Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SCL-MLNet: Boosting Few-Shot Remote Sensing Scene Classification via Self-Supervised Contrastive Learning

Few-shot classification aims at recognizing novel categories from low data regimes based on prior knowledge. However, the existing methods for few-shot scene classification have limitations on using few annotated data and do not fully consider the intra-class samples with classification targets in different sizes, which lead to poor feature representation. To address these problems, this study introduces an end-to-end framework called self-supervised contrastive learning-based metric learning network (SCL-MLNet) for few-shot remote sensing (RS) scene classification. On one hand, we weave self-supervised contrastive learning into few-shot classification algorithms through multi-task learning, enabling feature extractors to learn representative image features from few annotated samples. Moreover, we devise a new loss function to train the proposed model end-to-end and speed up the convergence of the model. On the other hand, considering the differences between intra-class samples, we introduce a novel attention module embedded in the feature extractor to fuse multi-scale spatial features from the classification targets in different sizes. In our experiments, SCL-MLNet is evaluated on three public benchmark datasets. The results demonstrate that SCL-MLNet achieves state-of-the-art performance for few-shot remote sensing scene classification.
Utilisation of Mining Waste from the Steel Industry, Ladle Furnace Slags, as a Filler in Bituminous Mixtures of Continuous Grading

Road construction is an activity that involves a large consumption of raw materials, with the consequent high environmental impact. For this reason, various research projects are being developed in which waste is used as a raw material for bituminous mixtures. This avoids the extraction of raw materials, reduces the environmental impact and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. In this research, the incorporation of ladle furnace slag as a filler for continuous grading bituminous mixtures was evaluated. Firstly, the ladle furnace slag was chemically and physically characterised and its suitability for use as a filler was determined in accordance with the regulations. Subsequently, bituminous mixtures were conformed with the slag and also with commercial fillers, calcareous and hornfels, in order to compare the results. Finally, the physical properties, Marshall stability and the effect of water were determined with the immersion–compression test on all families of samples. The results showed that the mixes conformed with ladle furnace slag had higher Marshall stability, less variation due to the effect of water and acceptable physical properties. Consequently, the suitability of utilisation of these slags in bituminous mixtures could be confirmed.
Computing the Similarity Estimate Using Approximate Memory

In many computing applications there is a need to compute the similarity of sets of elements. When the sets have many elements or comparison involves many sets, computing the similarity requires significant computational effort and storage capacity. As in most cases, a reasonably accurate estimate is sufficient, many algorithms for similarity estimation have been proposed during the last decades. Those algorithms compute signatures for the sets and use them to estimate similarity. However, as the number of sets that need to be compared grows, even these similarity estimation algorithms require significant memory with its associated power dissipation. This article for the first time considers the use of approximate memories for similarity estimation. A theoretical analysis and simulation results are provided; initially it is shown that similarity sketches can tolerate large bit error rates and thus, they can benefit from using approximate memories without substantially compromising the accuracy of the similarity estimate. An understanding of the effect of errors in the stored signatures on the similarity estimate is pursued. A scheme to mitigate the impact of errors is presented; the proposed scheme tolerates even larger bit error rates and does not need additional memory. For example, bit error rates of up to <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$10^{-4}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:msup><mml:mn>10</mml:mn><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="reviriego-ieq1-3109559.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> have less than a 1% impact on the accuracy of the estimate when the memory is unprotected, and larger bit errors rates can be tolerated if the memory is parity protected. These findings can be used for voltage supply scaling and increasing the refresh time in SRAMs and DRAMs. Based on those initial results, an enhanced implementation is further proposed for unprotected memories that further extends the range of tolerated BERs and enables power savings of up to 61.31% for SRAMs. In conclusion, this article shows that the use of approximate memories in sketches for similarity estimation provides significant benefits with a negligible impact on accuracy.
Updating the Marketing Research Course to Prepare the Marketing Generalist

