Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual Definition Modeling: Challenging Vision & Language Models to Define Words and Objects

Architectures that model language and vision together havereceived much attention in recent years. Nonetheless, most tasks in this field focus on end-to-end applications without providing insights on whether it is the underlying semantics of visual objects or words that is captured. In this paper we draw on the established Definition Modeling paradigm and enhance it by grounding, for the first time, textual definitions to visual representations. We name this new task Visual Definition Modeling and put forward DEMETER and DIONYSUS, two benchmarks where, given an image as context, models have to generate a textual definition for a target being either i) a word that describes the image, or ii) an object patch therein. To measure the difficulty of our tasks we finetuned six different baselines and analyzed their performances, which show that a text-only encoder-decoder model is more effective than models pretrained for handling inputs of both modalities concurrently. This demonstrates the complexity of our benchmarks and encourages more research on text generation conditioned on multimodal inputs. The datasets for both benchmarks are available at https://github.com/SapienzaNLP/visual-definition-modeling as well as the code to reproduce our models.
Comparative Study of Efficacy and Safety of Tamsulosin plus Tadalafil Combination Therapy versus Tamsulosin Monotherapy as Medical Expulsive Therapy of Ureteric Stone

Introduction: If surgical intervention is not indicated, current international guidelines and evidences recommend medical expulsive therapy (MET) involving the administration of drugs to improve spontaneous stone passage. Medical expulsive therapy has now become an established modality of treatment, and employs the use of various drugs that act on the ureter with different mechanisms. It is hypothesised that elevation of cyclic guanosine monophosphate in ureteral smooth muscle by phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) inhibitors may result in ureteral relaxation and increased stone clearance. Aims/ objective: To investigate whether we can achieve better ureteric relaxation and reduction in intramural pressure in order to facilitate stone passage by tamsulosin plus tadalafil combination therapy. Materials and Method: Stone expulsion rate of tamsulosin + tadalafil when compared to tamsulosin was our primary endpoint. (Assessed by subjective response and confirmed by repeat plain X ray abdomen and if needed CT scan abdomen). The efficacy of the individual drugs was analysed and compared with the help of Pearson chi square test. p value <0.05 were considered as statistically significant. Results: 33 patients (66%) receiving tamsulosin and 43 patients (86%) receiving combination therapy showed positive outcome (expulsion of stones). So, tamsulosin plus tadalafil combination therapy had significantly better efficacy. In tamsulosin group 30 patients among 33 (90.9%) expelled the stone in less than 5 days. In tamsulosin plus tadalafil group, 37 patients among 43 (86%) expelled in less than 5 days. But the difference was not statistically significant. Both drugs were well tolerated by the study patients. Conclusion: Tamsulosin plus tadalafil is more efficacious, and well tolerated as medical expulsive therapy for distal ureteric stones compared to tamsulosin. Medical expulsive therapy also doesn’t carry post-operative morbidities as compared to surgical methods.
Observations of the incipient and penultimate stages of Holocene marine terrace development

Flights of Holocene marine terraces are useful for reconstructing past earthquakes, but coastal erosion can remove terraces from the landscape, potentially leading to incorrect estimates of earthquake magnitude and frequency. Relatively little effort has been afforded to studying terrace erosion processes, and this paper presents the first field evidence that we are aware of documenting terrace erosion rates. Two case studies from New Zealand provide a unique opportunity to observe the beginning and end phases of terrace development. We present downwear and backwear erosion measurements, showing that both sets of processes are important. Micro‐erosion meter measurements from Kaikōura Peninsula, South Island, confirm that downwear processes are modifying new marine terraces that were created when the peninsula was uplifted about 1 m during the 2016 earthquake. Erosion rates were high immediately following uplift as the relatively barren intertidal rock shore platform rapidly transformed into an incipient marine terrace with cover deposits. However, the Kaikōura earthquake uplifted shore platforms only a small distance above the upper tidal limit and ongoing downwear and backwear erosion may begin to remove parts of this terrace in future decades. We explored this prospect with a case study at Māhia Peninsula, North Island, where 100–300 years have elapsed since the last terrace‐forming earthquake. Historical photographs were used to document about 80 years of backwear erosion. Terrace erosion rates have been nearly constant through this period, and extrapolation implies that the terrace will be removed in places by 2030. The erosion data in this paper provide new insights into how terraces can be removed from the landscape, but there are many complicating factors. To help understand these factors we present a new conceptual model of marine terrace creation and destruction for soft‐rock coasts.
Full-Length Transcriptome Sequencing Reveals Alternative Splicing and lncRNA Regulation during Nodule Development in Glycine max

