Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Circular economy in the wine chain production: maturity, challenges, and lessons from an emerging economy perspective

Abstract The purpose of this study is to analyze how the maturity stages of the adoption of circular economy practices are related to the circular economy business models. The study highlights a case study in which original datasets were collected through an in-depth interview within 10 analysis units and secondary sources. The case study examines the Santa Catarina Association of Fine Wine Producers of Height (ACAVITIS), a group that includes 28 associates. The relationship identified between the maturity stages and the practices of circular economy provides evidence that will fulfil the premises of the ReSOLVE Model and the 5Rs. Contributions/value: These evidences contribute to highlight the following contributions of the study: (i) circular economy has relation with stages of maturity of the analysed business models; (ii) advanced stages of maturity, that is, between 3 and 5 are interfaced with a variety of practices of circular economy; (iii) duration of the enterprise, level of education and portfolio of manufactured products do not have a strong direct relationship with the engagement with the circular economy; (iv) the practices of circular economy are already established in the analysed units of analysis, but they demand optimisation and management to make them more efficient and that can impact even more positively in the family wine production model. It is suggested that new studies be carried out to confirm and generalize the findings of this research, especially those that test hypotheses evidencing the relationship between circular economy practices and maturity stages of business models.
Effects of processing and storage conditions on the stability of sweet potato (
 Ipomoea batatas
 L.) leaf flavonoids

The effect of heat, high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) treatment, pH, light, temperature and simulated digestion on sweet potato leaf flavonoids (SPLF) stability was studied. Results showed heat treatment at 75 °C for 90 min or HHP treatment at 600 MPa for 30 min did not cause significant effect on SPLF. Heat treatment at 100 °C for 60 min and 90 min led to decrease in antioxidant activity by 20% and 25%, respectively, while pH 7.0 and 8.0 significantly decreased amount of SPLF by approximately 75%, decreased antioxidant activity by about 30% and 47% separately. Light treated samples recorded a decrease in SPLF by 52% and antioxidant activity by 24%. No significant effect on SPLF was observed for samples stored at −18 °C, 4 °C or room temperature. The retention of flavonoids and antioxidant activity was 45.9 ± 3.6% and 56.2 ± 2.6%, individually in SPLF after simulated digestion.
Performance of Shari’ah Based Investment: Evidence From Pakistani Listed Firms

The investment universe of Shariah Compliant (SC) equities is relatively smaller compared to the investment universe of Non-Shari’ah Complaint (NSC) equities due to the imposition of Shari’ah specific filters. Therefore, under the diversification theory, it is argued that portfolios constructed by using SC equities are sub-optimal. To empirically test this notion, the main purpose of this study is to investigate that either the SC portfolios (faith bound investors) forego some part of returns or hedged against market risks while fulfilling their religious obligations. To test the foregoing, we imply simple asset pricing techniques which are in vogue in conventional finance. Firstly, we segregate the firms listed at Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) into SC and NSC stocks. Then, we form two portfolios within each group based on market capitalization and volatility. The purpose is to analyze and compare the performance of these two groups while controlling for firms related characteristics such as size and volatility. The data coverage is from January 2004 until June 2016. Our results indicate that in most of the cases the risk-adjusted returns (alphas) for the returns differential between SC and NCS firms are positive. This is mainly because the SC firms in comparison to their counterparts in PSX, provides excess returns that are hedged against market, size and value based systematic risks factors. Overall, these results reconcile with one prevailing notion that the SC stocks that have lower financial leverage and higher investment in real assets are lesser exposed to market risks. Further, the SC firms that are more capitalized and lesser volatile, perform better than lower capitalized and higher volatile SC and NSC firms. To sum up our results, we do not find any substantial evidence for opportunity loss due to limited diversification opportunities in case of SC firms. This paper highlights that Islamic funds have potential to fulfill the demands of risk averse investors who are also faith bound.
Detection of Tactile Feedback on Touch-screen Devices using EEG Data

Neurohaptics strive to study brain activation associated with haptic interaction (tactile and/or kinesthetic). Understanding the haptic perception and cognition has become an exciting area in the technological, medical and psychophysical research. Neurohaptics has the potential to provide quantitative (objective) evaluation of the user haptic experience by directly measuring brain activities via EEG devices. In this study, we employed a Machine Learning (ML) based classifier model, namely the Radial Based Function Support Vector Machine (RBF-SVM) to select a few relevant Electroencephalography (EEG) channels and to detect the presence of tactile feedback during interaction with touch-screen devices using EEG data. To overcome the problem of limited training data, time-shifting is proposed as a method for data augmentation in time-series neural data which increased the classification accuracy. An experimental setup comprising an active touch task on the Tanvas touch-screen device is designed to evaluate the developed model. Results demonstrated that the middle frontal cortex, namely channels AF3, AF4, and F1 produced the best recognition rate of 85±3.3% in detecting the presence of the tactile feedback. This work is a step forward towards building a quantitative evaluation of tactile experience during haptic interaction.
Role of CIMT, eGFR, and Serum HbA1c in Predicting CAD in Non-Diabetic Patients Undergoing Elective Coronary Angiography

