Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Making Sense of Schooling during COVID-19: Crisis as Opportunity in Korean Schools

This article explores how policy actors in South Korea understand and make meaning of school-related policies responding to COVID-19. Using sensemaking and crisis theory as a framework and informed by literature on policy culture, we analyzed qualitative data collected from interviews with teachers, educational leaders, and parents. The findings show that our participants initially thought the crisis situation would “just pass,” but they experienced “fear” and “chaos” when online and hybrid classes were implemented. After adopting unexpected policy changes to cope with the spread of COVID-19, participants sought shared responsibility to overcome the crisis. In addition, our participants made meaning of the crisis as an opportunity to transform schools, suggesting that COVID-19 catalyzed democracy, innovation, and equity in Korean school education. We conclude this article with a discussion on the role of crisis in sensemaking and the importance of national policy culture and sociohistorical contexts in shaping policy actors’ meaning making, extending comparative perspectives in education.
Evaluation of Empirical Relation between Compressive and Flexural Strength of Concrete Partially Using Alccofine and Nano-Silica

In this paper, the flexural strength of concrete using alccofine and nano-silica was investigated experimentally and analytically. 15% alccofine and 3% nano-silica by weight of cement was used as a binary and ternary blend in three concrete grades M40, M50, and M60. Compressive strength and flexural strength were obtained experimentally by curing the specimens in water for 28 days. The empirical equation between compressive strength and flexural strength in the form of fr =bfc’n was obtained using regression analysis. The proposed empirical relation was compared with relations given by a code of practices and the relations reported by other researchers for predicting flexural strength using the compressive strength of concrete. The accuracy of the proposed empirical relation was validated using various statistical equations. From the experimental results, it was found that the cubic compressive strength and flexural strength of ternary blended concrete mixes using alccofine and nano-silica was 20 to 29% and 32 to 39 % higher compared to the control mixes. From the values of statistical equations, the proposed relation was found accurate. It showed less error compared to other relations and can be used to determine flexural strength results based on compressive strength data.
Gain flattening fibre filters using phase-shifted long period fibre gratings

The transmission characteristics of phase-shifted long period gratings (LPGs) are examined theoretically by a combination of coupled-mode theory and transfer matrix formulation. It is shown that the transmission spectrum of such a grating can be significantly controlled by the phase shift which allows the shape of the spectrum to be tailored to meet the requirements of many kinds of gain flattening. By choosing the phase shift and the index change appropriately, a phase-shifted LPG is designed to flatten the spectrum of an Er:silica superfluorescent fibre source.
Comparison of catheter-associated bacteriuria and urinary tract infections between designed sheathed urethral catheters versus other methods of urinary drainage

Introduction: One of the most common nosocomial infections is urinary tract infection (UTI) which more commonly occurs in patients with urethral catheter. Objectives: The aim of this study is to compare the incidence rate of catheter-associated bacteriuria (CRB) and UTI between sheathed designed catheters versus other methods of urinary drainage. Patients and Methods: In this randomized double-blind controlled trial, 150 male patients, who needed urethral catheter, were randomly assigned into three groups; condom bag, designed sheath catheter and traditional Foley catheter. The midstream urine samples were sent to laboratory to evaluate bacteriuria immediately after catheter insertion, upon catheter removal and after two weeks consequently. Results: The mean age of patients was 51.28 ± 14.12 years. The frequency of bacteriuria in patients was 19 (38%), 10 (20%) and 10 (20%) in the traditional catheter, condom bag and sheathed designed catheter, respectively, which was strongly significant (P<0.001). Conclusion: The frequency of bacteriuria in the patients with designed sheathed catheter was significantly less than the traditional catheter. Therefore, using the designed catheter in short-term may be safer in the patients. Trial registration: The trial was registered in the Thai Clinical Trials Registry (identifier: TCTR20200703002; http://www.clinicaltrials.in.th/index.php? tp=regtrials & menu=trialsear ch & smenu=fulltext & task=search & task2=view1& id=6443).
Benchmarking in Construction Industry

The construction industry has followed the lead of manufacturing in adopting total quality management programs. There is currently a lack of benchmarking standards for construction. The Houston Business Roundtable has assembled a group of owners and contractors to solicit ideas and compile initial benchmark data for use by the construction industry. The present paper gives a basic introduction to the process of benchmarking and outlines the steps taken by the Roundtable to date. Data collection has been a learning experience for both participating owners and contractors and the project team due to the lack of benchmarking experience and standardization in the industry. The findings to date indicate that within the construction industry, there is a tendency to overestimate total costs by 8% (on average) and underestimate schedule by 8% (on average), while change orders average +11%. Activities to date represent an important first step toward industry-wide benchmarking standards.
Fabrication and characterization of a wideband MEMS energy harvester utilizing nonlinear springs

