Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impacts of inhalation aromatherapy with lavender essential oil on students’ test anxiety: a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial

The impacts of inhalation aromatherapy with lavender essential oil on students’ test anxiety: a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial Esmat Jafarbegloo, Hoda Ahmari Tehran, Sareh Bakouei 1 Midwifery Department, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran 2 Department of Medical Education, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 3 Spiritual Health Research Center, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran
An extended Benthic Quality Index for assessment of lake profundal macroinvertebrates: addition of indicator taxa by multivariate ordination and weighted averaging

Abstract: The chironomid Benthic Quality Index (BQI) is a widely used metric in assessments of lake status. The BQI is based on 7 indicator taxa, which like most profundal fauna, often occur sporadically in low densities. Hence, a major weakness of the index is that it cannot be calculated when indicator taxa are not captured. Thus, an extension of the BQI that incorporates more macroinvertebrate taxa is desirable. We used 2 statistical approaches (Detrended Correspondence Analysis and Weighted Averaging) to estimate new benthic quality indicator scores for profundal macroinvertebrate taxa and to construct modified BQIs called Profundal Invertebrate Community Metrics (PICMs). We calibrated the PICMs and evaluated their bioassessment performance with macroinvertebrate and environmental data from 735 lake basins in Finland. Both PICMs included 70 taxa and could be calculated for a substantially greater proportion (99.5%) of sites than the original BQI (83.5%). Compared to the BQI, the PICMs were more strongly correlated with whole-community variation and were more predictable from environmental factors independent of human activities in undisturbed reference lakes. PICMs were more specific in identifying undisturbed lakes and more sensitive in discriminating nonreference from reference lakes. The strength of relationships to total P concentration was equal among indices. These results suggest that the extension of BQI to incorporate more taxa will increase generality, accuracy, and representativeness of lake profundal macroinvertebrate assessment.
WORKING PAPER SERIES Inefficiency in survey exchange rates forecasts

We use survey data on five bilateral exchange rates to provide empirical evidence of the fact that professional forecasters of foreign exchange rates behave irrationally, in the specific sense that they respond inaccurately to available information in the market when forming their predictions. In particular, we find systematic biases in the forecasts resulting in the overreaction of analysts to past information contained in the exchange rate dynamics: forecasters change their prediction more than would be rational on the basis of past realized changes. In addition, forecasters are heterogeneous in their irrationality: low performers in previous periods show a more pronounced overreaction effect. This can be read as an indication of perpetration of past errors and continued inability to learn from the past. In the second part of the paper, we exploit the novel structure of our dataset, which consists of survey data extracted from the Bloomberg platform and readily available to anyone. This feature allows us to consider own and others’ past forecasts as part of the information set that analysts use in making their predictions. By using past forecasts as proxies for relevant macroeconomic variables, we find evidence that analysts fail to correctly process not only the information contained in the spot rate past dynamics, but also the information in this broader set. We see this as confirmation of the existence of inefficiency and heterogeneity between low and high performers also when full information is available.
School-based nutrition education to improve children and their mothers’ knowledge on food and nutrition in rural areas of the Philippines

Introduction: Nutrition education among school children and their mothers is an opportunity to promote lifelong healthy eating behaviours to improve their nutrition and well-being. The present study determined the effectiveness of nutrition education modules in improving children and their mothers’ knowledge on food and nutrition. Likewise, changes in attitude and behaviour among children were also determined. Methods: Five nutrition education modules were developed with key messages on healthy plate, fruits and vegetables, protein sources, nutrientdense sources of energy, and water and healthy beverages. Grades 2 and 3 students received 60 hours of nutrition education with a duration of 25 minutes per session. Students were divided into two groups: (1) nutrition education alone (n=83) and (2) nutrition education with feeding (n=83). Simultaneously, a total of nine onehour nutrition education sessions were conducted among mothers, following the same five modules taught to the students. Mothers were also grouped according to their child’s group. Results: Student participants in both groups exhibited improvements in mean scores on knowledge, attitude, and behaviour (KAB) from baseline to end line. Based on results of mothers’ classes, mean post-test scores of participants were significantly higher than mean pre-test scores in both groups. Group 1 had a higher increase in score from 67.2±32.8 at pre-test to 71.8±33.7 in post-test. Conclusion: The developed nutrition education modules were effective in teaching children proper nutrition. Incorporation of these modules into the K to 12 curriculum will emphasise importance of proper nutrition in early childhood. Moreover, mothers’ classes can be an effective way to bridge the gap between school and community nutrition interventions.
The cyprinodont fish Rivulus (Aplocheiloidei: Rivulidae) in Trinidad and Tobago: molecular evidence for marine dispersal, genetic isolation and local differentiation

