Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationship of higher termite Globitermes sulphureus (Haviland)(Blattodea:Termitidae)

The subterranean higher termite Globitermes sulphureus (Blattodea: Termitidae), is a peridomestic forager and regarded as a significant pest in Southeast Asia. In this study, the populations of G. sulphureus from the USM main campus area were investigated based on partial sequences of the mitochondrial COII gene. The genetic diversity was determined using DnaSP v5 software while the phylogenetic relationship was defined using Neighbor-joining (NJ) and maximum likelihood (ML) methods using Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis (MEGA 7) software. A total of 2 haplotypes were detected among the 5 sample sequences that differed by two variable sites. In addition, both phylogenetic trees gave similar topology and supporting the results from haplotype diversity. Based on the haplotype diversity and molecular phylogeny, it is proposed that geographic isolation and lack of human activities have contributed to the neutral genetic diversity of G. sulphureus.
Optimization of induced voltage on a buried pipeline from HV power lines using grasshopper algorithm (GOA)

The buried metallic pipeline which parallels to the HV power line is subject to induced voltages from the AC currents flowing in the conductors, these voltages can affect the operating personnel, pipeline associated equipment, and the pipeline integrity. This paper analyses the induced voltage and current on the buried pipeline running parallel to HV power lines. It also presents an optimization procedure of different parameters that affect the level of the induced voltage in the pipeline during normal operating conditions. A comparison study between the proposed optimization algorithms (GOA, GE, DE and PSO) is done with a maximization of a given objective function. The simulation results establish that the GOA algorithm provides a faster convergence and better solution than the other optimization algorithms. Thus, the statistical analysis according to Friedman’s rank test confirmed the superiority of this proposed algorithm. Furthermore, the results show that the parameters optimization of the metallic pipeline is an effective approach to provide the best performance for mitigation which is generally sufficient to reduce the induced voltage experienced by the buried metallic pipeline to enforce the safety limit.
Floral diversity in the central part of Chattogram city, Bangladesh

This study/paper aims to evaluate the floral richness of the central part of Chattogram city, Bangladesh. Chattogram is recognized as the largest port city and the commercial capital of Bangladesh, which confronts faster urbanization and swift infrastructure development. Green spaces in and around Chattogram city are shrinking sharply, which resulted in rapid loss of floral and faunal resources in this area. The present study was carried out from February 2018 to January 2019 to enumerate the vascular plant species of the Sulakbahar ward located in the central part of Chattogram City, Bangladesh. ,The study area was categorized into 10 habitats to assess the variation of floral composition. The extensive whole area survey method was applied to record the flora from all sorts of plant habitats of the research area. ,The study enumerated 418 vascular plant species under 315 genera and 120 families including natural, planted and cultivated from the study area. The habit form of the recorded plant composition indicated that herbs (35%) constitute the major plant category followed by trees (34%), shrubs (17%), climbers (12%), ferns (1%) and orchids (1%). The study also indicated that exotic species (50.3%) became dominant than native species (49.7%) in Chattogram city because of their scenic beauty, easy propagation and ornamental value to the city planners and inhabitants. ,It appeared that floral resources of the Chattogram city area are in great threat due to aggressive and unplanned infrastructure development for housing, offices and institutions by replacing the green spaces. The study recommended that urgent protection measures should be taken to conserve and protect the existing floral resources for the well-being of the urban people.
Climatology of Northern Hemisphere Cryo‐cover

The Earth's cryo‐cover (defined here as snow cover and sea ice) is dynamic, and varies considerably on both interannual and seasonal time‐scales. This study analyzes trends in Northern Hemisphere cryo‐cover from 1979 to 2020 using three datasets: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) Sea Ice Extent, Rutgers Global Snow Lab (GSL) Snow Cover Extent and MeaSuREs State of the Cryosphere values. Temporal trends of cryo‐cover, both as a combined variable and as separate snow and ice components, are calculated on an annual and monthly basis. Using derived cryo‐cover concentration values, pixels are categorized to be either stable (covered 75% of the time or more) or transient (covered <75% of the time), as a method to differentiate the type of cryo‐cover present annually and monthly as well as associated trends and transitions from one cover type (stable or transient) to the other. Results indicate a decrease in cryo‐cover since 1979 with sea ice decreasing in all months, but snow cover increasing in the autumn and early winter and decreasing during the spring. Decreasing trends in stable cryo‐cover are observed during most months with several months seeing increases in transient cover. Increases in autumn snow cover (particularly in October) help to offset the large decreases in late summer/early autumn sea ice. From April to August, cryo‐cover as a whole exhibits statistically significant decreasing trends. A comprehensive understanding of the climatology of cryo‐cover is of great importance in understanding the radiative impacts of a changing cryosphere in a warming climate.
Student perceptions in online higher education toward faculty mentoring

