Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ICT Self-Efficacy, Organizational Support, Attitudes, and the Use of Blended Learning: An Exploratory Study Based on English Teachers in Basic Education

The study aims to build a model that predicts the behavior of the use of blended learning by English teachers of basic education in China in the environment of repeated lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the relationships between ICT self-efficacy, organizational support for blended learning, attitudes toward blended learning, and the use of blended learning. Data were collected from 562 teachers using a survey questionnaire. Employing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), a hypothesized model was tested for path coefficients and predictive power. This study found that ICT self-efficacy and organizational support for blended learning are sound predictors of teachers' use of blended learning and that the former appeared to be a stronger determinant. In addition, attitudes toward blended learning can directly influence teachers' use of blended learning and mediate the relationship between ICT efficacy and the use of blended learning and between organizational support for blended learning and the use of blended learning. These three variables account for 54.7% of the variance in teachers' use of blended learning.
A Source You Prefer, or Majority? Investigating User Responses to Conflicting Opinions in Multi-Platform Restaurant-Review Lists

Abstract Customers learn about restaurants in various ways, and integrating this disparate information could give them access to a greater diversity of perspectives. Conflicting opinions between restaurant-review platforms are inevitable. However, such conflicts’ influences on users’ perceptions remain unclear, especially when the opinion of a user’s preferred platform conflicts with the majority of others. This study’s experiment with a sample of 304 users found that, when such situations occurred, the preferred platform’s influence differed depending on whether the user was shown a sequence of whole-platform aggregations vs. a sequence of individual reviews drawn from multiple platforms. That is, the participants accepted the majority view most of the time, but when looking at aggregated lists, if their preferred platform expressed a minority positive opinion based on a high quantity of reviews, that minority opinion could prevail over the majority one. Between-platform conflicts were also found to have a greater impact on user reactions than within-platform ones did.
Fear of Illness and Convenient Access to Vaccines Appear to Be the Missing Keys to Successful Vaccination Campaigns: Analysis of the Factors Influencing the Decisions of Hospital Staff in Poland concerning Vaccination against Influenza and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has lasted for two years as of 2022, and it is common knowledge that vaccines are an essential tool to mitigate the health, economic, and social fallout. Unfortunately, vaccine hesitancy is still a serious global problem, both in the general population and among healthcare workers. The authors used an original questionnaire to conduct an anonymous survey study in the University Clinical Hospital in Wrocław, Poland, in April and May of 2021 after acquiring consent from the Medical University of Wrocław, Poland Bioethical Committee. The study results demonstrate that, to a significant extent, the decisions concerning vaccinations are based on factors that are difficult to change with rational argumentation, including people’s personal opinions or beliefs concerning vaccinations and their earlier experiences with vaccinations. The study results suggest that the impregnating effect of one’s own opinions, beliefs, and experiences can be surmounted if vaccines are dispensed free and conveniently while the pathogen is irrationally and emotionally perceived as untamed and possibly severe and life threatening. It makes a significant difference as in such cases that the percentage of participants whose decisions concerning vaccination are influenced by the risks to life or health of one’s own or others rises by about 27 and 36 percent points, respectively. Therefore, in order to succeed, campaigns for vaccinations need to include strong subjective and emotional communication, appealing to negative emotions and exploiting the public’s fear of the unknown while stressing tangible and personal threats possibly resulting from acquiring a vaccine-preventable infectious disease.
Characterization of Roasting Time on Sensory Quality, Color, Taste, and Nonvolatile Compounds of Yuan An Yellow Tea

Roasting is crucial for producing Yuan An yellow tea (YAYT) as it substantially affects sensory quality. However, the effect of roasting time on YAYT flavor quality is not clear. To investigate the effect of roasting time on the sensory qualities, chemical components, odor profiles, and metabolic profile of YAYTs produced with 13 min roasting, 16 min roasting, 19 min roasting, 22 min roasting, and 25 min roasting were determined. The YAYTs roasted for 22 min got higher sensory scores and better chemical qualities, such as the content of gallocatechin (GC), gallocatechin gallate (GCG), free amino acids, solutable sugar, meanwhile the lightness decreased, the hue of tea brew color (b) increased, which meant the tea brew got darker and yellower. YAYTs roasted for 22 min also increased the contents of key odorants, such as benzaldehyde, nonanal, β-cyclocitral, linalool, nerol, α-cedrol, β-ionone, limonene, 2-methylfuran, indole, and longiborneol. Moreover, non-targeted metabolomics identified up to 14 differentially expressed metabolites through pair-wise comparisons, such as flavonoids, phenolic acids, sucrose, and critical metabolites, which were the main components corresponding to YAYT roasted for 22 min. In summary, the current results provide scientific guidance for the production of high quality YAYT.
Automatic Vision-Based Online Inspection System for Broken-Filament of Carbon Fiber With Multiscale Feature Learning

