Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reflection Removal Using Dual-Polarization and Saliency in Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz Imaging

Passive millimeter-wave and terahertz (MMW/THz) imaging is a significant technique used in personal security inspection and scene surveillance. However, a human body generally generates an obvious reflection on the floor, which may have negative influences on target detection and observer vision. In this article, we present a physically based method using dual-polarization feature and saliency information to solve the problem of reflection removal. The physical principle of a special dual-polarization phenomenon has been revealed by theoretical calculation and simulation analysis. By combining the second Stokes parameter (TQ) and modified linear polarization ratio (mLPR), a new feature parameter has been created to extract reflections of human bodies. By using a saliency analysis, the false positive alarms are eliminated completely. The experimental results demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed method using various measured MMW/THz images.
Adverse Neonatal Outcomes and Its Associated Factors Among Mothers with Short and Recommended Interpregnancy Interval, in Awi Zone Public Hospitals, 2020.

Background: Short interpregnancy interval is among modifiable risk factors for maternal and neonatal adverse outcomes for planned pregnancies. It is potentially associated with adverse neonatal outcomes which are known to have considerable public health significance. In Ethiopia neonatal mortality was found to be high according to recent mini Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey Report. More importantly information about adverse neonatal outcomes in relation to interpregnancy interval is poorly described yet in Ethiopia. Methods: Institution based comparative cross-sectional study was conducted in Awi zone public hospitals. A total of 482 mothers (241 with short and 241 with recommended IPI) were selected. The data was collected by using systematic random sampling technique through pretested structured questionnaire and entered in to Epi data version 3.1 then exported to Statistical Package of Social Science version 23.0 for analysis. Chi-square and independent t-test were used to compare means. Bivariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses was employed to estimate the crude and adjusted odds ratio with a confidence interval of 95% and P value of less than 0.05 considered statistically significant.Result: Among a total of selected mothers with short and recommended Interpregnancy interval (IPI) response rate was 237 (98.3%) and 238 (98.7%) respectively. Proportion of adverse neonatal outcomes were higher among short IPI groups (37.1%). Factors like, rural residence [AOR=6.9, 95%CI (3.32, 14.59)], and Cesarean section delivery [AOR=3.4, 95%CI (1.18, 10.09)] were significantly associated with adverse neonatal outcomes in short IPI groups. Factors like rural residence [AOR=6.1, 95%CI (2.11, 17.7)], unintended pregnancy [AOR=5.3, 95%CI (1.11, 25.00)], rupture of membrane [AOR=6.89, 95%CI (2.54, 18.65)] and induction of labor [AOR=13.4, 95%CI (3.17, 21.77)] were significantly associated in recommended IPI groups.Conclusion: Urban residency and vaginal mode of delivery were significantly associated with less risk of adverse neonatal outcomes in both IPI groups. Whereas, intended pregnancy status, spontaneous labor initiation and absence of ROM before labor were protective for adverse neonatal outcomes in recommended IPI mothers. Provision of proper health service coverage at rural area and minimizing C/S rate to reduce adverse neonatal outcome is recommended.
Using of Glycated Albumin Rather than Glycated Hemoglobin for assessing Glycaemic Control in Hemodialysis Patients with Type II Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a global epidemic that is correlated with long-term damage and causes dysfunctionof many organs like the kidney leading to diabetic nephropathy (DN) which need for heamodialysis (HD) toprotect progressive renal decline. This study was designed to evaluate the significance of glycated albumin(GA), compared with fasting blood sugar (FBS) and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), were evaluated as anindicator of glycemic control, also determinant of insulin. This study was conducted on 95 patients at agerang (30-70) years, and patients include (35) HD patients with diabetes, (35) HD patients without diabetesand (25) Type 2 diabetes mellitus, who attended atRamadi General Hospital and (25) samples as controlincluded in this study. This study showed that HbA1c% was significantly lower than simultaneous FBS andGA% in HD patients in comparison with in diabetic patients and control, as illustrated in significantly shallowslope of regression line between FBS with HbA1c and FBS with GA. Also, GA% was nearly correspondingbetween before and after one hemodialysis in HD patients compared with HbA1c.In conclusion, GA providesa better measure to estimate glycemic control in HD patients with diabetes compared with HbA1c.
Effect of thermal forcing of corms on the flowering of saffron (Crocus sativus L.)

