Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advance Optical Properties and Emerging Applications of 2D Materials

In the last several decades, significant efforts have been devoted to two-dimensional (2D) materials on account of their optical properties that have numerous applications in the optoelectronic world in the range of light-emitting diodes, optical sensors, solar energy conversion, photo-electrochemical cells, photovoltaic solar cells, and even the biomedical sector. First, we provide an outline of linear optical properties of 2D materials such as graphene, TMDs, h-BN, MXenes, perovskite oxide, and metal-organic framework. Then, we discuss the optoelectronic properties of the 2D materials. Along with these, we also highlight the important efforts in developing 2D optical materials with intensive emission properties at a broad wavelength from ultraviolet to near-infrared. The origin of this tunable emission has been discussed decoratively. Thickness and layer-dependent optical properties have been highlighted and are explained through surface defects, strain, vacancy, doping, and dangling bonds emerging due to structural change in the material. The linear and nonlinear optical properties in 2D MXene and perovskite oxides are also impressive due to their potential applications in next-generation devices with excellent optical sensitivity. Finally, technological innovations, challenges, and possible tuning of defects and imperfections in the 2D lattice are discussed.
CNV-MEANN: A Neural Network and Mind Evolutionary Algorithm-Based Detection of Copy Number Variations From Next-Generation Sequencing Data

Copy number variation (CNV), is defined as repetitions or deletions of genomic segments of 1 Kb to 5 Mb, and is a major trigger for human disease. The high-throughput and low-cost characteristics of next-generation sequencing technology provide the possibility of the detection of CNVs in the whole genome, and also greatly improve the clinical practicability of next-generation sequencing (NGS) testing. However, current methods for the detection of CNVs are easily affected by sequencing and mapping errors, and uneven distribution of reads. In this paper, we propose an improved approach, CNV-MEANN, for the detection of CNVs, involving changing the structure of the neural network used in the MFCNV method. This method has three differences relative to the MFCNV method: (1) it utilizes a new feature, mapping quality, to replace two features in MFCNV, (2) it considers the influence of the loss categories of CNV on disease prediction, and refines the output structure, and (3) it uses a mind evolutionary algorithm to optimize the backpropagation (neural network) neural network model, and calculates individual scores for each genome bin to predict CNVs. Using both simulated and real datasets, we tested the performance of CNV-MEANN and compared its performance with those of seven widely used CNV detection methods. Experimental results demonstrated that the CNV-MEANN approach outperformed other methods with respect to sensitivity, precision, and F1-score. The proposed method was able to detect many CNVs that other approaches could not, and it reduced the boundary bias. CNV-MEANN is expected to be an effective method for the analysis of changes in CNVs in the genome.
Toward the Role of EFL/ESL Students’ Silence as a Facilitative Element in Their Success

Following the recent evolution of research perspectives toward student silence, an increasing number of studies have sought to empirically probe into the beneficial role of this variable in students’ success. Yet, a limited number of review studies have been carried out to illustrate the complex nature of student silence and its positive consequences (e.g., success, increased learning outcomes, etc.). Hence, this study aims to review different definitions of “student silence” to elucidate its facilitative function in EFL/ESL students’ success. Providing empirical evidence, the role of student silence as a facilitative element in English language learning was proved. Finally, some pedagogical implications for EFL/ESL teachers and teacher trainers are also discussed.
Ascorbic Acid-Induced Photosynthetic Adaptability of Processing Tomatoes to Salt Stress Probed by Fast OJIP Fluorescence Rise

In this study, the protective role of exogenous ascorbic acid (AsA) on salt-induced inhibition of photosynthesis in the seedlings of processing tomatoes under salt stress has been investigated. Plants under salt stress (NaCl, 100 mmol/L) were foliar-sprayed with AsA (0.5 mmol/L), lycorine (LYC, 0.25 mmol/L, an inhibitor of key AsA synthesis enzyme l-galactono-γ-lactone dehydrogenase activity), or AsA plus LYC. The effects of AsA on fast OJIP fluorescence rise curve and JIP parameters were then examined. Our results demonstrated that applying exogenous AsA significantly changed the composition of O-J-I-P fluorescence transients in plants subjected to salt stress both with and without LYC. An increase in basal fluorescence (Fo) and a decrease in maximum fluorescence (Fm) were observed. Lower K- and L-bands and higher I-band were detected on the OJIP transient curves compared, respectively, with salt-stressed plants with and without LYC. AsA application also significantly increased the values of normalized total complementary area (Sm), relative variable fluorescence intensity at the I-step (VI), absorbed light energy (ABS/CSm), excitation energy (TRo/CSm), and reduction energy entering the electron transfer chain beyond QA (ETo/CSm) per reaction centre (RC) and electron transport flux per active RC (ETo/RC), while decreasing some others like the approximated initial slope of the fluorescence transient (Mo), relative variable fluorescence intensity at the K-step (VK), average absorption (ABS/RC), trapping (TRo/RC), heat dissipation (DIo/RC) per active RC, and heat dissipation per active RC (DIo/CSm) in the presence or absence of LYC. These results suggested that exogenous AsA counteracted salt-induced photoinhibition mainly by modulating the endogenous AsA level and redox state in the chloroplast to promote chlorophyll synthesis and alleviate the damage of oxidative stress to photosynthetic apparatus. AsA can also raise the efficiency of light utilization as well as excitation energy dissipation within the photosystem II (PSII) antennae, thus increasing the stability of PSII and promoting the movement of electrons among PS1 and PSII in tomato seedling leaves subjected to salt stress.
Rapid Progression After 177Lu-DOTATATE in Patients With Neuroendocrine Tumors