This article aims at solving the problem of broken-filament online detection and tracking during the process of carbon fiber production. Owing to the complex background and unique broken-filament shape, it is challenging to achieve the broken-filament online detection with high accuracy via classical machine vision methods, even general convolutional neural network (CNN)-based methods. Moreover, the carbon fiber strands are usually merged during the winding process, which would lead to the broken-filament location and tracking errors due to wrong segmentation and numbering of carbon fiber strands. To address these problems, we propose a vision-based method to achieve broken-filament online detection and tracking. First, an image collection module is designed to capture high resolution carbon fiber strand data. Then, a novel broken-filament detection network (BFDNet) is proposed to detect broken-filaments, including a feature learning part and a new anchor generation scheme, which is implemented based on the RetinaNet framework. Especially, the feature learning part contains several multiscale kernel fusion blocks (MKFBs) that are composed of convolution kernels of different sizes. Finally, a pixel projection method is proposed to segment and number carbon fiber strands for tracking. Our method achieves satisfactory performance for broken-filament online detection in terms of accuracy compared with several state-of-the-art methods designed for feature learning based on the classical object detection framework. Moreover, our method has been applied in practical applications for broken-filament inspection tasks in factories.
ERGONOMIC RISK LEVEL AND MUSCULOSKELETAL COMPLAINTS DISORDERS (MSDS) IN GALLON SHUTTERS IN THE QUALITY AREA OF QUEEN AGUNG BENGKULU CITY

Ergonomics is a field of study that studies human interaction with elements in the system, so that various theories and methods will be produced to optimize the performance and performance of the overall system. While Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are complaints felt by workers such as muscle pain, and cartilage pain. This study aims to determine the ergonomics and complaints of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). Based on an initial survey of 5 drinking water depot workers about whether they feel pain in the body when they work, it turns out there are complaints such as pain in some parts of their body such as back pain 3 people, neck 2 people, and others after they work. This research was a descriptive observational study, the sample in this study was 35 drinking water depot workers using total sampling. From the univariate results of 35 workers had a moderate level of ergonomic risk of 32 (91.4%), while complaints of Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) experienced by workers were more dominant while complaints of musculoskeletal disorders were 21 (60%). Workers are expected to pay attention to the ergonomics of work positions carried out when carrying out work activities that have a sufficiently long period of time, thereby reducing complaints of Musculoskeletal disorders experienced by workers.
A VCO-Based CTDSM With Integrated Phase Error Correction for Neural Interface

Neural recording front-ends with voltage controlled-oscillator (VCO) based continuous-time $\rm \Delta \Sigma $ modulators (CTDSM) enable direct analogue to digital conversion with minimized aliasing and hardware overhead, however, their performance suffers from phase glitches due to sampling meta-stability and large interference from input or power line. This brief presents a self-correction scheme for multi-phase VCO-based CTDSM. The VCO’s phase pattern is processed in both continuous-time (CT) and discrete-time (DT) domain with real-time error detection and correction to guarantee robust operation. Based on the this scheme, a phase counter can be implemented to assist the XOR-based phase detector (PD) with minimized error, extending the phase detection range, therefore leading to improved quantization resolution and system linearity even with glitches. Fabricated in a 180-nm CMOS process, the prototype achieves 70.7 dB SNDR, 71.0 dB SNR, 83.1 dB SFDR and 71.2 dB DR within 10 kHz bandwidth. The measured input referred noise (IRN) is 5.94 $\mu \text{V}\rm _{rms}$ over 0.5 Hz-10 kHz bandwidth. The performance of this self-correction scheme is verified by injecting phase error with different frequency. A maximum of 16.2 dB improvement of SNDR can be observed for 625 Hz injected interference.
Mesoscale Study on Dilation Behavior of Plain Concrete under Axial Compression

The dilation of concrete in the radial direction is crucial in understanding the failure process and the key to predicting the confining level of passively confined concrete. To better understand this problem, we established a mesoscale model of concrete by considering the random distribution of coarse aggregate and the different properties between mortar and concrete. The model’s validity was demonstrated by comparing with the stress–strain curves in code and the lateral–axial strain curves in test. The simulation results show that the lateral dilation is non-uniformly distributed along the specimen height and the circumferential direction of sections. Moreover, the deformation mainly occurs in the middle part of the specimen ranging from 3/8 to 5/8. The strength of concrete influences the stress ratio at maximum compressive strain, while it slightly influences the stress ratio at zero volumetric strain. The secant strain ratio is about 0.5 as the compressive stress reaches the strength of concrete. Compared with the simulation, the relationship between lateral strain and axial strain proposed by Teng and Binici shows excellent performance on the dilation trend prediction of plain concrete.
COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT ROTARY INSTRUMENT SYSTEMS ON THE AMOUNT OF APICALLY EXTRUDED DEBRIS

