Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
INSYDE-BE: Adaptation of the INSYDE model to the Walloon Region (Belgium)

Abstract. The spatial transfer of flood damage models among regions and countries is a challenging but unavoidable approach, for performing flood risk assessments in data and model scarce regions. In these cases, similarities and differences between the contexts of application should be considered to obtain reliable damage estimations and, in some cases, the adaptation of the original model to the new conditions is required. This study exemplifies a replicable procedure for the adaptation to the Belgian context of a multi-variable, synthetic flood damage model for the residential sector originally developed for Italy (INSYDE). The study illustrates necessary amendments in model assumptions, especially regarding input default values for the hazard and building parameters and damage functions describing the modelled damage mechanisms.
Neuroprotective effect of Foeniculum vulgare essential oil in developing Wistar rats exposed to manganese chloride

The present study was carried out in order to evaluate, on the one hand, the modifications induced by manganese chloride according to a neurobehavioral, biochemical and histological approach in developing Wistar rats and, on the other hand, to test the effectiveness of Foeniculum vulgare (fennel) essential oil (FEO) in restoring or not the harmful effects of manganese chloride (MnCl2). The characterization of this essential oil by gas chromatography showed that the major component is E-anethole (34.7907%). The administration of FEO corrected the depressive state, anxiety and locomotor hypoactivity respectively observed in rats exposed to MnCl2, thus, the FEO restored the activity of the various antioxidant enzymes with a clear improvement of the cerebral tissue architecture in intoxicated rats treated with FEO. In conclusion, the FEO has a beneficial effect on the nervous system of rats intoxicated with MnCl2 which justifies the importance of this oil in traditional medicine.
Brand Capital and Stock Price Crash Risk

We examine the relationship between brand capital and stock price crash risk. Crash risk, defined as the negative skewness in the distribution of returns for individual stocks, captures asymmetry in risk, and has important implications for investment choices and risk management. Using a sample of 39,685 publicly listed U.S. firm-year observations covering 1975 to 2018, we show that brand capital is significantly and negatively related to crash risk. We also use an advanced machine learning approach and confirm that brand capital is a strong predictor of future stock price crashes. Our cross-sectional analyses show that this negative relationship is more evident for subsamples with transitory poor earnings performance or persistent good earnings performance, greater corporate tax avoidance, and weak corporate governance structures. The results survive numerous robustness tests, including the use of alternative measures of brand capital, crash risk, and several endogeneity tests. In sum, our findings are consistent with agency theory, suggesting that high levels of brand capital expose firms to investor and customer scrutiny, which reduces managerial opportunistic behavior that may include the accumulation and concealment of negative information. This paper was accepted by Karl Diether, finance.
Research and statistics: a question of time: cross-sectional versus longitudinal study designs.

1. Sarah Lindstrom Johnson, PhD* 1. *General Academic Pediatrics Fellow, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD. You are seeing a 12-year-old boy who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Like so many of his peers, he loves video games and spends many hours a day playing. You know that gamers spend an average of 8 hours each week playing. Besides the lost opportunity to exercise, you begin to wonder about the effect of video games on behavior. Are children who play video games more likely to have ADHD? Embedded in your question are two possible lines of inquiry: 1) Does video game playing cause ADHD? and 2) Are children who have ADHD more likely to play video games? Each question suggests a slightly different study design (Table). View this table: Table. Summary of Designs In cross-sectional study designs, data collection occurs at one point in time. In longitudinal study designs, subjects are followed over time, with data collection occurring …
Axiomatic Design of a Spatial Micromanipulator and Experimental Verification

The micromanipulator is basically required sufficient workspace and high natural frequency. However, previous designs are hard to satisfy the required workspace and natural frequency simultaneously. In this study, a previous design was analyzed from the viewpoint of the axiomatic design. Then, a new design parameter as displacement amplifier which transforms a coupled design into a decoupled design, was suggested. And a design procedure based on axiomatic design was developed. A spatial 3-DOF parallel-type micromanipulator was chosen as an exemplary device. According to the suggested design procedure, the micromanipulator having the required natural frequency was designed in the first step, and then the displacement amplifier satisfying the required work space was designed sequentially. To check the effectiveness of the manipulator and displacement amplifier, simulations and experiments were performed. Those are verified that the displacement amplifiers implemened work very well for satisfying the required task workspace.
Computer‐aided diagnosis of COVID‐19 disease from chest X‐ray images integrating deep feature extraction

