Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Sand to Aggregate Ratio on the Properties of 
Self-Compacting High-Performance Concrete

- Self-compacting high-performance concrete (SCHPC) combines the properties and advantages of self-compacting concrete and high-performance concrete in both fresh and hardened states. For the SCHPC mix design, sand to aggregate ratio is a crucial parameter and plays an important role in governing the properties of SCHPC mix. This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on the flowability, passing ability and mechanical properties of SCHPC mixes for various sand to total aggregate (S/A) ratio and water to cementitious material (w/cm) ratio. Tests were conducted on specimens using four (w/cm) ratios: 0.26, 0.30, 0.35 and 0.40 and two (S/A) ratios: 48% and 53%. All the mixtures were tested using slump flow test, J-Ring test, and L-box test in the fresh state as well as compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, and unit weight in the hardened state. The test results revealed that a lower S/A ratio (0.48) enhanced the flowability whereas the higher S/A ratio (0.53) enhanced the passing ability. The lower S/A ratio (0.48), containing greater proportion of coarse aggregate, generally improved the mechanical properties of SCHPC compared to the mixes with the higher S/A ratio (0.53).
Natural Language Processing for the Analysis Sentiment using a LSTM Model

—Over the past decade, social networks have revo- lutionised the communication between organisations and their customers, and the data provided by customers on social net- work platforms is having an increasingly important impact on how organisations collect and analyse this data to make better decisions. We have prepared a new dataset that will allow the scientiﬁc community to estimate and evaluate new models using nearly the same conditions. Moreover, this dataset represents a recent and interesting sample for the proposed machine learning models to correctly identify the topics or points on which the company should focus to improve customer satisfaction and better meet their needs. Therefore, we have proposed a recurrent neural network (RNN) with Long short-term memory (LSTM) that we will run in the cloud to predict sentiment analysis. The objective is also to deﬁne systems capable of extracting subjective information from natural language texts, such as feelings and opinions, with the aim of creating structured knowledge that can be used by a decision support system or a decision maker for better customer management. The proposed neural network has been trained on the proposed dataset which contains 50 000 customer observations. The performance of the proposed architecture is very important as the success rate is 96%.
Assistance to patients eligible for palliative care: the view of professionals from an Intensive Care Unit

ABSTRACT Objective: to understand the perception of the multiprofessional team about the quality of health care provided to patients in palliative care in the Intensive Care Unit. Method: qualitative study, anchored to Donabedian’s theoretical framework, through semi-structured interviews with 35 professionals working in the Intensive Care Unit. For data analysis, the Content Analysis technique was used. Results: three categories were pre-established: structure, process, and outcome, from which five subcategories emerged: Deficit in terms of numbers of workers and professional qualification; Ambience and palliative care; (In)existence of assistance based on the principles of palliative care; Failures in communication and in the interdisciplinary approach and Repercussions of (lack of) assistance. Conclusion: the study allowed understanding the institutional weaknesses for the operationalization of care provided to patients eligible for palliative care in the Intensive Care Unit setting. Thus, for this philosophy of care to be propagated, the co-participation of managers, professionals, patients, and family members is required, since these gaps cannot be filled without collective involvement.
Organising lexica into analogical grids: a study of a holistic approach for morphological generation under various sizes of data in various languages

ABSTRACT Morphological generation is a task where given a lemma and a morphosyntactic description of the target form, we are asked to generate the target form. Knowing that the syntactic and semantic relations to other forms are reflected by the word form itself, we show how to exploit these relations between word forms, holistically, that is, as a whole, to derive the target form without even breaking them into morphemes. Experimental results show that by organising the lexica into analogical grids we are able to improve the accuracy of morphological generation by up to 8% in low data scenarios. Our holistic approach always performs better than a morpheme-based baseline. We also enquire possible improvements by using data augmentation for neural approaches, especially in low data scenarios. However, our system seems not to gain any advantage from having more data after some point in time.
Amelanotic Uveal Melanomas Evaluated by Indirect Ophthalmoscopy Reveal Better Long-Term Prognosis Than Pigmented Primary Tumours—A Single Centre Experience