Alternative splicing (AS) is a ubiquitous phenomenon among eukaryotic intron-containing genes, which greatly contributes to transcriptome and proteome diversity. Here we performed the isoform sequencing (Iso-Seq) of soybean underground tissues inoculated and uninoculated with Rhizobium and obtained 200,681 full-length transcripts covering 26,183 gene loci. It was found that 80.78% of the multi-exon loci produced more than one splicing variant. Comprehensive analysis of these identified 7874 differentially splicing events with highly diverse splicing patterns during nodule development, especially in defense and transport-related processes. We further profiled genes with differential isoform usage and revealed that 2008 multi-isoform loci underwent stage-specific or simultaneous major isoform switches after Rhizobium inoculation, indicating that AS is a vital way to regulate nodule development. Moreover, we took the lead in identifying 1563 high-confidence long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in soybean, and 157 of them are differentially expressed during nodule development. Therefore, our study uncovers the landscape of AS during the soybean-Rhizobium interaction and provides systematic transcriptomic data for future study of multiple novel directions in soybean.
Safety of frozen and freeze‐dried formulations of the lesser mealworm (Alphitobius diaperinus larva) as a Novel food pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2015/2283

Abstract Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens (NDA) was asked to deliver an opinion on frozen and dried formulations from whole lesser mealworm (Alphitobius diaperinus larva) as a novel food (NF) pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2015/2283. The term lesser mealworm refers to the larval form of the insect species Alphitobius diaperinus. The NF comprises the frozen and freeze‐dried formulations of the lesser mealworm as whole or in the form of a paste or powder. Apart from water in the frozen formulations (whole, paste), the main components of the NF are crude protein and fat, besides smaller amounts of digestible carbohydrates and fibre (chitin). The Panel notes that the levels of contaminants in the NF depend on the concentration of such substances in the insect feed. The Panel notes furthermore that the true protein levels in the NF are overestimated when using the nitrogen‐to‐protein conversion factor of 6.25, due to the presence of non‐protein nitrogen from chitin. The applicant proposed to use the NF formulations added as an ingredient to various food products such as cereal bars, pasta, meat imitates and bakery products. The target population is the general population. Additionally, the applicant proposed to use the NF as a food supplement in adults. The Panel notes that, considering that the NF will not be the sole source of dietary protein, and the composition of the NF and the proposed conditions of use, the consumption of the NF is not nutritionally disadvantageous. The submitted subchronic 90‐day toxicity study with the NF as testing material did not raise safety concerns. The Panel considers that the consumption of the NF may induce primary sensitisation and allergic reactions to lesser mealworm proteins and may cause allergic reactions in subjects with allergy to crustaceans and dust mites. Additionally, allergens from the feed may end up in the NF. Allergenicity aside, the Panel concludes that the NF is safe under the proposed uses and use levels.
Gambaran Determinan Resiliensi pada Remaja yang Mengalami Kehamilan di Luar Nikah: Studi Kasus

