Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dilated Spatial Generative Adversarial Networks for Ergodic Image Generation

Generative models have recently received renewed attention as a result of adversarial learning. Generative adversarial networks consist of samples generation model and a discrimination model able to distinguish between genuine and synthetic samples. In combination with convolutional (for the discriminator) and de-convolutional (for the generator) layers, they are particularly suitable for image generation, especially of natural scenes. However, the presence of fully connected layers adds global dependencies in the generated images. This may lead to high and global variations in the generated sample for small local variations in the input noise. In this work we propose to use architec-tures based on fully convolutional networks (including among others dilated layers), architectures specifically designed to generate globally ergodic images, that is images without global dependencies. Conducted experiments reveal that these architectures are well suited for generating natural textures such as geologic structures .
Amphibians and reptiles of an agroforestry system in the Colombian Caribbean

—Land-use change is a factor that may alter the assembly of herpetofaunal communities. To determine the effects of land use change, we characterized the herpetofaunal community of “La Gloria Project” in Magdalena, Colombia. Agroforestry crops (Red Gum, Pink Trumpet Tree, Beechwood, and Teak), native forest, wetlands, and built-up zones composing the site. From March to October 2012, we performed eleven field trips, of ten days (eight hours each) for a total sampling effort of 880 hours per observer. We implemented visual encounter surveys and pitfall traps for herpetofauna detection. We recorded 23 amphibian (3,555 individuals) and 37 reptile species (1,088 individuals); the highest diversity for both amphibians and reptiles were found in native forest. Comparing disturbed areas, Teak agroforest presented the highest diversity for both taxa relative to non-natural environments, by factors such as big leaf size, generating conditions to sustenance of some species. However, we demonstrated that short-term differences between natural and nonnatural habitats are significant, since there has not been enough time for generalist species to displace the susceptible species and occupy their niches in all vegetation coverages in the study area.
An Analysis of Selected Data Practices: A Case Study of the Purdue College of Agriculture.

This paper describes a survey of data practices given to the Purdue College of Agriculture. Data practices are a concern for many researchers with new governmental funding mandates that require data management plans, and for the institution providing resources to comply with these mandates. The survey attempted to answer these questions: What are the characteristics of the data held by respondents? What tools do the respondents use in managing, analyzing, or manipulating their data? Where do students primarily learn research data management skills? The survey documents that there is a statistically significant difference in data holding sizes between faculty and graduate students, and that MS-Excel is still the analysis tool of choice. Results also showed that many researchers in the College were not thinking of the Libraries as a resource for data management practices, preservation, or data literacy instruction for graduate students. The survey results may inform the Libraries in developing new data services and instruction, while also highlighting the need for additional research into data practices for specific disciplinary areas or types of researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
The Influence of Accounting Information System on Financial Performance of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Kangar, Perlis

Accounting Information Systems (AIS) play a pivotal role in shaping the financial performance of companies in Malaysia, with particular significance for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). However, the intricate nature of AIS presents formidable challenges and barriers for SMEs, necessitating a thorough examination of its impact on their operational efficiency and financial outcomes. This study aims to elucidate the nexus between AIS and SMEs' financial performance by focusing on three crucial variables: timeliness, transparency, and accuracy. The study employed questionnaire surveys, with a total sample size of 357 respondents drawn from a population of 4,735 SMEs in Kangar, Perlis. Utilising SPSS Statistics Software, the collected data underwent rigorous analysis, including correlation and multi-regression analyses. The results underscored a highly significant impact of timeliness, transparency, and accuracy of AIS on SMEs' financial performance. These findings offer invaluable insights into the pivotal role of AIS in augmenting SMEs' financial performance, highlighting avenues for optimising their accounting systems. By shedding light on the intricate dynamics between AIS and SMEs' financial outcomes, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underpinning effective financial management in the SME sector. Moreover, it provides actionable recommendations for SMEs to leverage AIS effectively, thereby enhancing their competitiveness and sustainability in the dynamic business landscape of Malaysia.
Bridging the Gap in Understanding Bone Metastasis: A Multifaceted Perspective