Objectives: The purpose of our study is to examine in vitro the amount of debris extrusion from the apical after root canal preparation with different rotary instruments. Materials and Methods: In present study, 60 single root single-canal lower premolar human teeth were used. The teeth were randomly selected and divided into 4 main groups (n=15). Root canals are shaped by using 2Shape, One Curve and XP-3DEndo Shaper working in rotational motion and WaveOne Gold working reciprocal motion. Later, the weight of each eppendorf tube was weighed on a precision scale and the amount of debris extrusion from the apical was determined with 10ˉ4 precision by subtracting the empty weight of the tube. Since the parametric test assumptions were fulfilled in the evaluation of the data obtained regarding the amount of debris extrusion from the apical of file systems by loading them into the SPSS 22.0 program, One-Way Variance analysis was used and the level of error was taken as 0.05. Results: When the amount of debris extrusion from the apical is ordered from high to low, it was seen that there are 2Shape, One Curve, XP-Endo Shaper, WaveOne Gold. However, the difference between study groups was not statistically significant (p> 0.05). Conclusions: Considering the results obtained in terms of debris extrusion from the apical about the new generation files with different metallurgy, kinematics, structural features, designs and different configurations that we used ın present study, it was seen that these systems would not show any difference in terms of the effect of debris on the success of endodontic treatment.
Dividend Policy and Earnings Management: Evidence from the U.S. Aerospace and Defence Industry

ABSTRACT This study provides evidence on how dividend policy affects earnings management. Our goal is to contribute to the literature by employing data from a sector (aerospace and defence) that to the best of our knowledge has never been studied before in terms of the relationship between earnings management and dividend policy. Our sample consists of 17 listed companies in the U.S. Stock Exchanges, examined for the 2012-2019 period. We employ panel data linear regression to conclude that the dividend policy positively affects the management’s practice of discretionary accruals manipulation. Consequently, our results support the signalling hypothesis that points to the importance of a stable dividend policy. Specifically, we provide relevant and robust information on management decision making regarding value return to the shareholders of U.S. aerospace and defence companies. Finally, we provide future research proposals that may shed more light on this obscure relationship.
Numbers matter: Predatory ability increases with forager group size in omnivorous ant species with similar predatory traits

Predation is an important force structuring ecological communities. However, it is still controversial whether larger predator groups are more efficient at exploiting abundant resources. Here, we explored the association between the number of foragers and predation ability in generalist ant species that differ in forager numbers when exploiting resources. We conducted a field experiment by increasing caterpillar density around nests of two abundant Dorymyrmex ant species in the semiarid Patagonian steppe, where D. tener allocates a higher number of foragers to resource exploitation than D. antarcticus. We (1) compared the association between predation effectiveness (success to complete a task) and efficiency (speed of task performance and economy of foragers) with the number of foragers involved between species, and (2) studied how they responded numerically to increasing prey densities, by sequentially adding 3, 6 and 12 larvae in the same foraging arena. Finally, (3) we compared behavioural and morphological traits related to predation between these ant species. Although D. tener discovered a similar number of arenas with larvae than D. antarcticus, it was more effective as it recruited more and removed more larvae. This species was also more efficient than D. antarcticus in all predation subtasks, and the time used to remove one larva depended on prey density, being faster for the high‐larvae density. Besides the number of foragers, ant species did not differ in other behavioural traits, and D. tener's foragers were slightly larger than those of D. antarcticus. This study illustrates how, in social predators, the predator group size and individual behavioural characteristics may act in conjunction, with relevant consequences at ecological, evolutionary, and applied levels, including potential implications for pest control.
Genome-Wide Dissection of the Genetic Basis for Drought Tolerance in Gossypium hirsutum L. Races

Drought seriously threats the growth and development of Gossypium hirsutum L. To dissect the genetic basis for drought tolerance in the G. hirsutum L. germplasm, a population, consisting of 188 accessions of G. hirsutum races and a cultivar (TM-1), was genotyped using the Cotton80KSNP biochip, and 51,268 high-quality single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were obtained. Based on the phenotypic data of eight drought relative traits from four environments, we carried out association mapping with five models using GAPIT software. In total, thirty-six SNPs were detected significantly associated at least in two environments or two models. Among these SNPs, 8 and 28 (including 24 SNPs in 5 peak regions) were distributed in the A and D subgenome, respectively; eight SNPs were found to be distributed within separate genes. An SNP, TM73079, located on chromosome D10, was simultaneously associated with leaf fresh weight, leaf wilted weight, and leaf dry weight. Another nine SNPs, TM47696, TM33865, TM40383, TM10267, TM59672, TM59675, TM59677, TM72359, and TM72361, on chromosomes A13, A10, A12, A5, D6, and D9, were localized within or near previously reported quantitative trait loci for drought tolerance. Moreover, 520 genes located 200 kb up- and down-stream of 36 SNPs were obtained and analyzed based on gene annotation and transcriptome sequencing. The results showed that three candidate genes, Gh_D08G2462, Gh_A03G0043, and Gh_A12G0369, may play important roles in drought tolerance. The current GWAS represents the first investigation into mapping QTL for drought tolerance in G. hirsutum races and provides important information for improving cotton cultivars.
Implementation of a Multi-Gbit/s and GFDM-based Optical-Wireless 5G Network