This paper presents the fabrication, characterization and modeling of a wideband MEMS electrostatic energy harvester utilizing nonlinear springs. The experimental results show that the vibration energy harvester displays a strong softening spring effect. For narrow band vibration, the energy harvester exhibits a widening bandwidth during frequency down-sweeps. For increasing levels of broadband random noise vibration, the energy harvester displays a broadening bandwidth response. Furthermore, the vibration energy harvester with softening springs not only increases the bandwidth, but also harvests more output power than a linear energy harvester at a sufficient level of broadband random vibration. At a broadband random vibration of 7.0 × 10−4 g2 Hz−1, we found that the bandwidth increases by more than 13 times and the average harvesting output power increases by 68% compared to that of a linear vibration energy harvester. Numerical analysis confirmed that the softening springs are responsible for the band broadening.
A Literature Review: The History of Psychological Impact of Illness amongst People with Leprosy (PwL) in Countries across the Globe

Background Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease for which effective therapy has been long since invented. Thus, the morbidity has been decreased as technology has advanced, but the permanent disability has continuously generated stigma for centuries. The stigma causes the emergence of a poor psychological impact on people with leprosy (PwL). These impacts make new PwL reluctant to get appropriate therapy for their initial symptoms and are, thus, troublesome in accomplishing the goals of the leprosy elimination program. The aim of this review is to provide the history of psychological impact amongst PwL in countries across the globe. Methods This is a literature review study. A keyword-based search was conducted in digital libraries. Articles reporting on PwL's psychology and related issues, such as quality of life, opportunity of building a marriage, and getting hired, were included. The data were presented based on a leprosy history timeline with cutoff points, namely, the invention of promin (1941) and multidrug treatment (1970). Results In total, 38 studies were included in this review. These studies showed that PwL's knowledge towards leprosy has been increasing; nevertheless, their attitude is still lacking. The emotional response was described by various negative feelings that had persistently occurred. These poor psychological impacts were followed by poor treatment-seeking behavior and resulted in low quality of life. Conclusions From year to year, the PwL's knowledge about leprosy has been getting better; nevertheless, their attitude towards the disease is still poor. The emotional response, social participation, and quality of life of PwL are persistently poor due to the persistent stigma.
Flow in membrane filter simulated as microchannel flow with diaphragm

Axisymmetrical and three dimentional flows through single circular and rectangular microchannel with diaphragm are studied in this paper to imitate the performance of micro-machined membrane particle filter with grid of through holes. The microchannel flows are studied using both the DSMC method and the information preservation (IP) method which yield the result of pressure drop across the diaphragm in better agreement with the experimental data for the membrane filter, than the NS equation calculation with slip boundary condition.
Developing Reflection on Practice Through Journal Writing: Impacts of variations in the focus and level of feedback

Journal writing is a popular technique for encouraging student-teachers to reflect on their professional practice during field experience placements. This paper explores the role and importance of journal feedback in developing students' reflective skills. Weekly journal entries were submitted by 35 student-teachers during a 6-week field placement. Students received individual feedback on each journal entry that focused on either the level of reflection attained in their writing or the particular issues that their entries addressed. Within these groups, the type of feedback provided was further varied according to the level of questioning and challenge with which students were confronted (high versus low). The relative effectiveness of the four different types of feedback in improving student journal writing and facilitating reflection on practice is examined. Although students in all conditions reported positive aspects of the feedback they received, feedback that focused on the level of reflection attained was more effective in bringing about improvement in journal writing than feedback that focused on teaching issues. Such feedback, combined with issue-related questions and comments designed to challenge the student and encourage consideration of alternative perspectives, would appear to offer the most effective strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of journal writing as a learning tool.
Effect of Marketing Mix on Consumer Purchase Decisions to Buy Cavendish Banana at Modern Markets in Semarang

This study aims at identifying marketing mix of purchase decisions to buy Cavendish banana and analyzing the effect of marketing mix on purchase decisions to buy Cavendish banana at modern market in Semarang. This research was conducted at modern market in Semarang, namely Gelael Supermarket, Ada Swalayan, Superindo and Giant. Survey was employed as research method in this study. 100 respondents were taken for research sampling. The independent variables used were products, prices, places, and promotions, while the dependent variable was decisions. Descriptive analysis having been conducted shows that the variables of product have an average of 4.14; a variable of price is 3.65; a variable of place is 4.32, a variable of promotion is 3.26; and a variable of purchase decision is 3.85. Statistical analysis having been carried out shows that the f-test of product, price, place and promotion variables simultaneously affect the consumer purchase decision to buy Cavendish bananas with an f-count value of 26.378. Besides, the results of the t-test of product, price and promotion variables partially affect the consumer purchase decision to buy Cavendish bananas with t-count value of 1.984. Moreover, the place variable does not partially affect the consumer purchase decision to buy at Modern Market in Semarang.
Psychosocial impacts of COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study of Mirpur, Pakistan