The treatment of patients with advanced cancer poses clinical problems due to the complications that arise as the disease progresses. Bone metastases are a common problem that cancer patients may face, and currently, there are no effective drugs to treat these individuals. Prostate, breast, and lung cancers often spread to the bone, causing significant and disabling health conditions. The bone is a highly active and dynamic tissue and is considered a favorable environment for the growth of cancer. The role of osteoblasts and osteoclasts in the process of bone remodeling and the way in which their interactions change during the progression of metastasis is critical to understanding the pathophysiology of this disease. These interactions create a self-perpetuating loop that stimulates the growth of metastatic cells in the bone. The metabolic reprogramming of both cancer cells and cells in the bone microenvironment has serious implications for the development and progression of metastasis. Insight into the process of bone remodeling and the systemic elements that regulate this process, as well as the cellular changes that occur during the progression of bone metastases, is critical to the discovery of a cure for this disease. It is crucial to explore different therapeutic options that focus specifically on malignancy in the bone microenvironment in order to effectively treat this disease. This review will focus on the bone remodeling process and the effects of metabolic disorders as well as systemic factors like hormones and cytokines on the development of bone metastases. We will also examine the various therapeutic alternatives available today and the upcoming advances in novel treatments.
Interplay of cooperative breeding and predation risk on egg allocation and reproductive output

Abstract Predation risk can influence behavior, reproductive investment, and, ultimately, individuals’ fitness. In high-risk environments, females often reduce allocation to reproduction, which can affect offspring phenotype and breeding success. In cooperative breeders, helpers contribute to feed the offspring, and groups often live and forage together. Helpers can, therefore, improve reproductive success, but also influence breeders’ condition, stress levels and predation risk. Yet, whether helper presence can buffer the effects of predation risk on maternal reproductive allocation remains unstudied. Here, we used the cooperatively breeding sociable weaver Philetairus socius to test the interactive effects of predation risk and breeding group size on maternal allocation to clutch size, egg mass, yolk mass, and yolk corticosterone. We increased perceived predation risk before egg laying using playbacks of the adults’ main predator, gabar goshawk (Micronisus gabar). We also tested the interactive effects of group size and prenatal predator playbacks on offspring hatching and fledging probability. Predator-exposed females laid eggs with 4% lighter yolks, but predator-calls’ exposure did not clearly affect clutch size, egg mass, or egg corticosterone levels. Playback-treatment effects on yolk mass were independent of group size, suggesting that helpers’ presence did not mitigate predation risk effects on maternal allocation. Although predator-induced reductions in yolk mass may decrease nutrient availability to offspring, potentially affecting their survival, playback-treatment effects on hatching and fledging success were not evident. The interplay between helper presence and predator effects on maternal reproductive investment is still an overlooked area of life history and physiological evolutionary trade-offs that requires further studies.
Investigating Unhealthy Behaviors Associated with SF-36 Domains in Women with Endometriosis—Findings from a Web-Based Survey Data Set

Unhealthy behaviors may contribute to the development and the progression of chronic diseases with negative consequences on patients’ quality of life. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between unhealthy behaviors (physical inactivity, tobacco consumption, and alcohol consumption) and health-related quality of life, measured with the SF-36 questionnaire, in women with endometriosis. To achieve this, data from a previous cross-sectional web survey among Italian adult women were analyzed. A total of 1045 responses were included in the analysis. Among the SF-36 subscales, the lowest score was recorded in the energy/fatigue domain: mean = 35.536 (Standard Deviation = 18.452). Smoking and physically inactive women had lower scores than non-smoking and physically active women, respectively, in each SF-36 domain. Women who drank more than one unit of alcohol a day, on average, reported lower scores than women with an alcohol intake <1 unit a day, for the following SF-36 domains: role limitations due to physical health, role limitations due to emotional problems, and emotional well-being. The multivariable analysis evidenced that employment, physical inactivity, and tobacco consumption were significant predictors for each SF-36 domain (p < 0.05). Physical inactivity and tobacco consumption had negative effects on the SF-36 subscales. Our results showed the need to monitor unhealthy behaviors to improve the overall well-being of women with endometriosis. Tailored strategies addressing smoking cessation, promoting physical activity, and moderating alcohol intake may aid in enhancing health-related quality of life in this vulnerable population.
Effectiveness of Marine Managed Areas of Central and Southern Belize: Spatial variations in Major Community Processes and the Implications for Local Management Success

