Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adjustment Experiences of International Graduate Students to Life in the United States

The adjustment process, also interchangeably referred as a transition or adaptation process, is a stage that every international student went through as part of their study abroad experiences. For international graduate students, their pursuit represents an important milestone in their self-development and personal growth. However, adjusting to a new educational and social environment can be challenging. During this important starting point of their academic journey, what are the key aspects that shaped the adjustment experiences of these international graduate students? This study explored the narratives of international graduate students of their adjustment process to academic life in the United States using the integrated acculturation framework using a naturalistic qualitative inquiry process. Participants’ selection includes criterion sampling and maximum variation strategy to elect international students who were at least completing his or second semester in a current graduate program. In total, 9 participants were selected based upon different countries of origins and program majors and having both male and female and doctorate and master level participants in this study. The findings show that these international graduate students experienced varied adjustment experiences, impacted by motivation, personality, coping strategies, and social support received. All the participants also reported having a varying set of growth as a result of the adjustment process. The recommendations include providing more support geared towards academic well-being and creating a supportive culture among faculty and other students on the diversity and difference these international graduate students bring on campus.
Lightning protection zone in substation using mast

This paper proposes zone apportionment algorithms (ZAA) to apportion lightning protection zonegenerated by mast. Mast may be used to protect equipment within substation against lightning. Lightning distance equations are used to determine striking distance to ground, object and mast. The calculation of corresponding protection zone is sophisticated especially when more masts are used. ZAA is proposedto apportion the lightning protection zone generated by 1–4 mast(s), calculate the critical protection height at each point, and create a three dimension protection volume to be visualized. Each point of equipment is laid out in substation with its height. Then, the equipment height at each point is compared with the corresponding critical protection height to determine whether equipmentareprotected or not.The risk part of unprotected equipment will emerge above the comparable protection roof and be visualized clearly. This will help engineers to understand the protection zone thoroughly and ensure that equipment are protected. ZAA algorithms are tested on a 30 m x 30 m substation protected by 1–4 mast(s)located outside substation with height of 32 m, 17 m, 14 m and 13 m, respectively. Equipment are located at the center of substation. Calculation from ZAA indicated that equipment with size 10 m x 10 m should not be higher than 10.14 m, 10.28 m, 10.26 m and 10.97 m in case of 1–4 mast(s), respectively. For larger equipment, with size 12 m x 12 m, they should not be higher than 9.31 m, 9.59 m, 10.26 m and 10.97 m in case of 1–4 mast(s), respectively. Numerical results indicated that the proposed algorithms, ZAA could identify the unprotected part of equipment correctly and produce a three dimension protection volume with emerging of the unprotected part of equipment. ZAA could verify the lightning protection correctly in all cases.
A Review of Genetic Algorithms Applied to Optimizing Maintenance Strategy of Bridges

Abstract:Along with the fast increasing of maintenance demand, the problems associated with maintenance and reinforcement decision-making for deteriorating bridges such as maintenance strategy optimization have been present research focus. The solutions to these problems have inspired a considerable amount of research, one particular area being the application of evolutionary search algorithms such as the genetic algorithm (GA). This paper begins with a brief overview of bridge maintenance strategy optimization followed by a review of the current state of research in applying evolutionary techniques to solving this problem.
Infinitely many solutions for a class of fractional boundary value problem with $p$-Laplacian with impulsive effects

The existence of infinitely many solutions for a class of impulsive fractional boundary value problems with $p$-Laplacian with Neumann conditions is established. Our approach is based on recent variational methods for smooth functionals defined on reflexive Banach spaces. One example is presented to demonstrate the application of our main results.
Using CRISPR technology to inhibit the replication of human cytomegalovirus by deletion of a gene promoter

