Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring Indonesian EFL Teachers‘ Digital Creativity: Validation of Hoffmann‘s Digital Creativity Scale

The current study was part of a larger project on Indonesian EFL teachers’ digital creativity. Specifically, the aim of the current research was to validate the digital creativity proposed by Hoffmann et al. by assessing the reliability of the instrument, its unidimensionality, the effectiveness of the instrument rating scale, and the differential item functioning used to gather data related to the Indonesian teachers’ digital creativity. Quantitative methods were employed throughout the research. A total of 422 Indonesian EFL teachers of different ages, genders, and educational backgrounds participated in an online survey, which was then filtered until a sample size of 132 EFL primary school, 162 EFL junior high school, and 104 EFL senior high school teachers remained. The findings of this study showed that first, statistical results indicated that the instrument used was reliable, obtaining a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.99. Second, the instruments have achieved their research objectives in that there is an aspect of digital creativity which is considered in the teaching activities of Indonesian teachers. The results also suggested that there are differences in gender and age in EFL teachers’ digital creativity. This paper can be a useful reference for further research related to aspects which need to be fulfilled by teachers in the development of online teaching, considering the deficiencies found and offering solutions in subsequent research papers.
Automatic Kidney Segmentation Method Based on an Enhanced Generative Adversarial Network

When deciding on a kidney tumor’s diagnosis and treatment, it is critical to take its morphometry into account. It is challenging to undertake a quantitative analysis of the association between kidney tumor morphology and clinical outcomes due to a paucity of data and the need for the time-consuming manual measurement of imaging variables. To address this issue, an autonomous kidney segmentation technique, namely SegTGAN, is proposed in this paper, which is based on a conventional generative adversarial network model. Its core framework includes a discriminator network with multi-scale feature extraction and a fully convolutional generator network made up of densely linked blocks. For qualitative and quantitative comparisons with the SegTGAN technique, the widely used and related medical image segmentation networks U-Net, FCN, and SegAN are used. The experimental results show that the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), volumetric overlap error (VOE), accuracy (ACC), and average surface distance (ASD) of SegTGAN on the Kits19 dataset reach 92.28%, 16.17%, 97.28%, and 0.61 mm, respectively. SegTGAN outscores all the other neural networks, which indicates that our proposed model has the potential to improve the accuracy of CT-based kidney segmentation.
The Effect of Metformin and Carbohydrate-Controlled Diet on DNA Methylation and Gene Expression in the Endometrium of Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is an endocrine disease associated with infertility and metabolic disorders in reproductive-aged women. In this study, we evaluated the expression of eight genes related to endometrial function and their DNA methylation levels in the endometrium of PCOS patients and women without the disease (control group). In addition, eight of the PCOS patients underwent intervention with metformin (1500 mg/day) and a carbohydrate-controlled diet (type and quantity) for three months. Clinical and metabolic parameters were determined, and RT-qPCR and MeDIP-qPCR were used to evaluate gene expression and DNA methylation levels, respectively. Decreased expression levels of HOXA10, GAB1, and SLC2A4 genes and increased DNA methylation levels of the HOXA10 promoter were found in the endometrium of PCOS patients compared to controls. After metformin and nutritional intervention, some metabolic and clinical variables improved in PCOS patients. This intervention was associated with increased expression of HOXA10, ESR1, GAB1, and SLC2A4 genes and reduced DNA methylation levels of the HOXA10 promoter in the endometrium of PCOS women. Our preliminary findings suggest that metformin and a carbohydrate-controlled diet improve endometrial function in PCOS patients, partly by modulating DNA methylation of the HOXA10 gene promoter and the expression of genes implicated in endometrial receptivity and insulin signaling.
IMPACT OF URBANIZATION IN DIFFERENT REGIONS OF EASTERN CHINA ON PRECIPITATION AND ITS UNCERTAINTY

Climate effect caused by urbanization has been an indispensable artificial factor in research on regional climate change. Based on daily precipitation data, possible effects of precipitation on the development of three urban groups in east China are discussed. With three division methods(total population, population density and MODIS land cover), urban and rural stations are identified. The main findings are as follows. Climate effects caused by urbanization are different from place to place. In 1960—2009, the urbanization brought more precipitation to the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta city groups but had no obvious effect on the precipitation of the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan city group. The difference of precipitation is slight between urban and suburban areas in 1960—1979. It is more evident in 1980—2009 that urbanization has positive effects on precipitation in every city group. The difference of precipitation between urban and rural stations is sensitive to the ways of distinguishing rural from urban area, which may cause uncertainties in 1960—1979, while it is very different in 1980—2009 in which urbanization favors more precipitation in all city groups and their difference in precipitation is not sensitive to the division method.
Graphene Field-Effect-Coupled Detection of Avalanche Multiplication in Silicon

