Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Country Survey: Canadian Military Expenditure and Defence Policy

ABSTRACT This paper provides an overview of the Canadian defence sector following the Cold War. A review of Canadian defence policy in this period indicates that, though the mission of the Canadian military did not change, fiscal realities forced severe restrictions on the size and capabilities of the organization. Comparisons between Canada and other G7 NATO nations indicate that throughout this period, Canada has consistently devoted fewer resources to the military than its allies. A review of Canada’s defence industrial base and defence policy indicates that this limited funding has led to a small and uncompetitive defence sector in the Canadian economy. Lastly, a regression analysis of Canada’s defence spending is undertaken which reveals that domestic economic variables are the primary determinant of Canadian defence spending during this period.
Composition of organics on asteroid (101955) Bennu

Context. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission detected an infrared absorption at 3.4 μm on near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu. This absorption is indicative of carbon species, including organics, on the surface. Aims. We aim to describe the composition of the organic matter on Bennu by investigating the spectral features in detail. Methods. We use a curated set of spectra acquired by the OSIRIS-REx Visible and InfraRed Spectrometer that have features near 3.4 μm (3.2 to 3.6 μm) attributed to organics. We assess the shapes and strengths of these absorptions in the context of laboratory spectra of extraterrestrial organics and analogs. Results. We find spectral evidence of aromatic and aliphatic CH bonds. The absorptions are broadly consistent in shape and depth with those associated with insoluble organic matter in meteorites. Given the thermal and space weathering environments on Bennu, it is likely that the organics have not been exposed for long enough to substantially decrease the H/C and destroy all aliphatic molecules.
A Case Report of Caries Incident in a Patient Wearing an Essix Type Retainer.

This report presents a rare case of multiple Cl.VI carious lesions developed in a young female patient due to full-time wearing of an Essix retainer combined with poor oral hygiene and high acidic intake. The demineralization during orthodontic retention and the hygiene instructions, including the retainer cleaning protocol, are highlighted.
Image-Based Crack Detection Methods: A Review

Annually, millions of dollars are spent to carry out defect detection in key infrastructure including roads, bridges, and buildings. The aftermath of natural disasters like floods and earthquakes leads to severe damage to the urban infrastructure. Maintenance operations that follow for the damaged infrastructure often involve a visual inspection and assessment of their state to ensure their functional and physical integrity. Such damage may appear in the form of minor or major cracks, which gradually spread, leading to ultimate collapse or destruction of the structure. Crack detection is a very laborious task if performed via manual visual inspection. Many infrastructure elements need to be checked regularly and it is therefore not feasible as it will require significant human resources. This may also result in cases where cracks go undetected. A need, therefore, exists for performing automatic defect detection in infrastructure to ensure its effectiveness and reliability. Using image processing techniques, the captured or scanned images of the infrastructure parts can be analyzed to identify any possible defects. Apart from image processing, machine learning methods are being increasingly applied to ensure better performance outcomes and robustness in crack detection. This paper provides a review of image-based crack detection techniques which implement image processing and/or machine learning. A total of 30 research articles have been collected for the review which is published in top tier journals and conferences in the past decade. A comprehensive analysis and comparison of these methods are performed to highlight the most promising automated approaches for crack detection.
The Role of Personality Traits, Cooperative Behaviour and Trust in Governments on the Brexit Referendum Outcome

We analyse the role of personality traits along with individuals’ cooperative behaviour, level of trust in the UK government and the European Council (EC, the body that defines the European Union’s overall political direction and priorities) and socio-demographics on UK citizens’ voting choices on the 2016 Brexit referendum. We use data from a survey conducted in April 2019 on 530 UK citizens who voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum. We use a Probit model to investigate what role voters’ personality traits, their trust in government institutions, their level of cooperative behaviour and socio-demographics played in the way they voted. We find voters’ choice was associated voters’ personality traits. In particular, voters associated with being extraverted, acting with self-confidence and outspokenness (i.e., agency), and voters’ closeness to experience, to forming part of a diverse community and the exchange of ideas and experiences were found to be associated with voting for Brexit in the 2016 referendum. We found that voters’ willingness to cooperate with others was associated with being less likely to vote for Brexit. In addition, voters who trusted the UK government were more likely to vote for Brexit, whereas voters trusting the EC were more likely to vote for the UK to stay in the EU. We also found that voters with relatively high level of education were less likely to vote for Brexit and voters not seeking jobs were more likely to vote for Brexit than students, unemployed and retired. We conclude that incorporating personality profiles of voters, their pro-social behaviour as well as their views on trust in politicians/government institutions, along with socio-demographic variables, into individuals’ vote choice analysis can account for voter heterogeneity and provide a more complete picture of an individual’s vote choice decisions, helping to gain a better understanding of individual vote choices (e.g., better predictions of future individual vote intentions).
Are We Past the Heterosexual Script? A Content Analysis of Contextual Cues Within the Heterosexual Script in Tween, Teen, and Young Adult Television Programs