Background: Pre-diabetic state, renal function, atherosclerosis burden are the major predictors for development of coronary artery disease (CAD). Present study aims to analyze the role of carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and serum glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels in predicting CAD on coronary angiography in non-diabetic patients. Methods: CAD and its severity according to SYNTAX score (SX score) was evaluated in 450 non-diabetic patients hospitalized with acute coronary syndrome or stable angina and underwent coronary angiography. CIMT, eGFR, and serum HbA1c values were obtained during admission. Spearman correlation and linear regression were used in the analysis of the data. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was constructed to calculate cutoff values, area under curve (AUC), sensitivity and specificity. Results:Statistically significant positive correlation was observed between HbA1c (r: 0.242, p = 0.001); CIMT (r: 0.231, p = 0.001), patient’s age (r: 0.148, p = 0.002) and SX score, whereas eGFR was negatively correlated (r: -0.148, p = 0.002). On regression analysis, CIMT, eGFR, HbA1c and patient’s age collectively predicted 36% of change in the SYNTAX score. Patient’s age > 56 years (AUC = 0.622), CIMT > 0.86 mm (AUC = 0.642), HbA1c > 6 (AUC = 0.620), eGFR 2 (AUC = 0.601) were the cutoff values on ROC curve analysis. CIMT, HbA1c had relatively high specificity (88.5%, 90.2% respectively) and eGFR had relatively high sensitivity (71.3%) among the studied variables in predicting CAD in present study. Conclusions: CIMT, HbA1c, eGFR and patient’s age at the time of admission predict CAD in non-diabetic patients undergoing coronary angiography.
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) evaluation for an automated ice cream production line

As overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a metric to estimate equipment effectiveness of production systems, the purpose of this paper is to identify strategic management tools and techniques based on OEE assessment of the ice cream production line. ,This paper presents the collection and the analysis of data for ice cream production under real working conditions. The data cover a period of eight months. A framework process to improve the OEE of an automated production system was proposed. Six major stoppage losses, i.e. equipment failure, setup and adjustment, idling and minor stoppage, reduced speed, defects in the process, and reduced yield, were examined with the help of Pareto analysis. In addition, the actual availability (A), performance efficiency (PE) and quality rate (QR) measures, together with the complete OEE for each working day, week and month of the production line were shown. ,The main goal of the study is to identify major stoppage losses, in order to examine and improve the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) of the ice cream production line through the application of an adequate management, i.e. TPM approach. Based on the obtained results, maintenance management strategy and production planning have been suggested to improve their maintenance procedures and the productivity as well. ,The proposed method can be applied to each automated production system. The main benefits of this method are the improvement of productivity, quality enhancement of products, the reduction of sudden breakdowns and the cost of maintenance. Moreover, the analysis provides a useful perspective and helps managers/engineers make better decisions on the operations management of the line, and suggestions for improvement were proposed and will be implemented accordingly.
Association of nutritional anemia with leukocyte and platelet counts in people of Odisha

Background: Anemia is the most common hematological disorder in the world, due to deficiency of micronutrients such as iron, Zn, Se, Cu, folic acid, and vitamins. Iron deficiency impairs immune response and bactericidal activity of macrophages, monocytes, and neutrophils that alters the length and quality of life. Leukocyte count may be altered due to hypoxia and ischemia, which is seen in anemia. A strong association between leukocyte counts and ischemia is seen from the experimental and clinical studies. Aims and Objectives: The present study was aimed to estimate total leukocyte count (TLC) and differential leukocyte count (DLC), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (N/L ratio), and platelet count in anemia. N/L ratio has emerged as a useful index in ischemic heart disease (IHD). Materials and Methods: A total of 30 patients of nutritional anemia in both the sexes were taken as study group, whose hemoglobin level was
A Multicarrier Technique for Monte Carlo Simulation of Electrothermal Transport in Nanoelectronics