ABSTRACT This article is aimed to examine the psychosocial impacts faced by the people of Mirpur city during the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective was to determine the nature of psycho-social impacts faced by the people during the outbreak. Thus, we conducted this research in Mirpur city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir due to its second-highest prevalence rate of pandemic in Pakistan. The study was fashioned in positivistic tradition of quantitative research design. An online survey technique of Google survey form was adopted. Google survey form was disseminated among identified groups through social media tools due to the pandemics’ lockdown situation. Moreover, a sample of 856 respondents out of 1853 participated in the research. This research is informed by the stress-coping theory of Lazarus and Folkman. Findings revealed that psychosocial problems have strong association with loss of business, restrictions on religious practices, shutdown of markets, ban on social obligations, recreational activities, and physical movement. Similarly, logistic regression analysis also endorsed psychosocial impacts of pandemic on people. It is also unveiled that people were unable to cope with the psychological problems during the pandemic. Thus, our research substantiate the stress-coping theory of Lazarus and Folkman.
Fluid wave actuator for the active control of hydraulic pulsations in piping systems

Fluid-borne vibrations in piping systems remain a serious problem in applications such as marine vessels where mechanical fatigue and radiated noise are critical factors. In the case of pumps or hydraulic engines, the main source of vibrational energy is in the fluid axisymmetric plane wave associated with the system pressure pulsations. Due to fluid/structure coupling, this wave propagates in both the pipe wall and fluid. For high levels of pressure pulsations, the resulting radial and axial wall motion can then cause mechanical fatigue and unwanted radiated noise. Passive pulsations dampers have been used traditionally to reduce the fluid pressure pulses. The use of such passive devices is limited however in critical applications due to the resulting static pressure loss which decreases the system performance. This paper describes the design and testing of a non-intrusive fluid wave actuator for the active control of pressure pulses. The actuator consists of a circumferential ring of PZT stacks acting on the pipe outside wall to generate an axisymmetric plane wave in the fluid. Experimental results estimate the control performance of the actuator applied to the discharge line of an oil driven hydraulic engine.
Road Surface Crack Detection Method Based on Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks

Constant monitoring of road surfaces helps to show the urgency of deterioration or problems in the road construction and to improve the safety level of the road surface. Conditional generative adversarial networks (cGAN) are a powerful tool to generate or transform the images used for crack detection. The advantage of this method is the highly accurate results in vector-based images, which are convenient for mathematical analysis of the detected cracks at a later time. However, images taken under established parameters are different from images in real-world contexts. Another potential problem of cGAN is that it is difficult to detect the shape of an object when the resulting accuracy is low, which can seriously affect any further mathematical analysis of the detected crack. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes a method called improved cGAN with attention gate (ICGA) for roadway surface crack detection. To obtain a more accurate shape of the detected target object, ICGA establishes a multi-level model with independent stages. In the first stage, everything except the road is treated as noise and removed from the image. These images are stored in a new dataset. In the second stage, ICGA determines the cracks. Therefore, ICGA focuses on the redistribution of cracks, not the auxiliary elements in the image. ICGA adds two attention gates to a U-net architecture and improves the segmentation capacities of the generator in pix2pix. Extensive experimental results on dashboard camera images of the Unsupervised Llamas dataset show that our method has better performance than other state-of-the-art methods.
Effect of new generation herbicides on weed parameters and seed yield of rice fallow black gram, Vigna mungo L

A field experiment was conducted during the Rabi season of 2004 at Agricultural College and Research Institute, Madurai on sandy clay loam soil to study the effect of new generation herbicides and their rates on weed parameters and seed yield of rice fallow black gram, Vigna mungo L. The predominant weeds in the experimental field were grasses followed by broad leaved weeds and sedges. The results revealed that application of fenoxaprop-p-ethyl @ 75 g/ha was found to be very efficient in controlling the dominant grass weeds and found to be at par with fenoxaprop-p-ethyl @ 100 g/ha, cyhalofop butyl @ 100 g/ha and 125 g/ha. But all these herbicides failed to show their effect on sedges and broad leaved weeds (BLWs). Imazethapyr @ 100 g/ha caused significant reduction in BLW density and dry matter production followed by imazethapyr @ 75 g/ha. The extent of control of dominant grass weeds was 95.55 with fenoxaprop-p-ethyl @ 100 g/ha, 95.51 with cyhalofop butyl @ 125 g/ha and 59.32 per cent with imazethapyr @ 100 g/ha. However maximum seed yield was recorded with fenoxaprop-p-ethyl @ 100 g/ha which was comparable with cyhalofop butyl @ 125 g/ha.
PROTECTIVE ACTIVITY OF LEMNA MINOR L. IN CHRONIC BLEOMYCIN–INDUCED LUNG INFLAMMATION