Among all environmental factors, temperature is considered one of the key elements that control the growth and development of saffron. This study was undertaken to investigate the effect of thermal forcing of corms on saffron growth and development. To this end, mother corms were collected at three different periods: late March (Q2), mid-April (Q3) and late April (Q4). The corms of each period were then pretreated at three successive temperature levels: at 25°C for 2 weeks, at 15 °C for 2 weeks and finally at 4°C for 12 weeks. The results showed that the thermal pretreatment of corms had a significant effect on some saffron parameters. The flowers of the corms that underwent thermal treatment were later than those of the control. Similarly, the flower numbers and stigma yield were negatively affected by thermal forcing of corms. Overall, the thermal forcing of corms under the proposed regime was unfavorable for the growth and development of saffron.
Factors Affecting the Adoption of e-Learning at University Level

The dynamic development of e-learning technologies caused by the global epidemiological situation during the last year has prompted the rapid adaptation of the education sector to new challenges. At the same time, many barriers and challenges have emerged, especially at the initial period of e-learning implementation. The identification of factors determining the adoption of e-learning should be the source of information needed to improve the methods and tools used by educational institutions. In the era of strong competition, higher education institutions need to improve their business models or build new ones e.g. based on remote learning. The article aims to identify the essential success factors and their interlinks that explain the initial stages of adoption of an e-learning system by university students in Poland. The author built three regression models which explain relationships between six input variables, i.e., the perceived usefulness (PU), the perceived ease of use (PEU), facilitating conditions (FC), computer self-efficacy (CSE), the preparedness level (PL), and previous experience (PE); and three output variables, i.e., satisfaction and personal development (SPD), attitude toward e-learning (AT), and intention to use (IU). The variable “satisfaction and personal development” (SPD) was newly added to the model. Data was collected with the help of a survey, which was conducted using the CAWI (computer-assisted web interview) technique. In total, 982 completed questionnaires were received. Results achieved using a regression analysis confirmed that the perceived usefulness played a crucial role in building the attitude of students toward e-learning and achieving satisfaction and personal development of the users. Only in the case of two analyzed variables, the obtained results confirmed statistically significant differentiation within the two gender groups. Results confirmed that men had declared a high level of computer self-efficacy. The variable “facilitating conditions” received higher marks from women. The research carried out and the results obtained may form the basis for building strategies for the development of universities and building business models in which e-learning plays an important role.
The transformation of Caribbean coral communities since humans

Abstract The mass die‐off of Caribbean corals has transformed many of this region’s reefs to macroalgal‐dominated habitats since systematic monitoring began in the 1970s. Although attributed to a combination of local and global human stressors, the lack of long‐term data on Caribbean reef coral communities has prevented a clear understanding of the causes and consequences of coral declines. We integrated paleoecological, historical, and modern survey data to track the occurrence of major coral species and life‐history groups throughout the Caribbean from the prehuman period to the present. The regional loss of Acropora corals beginning by the 1960s from local human disturbances resulted in increases in the occurrence of formerly subdominant stress‐tolerant and weedy scleractinian corals and the competitive hydrozoan Millepora beginning in the 1970s and 1980s. These transformations have resulted in the homogenization of coral communities within individual countries. However, increases in stress‐tolerant and weedy corals have slowed or reversed since the 1980s and 1990s in tandem with intensified coral bleaching and disease. These patterns reveal the long history of increasingly stressful environmental conditions on Caribbean reefs that began with widespread local human disturbances and have recently culminated in the combined effects of local and global change.
Formation of Amphibole‐Bearing Peridotite and Amphibole‐Bearing Pyroxenite Through Hydrous Melt‐Peridotite Reaction and In Situ Crystallization: An Experimental Study