Student persistence is important for students, faculty, and universities and online faculty mentoring supports student persistence to graduation. The online learning environment is increasingly a choice for more undergraduate students, and it continues to grow in popularity as an attractive option for adults. It is crucial to find ways to increase persistence and graduation especially given the increased use of virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Attrition rates in online learning can be high for a variety of reasons, including persistence and engagement. Faculty mentors in the online environment can strengthen connections and relationships with undergraduate students, and it is important to ask for and evaluate these student perceptions. This mixed methods study surveyed and interviewed undergraduate students in an online university to understand both their experiences with faculty mentoring in the online environment and the potential of a faculty mentor program in a large online university. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of four undergraduate student mentees with their faculty mentor at a large online university using mixed methods research design. In addition, survey data from one department are analyzed to guide future mentoring programs in online learning environments. Findings from the study indicate belief that mentoring and encouragement from faculty would enhance students’ scholarly experience. Students indicated they would like to participate in a faculty mentoring program, and it was clear that students welcome and appreciate the opportunity to further cement a professional relationship between themselves and faculty. This article makes a unique contribution to higher education research, providing a potential model for others seeking guidance in mentoring in online higher education. The data analysis and research indicate that a larger scale mentoring program might be more valuable for students.
Uncertainty-Aware Deep Learning-Based Cardiac Arrhythmias Classification Model of Electrocardiogram Signals

Deep Learning-based methods have emerged to be one of the most effective and practical solutions in a wide range of medical problems, including the diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmias. A critical step to a precocious diagnosis in many heart dysfunctions diseases starts with the accurate detection and classification of cardiac arrhythmias, which can be achieved via electrocardiograms (ECGs). Motivated by the desire to enhance conventional clinical methods in diagnosing cardiac arrhythmias, we introduce an uncertainty-aware deep learning-based predictive model design for accurate large-scale classification of cardiac arrhythmias successfully trained and evaluated using three benchmark medical datasets. In addition, considering that the quantification of uncertainty estimates is vital for clinical decision-making, our method incorporates a probabilistic approach to capture the model’s uncertainty using a Bayesian-based approximation method without introducing additional parameters or significant changes to the network’s architecture. Although many arrhythmias classification solutions with various ECG feature engineering techniques have been reported in the literature, the introduced AI-based probabilistic-enabled method in this paper outperforms the results of existing methods in outstanding multiclass classification results that manifest F1 scores of 98.62% and 96.73% with (MIT-BIH) dataset of 20 annotations, and 99.23% and 96.94% with (INCART) dataset of eight annotations, and 97.25% and 96.73% with (BIDMC) dataset of six annotations, for the deep ensemble and probabilistic mode, respectively. We demonstrate our method’s high-performing and statistical reliability results in numerical experiments on the language modeling using the gating mechanism of Recurrent Neural Networks.
COVID-Driven Innovation in Higher Education: Analysing the Collaboration of Leadership and Digital Technology during the Pandemic in UiTM Malaysia and UNNES Indonesia

Abstract: This study aims to analyse the way leadership and digital technology usage affect the faculty members’ research performance in surviving higher education sustainability during the COVID-19 pandemic. A breakthrough innovation is needed to design a fast-track online work management system. Hence, it requires a loyal contribution from all the faculty members to support this system. This quantitative study conducted in Malaysia and Indonesia, included 260 faculty members from various fields of studies. Using the online questionnaire, it shows that leadership and technology usage plays an important role to maintain faculty members’ research performance during the pandemic. However, it has a slight difference in result between Malaysia and Indonesia in terms of the portion of leadership and digital technology that affected the research performance. The higher education leaders play a stronger role in affecting Malaysian faculty members’ research performance, while Indonesian faculty members are influenced more by digital technology usage than by their leaders. Each of them has a significant implication in designing the effective institution policies in optimizing faculty members’ research performance. Keywords: COVID-19, research performance, leadership, digital technology
Assessment of airborne bacterial and fungal communities in different wards of educational hospitals: A case study in Urmia, Iran

