Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GROWTH AND PRODUCTION OF Vigna unguiculata L. SUBMITTED TO ORGANIC FERTILIZATION WITH EARTHWORM HUMUS

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar diferentes quantidades de humus de minhoca incorporado ao solo e o humus liquido via foliar em plantas de feijao caupi. O delineamento experimental adotado foi de blocos casualizados, com 10 tratamentos, num arranjo fatorial 5 x 2, e 4 repeticoes, totalizando 40 parcelas experimentais. Estudou-se 5 quantidades de humus de minhoca: (Q 1 = 0,0; Q 2 = 2,0; Q 3 = 3,0; Q 4 = 4,0 e Q 5 = 5,0 kg/metro/linear) e de humus liquido: (H 1 = presenca e H 0 = ausencia). A quantidade de 5 kg por metro linear de humus de minhoca proporcionou maiores resultados para crescimento e producao do feijoeiro BRS Purjante, com excecao apenas do peso de 100 sementes. Observou-se que a aplicacao do humus liquido (H 1 ), embora nao tenha apresentado significância estatistica, proporcionou maior incremento em relacao aos tratamentos sem aplicacao de humus liquido (H 0 ).
Crystal structures and property characterization of two magnetic frustration compounds

We report the structure and physical properties of two quasi-two-dimensional triangular antiferromagnetic materials, Co0.66Al2Se3. 53 and Ni0.61Al2Se3. 55, which show highly magnetically frustrated characters. Powder X-ray diffractions demonstrate that Co0.66Al2Se3. 53 and Ni0.61Al2Se3. 55 possess identical space group of P-3m1 with lattice parameters a = 3.8089(1) Å, c = 12.676(1) Å and a = 3.7880(1) Å, c = 12.650(1) Å, respectively. Analyzing the susceptibility data of Co0.66Al2Se3. 53 reveal a Curie Weiss temperature of −216 K, and a spin-freezing transition temperature of 4.5 K, giving a frustration index f = −θcw/Tf ≈ 48. Ni0.61Al2Se3. 55 possesses an effective moment of 2.38 µB, a Curie–Weiss temperature of −62 K with no sign of spin-freezing transition down to 2 K. The AC susceptibility data of Co0.66Al2Se3. 53 suggest a spin glass-like transition, but no intersite mixing between Co2+ and Al3+ was observed from the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements.
Green Synthesis of Iron Nanoparticles by Acacia nilotica Pods Extract and Its Catalytic, Adsorption, and Antibacterial Activities

Iron nanoparticles (FeNP) were synthesized using Acacia nilotica seedless pods extract. The synthesized FeNP were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), UV/Vis spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering (DLS), electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The XRD pattern confirmed the synthesis of crystalline phase of α-Fe2O3. EDS spectroscopy showed the presence of elemental iron and oxygen, indicating that the nanoparticles are essentially present in oxide form. UV absorption in the range of 450–550 nm confirmed the formation of FeNP. DLS indicated an average FeNP particle size of 229 nm. The synthesized FeNP was tested for adsorption and oxidation degradation of methyl orange (MO) under different conditions and found to be effective in both degradation and adsorption processes. Furthermore, the synthesized FeNP has the potential to terminate the pathogenicity of several human opportunistic pathogens; belongs to gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria and one species of Candida as well.
Pysicochemical properties and application of edible coatings in strawberry Fragaria x Ananassa) preservation