Amphibole is a common hydrous mineral in mantle rocks. To better understand processes leading to the formation of amphibole‐bearing peridotites and pyroxenites in the lithospheric mantle, we conducted experiments by juxtaposing a lherzolite against hydrous basaltic melts in Au‐Pd capsules. Two melts were examined, a basaltic andesite and a basalt, each containing 4 wt% of water. The experiments were run at 1200°C and 1 GPa for 3 or 12 h, and then cooled to 880°C and 0.8 GPa over 49 h. The reaction at 1200°C produced a melt‐bearing orthopyroxenite‐dunite sequence. Crystallization of the partially reacted melts during cooling lead to the formation of an amphibole‐bearing gabbronorite‐orthopyroxenite‐peridotite sequence. Orthopyroxene in the peridotite and orthopyroxenite has a poikilitic texture enclosing olivines and spinels. Amphibole in the peridotite occurs interstitial to olivine, orthopyroxene, clinopyroxene, and spinel. Comparisons of texture and mineral compositions in the experimental products with those from field observations allow a better understanding of hydrous melt‐rock reaction in the lithospheric mantle. Amphibole‐bearing pyroxenite veins (or dikes) can be formed in the lithospheric mantle or at the crust‐mantle boundary by interaction between hydrous melt and peridotite and subsequent crystallization. Hornblendite or amphibole gabbronorite can be formed in the veins when the flux of hydrous melt is high. Differences in reacting melt and peridotite compositions are responsible for the variation in amphibole composition in mantle xenoliths from different tectonic settings. The extent of melt‐rock reaction is a factor that control amphibole composition across the amphibole‐bearing vein and the host peridotite.
Negative human capital externalities in well-being: evidence from Chinese cities

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of the concentration of human capital on individual happiness in Chinese cities. In contrast to findings in the literature based on the US context, we report lower individual happiness for residents living in cities with higher levels of human capital. A further investigation shows that the housing price underpins such negative human capital externalities in well-being. The results are robust to different model specifications. While human capital is often considered the key factor for the economic success of cities, this research informs subnational policy-makers of the potential negative consequence of attracting talent and possible solutions.
A Multi-Resolution Approach to GAN-Based Speech Enhancement

Recently, generative adversarial networks (GANs) have been successfully applied to speech enhancement. However, there still remain two issues that need to be addressed: (1) GAN-based training is typically unstable due to its non-convex property, and (2) most of the conventional methods do not fully take advantage of the speech characteristics, which could result in a sub-optimal solution. In order to deal with these problems, we propose a progressive generator that can handle the speech in a multi-resolution fashion. Additionally, we propose a multi-scale discriminator that discriminates the real and generated speech at various sampling rates to stabilize GAN training. The proposed structure was compared with the conventional GAN-based speech enhancement algorithms using the VoiceBank-DEMAND dataset. Experimental results showed that the proposed approach can make the training faster and more stable, which improves the performance on various metrics for speech enhancement.
Video-enhanced or textual rubrics: Does the Viewbrics' formative assessment methodology support the mastery of complex (21st century) skills?