In this work, we demonstrate the instant detection of out-of-plane avalanche multiplication in graphene-oxide-semiconductor structure via strong field-effect coupling of the graphene channel with the silicon photo gate. This in situ detection of out-of-plane avalanche can eliminate carriers’ preamplification losses in traditional avalanche multiplication charge-coupled devices (CCDs). By relying upon the electrostatic coupling, a real-time signature of the space charge region in silicon can be observed by both displacement and channel currents of the device. This allows us to alternatively probe the multiplication capability of the graphene-oxide-semiconductor structure under pulsed laser illumination while the semiconductor is dynamically biased through multiple ramping signals. The operating scheme of the device shows good capability for detecting weak light (45 nW), while the intrinsic self-regulating mechanism helps avoid oxide breakdown. The maximum multiplication factor (MF) of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim {10}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, responsivity of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$340 \text {A/{W}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, and specific detectivity of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.85\times 10^{{13}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> Jones are achieved, respectively.
Interplay between Mechanics, Electronics, and Energetics in Atomic-Scale Junctions

Interplay between mechanics, electronics, and energetics in atomic-scale junctions Sriharsha V. Aradhya The physical properties of materials at the nanoscale are controlled to a large extent by their interfaces. While much knowledge has been acquired about the properties of material in the bulk, there are many new and interesting phenomena at the interfaces that remain to be better understood. This is especially true at the scale of their constituent building blocks – atoms and molecules. Studying materials at this intricate level is a necessity at this point in time because electronic devices are rapidly approaching the limits of what was once thought possible, both in terms of their miniaturization as well as our ability to design their behavior. In this thesis I present our explorations of the interplay between mechanical properties, electronic transport and binding energetics of single atomic contacts and single-molecule junctions. Experimentally, we use a customized conducting atomic force microscope (AFM) that simultaneously measures the current and force across atomic-scale junctions. We use this instrument to study single atomic contacts of gold and silver and single-molecule junctions formed in the gap between two gold metallic point contacts, with molecules with a variety of backbones and chemical linker groups. Combined with density functional theory based simulations and analytical modeling, these experiments provide insight into the correlations between mechanics and electronic structure at
An Efficient Diverse-Branch Convolution Scheme for Sensor-Based Human Activity Recognition

Deep convolutional networks have recently achieved significant success in sensor-based human activity recognition (HAR). Existing works are mainly devoted to extracting multiscale activity features from sensor time series by increasing network depth or width, which are not friendly to mobile devices with limited computing resources. It still remains a challenging issue to strike an ideal tradeoff between activity recognition performance and inference-time costs, e.g., the latency and memory footprint. To address this issue, we propose a diverse-branch convolution (DBC) scheme, which could strengthen the representation capacity of vanilla convolution via exploiting diverse branches of different scales and complexities to enrich activity feature space. Then, DBC could be equivalently transformed into a single convolution layer after training for HAR deployment. In such a manner, DBC only complicates training-time microstructure while preserving inference-time macrostructure, where the model performance can be boosted to a higher level and then converted back to its original inference-time structure for activity recognition. Extensive experiments are conducted on three publicly available benchmark datasets, i.e., OPPORTUNITY, UniMiB-SHAR, Wireless Sensor Data Mining (WISDM), and a self-collected weakly labeled HAR dataset, which verify that our method can give a lift in performance while maintaining the same number of parameters and FLOPs as baselines. Finally, the actual inference-time cost is evaluated for HAR deployment on a Raspberry Pi platform.
Label-Free Quantification Mass Spectrometry Identifies Protein Markers of Chemotherapy Response in High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer

Simple Summary Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological cancer, despite advances in patient stratification and treatment. Despite initial response to first-line treatment, most patients suffer a relapse and die from treatment-resistant disease. We identified three predictive protein biomarkers for chemotherapy response using primary ovarian cancer samples and showed their concurrent regulation in a chemoresistant cell line. Those markers will potentially help in understanding the mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance. Abstract Eighty percent of ovarian cancer patients initially respond to chemotherapy, but the majority eventually experience a relapse and die from the disease with acquired chemoresistance. In addition, 20% of patients do not respond to treatment at all, as their disease is intrinsically chemotherapy resistant. Data-independent acquisition nano-flow liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (DIA LC-MS) identified the three protein markers: gelsolin (GSN), calmodulin (CALM1), and thioredoxin (TXN), to be elevated in high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) tissues from patients that responded to chemotherapy compared to those who did not; the differential expression of the three protein markers was confirmed by immunohistochemistry. Analysis of the online GENT2 database showed that mRNA levels of GSN, CALM1, and TXN were decreased in HGSOC compared to fallopian tube epithelium. Elevated levels of GSN and TXN mRNA expression correlated with increased overall and progression-free survival, respectively, in a Kaplan–Meier analysis of a large online repository of HGSOC patient data. Importantly, differential expression of the three protein markers was further confirmed when comparing parental OVCAR-5 cells to carboplatin-resistant OVCAR-5 cells using DIA LC-MS analysis. Our findings suggest that GSN, CALM1, and TXN may be useful biomarkers for predicting chemotherapy response and understanding the mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance. Proteomic data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD033785.
Board of Directors’ Networks, Gender, and Firm Performance in a Male-Dominated Industry: Evidence from U.S. Banking

