Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Shannon Entropy and Weights of Evidence Models in Landslide Susceptibility Mapping for the Pithoragarh District of Uttarakhand State, India

Landslide susceptibility mapping is considered a useful tool for planning, disaster management, and natural hazard mitigation of a region. Although there are different methods for predicting landslide susceptibility, the bivariate statistical analysis method is considered to be simple and popular. In this study, the main aim is to evaluate the performance of Shannon entropy (SE) and weights of evidence (WOE) statistical models in landslide susceptibility mapping of Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand state, India. For this purpose, ten landslide affecting factors, namely, slope degree, aspect, curvature, elevation, land cover, slope forming materials, geomorphology (landforms), distance to rivers, distance to roads, and overburden depth were used for the development of landslide susceptibility maps using the SE and WOE methods. Data extracted from the Google Earth images, Aster Digital Elevation Model, and Geological Survey of India report were used for the construction and evaluation of landslide susceptibility models and maps. The landslide data of 91 locations were randomly divided into two parts in the ratio of 70 : 30 using GIS software that is 70% data was used for training the models and 30% data was used for testing and validating the models. Performance of the applied models was evaluated using area under the AUC (area under the curve) ROC (receiver operating characteristics) curve. Results indicated that the WOE model is having better accuracy (AUCWOE = 68.75%) than the SE model (AUCSE = 52.17%) in the development of landslide susceptibility maps. Hence, WOE model can be used for the development of accurate landslide susceptibility maps which can provide useful information to decision maker and policy planner in better development of landslide prone areas.
Translation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the Exercise Adherence Rating Scale (EARS) into Danish

The Exercise Adherence Rating Scale (EARS) is a self-administrated questionnaire designed to measure adherence to prescribed home-based exercises in a British population. In a Danish context, no reliable and valid questionnaires are available to measure exercise adherence. This study aimed to translate and cross-culturally adapt the EARS into Danish following international guidelines and to provide insights about construct validity in a Danish population with longstanding hip pain. The EARS was translated and cross-culturally adapted into Danish using a forward-backward method. The understanding and interpretability of the EARS were evaluated with semistructured interviews in 24 patients with longstanding hip pain due to hip dysplasia (22 females; median age 30 (IQR 24-37)). These patients were prescribed home-based exercises. Using Spearman’s correlation, construct validity was evaluated by assessing if the Danish version of EARS was correlated with completed exercise sessions and self-reported pain and sport/recreation function. The EARS was translated and cross-culturally adapted into Danish following minor adjustments. The EARS was statistically significantly correlated to completed exercise sessions ( p = 0.005 ), self-reported pain ( p = 0.005 ), and sport/recreation function ( p < 0.03 ). In patients with longstanding hip pain, the Danish EARS seems suitable to measure adherence to prescribed exercises; however, further evaluation of measurement properties may be needed.
Evaluation of fiber compositions, strength indicators, and disintegration patterns of flushable sanitary products in relevance to what is flushable

ABSTRACT Sanitary products (SPs) such as toilet paper and moist wipes are marketed as flushable products (FPs). SP manufacturers, wastewater authorities, and governmental agencies describe FPs in their own terms, and cause confusion about what is safe to flush with respect to sewer operations. To identify sewer-safe FPs, 11 toilet paper (TP) and 39 flushable wipe (FW) samples that were collected from around the world were examined to assess critical links between their fiber compositions, strength indicators, and disintegration performance. The findings illustrate that products that are made of primarily wood-pulp fibers have low strength, disintegrate rapidly, and are safe flushables. In contrast, products that contain strong and synthetic fibers (e.g. polyester) exhibit high strength, disintegrate slowly, and pose significant risk of accumulation in sewer systems. Suggestions are offered for product improvement and for long-term sustainability of FPs and wastewater infrastructures.
Spray water cooling of newly laid asphalt pavement for rapid opening to traffic

Freshly paved asphalt must be sufficiently warm before it can be trafficked to prevent premature failure. In countries with high air ambient temperature, the newly laid asphalt temperatures reduce slowly; thus, it requires lengthy periods to reach the opening-to-traffic asphalt temperature. Some contractors practice spraying water onto the freshly paved asphalt to accelerate the cooling time, so the new sections can be quickly opened to traffic. However, no particular research has been performed regarding this practice. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of spray water cooling and examine the potential detrimental effects on the asphalt material properties. For this purpose, laboratory temperature measurements and heat transfer analyses of natural cooling and water spray cooling were performed. In addition, Cantabro and indirect tensile strength (IDT) testing were carried outto investigate the possible drawbacks of water. The results indicate the water spray application onto newly laid asphalt pavement does not necessarily adversely affect the asphalt durability (resistance to cohesion loss) and or the moisture damage of asphalt pavement. However, it is likely to be of limited value in accelerating the cooling of overlays, except when they are relatively thin.
Artificial Intelligence for Remote Sensing Data Analysis: A review of challenges and opportunities