The novel coronavirus (COVID‐19) has an enormous impact on the daily lives and health of people residing in more than 200 nations. This article proposes a deep learning‐based system for the rapid diagnosis of COVID‐19. Chest x‐ray radiograph images were used because recent findings revealed that these images contain salient features about COVID‐19 disease. Transfer learning was performed using different pre‐trained convolutional neural networks models for binary (normal and COVID‐19) and triple (normal, COVID‐19 and viral pneumonia) class problems. Deep features were extracted from a fully connected layer of the ResNET50v2 model and feature dimension was reduced through feature reduction methods. Feature fusion of feature sets reduced through analysis of variance (ANOVA) and mutual information feature selection (MIFS) was fed to Fine K‐nearest neighbour to perform binary classification. Similarly, serial feature fusion of MIFS and chi‐square features were utilized to train Medium Gaussian Support Vector Machines to distinguish normal, COVID‐19 and viral pneumonia cases. The proposed framework yielded accuracies of 99.5% for binary and 95.5% for triple class experiments. The proposed model shows better performance than the existing methods, and this research has the potential to assist medical professionals to enhance the diagnostic ability to detect coronavirus disease.
Effect of Cu and Sm doping on the ferroelectric character of bismuth ferrite thin films

Abstract This report discusses the effect of substitution of copper (Cu) and samarium (Sm) at the Fe-site and Bi site respectively on structural, morphological, optical and ferroelectric properties of bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) films. Pure and (Sm, Cu) co-doped perovskite BiFeO3 thin films were fabricated on fluorine doped tin oxide substrates by sol–gel assisted spin coating technique. The X-ray diffraction analysis revealed the rhombohedral structure of all the samples. This confirmed that no phase change occurred due to doping. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) images of the films present uniform distribution of grains. The UV–Vis spectra demonstrated increased absorption for the doped samples. The corresponding Tauc plots exposed reduction in the energy bandgap of the doped films. The ferroelectric studies exhibited significantly improved saturation polarization, remnant polarization and coercive field of the doped films. The reduced band gap in the visible region and enhanced ferroelectric behavior of (Sm, Cu) co-doped bismuth ferrite films favor their suitability in visible light photovoltaic applications. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Occupational Health and Safety on Australian Farms: 1. Farmers' Perceptions of Major Hazards

subset of data from a larger survey of 335 farm enterprises throughout New South Wales was examined, focusing specifically on farmers' perceptions about major hazards on Australian farms. The data collected from participating enterprises clearly demonstrate that there is a disconnect between what farmers perceive as the risks on their farm and what hazards and risks cause the highest rates of fatalities in Australian agriculture. For example, previous research has shown that tractors were the most commonly reported agent of death by injury on Australian farms over the period 2001-04, accounting for 19 per cent of fatalities, followed by all-terrain-vehicles (ATVs). However, a frequency analysis of identified risks or hazards by study participants, rated tractors at 20th, with ATVs even further down the list at 27th; just 11 of the 335 enterprises rated ATVs as a risk on their farms. The most frequently reported injury agent by study participants was livestock handling and stockyards, followed by silos and chemical handling. While these agents are seen commonly in farm safety campaigns and promotions due to the legislative requirements with training and operation, with the exception of livestock handling, they do not feature highly in injury hospitalisation, and none of these agents feature in the causation of deaths on farms.
Effects of upstream strut on the combustion of liquid kerosene in a model cavity scramjet

A supersonic combustion organizer that consists of both cavity flameholder and strut injector was applied in a liquid-kerosene-fueled model scramjet. The experimental results indicated that the strut injection can improve the combustion performance. When the strut was mounted near the cavity, transverse injection from the strut gave the best performance. However, the excessive long distance between the upstream strut and the cavity led to upstream spreading of combustion to the isolator and pressure rise at the isolator entrance. Besides that, parallel injection was found difficult to establish effective combustion due to the poor spreading performance, except in the condition that the strut was mounted close to the cavity and wall injection was used simultaneously.
GLIS3: A Critical Transcription Factor in Islet β-Cell Generation

Understanding of pancreatic islet biology has greatly increased over the past few decades based in part on an increased understanding of the transcription factors that guide this process. One such transcription factor that has been increasingly tied to both β-cell development and the development of diabetes in humans is GLIS3. Genetic deletion of GLIS3 in mice and humans induces neonatal diabetes, while single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in GLIS3 have been associated with both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. As a significant progress has been made in understanding some of GLIS3’s roles in pancreas development and diabetes, we sought to compare current knowledge on GLIS3 within the pancreas to that of other islet enriched transcription factors. While GLIS3 appears to regulate similar genes and pathways to other transcription factors, its unique roles in β-cell development and maturation make it a key target for future studies and therapy.
Maximally flat low-pass digital differentiator

