Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards future PLM maturity assessment dimensions

Of the many studies on PLM and maturity found in literature, only few discuss maturity or road mapping approaches in the context of PLM. The main objective of using PLM Maturity Assessment is to make the implementation of PLM better approachable and a more carefully planned process, since a significant portion of companies struggles heavily in adoption and implementation of PLM. In our paper, several approaches to PLM Maturity Assessment are discussed. Our aim is to study how maturity levels and dimensions should be redefined to enable companies, even those that are quite advanced today, to define their PLM roadmap for the next five to 10 years.
General trust in the health care system and general trust in physicians: A multilevel analysis of 30 countries

This article builds upon a multilevel theory of trust to explore the relationship between general trust in health care systems and general trust in physicians and the social-contextual factors that shape this relationship. We develop a model of trust in physicians emphasizing the embeddedness of individuals in broader social-institutional contexts. We analyze data from 30 countries in the 2011 International Social Survey Program (N = 38,068) and specify hierarchical linear models with macro-micro level interactions. At the individual level, we find that individuals who trust the health care system are more likely to trust physicians in general. At the country level, we find that respondents from countries with predominately publicly financed health care systems are more likely to trust physicians than their counterparts in countries with less public funding of the health care system. Finally, we find that the greatest predicted probability of trust in physicians is found among individuals who trust their publicly funded health care system and the lowest probability is among individuals who have no confidence in their privately funded health care system. Based on these findings, we call for greater attention to the interaction of micro- and macro-level factors in models of trust in physicians cross-nationally.
Comovement across BRICS and the US Stock Markets: A Multitime Scale Wavelet Analysis

During the past two decades, financial markets across the globe have experienced sporadic waves of crashes. Such waves raise concerns about the vulnerability of global financial markets and the transmission mechanisms of shocks beyond borders. The current study examines the co-movement of stock markets in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries and the United States of America (US). It unfolds their exposure to contagion effects during the major financial crises, which have flared up since 2000. Daily close price indices of selected stock markets were used in this endeavour. These data spanned from 5 January 2000 to 10 March 2021. A wavelet decomposition on stock return series was performed on these data to determine the multihorizon nature of comovement (pure contagion or interdependence) and the dynamics of market integration. It emerges that before the 2006-US-housing-bubble and after the 2011/13-EU-sovereign-debt crises, some shocks caused pure contagion. Such transmission generated short-term shocks. Most of the earlier shocks, particularly the US subprime and the EU Sovereign Debt crises, were spread via interdependence. Trade linkages and economic integration improvements enhanced such interdependence. In addition, when analysing the episodes of market integration, it arises that, in general, the short- and long-term integration strengthened and deepened comovement among equity markets. From the portfolio diversification and risk management perspectives, these results indicate that the market in China provided lucrative grounds for short-run investors from the other countries covered in the current study. These results can be helpful for investors interested in portfolio diversification in the BRICS region. They might also help policymakers in the region mitigate the exposure to external shocks of markets.
RB-Net: Training Highly Accurate and Efficient Binary Neural Networks With Reshaped Point-Wise Convolution and Balanced Activation

In this paper, we find that the conventional convolution operation becomes the bottleneck for extremely efficient binary neural networks (BNNs). To address this issue, we open up a new direction by introducing a reshaped point-wise convolution (RPC) to replace the conventional one to build BNNs. Specifically, we conduct a point-wise convolution after rearranging the spatial information into depth, with which at least $2.25\times $ computation reduction can be achieved. Such an efficient RPC allows us to explore more powerful representational capacity of BNNs under a given computation complexity budget. Moreover, we propose to use a balanced activation (BA) to adjust the distribution of the scaled activations after binarization, which enables significant performance improvement of BNNs. After integrating RPC and BA, the proposed network, dubbed as RB-Net, strikes a good trade-off between accuracy and efficiency, achieving superior performance with lower computational cost against the state-of-the-art BNN methods. Specifically, our RB-Net achieves 66.8% Top-1 accuracy with ResNet-18 backbone on ImageNet, exceeding the state-of-the-art Real-to-Binary Net (65.4%) by 1.4% while achieving more than $3\times $ reduction (52M vs. 165M) in computational complexity.
Sticky Floor and Glass Ceilings in Academic Medicine: Analysis of Race and Gender

