Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gamification of Citizen Participation: A Systematic Mapping

The growth and diversification of public debate made it possible for civil society to become more participatory in decision-making processes. In other words, it enabled citizen participation, which is the interaction between civil society and public authorities to solve problems. Furthermore, with the development of information and computer technologies, citizen participation has expanded into the digital realm, giving way to electronic participation or e-participation. However, in this context, citizen engagement still is a challenge. As a result, different researches have been carried out to identify strategies that can increase engagement so that electronic participation is effective. One of these fields aims to improve users' experience and the usability of electronic participation tools by using gamification to enliven participatory activities. The purpose of this article is to carry out a systematic mapping study of the literature as a way of better understanding the impact caused by gamification on citizen participation. Thus, 75 papers were selected and classified, allowing the identification of research methods, application contexts, forms of participation, and game elements used. This mapping enabled the following discoveries: design and prototyping is the most carried out research method for studying gamification in citizen participation, and civic engagement was the most analyzed context. Furthermore, the development of tools mainly focused on asking the population their opinions on policy issues to create a partnership between government and civil society.
Entanglement-assisted tomography of a quantum target

We study the efficiency of quantum tomographic reconstruction where the system under investigation (quantum target) is indirectly monitored by looking at the state of a quantum probe that has been scattered off the target. In particular, we focus on the state tomography of a qubit through a one-dimensional scattering of a probe qubit, with a Heisenberg-type interaction. Via direct evaluation of the associated quantum Cramér–Rao bounds, we compare the accuracy efficiency that one can obtain by adopting entanglement-assisted strategies with that achievable when entanglement resources are not available. Even though sub-shot noise accuracy levels are not attainable, we show that quantum correlations play a significant role in the estimation. A comparison with the accuracy levels obtainable by direct estimation (not through a probe) of the quantum target is also performed.
Dynamics of the quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice: Soft modes and local resonating valence-bond correlations.

We report on an exhaustive investigation of the dynamical dimer-dimer correlations in imaginary time for the quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice using the Green’s function Monte Carlo method. We show in particular that soft modes develop upon reducing the dimer-dimer repulsion, indicating the presence of a second-order phase transition into an ordered phase with broken translational symmetry. We further investigate the nature of this ordered phase, for which a 12-site unit cell has been previously proposed, with the surprising result that significant Bragg peaks are only present at two of the three high-symmetry points consistent with this unit cell. We attribute the absence of a detectable peak to its small magnitude due to the nearly uniform internal structure of the 12-site crystal cell.
DYNAMICAL FORMATION OF MILLISECOND PULSARS IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS

The cumulative luminosity distribution functions (CLFs) of radio millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in globular clusters (GCs) and in the Galactic field at a frequency of 1.4 GHz have been examined. Assuming a functional form, N ∝ Lq where N is the number of MSPs and L is the luminosity at 1.4 GHz, it is found that the CLFs significantly differ with a steeper slope, q = −0.83 ± 0.05, in GCs than in the Galactic field (q = −0.48 ± 0.04), suggesting a different formation or evolutionary history of MSPs in these two regions of the Galaxy. To probe the production mechanism of MSPs in clusters, a search of the possible relationships between the MSP population and cluster properties was carried out. The results of an investigation of nine GCs indicate positive correlations between the MSP population and the stellar encounter rate and metallicity. This provides additional evidence suggesting that stellar dynamical interactions are important in the formation of the MSP population in GCs.
Sucrose and light induced betalain biosynthesis in callus cultures of bougainvillea (Bougainvillea spp.)

An attempt was made to substantiate the optimum sucrose level and light conditions for biosynthesis of betalain pigments (betaxanthins and betacyaninins) from callus cultures of bougainvillea (Bougainvillea spp.). A sucrose concentration of 50 g/l in MS medium resulted in maximum response coefficient with earliest pigment initiation and intensification. Sucrose at 50 g/l resulted in significant increase in production of betacyanin and betaxanthin as compared to control. Under high sucrose concentration callus growth was significantly decreased. Continuous blue light was most effective in enhancing the betacyanin and betaxanthin content in the callus cultures. Under complete darkness there was significant decrease in pigment content but the callus growth was increased.
Evaluation of the Improvement Effect of Limestone Powder Waste in the Stabilization of Swelling Clayey Soil

