Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does economic policy uncertainty impact the mean–variance relation? Evidence from China

ABSTRACT This study shows the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the mean–variance relation. Using the news-based EPU index of China, we discover the significant effect of EPU on the mean–variance relation of the Chinese stock market. Besides, our empirical findings reveal that the influence of EPU on the market’s mean–variance relation is time-varying. During the low-EPU periods, the stock market’s excess return is positively related to conditional variance; during the high-EPU periods, the stock market’s excess return is negatively related to conditional variance. Furthermore, our results are robust across different conditional variance models as well as controlling for Fama–French three factors of the Chinese stock market.
Extensive testing on PVC sewer pipes towards identifying the factors that affect their operational lifetime

Abstract Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) sewer pipes have operated for decades in a hostile environment, raising concern among sewer managers over the longevity of their drainage systems. Inspection data (CCTV and Panoramo®) reveals that severe defects have already surfaced, yet it is unknown if the material properties of PVC sewers have been affected. In order to address this issue, extensive testing (among others flexural and tensile tests, FT-IR, X-ray, viscosity measurements) was conducted on eight exhumed PVC sewer pipes (16–43 years old) with known defects and one brand-new for reference purposes. Visual examination during excavation revealed various failure causes, including uncontrolled handling of the pipes during construction or due to digging activities in the direct vicinity of the pipes. The test results indicate that physical ageing is extensively detected while other degradation mechanisms had minimal or no effect on the investigated pipes. However, mechanical testing on exhumed 3-layer pipes show that the incorporation of layered wall constructions is potentially a critical factor for the structural status of the pipe.
Linking people and activities through community mobility: an international comparison of the mobility patterns of older drivers and non-drivers

Abstract Community mobility using private and public transportation is important for maintaining health, social participation and living well in later life. This international cross-sectional cohort study (N = 246) reported on the health and driving status of older adults from seven countries where the mobility patterns of drivers and non-drivers were compared in terms of city and rural areas, weather, as well as their respective differences in the number of out-of-home places accessed and quality of life. Older adults participated in a semi-structured interview and completed four standardised instruments: the EQ-5D-5L, modified PULSES health profile, modified Transportation Questionnaire, and the Transport – Participation in Activities and Places Outside the Home. Results suggested inclement weather and place of residence negatively impacted out-of-home activities but did not increase use of public transportation. Drivers accessed more out-of-home activities than non-drivers, suggesting higher community participation among this group, and quality of life was generally high among all participants, but slightly higher for drivers. Findings indicate that a complex myriad of factors can influence community mobility in older adults and further investigations are needed to understand patterns of transport in later life, particularly with regard to those factors that promote and maintain transport mobility, and relationships between transport mobility, community participation and quality of life.
Diversity Assessment by Molecular Barcoding and Seed Morphology in Ricinus communis L.

تم تجميع بذورأربعة عشر صنف من أصناف نبات الخروع المتناوعه فى الشكل من مناطق مختلفة في مصر والسودان والمملكة العربية السعودية. تم فحص مورفولوجيا البذور وتحليل الباركود ITS)) (الفاصل الداخلي المنسوخ لشريط الرنا الريبوسومي) لتقييم تنوعها والعلاقة بين الأصناف. التتابع الوراثي "لمنطقة الفاصل الداخلي المنسوخ لشريط الرنا الريبوسومي" تظهر مستويات عالية من التشابه الوراثي. لم يتمكن تحليل شجرة النسب من تجميع المدخلات المختلفة وفقا لتوزيعها الجغرافي. ومع ذلك، يتطابق الباركود الجيني بشكل مثير للاهتمام مع السمات المورفولوجية لبذور الخروع. أثبتت الدراسة ان مورفولوجيا البذور أداة قيمة في تقييم العلاقة بين التنوع البيولوجي والتطور الوراثي في الأنواع النباتية ذات المستويات المنخفضة من التنوع الجيني والمنتشره جغرافيا" مثل الخروع، سيساعد التقييم الجزيئي لبذور الخروع المتناوعة شكليا المربين على الاستخدام الأفضل للبذور لتطوير الأصناف، كما سيدعم إدارة الموارد الوراثية والحفاظ على بذور الخروع.
Influence of fungal low molecular weight organic acids on extraction and speciation of runoff particulate‐associated phosphorus: Implications for nonpoint phosphorus recovery and beneficial reuse

