppress the hotspot temperature. A three-dimensional analytical thermal model of the silicon chip, including localized silicon thermoelectric cooling, thermoelectric heating, Joule heating, hotspot heating, background heating, and conductive/convective cooling on the back of the silicon chip, is developed and used to predict the on-chip hotspot cooling performance. The effects of chip thickness, microcooler size, doping concentration and parasitic Joule heating from the electric contact resistance on hotspot cooling are investigated in details.Copyright © 2006 by ASME
METHOD TO INCREASE CAPACITY AND STIFFNESS OF REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAMS

Recent research into retrofitting existing concrete structures has led to many advances in the area of increasing the strength and stiffness of existing concrete members. Bonding steel and fiber reinforced plastic plates to the tension face of existing concrete members has evolved as a popular means with which to increase flexural strength and stiffness. These techniques often require substantial field preparation of the components and can result in significant construction cost. An alternative simple cost-effective method for increasing the flexural strength and serviceable stiffness of existing reinforced concrete members is presented. The proposed technique is based on fundamental principles of reinforced concrete design and involves the bolting of structural steel channels to the tension face of the existing concrete member. Validity of the method is established through experimental testing. Results indicate that the method provides an acceptable alternative to plate bonding to the tension soffit of existing concrete beams.
Models of the Monitoring and Control of Natural and Technological Objects

Abstract Monitoring of different natural and technological objects is essential in the modern world to ensure a safe and comfortable people’s lifestyle; it helps to understand how the planet and its climate change, what role is played by anthropogenic and technological factors in these changes. Different methods and decision-making models are used in the monitoring and control of natural and technological objects; this paper provides an overview of the commonly used models of ground-space monitoring of natural and technological objects, which have been analysed in the framework of the project INFROM.
Some aspects of blank-holder force schemes in deep drawing process

Purpose: This paper presents a finite element-based assessment of the performance of some non-conventional blank-holding techniques. This includes friction actuted, pulsating, and pliable blank-holding techniques. Design/methodology/approach: A 3-D explicit-finite element analysis is used to investigate the influence of various blank-holder force (BHF) schemes on sheet metal formability limits especially wrinkling and tearing rupture. The role of relevant parameters of each blank-holding technique are also investigated. Three nonconventional blank-holders are considered,namely friction-actuated,elastic and pulsating blank-holders. Findings: For the conditions considered in this study, comparison with fixed BHF scheme revealed that slight improvements in the formability are observed for the three BHF schemes under consideration. Research limitations/implications: Only 5182 Al-alloy circular cups are considered. Further investigations should consider different materials and non-circular shapes because of their effect on sheet metal formability. Practical implications: Cylindrical cups’ drawing is responsible for the manufacture of billions of metal containers. This study can help improve working conditions leading to defect free products. Originality/value: The 3D-explicit finite simulations presented for a number of non-conventional blankholding techniques are useful in the assessment of their performance.