The natural stone industry generates large amounts of industrial waste every year. Limestone powder produced by the activity of this industry is dumped into landfills, generating an environmental impact that could be reduced by using this waste as a binder in building materials. In the present work, the use of this by-product as an addition for soil improvement of clayey soils has been studied. The tested natural soil is a soft clay from southeastern Spain, which has been mixed by adding 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25% of dry limestone dust by total dry weight of the soil. The natural soil and the additive have been characterized, in addition to the common geotechnical tests, by means of X-Ray diffraction and X-Ray Fluorescence. The improvement of the geotechnical properties of the mixed soil has been evaluated by means of the change in the Atterberg limits, free swell index, unconfined compressive strength, and one-dimensional consolidation test. The change in the microstructure of the mixed soil has been studied by scanning electron microscopy. In general, the results obtained show an increase in the strength of the soil and a reduction of its deformability when limestone powder is added.
Biotechnology and the lifetime of technical civilizations

Abstract The number of people able to end Earth's technical civilization has heretofore been small. Emerging dual-use technologies, such as biotechnology, may give similar power to thousands or millions of individuals. To quantitatively investigate the ramifications of such a marked shift on the survival of both terrestrial and extraterrestrial technical civilizations, this paper presents a two-parameter model for civilizational lifespans, i.e. the quantity L in Drake's equation for the number of communicating extraterrestrial civilizations. One parameter characterizes the population lethality of a civilization's biotechnology and the other characterizes the civilization's psychosociology. L is demonstrated to be less than the inverse of the product of these two parameters. Using empiric data from PubMed to inform the biotechnology parameter, the model predicts human civilization's median survival time as decades to centuries, even with optimistic psychosociological parameter values, thereby positioning biotechnology as a proximate threat to human civilization. For an ensemble of civilizations having some median calculated survival time, the model predicts that, after 80 times that duration, only one in 1024 civilizations will survive – a tempo and degree of winnowing compatible with Hanson's ‘Great Filter. ’ Thus, assuming that civilizations universally develop advanced biotechnology, before they become vigorous interstellar colonizers, the model provides a resolution to the Fermi paradox.
Sound mechanics from squeaky and booming dune sands

: It is veriﬁed that the source of the acoustic emissions when beach sand or other squeaky grains are stepped on or impacted by a pestle lies in a thin shear band directly under the pestle. The grain layers in this band slide one over another at a slow creepy pace giving rise to energy transfer, via the stick-slip eﬀect, from the impacting pestle to the elastic vibrations in the shear bands at the grain contact areas. In turn, this vibration energy feeds the elastic modes of vibration along the vertical grain columns or equivalently, the elastic modes of vibration in the shear band under the pestle comprising the vibrating columns, with dominant frequency in the range of 1,000 Hz. In search of an explanation of the acoustic emissions when booming dune sand is pushed by a blade or is freely avalanching, we adopt the concept of the collision shear band, where, due to the high degree of ﬂuidity of the sand mass, the grain layers slide one over another at a brisk pace so that the average collision frequency between grains in two adjacent grain layers deﬁnes the dominant frequency of the acoustic emission in the range of 100 Hz.
2D kinematic study of the central region of NGC 4501

GMOS-IFU observational data were used to study the detailed two dimensional gas kinematics and morphological structures within the ~500x421 pc^2 of the active Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 4501. We provide empirical evidences of possible outflowing material from the central zones of NGC 4501 to the observer. In addition, we performed a spectral synthesis and diagnostic diagram analysis to determine respectively the dominant stellar population in the inner disc of this galaxy and to unveil the actual nature of the central engine of NGC 4501. The principal finding of this work is that the central regions of NGC 4501 are dominated by non circular motions connected to probable outflows of matter from the nuclear regions of this galaxy. A predominant old stellar population inhabits the internal zones of NGC 4501 excluding the possibility of ongoing starburst activity in the central parsecs of this galaxy. The latter result is confirmed by the diagnostic diagram analysis that establishes a preponderant active galactic nucleus character for NGC 4501. These outcomes together provide a general description of the gas motion and the corresponding nuclear activity in the internal disc of NGC 4501 in an attempt to elucidate the possible relation among the central activity and the induced kinematic properties of this nearby galaxy.
Cryptocurrency Price Prediction using Forecasting and Sentiment Analysis

—In recent years, many investors have used cryp- tocurrencies, prompting specialists to find out the factors that affect cryptocurrencies’ prices. Therefore, one of the most pop- ular methods that have been used to predict cryptocurrency prices is sentiment analysis. It is a widespread technique utilized by many researchers on social media platforms, particularly on Twitter. Thus, to determine the relationship between investors’ sentiment and the volatility of cryptocurrency prices, this study forecasts the cryptocurrency prices using the Long-Term-Short- Memory (LSTM) deep learning algorithm. In addition, Twitter users’ sentiments using Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Naive Bayes (NB) machine learning approaches are analyzed. As a result, in the classification of the bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) datasets of investors’ sentiments into (Positive, Negative, and Neutral), the SVM algorithm outperformed the NB algorithm with an accuracy of 93.95% and 95.59%, respectively. Furthermore, the forecasting regression model achieves an error rate of 0.2545 for MAE, 0.2528 for MSE, and 0.5028 for RMSE.
Association of COVID-19 Real-Time Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) Cycle Threshold Value With Surrogate Markers of Disease Severity