Remaja yang mengalami kehamilan di luar nikah rentan mengalami dampak negatif dari sisi sosial maupun kesehatan fisik, hal tersebut dapat memicu aborsi, depresi dan kecemasan. Walaupun begitu tidak semua remaja mengalami hal tersebut karena adanya resiliensi. Oleh karena itu, peneliti ingin mengetahui gambaran pada remaja yang resilien terkait kondisi yang hamil di luar nikah. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kualitatif dengan metode studi kasus, dikumpulkan dengan wawancara semi terstruktur dan didukung oleh dokumen dari LSM. Data kemudian dianalisis dengan analisis tematik menurut model resiliensi remaja dari Rew dan Horner (2003). Hasil menunjukkan bahwa remaja memiliki faktor protektif dan faktor resiko yang berinteraksi sehingga mampu membentuk resiliensi serta perilaku yang adaptif.
Effect of lice Linognathus Vituli on the effectiveness of liver enzymes for sheep in Salah al-Din province

The current study was conducted to find out the extent of the spread of lice Linognathus Vituli on sheep in Salah El-Din Governorate for the period from 1/10/2021 to 1/4/ 2022, and its aim is to assess the impact of sheep lice infestation on liver enzymes. The present results showed on the effect of sheep lice infestation on some physiological parameters, and the result of the study showed an increase in the levels of both aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and a decrease in the level of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) was noted at a significant level P≤ 0.05 compared to control group.
Change and stability in the tonal contours of King Rama IX of Thailand, 1959-1997

Studies of change across the lifespan have enabled a more nuanced understanding of segmental sound change, but this method has hardly ever been used in tone change research. This study, one of the first longitudinal studies of tone, investigates the tonal contours of King Rama IX of Thailand across a 38-year period (1959-1997). During the 20 th century, Thai Tone 3 (“Falling”) changed from mid-falling to high-falling. The study examines whether King Rama IX’s T3 pronunciation changed during the period of investigation, and if so, whether the change was in the same direction as the community trend. The data consist of 16 recordings of the King’s commencement speeches at Chulalongkorn University. F0 was extracted from 1317 T3 tokens and fitted to a cubic polynomial function. Linear mixed model results and post-hoc analysis of estimated marginal means indicate a period of change followed by stability: T3’s F0 onset raised and the slope became steeper between the 1960’s and the 1980’s (in line with community trends), but not between the 1980’s and 1990’s. These findings align with previous research showing that adults have the potential to change in the post-adolescent period, but they also may resist change when that aligns with their identity.
LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING DURING EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: ARE LEARNERS REALLY ENGAGED?

This study analyzed the students’ engagement in emergency remote teaching (ERT) environment as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The subjects were 49 business-majored students at a university in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. The research was drawn upon Moore’s interaction framework with the adoption of a 5-Likert scale questionnaire to examine learner-content, learner-learner and learner-instructor engagement. Open-ended questions at the end of the survey and videos synchronous classroom observations from four lessons provided insights into students’ perceptions and behaviors. The quantitative result reveals learner-instructor engagement to be the strongest among the three categories, and the lack of interaction with their peers was the most frequently observed and reported. The fundamental cause lies in the loss and lack of human interactions. The engagement of both learner-learner and learner-instructor were dwarfed by superficial interaction in synchronous learning platforms. The paper ends with some recommendations to increase students’ learning engagement in the uncertain times of ERT.
Perampanel as First Add-On Therapy in Patients with Focal-Onset Seizures in the FAME Trial: Post hoc Analyses of Efficacy and Safety Related to Maintenance Dose and Background Antiepileptic Drug Therapy