This paper describes the design of type III and type IV linear-phase finite-impulse response (FIR) low-pass digital differentiators according to the maximally flat criterion. We introduce a two-term recursive formula that enables the simple stable computation of the impulse response coefficients. The same recursive formula is valid for both Type III and Type IV solutions.
A Fixed-Time Distributed Optimization Algorithm Based on Event-Triggered Strategy

This paper considers the fixed-time distributed optimization problem with consensus constraint and strongly convex local cost functions, and a distributed optimization algorithm involving two stages is designed. The first stage is to make each agent converge to its own locally optimal state (the minimizer of local cost function) from any initial value in fixed time by designing distributed local optimization controllers. The second one is to realize the goal that all agents achieve the globally optimal state (the minimizer of global cost function) in fixed time under the distributed global optimization protocol. During the second stage of the proposed algorithm, each agent only communicates with its neighbors at event-triggered instants. Hence, comparing to the continuous communication optimization algorithm, our method has the advantage in the terms of saving the communication resources. Furthermore, Zeno behavior is avoided under such control strategy. The proposed algorithm in this paper can ensure that all agents achieve the globally optimal state in fixed time, which is independent of agents’ initial values and decided by some tunable parameters. Finally, the effectiveness of the presented optimization algorithm is demonstrated by a simulation example.
Radiation-induced back-channel leakage in SiGe CMOS on silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) technology

We report the first results of a high-energy gamma irradiation experiment on SiGe CMOS on silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) technology. In contrast to bulk Si CMOS, with increasing total dose the pFETs develop a significant off-state leakage, while the nFETs show a reduction in the leakage, which we attribute to negative charge trapping at the back Si-sapphire interface. Both the Si and SiGe pFETs showed the enhancement in leakage, suggesting that the leakage mechanism was not related to the SiGe channel. When the devices were cooled to liquid-nitrogen temperature, the leakage disappears completely, suggesting that the trapping mechanism is strongly temperature dependent.
Distinctive Gut Microbiota Alteration Is Associated with Poststroke Functional Recovery: Results from a Prospective Cohort Study

Objectives Functional prognosis is potentially correlated with gut microbiota alterations following the dysregulation of the gut-microbiota-brain axis after stroke. This study was designed to explore the poststroke alterations of gut microbiota and potential correlations between gut microbiota and global functions. Methods A total of thirty-eight patients with stroke and thirty-five healthy demographics-matched controls were recruited. Their fecal DNAs were extracted, and the V3-V4 regions of the conserved bacterial 16S RNA were amplified and sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Microbial composition, diversity indices, and species cooccurrence were compared between groups. Random forest and receiver operating characteristic analysis were used to identify potential diagnostic biomarkers. Relationships between discriminant bacteria and poststroke functional outcomes were estimated. Results Higher alpha diversity of gut microbiota was observed in poststroke patients as compared to the healthy controls (p < 0.05). Beta diversity showed that microbiota composition in the poststroke group was significantly different from that in the control group. Relative abundance of nine genera increased significantly in poststroke patients, while 82 genera significantly decreased (p < 0.05). The accuracy, specificity, and susceptibility of the optimal model consisted of the top 10 discriminant species were 93%, 100%, and 86%, respectively. Subgroup analysis showed that bacterial taxa abundant between subacute and chronic stroke patients were overall different (p < 0.05). The modified Rankin scale (mRS) (r = −0.370, p < 0.05), Fugl-Meyer assessment (FMA) score (r = 0.364, p < 0.05), water swallow test (WST) (r = 0.340, p < 0.05), and Barthel index (BI) (r = 0.349, p < 0.05) were significantly associated with alterations of distinctive gut microbiota. Conclusions The gut microbiota in patients with stroke was significantly changed in terms of richness and composition. Significant associations were detected between alterations of distinctive gut microbiota and global functional prognosis. It would facilitate novel treatment target selection in the context of stroke while the causal relationships between distinctive gut microbiota alterations and functional variations need to be further verified with well-designed studies.
Effect of Educational Intervention Program on Awareness, Knowledge, Attitude, and Willingness to Recommend Physiotherapy as a Career Among High School Science Teachers