This report summarized the activities and findings of the Marine Managed Areas Science (MMAS) program, Belize Ecological Monitoring (BEM) project, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and administered through Conservation International. The Belize Ecological Monitoring Project was a four-year study of the ecology of coral reef ecosystems associated with established Marine Managed Areas in central and southern Belize. The three main goals of this project were to (1) examine how fishing exclusion zones affect the structure of fish assemblages, (2) determine if the presence of fishing exclusion zones benefited the reef benthos and (3) understand how variations in other environmental or ecological parameters impact reef ecology and management strategies. The document is divided into six major sections:  A general introduction, description of study areas and methodology  Chapter 1 is on the detection of protection effects in managed areas and the status of fish biomass for target fish species at the study areas.  Chapter 2 is on patterns in larger, herbivorous fishes (F. Scaridae and Acanthuridae) and their correlation to benthic algal composition.  Chapter 3 examines coral recruitment patterns and their role in maintaining coral populations as well as the relative influence of benthic and fish assemblages on recruitment patterns.  Chapter 4 reports on geographic patterns in coral disease incidence and plausible causes for the observed spatial patterns.
Potential of Carica Papaya Stem Activated Carbon in Removal of Undesired Compounds from Metakaolin

Metakaolin (MK) is a pozzolan exhibiting additional cementitious tendency and is made by dehydroxylating Kaolin Clay (KC). In this study,potential of Carica papaya Stem Activated Carbon (CPSAC) in removal of undesired compounds or impurities from MK was examined.Carica papaya Stem (CPS) was processed into powder and chemically activated using hydrochloric (HCl) acid, while MK was produced from KC through calcination process.Five conical flasks contained 5 to 25 % CPSAC at 5 % weight intervals. Two hundredg of MK or KC was added and well mixed to achieve homogeneity.The KC+CPSAC samples were subjected to calcination inside a muffle furnace at 700 °C and removed after 1 to 2 h then allowed to cool; while the MK+CPSAC samples were soaked in water (125 mL for each sample) for 24 h, thereafter oven-dried at 105 °C. Subsequently, the samples obtained were subjected to Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis to investigate their surface morphology, while X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) techniques were employed to ascertain their chemical and mineralogical compositions, respectively.The data obtained from chemical composition analyses were thereafter subjected to optimization studies.The SEM plates showed thatthe sizes of all thesamples were within ranges of 2 and 50 nm, and their intensity pinnacles from XRD plots ranged between 200 and 4000 cps. CPSAC (21.42%) eliminated the unwanted compounds in the MK andincreasethe amount of its major oxides (Al2O3, CaO, SiO2 and Fe2O3by 43.76,16.89, 12.76, 6.51 %, respectively). In conclusion, CPSAC showed potential as a viable industrial treatment material for MK. HIGHLIGHTS Remediation of unwanted compounds from MK CPSAC’s efficacies in soil (MK) remediation Treatment effects of calcination process and agricultural adsorbent on MK Optimization studies of MK compounds GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Visual Attention-Guided Learning With Incomplete Labels for Seismic Fault Interpretation

Annotating geological faults on 3-D seismic volumes is a laborious process. Typically, only a fraction of the actual faults are manually interpreted, leaving many others unlabeled. This is due to the way attention selectivity works to drive human perception. The human brain selectively focuses its attention on certain salient regions in a visual scene marked by prominent changes in color, contrast, and other low-level signal cues. This bottom-up attention is further modulated by the individual’s goals, expectations, and constraints with respect to the task at hand, also called top-down attention. The fault annotations created by seismic interpreters reflect this cognitive process comprising both bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms. The 3-D convolutional neural networks (CNNs) pretrained on synthetic seismic data for fault mapping can be finetuned on select seismic lines extracted and labeled on a real seismic volume of interest. Traditional finetuning approaches treat all pixels on labeled sections as the absolute ground truth. This leads to the network incorrectly learning to predict regions of missing fault labels as negatives. We propose an attention-guided training framework that models and incorporates human visual attention to: 1) condition the process of sampling training data and 2) modulate the loss value for each pixel. Through quantitative and qualitative evaluation of results on a real seismic volume from North Western Australia, we demonstrate that the proposed approach is able to predict both the annotated and the unlabeled faults significantly better compared to baseline approaches.
The Influencing Factors and Mitigation Strategies of Seafarer Job Burnout

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the causes of seafarer burnout and the complex combination of causes that inspire burnout, and to provide a theoretical basis for mitigating seafarer burnout. Methods: This study used questionnaire method to survey 451 seafarer members. Then, the questionnaire data were statistically analyzed using SPSS26.0 software, and the job burnout influencing factors were explored by structural equation modeling using AMOS24.0. Third, a qualitative comparative analysis is used to explore the combination of factors that stimulate job burnout. Methods: The results of structural equation modeling showed that seafarer members' subjective well-being, general self-efficacy, and psychological resilience genera are all significantly negatively related to job burnout. Job demands are significantly negatively related to job burnout, job control negatively affects the decreased personal accomplishment dimension, and social support negatively affects the depersonalization and emotional exhaustion dimensions. Then, this study conducted a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis based on these six burnout influencing factors, and the results show that there are no necessary conditions leading to job burnout among the six antecedent variables and that there existed four combinations of conditions with high explanatory power for the formation of burnou. Finally, based on the findings of the study to alleviate seafarer burnout to provide management recommendations.
Preparation, Structural Identification, and Screening of Egg-Derived Peptides with Facilitating Alcohol Metabolism Activity