Mitochondrial DNA sequences (756 bp) were obtained from the cytochrome b gene of 36 Rivulus individuals collected from 10 sites in Trinidad and one site in Tobago. Eight haplotypes were identified. Low genetic divergence (0.5%) between one western Trinidad (Blue Basin) haplotype and Rivulus hartii from north-western Venezuela (Paria peninsula) and high genetic divergence (c. 11%) between these and the remaining other Trinidad and Tobago haplotypes suggests that the islands were colonized by two lineages. The commoner haplotype is distributed throughout lowland Trinidad, possibly a reflection of flooding of the Orinoco River leading to high dispersal between watersheds. Rivulus from higher altitude (Northern Range) localities that would not have been affected by such flooding show high genetic divergence between sites. The genetic differentiation between northern and southern watersheds suggests isolation between some of these drainages. Resumen Secuencias mitocondriales de ADN (756 bp) fueron obtenidas del gen citocroma b de 36 individuos de Rivulus colectados de diez localidades en Trinidad y de una localidad en Tobago. Ocho haplotipos fueron identificados. Baja variabilidad genetica (0.5%) entre un haplotipo del oeste de Trinidad (Blue Basin) y R. hartii del noroeste de Venezuela (Peninsula de Paria) y alta divergencia genetica (c. 11%) entre estos y el resto de haplotipos provenientes de Trinidad y Tobago sugiere que las islas fueron colonizadas por dos linages. El haplotipo mas comun se distribuye por zonas bajas, posiblemente a consecuencia de las inundaciones del rio Orinoco que facilitaron la dispersion de individuos entre rios. Rivulus provenientes de localidades a elevada altitud (Cordillera del Norte) no afectados por estas inundaciones muestran alta divergencia genetica entre localidades. La diferencia genetica entre rios del sur y del norte de Trinidad sugiere isolamento entre estos sistemas fluviales.
Utility of grafting in tree domestication with reference to Allanblackia parviflora A. Chev

Agricultural biodiversity and provision ol alternate livelihoods for farmers have become critical issues jor sustainable management of biological resources as well as poverty reduction in rural areas. This is being done through cultivation of a wide range offood crops, vegetables, Fuits and medicinal plants. One of such Fuit trees being encouraged in agroforestry systems is Allanblackia spp. , hence the need for sustainable supply of improved early Fuiting planting stock. Grajiing was adopted for production of early Fuiting high yielding planting stock to satisfY farmers needs. Two methods o.l grafting tried were side veneer grajiing and cleji grafting The mean grafiing success for side veneer grajiing (50.21%) was significantly lower than that of cleji grajiing (79.8%). Clonal differences in grafiing success were quite substantialrangingFom 70 to 87.5%for cleji grajiing and 42.8 to 57.8%for side veneer gr{1fting Grafts flowered within 12 months afier grajiing even though the flowers could not develop into Fuits. This suggests that grafiing could be a tool for mass propagation of desirable genotypes ofA. parviflora with reduced gestation period.
GENERATION MECHANISM OF VLF HISS EMISSIONS OBSERVED AT INDIAN ANTARCTIC STATION, MAITRI (L = 4.5)