Learners in the process of developing complex skills need a rich mental model of what such skills entail. Textual analytics rubrics (TR) are a widely used instrument to support formative assessment of complex skills, supporting feedback, reflection, and thus mental model development of complex skills. However, the textual nature of a rubric limits the possibility to deliver contextual and dynamic (time-and behaviour-oriented) information. In the Viewbrics online tool, we developed a version supporting the delivery of contextual and dynamic information by adding video-modelling examples with embedded self-explanation prompts to textual analytics rubrics. We called this combination as video-enhanced rubrics (VERs). Our current study investigates whether the Viewbrics online tool supports complex skills development and whether either textual-or video-enhanced rubrics best support complex skills' mastery. The study was a three-group (VERS n = 49, TR n = 54, control n = 50) within-subjects design. Learners' performance of complex skills was measured through expert, peer, and self-assessment using the Viewbrics online tool. A multi-level regression analysis shows learners in the TR and VERS conditions consistently outperforming the control condition to varying degrees across skills. However, no differences have been found between the two experimental conditions. Positive results across different complex skills indicate the Viewbrics online tool can be used to support the development of a wide range of complex skills in secondary education.
SYMBOLISM AND ISLAMIC VALUES IN STUDENTS’ REOG STAGE AT MUHARAM CELEBRATION

Signs, symbols, and meanings are important elements in human interaction. This research aims to reveal how the signs, symbols, and meanings related and can be used to describe the relationship among students in Reog culture staging. The results of the study showed that interaction between muslim’s players on the Reog stage forms togetherness, soul sacrifice, struggle, and friendship. This research of signs, symbols, and meanings in the relationship among Islamic students in Reog staging can be obtained that communication is the process of tagging and signification on signs to obtain a mutual understanding of meaning that involves human creativity in the production, exchange, and meaning process of the signs and symbols. The islamic values of students in Reog Muharam stage are leadership, togetherness, mutual respect and the means of silaturrahmi of muslim’s community in Ponorogo.
Applying a Practice Lens to Local Government Climate Change Governance: Rethinking Community Engagement Practices

Governments commit substantial time and resources engaging individuals and households to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These approaches, based largely upon behaviour change theories, have been criticised for their limited reach and effectiveness by practice theorists who have offered an alternative approach, broadening the focus beyond individuals. While practice theory has provided valuable insights into the energy consuming activities of households it has gained limited traction as a way to analyse and inform government practices and policy making. We address this by applying a practice lens to climate change community engagement practices performed by Australian local governments. Drawing on 29 interviews with practitioners and analysis of 37 Australian local government climate strategies, we examine the bundle of practices that constitute climate change community engagement: recruitment, engagement and evaluation. We consider how these practices are situated vis-a-vis other climate governance practices (regulation, service delivery, infrastructure provision and advocacy) as well as internal local government processes. Using a practice lens reveals the weaknesses in current engagement approaches which we contend are limiting efficacy. We draw upon Spurling et al.’s conceptualisation of re-crafting, re-integrating and substituting practices to consider how climate change community engagement practices might be reconfigured to improve their effectiveness.
Examining the effects of different English speech varieties on an L2 academic listening comprehension test at the item level

In this study we investigated the potential for a shared-first-language (shared-L1) effect on second language (L2) listening test scores using differential item functioning (DIF) analyses. We did this in order to understand how accented speech may influence performance at the item level, while controlling for key variables including listening passages, item type, and the degrees of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and speaker accentedness. A total of 386 undergraduate and graduate students from China, Korea, and India, who were enrolled in a university in the United States, each took two listening tests. In the first session, they took a standardized listening comprehension test comprising texts recorded by native English speakers. In the second session, they took a listening comprehension test consisting of counterbalanced sets of American English-, Indian-, and Chinese-accented lectures. The results show that the shared-L1 effect is minimal. Effects are consistent for only a few narrow, detail-oriented items, on which Chinese and Korean listeners performed relatively poorly when listening to Indian speakers.
First report of a rare bloom of Ornithocercus magnificus, Stein 1883 along the coastal waters of Kochi; A possible indicator of increasing sea surface temperature