The strawberry is one of the most economically important fruit in the Ecuadorian Highlands. Diseases are the main cause of post-harvest losses, causing damage to color, firmness and fruit quality. The main objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of three edible coatings based on gelatin, pectin and beeswax in the post-harvest conservation of the strawberry variety “Oso Grande” from the Chambo canton, Chimborazo province, Ecuador. The process was developed by using a completely random design with factorial arrangement: at room temperature and cooling First, the fruit was selected considering the degree of maturation, size, shape, health of the fruit, and uniform color. Next, it was separated into four groups, washed, and sanitized. Finally, the edible coatings based on gelatin, pectin and beeswax, all enriched with clove essential oil, were applied. The presented physical-chemical changes were evaluated in the two study temperatures. With the obtained results, it could be verified that the use of edible coatings affected statistically in the physical-chemical characteristics of the strawberry. The gelatin coating is the one with the best results, with a lower weight loss of 5.26%, firmness 9.92 N, soluble solids 7.49%, pH 3.69, acidity 0.73% and a shelf life of 5 days. The cost of production for obtaining the gelatin coating was the most economical with a price of $11.10/kg USD. The results show the efficiency of the edible coatings and the storage temperature in the extension of the shelf life of the strawberry.
Size and shape control of metal nanoparticles in millifluidic reactors

Abstract Engineered metal nanoparticles (metal NPs) possess unique size -dependent optical and electronic properties that could enable new applications in biomedicine, energy generation, microelectronics, micro-optics, and catalysis. For metal NPs to make a mark in these fields, however, new synthetic strategies must be developed that permit NP synthesis on the kilogram scale, while maintaining precise control over NP physiochemical properties (size, shape, composition, and surface chemistry). Currently, NP batch syntheses produce product on the milligram scale and rely on synthetic strategies that are not readily amenable to scale-up. Flow reactor systems (including lab-on-a-chip devices) provide a synthesis platform that can circumvent many of the traditional limitations of batch-scale NP syntheses. These reactors provide more uniform reagent mixing, more uniform heat transfer, opportunities to interface in situ monitoring technology, and allow product yield to be scaled up simply by running multiple reactors in parallel. While many NP syntheses have been successfully transferred to microfluidic reactor systems, microfluidic reactor fabrication is time intensive and typically requires sophisticated lithography facilities. Consequently, millifluidic flow reactors (reactors with channel dimensions of 0.5–10.0 mm) are gaining popularity in NP synthesis. These millifluidic reactors provide many of the same synthetic advantages as microfluidic devices, but are simpler to construct, easier to reconfigure, and more straightforward to interface with in situ monitoring techniques. In this chapter, we will discuss the progress that has been made in developing millifluidic reactors for functionalized metal NP synthesis. First, we will review the basic wet-chemical strategies used to control metal NP size and shape in batch reactors. We will then survey some of the basic principles of millifluidic device design, construction, and operation. We will also discuss the potential for incorporating in situ monitoring for quality control during synthesis. We will conclude by highlighting some particularly relevant examples of millifluidic metal NP synthesis that have set new standards for metal NP size, shape, and surface chemistry control. Graphical Abstract: Credit: Sam Lohse
Revisiting the interconnection between governance mechanisms and firm performance: evidence from Vietnamese listed firms

Purpose Corporate governance plays a critical role in solving agency problems. However, previous findings on how governance mechanisms lead to high firm performance are inconclusive. Additionally, this relationship has not been well addressed in the context of transitional countries where governance systems and mechanisms are weak, leaving a gap for research. Hence, this study aims to shed light on the effects of four key governance components, namely, ownership concentration, chief executive officer duality, board size and gender diversity, on firm performance. Design/methodology/approach This study reports on the econometric panel data analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 1,424 firm-year observations from listed companies in Vietnam covering the period of 2010–2017. Findings The econometric panel data analysis confirmed the net effects of single solitary governance components. FsQCA revealed equifinal configurations of components that explain high firm market- and accounting-based performance. Practical implications These findings are relevant for firms in transitional and emerging markets, aiming to adopt the most suitable internal mechanisms to pursue their performance objectives and for regulators interested in enhancing the advantages of the capital market. Originality/value This study provides empirical evidence that firm performance can be improved when the appropriate corporate governance mechanisms are selected. As there are equifinal paths leading to the desired outcome of high performance, firms from different industrial and national contexts should mindfully apply any uniform corporate governance code.
High-efficiency organic solar cells based on a halide salt and polyfluorene polymer with a high alignment-level of the cathode selective contact