This exploratory research suggests that undergraduate marketing research textbooks and courses have not kept pace with the changes in the marketing research world over the past two decades. Two studies, one a review of marketing research syllabi and another a content analysis of online job postings, explore this phenomenon. The results imply that, in contrast to the historical context of marketing research course, most advertised entry-level marketing jobs requiring marketing research skills are not in marketing research firms. Indeed, contemporary marketing research is more likely a function embedded within an array of generalist job duties that also require soft skills and the ability to analyze and present data to upper management. As a result of this research, educators should have a heightened awareness of the following: (a) the disconnect between the marketing research curriculum and current industry needs, (b) the changing role of marketing research as diffused throughout the organization, and (c) the broader set of skills and techniques required of entry-level marketing graduates. As a possible solution to these issues, this research proposes an integrated model whereby instructors can help their students navigate the current landscape by choosing an appropriate pedagogical path to assist students in their career goals.
Prevalence of Opioid Side Effects in Patients with Protocolized Analgesia for the Management of Acute Postoperative Pain

Acute Postoperative Pain is the main model of acute pain that results from nociceptive stimulation, the result of direct and indirect aggression of a surgical act. 70% of postsurgical patients suffer moderate pain, and 30% severe. Opioids are indicated to manage moderate to severe pain, their use triggers gastrointestinal, respiratory, urinary among other side effects. The WHO considers a side effect or adverse reaction of a drug to the expected and harmful reactions of pharmacological agents. Objective: To know the prevalence of opioid side effects in postoperative patients who received protocolized analgesia. Material and methods: Descriptive, observational, cross-sectional, retrospective study of patients who received protocolized analgesia with opioids from March - September 2018, at the “Specialty Hospital National Medical Center XXI Century”. The study variables were demographic data, side effects (nausea, vomiting, constipation, pruritus, sedation, etc.). For the analysis of results, the SPSS version 22 program was used. Results: 320 records of patients who received opioid analgesia were included. The prevalence of side effects was 47% (140 patients). The opioids that are related to side effects were: intravenous morphine (nausea 17.8%, vomiting 16.4%), intravenous buprenorphine (sedation 7.1%), no case of respiratory depression. Conclusions: The prevalence of side effects in patients who received opioids for Acute Postoperative Pain was lower than that reported in other studies, possibly the anticipated use of antiemetics, and decreased analgesic doses of opioids.
Perioperative Use of Intravenous Magnesium Sulfate to Decrease Postoperative Pain

Anesthesia providers currently use non-opioid medications in the effort to decrease opioid use. In a randomized controlled trial in 1996, it was first discovered that magnesium sulfate decreased postoperative pain. Further studies from 2013 until 2018 compared intravenous magnesium sulfate versus placebo to decrease postoperative pain. These included five systematic reviews, seven randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and one review article which included 5,858 patients. The data gained from these articles was condensed into information for anesthesia providers so they would be able to safely utilize magnesium sulfate to decrease postoperative pain, which could lead to decreased opioid utilization.
Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome and its Components in Kanifing Municipality, The Gambia

Background: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a complex syndrome with clustering of interrelated risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Its rising worldwide prevalence has been largely related to the increasing obesity. In The Gambia, the last and only time a MetS related study was conducted, and then reported, was 21 years. Therefore, there is need for evaluating the prevalence of MetS and its components in the country. Objective: This study was aimed to evaluate the prevalence of MetS and its individual components in Kanifing Municipality (KM). Methods: It was a cross-sectional study conducted at Kanifing General Hospital, Kanifing Municipality. Data obtained from each participants included anthropometric indices, blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, triglyceride and high-density lipoprotein levels, and clinical information. Results: One hundred and thirty-six participants were included in the analysis. The overall MetS prevalence was 54.4% with significant female predominance (female, 58%; male, 29.4%; P=0.025). The most predominant component among the study population was central obesity (raised WC) (72.8%). Hypertriglyceridemia was found to be the strongest predictor of MetS among our participants (OR: 118.13; 95% CI: 33.79-412.77; P < 0.001). Conclusion: Our study discloses a very high prevalence of MetS among the participants, and a significant female predominance, with central obesity the commonest Mets component. The results suggest that hypertriglyceridemia is the strongest predictor of metabolic syndrome in our study participants.
High investor sentiment and initial engagement discounts: evidence from Korea