This research investigates the probable effects of induced chronic (28 days) lung inflammations by Bleomycin (BLM) and its oxidative-toxicity protection by the aquatic extract of Lemna minor L. (LME). Balb/c male mice were in every two days exposed to: (1) a controlled normal diet, (2) an LME treatment (120 mg/kg bwt, i.p.), (3) a BLM treatment (0.34 U/kg bwt, i.p.), and (4) an LME (120 mg/kg bwt, i.p.) administered two hours prior to the BLM. At the 30 experimental days of chronic BLM administration, the mice were sacrificed and fresh lung tissue was collected for biochemical determination and EPR analysis. The BLM treatment significantly increased the biochemical indices two-fold (SOD, CAT, MDA, TC) than controls. Furthermore, lung/alveolar cell experiments were performed to investigate the LME modulative and oxidative-protection effect. The results revealed that LME alone and in combination (LME + BLM) inhibited BLM expression by significantly reducing EPR-ascorbate (p < 0.05), ROS production (p < 0.05), and by enhancing enzymatic antioxidants. As a conclusion, our results indicated that chronic BLM toxicity and lung inflammation could be neutralized by long-term LME treatment. Therefore, LME + BLM prevented the detrimental impacts of BLM and have proved to have a potential therapeutic effect on the oxidative stress biomarkers, antioxidant enzymes and alleviation of lung inflammations.
Biologically inspired radar and sonar target classification

Classification of targets is a key problem of modern radar and sonar systems. This is an activity carried out with great success by echolocating mammals, such as bats, that have evolved echolocation as a means of detecting, selecting and attacking prey over a period of more than 50 million years. Because they have developed a highly sophisticated capability on which they depend for their survival, it is likely that there is potentially a great deal that can be learnt from understanding how they use this capability and how this might be valuably applied to radar and sonar systems. Bat-pollinated plants and their flowers represent a very interesting class of organisms for the study of target classification as it is thought that co-evolution has shaped bat-pollinated flowers in order to ease classification by bats. In this thesis, the strategy that underpins classification of flowers by bats is investigated. An acoustic radar has been developed to collect data to perform a floral echoes analysis. Results show that there is a relative relevance of specific parts of the flower in displaying information to bats and show that there are different characteristics in the flowers' echo fingerprints, depending on age and stage of maturity, that bats might use to choose the most suitable flowers for pollination. We show that, as suggested by the oral echoes analysis, a more intelligent way to perform target classification can result in improved classification performance and, investigate biologically inspired methods and ideas that might become important tools for the study and the development of radar and sonar target classification.
Tissue and Growth Specific Chemical Profiles and Antimicrobial Activity of Libanotis buchtormensis (Fisch.) DC Extracts

Libanotis buchtormensis (Fisch.) DC. is a traditional Chinese medicinal herb used for the treatment of rheumatism, articular pain, and symptoms of the common cold. To evaluate the possible medicinal value of the aerial parts of L. buchtormensis, the chemical composition and antibacterial activity were assessed on a tissue and growth specific basis. Results based on high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) showed that the samples were divided into two main clusters, one associated with roots and the other associated with the aerial parts. Analysis of the bioactive chemical contents revealed that coumarin was the most abundant compound in leaves (0.53 to 0.82%), while osthole and isoimperatorin exhibited relatively high concentrations in roots. Two-year growth samples, which correspond with the harvest period of L. buchtormensis, contained the highest amounts of total coumarin, osthole, and isoimperatorin. Broth microdilution tests showed that Gram-positive bacterial strains (Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis and Streptococcus agalactiae) were more sensitive to L. buchtormensis extracts than the Gram-negative bacterial strain (Escherichia coli). Staphylococcus aureus and S. epidermidis were more sensitive to the extracts, exhibiting significant correlation with osthole and isoimperatorin contents. Comparative analysis of the chemical profiles and antibacterial activity revealed significant differences between the root and the aerial parts, which implied that the clinical application of the aerial parts needed further study. In addition, the aerial parts could serve as a material source for osthole, having comparable content to that of the root.
The Perfect Storm: A Subcultural Analysis of the QAnon Movement

In this study, we examine the social phenomenon known as ‘QAnon’. While QAnon is typically thought of as an exclusively online cultural phenomenon, and thus easily dismissed, it has played a significant role in promoting physical acts of violence—including multiple murders and the attack on the United States Capital on 6 January 2021. Utilizing a qualitative analysis of 300 hours of QAnon-related content, we argue that the widespread beliefs held by QAnon supporters were only possible due to the confluence of feelings of distrust in government and other public officials, purveyors of QAnon that profited in the movement’s success, and a populist digital media environment in which extremist ideas are housed and promoted. We conclude by asking if this is a phenomenon created by greater connectivity, or if this is a byproduct of late-stage capitalism in which social relations continue to be atomized.