Abstract Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) is a treatment option for somatostatin receptor–positive, unresectable or metastatic neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). Despite high disease control rates seen with PRRT, a subset of the NET population seems to have a short progression-free interval. We hypothesize that patients with NETs with rapid progression post-PRRT may have mixed low- and high-grade cell populations, and PRRT treats the lower-grade component, allowing the more aggressive high-grade component to progress. We report 7 patients with biopsy-proven NET who received PRRT with 177Lu-DOTATATE at the Stanford Cancer Center who had evidence of progressive disease (PD) on or within 6 months of therapy. All patients had primary pancreatic, metastatic, well-differentiated NET on diagnosis and were heavily pretreated before receiving PRRT. Two patients had PD while on PRRT; 5 had PD within 6 months of completing PRRT. The median time from the last cycle to PD was 3.2 months (range, 1.1–4.6 months). The median progression-free survival was 7.7 months (95% confidence interval, 5.7–9.8 months). Three patients had a repeat biopsy post-PRRT, 2 of which demonstrated higher disease grade compared with their initial pathology. Further evaluation in larger patient cohorts is warranted to elucidate predictive factors of PRRT response/nonresponse to enable better patient selection.
Structural Equation Modeling of Terrorism Perception: New Correlates of Perception Formation

Terrorism perceptions are significant factors in determining social and political policy responses. It has been shown by previous research that most perceptions become cognitive in individuals at an early age. This article describes an empirical study testing potential correlates of the formation of terrorism perceptions on a large sample size of high school students from Turkey. Using advanced statistical techniques, we found a structural equation model of which external powers and religion are the major factors in the formation of terrorism perceptions. These findings confirm previous perception control variables and extend them with new contributing factors. Replications in other countries are suggested.
Exploring Servitization in Industrial Construction: A Sustainable Approach

Off-site manufacturing is emerging as an advantageous production model in the construction industry. In recent years, many tier 1 construction companies are including off-site production as part of their portfolio. Likewise, this change of model is attracting new entrants to the sector. The shift from the traditional on-site construction model to off-site manufacturing is unleashing positive impacts on projects in terms of cost, time efficiency, sustainability, and improved quality. Nonetheless, this phenomenon has yet to be analysed from the perspective of how this change in production processes influences the inclusion of services in company business models. This study explores whether and how industrialisation arises as an enabler for servitization in the construction sector. By means of an in-depth case study, our research identifies different product-service system (PSS) typologies associated with industrial construction and reveals their potential to increase additional services. Furthermore, the research sheds light on how industrial construction provides an opportunity to integrate offers and features that work towards reducing the environmental impact of construction projects and the operation and maintenance of built assets.
Determinants of Cross Sectional Stock Returns Variation Part 2 – Systematic and Idiosyncratic Risks

This is the second part of a two-part study on the factors that influence cross variability in stock returns, with particular attention to the role of macroeconomic fluctuations and idiosyncratic risks. The study covered the listed firms represented in the Phisix for the period 1988-2000 and 1994-2000. The first part of the study focuses on the role of macroeconomic fluctuations as systematic risk factors. It uses a multifactor asset pricing framework with seven macroeconomic factors identified as potential sources of significant risks to individual firms. Regression results indicate that fluctuations in all of these macroeconomic factors have significant influence on individual stock returns. However, it is also found that systematic risks due to macroeconomic factors may not by themselves be able to fully explain observed variation in stock returns. Thus, the role of idiosyncratic risks, relative to systematic risks, warrants further investigation. The second part of the study confirms the conjecture that both systematic and idiosyncratic risks matter. Using the model developed in the first part of the study, total risk is decomposed into its systematic and idiosyncratic components. Statistical analysis confirms that both risk components, together with a measure of the stock’s market liquidity, are the main determinants of cross sectional variation in stock returns. Looking deeper into what factors generate both types of risks, the individual firm’s sensitivity to systematic risk appears to be determined by its dividend history and certain other firm-level fundamentals, especially growth history. Dividend history, because of its signaling function, is also found to be a major indicator of idiosyncratic risk. Except for this, idiosyncratic risk appears to be driven by factors very specific to the firm which may not be directly related to firm fundamentals. More research is indicated on the factors that generate firm-specific or idiosyncratic risk. These results have important implications. Systematic risk, which constitutes a large proportion of total risk, can be managed at the macro level by regulating macroeconomic fluctuations. The firm can also choose its level of systematic risk exposure by appropriate operating decisions and internal diversification. In a similar vein, the investor can choose his/her level of systematic risk by appropriate analysis of firm fundamentals and stock selection. * Professor of Accounting and Finance, College of Business Administration, University of the Philippines.
Identity construction among L2 writers in an Egyptian university