ABSTRACT In light of recent research establishing the prevalence of the heterosexual script on television (Aubrey et al., 2020; Kim et al., 2007), the present study investigated the context of the heterosexual script in 182 episodes of tween, teen, and young adult television programs. The following scripts were assessed: sex as masculinity (masculinity is achieved through sexuality), good girls (women are sexual gatekeepers), male commitment (men avoid commitment), and female commitment (women seek commitment). Results revealed that depictions of the heterosexual script varied with sexual behavior, sexual talk, and the composition of gender in conversation dyads but not with the gender of sexual initiators. Sex as masculinity was most likely to occur with intimate touching, talk about sexual interests, and mostly discussed within female-female dyads. The good girls script was most likely to occur with instances of intimate touching and talk about sexual advice, whereas male commitment was most likely to occur in portrayals of intercourse and talk about sexual experiences. Lastly, female commitment was most likely to occur in talk toward sex and in male-male dyads.
Residual mechanical properties of concrete containing lightweight expanded clay aggregate (LECA) after exposure to elevated temperatures

The mechanical properties of light‐weight concrete (LWC) in fire are known to be better than those of normal‐strength concrete (NSC), both at high temperature (hot properties) and after cooling (residual properties). The objective of this paper is to increase the knowledge of LWC's residual properties by testing a number of mixes containing expanded clay as light‐weight coarse aggregate. An experimental program was carried out, in which one normal‐weight concrete mix and two lightweight aggregate mixes containing different amounts of LECA were used to fabricate 72 concrete cylinders and 36 concrete prisms. All mixes contained silica fume as a supplementary cementitious material. The specimens were tested at the ambient temperature and after exposure to temperatures of 250, 500, and 750°C to obtain their compressive and tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and stress–strain response. Results indicate that exposure to temperatures up to 250°C has no significant effect on the mechanical properties of concrete containing LECA just as in normal weight concrete. However, with increasing the temperature, increasing the lightweight aggregate content of the mix resulted in better strength retention after exposure to elevated temperatures. The experimental data are also used to develop equations to evaluate the residual mechanical properties of concrete.
Prevalence of Hypertension and Its Associated Factors among Adults in Selected Areas of Bangladesh: A Community Based Cross-sectional Study

Background: Hypertension is a silent killer and an overwhelming global public health challenge. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and associated factors of hypertension among adults in Bangladesh. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study design was conducted among 400 adults who lived in Dhaka, Mymensing, Sylhet and Khulna District. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire that is adapted from the WHO Stepwise approach. Data was analyzed by SPSS version 25. Descriptive statistics and bivariate logistic regression analysis were conducted and statistical significance was declared at a p-value ≤0.05. Results: This study identified a high prevalence of hypertension in the study area and it was 39.75%. Among the male the prevalence was 23.5% and the prevalence was 16.5% among female. In this study hypertension was significantly associated with the age group 51-65 years (OR=1.02; CI 0.557-1.862) , ever smoking (OR= 2.59; CI 1.718-3.917) consume less fruits (OR=3.125; CI 0.839-11.632) and vegetable (OR=2.25; CI 1.364-3.725), physically inactive (OR=1.48;CI 0.973-2.252) overweight (OR=7.98; CI 4.612-13.793) and had diabetes mellitus (0R=2.38; CI 1.213-4.659). Conclusion: The prevalence of hypertension was considerably higher in this study area. Hence, the health care system needs to establish strategies to improve the diagnostic and screening services. Community-level intervention and regular assessment, screening, and diagnosis of behavioral, socio-demographic, and physiological risk factors, screening, should be institutionalized to address the occult burden of hypertension.
Assessment of Corrosion and Scale forming Potential of Groundwater Resources: Case Study of Dire Dawa City, Ethiopia

Almost 100% of the water supply of Dire Dawa City is from groundwater (including boreholes, dug wells, and springs). Recently, groundwater cause corrosion and scale problems to water distribution systems due to its content of dissolved ions that can cause public health and economic issues. The present paper investigates the corrosion and scale-forming potential of the groundwater in the city and visualizes it with mapping. Spectrophotometer, EDTA/Acid titration with calculation methods were used for water quality parameters analysis. GW Chart Calibration plot applied for the Piper diagram to categorizes the water types. Langelier saturation (LSI), Ryznar (RSI), aggressive (AI), Puckorius Scale (PSI), and Larson-Skold (LRI) indices were manipulated with Excel ® and visualized their spatial distribution using ArcGIS 10®. The mean values of LSI, RSI, PSI, AI, and LRI obtained were 0.29 ± 0.28, 6.4 ± 0.5, 5.10 ± 0.48, 12.20 ± 0.24, and 1.4±1.57 respectively. LSI and RSI results indicate moderate to low scale-forming tendency of groundwater in most parts except the northeastern part with corrosive groundwater. Based on the AI value, the groundwater ranges low corrosion in almost all zones except the edge of the northeast and northwest region. PSI indicated the water tends to form salt-scale at a medium rate. The LSI results showed that chloride and sulphate are unlikely to interfere with the formation of protecting film except in northwestern and northeastern regions where localized corrosion might occur. In conclusion, in almost all distribution system of the city is affected by calcium carbonate scale formation. The groundwater in the northwest and northeast resulted in localized corrosion because of relatively high contents of chlorides and sulphates.
Therapeutic Targets and Mechanism of Banxia Xiexin Decoction on Precancerous Lesions of Gastric Cancer: Network pharmacology

