Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Connectivity, confidentiality and confidence: Key issues in the provision of online pro bono activities

The provision of pro bono activities for law students has become an established feature of the undergraduate legal education landscape in Law Schools in the United Kingdom (“UK”) and beyond, providing the experiential elements of clinical legal education programmes. Pro bono activities conducted online, or utilising and enhanced by technologies in other ways (for example, through the development of a mobile phone application providing legal guidance), are increasingly becoming a part of this offering, reflecting wider shifts within legal practice and society and an increasing recognition of the importance of digital literacy skills. This paper will situate these forms of online and technologically-enhanced pro bono activities both within the wider context of contemporary clinical legal education and also as a part of broader professional and societal shifts. It will explore a variety of innovative approaches being taken internationally, including work done by The Open University’s Open Justice Centre in the UK, before moving on to focus on a number of key challenges and opportunities which may arise through the increasing provision of these new forms of pro bono activities by Law Schools. These include the potential and pitfalls of the technology involved, issues with confidentiality (particularly in the context of online legal advice) and the issue of how to foster trust in the online environment. The paper will conclude with a number of suggestions for areas requiring further research and discussion to enable contemporary clinicians to fully utilise the potential of online and technologically-enhanced pro bono activities.
Gender classification system for half face images using multi manifold discriminant analysis

Recognizing the gender from the half face image is a challenging problem in the field of computer vision. This paper investigates the issue and proposes a gender classification system that works for full-face images to half face images. In this manuscript, a Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) followed by MMDA is used for feature extraction. The proposed approach uses DWT to gather the potential information from the face images. Support Vector Machine (SVM) and k-NN classifiers are used to finds the features that can discriminate between male and female. The proposed method is evaluated on FERET and FEI databases and the experimental result shows that the proposed technique achieves the gender classification target with more than 94% accuracy for both half face and full-face images.
Implementation of a Nursing Home Quality Improvement Project to Reduce Resident Pain: A Qualitative Case Study

This article describes the experiences of staff members working within nursing homes that successfully implemented a quality improvement project aimed at reducing resident pain. Interviews were conducted with 24 nursing home employees from within 8 facilities participating in the quality improvement project. Findings were organized using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. Interdisciplinary communication, supportive leadership, training, and nursing assistant participation facilitated implementation. Increased documentation, resistance to change, and difficulty measuring outcomes were perceived challenges.
Plasma Renin Activity Related to Sodium Balance, Renal Function and Urinary Vasopressin in the Newborn Infant

Summary: Plasma renin activity was determined in 25 healthy, full-term, newborn infants aged 1 day to 9 weeks. High values were found, the mean level at 1–2 days of life (24.8 ± 8.4 ng/ml/hr, SE) being significantly higher than the mean levels at 7–9 days (5.8 ± 1.5) and at 4–9 weeks (8.1 ± 1.3) (P < 0.05). No correlation was found between plasma renin activity and systolic blood pressure, hematocrit, creatinine clearance, serum sodium, or serum potassium. Plasma renin activity (log values) was inversely correlated with sodium intake (r = −0.58) or with urinary sodium (r = −0.44), and positively with urinary osmolality (r = 0.67). The correlations reached higher coefficients if only infants aged ≤ 9 days were considered.In addition, vasopressin was measured by radioimmunoassay in the urine. The daily excretion was lower in newborn infants (9.4 ± 1.6 ng/m2/day, SE, at 1–2 days of postnatal life) than in healthy children (37.1 ± 5.6), and was significantly correlated with creatinine clearance (r = 0.69), but not with urinary osmolality.Speculation: The postnatal changes of plasma renin activity were significantly correlated only with parameters of sodium balance and with urinary osmolality, so that one can speculate that early after birth, the renin-angiotensin system plays a preponderant role not only in sodium homeostasis, but also in water balance.
Participatory Budgeting in Germany – A Review of Empirical Findings

ABSTRACT Participatory budgeting (PB) is one of the most popular democratic innovations worldwide. PB is connected with high stakes regarding mobilizing political inactive citizens, efficient and effective budgetary policy as well as positive effects on citizens (e.g., civic education, democratic attitudes). However, in many Western countries empirical evidence for such benefits is scarce. This also holds for Germany. Since the conduction of PB demands financial and personnel resources, a thorough evaluation is necessary. This article systematically summarizes the current state of research to make the literature on PB in Germany accessible to international scholars as well as political and administrative practitioners. It focusses on the context (which municipalities conduct PB and why), process (role of local administration and council, participation, deliberation), and outcome/impact dimension (outcomes and impact on policies and citizens). To conclude, further research venues are briefly outlined, followed by an outlook on PBs future and practical implications.
Submodular Attribute Selection for Visual Recognition