Leadership roles in banking remain dominated by men; only about one in six bank board members is female. Connections among board members can improve firm performance, but women on boards are much less connected than men. In this paper, we study how gender relates to the role of connections: how do connected female versus male board members affect banks’ performance? Using IV techniques to account for the endogeneity of connections, we find that (1) better connected female (but not male) board members improve bank profitability and reduce earnings management; (2) connections of women on important board committees also improve performance – especially when the share of women on the board is relatively high (above the median).
Socially Responsible Firms

In the corporate finance tradition starting with Berle & Means (1923), corporations should generally be run so as to maximize shareholder value. The agency view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) generally considers CSR as a managerial agency problem and a waste of corporate resources, since corporate insiders do good with other people’s money. We evaluate this agency view using large-scale datasets with global coverage (59 countries) on firm-level corporate engagement and compliance with respect to environmental, social, and governance issues. Using an instrumental variable approach, we document that CSR ratings are higher for companies with fewer agency problems (using standard proxies such as having lower levels of free cash flow and higher dividend payout and leverage ratios). Moreover, certain aspects of CSR (e.g., environmental, labor and social protection) are associated with increased executive pay-for-performance sensitivity and the maximization of shareholder value.
Phenolics Content and DPPH Free Radical Scavenging Activity of Dalbergia latifolia leaf ethanolic extract

Dalbergia latifolia is one of the famous species that naturally grows in Java, Indonesia. The wood of this species is purple in color and the leaf is utilized as forage. The purpose of this study is to determine the bioactivity and phenol contents of D. latifolia leaf ethanolic extract. The antioxidant activity and anti-termite activity were measured through the DPPH method and Neotermes bosei activity. Furthermore, phenol contents were determined through colorimetric method and ethanolic extract constituents were identified by GC-MS. The DPPH inhibition of ethanol extract of D. latifolia leaf exhibited 138.20±2.14 µg/ml. While the measurement of total phenol and total flavonoid content of D. latifolia leaf showed a value of 192.67±9.41 mg GAE/ g and 55.23±5.11 mg QE/ g of dried extract sample. The termiticidal activity of ethanolic extract showed low activity. The GC-MS detection showed fatty acids as dominant compounds. The inhibition of DPPH by D. latifolia leaf ethanol extract in this study suggested this leaf is potent as antioxidant agents.
The Effect of Course Review Horay (CRH) Cooperative Learning Model on Learning Outcomes of Elementary School Students

This study aims to determine the effect of the CRH type of cooperative learning model on learning outcomes in the science subject on the water cycle material for fifth grade students at SD Negeri 34 Parepare. This study uses a quantitative approach with experimental research types and uses a Quasy Experimental design in the form of The Nonequivalent Pretest-Posttest Control Group Design. The sampling technique used in this study was saturated sampling with a total sample of 50 students. The data collection technique used in this study was a test in the form of multiple choice and documentation. Data analysis used descriptive statistical analysis techniques and inferential statistical analysis techniques. Based on the statistical results, it can be concluded that the CRH type cooperative learning model has an effect on learning outcomes in natural science students on the water cycle material for fifth grade students at SD Negeri 34 Parepare. The research recommendation is that subjects focus on other subjects.
Adventures in Holography