BackgroundPrecancerous Lesions of Gastric Cancer (PLGC) is a common gastrointestinal tract and digestive systemdisease that lacks effective therapeutic drugs with good curative effects and few adverse reactions. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has the advantages of multiple components, multiple channels, and fewer adverse reactions in the treatment of PLGC. Although Banxia xiexin Decoction (BXD) demonstrates a good therapeutic effect on PLGC, the pharmacological mechanism underlying its anticancer effect is still unclear. MethodsWe used a network pharmacology strategy, including the construction and analysis of a complex drug-disease network, to explore the complex mechanism of BXD treatment of PLGC. In addition, molecular docking technology was used to preliminarily study the binding ability of the potential active components and core therapeutic targets of BXD. ResultsThe networkpharmacology results showed 80 targets of BXD that are involved in PLGC. PPI network analysis demonstrated that the top10 core targets were JUN, TP53, MAPK3, MAPK1, TNF, VEGFA, MAPK14, ESR1, NR3C1, and MAPK8. The GO enrichment analysis results showed that the BXD anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory mechanism mainly involves cellular response to organic cyclic compound, response to toxic substance, response to oxidative stress, cellular response to nitrogen compound, response to inorganic substance, and others. The KEGG analysis results indicated that BXD may regulate 167 pathways such as MAPK signaling pathway and pathway in cancer in the treatment of PLGC. The molecular docking resultsshowed that the binding energies of beta sitosterol withMAPK1, MAPK3, MAPK14, JUN, and VEGFA were less than−7.0 kcal·mol−1, indicating a good docking effect. ConclusionsThis study reflects the characteristics of the mechanism of action by which BXD treats PLGC, which includes multiple components, multiple targets, and multiple pathways, and provides a biological basis for further verification and a novel perspective for drug discoveryin PLGC.
Fluctuation of body mass in cotton rats and pocket gophers during the late Cenozoic in the Meade basin of Kansas: possible influence of the Huckleberry Ridge Ash-fall

ABSTRACT Equations estimating body mass were used to depict a near 5-million-year history of size change in pocket gophers and cotton rats from the Meade Basin of southwestern Kansas. Although phyletic size decrease was noted in Sigmodon minor and Geomys minor and size increase in Geomys quinni, no long-term intra-basin size trends were observed. Immediately following the Huckleberry Ridge ash-fall at 2.11 Ma, the small Pliocene cotton rat S. minor became extinct, a large cotton rat entered the basin, two gophers became extinct, and two new ones entered the basin. Assuming the same rodent contingent at the Short Haul locality as at the Aries A site, between deposition of the Borchers and Short Haul assemblages, minimally about 0.12 million years, 40% of the Meade Basin rodent fauna turned over and Microtus dispersed into North America across Beringia. Geochemical environmental proxy data did not identify significant climatic events in the Borchers Badlands Pleistocene sequence; consequently it is possible that a super-eruption from the Yellowstone caldera was at least partly responsible for size shifts in cotton rats and pocket gophers and significant modifications to the Meade Basin rodent community.
The Acceptance of Independent Autonomous Vehicles and Cooperative Vehicle-Highway Autonomous Vehicles

The public’s acceptance of independent autonomous vehicles and cooperative vehicle-highway autonomous vehicles is studied by combining the structural equation model and an artificial neural network. The structural equation model’s output variables are used as the input variables of the artificial neural network, which compensates for the linear problem of the structural equation model and ensures the accuracy of the input variables of the artificial neural network. In order to summarize the influencing factors of autonomous vehicles acceptance, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model was expanded by adding two variables: risk expectation and consumer innovation. The results show that social influence is the strongest predictor of the acceptance of independent autonomous vehicles. The most significant factor of the cooperative vehicle-highway autonomous vehicles’ acceptance is effort expectation. Additionally, risks, performance, existing traffic conditions, and personal innovation awareness also significantly affect autonomous driving acceptance. The research results can provide a theoretical basis for technology developers and industry managers to develop autonomous driving technology and policymaking.
Viscose-Derived Activated Carbons Fibers as Highly Efficient Adsorbents for Dimethoate Removal from Water