Simple Summary The prognosis of uveal melanoma is dependent on many factors. Among the most relevant are the tumour size, ciliary body involvement, extraocular extension, tumour cell type, genetic abnormalities, and the presence of lymphocytic infiltration. The assessment of some of these is very expensive and not available in every centre. In the search for another prognostic factor, we decided to focus on the degree of tumour pigmentation, which is very easy to assess on indirect ophthalmoscopy. It was demonstrated that patients with amelanotic uveal melanomas (those without pigment) lived longer and the eventual spread of the neoplastic process occurred later than in patients with heavily pigmented tumours. In heavily pigmented uveal melanomas, we found features on histopathological examination that were associated with an unfavourable prognosis. In the two separate groups of uveal melanomas with different degrees of pigmentation, we observed that amelanotic tumours with a lower clinical stage had the best prognosis. Abstract (1) Background: There is a constant search for new prognostic factors that would allow us to accurately determine the prognosis, select the type of treatment, and monitor the patient diagnosed with uveal melanoma in a minimally invasive and easily accessible way. Therefore, we decided to evaluate the prognostic role of its pigmentation in a clinical assessment. (2) Methods: The pigmentation of 154 uveal melanomas was assessed by indirect ophthalmoscopy. Two groups of tumours were identified: amelanotic and pigmented. The statistical relationships between these two groups and clinical, pathological parameters and the long-term survival rate were analyzed. (3) Results: There were 16.9% amelanotic tumours among all and they occurred in younger patients (p = 0.022). In pigmented melanomas, unfavourable prognostic features such as: epithelioid cells (p = 0.0013), extrascleral extension (p = 0.027), macronucleoli (p = 0.0065), and the absence of BAP1 expression (p = 0.029) were statistically more frequently observed. Kaplan–Meier analysis demonstrated significantly better overall (p = 0.017) and disease-free (p < 0.001) survival rates for patients with amelanotic tumours. However, this relationship was statistically significant for lower stage tumours (AJCC stage II), and was not present in larger and more advanced stages (AJCC stage III). (4) Conclusions: The results obtained suggested that the presence of pigmentation in uveal melanoma by indirect ophthalmoscopy was associated with a worse prognosis, compared to amelanotic lesions. These findings could be useful in the choice of therapeutic and follow-up options in the future.
Authoritarian state capitalism: Spatial planning and the megaproject in Russia

The phenomenon of state capitalism is attracting growing attention in economic geography and political economy. We contribute to the debate by exploring the authoritarian state capitalism variant whereby the state moves beyond a predominantly regulatory role and appears as the dominant actor. We take Russia to be a prominent example of authoritarian state capitalism because the central state has subjugated economy, created organisational structures and designed development strategies to serve the interests of the kleptocrat, inverting the conventional meaning of ‘state capture’. The paper illustrates the centrality of the state by exploring two state-sponsored megaprojects: (i) the upgrade of the Northern Sea Route and (ii) the construction of innovation clusters (Skolkovo). In the first case, the state directs resources to the Northern Sea Route to secure Russia's control of the Arctic. In the second case, the state attempts to replicate the perceived developmental success stories of the West by fostering technology clusters. Each illustrative case offers an instructive insight into Russia's authoritarian state capitalism characterised by tensions between its own political and economic repertoires and a contentious relationship with the Western-dominated liberal capitalist world order.
Modeling of Stray Currents From Metro Intruding Into Power System Considering the Complex Geological Conditions in Modern Megacities

The risks of power supply in power systems attributed to stray currents caused by denser metro lines are increasing in modern megacities. Factors such as multi-layered soil and multiple metro operating lines (MOLs) make it more difficult to analyze dc coupling between the metro and power system. This article proposes a model for dc coupling of the metro and power system considering the two systems’ spatial information, the actual multi-layered soil, and the non-linear ionization of soil caused by stray currents. This article presents a dc coupling model suitable for studying multiple metro lines and large-scale power systems in modern megacities, which has an average relative error of 6.3% compared with experimental results. The neutral current of the transformer in a substation is up to 43 A (normal operation requires it to be less than 6 A in amplitude) under the influence of multiple MOL. The non-linear ionization of the soil near the power substations’ grounding network will decrease the soil resistance, this also results in greater dc currents intruding into power substations.
An updated, illustrated inventory of the marine fishes of the US Virgin Islands

﻿Abstract The US Virgin Islands (USVI) include St. John and St. Thomas on the Puerto Rican Platform (PRP) and St. Croix, isolated by 2000 m deep water 45 km south of that platform. Previous inventories of the marine fishes of these islands include a comprehensive 2014 checklist of the fishes of St. Croix and a list of the fishes of the PRP produced in 2000. The latter list noted the locations of many records of the plateau’s fishes, allowing the construction of a combined inventory for St. John and St. Thomas. Those two islands are treated here as a single faunal unit because they are only 3.5 km apart on a shared shallow shelf with various islets and reefs in between. Here we provide updated information on those two USVI (St. Croix and St. John-Thomas) marine fish faunas. The additions to the St. Croix and St. John-Thomas inventories presented here are based on a combination of information from the two sources indicated above, more recent publications dealing with those faunas, a review of location records on various online sources of biogeographic data, and voucher photographs taken of fishes in the field by authors of this paper and other citizen scientists. This assessment increased the known fauna of St. Croix by 7.5% to 585 species. The inventory for St. John-Thomas increased by 39.9% from 401 species on the 2000 PRP list to 561 with the inclusion of records from other sources. On-site mtDNA (COI) barcodes are available for approximately one-third of the species of the St. John-Thomas fauna, but for only one species collected at St. Croix. A set of underwater photographs of 372 species (34 of them representing the sole record of a species) from St. John-Thomas and of 11 shallow-water species added to the St. Croix fauna is included. These represent occurrence vouchers and also are intended to facilitate future work that builds on the present compendium.
On Hop-Constrained Steiner Trees in Tree-Like Metrics