VLF Hiss is a well-known form of electromagnetic emission having constant spectral density in the limited frequency band with right hand polarization. During its propagation from the source, it interacts with energetic electrons in the magnetosphere. The characteristic features of VLF hiss recorded at the Indian Antarctic Station, Maitri (geom. lat. = 70 46 S, long. = 11 50 E, L = 4.5) during FebruaryMarch 2001 will be presented. Out of various generation mechanisms proposed from time to time, we find that these waves seems to be generated by low energy electrons through the Cerenkov Radiation Process and get amplified during interaction with relatively higher energy electrons. We have computed Cerenkov Radiation Power for L = 4.5 and L = 5 values. It is observed from the computation that the power radiated and the frequency range of maximum power radiated both decreases with the increase of L-value. The computed spectral density could not explain the observed spectra. To explain this deficiency in the observed and computed power, we have suggested that the generated waves of small amplitudes interact with the energetic electrons while bouncing back and forth along geomagnetic field lines and are thus amplified.
Video Synthesis from the StyleGAN Latent Space

Generative models have shown impressive results in generating synthetic images. However, video synthesis is still difficult to achieve, even for these generative models. The best videos that generative models can currently create are a few seconds long, distorted, and low resolution. For this project, I propose and implement a model to synthesize videos at 1024x1024x32 resolution that include human facial expressions by using static images generated from a Generative Adversarial Network trained on the human facial images. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first work that generates realistic videos that are larger than 256x256 resolution from single starting images. This model improves the video synthesis in both quantitative and qualitative ways compared to two state-of-the-art models: TGAN and MocoGAN. In a quantitative comparison, this project reaches a best Average Content Distance (ACD) score of 0.167, as compared to 0.305 and 0.201 of TGAN and MocoGAN, respectively.
Association of ADAM33 T1 Polymorphism With Subgroups of Pediatric Asthma Patients in Iran

There is strong evidence on the interaction of several genetic variations and environmental conditions in the etiology of asthma. Association of a disintegrin and metalloproteinase 33 (ADAM33) with asthma risk is not clear and shows diversity between nations and ethnicities. Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of the ADAM33 gene are introduced and studied according to the disease onset and characteristics. The aim of our study is to determine the association of ADAM33 rs2280091 polymorphism and pediatric asthma in the Iranian population. A total of 63 asthma patients (aged 6-18) and 86 healthy controls were enrolled in our study. Asthma type, classification, and severity were defined. SNPs of the ADAM33 gene at rs2280091 (T1) were analyzed. Pulmonary function tests, total blood eosinophil count, and IgE count were also assessed. T1 genotype and allele frequencies were not associated with asthma risk in Iranian pediatric asthma. Atopic asthma subgroup and patients with normal eosinophil count showed association with ADAM33 rs2280091. Moreover, asthma patients with AG genotype showed lower pulmonary functions.
Pancake: Frequency Smoothing for Encrypted Data Stores

We present PANCAKE , the ﬁrst system to protect key-value stores from access pattern leakage attacks with small constant factor bandwidth overhead. PANCAKE uses a new approach, that we call frequency smoothing , to transform plaintext accesses into uniformly distributed encrypted accesses to an encrypted data store. We show that frequency smoothing prevents access pattern leakage attacks by passive persistent adversaries in a new formal security model. We integrate PANCAKE into three key-value stores used in production clusters, and demonstrate its practicality: on standard benchmarks, PANCAKE achieves 229 × better throughput than non-recursive Path ORAM — within 3–6 × of insecure base-lines for these key-value stores.
Disease Identification and In situ Screening of Gumamela (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis Linn) Germplasm and Hybrids to Leaf Anthracnose for Disease Resistance Breeding