The aim of this study was to obtain egg-derived peptides with facilitating alcohol metabolism (EPs) by enzymolysis, to identify their structures, and screen small polypeptides with higher activity by molecular docking. The optimum conditions for preparing EPs with facilitating alcohol metabolism were obtained by a single factor experiment, adding 2% Protamex and performing enzymolysis for 3 h with a liquid–material ratio of 35:1. The dose–response relationship experiment showed that 800 mg/kg·bw EPs played a better role in facilitating alcohol metabolism. EPs contained 40% hydrophobic amino acids (HAA), including 9.24% Leu. Eighty-four peptides were identified by HPLC-MS/MS and four peptides with potential activation of alcohol dehydrogenase were further selected by molecular docking. The tetrapeptide Trp-Ile-Val-Asp (WIVD) with the highest binding energy reached −7.16 kcal/mol. These findings suggest that egg is a good source for the preparation of peptides with facilitating alcohol metabolism activity.
Contribution of Idaho National Laboratory to the CPR FUMAC

This report summarizes the contribution of Idaho National laboratory (INL) to the IAEA Coordinated Research Project on Fuel Modeling under Accident Conditions FUMAC. In line with the original research agreement between INL/US DOE/Battelle and IAEA, work at INL has focused on both (i) development of INL’s fuel performance code BISON for the analysis of loss-of-coolant accidents (LOCA) and (ii) simulation of selected FUMAC priority cases. With reference to code development efforts, models were implemented in BISON for high temperature cladding oxidation, Zircaloy solid-solid phase transformation, Zircaloy high temperature creep, cladding burst failure and axial fuel relocation. BISON, analyses were performed of the FUMAC cases (1) MTA EK tests PUZRY, (2) QUENCH L1 rods 4 and 7, (3) Halden IFA-650.2 and (4) Halden IFA-650.10. In addition, the REBEKA separate effects tests were analyzed, including an effort to investigate 3D cladding response in presence of azimuthal temperature variations. In general, BISON predictions of burst temperature, pressure and time to burst are very reasonable. Predictions of cladding hoop strain are less satisfactory and require additional investigation. Finally, results of 3D simulations indicated that 3D effects are potentially important in fuel rod analysis during LOCAs. BISON results are made available to the FUMAC project as a contribution to the FUMAC benchmark exercise.
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons: potential sources from the vineyard and analysis in wine

Ultra high-pressure liquid chromatography (UPLC) and high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) methods for determination Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) were compared for speed and the proficiency in detecting low levels of PAHs in wine. Sample preparation was carried out using a validated liquid-liquid extraction method (LLE) Panzeri, (2013). Both instrumental methods are relatively rapid: total running time was 29,48 minutes and 17,90 minutes for HPLC and UPLC methods, respectively. In this study, methods were validated in terms of limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ), accuracy and recovery. Both methods were found to be sensitive and suited for the analysis of PAHs in wine. 3.
Embryo Transfer Procedural Parameters Do Not Predict IVF Cycle Outcome

Background: this study aims to assess the effect of embryo transfer (ET) performance parameters of a technical nature on IVF outcome. Methods: A total of 1417 ETs from a single IVF center were included in this prospective observational study. The parameters investigated were as follows: the presence of cervical mucus post catheter withdrawal, the presence of blood, catheter reload, the employment of a tenaculum and stylet, catheter resistance as experienced by the physician and patient discomfort. Results: When ET performance parameters were associated with clinical outcomes on a singular level, none of the ET parameters presented with any statistical significance. The evaluation of covariates indicated that the number and the quality of transferred embryos, as well as maternal age, exerted a statistically significant effect on clinical outcomes. In a multivariate analysis, only the presence of mucus along with significant catheter resistance presented with statistical significance; however, when adjusting for covariates, this combination showed no statistically significant effect on clinical outcomes. Conclusions: the results indicate that the time-consuming process of recording and analyzing ET performance parameters fails to offer any additional value in predicting the cycle’s outcome, while factors like embryo quality and number, as well as maternal age, seem to be the sole robust predictive factors of an IVF cycle.