We report the implementation of an optical-wireless 5G network based on generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) and multi-Gbit/s communication. Dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator was employed, enabling simultaneously RF signals transport using two 5G candidate bands, namely: 26 GHz band for providing a femtocell with 2 Gbit/s throughput; 700 MHz band for enabling rural access applying a supercell. A vector signal generator provides the broadband 26 GHz signal. The Brazilian GFDM-based 5G transceiver generates the lower-frequency signal, with the advantage of low out-of-band emission. An experimental digital performance analysis illustrates the suitability of the proposed solution to address 5G requirements.
Insights on Gut and Skin Wound Microbiome in Stranded Indo-Pacific Finless Porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides)

The gut microbiome is a unique marker for cetaceans’ health status, and the microbiome composition of their skin wounds can indicate a potential infection from their habitat. Our study provides the first comparative analysis of the microbial communities from gut regions and skin wounds of an individual Indo-Pacific finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides). Microbial richness increased from the foregut to the hindgut with variation in the composition of microbes. Fusobacteria (67.51% ± 5.10%), Firmicutes (22.00% ± 2.60%), and Proteobacteria (10.47% ± 5.49%) were the dominant phyla in the gastrointestinal tract, while Proteobacteria (76.11% ± 0.54%), Firmicutes (22.00% ± 2.60%), and Bacteroidetes (10.13% ± 0.49%) were the dominant phyla in the skin wounds. The genera Photobacterium, Actinobacillus, Vibrio, Erysipelothrix, Tenacibaculum, and Psychrobacter, considered potential pathogens for mammals, were identified in the gut and skin wounds of the stranded Indo-Pacific finless porpoise. A comparison of the gut microbiome in the Indo-Pacific finless porpoise and other cetaceans revealed a possible species-specific gut microbiome in the Indo-Pacific finless porpoise. There was a significant difference between the skin wound microbiomes in terrestrial and marine mammals, probably due to habitat-specific differences. Our results show potential species specificity in the microbiome structure and a potential threat posed by environmental pathogens to cetaceans.
Climate Change and Weather Extremes in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East

Observation‐based and modeling studies have identified the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region as a prominent climate change hotspot. While several initiatives have addressed the impacts of climate change in parts of the EMME, here we present an updated assessment, covering a wide range of timescales, phenomena and future pathways. Our assessment is based on a revised analysis of recent observations and projections and an extensive overview of the recent scientific literature on the causes and effects of regional climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions in the EMME are growing rapidly, surpassing those of the European Union, hence contributing significantly to climate change. Over the past half‐century and especially during recent decades, the EMME has warmed significantly faster than other inhabited regions. At the same time, changes in the hydrological cycle have become evident. The observed recent temperature increase of about 0.45°C per decade is projected to continue, although strong global greenhouse gas emission reductions could moderate this trend. In addition to projected changes in mean climate conditions, we call attention to extreme weather events with potentially disruptive societal impacts. These include the strongly increasing severity and duration of heatwaves, droughts and dust storms, as well as torrential rain events that can trigger flash floods. Our review is complemented by a discussion of atmospheric pollution and land‐use change in the region, including urbanization, desertification and forest fires. Finally, we identify sectors that may be critically affected and formulate adaptation and research recommendations toward greater resilience of the EMME region to climate change.
X-ray emission from cataclysmic variables with accretion disks. II. EUV/Soft x-ray radiation

About half of the gravitational luminosity released by gas accreting onto a white dwarf through a disk should emerge from the star/disk boundary layer. For the accretion rates present in many cataclysmic variables, theory predicts that this luminosity should be in the form of an optically thick EUV/soft X-ray component, with T/sub e/roughly-equal(1-3) x 10/sup 5/ K. We compare the theoretical predictions with presently available soft X-ray observations and find satisfactory agreement. Previous doubts on this point were based on inappropriate choices for several critical parameters: white dwarf mass, interstellar column density, and the space density of classical novae. We also attempt to constrain the boundary layer radiation by comparing observed and predicted strengths of the He II lambda1640 and lambda4686 emission lines, assuming that these are produced by photoionization in the upper layers of the disk. The results support the simple optically thick model for high-M systems, but may require complicated X-ray spectra in low-M systems.