Extensive use of pesticides resulting in their accumulation in the environment presents a hazard for their non-target species, including humans. Hence, efficient remediation strategies are needed, and, in this sense, adsorption is seen as the most straightforward approach. We have studied activated carbon fibers (ACFs) derived from viscose fibers impregnated with diammonium hydrogen phosphate (DAHP). By changing the amount of DAHP in the impregnation step, the chemical composition and textural properties of ACFs are effectively tuned, affecting their performance for dimethoate removal from water. The prepared ACFs effectively reduced the toxicity of treated water samples, both deionized water solutions and spiked tap water samples, under batch conditions and in dynamic filtration experiments. Using the results of physicochemical characterization and dimethoate adsorption measurements, multiple linear regression models were made to reliably predict performance towards dimethoate removal from water. These models can be used to quickly screen among larger sets of possible adsorbents and guide the development of novel, highly efficient adsorbents for dimethoate removal from water.
The Systemic Inflammation Index on admission is independently associated with length of stay in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

BACKGROUND: The early detection of factors predicting hospital length of stay (LOS) in patients affected by severe acute respiratory syndrome in Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) disease (COVID-19) might facilitate therapeutic decisions and patient flow management. METHODS: We collected routine clinical and laboratory parameters and derived inflammatory indexes on admission in 65 consecutive COVID-19 patients transferred to the Unit of Respiratory and Infectious Disease of the University Hospital of Sassari (North-Sardinia, Italy) who were alive on discharge. RESULTS: Patients with prolonged length of stay (LOS) (PLOS >= 26 days, N.=22) had significantly higher chest CT severity scores, neutrophils, neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR), aggregate index of systemic inflammation, Systemic Inflammation Response Index, Systemic Inflammation Index (SII), aspartate aminotransferase, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and rates of obesity and respiratory support, than non-PLOS patients (N.=43). In univariate analysis, LOS was significantly and negatively correlated with lymphocytes and monocytes, and positively correlated with Body Mass Index (BMI), intensity of care, chest CT severity score, NLR, platelet lymphocyte ratio, SII and LDH. In multivariate regression analysis, only the SII was significantly associated with LOS (beta=0.506, P=0.002) after adjusting for BMI, intensity of care, chest CT severity score and LDH. CONCLUSIONS: SII values on admission were independently associated with LOS in COVID-19 patients. Prospective studies in larger cohorts are required to confirm our findings and to determine the role of the SII in clinical decision making.
Pengaruh Struktur Modal, Investment Opportunity Set, Ukuran Perusahaan, Return On Asset dan Likuiditas terhadap Kualitas Laba pada Perusahaan Jasa yang Terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia

Abstract The purpose of this study was to see and test the effect of Capital Structure, Investment Opportunity Set (IOS), Company Size, Return on Asset (ROA) and Liquidity on Earning Quality at Service Companies listed on the IDX (Indonesia Stock Exchange) in 2017-2019. This research uses the quantitative descriptive approach. The population obtained was 79 companies listed on the IDX (Indonesia Stock Exchange) from 2017-2019. Samples were taken by using purposive sampling technique. This technique is also often used by other researchers because the obtained samples are closer to the research objectives. The obtained samples were 16 companies. The data analysis used various kind of analysys, namely ; the multiple linear analysis, the coefficient of determination test, the classical assumption test, the F test and the t test. This result of this study shows that, partially, the Capital Structure, Investment Opportunity Set (IOS), Company Size, Return on Asset (ROA) and Liquidity did not significantly affect the Earning Quality listed on the IDX (Indonesia Stock Exchange) in 2017-2019. Neither, simultaneously, the Capital Structure, Investment Opportunity Set (IOS), Company Size, Return on Asset (ROA) and Liquidity is significant on the Earning Quality at Service Companies listed on the IDX (Indonesia Stock Exchange) in 2017-2019. Keywords : Capital Structure, Investment Opportunity Set, Company Size, Return on Asset and Liquidity (Current Ratio).
Relationships between physical environment, ethnic authenticity, and willingness to pay in Thai select restaurants

ABSTRACT This study used Thai Select restaurants, which are restaurants recommended by the Thailand Trade and Economic Office, to explore whether customers’ willingness to pay after dining in a Thai Select restaurant is affected by the physical environment or ethnic authenticity of the restaurant. A survey was conducted using convenience sampling, with questionnaires distributed in front of Thai Select restaurants in the Taipei area. A total of 383 valid questionnaires were collected. The findings suggest that both physical environment and ethnic authenticity have a positive effect on customers’ willingness to pay. The findings can serve as a reference for restaurant operators of Thai Select restaurants and other ethnic restaurants in developing strategies to enhance the physical environment or ethnic authenticity of their restaurants.