Introduction The cycle threshold (Ct) value in real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) serves as a criterion to diagnose coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and is inversely proportional to viral load. Levels of inflammatory markers such as aspartate aminotransferase (AST), ferritin, D-dimer, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) are used as quantitative measures of COVID-19 severity. We examined the association between these markers and Ct values. Methodology This retrospective data analysis included 400 patients with positive RT-PCR results for COVID-19 who were admitted to a tertiary care hospital. Clinical and biochemical data were accessed from the hospital information management system. Associations of clinical parameters and markers of disease severity (e.g., polymorph, AST, hs-CRP, D-dimer, LDH, and ferritin levels) with Ct values were assessed. Observations LDH, ferritin, D-dimer, and hs-CRP were found to be significantly higher in moderate and severe groups than in the mild COVID-19 group. AST, ferritin, and hs-CRP levels were also significantly higher in severe COVID-19 subjects, compared to moderate COVID-19 subjects. Ct values for the E (envelop) gene and ORF (open reading frame) 1b gene were found to be significantly higher in those with severe COVID-19. Polymorph counts in subjects with Ct values of 25 or higher were significantly increased, compared to those with Ct values under 30. LDH, D-dimer, and hs-CRP levels in subjects with Ct values over 30 were significantly lower than for those with Ct values under 30. Ferritin was the best independent predictor of non-survival in study subjects, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 85.5% (95% confidence interval = 73.2-95.9). The Ct value for the E gene had an AUC of 75.1%, and the ORF1b gene had an AUC of 64.5%. However, no significant correlation was detected between any parameter and Ct value. Conclusion Polymorph, LDH, ferritin, D-dimer, and hs-CRP levels were significantly elevated in subjects with low E gene Ct values. Also, these subjects were at risk of severe disease and fatality. Ct values for the E gene thus could serve as an early indicator for patients at risk of severe disease and death.
Structural Interpretation of Lineaments Uses Satellite Images Processing: A Case Study in North-Eastern Tunisia

This paper presents a lineament detection method using multi-band remote sensing images. The main objective of this work is to design an automatic image processing tool for lineament mapping from Landsat-7 ETM + satellite data. Five procedures were involved: 1) The Principal Component Analysis; 2) image enhancement using histogram equalization technique 3) directional Sobel filters of the original data; 4) histogram segmentation and 5) binary image generation. The applied methodology was contributed in identifying several known large-scale faults in the Northeast of Tunisia. The statistical and spatial analyses of lineament map indicate a difference of morphological appearance of lineaments in the satellite image. Indeed, all the lineaments present a specific organization. Five groups were classified based on three orientations: NE-SW, E-W and NW-SE. The overlapping of lineament map with the geologic map confirms that these lineaments of diverse directions can be identified and recognized on the field as a fault. The identified lineaments were linked to a deep faults caused by tectonic movements in Tunisia. This study shows the performance of the satellite image processing in the analysis and mapping of the accidents in the northern Atlas.
The special growth history of central galaxies in groups and clusters

Central galaxies (CGs) in galaxy groups and clusters are believed to form and assemble a good portion of their stellar mass at early times, but they also accrete significant mass at late times via galactic cannibalism, that is merging with companion group or cluster galaxies that experience dynamical friction against the common host dark-matter halo. The effect of these mergers on the structure and kinematics of the CG depends not only on the properties of the accreted satellites, but also on the orbital parameters of the encounters. Here we present the results of numerical simulations aimed at estimating the distribution of merging orbital parameters of satellites cannibalized by the CGs in groups and clusters. As a consequence of dynamical friction, the satellites' orbits evolve losing energy and angular momentum, with no clear trend towards orbit circularization. The distributions of the orbital parameters of the central-satellite encounters are markedly different from the distributions found for halo-halo mergers in cosmological simulations. The orbits of satellites accreted by the CGs are on average less bound and less eccentric than those of cosmological halo-halo encounters. We provide fits to the distributions of the central-satellite merging orbital parameters that can be used to study the merger-driven evolution of the scaling relations of CGs.
Analytical spectral density of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model at finite N