APA Citation Abousaeed, D. Z. (2020). Identity construction among L2 writers in an Egyptian university [Master’s thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt. edu/etds/1444 MLA Citation Abousaeed, Duaa Zein. Identity construction among L2 writers in an Egyptian university. 2020. American University in Cairo, Master's thesis. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt. edu/etds/1444
Proportion and Associated Factors of Primary Rifampicin Resistance among New Pulmonary TB Patients in Public Hospitals of Gen-Xpert Testing Sites, East Amhara–Ethiopia, 2019

Introduction: The emergence and spreading of Rifampicin-resistance strains of mycobacterium tuberculosis pose significant challenges to tuberculosis control programs in resource-limited countries like Ethiopia. This study aimed to assess the proportion and factors associated with primary rifampicin resistance. Methods: A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted from April to November 2019 among 570 new pulmonary tuberculosis patients. A systematic random sampling technique was used to select the study participants from 8 Gene-Xpert testing hospitals. Rifampicin resistance was detected by Gene-Xpert assay from sputum specimens. Data were collected by face-to-face interviews, document review, and laboratory results using a pre-tested structured questionnaire. We developed the questionnaire from different kinds of literature and the World Health Organization resources. Variables with P-value <0.2 in simple binary logistic regression were included in the multiple binary logistic regressions. A statistical test was reported as significant when p-value < 0.05 in multiple variable logistic regressions. Fitness of goodness was checked by using the Hosmer Lemeshow model fitness test. Results: A total of 570 individuals have participated in this study. Of those, 43 (7.50%) 95% CI: 5-10) were resistant to rifampicin. Persons, have a contact history with known tuberculosis Patients (AOR 2.5 [95% CI: 1.21-5.11]), with human immune virus infection (AOR 2.3 [95% CI: 1.11-4.73]) and being diabetic Mellitus cases (AOR 4.2[95% CI: 1.51-8.78]) were factors significantly associated with rifampicin resistance. Conclusions and recommendations: The proportion of rifampicin resistance was high. Identified factors significantly associated with rifampicin resistance were persons having contact history with known tuberculosis patients, human immune virus infection, and being diabetic Mellitus cases. Strengthen the prevention of rifampicin resistance tuberculosis transmission, strengthening contact tracing, improve TB/HIV coinfection health care services, and screening tuberculosis patients for diabetic Mellitus is crucial.
Use of fly larvae Hermetia illucens in poultry feeding: A review paper

The paper presents the review of scientific publications of world literature on the use of the larvae of black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) when feeding poultry. Nowadays, the issue of replacing traditional sources of protein when feeding poultry is very urgent, especially in connection with the global food crisis. Insects are the natural food of most birds; thus, the use of fly larvae for feed production has a biological basis. The research results presented in published works show that there are no negative effects on bird health and meat quality when feeding poultry, quail and other birds. In some cases, the experimental groups of birds gained weight slightly more slowly than the control group. Other reports indicate that birds grew at the same rate as normal birds. The quantity and quality of eggs did not differ significantly, but dietary changes affected the colour of yolks and eggshell. The effect of the addition of live larvae to the diet of young turkeys on the weight characteristics of was studied. Replacing 10% of the daily amount of feed with live Hermetia illucens larvae in the diet of turkeys showed that the daily feed intake and body weight gain of the experimental birds were significantly higher compared to the control groups, which led to a significantly higher body weight of chicks at the age of five weeks (2.19 kg vs. 2.015 kg, respectively) and a significantly lower feed conversion rate. Most researchers agree that replacing protein in poultry feed with insect flour should be partial, in the 15–30% range. Feeding with larvae that have undergone processing – grinding, chitin removing, heat treatment – is more preferable than using whole larvae, since the chitinous membrane makes larvae difficult to be digested in the digestive tract of birds.
Interactive comment on “Direct and semi-direct radiative forcing of biomass burning aerosols over the Southeast Atlantic (SEA) and its sensitivity to absorbing properties: a regional climate modeling study” by