Background and Purpose FAME (Fycompa® as first Add-on to Monotherapy in patients with Epilepsy; NCT02726074), a previously reported single-arm, phase IV study, showed that perampanel improved seizure control as first add-on to failed anti-seizure medication (ASM) monotherapy in 85 South Korean patients aged ≥12 years with focal-onset seizures (FOS) with/without focal to bilateral tonic-clonic seizures. We present results of three post hoc analyses of FAME that further assessed the efficacy and safety of perampanel. Methods Patients were stratified by low- (4, 6 mg/day) versus high- (8, 10, 12 mg/day) dose maintenance perampanel, perampanel added to first- versus second-line ASM monotherapy, and concomitant background ASM monotherapy and perampanel dose. The primary endpoint was the proportion of patients with a ≥50% reduction in total seizure frequency during the 24-week maintenance period. Safety was assessed by the descriptive incidence of treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs). Results In post hoc analyses, 50% responder rates were significantly higher for low- versus high-dose maintenance perampanel (88.6% vs. 40.0%; p<0.001) and when added to first- versus second-line ASM monotherapy (83.5% vs. 33.3%; p=0.013). By concomitant background ASM and perampanel maintenance dose, 50% responder rates were 100% for perampanel 4 mg/day added to carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, lamotrigine, or valproic acid, and 85% when added to levetiracetam. Add-on perampanel improved 75% and seizure-free responder rates, and median percent changes from baseline seizure frequency per 28 days. Perampanel was well tolerated when added to ASM monotherapy, with dizziness being the most common TEAE. Conclusions Post hoc analyses of FAME provide supportive data for the use of perampanel as an effective and well-tolerated first add-on treatment to a broad spectrum of ASM monotherapies in patients with FOS.
STUDENTS' DESCRIPTIVE WRITING PERFORMANCES IN ONLINE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

ABSTRACTDuring the Covid-19 situation, the online classroom activities assist teachers and students in achieving the learning objectives. The objectives of this study were to know students' performances and obstacles in the online descriptive writing English language classroom. The qualitative method was used as the research design. The data were collected through open-ended questionnaires, semi-interviews, and documents. The study involved one teacher and 30 students in senior high school through purposive sampling. The results indicated that students' performances were mostly good in the online descriptive writing learning activities following their high motivation and great attitude to participate in the online classroom. However, some problems persisted, such as a lack of vocabulary and confusion in generic structure text and grammatical use. In addition, the internet connection has become the main problem supporting students' performance during online classroom activities. Hence, adding more supporting and proper activities that can be applied online is needed. ABSTRAKSelama Covid-19, kegiatan kelas online membantu guru dan siswa untuk mencapai tujuan pembelajaran. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui kinerja siswa dan hambatan dalam menulis deskriptif online kelas bahasa Inggris. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode kualitatif. Pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui angket terbuka, semi wawancara, dan dokumen. Penelitian ini melibatkan satu orang guru dan 30 siswa SMA melalui purposive sampling. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kinerja siswa sebagian besar baik dalam kegiatan pembelajaran menulis deskriptif online karena motivasi tinggi dan sikap mereka yang baik untuk berpartisipasi dalam kelas online. Namun, beberapa masalah masih tetap ada seperti kurangnya kosa kata dan kebingungan dalam memahami struktur teks umum dan penggunaan tata bahasa. Selain itu, koneksi internet menjadi kendala utama untuk menunjang kinerja siswa selama kegiatan kelas online. Oleh karena itu, sangat penting untuk menambah lebih banyak kegiatan yang mendukung dan tepat yang dapat diterapkan melalui online sangat diperlukan.
Improved Semisupervised UNet Deep Learning Model for Forest Height Mapping With Satellite SAR and Optical Data

In this study, we introduce an improved semisupervised deep learning approach, and demonstrate its suitability for modeling the relationship between forest structural parameters and satellite remote sensing imagery and producing forest maps. The improved approach is based on a popular UNet model, modified and fine-tuned to improve the forest parameter prediction performance. Within the improved model, squeeze-and-excitation blocks are embedded to recalibrate the multisource features via retrieved channel-wise self-attention and a novel cross-pseudo regression strategy is implemented to train the model in a semisupervised way. The improvement imposes consistency learning on two perturbed network branches: 1) generating regression pseudo-reference; 2) expanding the dataset size. For demonstration, we used satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) Sentinel-1 and multispectral optical Sentinel-2 images as remote sensing data, complemented with reference data represented by forest tree height as one of the key forest structural variables. The study area is located in a boreal forestland in Central Finland. Proposed approach showed larger accuracy compared to traditional machine learning methods such as random forests and boosting trees, and baseline UNet model. Best accuracy figures for forest tree height were achieved with combined SAR and optical imagery and were as small as 24.1% root-mean-square error (RMSE) on pixel-level and 15.4% RMSE on forest stand level.
Hyperbolic Embedding of Attributed and Directed Networks