Introduction: Bioaerosols consist of aerosols which are biologically originated and can be present ubiquitously in different environments, including the indoor air of hospitals. The objective of this study was to survey the bioaerosol type and density in various environments of four governmental educational hospitals in Urmia, Iran, namely the intensive care unit (ICU), operating room, the internal medicine room, the infectious diseases room, the infectious diseases corridor, and ambient air. Materials and methods: Sampling was performed during summer and winter of 2019 at four different day-times using passive (sedimentation plate) and active methods (an Andersen one-stage viable impactor and Quick Take30 sampling instrument) and by counting plates containing a bacterial and fungus-selective medium. Results: The results revealed that the highest microbial bioaerosol load was related to the infectious diseases corridor (100 and 150 CFU/m for total bacterial and fungal load, respectively). The highest bacterial and fungal density was observed in the afternoon at 17-18; and the concentration of bioaerosols was higher in summer than winter. A comparison of indoor and outdoor bacterial loads showed that the indoor bacterial concentration mean (49.1±23.8 CFU/m) was higher than the outdoor value (47.1±21.5 CFU/m), and the indoor levels of fungal contamination (83.3±31.9 CFU/m) were significantly lower than outdoor values (182.5±48.0 CFU/m). The predominantly isolated bacteria were Staphylococcus (95%) spp, and the main isolated fungi belong to the genera Aspergillus (50%) and Penicillium (32%). Conclusion: The results of this study can be useful in developing indoor air microbial quality guidelines in hospitals, which has not been done so far. A R T I C L E I N F O R M A T I O N Article Chronology: Received 1 October 2020 Revised 21 October 2020 Accepted 15 December 2020 Published 30 December 2020
Revisiting inclusion in smart cities: infrastructural hybridization and the institutionalization of citizen participation in Bengaluru’s peripheries

ABSTRACT Smart city development can be traced back in the urban development trajectories of cities, as well as the respective articulations, framing and practices of ‘inclusive’ and ‘participatory’ smart cities. As smart city development steadily gains more and more traction among urban policy makers throughout the Global South, many scholars warn for its negative consequences on the accessibility of infrastructure and the processes that transform democratic citizenship practices. Rather than perceiving the transformative power of smart cities as a phenomenon particular to the use of new technologies, this paper aims to analyse societal segregation and marginalization through smart city development and traces these externalities as a continuation or intensification of existing governance practices. This is demonstrated by the case study on the metropolitan city of Bengaluru, that participates in India's national Smart City Mission. Due to massive urbanization, Bengaluru's peripheries are suffering from increasing pressures on its basic infrastructure. In response, state actors have turned to hybridizing the city's infrastructure facilities and governance to market- and civil society actors. Furthermore, the efforts of middle-class civil society groups that contribute to infrastructural governance through the assistance in planning, facilitation and controlling state responsibilities are institutionalized by bureaucratic state actors, at the cost of electoral governance by local representatives. This analysis on infrastructure governance in the peripheries has been set in relation to a discourse analysis of official policy documents on the inclusive and participatory character of smart cities. The practices of hybridization and institutionalization not only undermine the access to basic infrastructure for marginalized groups but also heavily underpin the design of Bengaluru's smart city projects. To be called inclusive, we argue that smart city projects should make an effort to improve the overall accessibilities of infrastructures for all classes and population groups.
Systematics of the mountain-inhabiting cottontails (Sylvilagus) from southwestern United States and northern Mexico (Mammalia: Lagomorpha: Leporidae)

Abstract. The skull morphology of four species of cottontails from the mountains and plateaus of southwestern United States and northern Mexico, currently recognized as Sylvilagus nuttallii, S. cognatus, S. robustus, and S. holzneri (=S. floridanus holzneri), was analyzed using multivariate statistics. Based on 26 or 30 measurements taken on each of 350 adult skulls, and formulation of 16 pooled samples, with each representing a different geographic population, the results show there are two species-level distinctions in skull type. Cottontails from southern Utah, northern and east-central Arizona, and northern New Mexico show morphological overlap among geographically adjacent samples and all have a highly arched skull. These are referable to S. nuttallii. Cottontails from central Arizona, central New Mexico, and western Texas southward along the Sierra Madre Occidental to Durango, Mexico, and Sierra Madre Oriental to central Coahuila, Mexico show morphological overlap among geographically adjacent samples and all have a relatively flat skull. These are referable to S. holzneri. Both S. nuttallii and S. holzneri are polytypic in the study area. Sylvilagus n. pinetis is restricted to the White Mountains of Arizona. Those north and west of the Colorado River in Arizona and Utah are referable to S. n. nuttallii and those from southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona and northern New Mexico are referable to S. n. grangeri. The population of cottontails previously referred to S. cognatus from central New Mexico is indistinguishable from topotypical S. holzneri from southeastern Arizona as well as populations from southwestern New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Sonora, Mexico. Cottontails previously referred to S. robustus, from the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico and Texas, southward in the mountains of western Texas, and the Sierra Madre Oriental to central Coahuila, Mexico, average larger in overall size and, on average, have proportionately larger auditory bullae and are referable to S. holzneri robustus. The relationship of S. holzneri to other mountain/plateau-inhabiting taxa, outside the study area in central and southern Mexico remains to be resolved.
Kinetics and Mechanism of Alcohol Dehydration on γ-Al2O3: Effects of Carbon Chain Length and Substitution