This is a very interesting and important study topic. The manuscript described regional climate models simulation of biomass burning aerosol over southeast Atlantic, which draws very few attention in the literature but may have important influence due to the persistent intensive emission from South America. The modeling approach is reasonably, with solid validations and in-depth discussion of the result. The sensitivity simulations with different absorbing properties provided upper boundary estimates of the direct and semi-direct effect of aerosol. This is a well-organized study with fluent professional writing. Therefore I would recommend this manuscript to be accepted with very minor revisions, following are some detailed comments.
Relationship between visual-motor integration and manual dexterity in children with developmental coordination disorder in Indian Context

This study aimed to examine the visual-motor integration and manual dexterity skills in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). A cross-sectional descriptive study of 22 children aged 7 to 11 years old with DCD, assessed with the Brazilian version of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ-Brazil), Movement Assessment Battery for Children Second Edition (MABC-2) and Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration Sixth Edition (VMI). Four girls and 18 boys participated. Considering the 25th percentile in VMI as the cutoff point, 12 children presented a below-average performance in the visualmotor integration domain, 13 in the visual domain, and 19 in the motor coordination domain. We observed a statistically significant correlation between the motor dexterity and the total MABC-2 percentiles, but not between the MABC-2 percentiles and the different domains evaluated with the VMI. The results suggest that the combined use of tests for better assessment of children with DCD is needed and important to detect their real difficulties in both visuomotor integration and manual dexterity and their implications on the performance of children's daily activities.
Doubly infinite residual neural networks: a diffusion process approach

Modern neural networks (NN) featuring a large number of layers (depth) and units per layer (width) have achieved a remarkable performance across many domains. While there exists a vast literature on the interplay between infinitely wide NNs and Gaussian processes, a little is known about analogous interplays with respect to infinitely deep NNs. NNs with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) initializations exhibit undesirable forward and backward propagation properties as the number of layers increases. To overcome these drawbacks, Peluchetti and Favaro (2020) considered fully-connected residual networks (ResNets) with network's parameters initialized by means of distributions that shrink as the number of layers increases, thus establishing an interplay between infinitely deep ResNets and solutions to stochastic differential equations, i.e. diffusion processes, and showing that infinitely deep ResNets does not suffer from undesirable forward-propagation properties. In this paper, we review the results of Peluchetti and Favaro (2020), extending them to convolutional ResNets, and we establish analogous backward-propagation results, which directly relate to the problem of training fully-connected deep ResNets. Then, we investigate the more general setting of doubly infinite NNs, where both network's width and network's depth grow unboundedly. We focus on doubly infinite fully-connected ResNets, for which we consider i.i. d. initializations. Under this setting, we show that the dynamics of quantities of interest converge, at initialization, to deterministic limits. This allow us to provide analytical expressions for inference, both in the case of weakly trained and fully trained ResNets. Our results highlight a limited expressive power of doubly infinite ResNets when the unscaled network's parameters are i.i. d. and the residual blocks are shallow.
Biochemical, electrolytic, and cardiovascular evaluations in cats with urethral obstruction

Abstract Background and Aim: Urethral obstruction (UO) is a common condition in feline medicine. Severe acid-base and electrolyte disorders promote relevant electrocardiographic changes in these animals. Cardiac biomarkers such as cardiac troponin I have been shown to be useful in identifying cats with myocardial disease, but it has not been investigated whether UO leads to myocardial damages. This study aimed to evaluate biochemical changes, electrocardiographic findings, troponin I measurements, and electrolyte disturbances for 7 days in cats with UO. Materials and Methods: This follow-up prospective study included 33 cats diagnosed with UO for 7 days. For all cats, clinical examination, serum biochemistry, electrolyte analyses, blood pressure, and electrocardiography were performed. Cardiac troponin I was measured in the serum in 16 cats at 3 different times. Results: The mean age of the feline population was 1.83±1.58 years (mean±standard deviation). Creatinine, urea, blood urea nitrogen, glucose, phosphorus, base excess, bicarbonate, and serum potassium decreased significantly (p≤0.05), while ionic calcium and blood pH increased significantly (p≤0.05) at different times. Electrocardiographic abnormalities were observed in 21/33 (63.63%) of the felines on admission day. The electrocardiographic abnormalities were no longer observed on the subsequent days. Only one feline showed changes in troponin I cardiac concentrations. Conclusion: This study suggests the sum and severity of electrolyte abnormalities aggravate the clinical and cardiovascular status of these patients. However, cTnI, blood pressure, and heart rate within the reference range do not exclude the presence of major cardiovascular and metabolic abnormalities. The hyperglycemia in felines with UO appears to be associated with decreased renal clearance, which may reflect the severity of hyperkalemia and azotemia. The metabolic and cardiovascular changes of these felines are minimized by the establishment of appropriate intensive care; however, cardiac and blood gas monitoring is essential to assess the severity of the disease.