Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short-Form Video Exposure and Its Two-Sided Effect on the Physical Activity of Older Community Women in China: Secondary Data Analysis

Background There is a tendency for older adults to become more physically inactive, especially older women. Physical inactivity has been exacerbated since the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns and information-based preventive measures for COVID-19 increased the number of short-form video app users and short-form video exposure, including content exposure and the duration of exposure, which has demonstrated important effects on youths’ health and health-related behaviors. Despite more older adults viewing short-form videos, less is known about the status of their short-form video exposure or the impacts of the exposure on their physical activity. Objective This study aims to describe physical activity–related content exposure among older adults and to quantify its impacts along with the duration of short-form video exposure on step counts, low-intensity physical activity (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Methods We analyzed a subsample (N=476) of older women who used smartphones and installed short-form video apps, using the baseline data collected from an ongoing cohort study named the Physical Activity and Health in Older Women Study (PAHIOWS) launched from March to June 2021 in Yantai, Shandong Province, China. The information on short-form video exposure was collected by unstructured questions; physical activity–related content exposure was finalized by professionals using the Q-methodology, and the duration of exposure was transformed into hours per day. Step counts, LPA, and MVPA were assessed with ActiGraph wGT3X-BT accelerometers. Multiple subjective and objective covariates were assessed. Linear regression models were used to test the effects of short-form video exposure on step counts, LPA, and MVPA. MVPA was dichotomized into less than 150 minutes per week and 150 minutes or more per week, and the binary logistic regression model was run to test the effects of short-form video exposure on the achievement of spending 150 minutes or more on MVPA. Results Of 476 older women (mean age 64.63, SD 2.90 years), 23.7% (113/476) were exposed to physical activity–related short-form videos, and their daily exposure to short-form videos was 1.5 hours. Physical activity–related content exposure increased the minutes spent on MVPA by older women (B=4.14, 95% CI 0.13-8.15); the longer duration of short-form video exposure was associated with a reduced step count (B=−322.58, 95% CI −500.24 to −144.92) and minutes engaged in LPA (B=−6.95, 95% CI −12.19 to −1.71) and MVPA (B=−1.56, 95% CI −2.82 to −0.29). Neither content exposure nor the duration of exposure significantly increased or decreased the odds of older women engaging in MVPA for 150 minutes or more per week. Conclusions Short-form video exposure has both positive and negative impacts on the physical activity of older adults. Efforts are needed to develop strategies to leverage the benefits while avoiding the harms of short-form videos.
The Effects of Replacing Fish Meal with Enzymatic Soybean Meal on the Growth Performance, Whole-Body Composition, and Health of Juvenile Gibel Carp (Carassius auratus gibelio)

Fish meal (FM) constitutes the main, expensive component in aquatic diets. However, the supply of FM is no longer sufficient to sustain global aquaculture production. This study had the primary goal of assessing if the replacement of FM with enzymatic soybean meal (ESBM) can affect the performance of growth and immunological response in juvenile Gibel carp. Juvenile fish with an initial weight of 45.02 ± 0.03 g were arbitrarily assigned to 18 fish cages of 1 m3 each, then fed with diets of different levels of ESBM (0% (control group), 4%, 8%, 12%, 16%, and 20%) for 159 days. These diets corresponded, respectively, to the replacement levels of 0% (control group), 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% FM by ESBM. For the parameters of growth and whole-body composition, no obvious differences were found between the control group and other replacement levels (p > 0.05). Similarly, none of the replacement levels showed significant effects for alanine transaminase (ALT), total cholesterol (TC), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and glucose (GLU) levels (p > 0.05). Malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, as well as the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC) in plasma, were not significantly affected at all replacement levels, according to the findings of this study (p > 0.05). The replacement level of 60% significantly increased the activities of catalase (CAT), whereas the replacement levels of 20% and 100% markedly decreased the activities of this enzyme (p ˂ 0.05). Hepatic and intestinal tissues in this study did not show obvious alterations at all levels of replacement.
Seismic hazard assessment in Eastern and Southern Africa