Purpose This paper examines the changes in the representation of women and racial minorities in academic medicine, compares the proportion of minorities in medicine and the general United States (US) population, and discusses potential explanations for observed trends. Methods A retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) database was done and used to collect data on the gender and race of physicians in academic medicine. Data was collected for instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, full professors, and chairpersons from 2007 to 2018, and trends were presented. Results White physicians represented most academic physicians at every academic level, peaking in proportion at 82.74% of chairpersons and were lowest at the level of instructor at 59.30%. A similar distribution existed when gender was compared, with men comprising 84.67% of chairpersons and forming the majority at levels of full, associate, and assistant professors. However, most physicians at the level of instructors are women at 55.44%. Conclusions Though women and racial minorities have gained greater representation in academic medicine over the past decade, high-level academic positions are not as accessible to them. Existing efforts of advocacy for women and minority races have proven fruitful over the past decade, but much more work needs to be done.
The Effectiveness of Student Facilitator and Explaining Learning Model Assisted by Edmodo to Enhanced Students' Problem Solving Ability

This study aims to determine the effect and effectiveness of the Student Facilitator and Explaining (SFAE) learning model assisted by Edmodo to enhanced students’ problem solving abilities. This study uses a quasi-experimental research method. The sample in this study was taken by cluster random sampling technique. Data collection techniques in this study used interviews, tests, and questionnaires. Analysis of the influence and effectiveness of the Student Facilitator and Explaining (SFAE) learning model assisted by Edmodo using N-gain analysis and comparative t-test related analysis. The results of the N-gain analysis showed that there was an increase in problem solving ability in the experimental class by 0,45 and in the control class by 0,20. The results of the comparative t-test related showed that there was a significant difference between the problem solving abilities of the control class and the experimental class with t count (3.97) > t tabel (2,0003). The results of the student response questionnaire after carrying out learning with the Student Facilitator and Explaining (SFAE) learning model assisted by Edmodo showed a very good response of 88.4%. The results showed that the Student Facilitator and Explaining (SFAE) learning model assisted by Edmodo was effective in enhanced students' problem solving abilities.
The development of a vibro-acoustic model of the human ear

A vibro-acoustic finite element model of the ear is presented. (a) an eardrum structure based on a model published by Wada et al the ossicles, which are known to have a small intersubject variability This includes; [1], (b) and are modelled from geometries published by Kirikae [2] and the ear canal geometry which was implemented from N.M. R. Spectroscopy images taken from a healthy subject. The values of various structural parameters was assessed by tuning the model to experimentally determined natural frequencies of the subject’s ear obtained using a "two-microphone" technique and a modal curve fitting program. The procedure is valid upto 2kHz, however, response curves were calculated upto 7kHz. Natural frequencies were found at approximately 820 and 1670Hz. A high level of middle ear damping is evident and it is proposed that this increases the sensitivity of the ear by broadening natural frequency peaks. The dynamics exhibited by the model were consistent with reports from previous research work. Anisotropy and certain annular boundary conditions of the eardrum are shown to be essential parameters to tune the finite element model to the experimental data. The potential of this model as an aid to understanding middle ear function is promising. Chapter
Nexus between Firm Ownership, Board Composition and Initial Public Offering Stocks Performance at the Nairobi Securities Exchange in Kenya

Extant literature has globally demonstrated two anomalies of initial public offering stocks performance: positive initial returns and long run underperformance. Kenya’s IPO market is experiencing a downward trend. The last issue was in 2015. Bond market has gained traction compared to equity market. Studies have associated firm specific factors to IPO stocks performance and ignored the moderating variable of automation. The study analysed the relationship between firm ownership, board composition and IPO stocks performance at NSE. The percentage of shares owned by the Kenyan government was used to measure firm ownership and board composition was measured by percentage of executive board members to total board members. The performance of IPO stocks was measured using both Cumulative Abnormal Returns and Buy and Hold Abnormal Returns. Automation was measured by IPO stocks performance between pre and post automation period. The sample size was 15 firms which floated shares between 1994 and 2019 with 2,586 observations. Secondary source was used to collect data. Longitudinal and descriptive study designs were used together with multiple linear regression to analyse the data. To determine between fixed and random effects, the study used Hausman test. It was established that both firm ownership and board compositions correlated negatively with IPO stocks performance. Automation on the other hand was positively correlated with board composition but did not correlate with firm ownership. This study will assist the Kenyan government in developing financial stability measures and investors in making informed decisions.
Distribution of Rice Plant Pests (Oryza sativa L.) in Vegetative and Generative Phases: analytical study

Rice as one of the main foods that experience many obstacles in doing cultivation. One of them is insect pest attack. This study aims to study the activity of insect pests that damage rice plants to inhibit their growth and development. Increasing rice production in Indrapuri District, Aceh Besar District continues to be pursued. This research activity was carried out from April to June 2019, by adopting the observation method to detect the presence of types of pests by using sweeping equipment in the form of a net at the location of rice field plots. The collection of pests from the insect group is carried out by identifying them which refers to the insect identification key. The results showed that insect and non-insect types of pests were found that were destructive in both the vetetative and generative phases to inhibit their growth and development which had a negative impact on production. Lepidoptera. insect pests All groups of insect pests phylum arthropoda contain insect inhibits
Life cycle cost evaluation of alternatives to the nuclear density gauge for compaction testing on design-build projects