The field of microelectronics plays an important role in many areas of engineering and science, being ubiquitous in aerospace, industrial manufacturing, biotechnology, and many other fields. Today, many micro- and nanoscale electronic devices are integrated into one package. e capacity to simulate new devices accurately is critical to the engineering design process, as device engineers use simulations to predict performance characteristics and identify potential issues before fabrication. A problem of particular interest is the simulation of devices which exhibit exotic behaviors due to non-equilibrium thermodynamics and thermal effects such as self-heating. Frequently, it is desirable to predict the level of heat generation, the maximum temperature and its location, and the impact of these thermal effects on the current-voltage (IV) characteristic of a device. is problem is furthermore complicated by nanoscale device dimensions. As the ratio of surface area to volume increases, boundary effects tend to dominate the transfer of energy through a device. Effects such as quantum confinement begin to play a role for nanoscale devices as geometric feature sizes approach the wavelength of the particles involved. Classical approaches to charge transport and heat transfer simulation such as the drift-diffusion approach and Fourier’s law, respectively, do not provide accurate results at these length scales. Instead, the transport processes are governed by the semi-classical Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) with quantum corrections derived from the Schrodinger equation ̈ (SE). In this work, a technique is presented for coupling a 3D phonon Monte Carlo (MC) simulation to an electron multi-subband Monte Carlo (MSBMC) simulation. Both carrier species are first examined separately. An electron MC simulation of bulk silicon, a silicon n-i-n diode, and an intrinsic-channel fin-field effect transistor (FinFET) structure are also presented. A 3D phonon MC algorithm is demonstrated in bulk silicon, a silicon thin film, and a silicon nanoconstriction. These tests verify the correctness of the MC framework. Finally, a novel carrier scattering system which directly accounts for the interaction be- tween the two particle populations inside a nanoscale device is shown. e tool developed supports quantum size effects and is shown to be capable of modeling the exchange of energy between thermal and electronic particle systems in a silicon FinFET.
RNA structure prediction using positive and negative evolutionary information

Knowing the structure of conserved structural RNAs is important to elucidate their function and mechanism of action. However, predicting a conserved RNA structure remains unreliable, even when using a combination of thermodynamic stability and evolutionary covariation information. Here we present a method to predict a conserved RNA structure that combines the following three features. First, it uses significant covariation due to RNA structure and removes spurious covariation due to phylogeny. Second, it uses negative evolutionary information: basepairs that have variation but no significant covariation are prevented from occurring. Lastly, it uses a battery of probabilistic folding algorithms that incorporate all positive covariation into one structure. The method, named CaCoFold (Cascade variation/covariation Constrained Folding algorithm), predicts a nested structure guided by a maximal subset of positive basepairs, and recursively incorporates all remaining positive basepairs into alternative helices. The alternative helices can be compatible with the nested structure such as pseudoknots, or overlapping such as competing structures, base triplets, or other 3D non-antiparallel interactions. We present evidence that CaCoFold predictions are consistent with structures modeled from crystallography. Author Summary The availability of deeper comparative sequence alignments and recent advances in statistical analysis of RNA sequence covariation have made it possible to identify a reliable set of conserved base pairs, as well as a reliable set of non-basepairs (positions that vary without covarying). Predicting an overall consensus secondary structure consistent with a set of individual inferred pairs and non-pairs remains a problem. Current RNA structure prediction algorithms that predict nested secondary structures cannot use the full set of inferred covarying pairs, because covariation analysis also identifies important non-nested pairing interactions such as pseudoknots, base triples, and alternative structures. Moreover, although algorithms for incorporating negative constraints exist, negative information from covariation analysis (inferred non-pairs) has not been systematically exploited. Here I introduce an efficient approximate RNA structure prediction algorithm that incorporates all inferred pairs and excludes all non-pairs. Using this, and an improved visualization tool, I show that the method correctly identifies many non-nested structures in agreement with known crystal structures, and improves many curated consensus secondary structure annotations in RNA sequence alignment databases.
Analysis of subsurface drainage of sloping lands using the homotopy perturbation method

ABSTRACT An analytical model is developed using the homotopy perturbation (HP) method for predicting explicitly the location of water table heights resulting from steady drainage of a homogeneous sloping aquifer overlying a uniformly sloping impervious barrier at a finite distance from the top of the soil. The model assumes the aquifer to receive a steady recharge at its surface, the drains to have equal water level heights in them and the head loss in the vertical direction as negligible. The necessary and a sufficient condition within which the proposed solution is expected to converge are been worked out and also its validity been checked by comparing with the works of others for a few tested situations. The proposed series solution is expected to converge for all hillslope drainage settings so long these drainage layouts respect the necessary and sufficiency conditions of the developed solution. As the existing analytical solutions to the hillslope drainage problem, unlike the present one, do not render a direct determination of the water table profile for such a system, it is hoped that the solution proposed here would relatively be simpler to use in designing subsurface drains in a hillslope aquifer.
Presynaptic Spike-Driven Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity With Address Event Representation for Large-Scale Neuromorphic Systems