Seismic hazard assessment for the Eastern and Southern Africa region was done using the probabilistic approach. Seismic hazard maps for 10% exceedance in 50 years, 10% exceedance in 100 years, as well as for 50 and 100 years return periods were prepared using the FRISK88M software. The area involved covers a wide region bounded by latitudes 40°S-25°N and longitudes 10°E and 55°E. Input parameters for the computations were obtained using the recent earthquake catalogue compiled by Turyomurugyendo. The catalogue which covers the time period 627-1994, contains earthquakes within the area bounded by 40°S-25°N and 10°E-55°E, with homogeneous magnitudes (M S ). Since a Poisson model of earthquake occurrence is assumed, dependent events were cleaned from the catalogue. Attenuation relations for the Eastern and Southern Africa region based on the strong motion data are virtually non-existent. However, attempts have been made recently by Jonathan and Twesigomwe to establish an average attenuation relation for the region. These relations were used in the computations. Possible uncertainties in the attenuation relations were accounted for using the logic-tree formalism. The results are presented in seismic hazard maps in terms of Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) for the mean and the 85th percentile. The distribution of PGA values indicate relatively high hazard along the East African rift system. In the northern segments of the rift system, they exceed 250 gals for 10% probability of exceedence in 50 years.
Analysis of Genes Related to Invadopodia Formation and CTTN in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma—A Systematic Gene Expression Analysis

Successful treatment for any type of carcinoma largely depends on understanding the patterns of invasion and migration. For oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), these processes are not entirely understood as of now. Invadopodia and podosomes, called invadosomes, play an important role in cancer cell invasion and migration. Previous research has established that cortactin (CTTN) is a major inducer of invadosome formation. However, less is known about the expression patterns of CTTN and other genes related to it or invadopodia formation in OSCC during tumor progression in particular. In this study, gene expression patterns of CTTN and various genes (n = 36) associated with invadopodia formation were analyzed to reveal relevant expression patterns and give a comprehensive overview of them. The genes were analyzed from a whole genome dataset of 83 OSCC samples relating to tumor size, grading, lymph node status, and UICC (Union for Internatioanl Cancer Control). The data revealed significant overexpression of 18 genes, most notably CTTN, SRC (SRC proto-onocogene, non-receptor tyrosine kinase), EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor), SYK (spleen associated tyrosine kinase), WASL (WASP like actin nucleation promotion factor), and ARPC2 (arrestin beta 1) due to their significant correlation with further tumor parameters. This study is one of the first to summarize the expression patterns of CTTN and related genes in a complex group of OSCC samples.
Private Inference for Deep Neural Networks: A Secure, Adaptive, and Efficient Realization

The advances in deep neural networks (DNNs) have driven many companies to offer their carefully-trained DNNs as inference services for clients’ private data. The privacy concerns have increasingly motivated the need for private inference (PI), where DNN inferences are performed directly on encrypted data without revealing the client's private inputs to the server or revealing the server's proprietary DNN weights to the client. However, existing cryptographic protocols for PI suffer from impractically high latency, stemming mostly from non-linear operators like ReLU activations. In this paper, we propose PAPI, a Practical and Adaptive Private Inference framework. First, we develop an accuracy-adaptive neural architecture search (NAS) approach to generate DNN models tailored for high-efficiency ciphertext computation. Specifically, our NAS automatically generates the DNNs with fewer ReLUs while keeping the accuracy above a user-defined target. Second, we propose secure online/offline protocols for ReLU activation and its approximation variants (i.e., polynomial activations), which purely rely on the lightweight secret sharing techniques in the online execution and can well cope with our optimized DNNs in the ciphertext domain. Experimental results show that PAPI reduces online inference latency on the CIFAR-10/100 and ImageNet datasets by 2.7 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\times}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="cheng-ieq1-3305754.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mo>∼</mml:mo></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="cheng-ieq2-3305754.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> 7.8 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\times}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="cheng-ieq3-3305754.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> over the state-of-the-art.
The excitement and value of discovering tourism economics

Presents the personal histories of some of the world's leading tourism economists, many of whom pioneered the field. This book offers a collection of personal experiences and is a literary celebration of the global community of economic scholars working in tourism. It provides a culturally and geographically diverse set of autobiographies. [from WorldCat]
Combine with RNA-seq Reveals the Effect of Melatonin in the Synthesis of Melanin in Primary Melanocytes of Silky Fowls Black-Bone Chicken

(1) Background: It was found that the melanin of black-bone chicken has various effects such as scavenging DPPH free radicals and anti-oxidation, and the synthesis of melanin is affected by various factors including hormones. In addition, several studies have found that melatonin affects the melanoma cell synthesis of melanin, which has not been reported in chicken primary melanocytes; so, relevant studies were conducted. (2) Methods: In this study, chicken primary melanocytes were isolated and characterized, and then melanocytes were treated with different concentrations of melatonin to investigate the effects of melatonin on melanin synthesis in chicken melanocytes in terms of melanin synthesis-related genes, melanin content, and tyrosinase activity, and combined with RNA seq to detect the change in gene expression level of chicken melanocytes after melatonin treatment. (3) Results: We isolated and characterized primary melanocytes, and indirect immunofluorescence assay results showed positive melanocyte marker genes. RT-qPCR results showed that melatonin decreased the expression of melanin synthesis-related genes. In addition, melatonin reduced the melanin content and decreased the tyrosinase activity of melanocytes in the treated group. A total of 1703 differentially expressed genes were screened by RNA-seq, and in addition, in the KEGG results, the signaling pathway associated with melanin synthesis, and the mTOR signaling pathway were enriched. (4) Conclusions: Melatonin could decrease the synthesis of melanin in chicken primary melanocytes.
The role of female population, urbanization and trade openness in sustainable environment: The case of carbon dioxide emissions in Ghana