In real-world visual recognition problems, low-level features cannot adequately characterize the semantic content in images, or the spatio-temporal structure in videos. In this work, we encode objects or actions based on attributes that describe them as high-level concepts. We consider two types of attributes. One type of attributes is generated by humans, while the second type is data-driven attributes extracted from data using dictionary learning methods. Attribute-based representation may exhibit variations due to noisy and redundant attributes. We propose a discriminative and compact attribute-based representation by selecting a subset of discriminative attributes from a large attribute set. Three attribute selection criteria are proposed and formulated as a submodular optimization problem. A greedy optimization algorithm is presented and its solution is guaranteed to be at least (1−1/e)-approximation to the optimum. Experimental results on four public datasets demonstrate that the proposed attribute-based representation significantly boosts the performance of visual recognition and outperforms most recently proposed recognition approaches.
125 Years of Catholicism in Zambia: The History and Mission of the Church in the Provision of University Education

This article is based on an inquiry of the 125 years of Catholicism in Zambia, with reference to the history and mission of the Roman Catholic Church in providing university education. The observable expansion of the church’s involvement in university education has not received attention in academia and therefore needed analysis; as religion and scholarship have been devoid of the Christian university movement discourse in the country. Informed by interpretivism, the study followed an interpretative case study approach. Data were collected through document reviews and recorded interviews and were inductively analysed. The findings of the study revealed that the church has expanded its presence in the provision of university education, through the establishment of the Zambia Catholic University. The article contends that contrary to how the Catholic Church’s involvement in education was portrayed, which was seen to be only centred on the church’s involvement in primary and secondary education, the contemporary history of the church has transformed through the expansion of its mission to provide university education. The church has used religion as a resource to not only respond to societal needs but is now also using the university as a vehicle to promote the church and for integral development.
Comparison of the type and number of microorganisms and concentration of endotoxin in the air of feedyards in the Southern High Plains.

OBJECTIVES To determine the bacterial, fungal, and endotoxin concentrations in aerosolized ambient air during the winter and summer in feedyards located in the Southern High Plains, identify aerosolized microbial pathogens, and determine the size of microbial and dust components. SAMPLE POPULATION Aerosol samples were obtained from 7 feedyards. PROCEDURE Aerosol samples were collected upwind, on-site, and downwind from each feedyard at a point 1 m above the ground by use of biological 2- and 6-stage cascade impactors. RESULTS Significantly more microbes were cultured from on-site and downwind samples than upwind samples. There were significantly more microbes during the summer than during the winter. However, mean endotoxin concentration was significantly higher during the winter (8.37 ng/m3) than the summer (2.63 ng/m3). Among 7 feedyards, mean +/- SE number of mesophilic bacteria (1,441 +/- 195 colony-forming units [CFUs]/m3) was significantly higher than mean number of anaerobic bacteria (751 +/- 133 CFUs/m3) or thermophilic bacteria (54 +/- 10 CFUs/m3) in feedyard air. Feedyard aerosol samples contained more mesophilic fungi (78 +/- 7 CFUs/m3) than thermophilic fungi (2 +/- 0.2 CFUs/m3). Eighteen genera of bacteria were identified by use of an automated identification system. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE It appeared that gram-negative enteric pathogens offered little risk to remote calves or humans via ambient aerosols and that gram-positive pathogens of the Bacillus, Corynebacterium, and Staphylococcus spp can be spread by aerosols in and around feedyards. It was common to detect concentrations of endotoxin in the ambient air of 7 feedyards.
Neurophysiologic mechanisms of attention deficits in schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND Despite advances in the pharmacologic treatment of schizophrenia, the neurophysiologic mechanism(s) of disordered attention in schizophrenia remain elusive. OBJECTIVE The goal of the present study was to assess specific components of attention, including disengagement, movement, re-engagement, and the inhibitory processes involved their control. METHODS Thirteen chronic schizophrenics from the inpatient and outpatient units of the Veterans Administration Medical Center (New Orleans, LA) and thirteen normal control subjects were administered a saccadic eye movements task. Saccade latency was measured in the presence of contra-lateral distracter stimuli that preceded the target onset (Distracter-before), followed the target onset (Distracter - after) or in the absence of a distracter (No-distracter). In order to assess the interactive process of fixation disengagement and target selection, fixation was either offset before the target (Gap) or it remained on in the presence of the target (Overlap). RESULTS Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that saccadic latency in patients with schizophrenia is prolonged to a greater extent than in normal control subjects in the presence of distracter stimuli. Patients with schizophrenia are also characterized by a greater percentage of error saccades directed to the distracter, and require a longer latency to "issue" corrective saccades following error saccades. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia are required to invoke volitional control under distracter conditions, whereas normal control subjects require minimal volitional control. The results are interpreted in terms of the inhibitory mechanisms that regulate attention.
Detection of a coronavirus from turkey poults in Europe genetically related to infectious bronchitis virus of chickens