Massive nonpoint particulate‐bound phosphorus (P) losses in runoff and erosion streams cause eutrophication and toxic algal blooms in surface water bodies that receive these streams. On the other hand, runoff particulates can be regarded as a “new” sustainable source of P that can be recovered and reused in agriculture to minimize dependence on mined P sources. In this study, the effects of low molecular weight organic acids (LMWOA) generated by P‐solubilizing fungi (PSF) on bound P extraction efficiency and inorganic P speciation from intercepted runoff sediments discharging into a eutrophic lake were investigated. Runoff sediments were processed using model aqueous LMWOA solutions and cell‐free PSF culture broths containing oxalate and citrate. Up to 61% of total bound P were extracted from runoff sediments using 2:1 and 1:1 (by molarity) oxalate‐citrate mixtures. Equilibrium soluble P levels were reached within 120 min of extraction. Majority of the extracted P originated from potentially bioavailable Fe‐bound P pools whereas some desorbed P appeared to reform as Ca‐P phases when using oxalate‐dominant extractant mixtures. Extractions using cell‐free fungal culture broth demonstrated higher P mobilization rates than using pure aqueous LMWOA solutions, indicating the relevance of other non‐LMWOA‐related chelating and dissolution mechanisms. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 36: 1810–1816, 2017
Title Knowledge, attitude and use of evidence based practice (EBP) among Registered Nurse-Midwives practicing in Central Hospitals in Malawi: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Background: Even though EBP is being considered as a critical element in improving the quality of health services and achieving excellence in patient care, there is currently little knowledge of how EBP relates to nursing and midwifery in Malawi. This paper is a report of a study describing EBP knowledge, attitudes and use of registered nurses-midwives practicing in central hospitals in Malawi. Methods: The descriptive, cross-sectional research design was conducted with a convenient sample of 183 nurse-midwives (response rate of 86%). The study used a questionnaire to collect data. Data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics in the Statistical Product and Service Solutions version 23. Descriptive statistics were calculated to summarize overall knowledge levels, attitudes and use of nurse-midwives as percentages based on their scores from the assessment scale (1 to 7 Likert scale) in the EBP questionnaire. Non-parametric Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were carried out to compare evidence-based practice scores based on demographics. Pearson’s correlation (r) and stepwise regression analysis were further performed to analyse the relationship between the knowledge, attitude and use of nurse-midwives on the overall EBP of nurse-midwives. Results: The average scores (mean±SD) of evidence-based practice amongst nurse midwives were 78.7±19.6 for attitude, 70.6±15.1 for knowledge levels, 57.8±23.for use, and 68.9±14.2 for the overall EBP. Higher educational qualification was associated with higher scores in knowledge levels (P=0.02). Research experience was associated with higher scores in nursing use (P=0.005), and higher overall evidence based practice were associated with both research experience (P=0.035) and educational qualification (P=0.004). Nurse-midwives attitude was affected by clinical experience (P=0.006) and the hospital where nurse-midwives worked (P=0.016). There was no significant difference in the EBP scores of nurse-midwives based on gender and/or their administrative roles in their respective central hospitals Conclusion: It is important to develop the knowledge/skills of nurse midwives in order to enhance evidence based practice amongst nurse midwives in Malawian hospitals. The results can be used by nurse managers, nurse educators, Ministry of Health policy makers, Nurses and Midwives Council of Malawi and donors to enhance implementation of EBP.
The good process or the great illusion? A spatial perspective on public participation in Danish municipal wind turbine planning