Abstract When Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) implemented design–build (DB) contracting, it revised its quality assurance programme and shifted most of the compaction testing to the design-builder. As a result, fewer compaction tests were performed by state personnel and the need for speedy quality control testing by the agency to facilitate construction production disappeared. This paper reports the results of a study conducted by the department to evaluate three alternatives to the nuclear density gauge (NDG) using life cycle cost analysis and cost index number theory. The study’s objective was to investigate alternative soil compaction test devices and provide input to a decision regarding whether or not MoDOT should retain or replace the NDG. Despite the NDG successful track record, the ease of employment and speed with which the compaction results are delivered comes with a price in terms of life cycle costs. The NDG is regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and entails an onerous, ongoing administrative workload to permit its continued use. The NDG also incurs additional certification, storage and disposal costs, not found in non-nuclear compaction testing alternatives. This paper reports the results of a life cycle cost analysis of NDG and three alternatives: dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP), electrical density gauge and the sand cone (SC). The study finds that the SC and DCP are the most cost-effective but are the least cost-effective when measured on a basis of timely results. Thus, the NDG replacement/retention decision becomes one of how fast are compaction tests required by the agency. Since MoDOT has adopted contractor acceptance testing in its DB program, it now only conducts verification testing of contractor test results. Thus, the paper recommends that the NDG be replaced.
Three-year outcomes of uveal melanoma treated with intra-operative ultrasound-guided iodine-125 brachytherapy using custom-built eye plaques

Purpose The aim of this study was to demonstrate that uveal melanoma (UM) treated with eye plaque brachytherapy (EPB) with intra-operative ultrasound (IOUS) guidance results in increased local control. Material and methods A retrospective study was conducted among 212 patients with 214 UM tumors treated by iodine-125 EPB with IOUS guidance from 2013 to 2019. 85 Gy was prescribed to tumor apical height or 5 mm from inner sclera, whichever was greater. Lesions were treated to 95% of 85 Gy at 2 mm margin from tumor edge. Local failure (LF), distant metastasis (DM), and radiation-related toxicity were recorded. Results Median tumor apical height was 3.3 mm. COMS stage was 90 small (42.1%), 81 medium (37.9%), and 43 large (20.1%). Most patients had gene expression profile (GEP) class available, with 119 (55.6%), 30 (14.0%), 55 (25.7%) cases classified as 1A, 1B, and 2, respectively. Median dose at apex for tumor height > 5 mm and ≤ 5 mm was 85.0 Gy and 120.6 Gy, respectively. Outcomes data for 180 patients with over 12 months follow-up were reported. Mean follow-up was 37.3 months. Rates of LF and DM were 0.0% and 12.2%, respectively. Actuarial estimates of 5-year DM for class 1A, 1B, and 2 tumors were 2.5%, 0.0%, and 57.8%, respectively. 87 patients (48.3%) developed radiation-related toxicities. Conclusions The excellent local control rate amongst lesions ranging across all sizes and GEP classes emphasizes the importance of image-guided brachytherapy with IOUS. We report favorable 5-year DM rates compared to established rates. Acceptable rate and severity of radiation-related toxicities were observed.
Small‐Scale Irregularities Within Polarization Jet/SAID During Geomagnetic Activity

We study the spatial structure of a polarization jet/Sub‐Auroral Ion Drift (PJ/SAID) based on data from the NorSat‐1 and Swarm satellites during a geomagnetic storm. Observations of plasma parameters inside the PJ/SAID are obtained with NorSat‐1 using a system of Langmuir probes with a nominal sampling rate of up to 1 kHz, which allowed measurements with such a high temporal resolution for the first time. A comparative analysis of plasma parameters and electron density spectra inside PJ according to the data from both satellites is presented. Our results show that fluctuations of plasma parameters inside the PJ increase at all scales with increasing geomagnetic activity. Small‐scale irregularities in the PJ are measured in situ down to hundreds of meters. The role of large‐scale effects in the PJ increases in comparison with the small‐scale ones during high geomagnetic activity. The PJ consists of structures ∼0.2° latitude in size within which small‐scale irregularities are present.
Overlapping Environmental Policies and the Impact on Pollution

