Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk Factors Associated with All-Cause Death Among Dialysis Patients with Diabetes

Background Patients receiving dialysis who also have diabetes mellitus have high mortality. This study aimed to investigate the risk factors associated with all-cause death among Polish patients with diabetes receiving dialysis. Material/Methods This prospective observational study included 100 patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes who were treated with peritoneal dialysis or hemodialysis. Blood laboratory tests, the occurrence of diabetes complications, and comorbidity, using the Charlson Comorbidity Index, were estimated. Survival analysis was performed using the multivariate Cox proportional hazard model, and Kaplan-Meyer survival analyses with log-rank tests were performed to show differences between groups. Results During 16.0±5.0 months, 23 patients died. The deceased group had significantly higher levels of HbA1c (P=0.046) and fructosamine (P=0.011) than the surviving group. The deceased patients also had higher comorbidity scores (P=0.013). In the stepwise multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression model, history of stroke or transient ischemic attack was an independent risk factor of all-cause death (hazard ratio [HR] 3.15, 95% CI 1.34–7.39; P=0.009), while regular physical activity significantly reduced the risk of all-cause death (HR 0.26, 95% CI 0.08–0.87; P=0.029). Conclusions Deceased patients had higher HbA1c and fructosamine levels and higher comorbidity. However, history of stroke or transient ischemic attack was an independent risk factor of all-cause death, while regular physical activity was associated with the reduction of the risk of all-cause death in patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes treated with peritoneal dialysis or hemodialysis. Regular physical activity should be recommended to improve survival in this population.
Siblings with congenital ichthyosis – A case report

Ichthyosis is caused due to abnormal epidermal differentiation. It could be acquired or inherited. The common inherited variety is subdivided as autosomal dominant or recessive [1]. Harlequin ichthyosis (HI) is severe a fatal form of autosomal recessive type of congenital ichthyosis [2]. The incidence is very low ~1 in 200,000 births [3]. The affected newborn has a typical grotesque appearance with, encased thick, large, thick grayish-yellow armor-like skin plaques with reddish moist oozing cracks all over the body. Other features include a severe bilateral ectropion, eclabium, flattened and crumbled ears, malformed nose, and semi-flexed extremities due to restricted joint mobility, and absent or hypoplastic nails. Scalp hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes are usually absent [1,4,5]. We are presenting this rare devastating gene dermatoses encountered in two siblings from our tertiary health care institute.
Corporate governance, dynamic capabilities and business performance in companies listed in Brasil, Bolsa, Balcão S/A (B3 S/A)

Purpose- The main objective is to analyze the direct effect of Corporate Governance (CG) on Dynamic Capabilities (DCs) and on Business Performance (BP), and the moderating and/or mediating impact of DCs on the CG-BP relationship.Methodology- The quantitative analysis was performed through PLS-SEM. Data were collected through a survey involving companies listed in B3 S/A from 2014 to 2016, except for companies from the financial sector. The final sample encompassed 195 companies per assessed year, thus totaling 585 observations concerning 2014, 2015 and 2016.Findings- Confirmed the direct and positive effect of CG on DC development, as well as DC’s influence on BP and the mediating effect of DC on the CG - BP relationship. The main conclusion was that DCs are a powerful mediating influence on the CG-BP relationship. Hence, even with efficient corporate governance mechanisms, the companies must make decisions in line with their dynamic capabilities as a way to reach better business performance.Limitations- Research cross-section method of data collection; and universe of companies listed in the Brazilian stock market.Practical implications- For example, the rejected hypothesis about the direct effect of CG on BP and the confirmation of the indirect effect via DCs suggests the analysis of aspects related to costs with monitoring procedures applied to agency conflicts and to complementary factors that must be achieved in order to boost performance. On practical terms, the results contribute to companies that look for the best and most satisfactory performance in the markets they work in.
Robust Bilevel Resource Recovery Planning