ABSTRACT This study examines whether high sentiment affects auditors’ risk assessment in a less litigious environment. Specifically, we use a Korean setting with relatively low litigation risks and investigate whether audit fees are lower when firms change auditors during high sentiment times. Lower audit fees responding to high sentiment in a weak legal environment may indicate that auditors perceive the overall audit risk including reputation risk and regulation risk as low within the given period, increasing the possibility of their failure to detect managerial opportunistic behaviour. Using 17,469 Korean public firm-year observations from 2003 to 2017, we find that initial audit fees are significantly lower when investor sentiment is high, while changing auditors has no influence on audit fees when investor sentiment is low. Furthermore, this result is maintained even when auditors are changed to Big4 or industry specialist auditors (SPEC), which are known to have high ability and risk sensitivity. We also find that Big4 and SPEC initial auditors input significantly less audit hours during high investor sentiment periods, suggesting that optimistic bias caused by high sentiment makes auditors expect that relaxed audits are tolerable regardless of the legal environment.
Prevalence and Causative Organisms of Asymptomatic Bacteriuria among Pregnant Women in Karachi, Pakistan

Introduction: During pregnancy, urinary tract experiences various anatomical as well as physiological changes which lead to the development of urinary tract infections. Of these, asymptomatic bacteriuria is prevalent during pregnancy and the adverse outcomes could include intrauterine growth retardation, pyelonephritis, preterm delivery, low birth weight, hypertension, and anaemia. Hence, screening for asymptomatic bacteriuria should be included in antenatal care. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria and the frequency of different organisms causing asymptomatic bacteriuria among pregnant women attending the outpatient department at Dow University Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in the obstetric outpatient department (OPD) of Dow University Hospital, Karachi for six months. A total of 161 pregnant women with no clinical symptoms of urinary tract infection were included in this study. The method of urine sample collection was explained to all the enrolled participants. After collection, samples were labeled and processed. The result of the urine cultures was available after three days and was entered in the Performa. Participants with positive culture reports were treated according to the antibiotic sensitivity. Results: The prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria among pregnant women was found in 17% (SD=0.61) with maximum prevalence in the age group of ≤25 years among primigravidae. The common organisms responsible for urinary tract infection in asymptomatic pregnant women were Escherichia coli (39.3%), Klebsiella pneumonia (17.9%), Staphylococcus spp. (17.9%) and Enterococcus spp. (14.3%). Conclusions & Recommendations: As asymptomatic bacteriuria is associated with complications in pregnancy; hence it is essential that pregnant women should be screened for bacteriuria, regularly in every trimester of the gestational period.
Examining PERMA+4 and work role performance beyond self-report bias: insights from multitrait-multimethod analyses

ABSTRACT Self-report and monomethod bias threaten the validity of positive work and organizations research. The current study used multitrait-multimethod analyses to examine the relationship between PERMA+4 and work role performance (adaptivity, proactivity, and proficiency) beyond self-report and monomethod bias. Findings from 221 coworker pairs demonstrated convergence between self-reported and collateral-reported PERMA+4 (r > .85) and work role performance (r > .85). A multitrait-multimethod matrix showed that monomethod trait interrelationships were systematically higher than heteromethod trait interrelationships with inflated correlations ranging from . 07 to . 20. Monomethod parameter estimates and coefficients of determination were generally higher than in bias corrected self-reports, knowledgeable collateral-reports, and heteromethod parameter estimates. The results provide support for the validity of the relationship between PERMA+4 and work role performance, but also suggest the importance of including procedural design and statistical control methods in positive work and organizations surveys to correct for self-report and monomethod bias.
Subjective age and attitudes toward own aging across two decades of historical time.

A large body of empirical evidence has accumulated showing that the experience of old age is "younger," more "agentic," and "happier" than ever before. However, it is not yet known whether historical improvements in well-being, control beliefs, cognitive functioning, and other outcomes generalize to individuals' views on their own aging process. To examine historical changes in such views on aging, we compared matched cohorts of older adults within two independent studies that assessed differences across a two-decade interval, the Berlin Aging Studies (BASE; 1990/1993 vs. 2017/2018, each n = 256, Mage = 77) and the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS; 1995/1996 vs. 2013/14, each n = 848, Mage = 67). Consistent across four different dimensions of individuals' subjective views on aging (age felt, age appeared, desired age, and attitudes toward own aging) in the BASE and corroborated with subjective age felt and subjective age desired in the MIDUS, there was no evidence whatsoever that older adults of today have more favorable views on how they age than older adults did two decades ago. Further, heterogeneity in views on aging increased across two decades in the MIDUS but decreased in BASE. Also consistent across studies, associations of views on aging with sociodemographic, health, cognitive, and psychosocial correlates did not change across historical times. We discuss possible reasons for our findings, including the possibility that individual age views may have become increasingly decoupled from societal age views. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Sex estimation by the patterns of lip impressions (cheiloscopy)