We consider the problem of computing a Steiner tree of minimum cost under a hop constraint which requires the depth of the tree to be at most $k$. Our main result is an exact algorithm for metrics induced by graphs with bounded treewidth that runs in time $n^{O(k)}$. For the special case of a path, we give a simple algorithm that solves the problem in polynomial time, even if $k$ is part of the input. The main result can be used to obtain, in quasi-polynomial time, a near-optimal solution that violates the $k$-hop constraint by at most one hop for more general metrics induced by graphs of bounded highway dimension and bounded doubling dimension. For non-metric graphs, we rule out an $o(\log n)$-approximation, assuming P$\neq$NP even when relaxing the hop constraint by any additive constant.
Natural Resource Dependence, Corruption, and Tax Revenue Mobilization

This paper explores the dynamic interactions between natural resource dependence, corruption, and tax revenue mobilization worldwide. The empirical analysis used a cross-section augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) approach that accounts for time dynamics, cross-sectional heterogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence. The results show that the interaction between natural resource dependence, corruption, and tax revenue mobilization is complex and depends on the type of tax revenue. For example, reducing corruption stimulates non-resource tax revenue mobilization compared to total tax revenue; however, tax revenue mobilization is sometimes a source of corruption and evasion of natural resource rents. The results suggest that tax administration institutions need to be strengthened to limit predatory and rent-seeking behavior.
Lack of Association between Inhaled Corticosteroid Use and the Risk of Future Exacerbation in Patients with GOLD Group A Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Background: As most clinical trials have been performed in more symptomatic and higher-risk patients, evidence regarding treatment in patients with Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) group A chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is limited. We assessed the distribution of inhaler treatment and sought to investigate the association between inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) use and future exacerbation in GOLD group A COPD patients. Methods: Patients with GOLD group A COPD who received maintenance inhalers were identified from a multicentre, prospective cohort in South Korea. Patients were categorized as group A when they had fewer symptoms and did not experience severe exacerbation in the previous year. Development of moderate or severe exacerbation during the 1-year follow-up was analysed according to baseline inhaler treatment. Results: In 286 patients with GOLD group A COPD, mono-bronchodilator (37.8%), dual-bronchodilator (29.0%), triple therapy (17.5%), and ICS/long-acting beta-2 agonist (15.4%) were used. Compared to patients without ICS-containing inhalers (N = 191), those using ICS (N = 95) were more dyspnoeic, and more likely to have asthma history, lower lung function, and bronchodilator response. During the 1-year follow-up, moderate or severe exacerbations occurred in 66 of 286 (23.1%) patients. In the multivariable logistic regression analysis, ICS-containing inhaler use was not associated with the development of exacerbation, even in the subgroup with a high probability of asthma–COPD overlap. Conclusion: Although about one-third of patients with GOLD group A COPD were using ICS-containing inhalers, use of ICS was not associated with a reduction in the future development of exacerbation.
Association of Impaired Glucose Tolerance and Insulin Resistance in Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Objective: To find out association between impaired glucose tolerance and insulin resistance with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). Materials and methods: This cross-sectional comparative study was carried out on women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) admitted in the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, SSMC Mitford Hospital and BSMMU Dhaka over a period of 2 years from July 2008 to June 2010. Result: A total of 100 subjects, 50 cases and 50 controls were consecutively included in the study. The mean insulin resistance, impaired fasting glucose and impaired glucose 2 hours after 75 gm of glucose were observed to be significantly higher in cases than in controls (26.7+8.4 vs. 18.8+7.5 micro IU /ml, p<0.001) The prevalence of insulin resistance ,impaired fasting serum glucose and impaired glucose 2 hours after 75 gm of glucose also higher among study group compared to control group (70% vs. 12%;44% vs. 10% and 56% vs. 10 % respectively ). Conclusion: Impaired glucose tolerance and insulin resistance are useful parameter for diagnosis of PCOS. Bangladesh J Obstet Gynaecol, 2019; Vol. 34(2): 93-98
Voice Biometrics for Indonesian Language Users using Algorithm of Deep Learning CNN Residual and Hybrid of DWT-MFCC Extraction Features