In this study, we consider a resource recovery planning problem under a public–private partnership. The local authority's problem is to determine the waste sorting scheme, and also a cost‐sharing budget, to minimize her expected payout, subject to a requirement of economic feasibility of the private operator. Given the budget and sorting scheme, the private operator's problem is to site and operate resource recovery facilities, and his goal is to maximize his expected total profits. A salient feature of the problem is that the feedstock condition (composition and volume) is uncertain, but can be influenced by the sorting‐at‐source scheme implemented. This feature drives the interactions of the public and private partners. We develop a bilevel resource recovery planning model in the framework of distributionally robust optimization, where a decision‐dependent ambiguity set is defined to model the influence of sorting schemes on the feedstock uncertainty. We perform the model analysis on the cost‐share ratio, which suggests the importance of sorting investment in achieving the sustainable resource recovery. Computationally, we show that the solutions of the bilevel problem can be obtained by solving one instance of a mixed‐integer linear program that does not induce any additional integer variable. Our proposed optimization framework provides a useful decision‐analysis tool for effectively utilizing and balancing the instruments of sorting and facility installation investments for resource recovery planning under feedstock ambiguity. For instance, the computational experiments with partial real data in the Singapore context justify several important insights: (i) the suitable sorting scheme implementation serves as a cost‐effective instrument that could significantly enhance the utility of the cost sharing; (ii) the sorting dependency of feedstock condition is critical in affecting the private operator's recovery performance; and (iii) the robust planning is effective in hedging against ambiguously poor feedstock condition. These findings should deserve attentions of both public and private sectors in current waste management practice.
CNN‐based novelty detection for terrestrial and extra‐terrestrial autonomous exploration

Novelty detection is concerned with detecting features that do not belong to any known class or are not well represented by existing models. Ergo, in autonomous navigation novelty detection determines whether an input camera frame contains certain entities of high interest which do not correspond to a known category. One of the key requirements for the future space exploration missions is the reduction of the information to be transferred back to Earth. Thus, novelty detection techniques have been developed to select the subset of acquired images with significant measurements that justify utilisation of the limited bandwidth from the available information link. Such methods are based on the identification of salient regions, which are then evaluated against a set of trained classifiers. We explore a novelty detection approach, based on the reasoning properties of Neural Networks, which follow the same guidelines while also being trainable in an end ‐ to ‐ end manner. This characteristic allows for the intertwined optimisation of the individual components leading to a closer estimation of a global solution. Our experiments reveal that the proposed novelty detection system achieves better performance, as compared to hand ‐ crafted techniques, when the learning and testing examples refer to similar environments.
The Impact of Demographic Characteristics on Academic Performance: Face-to-Face Learning Versus Distance Learning Implemented to Prevent the Spread of COVID-19

The spread of COVID-19 presents an opportunity for many educational institutions to implement distance learning and ensure the provision of educational resources and services, secure income and revenues, and contribute to the control and prevention of the coronavirus. This study was conducted to investigate the impact of demographic characteristics on academic performance. Students’ grades and grade point averages (GPA) were collected from the Admission and Registration Unit, Al Ain University in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. The data were used to measure academic performance in face-to-face (F2F) learning and distance learning (DL) implemented by the university to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Statistical analysis including the Mann-Whitney test, Spearman’s rho test, and a regression test were used to answer research questions and verify hypotheses. Students demonstrated better academic performance in DL than F2F learning. It was found that the number of weak students in F2F learning dropped sharply by more than 11% in DL. Demographic characteristics demonstrated a significant impact on students’ academic performance and predicted at least 7.4% variation in F2F learning and DL. Findings of the study support the model developed by Tinto (1975) which proposed the impact of student’s attributes, experiences, and family backgrounds on academic performance. The findings suggest non-DL institutions should continue offering DL side-by-side with F2F learning programs.
A Note on On-Line Ramsey Numbers for Some Paths

We consider the important generalisation of Ramsey numbers, namely on-line Ramsey numbers. It is easiest to understand them by considering a game between two players, a Builder and Painter, on an infinite set of vertices. In each round, the Builder joins two non-adjacent vertices with an edge, and the Painter colors the edge red or blue. An on-line Ramsey number r˜(G,H) is the minimum number of rounds it takes the Builder to force the Painter to create a red copy of graph G or a blue copy of graph H, assuming that both the Builder and Painter play perfectly. The Painter’s goal is to resist to do so for as long as possible. In this paper, we consider the case where G is a path P4 and H is a path P10 or P11.
The COVID-19 Health Crisis And Its Framing: Approaches Used by the Print Media for Coverage

Almost all the countries of the world have witnessed the outbreak of a global health pandemic known as COVID-19 like never before. This pandemic has negatively impacted the economic, health, social, and overall well-being of humanity. The framing analysis approach allows scholars to explore the media’s roles in developing health, economic, political, social, and cultural issues facing society daily. Besides, framing entails an interplay between leading social values and the efforts to tinker with them. This study explored what aspects of framing approaches the major newspapers have created for their readership in Nigeria in understanding the COVID-19 health pandemic that has rattled the entire world since January 2020. The research findings revealed that the six selected newspapers amplified coverage of the pandemic using the frames of economic issues, public healthcare crisis, health workers strike, and corruption with different ferocity and salience. It was also found that the dominant news frames approaches of economic issues, corruption, and public healthcare crisis received negative tone coverage across all the sampled papers at varying degrees. The tone approaches used in framing the COVID-19 pandemic in the selected newspapers were positive, negative, and neutral tones, which are possibly rooted in their editorial policies and political beliefs.
Exploring the Continuous Usage Intention of Online Learning Platforms from the Perspective of Social Capital