Crop Science Cluster Institute of Plant Breeding (CSC-IPB) breeding blocks have been observed to be affected by a few diseases. The identification of these diseases and their causal organism plus the identification of natural sources of resistance is crucial for the breeding program. The diseases that were identified included the following: a) anthracnose, commonly known as the leaf spot disease caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporoides Penz. , b) early wilt and die-back attributed to Fusarium oxysporum Schlect, c) stem rot at the base of the plant, wilting and blighting of the plant caused by Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn. All fungal isolates demonstrated pathogenicity to hibiscus. Out of the 36 hibiscus genotypes evaluated in situ, 12 H showed less than 10% average of the leaf area infected for leaf anthracnose. In contrast, two Hibiscus species namely: Hibiscus cooperri and H. schizopetalus, two hybrids namely: H. rosasinensis ‘Perla Santos Ocampo’ x H. rosa-sinensis ‘Loren B. Legarda’ and H. rosa-sinensis ‘Gelia T. Castillo’x H. rosasinensis ‘Betty Go-Belmonte’ including three other varieties like ‘Reddy or Not’, ‘Wilcox’ and ‘Petite Peach’ were not infected by the leafspot disease or anthracnose under field conditions, which suggests that they could have some form of resistance to this disease. This further suggests that the resistant related species especially H. cooperri having red and white variegated leaves could be used for hybridization with the susceptible varieties to develop a variety with a dual purpose trait, i.e. resistant to the fungus and leaves with variegations as another ornamental trait of the hybrid variety.
Metabolic scaling regularity in aquatic ecosystems

We tested the hypothesis that ecosystem metabolism follows a quarter power scaling relation, analogous to organisms. Logarithm of Biomass/Production (B/P) to Trophic Level (TL) relationship was estimated to 98 trophic models of aquatic ecosystems. A normal distribution of the slopes gives a modal value of 0.64, which was significantly different of the theoretical value of 0.75 (p 0.05). We also tested for error in both variables, Log (B/P) and TL, through a Reduced Major Axis regression with similar results, with a modal value of 0.756 (p>0.05). We also explored a geographic distribution showing no significant relation (p>0.05) to latitude and between different regions of the world. We conclude that: a) ecosystem metabolism follows the quarter-power scaling rule; b) transfer efficiency between TL plays a relevant role characterizing local attributes to ecosystem metabolism; and c) there is neither latitudinal nor geographic differences. These findings confirm the existence of a metabolic scaling regularity in aquatic ecosystems. Regularidad del escalamiento metabolico en ecosistemas acuaticos Se contrasto la hipotesis de que el metabolismo de un ecosistema sigue una relacion de escalamiento analoga a la existente en los organismos. La relacion entre el logaritmo de la razon Produccion/Biomasa (B/P) y el nivel trofico (TL) se estimo para 98 modelos troficos de los ecosistemas acuaticos. Una distribucion normal de las pendientes de esta relacion produjo un valor modal de 0.64 que es significativamente diferente del valor teorico de 0.75 (p 0.05) similar al teorico esperado. Tambien se contrasto la hipotesis de existencia de error en ambas variables, logaritmo (B/P) y TL, a traves de la tecnica de regresion denominada “Reduced Major Axis”, con resultados similares segun el valor modal de 0.756, sin diferencia estadisticamente significativa (p>0.05) del valor teorico. Se exploro la existencia de algun patron en la distribucion geografica, sin obtenerse relacion significativa (p>0.05) con la latitud, o con diferentes regiones del mundo. Las conclusiones son: a) el metabolismo del ecosistema sigue la regla de escalamiento metabolico de 3/4; b) la eficiencia de la transferencia entre TL desempena un papel relevante, representando los atributos locales del metabolismo del ecosistema; c) no hay una diferencias latitudinal o geografica. Estos resultados confirman la existencia de una regularidad en el escalamiento metabolico en ecosistemas acuaticos.
Redundancy Resolution Integrated Model Predictive Control of CDPRs: Concept, Implementation and Experiments

This paper introduces a Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategy for fully-constrained Cable-Driven Parallel Robots. The main advantage of the proposed scheme lies in its ability to explicitly handle cable tension limits. Indeed, the cable tension distribution is performed as an integral part of the main control architecture. This characteristic significantly improves the safety of the system. Experimental results demonstrate this advantage addressing a typical pick-and-place task with two different scenarios: nominal cable tension limits and reduced maximum tension. Satisfactory tracking errors were obtained in the first scenario. In the second scenario, the desired trajectory escapes from the workspace defined by the new set of tension limits. The proposed MPC scheme is able to minimize the tracking errors without violating the tension limits. Satisfying results were also obtained regarding robustness against uncertainties on the payload mass.
Interaction between bottlenose dolphins and fish farms: could there be an economic impact? ICES CM 2005/X: 10