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a growing role in remote sensing (RS). Applications of AI, particularly machine learning algorithms, range from initial image processing to high-level data understanding and knowledge discovery. AI techniques have emerged as a powerful strategy for analyzing RS data and led to remarkable breakthroughs in all RS fields. Given this period of breathtaking evolution, this work aims to provide a comprehensive review of the recent achievements of AI algorithms and applications in RS data analysis. The review includes more than 270 research papers, covering the following major aspects of AI innovation for RS: machine learning, computational intelligence, AI explicability, data mining, natural language processing (NLP), and AI security. We conclude this review by identifying promising directions for future research.
The modelling of movement of multiple animals that share behavioural features

In this work, we propose a model that can be used to infer the behaviour of multiple animals. Our proposal is defined as a set of hidden Markov models that are based on the sticky hierarchical Dirichlet process, with a shared base‐measure, and a step and turn with an attractive point (STAP) emission distribution. The latent classifications are representative of the behaviour assumed by the animals, which is described by the STAP parameters. Given the latent classifications, the animals are independent. As a result of the way we formalize the distribution over the STAP parameters, the animals may share, in different behaviours, the set or a subset of the parameters, thereby allowing us to investigate the similarities between them. The hidden Markov models, based on the Dirichlet process, allow us to estimate the number of latent behaviours for each animal, as a model parameter. This proposal is motivated by a real data problem, where the global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of six Maremma Sheepdogs have been observed. Among the other results, we show that four dogs share most of the behaviour characteristics, while two have specific behaviours.
Mechanical Properties and Dimensional Stability of Poplar Wood Modified by Pre-Compression and Post-Vacuum-Thermo Treatments

Fast-growing poplar wood has the bottleneck problems of inferior mechanical strength and poor dimensional stability. In this study, the wood was modified by combined treatments of pre-compression and post-vacuum-thermo modification to improve its mechanical strength and dimensional stability, simultaneously; in addition, the variation law of mechanical properties of the wood with compression ratio as well as the improvement effect of dimensional stability of the treated wood were mainly studied. The results show that the optimal temperature and time of the vacuum-thermo modification were 190 °C and 10 h, respectively. Under these conditions, the structure of pre-compressed and post-vacuum-thermally modified wood (CT wood) is gradually densified with the increase in the compression ratio, which results in the continuous enhancement of mechanical properties. Meanwhile, the anti-swelling efficiency (ASE) of the CT wood after water absorption is correspondingly better than that of the compressed wood before thermal modification, indicating that the dimensional stability of compressed wood was improved by the thermal modification. When the compression ratio was 70%, the modulus of rupture (MOR) and impact toughness of CT wood was 176 MPa and 63 KJ/m2, which was 125% and 59% higher than that of untreated wood, respectively. The ASE was also 26% higher than that of the wood with sole compression. Therefore, this method improves the mechanical strength and dimensional stability of wood simultaneously, and it provides a scientific basis for optimization of the reinforcing modification process of fast-growing wood.
Phylogeographic structure of the Persian Squirrel, Sciurus anomalus Güldenstädt, 1785 (Mammalia: Rodentia) in the Anatolian Peninsula, based on mitochondrial DNA sequences: implications for metapopulation

The phylogenetic, phylogeographic and evolution history of Sciurus anomalus was studied in the Anatolian Peninsula using a 1726 bp region of the mitochondrial genome. The phylogenetic and network analyses of 32 specimens suggested that S. anomalus consists of two main mitochondrial lineages, an eastern and a western lineage. Both lineages are nested within the Greek and Lebanese populations, but not within the Syrian or Iranian populations. Coalescence analyses indicated that both lineages originated during the Chibanian geological stage under the climatic fluctuations, one of them within western Anatolia or the Aegean islands and the other one in eastern Anatolia or the Caucasus region. The neutrality and mismatch analyses offered a possible scenario suggesting the existence of different lineages in the Anatolian Peninsula. Isolation by distance typically represented a significant positive correlation between geographic distance and genetic divergence in both lineages. The analyses also suggest that the eastern and western lineages of S. anomalus may represent a metapopulation in Anatolia.
Acquisition of empathy in child Japanese