Network embedding – finding a low dimensional representation of the nodes with attributes in a hierarchical, directed network remains a challenging problem in the machine learning community. An emerging approach is to embed complex networks – networks of real-world systems – into hyperbolic space due to the fact that hyperbolic space can better naturally represent such a network's hierarchical structure. Existing hyperbolic embedding approaches, however, cannot handle the embedding of attributed directed networks to an arbitrary embedding dimension. To fill this gap, we introduce HEADNet, for Hyperbolic Embedding of Attributed Directed Networks, an algorithm based on extending previous works for embedding directed attributed networks to Gaussian distributions in hyperbolic space of arbitrary dimension. Through experimentation on a variety of both synthetic and real-world networks, we show that HEADNet can achieve competitive performance on common downstream machine learning tasks, including predicting directed links for previously unseen nodes. HEADNet provides an inductive hyperbolic embedding method for directed attributed networks, which opens the door to hyperbolic manifold learning on a wider range of real-world networks. The source code is freely available at https://github.com/DavidMcDonald1993/HEADNET.
Toward Robust Stress Prediction in the Age of Wearables: Modeling Perceived Stress in a Longitudinal Study With Information Workers

Given the widespread adverse outcomes of stress – exacerbated by the current pandemic – wearable sensing provides unique opportunities for automated stress tracking to inform well-being interventions. However, its success in the wild and at scale depends on the robustness and validity of automated stress inference, which is limited in current systems. In this work, we enumerate the properties of robustness and validity necessary for achieving viable automated stress inference using wearable sensors, and we underscore present challenges to constructing and evaluating these systems. Using these criteria as guiding principles, we present automated stress inference results from a large (N=606) in situ longitudinal wearable and contextual sensing study of information workers. Using a multimodal approach encompassing a wearable sensor, relative location tracking, smartphone usage, and environmental sensing, we trained regression models to predict daily self-reported perceived stress in a participant-independent fashion. Our models significantly outperformed baseline variants with shuffled stress scores and were consistent with small-to-moderate effects. Our findings highlight the performance disparity between robust and valid approaches to automated perceived stress inference and current approaches and suggest that further performance gains might require additional sensing modalities and enhanced contextual awareness than existing approaches.
Social skills training in the promotion of effective coping: A pilot trial

This research aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a Social Skills Training (SST) in increasing social skills, reducing stress levels, and developing effective coping of eight female undergraduate Psychology students. The participants were recruited through a form sent on social media and telephone contact and were voluntarily submitted to the intervention at the university in which they studied. The intervention, analogous to a quasi-experiment, had pre-and posttest evaluations without a control group, using the instruments Social Skills Inventory 2 (IHS2-Del-Prette), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14), Folkman and Lazarus’ Coping Strategies Inventory, interviews, and a field diary. The results indicated stress reduction, acquisition of social skills, and enhancement of problem-solving strategies. Further studies regarding the evaluation of the SST’s efficacy in a larger and more heterogeneous sample of university students would be worthwhile.
SURVEY OF OLDER ROAD USERS: BEHAVIOURAL AND TRAVEL ISSUES

A study was undertaken of attitudes, habits and perceptions on a range ofroad user safety issues for older people in Australia. The study involved a literature review, a one-day workshop of older road users, and a survey of 1600 young and old drivers and pedestrians in a number of shopping centres. This paper presents the results of the study, giving details of the attitudes, behaviour and problems facing older pedestrians and drivers.A number of areas requiring intervention and additional research were identified to help reduce road trauma for older people in the years ahead. The study was sponsored by the NRMA ACT Road Safety Trust