The nourishment coming from the fish farm increased the presence of "wild" fishes in the surrounding area favouring bottlenose dolphin opportunistic feeding. The most direct impact of fish farming on marine mammals is its need to control predators. Bottlenose dolphin attacks on farmed fish could present a problem to the industry in terms of financial loss. Double walls of netting are the most often used deterrent, but present problems of fouling and reduced water circulation.
An ML Model for Predicting Information Check-Worthiness using a Variety of Features (short paper)

In this communication, we introduce the important problem of information check-worthiness. We present the method we developed to automatically answer this problem. This method makes use of an elaborated information representation that combines the “information nutritional label” features along with word-embedding features. The information check-worthy claim is then predicted by training a machine learning model based on these features. Our model outperforms the ofﬁcial participants’ runs of CheckThat! 2018 challenge.
Growth, mortality, and secondary production of the copepod Acartia tranteri in Westernport Bay, Australia'

We measured the growth rate of Acartia tranteri and related variables in Westernport Bay, Australia, on 19 occasions in 1982-1984. Acartia tranteri is numerically dominant in the bay zooplankton, with a mean abundance of all life stages of 12,000 m-3. Growth rates, measured by an incubation method, varied between 0.025 and 0.26 d-l with a time-weighted mean of 0.11 d-l. Temperature and chlorophyll concentrations together explained 50% of the variance in growth rate, which was usually food limited. Annual secondary production of A. tranteri was 130 mg C m- 3, 2O”C. The low mortality and high longevity are consistent with the observed low abundances of planktonic predators and with the low consumption rates of Acartia by planktivorous fish in the bay.
Exploring the Determinants of Third Generation (3G) Mobile Technology Adoption among University Students

This study examined the factors influencing 3G adoption among university students in Ghana. A questionnaire regarding the use of 3G services was developed and distributed among university students. The data was analysed using factor analysis and multiple regression. Among the determinants used for the study, it was found that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, variety of services significantly influence 3G adoption, whereas the cost of service was found to be statistically insignificant. Also, with respect to gender differences on these factors, effort expectancy and social influence were found to have a major influence on female 3G technology adoption than males, whereas performance expectancy and a variety of services were also found to have a major influence on males than females. The gender difference in cost of services was seen to be statistically insignificant. The findings will serve as a guide for telecommunication companies in the deployment of similar technologies in the future.
Stay or Leave? Using Job Embeddedness to Explain Turn over Intention among Hotel Staff in Ghana

The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between job embeddedness and employee turnover intentions of staff in the hotel industry. It examined the various factors of each of the component of job embeddedness and its influence on employees’ mobility decision. Cross sectional quantitative design was conducted on a probability multi-stage sampling of 309 staff in the hotel industry of Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis. A binary log it regression model was used to investigate the relationship between job embeddedness and employee turnover intentions. The results of the study revealed that organization-person culture fitness, autonomy (factors of organisation fit), experience, sense of belongingness, co-worker dependency (factors of organisation links) have significant effect on turnover intention. When designing retention strategies, management and human resource practitioners need to recognize how job embeddedness influences the turnover intention of higher educated staff. This paper provides a new dimension of considering the individual indicators of each of the main component of job embeddedness construct and its effects on employee turnover intention.
Backdoors into Two Occurrences

Backdoor sets for the class CNF(2) of CNF-formulas in which every variable has at most two occurrences are studied in terms of parameterized complexity. The question whether there exists a CNF(2)-backdoor set of size k is hard for the class W [2], for both weak and strong backdoors, and in both cases it becomes ﬁxed-parameter tractable when restricted to inputs in d -CNF for a ﬁxed d . Besides that, it is shown that the problem of ﬁnding weak backdoor sets is W [2]-complete, for certain tractable cases. These are the ﬁrst completeness results in lower levels of the W -hierarchy for any backdoor set problems.