ABSTRACT This article investigates the acquisition of empathy verbs in child Japanese, focusing on verbs of giving/receiving: age-ru ‘give,’ kure-ru ‘give,’ and mora(w)-u ‘receive. ’ These verbs are distinguished by which argument the speaker empathizes with when describing an event. For age-ru ‘give,’ the speaker empathizes with the subject (the giver); for kure-ru ‘give,’ the speaker empathizes with a non-subject (the recipient), and for mora(w)-u ‘receive,’ the speaker empathizes with the subject (the recipient). Using two diagnostics for empathy (alignment of first person with empathy loci; empathy loci being preferred antecedents in reflexive binding), 4- to 6-year-old children were tested. Our experiments show the following two findings: (i) children found kure-ru as most challenging, partially contradicting previous research; (ii) some children as young as age 4 have fully acquired the empathy-encoding properties of these verbs despite the speaker’s empathy being unobservable in the input. We discuss the challenges that kure-ru poses for children in light of the potential learnability problem that these empathy verbs pose.
Understanding reasons behind mobile service platform switching behavior: An inductive analysis from consumer perspective

Objectives of the Study Why do people switch their mobile phones? What factors make them to stick with their current phones? This thesis’ objective is to find out the influences behind consumer mobile phone switching behavior. Academic literature has examined mobile phone switching surprisingly little since the focus has been on mobile phone related adoption research. This thesis aims to fill that gap of lacking mobile phone switching behavior research. Academic background and methodology An inductive approach is applied on a qualitative data set that was collected from 249 university students from three different continents to determine the consumer expressed reasons to switch and not to switch mobile phones. The results are organized based on consumer responses and examined in the light of PPM framework as well as mirrored to the established adoption literature such as the technology acceptance model and diffusion of innovations framework. Findings and conclusions The findings suggest that mobile phones of any sort are increasingly switched to smartphones. The main reasons pushing people to switch mobile phones were identified as rational reasons such as dissatisfaction with reliability and advanced functionalities of the device being switched from along with external forced influences. The main reasons pulling towards attractive alternatives were identified as personal desires, advanced functionalities and subjectively perceived factors again along with external social influences. Additionally, brand influence and price value perceptions were pinpointed as pulling clearly towards smartphone adoption. The main elements preventing individuals from wanting to switch their mobile phones were determined as attachment to familiar advanced functionalities and subjectively perceived factors. In a general level, the pull effect is the strongest force leading to switching and the principal causes for this pull effect stem from associations to functional elements of the mobile phones.
Effect of Volatile Fatty Acids Accumulation on Biogas Production by Sludge-Feeding Thermophilic Anaerobic Digester and Predicting Process Parameters

Sewage sludge represents an important resource for reuse in the wastewater treatment field. Hence, thermophilic anaerobic digestion (TAD) could be an alternative technique to recover renewable resources from sludge. In the TAD biodegradation process, volatile fatty acids (VFAs) are the intermediate products of methanogenesis. However, the higher formation and accumulation of VFAs leads to microbial stress, resulting in acidification and failure of the digester. Therefore, several batch TADs have been investigated to evaluate the VFAs production from sludge and their impact on biogas generation and biodegradation efficiency. Three types of sewage sludges, e.g., primary sludge (PS), secondary sludge (SS), and mixed sludge (MS) were used as substrates to estimate the accumulation of VFAs and yield of methane gas. The system showed the maximum total VFAs accumulation from both PS and MS as 824.68 ± 0.5 mg/L and 236.67 ± 0.5 mg/L, respectively. The dominant VFA accumulation was identified as acetic acid, the main intermediate by-product of methane production. The produced biogas from PS and MS contained 66.75 ± 0.5% and 52.29 ± 0.5% methane, respectively. The high content of methane with PS-feeding digesters was due to the higher accumulation of VFAs (i.e., 824.68 ± 0.5 mg/L) in the TAD. The study also predicted the design parameters of TAD process by fitting the lab-scale experimental data with the well-known first-order kinetic and logistic models. Such predicted design parameters are significantly important before the large-scale application of the TAD process.
ADOPTION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ACCEPTANCE OF LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS DURING PANDEMIC COVID-19 IN INDONESIA

The COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in 2019, in wuhan, Hubei province, China has spread almost throughout the world, including Indonesia. The impact of the virus is that the government has issued public policies, which include social distancing, social isolation, and self-quarantine. Various sectors must implement the policy. Several companies in Indonesia have to enforce working from home for all their employees, including educational institutions in Indonesia, from the level of Playgroups, Early Childhood Education, Kindergartens, Elementary Schools, Junior High Schools, Public High Schools or Senior High Schools. Vocational High Schools and Universities also apply an online learning process from home. Information Technology provides solutions for the education system in Indonesia in these difficult times, so that the learning process can continue. In previous studies, an exploration of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model with social isolation variables, and corona fear moderating variables was carried out on the Behavioral Intentions of the Learning Management System and the Behavior of the Use of Learning Management Systems among General or Vocational High School students. Data analysis using Smart Partial Least Square (PLS) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings show a positive relationship of Performance Expectations (PE), Effort Expectations (EE), Social Influence (SI), and Social Isolation on LMS Behavioral Intentions and, also between LMS Behavioral Intentions and Use Behavior. In addition, the results of the moderation analysis show that the fear of Corona only moderates the relationship between Performance Expectations and Social Influences with LMS Behavioral Intentions. The findings imply the need to increase the behavioral intentions of LMS users among college students or students.
The Profile of Leprosy Patients in Aceh: Retrospective Study