We show analytically that the spectral density of the $q$-body Sachdeev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model agrees with that of Q-Hermite polynomials with Q a non-trivial function of $q \ge 2$ and the number of Majorana fermions $N \gg 1$. Numerical results, obtained by exact diagonalization, are in excellent agreement with the analytical spectral density even for relatively small $N \sim 8$. For $N \gg 1$ and not close to the edge of the spectrum, we find the macroscopic spectral density simplifies to $\rho(E) \sim \exp[2\arcsin^2(E/E_0)/\log \eta]$, where $\eta$ is the suppression factor of the contribution of intersecting Wick contractions relative to nested contractions. This spectral density reproduces the known result for the free energy in the large $q$ and $N$ limit. In the infrared region, where the SYK model is believed to have a gravity-dual, the spectral density is given by $\rho(E) \sim \sinh[2\pi \sqrt 2 \sqrt{(1-E/E_0)/(-\log \eta)}]$. It therefore has a square-root edge, as in random matrix ensembles, followed by an exponential growth, a distinctive feature of black holes and also of low energy nuclear excitations. Results for level-statistics in this region confirm the agreement with random matrix theory. Physically this is a signature that, for sufficiently long times, the SYK model and its gravity dual evolve to a fully ergodic state whose dynamics only depends on the global symmetry of the system. Our results strongly suggest that random matrix correlations are a universal feature of quantum black holes and that the SYK model, combined with holography, may be relevant to model certain aspects of the nuclear dynamics.
Examining the Influence of the Human Gut Microbiota on Cognition and Stress: A Systematic Review of the Literature

The gut microbiota is seen as an emerging biotechnology that can be manipulated to enhance or preserve cognition and physiological outputs of anxiety and depression in clinical conditions. However, the existence of such interactions in healthy young individuals in both non-stressful and stressful environments is unclear. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the relationship between the human gut microbiota, including modulators of the microbiota on cognition, brain function and/or stress, anxiety and depression. A total of n = 25 eligible research articles from a possible 3853 published between October 2018 and August 2021 were identified and included. Two study design methods for synthesis were identified: cross-sectional or pre/post intervention. Few cross-sectional design studies that linked microbiota to cognition, brain activity/structure or mental wellbeing endpoints existed (n = 6); however, correlations between microbiota diversity and composition and areas of the brain related to cognitive functions (memory and visual processing) were observed. Intervention studies targeting the gut microbiota to improve cognition, brain structure/function or emotional well-being (n = 19) generally resulted in improved brain activity and/or cognition (6/8), and improvements in depression and anxiety scores (5/8). Despite inherit limitations in studies reviewed, available evidence suggests that gut microbiota is linked to brain connectivity and cognitive performance and that modulation of gut microbiota could be a promising strategy for enhancing cognition and emotional well-being in stressed and non-stressed situations.
An Infrared Photometric and Spectroscopic Study of Post-AGB Stars

We present here $Spitzer$ mid-infrared (IR) spectra and modeling of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of a selection of post-Asymptotic Giant Branch (PAGB) stars. The mid-IR spectra of majority of these sources showed spectral features such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and silicates in emission. Our results from SED modeling showed interesting trends of dependency between the photospheric and circumstellar parameters. A trend of dependency is also noticed between the ratios of equivalent widths (EWs) of various vibrational modes of PAHs and the photospheric temperature T$_{*}$ and model-derived stellar parameters for the sample stars. The PAGB mass loss rates derived from the SED models are found to be higher than those for the AGB stars. In a few objects, low and high excitation fine structure emission lines were identified, indicating their advanced stage of evolution. Further, IR vibration modes of fullerene (C$_{60}$) were detected for the first time in the PAGB star IRAS 21546+4721.
Localized Recombining Plasma in G166.0+4.3: A Supernova Remnant with an Unusual Morphology

We observed the Galactic mixed-morphology supernova remnant G166.0+4.3 with Suzaku. The X-ray spectrum in the western part of the remnant is well represented by a one-component ionizing plasma model. The spectrum in the northeastern region can be explained by two components. One is the Fe-rich component with the electron temperature $kT_e = 0. 87_{-0.03}^{+0.02}$ keV. The other is the recombining plasma component of lighter elements with $kT_e = 0.46\pm0.03$ keV, the initial temperature $kT_{init} = 3$ keV (fixed) and the ionization parameter $n_et = (6.1_{-0.4}^{+0.5}) \times 10^{11} \rm cm^{-3} s$. As the formation process of the recombining plasma, two scenarios, the rarefaction and thermal conduction, are considered. The former would not be favored since we found the recombining plasma only in the northeastern region whereas the latter would explain the origin of the RP. In the latter scenario, an RP is anticipated in a part of the remnant where blast waves are in contact with cool dense gas. The emission measure suggests higher ambient gas density in the northeastern region. The morphology of the radio shell and a GeV gamma-ray emission also suggest a molecular cloud in the region.