Advances in organic photovoltaic technology for improving the power conversion efficiency (PCE) towards the theoretical maximum require efficient light-absorbing polymers, a high alignment-level of selective contacts, and an easy manufacturing process with low cost to reach them. The halide salts constitute a highly promising class of materials that can produce better selective contacts in solar cells for improving the PCE. In this article, we demonstrate and report the use of a haloid salt in organic solar cells utilized as an interlayer. The haloid salt is deposited on top or below of polyfluorene polymer (PFN) layer and after it is placed on a transparent conductive oxide (TCO). Thermal evaporation of LiF layers is carried out to deposit ultrathin films of 0.5 nm to 0.8 nm thickness. As a photoactive layer we use the low-bandgap PBDTTT-EFT:PC70BM bulk-heterojunction. Among the different architectures analyzed we obtained a PCE of 11.00%, with an outstanding fill factor of FF = 73.5%, which is among the best reported for solar cells. This new stacking of a halide salt with polyfluorene materials could find use in fully exploiting the potential of various halide systems, and also opens up new opportunities to improve OSCs with a view to achieving record efficiencies.
ODNASSD: An End-to-end Object Detection Neural Architecture Search Space Design

With the development of deep learning, object detection methods based on the convolutional neural network have achieved superior performance compared with traditional methods. However, most detection networks are human-designed, and manually designing a well-performing detection network is inefficient and it heavily relies on expert knowledge. To address above problems, in this paper, we propose an end-to-end object detection neural architecture search space design (ODNASSD) framework, which explores a highly hardware-efficient framework with multiple techniques to save GPU memory and improve search efficiency. Besides, in order to solve the problem of the lack of backbone pre-training weights, we adopt a weights-sharing strategy. We conduct search experiments and our method achieves superior performance in precision and search efficiency.
Blockchain based trust management mechanism for IoT

Security presents a significant challenge for the implementation and the realization of IoT scenarios. Its requirements include data confidentiality, authentication, access control as well as privacy and trust among things and services. To evaluate entities trustworthiness, exchanging trust information is crucial to reach an accurate assessment. Secure sharing and storage of trust information is essential for its confidentiality, integrity and privacy. In this context, our objective is to propose a secure trust management system based on the blockchain technology so that we can take advantages of security features it provides regarding reliability, traceability and information integrity. Blockchain based trust management can provide tamper proof data, enable a more reliable trust information integrity verification, and help to enhance its privacy and availability during sharing and storage. For this purpose, we design and implement a blockchain based trust architecture to collect trust evidences, to define a trust score for each device and to securely store and share them with other devices within the network by embedding them into blockchain transactions. Results from performance evaluation demonstrate that our proposal provides security features including tamper-proof and attacks resiliency, reliability in addition to a low complexity for IoT scenarios and applications.
Accuracy Evaluation on Geolocation of the Chinese First Polar Microsatellite (Ice Pathfinder) Imagery