ABSTRACT This paper explores limitations and potentials of the public space for participation in Danish municipal wind energy planning. Although the Danish procedure for involving citizens in wind energy developments is often praised for its participatory merits, the approach is not without problems. Based on explorative case study research of three Danish wind energy projects at the planning stage, and qualitative interviews with both citizens and planners, the paper reveals shortcomings in terms of perceived procedural fairness and the powerful role ascribed to developers in a planning process. A general conclusion is that the implementation of limited participation requirements of the inherent invited space decouples citizens’ perspectives while providing a space for economic and strategic interests that is closed in its character. However, the study also localizes public input which is not limited to formal participation mechanisms. Self-initiated participation representing a ‘claimed’, ‘uninvited’ and ‘self-organized’ space exerts pressure from the outside and may carry important answers to future energy challenges. The paper suggests that a successful nurturing of such potentials could help to reconfigure a public space that encourages collective reflection between established and oppositional understandings of wind energy and society.
Multi-path Aggregation U-Net for Lung Segmentation in Chest Radiographs

Lung segmentation from chest X-ray images is a fundamental and crucial step for computer-aid diagnosis (CAD) system. Although many techniques for this problem have been proposed, it still remains as a challenge. Recently, Fully Convolutional Networks (FCNs) especially U-Net has been hugely successful for many image segmentation tasks. In this paper, we propose a revised variant of U-Net, specifically, we design two main components. The first component is multi-path dilated convolutions with different dilation rate to extract multi-scale features. It was used to replace the basic convolutions used in the original U-Net. The second component is skip connections with dense deep layer aggregation to further aggregate features across different scales. We perform extensive experiments on three publicly available datasets (in total 951 images). Our proposed method outperforms many other segmentation methods and achieves state-of-the-art segmentation performance (Dice’s coefficient of 96.5%, 97.9% and 96.7% on the three datasets, respectively).
Transcriptome Analysis Derives a Novel Prognostic 7-mRNA Signature in Early-Stage Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly heterogeneous disease and patients with early-stage TNBCs have distinct likelihood of distant recurrence. Methods: In this study, We extracted transcriptome data for 189 pathologically confirmed pT1-2 node-negative TNBC patients at Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center. Candidate mRNAs were filtered, which was followed by differential expressed mRNAs analysis, survival analysis, and LASSO Cox regression model. All-subsets regression program was used for constructing a multi-mRNA signature in the training set (n=159); the accuracy and prognostic value were then validated using an independent validation set (n=158). Results: Here, we profiled the transcriptome data from 189 early-stage TNBC patients along with 50 paired normal tissues, and developed a prognostic signature based on seven mRNAs (ACAN, KRT5, TMEM101, LCA5, RPP40, LAGE3, CDKL2). In both the training (n=159) and validation cohorts (n=158), the signature could identify patients with relatively high recurrence risks and serve as an independent prognostic factor. Furthermore, the signature had better prognostic value than traditional clinicopathological features in both sets. Among the seven mRNAs, TMEM101 was identified as a prognostic biomarker of early-stage TNBC. Additional cell experiments suggested that TMEM101 could facilitate migration and proliferation of TNBC cells. Conclusions: Our 7-mRNA signature could accurately predict recurrence risks of early-stage TNBCs. Clinical and genomic low risk TNBC patients may safely avoid adjuvant chemotherapy.
Does working capital management impact an enterprise’s profitability? Evidence from selected Nigerian firms