Steady-state rates of ether formation from alcohols (1-propanol, 2-propanol, and isobutanol) on γ-Al2O3 at 488 K increase at low alcohol pressure (0.1–4.2 kPa) but asymptotically converge to different values, inversely proportional to water pressure, at high alcohol pressure (4.2–7.2 kPa). This observed inhibition of etherification rates for C2–C4 alcohols on γ-Al2O3 by water is mechanistically explained by the inhibiting effect of surface trimers composed of two alcohol molecules and one water molecule. Unimolecular dehydration of C3–C4 alcohols follows the same mechanism as that for ethanol and involves inhibition by dimers. Deuterated alcohols show a primary kinetic isotope effect for unimolecular dehydration, implicating cleavage of a C–H bond (such as the Cβ–H bond) in the rate-determining step for olefin formation on γ-Al2O3. Bimolecular dehydration does not show a kinetic isotope effect with deuterated alcohols, implying that C–O or Al–O bond cleavage is the rate-determining step for ether formatio.
Experimental Characterization of Ablation Species in an Air Plasma Ablating Boundary Layer

Measurements of emission from an atmospheric pressure air plasma in local thermodynamic equilibrium and its interaction with a phenolic impregnated carbon-based ablative material called ASTERM were performed in a 50-kW inductively coupled plasma torch. These experiments were conducted with a plate power of 62 kW producing an air plasma near 7000 K with a centerline flow enthalpy of 25.8 MJ/kg delivering a heat flux of approximately 7.1 MW/m to the material surface. Recession rates, surface temperature, and product species emission profiles through the boundary layer are reported.
Microbiological quality of frozen black mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis, Lamarck, 1819) purchased from markets in the İzmir Province of Turkey

The purpose of this study was to examine the microbiological quality and consumer safety of frozen black mussels purchased from four different markets (A, B, C, D) in the İzmir Province of Turkey. A total of 36 frozen black mussel packages, which contained approximately 50 mussels in each, were purchased from the markets. They were not only examined for total mesophilic, psychrotrophic, coliform and fecal coliform bacteria count but also investigated for pathogenic bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes and Vibrio spp. According to the results of the mesophilic bacteria counts, frozen black mussels did not exceed the microbiological limits set for safe consumption. The findings showed that frozen black mussels purchased from (A, B, C, D) of markets were safe for human consumption because pathogenic bacteria species such as E.coli, Salmonella spp. , S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and Vibrio spp. were not present in the frozen mussel samples.
Presynch-Heatsynch: A New Approach to Improve Ovarian and Fertility Responses in Water Buffalo (Bubalus bubalis)

Background: Standard estrus synchronization regimens resulted in variable outcomes in buffaloes. The present study evaluated ovarian and fertility responses following presynchronization in Heatsynch protocol administered in postpartum buffaloes. Methods: In group-I (Presynch-Heatsynch group, n = 30), PGF2α was administered on days -14 and -2. Then, GnRH analogue, PGF2α (Cloprostenol) and Estradiol benzoate were administered on day 0, 7 and 8, respectively followed by fixed-time artificial insemination (FTAI) 48 hours later. In group-II (Heatsynch group, n = 30), rest protocol was same, except that first two PGF2α injections were not administered. Result: The progesterone concentrations differed (P less than 0.01) between the two groups on days -2, 0 and 7. Post-treatment, progesterone profiles were also higher in pregnant compared to non-pregnant buffaloes in both the groups except on day 10. CL diameter differed (P less than 0.01) between groups on days -2, 0 and 7. It was larger in pregnant than non-pregnant buffaloes on day 7 in both the groups. Dominant follicle diameter remained larger on days -2, 0 and 8 in group-I than -II. Buffaloes getting pregnant had a larger (P less than 0.01) dominant follicle size on the day of FTAI in group-I than of group-II. Ovulatory response of 93.33 and 90.00% was observed in group-I and II. The conception rate was higher (66.66 vs. 40.00%; P less than 0.05) in group-I than Group-II. Presynchronization improved reproductive efficiency in Heatsynch treatment and may aid for better fertility in buffaloes.