—This research develops a Voice Biometrics model for the Indonesian language users by using deep learning algorithm of CNN Residual and Hybrid of DWT-MFCC Feature Extraction. The voice dataset of Indonesian speakers were created with a duration of 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 minutes. The testing phase of speaker recognition and speech recognition were carried out by comparing the model of CNN Residual with CNN Standard. In the phase of speaker recognition, CNN Residual model has obtained the best results with the highest precision percentage of 99.91% and the highest accuracy of 99.47% at 25 minutes voice samples, compared to the CNN Standard obtaining precision of 96.83% and accuracy of 99.00%. In the phase of speech recognition, CNN Residual model has reached the best performance at 100% accuracy during 20 trials, while CNN Standard only gave 95% accuracy. CNN Residual Model provides a better performance for its accuracy and precision, but it is slightly slower than the CNN Standard, with a time difference of 0.03 – 1.28 seconds.
Obesity and the Other Independent Predictors in Elective Endotracheal Tube Intubations: A Narrative Review

Obesity is one of the challenging elements in health care. Studies have shown that as the body mass index (BMI) increases, the risk of chronic conditions tends to increase due to altered physiologic and metabolic demands. In addition to underlying physiological changes, anatomical changes can lead to common procedural challenges, such as difficult intravenous (IV) cannulation, difficult airway, and difficult intubation, which makes their preoperative and postoperative care challenging for the anesthesiologists. According to previous studies, there is no single best predictor for difficult airway or intubations and no designed protocol for choosing an intubation technique in obese patients. Some of the preoperative risk factors and techniques such as the modified Mallampati class, sternomental distance, thyromental distance, neck circumference, indirect mirror laryngoscopy, BMI, and intraoperative risk factors such as inappropriate positioning of the patient, suboptimal medication dosing, inappropriate laryngoscopy device acted as independent predictors for difficult airway and difficult intubation. Analyzing each element’s importance and making suitable decisions for the individual will reduce the complications and prepare for unplanned emergencies in the operating room. This review is convincing with previous studies that obesity itself is not an independent predictor. Instead, as a preoperative risk factor, and till date, sternomental distance and the number of intubation attempts were demonstrated as significant independent predictors for adverse events. All the other independent factors and considerations were discussed, which can help with further research.
Biodegradation and Metabolic Pathway of 17β-Estradiol by Rhodococcus sp. ED55

Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in the environment are considered a motif of concern, due to the widespread occurrence and potential adverse ecological and human health effects. The natural estrogen, 17β-estradiol (E2), is frequently detected in receiving water bodies after not being efficiently removed in conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), promoting a negative impact for both the aquatic ecosystem and human health. In this study, the biodegradation of E2 by Rhodococcus sp. ED55, a bacterial strain isolated from sediments of a discharge point of WWTP in Coloane, Macau, was investigated. Rhodococcus sp. ED55 was able to completely degrade 5 mg/L of E2 in 4 h in a synthetic medium. A similar degradation pattern was observed when the bacterial strain was used in wastewater collected from a WWTP, where a significant improvement in the degradation of the compound occurred. The detection and identification of 17 metabolites was achieved by means of UPLC/ESI/HRMS, which proposed a degradation pathway of E2. The acute test with luminescent marine bacterium Aliivibrio fischeri revealed the elimination of the toxicity of the treated effluent and the standardized yeast estrogenic (S-YES) assay with the recombinant strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae revealed a decrease in the estrogenic activity of wastewater samples after biodegradation.
Rational Design of Plant Hairpin-like Peptide EcAMP1: Structural–Functional Correlations to Reveal Antibacterial and Antifungal Activity

Plant antimicrobial peptides from the α-hairpinins family (hairpin-like peptides) are known to possess a wide range of biological activities. However, less is known about the structural determinants of their antimicrobial activity. Here, we suggest that spatial structure as well as surface charge and hydrophobicity level contribute to the antimicrobial properties of α-hairpinin EcAMP1 from barnyard grass (Echinochloa cruss-galli) seeds. To examine the role of the peptide spatial structure, two truncated forms of EcAMP1 restricted by inner and outer cysteine pairs were synthesized. It was shown that both truncated forms of EcAMP1 lost their antibacterial activity. In addition, their antifungal activity became weaker. To review the contribution of surface charge and hydrophobicity, another two peptides were designed. One of them carried single amino acid substitution from tryptophan to alanine residue at the 20th position. The second one represented a truncated form of the native EcAMP1 lacking six C-terminal residues. But the α-helix was kept intact. It was shown that the antifungal activity of both modified peptides weakened. Thereby we can conclude that the secondary structural integrity, hydrophobic properties, and surface charge all play roles in the antimicrobial properties of α-hairpinins. In addition, the antibacterial activity of cereal α-hairpinins against Gram-positive bacteria was described for the first time. This study expands on the knowledge of structure–function interactions in antimicrobial α-hairpinins.