Ice Pathfinder (Code: BNU-1), launched on 12 September 2019, is the first Chinese polar observation microsatellite. Its main payload is a wide-view camera with a ground resolution of 74 m at the subsatellite point and a scanning width of 744 km. BNU-1 takes into account the balance between spatial resolution and revisit frequency, providing observations with finer spatial resolution than Terra/Aqua MODIS data and more frequent revisits than Landsat-8 OLI and Sentinel-2 MSI. It is a valuable supplement for polar observations. Geolocation is an essential step in satellite image processing. This study aims to geolocate BNU-1 images; this includes two steps. For the first step, a geometric calibration model is applied to transform the image coordinates to geographic coordinates. The images calibrated by the geometric model are the Level1A (L1A) product. Due to the inaccuracy of satellite attitude and orbit parameters, the geometric calibration model also exhibits errors, resulting in geolocation errors in the BNU-1 L1A product. Then, a geometric correction method is applied as the second step to find the control points (CPs) extracted from the BNU-1 L1A product and the corresponding MODIS images. These CPs are used to estimate and correct geolocation errors. The BNU-1 L1A product corrected by the geometric correction method is processed to the Level1B (L1B) product. Although the geometric correction method based on CPs has been widely used to correct the geolocation errors of visible remote sensing images, it is difficult to extract enough CPs from polar images due to the high reflectance of snow and ice. In this study, the geometric correction employs an image division and an image enhancement method to extract more CPs from the BNU-1 L1A products. The results indicate that the number of CPs extracted by the division and image enhancements increases by about 30% to 182%. Twenty-eight images of Antarctica and fifteen images of Arctic regions were evaluated to assess the performance of the geometric correction. The average geolocation error was reduced from 10 km to ~300 m. In general, this study presents the geolocation method, which could serve as a reference for the geolocation of other visible remote sensing images for polar observations.
Exploring the Misalignment between Business and Information Technology on the Implementation of Balanced Scorecard: Case Study of State-Owned Telecommunication Companies in Indonesia

Many organisations around the world have faced misalignment in attaining the alignment between business and IT. The positive effect of alignment on overall company success has been focused on previous research. On the other hand, the misalignment in the implementation of a balanced scorecard was primarily unexplored. This study aimed at identifying and evaluating the factors that contribute to a misalignment of businesses and IT. The case study methodology is conducted in two state-owned telecommunication companies in Indonesia. The telecommunication industry’s selection as the case study is because of their nature closely related to technology development and implementation. Five semi-structured interviews, field notes and business records are used to produce the data, which have been thematically analysed and further follow by cross-case analysis to compare the thematic analysis result from each company. This study has resulted in 12 factors of misalignment between business and IT that can inhibit achieving alignment in implementing a balanced scorecard. The main findings showed that human factors, enterprise architecture, and IT project implementation factors could be three main source themes that can potentially contribute to misalignment. The findings may allow researchers to devise frameworks for how misalignments can be minimised to align business and IT better. This finding also useful in practice for companies that are seeking to achieve business-IT alignment by focusing on human factors, enterprise architecture factors, and IT project implementation factors.
Extraction of high-value added compounds by subcritical water and fractionation by membrane processes : Valorization of vine and wine by-products by eco-innovative processes

This work has dealt with extraction of natural substances from winery by-products using "green" processes such as extraction by subcritical water and purification by membrane processes. These processes are an alternative to solvent extraction traditionally used in the natural products industry. Main part of the work was done on different grape pomace, extraction was optimized and compared in terms of yield, chemical composition, and antioxidant activity of extracts. Dunkelfelder extracts exhibited the strongest antioxidant activity and comparison of chemical compositions of the different extracts indicated. Furthermore this Dunkelfelder grape pomace was used as model in order to optimize the different process parameters such as temperature, pressure and hydraulic retention time. After the subcritical water extraction, extracts produced were found to be rich in several families of molecules. An essential purification step of target compounds prior to industrial use was indispensable. Coupling the subcritical water with membrane processes offers an innovative solution for the purification of these extracts. Thereby, the extract was assayed in a cross-flow apparatus against eleven membranes of ultrafiltration (100 to 2 kDa) and nine membranes of nanofiltration (1000 to 150 Da). The monitoring of the process was carried out by determining performance parameters and retention coefficients of different families of macro and micromolecules. The results obtained have demonstrated that the use of membrane technologies could bring innovative changes in the recovery of bioactive compounds for future industries.
Nano-twinning in a γ′ precipitate strengthened Ni-based superalloy