In this thesis, inspired by the holographic theories, we study a variety of interesting problems in gravity, condensed matter and cosmology. First, we explore the entanglement entropy of a general region in a theory of quantum gravity using holographic calculations. In particular, we use holographic entanglement entropy prescription of Ryu-Takayanagi in the context of the Randall-Sundrum 2 model with considering three kind of gravity theory in the bulk: the Einstein gravity, the general f(R) gravity and the Gauss-Bonnet gravity. Showing the leading term is given by the usual Bekenstein-Hawking formula, we confirm the conjecture by Bianchi and Myers for this theory. Further, we calculate the first subleading term to entanglement entropy and show that they agree with the Wald entropy up to the extrinsic curvature terms. Then, we study the holographic dual of what is known as quantum Hall ferromagnetism in condensed matter theory. This phenomenon, which has been observed in graphene samples by applying strong magnetic field, is the emergence of energy gaps and Hall plateaus at integer filling fractions due to occurrence of spontaneous symmetry breaking. This e↵ect is partially understood with certain perturbative calculations at weak coupling. The question is then whether this feature survives in a strongly coupled system as well. To address this question, we apply a well-established string theory dual, namely the D3-D5 system. In this framework, coincident D5 and D7-branes are embedded in the AdS 5 ⇥ S5 background of the D3-branes. Within this holographic set-up and through the numerical calculations, we investigate the possibility of spontaneous symmetry breaking and find interesting phase transitions at finite temperature. Finally, we introduce a holographic description of our four-dimensional universe through a “brane world” scenario known as the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) construction, where the brane refers to our universe embedded in a bulk space-time with five or more dimensions. In fact, we examine the DGP model as a theory of five-dimensional Einstein gravity coupled to four-dimensional branes while we assume five-dimensional spherical black hole metric in the bulk. Then, we study the phenomenological viability of the brane around this five-dimensional black hole. Further, we relate bulk, brane, and black hole parameters and the observational constraints on them. We find that viable solutions are indeed possible, hence we propose a holographic origin for the big bang. In particular, we suggest that our four-dimensional brane emerges from the gravitational collapse of matter in five dimensions which avoids the big bang singularity.
On weakly reversible rings and strongly reversible rings

Year: 2010 Vol.: 77 Fasc. : 3-4 Title: On weakly reversible rings and strongly reversible rings Author(s): Liang Zhao and Xiaosheng Zhu We introduce the notion of weakly reversible rings which is a generalization of reversible rings, and investigate its properties. We ¯rst give some examples of weakly reversible rings. We next argue about the weak reversibility of some kinds of polyno- mial rings. A number of properties of this generalization are established. Furthermore, we introduce the concepts of ®-strongly reversible rings and (®; ±)-strongly reversible rings to consider the strongly reversible property of an Ore extension R[x; ®; ±] of a ring R instead of the ring R[x]. Address: Liang Zhao Department of Mathematics Nanjing University Nanjing, 210093 China Address: Xiaosheng Zhu Department of Mathematics Nanjing University Nanjing, 210093 China
Fast and Sensitive Method for Simultaneous Quantification of Meropenem and Vaborbactam in Human Plasma Microsamples by Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring

Meropenem (MRP)-Vaborbactam (VBR) is a novel beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor used for the management of difficult-to-treat Gram-negative infections. Among critically ill patients, MRP-VBR shows remarkable inter-individual variability in pharmacokinetic behavior, thus justifying the implementation of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) for improving real-time management in different challenging scenarios. In this study, we developed and validated a fast and sensitive Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method for the simultaneous quantification of MRP and VBR in human plasma microsamples of 3 microliters. The analysis required only a single-step sample preparation and was performed by means of a fast chromatographic run of 4 min, followed by positive electrospray ionization and detection on a high-sensitivity triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer operated in multiple reaction monitoring modes. The straightforward analytical procedure was successfully validated, based on the EMA guidelines, in terms of specificity, sensitivity, linearity, precision, accuracy, matrix effect, extraction recovery, the limit of quantification, and stability. The novel method was successfully applied for simultaneously measuring MRP and VBR concentrations in more than 42 plasma samples collected from critically ill patients affected by carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacteria infections.
Normal-Tension Glaucoma: A Glymphopathy?

Abstract Glaucoma is one of the main causes of irreversible blindness in the world. The most common form, primary open-angle glaucoma, is an optic neuropathy that is characterized by a progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells and their axons, leading to structural changes in the optic nerve head and associated visual field defects. Elevated intraocular pressure remains the most important modifiable risk factor for primary open-angle glaucoma. However, a significant proportion of patients develop glaucomatous damage in the absence of increased intraocular pressure, a condition known as normal-tension glaucoma (NTG). The pathophysiology underlying NTG remains unclear. Several studies have revealed that vascular and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) factors may play significant roles in the development of NTG. Vascular failure caused by functional or structural abnormalities, and compartmentation of the optic nerve subarachnoid space with disturbed CSF dynamics have been shown to be associated with NTG. In the present article, based on the concept of the glymphatic system and observations in patients with NTG, we hypothesize that failure of fluid transport via the glymphatic pathway in the optic nerve may be involved in the pathogenesis of some if not many cases of NTG. According to this hypothesis, vascular and CSF factors may share reduced glymphatic transport and perivascular waste clearance in the optic nerve as a final common pathway leading to the development of NTG. In addition, we speculate that some cases of NTG may reflect glymphatic dysfunction in natural brain aging and central nervous system diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Clearly, further studies are needed to gain additional insight into the relative contribution of these factors and conditions to reduced glymphatic transport in the optic nerve.