This paper examines how increases in renewable generation interact with market-based environmental regulations to affect the emissions of both regulated and unregulated pollutants. Using a simple analytical model, I first demonstrate that, when combined with a cap-and-trade program, expansions in renewable generation have the potential to cause an undesirable outcome—they can increase emissions of unregulated pollutants. To explore whether this unintended increase in unregulated pollution could occur in practice, I look back at a NOX cap-and-trade program that was in place in the eastern United States from 2009 through 2014—the EPA’s Clean Air Interstate Rule. Using hourly generation and emissions data, I estimate how unregulated emissions of CO2 and SO2 would have been affected by adding new wind turbines and solar panels in the presence of a binding cap on NOX. I show that, once the interaction with the NOX cap is taken into consideration, renewable capacity additions would have offset much less CO2 than was previously thought. Moreover, I find that the renewable additions would have increased SO2 emissions.
The effect of low‐defected carboxylic acid functional group–rich carbon nanotube–doped electrode on the performance of aqueous vanadium redox flow battery

Modified (2,2,6,6‐tetramethylpiperidin‐1‐yl)oxyl (TEMPO)‐mediated oxidation (MTMO) is introduced to fabricate low‐defected carboxylic acid functional group–rich carbon nanotube (TEMPO‐CNT) through facile and eco‐friendly chemical preparation. Due to the MTMO, the O=C‐O portion (18.2%), representing the amount of active site to vanadium ion redox reaction (VIRR), reaches the nearly same with conventionally acid‐treated CNT (AT‐CNT, 18.9%). However, the intensity ratio of D to G band of TEMPO‐CNT is measured lower value (1.14) than that of AT‐CNT (1.29) in Raman spectra, showing the MTMO is the better strategy to functionalize carboxylic groups on CNT with the uniform structure and low‐defected feature. Furthermore, when the TEMPO‐CNT is utilized for the catalyst for VIRR, the catalytic activity increases to 2.11 (negolyte) and 2.03 (posolyte) times compared to AT‐CNT, and the reversibility of VIRR is also improved. These results attribute to the 41.6% lower charge transfer resistance than AT‐CNT, demonstrating that the low‐defected CNT structure of TEMPO‐CNT induced a facile electron transfer, resulting in the high catalytic performance. With that, the energy efficiency (EE) and discharge capacity of vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) adopting TEMPO‐CNT display 58.8% and 16.8 Ah L−1 even at high current density (250 mA cm−2), whereas those of AT‐CNT are only 52.3% and 6.8 Ah L−1. Regarding long‐term stability, the TEMPO‐CNT and AT‐CNT preserved 98.8% and 91.4% of retention rate in EE at 200 mA cm−2 for 200 cycles, respectively, indicating that the MTMO is the promising option to fabricate the catalyst to use in the practical VRFB.
College Life Adjustment, Life Stress, Career Barriers, and Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy of College Students Who Have Experienced COVID-19 in South Korea

University life is challenging for students, given the college life adjustment, life stress, career barriers, and career decision-making self-efficacy required. COVID-19 has made this even more complex. This study investigated the relationships among these factors in college students who experienced COVID-19. Data were collected using an online cross-sectional structured survey of 1242 university students from December 2020 to January 2021. Data were analyzed via independent-sample t-tests, one-way ANOVAs, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, multiple regression, and logistic regression, using SPSS. College life adjustment was significantly correlated with life stress (r = −0.255, p < 0.001), career barriers (r = −0.429, p < 0.001), and career decision-making self-efficacy (r = 0.531, p < 0.001). The regression analysis showed that career barriers, career decision-making self-efficacy, and grade level had a total explanatory power of 33.7% for college life adaptation. The logistic regression analysis showed that the odds ratio (OR) of career barriers being low in the group with a high college life adaptation score was 2.045 (p < 0.001), and the OR of career decision-making self-efficacy being high was 4.107 (p < 0.001), as compared to the group with a low score. To increase college students’ adaptation to college life, career support programs that improve career barriers and career decision-making self-efficacy should be developed.
The effect of a games-based intervention on wellbeing in adolescent girls

Objective: To examine the impact of a self-determination theory-informed school-based lunchtime games intervention on wellbeing and symptoms of anxiety and depression among adolescent girls in Ireland. Design: Non-randomised controlled intervention design. Method: This self-determination theory-informed intervention consisted of lunchtime games for girls aged 13 ± 0.7 years, 3 days a week. After a 2-week ‘sampling’ period, students self-selected to 0, 1, 2 or 3 days of lunchtime games. Intervention and control groups were compared by pre- and post-testing. Participants were included in the intervention design via a survey to ascertain the most popular games and activities at the outset. Results: Participating in games twice a week led to significant decreases (p < .01) in symptoms of anxiety and depression while the control group showed significant increases (p < .01) in symptoms of anxiety and depression. Mental wellbeing significantly (p < .01) increased among those who participated two and three times a week. Increases in mental wellbeing were similar in effect size to increases in self-efficacy. Conclusion: Higher frequencies of physical activity led to increased mental health. Self-efficacy may act as an underlying mechanism for increases in mental health through physical activity.