Learning plays an important role in the brain to make it adaptive to dynamical environments. This paper presents a presynaptic spike-driven spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) learning rule in the address domain for a neuromorphic architecture using a synaptic connectivity table in an external memory at a local routing node. We contribute two aspects to the implementation of the learning rule for extended large-scale neuromorphic systems. First, we reduced buffer sizes required for tracing a spike train which is required to pair all presynaptic and postsynaptic spike for an STDP time window. This method implements an exponential decay STDP function with two parameters: the latest timestamp and the synaptic modification rate at the latest timestamp. It reduces the required buffer size compared to previous works. Second, we resolve a lack of reverse lookup table issue with the presynaptic spike-driven algorithm. The proposed algorithm holds causal updates at postsynaptic spikes until a next presynaptic spike arrival. This approach removes the need of a reverse lookup table required at a postsynaptic spike. We show the implementation of the proposed algorithm in an FPGA device and validate it with a spiking neural network configuration. The experiment results show the proposed algorithm is comparable qualitatively with a conventional STDP learning rule.
Fatty Liver Haemorrhagic Syndrome (FLHS) in Broilers

Fatty liver haemorrhagic syndrome (FLHS) in poultry is a metabolic disease. An outbreak of fatty liver haemorrhagic syndrome (FLHS) was detected by post mortem examination of broilers in a commercial farm. There was severe loss of production and sudden deaths with moderate mortality. Post mortem of the dead birds were performed and histopathological examination was done as per standard procedure. At necropsy, dead birds had pale combs and wattles with significant liver lesions. The liver was enlarged, friable and greasy, yellowish brown with firm fatty layer deposits and haematoma was noticed in abdominal cavity. Fat vacuoles were seen in liver sections which was also confirmed by special stain. Multiple factors like high dietary energy and stress of production may have precipitated the FLHS in broilers.
End-user practices in equine movement analysis: The potential of objective analysis tools to meet their needs

The use of objective gait analysis tools is becoming increasingly popular in equine research. The advancement of these technologies seeks to promote objective, mobile solutions which can be applied in equine training, monitoring or clinical contexts. This has led to the introduction of various tools in the commercial sphere. However, there has been slow adoption of objective technologies in the applied field. The purpose of this study was to understand existing equine movement analysis processes. We undertook qualitative interviews with industry stakeholders in the elite field to understand what key information they gather through their own, subjective analysis of the horse. We then mapped this information onto the capabilities of existing technologies to see what opportunities exist for user-driven technology solutions in this area. Our study highlights the need for knowledge exchange in the development and deployment of technologies within the equine industry. Commonalities in the important movement features identified by the stakeholders are presented that could be usefully considered and interpreted by future technology developers and researchers with respect to the underpinning biomechanical parameters. Objective technologies designed to capture and integrate these user-based parameters could be developed to augment the current subjective practices in equine analysis and monitoring.
ADMINISTRAÇÃO DE MEDICAMENTOS – CARGA DE TRABALHO DA EQUIPE DE ENFERMAGEM EM UNIDADE DE INTERNAÇÃO CLÍNICA

Objetivos: verificar la cantidad y tipo de medicamentos prescriptos y administrados por auxiliares de enfermeria en unidad de internacion, y discutir sus implicaciones en la carga de trabajo de enfermeria y en la seguridad de los pacientes. Metodo: Estudio transversal exploratorio, realizado en tres unidades de internacion clinica de hospital universitario del sur de Brasil, entre diciembre de 2014 y marzo de 2015. Muestra de 162 escalas de trabajo de pacientes atribuidas a profesionales de enfermeria. Datos recolectados con instrumento especifico, analizados por estadistica descriptiva. Resultados: El numero promedio de dosis prescriptas por turno/auxiliar fue de 60,41 (SD=20,26), y el de administradas, 34,50 (SD=15,64). Fueron identificadas 16 tipos de vias de administracion para los farmacos. Conclusion: El numero y tipo de medicamentos prescriptos y administrados genera implicancias en la carga de trabajo del equipo e incrementan el riesgo de errores.
Changes in student evaluations of a medical ethics class 3 years later

Aims: The present study investigated changes in the student evaluations of a medical ethics class after studying in dental school for an additional 3 years.Materials and Methods: A problem-based learning medical ethics class in which students discuss the “right to death with dignity” using video material as a trigger was offered to third-year students at the School of Dentistry. At the end of the class, each student submitted a report describing their own opinions of the ethical questions raised as well as their impression of the class. Three years later, the same students were surveyed regarding cognitive changes in class evaluations. The changes in class evaluations were statistically analyzed with reference to the contents of the initial report (P < 0.05). Results: Student evaluations of the class rose 3 years later. One reason for the evaluation rise was considered to be the growth in their reflection capacity during additional years of learning experience in the dental school. Students whose report demonstrated that they were engaged by the ethical dilemma tended to raise their evaluation of the class. On the other hand, students who mentioned the difficulty of the task or the shocking images in the video material in their initial report did not raise their evaluation later. Thus, students' perception of the task or setting in the class appeared to have a continuing effect on their evaluation. Conclusion: The results confirmed that student evaluations of a class would change after additional years of learning experience.