This research explores the factors that influence students’ continuous usage intention regarding online learning platforms from the perspectives of social capital, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use. The questionnaire survey method was used in the research to analyze the relationship between the research variables and verify the hypothesis based on data from 248 collected valid questionnaire responses. The following results were obtained: (1) “Social interaction ties” positively affect students’ continuous usage intention. (2) “Shared language” negatively affects students’ continuous usage intention. (3) “Shared vision” positively affects students’ continuous usage intention. (4) “Perceived usefulness” positively affects students’ continuous usage intention. (5) “Perceived ease of use” positively affects students’ continuous usage intention. According to the results, students believe in useful teaching that promotes knowledge and skills. The ease of use of learning tools is key to whether they can learn successfully. Paying attention to the interaction and communication between students, so that students have a shared goal and participate in teamwork, is something that teachers must pay attention to in the course of operation. The professional vocabulary of the teaching content and the way of announcing information should avoid using difficult terminology, which is also a point to which teachers need to pay attention.
Development of sugar free cookies with novel biodegradable packaging film

Eram S. Rao Department of Food Technology, Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences, University of Delhi, New Delhi-110075, India Prem Lata Meena Department of Polymer Science, Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences, University of Delhi, New Delhi-110075, India Manjeet Singh Barwa* Department of Chemistry, Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences, University of Delhi, New Delhi-110075, India
MSR-FAN: Multi-scale residual feature-aware network for crowd counting

Crowd counting aims to count the number of people in crowded scenes, which is important to the security systems, trafﬁc control and so on. The existing methods typically using local features cannot properly handle the perspective distortion and the varying scales in congested scene images, and henceforth perform wrong people counting. To alleviate this issue, this study proposes a multi-scale residual feature-aware network (MSR-FAN) that combines multi-scale features using multiple receptive ﬁeld sizes and learns the feature-aware information on each image. The MSR-FAN is trained end-to-end to generate high-quality density map and evaluate the crowd number. The method consists of three parts. To handle the perspective changes problem, the ﬁrst part, the direction-based feature-enhanced network, is designed to encode the perspective information in four directions based on the initial image feature. The second part, the proposed multi-scale residual block module, gets the global information to handle the represent the regional feature better. This module explores features of different scales as well as reinforce the global feature. The third part, the feature-aware block, is designed to extract the feature hidden in the different channels. Experiment results based on benchmark datasets show that the proposed approach outperforms the existing state-of-the-art methods.
Partial and full substitution of fish meal and soybean meal by canola meal in diets for genetically improved farmed tilapia (O. niloticus): Growth performance, carcass composition, serum biochemistry, immune response, and intestine histology

ABSTRACT The study was designed to assess the effects of partial or full replacement of fish meal (FM) and soy bean meal (SBM) with canola meal (CM) on growth performance, health status, and cost benefit ratio of genetically improved farmed tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus. Fish (mean body weight 4.67 ± 0.07 g) were fed with five isonitrogenous (crude protein 396 g kg−1) diets: D I was set as the control; D II, D III, D IV, and D V were supplemented with CM at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% respectively. After 16 weeks of feeding, the optimum CM (%) for growth performance, feed utilization, carcass composition, and body indexes of O. niloticus were predicted at D III (P < 0.05). Also, the following linear regression equation was acquired for weight gain versus CM (%) in diets: Y = −2.542x + 23.232; R2 = 0.9474. The survival rate remained unaffected among all groups. Serum total protein, albumin content, and lysozyme activity increased in D I, D II, and D III; activity of liver functioning enzymes (SGPT and SGOT), triglycerides, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol, blood urea nitrogen, and creatinine level were elevated in groups D IV and D V (P < 0.05). Also, a significantly increased degree of variation and Uran’s pooled score were measured in intestine histology with increasing levels of CM supplementation (P < 0.05). Additionally, the optimum unitary feeding cost (UFC) was obtained in group D III (P < 0.05) along with polynomial equation: Y = 9.8 × 2– 47.39x + 176.44; R2 = 0.9674 between UFC and CM (%) in diets. Thus, FM and SBM could be replaced by CM up to 50% without compromising production, health status, and cost benefit for O. niloticus culture.
Testing What You’re Told: Young Children’s Empirical Investigation of a Surprising Claim