ABSTRACT Twinning has been found to be a dominate mechanism in the γ′ precipitate strengthened Ni-based superalloys during service at intermediate temperatures. Here, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and atomistic simulations have been combined to show that the twin nucleation process can be facilitated by Co replacing a fraction of Al in the γ′ precipitates, due to the negative binding energy of Co–Co atoms. The study further reveals that the presence of Co promotes a new twinning pathway featured with nucleation of one complex stacking fault (CSF) on the middle plane in between two separated CSFs. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT IMPACT STATEMENT We demonstrate that Co in the γ′ precipitates promotes a new twinning pathway featured with nucleation of one CSF on the middle plane between two separated CSFs.
Enteric methane emissions from ruminants fed forages: Role of tannins content, a meta-analysis

Enteric methane emission by ruminants fed forages is highly variable and depends on forage composition, intake and digestibility. In addition, plant secondary compounds such as tannins have antimethanogenic properties; however, the mitigating effect of tannins on CH4 is inconsistent. A meta-analysis approach was used to compare the effects of different forages, supplemented or not with tannins, fed to ruminants on CH4 emission. Tannin content (TAN, condensed or hydrolysable), averaged 35.6 (sd =53.0) g/kg DM and varied from 0 to 199 g/kg DM, for 19 experiments and 53 treatments. Methane production, expressed per kg of digestible OMI (g/kg DOMI) significantly decreased when feeding level (FL, calculated as DM intake % liveweight) increased and when NDF content of the forage decreased. Moreover, tannins content (g/kg DM) decreasing effect on methane emission was significant. The effect of tannins for mitigating CH4 emission is in agreement with previous studies, but in the present study the impact of tannins was lower, probably due to accounting for decreasing effect of FL and increasing effect of NDF effects in the equation and to small relations between these factors.
Perception and adoption of artificial pollination technology in cocoa production: Evidence from Ghana

This study examined the perception and adoption of artificial pollination among cocoa farmers in Ghana. It used cross-sectional data collected from 206 cocoa farmers selected through multi-stage sampling technique. Descriptive statistics, Likert Scale and the Tobit regression model were the methods of analysis. With an adoption rate of 49%, the study revealed that cocoa farmers have a positive perception towards adoption of artificial pollination technology. The results also showed that age of farmer, extension visits, yield and household size have significant positive effects on the probability of adoption of artificial pollination among cocoa farmers, whereas farm size has a significant negative effect on adoption. Leveraging on the positive perception generated, we encourage extension agents to sensitize farmers on the importance of artificial pollination through continuous awareness creation and promotion of the benefits of adopting the technology. Furthermore, given cocoa farmers’ positive perception on artificial pollination, Ghana’s cocoa production and marketing regulatory body (COCOBOD) should take steps in implementing the technology. Implementers of this technology should also target younger farmers since age has a negative influence on adoption of artificial pollination. Finally, this paper contributes to the literature by focusing on the perception and the factors that influence adoption of artificial pollination in cocoa production which currently has not been researched and documented in the cocoa production literature.
Deprescribing Statins and Proton Pump Inhibitors in Nursing Home Residents; a Pragmatic Exploratory Study

Introduction Polypharmacy is common in the frail nursing home population and associated with an increased risk of adverse events, unplanned hospitalizations, and increased all-cause mortality. Deprescribing using a deprescribing algorithm might reduce unnecessary polypharmacy. This exploratory study was performed to determine the effect of this implicit deprescribing algorithm in deprescribing statins and proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) in nursing home residents. Method Multicenter, longitudinal, single-arm exploratory study. All participants received the same deprescribing intervention to identify and deprescribe potentially inappropriate statins and/or PPIs. Residents across 10 nursing homes in the Netherlands were included if they used a statin and/or PPI. Residents in hospices or short-stay wards were excluded. The intervention involved a deprescribing algorithm in which nursing home physicians identified and, if possible, deprescribed potentially inappropriate statins and/or PPIs. Results Sixty-seven residents participated in the study. At 3 months, deprescribing was successful in 52% of the residents. Six months after the intervention, all these residents still had their medication sustainably deprescribed. Conclusion Based on this study, deprescribing statins and PPIs using an implicit deprescribing algorithm is possible in a considerable number of nursing home residents.