Intestinal contents of 13-day-old turkey poults in Great Britain were analysed as the birds showed stunting, unevenness and lameness, with 4% mortality. At post mortem examination, the main gross features were fluid caecal and intestinal contents. Histological examination of tissues was largely unremarkable, apart from some sections that showed crypt dilation and flattened epithelia. Negative contrast electron microscopy of caecal contents revealed virus particles, which in size and morphology had the appearance of a coronavirus. RNA was extracted (turkey/UK/412/00) and used in a number of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reactions (RT-PCRs) with the oligonucleotides based on sequences derived from avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a coronavirus of domestic fowl. The RT-PCRs confirmed that turkey/UK/412/00 was a coronavirus and, moreover, showed that it had the same partial gene order (S-E-M-5-N-3' untranslated region) as IBV. This gene order is unlike that of any known mammalian coronavirus, which does not have a gene analogous to the gene 5 of IBV.The gene 5 of the turkey virus had two open reading frames, 5a and 5b, as in IBV and the coronaviruses isolated from turkeys in North America. The turkey/UK/412/00 also resembled IBV, but not mammalian coronaviruses, in having three open reading frames in the gene encoding E protein (gene 3). The percentage differences between the nucleotide sequences of genes 3 and 5 and the 3' untranslated region of turkey/UK/412/00 when compared with those of IBVs were similar to the differences observed when different strains of IBV were compared with each other. No sequences unique to the turkey isolates were identified. These results demonstrate, for the first time, that a coronavirus was associated with disease in turkeys outside of North America and that it is a Group 3 coronavirus, like IBV.
Cogging Torque of Brushless DC Motors Due to the Interaction Between the Uneven Magnetization of a Permanent Magnet and Teeth Curvature

This research investigates the characteristics of cogging torque in brushless DC motors due to the interaction between the uneven magnetization of a permanent magnet and the shape of the teeth. The excitation frequencies of the cogging torque are the harmonics of the least common multiple of the poles and slots in ideal brushless DC motors. However, this research numerically and experimentally illustrates that the uneven magnetization of a permanent magnet also generates the harmonics of slot number. Magnitudes of cogging torque are affected not only by the uneven magnetization of a permanent magnet but also by the shape of the teeth. The cogging torque can be effectively reduced by determining optimal teeth curvature once the range of uneven magnetization of permanent magnet in a brushless DC motor is identified.
Analyzing Head-Mounted AR Device Energy Consumption on a Frame Rate Perspective

As mobile computing platforms, head-mounted displays (HMDs) for augmented reality (AR) applications, similar to other mobile computing platforms, face challenges in minimizing their energy usage. While not yet as pervasive as smartphones, we can envision that more useful everyday AR applications can arise as we allow HMDs to enjoy longer operation times. This work takes a first step in designing an application- transparent energy management layer within the AR HMD graphics stack. We point out that one aspect that impacts the HMD lifetime is the frame rate at which AR objects are rendered and displayed. Using the Microsoft Hololens platform we propose a scheme to analyze objects' motion dynamics and respectively control the frame rate while meeting a target user perception. We see this work as a preliminary step towards understanding and improving the operational lifetime for AR HMDs.
Analysis and Evaluation of Three-Stage Twisty Octapole Field Electromagnetic Launcher

In this paper, we propose an improved launch mode called multistage twisty multipole electromagnetic launcher. The twisty multipole magnetic field configuration is resolved, and the group power supply module is considered. The induced eddy current of the projectile is considered, and the analysis of electromagnetic force and torque has been performed. A full 3-D transient motion simulation with multiple degrees of freedom is carried on the three-stage twisty octapole field electromagnetic launcher. The simulation results indicate that the magnetic torque of rotational motion is impressively large and the transverse displacement of the projectile is much little. The torsion option of multistage pole coils makes little influence on axial acceleration force and exit velocity comparing with the appositional configuration. The theoretical analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the projectile is accelerated with spinning motion about its axis which could keep the projectile fly stability. We suggest this launch mode could be applied in the evacuated tube transportation vehicle.
Hyaluronic acid modified chitosan nanoparticles for effective management of glaucoma: development, characterization, and evaluation