Aim: To determine whether there is sexual dimorphism of lip prints’ morphological features in the Croatian population and to provide a scoping review for the accuracy of sex estimation on lip prints. Methods: The study on the Croatian population included 88 male and 88 female (median age 25, range 18 - 50) participants. Lip prints were analyzed by quadrant, and then the predominant pattern on the entire lip was observed. A systematic search of the relevant bibliographical databases was conducted, including Medline, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), and Cinahl (October 23rd, 2020). OpenGrey, Open Science Framework, and Science.gov databases were searched for grey literature. Findings were reported in the narrative form in accordance with the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist. A total of 80 studies were included. Results: The study of sexual dimorphism of lip prints in the Croatian population showed that there were no statistically significant differences between males and females; and when all quadrants were considered together (χ2 = 3.625, P = 0.459), sex could be estimated for only 55.7% of persons. Twenty-nine studies (36.3%) did not find differences between males and females, and 34 (42.5%) found sexual dimorphism only in some of the lip parts and some quadrants. The assessment of examined studies showed that only six studies met all quality criteria. Conclusion: There is no forensically significant sexual dimorphism in lip prints in the Croatian population. The scoping review showed that sex estimation using lip prints should not be used as evidence in court as the present methodology is not reliable and the potential rate of error is unknown.
A Deep Learning Based Object Identification System for Forest Fire Detection

Forest fires are still a large concern in several countries due to the social, environmental and economic damages caused. This paper aims to show the design and validation of a proposed system for the classification of smoke columns with object detection and a deep learning-based approach. This approach is able to detect smoke columns visible below or above the horizon. During the dataset labelling, the smoke object was divided into three different classes, depending on its distance to the horizon, a cloud object was also added, along with images without annotations. A comparison between the use of RetinaNet and Faster R-CNN was also performed. Using an independent test set, an F1-score around 80%, a G-mean around 80% and a detection rate around 90% were achieved by the two best models: both were trained with the dataset labelled with three different smoke classes and with augmentation; Faster R-CNNN was the model architecture, re-trained during the same iterations but following different learning rate schedules. Finally, these models were tested in 24 smoke sequences of the public HPWREN dataset, with 6.3 min as the average time elapsed from the start of the fire compared to the first detection of a smoke column.
Education and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Lessons from COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted educators to rethink educational practices, especially with regard to technology. The COVID-19 pandemic is a huge challenge to education systems around the world. This Viewpoint offers guidance to teachers, institutional heads, and officials on addressing the crisis. This study investigated technology use in teaching during the COVID-19 lockdown in Malaysia, focusing on technology-based teaching methods, modifications necessitated by this new teaching style, and challenges teachers faced when using technology. Using purposive sampling, a qualitative study was undertaken with a sample of 10 English language teachers from Arabic schools in Malaysia. The results indicated that a digital leap occurred in education during the COVID-19 lockdown because teachers had to quickly adapt to a more technology-based teaching style. The challenges teachers faced included managing virtual classes, ensuring reliable Internet connections, overcoming a lack of preparedness and low digital competence, and dealing with students' mental health. Such changes in teaching methods have created new roles for teachers while also increasing their acceptance of e-learning and remote learning. The contribution of this research is to provide a holistic picture of remote education activities during the pandemic period to establish a linkage between the online teaching-learning process during the COVID-19 outbreak as to ensure the resumption of teaching-learning education as a normal course of procedure in the education system. Despite the human suffering brought by the pandemic, the new norms of education during COVID-19 generally have some pockets of excellence to drive the education into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. © 2021 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.
Impact of Cognitive Tasks on Scholastic Achievement among 14 Year Old Students

Educational process is complete when the objectives are met, and with this purpose, teachers select instructional methods, media and evaluation. The study was conducted on a sample of 493 students who were 14 years of age. The sample was selected from private schools of Punjab and Chandigarh. They were divided into experimental and control groups. During the programme, five assessments were conducted on all the respondents but the worksheets were given only to the subjects in experimental group. The entire programme was taken up in around 12 months. Eventually, it was found that owing to the personalized instructions system to teach students in experimental group, there was witnessed significant soar in their cognitive abilities and academic achievement. In contrast, insignificant changes were witnessed among their control group counterparts after the intervention programme.