Abstract Sustainable environment offers many benefits to individuals and societies. As a result, the agenda to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in order to mitigate climate change remains a global concern. Researchers, policymakers and governments have shown interest in this regard. Empirical studies on the subject matter have been increasing conflicting results and little evidence on the effects of some variables necessitate for further studies. To offer value to the literature, in this study, the effect of female population, urbanization and trade openness on carbon dioxide emission in Ghana is assessed. The study used the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, & Technology (STIRPAT) model as the foundation for empirical modelling. Time-series data spanning from 1971–2021 were used for regression analysis. In both long run and short run periods, urbanization was noted to exert positive influence on carbon dioxide emission while trade openness and female population exert a negative effect on carbon dioxide emission. Thus, growth in urbanization increases carbon dioxide emission while the opposite effect is the case for trade openness and the female population. Findings from the study suggest the need to intensify the empowerment of women, which could be a crucial catalyst for the achievement of Ghana’s nationally determined contributions toward CO2 reduction. Also, international trade negotiations that promote environmental protection should not be relaxed.
Observer-Based Adaptive Fuzzy Containment Control for Multiple Uncertain Nonlinear Systems

The adaptive fuzzy containment control problem is addressed for multiple uncertain nonlinear strict-feedback systems with immeasurable states and multiple leaders under directed communication graphs. By utilizing fuzzy logic systems to model the followers’ dynamics, a distributed fuzzy state observer is designed for the state estimation using only the relative position information. Then, an observer-based containment control scheme is constructed by the adaptive fuzzy control technique as well as the command filter. The filtering error loop is introduced to compensate the error arising from the command filter. The proposed adaptive fuzzy containment control scheme guarantees that all followers are driven into the dynamic convex hull spanned by the leaders with a bounded containment error, if there exists at least one of the leaders who has a directed path to the follower. Simulation results are given to illustrate the control performance of the proposed containment control method.
A simplified method for determining potential heavy metal leached from sediments of stormwater and combined sewer systems - importance for public health.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE The identification and understanding of interactions between contaminants present in sediments from stormwater and combined sewer systems is a prerequisite for their proper management, and provides a basis for developing effective strategies to minimize their negative impact on humans and the environment. The studypresents the method described in PN-EN 12457-2:2006 as a possible technique for studying the mobility of heavy metals in sediments from stormwater and combined sewer systems. MATERIAL AND METHODS The presented PN-EN 12457-2:2006 method is a relatively simple technique for preparing extracts for the determination of heavy metals in sediments from stormwater and combined sewer systems, consisting of one-step leaching, which is quick to perform. In addition, it allows determination of the characteristics of the samples to be analyzed, and indicates procedures and tests for evaluating hazardous substances released from solid waste. RESULTS The results of the concentrations of leached heavy metals: chromium, copper, nickel, lead and zinc, obtained in the study, corresponded to the concentrations of the exchange fraction of sludge when using the recommended method with sequential extraction (Student's t-test, p=0.263). In the literature review conducted, no papers were found on the application of the leaching method to prepare extracts for the determination of heavy metals in sediments from stormwater and combined sewer systems. CONCLUSIONS The PN-EN 12457-2:2006 method is capable of providing important data on the potential risks to humans and the environment from the presence of contaminants in sewage sludge.
Adequacy of capacity building and stakeholder involvement in decentralized education management: Evidence from Ethiopia