In clinical practices, solution of dorzolamide hydrochloride (DH) and timolol maléate (TM) is recommended for the treatment of glaucoma. However, low drug-contact time and poor ocular bioavailability of drugs due to drainage of solution, tear turnover and its dilution or lacrimation limits its uses. In addition, systemic absorption of TM may induce undesirable cardiovascular side effects. Chitosan (CS) is a polycationic biodegradable polymer which provides sustained and local delivery of drugs to the ocular sites. Hyaluronic acid (HA) also provides synergistic effect for mucoadhesion in association with chitosan. In the present study, hyaluronic acid modified chitosan nanoparticles (CS-HA-NPs) loaded with TM and DH were developed and characterized. The CS-HA-NPs were evaluated for size, shape, zeta potential, entrapment efficiency, and mucoadhesive strength. The in vitro release study was also performed in PBS pH 7.4. The ocular irritation potential of CS-HA-NPs was estimated using draize test on albino rabbits. A significant reduction in IOP level was obtained using CS-HA-NPs as compared to plain solution of drug and a comparable higher reduction in IOP level was observed as to CS-NPs. These results suggest that HA potentialy enhance the mucoadhesiveness and efficiency of CS-NPs and may be promising carrier for ocular drug delivery.
Estimating thresholds in conventional and high-pass resolution perimetry using computer simulation.

High-pass resolution perimetry is a new technique that uses a vanishing optotype as the test stimulus. This type of stimulus is thought to produce steeper frequency-of-seeing curves than the stimulus used in conventional automated perimetry, resulting in a lower variability in threshold estimates. The purpose of this study was to compare the stimulus properties in both conventional and high-pass resolution perimetry in computer simulation experiments. The computer model contained stimulus-response data sets obtained from frequency-of-seeing experiments in 11 normal subjects tested with each perimetric technique at four retinal locations [(0 degrees , 30 degrees ), (0 degrees , 15 degrees ), (0 degrees , - 15 degrees ), and (0 degrees , - 30 degrees )]. We programmed eight staircase procedures varying from a coarse one with one reversal to an elaborate procedure with four reversals to look at the relationship between accuracy (the difference between the estimated and actual threshold) and efficiency (number of presentations required for estimate) with each technique. Threshold estimates were made 100 times for each location, strategy, perimetric technique, and subject. Our results showed that an increase in accuracy was always coupled with a decrease in efficiency and that the relationship between these two parameters was similar between the two techniques. Some evidence, however, is presented to show that compared to conventional perimetry relatively simple staircase procedures may be used with high-pass resolution perimetry to attain threshold estimates of similar accuracy.
Autocorrelation-based beat estimation adaptive to drastic tempo change in a song

Automatic beat estimation is an essential technology not only for fundamental analysis of music, but also for the development of advanced music applications such as DJ mixing. In this paper, we propose an autocorrelation based beat estimation method, which, unlike existing methods, is capable of accurately detecting the position of beats, even from songs with drastic change of tempo. Our proposal consists of two major steps. First, the approximate positions of the beats are pre-estimated by a long-sized analysis window. Next, the preestimated beats are verified by using a short analysis window. These steps are repetitively executed until the beat estimation results converge. Experiments conducted with audio signals and songs with artificially applied tempo changes have proved that our proposal can detect beats with high accuracy.
A modular, positive selection bacterial artificial chromosome vector with multiple cloning sites.

To construct large-insert libraries for the sequencing, mapping, and functional studies of complex genomes, we have constructed a new modular bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) vector, pBACe3.6 (GenBank Accession No. U80929). This vector contains multiple cloning sites located within the sacB gene, allowing positive selection for recombinant clones on sucrose-containing medium. A recognition site for the PI-SceI nuclease has also been included, which permits linearization of recombinant DNA irrespective of the characteristics of the insert sequences. An attTn7 sequence present in pBACe3.6 permits retrofitting of BAC clones by Tn7-mediated insertion of desirable sequence elements into the vector portion. The ability to retrofit BAC clones will be useful for functional analysis of genes carried on the cloned inserts. The pBACe3.6 vector has been used for the construction of many genomic libraries currently serving as resources for large-scale mapping and sequencing.