ABSTRACT We examined differences among children in their endorsement of an adult’s claim, their subsequent empirical investigation of that claim, and their resolution of any potential conflict between the claim and their empirical investigation. American and Chinese preschool (N = 171, M = 4.71 years) and elementary school (N = 128, M = 7.59 years) children were presented with five, different-sized, Russian dolls and asked to indicate the heaviest doll. Children typically selected the biggest doll. Children then heard either a false, counter-intuitive claim (i.e., smallest doll = heaviest) or a claim confirming their initial intuition (i.e., biggest doll = heaviest). Children frequently endorsed the experimenter’s claim even when it was counter-intuitive. The experimenter then left the room. During the experimenter’s absence, older children who had heard the counter-intuitive as opposed to the confirming claim explored the dolls more than younger children, especially when subtly prompted to explore. Moreover, only older children who heard the counter-intuitive claim simultaneously picked up the smallest and biggest doll, a more deliberate test of the experimenter’s claim. By implication, children engage in selective exploration following a surprising claim. Older children’s more systematic explorations of what they have been told may reflect improvements in their ability to test such claims and in their greater sensitivity to the fact that unexpected claims can and should be empirically investigated.
Employee Engagement and the Ethic of Friendship

The failure of managers and supervisors to earn the trust and followership of the employees with whom they work is well documented in recent research about employee engagement (Clifton & Harter, 2019). Without that employee commitment, organizations inevitably struggle to compete in the global marketplace and fail to achieve their potential (Cameron, 2012). Although much has been discussed in the light of the findings of concerned scholars (HR Research Institute, 2019), disagreement nonetheless exists about the factors which make up employee engagement, as well as the most effective approach that can be taken to increase engagement and those factors. Though there has not been full agreement about the nature of employee engagement, it is widely accepted that the failure of organizations to engage employees has been a serious deterrent to achieving organization results (Clifton & Harter, 2019). Objective: The purposes of this paper are to offer insights into the precise nature of employee engagement and to identify the value of employers adopting the Ethic of Friendship – an ethical perspective that has begun to be written about more frequently in the management literature. Methods: We begin the paper by proposing an integrated and updated definition of employee engagement – identifying nine factors which contribute to its makeup. Results: We suggest that each of these nine factors significantly impact employee engagement and warrant increased attention by organizational leaders. We then address the Ethic of Friendship and its increasingly important role in today’s arms-length and transactional relationship between employers and employees. Conclusions: The paper then clarifies how the Ethic of Friendship addresses all nine of the factors which constitute employee engagement and explains how the Ethic of Friendship can increase the ability of organization leaders, managers, and supervisors to bridge the gap of distrust that often exists in the modern organization. After identifying five important contributions made by this paper, we conclude by encouraging leaders to adopt the Ethic of Friendship’s commitment to treating employees as valued partners and, by so doing, create a culture in which employee engagement is likely to thrive.
Hotspots of Diffusive CO2 and CH4 Emission From Tropical Reservoirs Shift Through Time

The patterns of spatial and temporal variability in CO2 and CH4 emission from reservoirs are still poorly studied, especially in tropical regions where hydropower is growing. We performed spatially resolved measurements of dissolved CO2 and CH4 surface water concentrations and their gas‐exchange coefficients (k) to compute diffusive carbon flux from four contrasting tropical reservoirs across Brazil during different hydrological seasons. We used an online equilibration system to measure dissolved CO2 and CH4 concentrations; we estimated k from floating chamber deployments in conjunction with discrete CO2 and CH4 water concentration measurements. Diffusive CO2 emissions were higher during dry season than during rainy season, whereas there were no consistent seasonal patterns for diffusive CH4 emissions. Our results reveal that the magnitude and the spatial within‐reservoir patterns of diffusive CO2 and CH4 flux varied strongly among hydrological seasons. River inflow areas were often characterized by high seasonality in diffusive flux. Areas close to the dam generally showed low seasonal variability in diffusive CH4 flux but high variability in CO2 flux. Overall, we found that reservoir areas exhibiting highest emission rates (“hotspots”) shifted substantially across hydrological seasons. Estimates of total diffusive carbon emission from the reservoir surfaces differed between hydrological seasons by a factor up to 7 in Chapéu D'Úvas, up to 13 in Curuá‐Una, up to 4 in Furnas, and up to 1.8 in Funil, indicating that spatially resolved measurements of CO2 and CH4 concentrations and k need to be performed at different hydrological seasons in order to constrain annual diffusive carbon emission.