Abstract Decentralization is a means of enhancing the access, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of educational services. However, no study has been carried about in the study area. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to assess the adequacy of capacity building and stakeholder involvement in decentralized education management in secondary schools in Enebsie Sarmider district, Ethiopia. With a parallel convergent mixed research design, data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and document reviews from 187 multilevel participants. The study showed that the capacity of buildings in schools to implement and manage decentralization education is low. Stakeholders’ involvements in various management functions were moderate. Stakeholders’ involvement in organizing activities, such as Kebele (village), Education and Training Bureau and Parent-Teacher-Student-Association members, were rated low. This revealed that stakeholders did not fully carry out their functions and responsibilities given by rules. The most challenging factors affecting decentralized educational management are related to the availability of resources, decision-making process, budget for education, and skilled human resources. Based on the findings, this study has several practical implications for many stakeholders of education, such as the Ministry of Education and school administrators, to understand the adequacy, of organization capacity, and stakeholders’ involvement and associated challenges in decentralizing education. Particularly, the researchers recommend the right people in the right place, a proper budget for education, and facilitating the local decision-making process to diminish the challenges of decentralized educational management. This study has also theoretical implications to the literature about decentralization of education in the Ethiopia context.
Hyperamylasemia is not Associated with Dipeptidyl Peptidase 4 Inhibitors in South Indian Adults with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Introduction: Although not definitive, there is small increased risk of acute pancreatitis with the use of dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors (DPP4i). Hence, there is an interest in the elevation of pancreatic enzymes among type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients using DPP4i. However, the studies regarding their association are limited and provide conflicting results. Moreover, there are no such studies among South Indian T2DM patients. Hence, we evaluated the prevalence of hyperamylasemia among South Indian T2DM patients and its association with DPP4i use. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary health care center from South India. Adult T2DM patients on stable doses of antidiabetic medications for at least previous 3 months were included in the study. Patients with other types of diabetes mellitus, gall stones, diabetic ketoacidosis, acute illness, chronic kidney disease and untreated hypothyroidism were excluded from the study. All participants were evaluated with glycemic parameters, serum creatinine and serum amylase. Hyperamylasemia was defined as serum amylase ≥220 U/L. Results: A total of 200 participants were included in the study among whom 93 patients were not on DPP4i whereas 107 were on DPP4i including 41 (38.32%) each on teneligliptin and sitagliptin. Baseline characteristics including glycemic measures were comparable between DPP4i users and nonusers. A total of 14 patients (7%) had hyperamylasemia but the prevalence of hyperamylasemia did not differ between DPP4i users and nonuser (6/107 vs. 8/93, P = 0.42). Conclusions: Asymptomatic hyperamylasemia is not uncommon in South Indian T2DM patients but is not associated with the use of DPP4i.
Neuroendocrine Biomarkers of Herbal Medicine for Major Depressive Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a medical condition involving persistent sadness and loss of interest; however, conventional treatments with antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy have limitations. Based on the pathogenesis of MDD, treatments using herbal medicines (HM) have been identified in animal studies. We conducted a systematic review of clinical studies to identify neurobiological outcomes and evaluate the effectiveness of HM in treating MDD. A meta-analysis was performed by searching nine databases from their inception until 12 September 2022, including 31 randomized controlled trials with 3133 participants, to examine the effects of HM on MDD using neurobiological biomarkers and a depression questionnaire scale. Quality assessment was performed using a risk of bias tool. Compared to antidepressants alone, HM combined with an antidepressant significantly increased concentrations of serotonin (SMD = 1.96, 95% CI: 1.24–2.68, p < 0.00001, I2 = 97%), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (SMD = 1.38, 95% CI: 0.92–1.83, p < 0.00001, I2 = 91%), and nerve growth factors (SMD = 2.38, 95% CI: 0.67–4.10, p = 0.006, I2 = 96%), and decreased cortisol concentrations (SMD = −3.78, 95% CI: −4.71 to −2.86, p < 0.00001, I2 = 87%). Although HM or HM with an antidepressant benefits MDD treatment through improving neuroendocrine factors, these findings should be interpreted with caution because of the low methodological quality and clinical heterogeneity of the included studies.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SIGNALLING ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION AND RELATIONSHIP LENDING FOR SMES’ BANK CREDIT ACCESS

Although SMEs matter for the development of economies, they need financing that is the main impediment to their survival. To overcome this barrier, SMEs might reduce information asymmetries between them and banks by signaling their entrepreneurial activities that are based on Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and by having frequent contact with banks in a lending relationship. In this regard, this paper purposes to find out the impacts of signaling EO and relationship lending on bank credit access of SMEs. To fulfill this aim, the researcher has applied stratified random and purposive sampling methods to create the research sample from SMEs that operate in various geographical regions of Turkey. The researcher also employs a self-administered internet-mediated questionnaire to collect data from 479 SMEs. Moreover, this paper runs Binary Logistic Regression Test to analyze the impacts of signaling EO and lending relationship on bank credit access. According to the results, trademark ownership, R&D subsidies received by SMEs and closeness of communication between SMEs and banks positively affect bank credit access of SMEs. On the other hand, patent ownership, R&D investments and alliances of SMEs with prominent firms do not influence their credit access.