Introduction. Physical therapy (physiotherapy) is an essential part of the health care delivery system. High school students with an interest in science may be suited for a career in health care, including physical therapy. It is important therefore that their teachers have good knowledge and great willingness to recommend physical therapy as a potential career choice to them. Few studies have been carried out on the knowledge about physical therapy among different populations. The previous reports highlighted the need for educational interventions to increase the knowledge about physical therapy. However, no previous study has investigated the effectiveness of these educational interventions. Therefore, this study was aimed at evaluating the effect of an educational intervention in improving the level of knowledge, attitude, and willingness to recommend physical therapy as a potential career choice to students among high (secondary) school science teachers in Nnewi, Anambra State, Nigeria. Review of Literature. Few studies have been carried out on the knowledge about physical therapy among different populations. There is need for educational interventions to increase the knowledge about physical therapy. No previous study has investigated the effectiveness of these educational interventions. Subjects. Consecutively recruited 99 science teachers from purposively selected high schools. Methods. This was a pretest–posttest quasi experimental study. Consecutively recruited 99 science teachers from purposively selected high schools participated in the study. Data were collected preintervention and postintervention using a self-developed instrument. Results. Only 20.2% of the participants had a good knowledge of physical therapy on pretest but the proportion with good knowledge increased to 96% after the intervention. Ninety-nine percent of the respondents also developed a positive attitude towards physical therapy and willingness to recommend physical therapy as a potential career choice to their students after the educational intervention. Discussion and Conclusion. Awareness of physical therapy among science teachers is poor. The effectiveness of the educational intervention program revealed a role for physical therapists who wish to enhance the awareness of counselors. Well-informed teachers and counselors may be equipped with the required knowledge to guide the career choice of their students.
Development of an algorithm for quality inspection of welded structures

A selection of reliable measurement systems that are able to measure the toe radius along the weld bead in a T-joint has been studied. The results show that the currently used methods and gauges do not provide the required accuracy when measuring the toe radius. The gauges are handled differently by different operators – even when using a vision system – which makes the current evaluation methods subjective and unreliable. Therefore, an algorithm has been developed that assesses weld bead surface data and automatically identifies and calculates the toe radius and the toe angle along the weld. The results obtained by the algorithm are consistent with reference measurements and it is possible for the algorithm to be used in improving the process and quality control during welding.
Using Principal–Steward Contracting and Scenario Planning to Manage Megaprojects

Performance on megaprojects is dismal. Megaprojects are complex, but people use constructs inappropriate in complex situations for their management, particularly contractual arrangements based on principal–agent governance and conventional project management, which is good at solving puzzles, but not at enlightening mysteries. I review current thinking. Principal–steward contracting is a liberal governance structure required in complex situations. Conventional project management emphasizes control at the expense of innovation. In cases of high uncertainty, innovation is required as unexpected events occur. Scenario planning is offered as a way of approaching the management of complex megaprojects, to construct narratives, and to identify alternative outcomes.
Computational Fluid Dynamic Modeling of In-duct UV Air Sterilisation Systems.

In-duct UVC air sterilisation is a technology that can help in the reduction and control of airborne diseases. Nevertheless, improvements in sterilisation performance efficiency are required for the technology to succeed in an increasingly restricted energy society. Computational fluid Dynamics (CFD) was used to systematically improve the performance of in-duct UVC air sterilisation systems. The Discrete Ordinates method (DO) was used to model lamp irradiation, and a user defined function (UDF) to model the injection of microorganisms inside the duct to then calculate the average UV dose of the system, with this it was possible to reproduce test results published by EPA. After the CFD model was validated, operation parameters such as wall reflectivity, lamp location, lamp position, air velocity and airflow patterns were analysed. It was found that accurate information of UVC susceptibility for microorganisms in air was essential for the correct modeling of UVC air sterilisation systems using CFD, and current available data contain considerable variations that needed to be analysed and interpreted in an appropriate manner. It was also found that the DO method was appropriate to model lamp irradiation and could account for reflectivity, and that CFD was robust enough to reproduce lab tests results. Moreover it was found that airflow patterns, and lamp location and position influenced the sterilisation performance of a UVC system. Results include a comprehensive list of microorganisms UVC susceptibilities in air (Chapter 3); a set of CFD models that can be used for validation or calibration for future studies and a confirmation that CFD is capable to model in-duct UVC air sterilisation systems (Chapter 5). Ultimately this research presents a series of conclusions that will help on the design of more efficient in-duct UVC air sterilisation systems.
Web of Lies: Drivers and Consequences of Social Media (In)Authenticity

Abstract Developing an authentic social media presence leads to more opportunities for meaningful self-expression through interactions with a firm’s social media content. This paper is the first to identify the key drivers of authenticity in social media. To do so, two studies are conducted, one qualitative and one quantitative. The results offer evidence that social media authenticity is influenced by corporate social responsibility, fit, sales orientation, content quality and complaint management. Further, the findings indicate that social media authenticity has a mediating influence on consumer outcomes.