This study examined the impact of working capital management on the profitability of selected quoted agricultural and agro-allied companies (from 2012 to 2016) in Nigeria. Secondary data were extracted from eighteen quoted agricultural and agro-allied companies in Nigeria, four of which are agricultural companies out of the twenty-three in Nigeria. Descriptive research design and regression analysis were used. Working capital management was measured using the trade receivables collection period, trade payables, payment period, inventory turnover period, and cash conversion cycle, while profit before interest and tax measured profitability. This study found that working capital management and profitability are related to the agriculture and agro-allied sector in Nigeria. The result shows the trade receivables collection period and profitability are negatively related. The result also shows the trade payables payment period and profitability are positively related. The result shows that the inventory turnover period and profitability are related, the cash conversion cycle and profitability are positively related. The conclusion is that working capital management and profitability are related. If the management of firms takes efficient and effective decisions in managing the company’s working capital, all things being equal, the maximization of the firm’s profitability, value, and shareholders’ wealth can be guaranteed. Consequently, agency costs asserted by agency theory would be eliminated automatically. AcknowledgmentAll researchers and non-researchers that contributed to this paper are highly appreciated.
Gd3+ Doped CoFe2O4 Nanoparticles for Targeted Drug Delivery and Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Nanoparticles of CoGdxFe2 − xO4 (x = 0%, 25%, 50%) synthesized via sol–gel auto combustion technique and encapsulated within a polymer (Eudragit E100) shell containing curcumin by single emulsion solvent evaporation technique were formulated in this study. Testing of synthesized nanoparticles was carried out by using different characterization techniques, to investigate composition, crystallinity, size, morphology, surface charge, functional groups and magnetic properties of the samples. The increased hydrophilicity resulted in sustained drug release of 90.6% and 95% for E1(CoGd0.25Fe1.75O4) and E2(CoGd0.50Fe1.5O4), respectively, over a time span of 24 h. The relaxivities of the best-chosen samples were measured by using a 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, and a high r2/r1 ratio of 43.64 and 23.34 for composition E1(CoGd0.25Fe1.75O4) and E2(CoGd0.50Fe1.5O4) suggests their ability to work as a better T2 contrast agent. Thus, these novel synthesized nanostructures cannot only enable MRI diagnosis but also targeted drug delivery.
Narratives of professional development in a teachers’ creative writing group

ABSTRACT This paper explores teachers’ experiences of professional development in a creative writing group. The data was collected in a teachers’ creative writing group and consist of semi-structured interviews and creative writing assignments. Reflexive thematic analysis and narrative analysis were applied to compose a nonfiction piece that describes the teachers’ experiences of a ‘year of creative writing’. Within the nonfiction piece, four themes were presented as findings of the study: social aspects, personal and emotional aspects, writer identity aspects, and pedagogical aspects. The results suggest that utilising creative writing methods in qualitative research can raise otherwise hidden voices and experiences that may be difficult to express through the academic language.
Adsorption Kinetics of Carbamate Pesticide in Rice Field Soil

Ultrasonic extraction (75.55%) with petroleum ether:acetone (1:1, v/v) was employed for extraction of carbofuran in rice field soil. The amounts of carbofuran were determined by reverse phase HPLC. The analytical method provided high precision and accuracy with the relative error of 0.47%. The percentage of recoveries varied from 84% to 77% in the concentration ranges of 10–40 mg/L of spiked soil samples. The carbofuran residues in the rice field soil significantly decreased year by year because of pesticide properties, soil properties and degradation conditions. A high amount of residues was found in the plots that contained high organic contents. The adsorption of carbofuran in soil reached equilibrium within 23 h. The percentage of adsorption varied from almost 30% to 80% depending on concentrations of carbofuran. The adsorption of carbofuran agreed with Freundlich isotherms; q = 7.07 x 10
Demographic sensitivity to environmental forcings: a multi‐trait, multi‐colony approach