A bloom of the planktonic dinoflagellate, Ornithocercus magnificus was reported for the first time in the surface waters of the off Kochi coastal region with an evidently higher density of 1.7 x 106 cells L-1 on 18.12. 2019. No conspicuous colouration of the surface waters was noticed even with the higher abundance of (1.7 x 106 cells L-1) observed near the barmouth area (6-7 m). The tracking on the occurrence of this genus in this region from 2013 to 2019 revealed their occurrence only during three times over the six years, i.e. the post monsoon season of 2013 and 2014 and during pre-monsoon of 2016. The SST of the three stations of the post monsoon season was compared for the last three years from 2017 to 2019, and an evident variation in the SST distribution was noticed in this region. The SST in 2019 was 2.1°C higher than that observed during 2017. The occurrence of Ornithocercus magnificus showed a positive correlation with SST (rs =0.425, p<0.05). It was also noted that the occurrence of this species was observed during the El Nino years. The Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) also positively correlated with the SST during the period (rs =0.432, p<0.05). The higher abundance of this species in 2019 when warmer SST was observed and their positive correlation with SST indicates the preferences of O.magnificus to warmer waters. The Shannon and Weiner diversity index (H’) ranged from 2.87-3.29 and the water quality index (WQI) remained good during the bloom. As Ornithocercus magnificus did occur during higher SST, this genus can be used as a proxy of climate change and hence has a strong potential to be used as indicator species of higher SST variation if found in novel environments.
Antioxidant Activity of Chitosans with Different Molecular Weight(DMW) and Chitosan Sulfates

The O~(·-)_2 and ·OH scavenging activities of DMW chitosans and sulfated chitosans of correspon-(ding) molecular weight were investigated.Colorimetric method was used,by which phenzine methosulphate(PMS)/dinucleotide-reduced(NADH) and Fe/H_(2)O_(2) were used as producing reagent and Nitro blue tetrazo-(lium)(NBT) and Fanhonghua as detecting reagent for O~(·-)_2 and ·OH.We obtained several satisfied results,as follows:Firstly,low molecular weight chitosans and their derivatives show stronger scavenging effects on O~(·-)_2 and ·OH than high molecular weight chitosan and their derivatives.For example,when the mass concentration of samples is 1.6 g/L,the O~(·-)_2 scavenging activity of low molecular weight chitosan(9×10~3) and high(molecular) weight chitosan(7.6×10~5) are 85.86% and 35.50% respectively.Secondly,compared with DMW chitosans,DMW sulfated chitosans show stronger inhibition effect on O~(·-)_2. At 0.05 g/L,the(scavenging) activity on O~(·-)_2 reaches to 86.26% for low molecular weight chitosan sulfate(9×10~5),but that of low(molecular) weight chitosan(9×10~3) is 85.86% when mass concentration of the sample is 1.6 g/L. (Thirdly),scavenging activity of chitosan sulfates(9×10~3,89.82%,1.2×10~5,59.68%,3.2 g/L) on OH is between those of low molecular weight chitosan(9×10~3,91.22%,3.2 g/L) and high molecular weight(chitosan)(1.2×10~5,44.11%,7.6×10~5,16.77%,3.2 g/L). Fourthly,low molecular weight chitosan(sulfates) show more effective scavenging activities on O~(·-)_2 and ·OH than high molecular weight chitosan(sulfates). Finally,the scavenging activities of DMW chitosan and their sulfated derivatives increase with the(increase) in their mass concentration.However,sulfated chitosans show quite strong scavenging action on O~(·-)_2. At 0.2 g/L,the scavenging activities reach to 95.87% and 91.96% respectively,but their scavenging activities barely increase over 0.2 g/L.This result also shows sulfated chitosans are very effective antioxidant.
The effect of organofluorine additives on the morphology, thermal conductivity and mechanical properties of rigid polyurethane and polyisocyanurate foams

This study investigates the effect of liquid-type organofluorine additives (OFAs) on the morphology, thermal conductivity and mechanical properties of rigid polyurethane (PU) and polyisocyanurate (PIR) foams. Foams were characterized in terms of their morphology (density, average cell size, anisotropy ratio, open cell content), thermal conductivity and compressive as well as flexural properties. Based on the results, we observed that OFAs efficiently reduced the average cell size of both PU and PIR foams, leading to improved thermal insulating and mechanical properties.