Backgrounds: Morbus Hansen or leprosy is a chronic granulomatous infectious disease caused by the obligate intracellular Mycobacterium leprae bacillus. Leprosy can cause loss of sensation in the skin with or without lesions and body dysfunction during the course of the disease. In Aceh, there were 337 new cases of leprosy in 2019 and this was the highest case in Sumatra. Purpose: To analyze the profile of leprosy patients in the Department of Dermatology and Venereology of RSUDZA Banda Aceh. Methods: Observational descriptive study with retrospective design, using medical record of leprosy patients who visited Dermatology and Venereology Outpatient Clinic RSUDZA Banda Aceh for the period of January 2017 – December 2021. Result: A total of 183 leprosy patients were obtained from the study. Most cases occured in male patients (68.3%), the majority was in the 18-40 year age group (60.1%), most patients live outside of Banda Aceh (71%). The most frequently reported type of leprosy was the multibacillary type (71.6%). Leprosy patients without disability were 35.5%, the majority did not experience a leprosy reaction (71%), the most common morphology of the lesion was erythematous (29.5%), and the highest proportion of the bacteriological and morphological index was negative (46.4% and 50.8% respectively). Conclusion: The diagnosis of leprosy was based on clinical, bacteriological, and histopathological features. Early diagnosis, patient access to treatment, early initiation of treatment and adherence to therapy would reduce the disease transmission thus would decrease the prevalence of leprosy in Aceh.
A New Early Predictor of Fatal Outcome for COVID-19 in an Italian Emergency Department: The Modified Quick-SOFA

Background: Since 2019, the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is causing a rapidly spreading pandemic. The present study aims to compare a modified quick SOFA (MqSOFA) score with the NEWS-2 score to predict in-hospital mortality (IHM), 30-days mortality and recovery setting. Methods: All patients admitted from March to October 2020 to the Emergency Department of St. Anna Hospital, Ferrara, Italy with clinically suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection were retrospectively included in this single-centre study and evaluated with the MqSOFA and NEWS-2 scores. Statistical and logistic regression analyses were applied to our database. Results: A total of 3359 individual records were retrieved. Among them, 2716 patients were excluded because of a negative nasopharyngeal swab and 206 for lacking data; thus, 437 patients were eligible. The data showed that the MqSOFA and NEWS-2 scores equally predicted IHM (p < 0.001) and 30-days mortality (p < 0.001). Higher incidences of coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, cerebrovascular accidents, dementia, chronic kidney disease and cancer were found in the deceased vs. survived group. Conclusions: In this study we confirmed that the MqSOFA score was non-inferior to the NEWS-2 score in predicting IHM and 30-days mortality. Furthermore, the MqSOFA score was easier to use than NEWS-2 and is more suitable for emergency settings. Neither the NEWS-2 nor the MqSOFA scores were able to predict the recovery setting.
TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN KISII COUNTY, KENYA

This paper investigates the teachers’ perceptions of inclusive education in public primary schools in Kenya.It particularly explores the influence of the teachers’ demographic variables on the perceptions of inclusive education in the regular school system. The study is guided by the positioning theory puts emphasis on within the framework of discursive psychology and requires close analysis of cues that participants use to position themselves, their listeners, and others. The analysis adopted the Ex Post Facto criterion group research design to identify the causative relationship between the demographic indicators and inclusive education practices. The respondents (n = 333) were regular primary school teachers in Kisii Central Sub County of Kisii County, Kenya. There were five research questions that guided the current study were translated into ten hypotheses which were tested using the one – way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The findings reveal that the participants presented mixed opinions on the general philosophy of inclusive education based on their demographic factors. The difference among age cohort (F (14,329)= 2.629; P< . 001), level of qualification (F(14,311)= 8.94; P< . 001) and teaching experience (F(12,163)= 18.03; p< . 001) were found to have statistically significant influence on regular teachers’ perceptions of inclusive education. However, the findings showed that gender (F(14, 300)= 1.385; p> . 001) and training in disability education (F (13,316)=3.84; P> . 001), did not have significant influence on regular teachers’ perceptions of inclusive education. The study has revealed that a number of teacher demographic factors significantly influence teacher’s perceptions in inclusive education classrooms in the general school environments. These include teacher’s age, level of educational qualification and teaching experience. The gender and training in disability of the teachers however do not influence the teachers perceptions.