Understanding the demographic responses of wild animal populations to different factors is fundamental to make reliable prediction of population dynamics. Both bottom– up processes and top–down regulation operate in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, but their relative contribution remains insufficiently known. In addition, direct weather effects on demographic rates have been overlooked in marine ecosystems and inferences on the demographic effects of environmental drivers were overwhelmingly made from single study sites. Here, we evaluate the relative effects of bottom–up, top–down and weather processes on four vital rates and on population growth rates of a long-lived seabird, the snow petrel Pagodroma nivea, within three different breeding colonies. We used multistate capture–recapture modelling and perturbation analyses from a matrix population model based on a 36-year-long (1981–2017) individual monitoring dataset to quantify the different drivers (predation, climatic and weather covariates) of probabilities of survival, breeding, hatching and fledging according to colony, sex and breeding status of individuals. Results show that bottom–up forces and local weather affected breeding parameters, and that survival was driven by top–down regulation pressure and bottom–up processes. Breeding parameters differed between colonies and survival was sex-specific. Sensitivity analysis revealed that population regulation was mainly driven by bottom–up processes and that top–down processes played a minor role. However, there were major differences between colonies about the importance of how local weather processes affected population growth rate. Our study brings new insights into the drivers of demographic processes in a marine meso-predator, and how these drivers vary according to colonies and individual characteristics. We emphasize the importance of considering multiple study sites to make robust inferences on the effects of environmental drivers on wildlife demography. More generally, robust conclusions about the importance of environmental drivers on demography rely on considering multiple causal effects at multiple sites, while accounting for individual characteristics.
Amorphous 2-Bromocarbazole Copolymers with Efficient Room-Temperature Phosphorescent Emission and Applications as Encryption Ink

The development of metal-free organic room-temperature phosphorescent (RTP) materials is promising but challenging, because spin–orbit coupling is less efficient without heavy metals such as platinum and palladium. Here, we present a novel amorphous copolymer composed of 2-bromocarbazole phosphor and acrylamide on its side chains, which can engender blue–purple phosphorescence emission with high quantum yield at room temperature. The polymer matrices of acrylamide and the hydrogen bonding in the polymeric chain system can effectively help to inhibit nonradiative transition process and, hence, strengthen the phosphorescent emission. The molar ratio of the 2-bromocarbazole phosphor and acrylamide remarkably influences the RTP emission intensities and quantum yields of the polymers. The high amount of phosphor will weaken the rigidity of the polymers and the shielding effect from oxygen, thus leading to a decrease in their RTP emission, while a low concentration of the phosphor will also weaken their RTP emi.
Emotional Intelligence Profiles and Mobbing in Nursing: The Mediating Role of Social Support and Sensitivity to Anxiety

The prevalence of mobbing among nurses in various countries is around 17–20%. Some researchers have attempted to explain the success or failure of adaptation to the work environment and teamwork and to buffer the effects of psychological harassment in the workplace by incorporating emotional intelligence into the mobbing context. As its main objectives, this quantitative, observational, cross-sectional study analyzed the relationship between emotional intelligence and mobbing as perceived by nurses and sought to establish the mediating roles of other variables involved, such as social support and sensitivity to anxiety. The final sample consisted of 1357 Spanish, self-selected nurses aged 22–58 from multiple healthcare institutions. The questionnaires (Perceived Psychological Harassment Questionnaire, The Brief Emotional Intelligence Inventory, Brief Perceived Social Support Questionnaire, Anxiety Sensitivity Index-3) were implemented on a web platform, which enabled the participants to complete them online. Descriptive analyses and mediation models were estimated. Personal characteristics related to high sensitivity to anxiety and low emotional intelligence implied greater presence of mobbing at work. This mobbing may be buffered if the person perceives enough support from family, friends or significant others. Our results recommend reinforcing the social support network of nursing personnel to improve the work climate and training them in emotional intelligence in university and on-the-job programs.
Definition and operationalization of resilience in qualitative health literature: a scoping review

ABSTRACT Resilience is a burgeoning focus in health research; yet, researchers have varying conceptual and methodological approaches to understanding resilience across populations. Consequently, there is little consensus on the definition or operationalization of resilience. The objective of the present study was to conduct a scoping review of qualitative health research from the United States to connect methodological approaches with operationalization and definitions. From our initial database search of 2,142 articles, we reviewed 29 articles that met the criteria for assessment. Our review revealed: (1) definitions of resilience followed two main pathways pursuing broad or context-specific definitions and (2) operationalization originated from previous research or developed during data collection and/or analysis using emic approaches. We offer a conceptual mapping of resilience and argue that researchers should attend to the emergence of resilience in their study population and give greater consideration to the implications of methodologies for future research.