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) causes serious infections in immunocompromised patients. It is ubiquitous in nature and has the potential to be transmitted via non-sexual contact (saliva, breast-feeding, placental transfer, blood transfusion, organ transplantation) or sexual contact. Although HCMV infection resolves spontaneously in immunocompetent hosts, it causes serious life-threatening disease in immunocompromised patients and can reactivate from latency at any time during life when the host’s immune system is compromised. Management of these infections is complex as currently available antiviral agents have several limitations, and thus mortality of these infections approaches 50%. Reactivation of latent HCMV remains a major concern and is associated with a high morbidity and mortality in high-risk immunocompromised adults. Although great progress has been made in the management of HCMV disease over the last several decades, management options are still limited due to major issues with dosing and side effects. Also, none of these medications inhibit latent HCMV lying dormant in cells. Gene-based targeting mechanisms have the added advantages of inhibiting not only the reactivated HCMV but also the latent HCMV in cells, as well as stopping the dysregulation of innate immunity occurring during the early stages of HCMV infection. Using CRISPR/Cas9 technology/synthetic single gRNA, site-specific cleavage was carried out with successful deletion of a major intermediate early gene promoter/enhancer (MIEP/E) of HCMV. This study demonstrated the efficacy of the sgRNA-CRISPR/Cas9 strategy to delete the MIEP/E of HCMV. Deletion of this promoter is expected to block the expression of early and late phase genes, inhibit HCMV replication, prevent latency, and protect the cellular immune system, in immunocompromised patients.
An analytical model for optimization of programming efficiency and uniformity of split gate source-side injection SuperFlash memory

An analytical model for evaluating the programming efficiency and uniformity of SST SuperFlash cells is developed for the first time. Starting with a two-dimensional electric field analysis, this model calculates the effective hot electron injection-induced gate current during programming. Based on a full transient simulation of the calculated gate current, the time to program is then developed and used as a figure of merit to evaluate SST cells programming. The time-to-program model predicts the nonlinear transformation from control-floating gate coupling ratios to the programming speed and the programming distribution broadening correlates with coupling ratios. The model also suggests that higher bias voltage of (V/sub d/-V/sub cg/) and a lower coupling ratio should result in better programming efficiency and uniformity.
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic related to lockdown measures on tropospheric NO 2 columns over Île-de-France

The evolution of NO2, considered as a proxy for air pollution, was analyzed to evaluate the impact of the first lockdown (17 March–10 May 2020) over the Île-de-France region (Paris and surroundings). Tropospheric NO2 columns measured by two UV-Visible Système d’Analyse par Observation Zénithale (SAOZ) spectrometers were analyzed to compare the evolution of NO2 between urban and suburban sites during the lockdown. The urban site is the observation platform QualAir (4850 N / 221 E) at the Sorbonne University Pierre and Marie Curie Campus in the center of Paris. The suburban site is located at Guyancourt (4846N / 203E), Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, 24 km southwest of Paris. Tropospheric NO2 columns above Paris and Guyancourt have shown similar values during the whole lockdown period from March to May 2020. A decade of data sets were filtered to consider air masses at both sites with similar meteorological conditions. The median NO2 columns and the surface measurements of Airparif (Air Quality Observatory in Île de France) during the lockdown period in 2020 were compared to the extrapolated values estimated from a linear trend analysis for the 2011–2019 period at each station. Negative NO2 trends of−1.5 Pmolec. cm−2 yr−1 (∼−6.3 % yr−1) are observed from the columns, and trends of −2.2 μg m−3 yr−1 (∼−3.6 % yr−1) are observed from the surface concentration. The negative anomaly in tropospheric columns in 2020 attributed to the lockdown (and related emission reductions) was found to be 56 % at Paris and 46 % at Guyancourt, respectively. A similar anomaly was found in the data of surface concentrations, amounting to 53 % and 28 % at the urban and suburban sites, accordingly.
Determination of single-mode fiber coupler design parameters from loss measurements

A method is presented for determining the minimum spacing between the fiber core centers in a single-mode fiber coupler which consists of two substrate blocks each provided with a fiber fixed in a curved groove. Immersion liquids with known refractive indices are placed on the top surface of one coupler block and the introduced power loss of the light guided within the fiber is measured. By fitting these results to calculated curves the minimum spacing may be determined with an error of less than 0.2 μm.
Knowledge Embedding

3 Graph to Vector 5 3.1 LINE with First-order Proximity . 5 3.2 LINE with Second-order Proximity . 6 Neural Networks are applied in many fields of Machine Learning. Due to their natural property, it is suitable to use them to estimate the distribution representations from some knowledge source. This kind of representation may be referred as knowledge embedding. Embedding, mathematically, denotes one instance of some mathematical structure contained within another instance. In Machine Learning context, it often means to transfer a sparse coding of an instance to a more dense coding, e.g., a 1-of-V coding to a low dimension vector.
Race , Representation and Policy : Black Elected Officials and Public Spending in the US South ∗

The Supreme Court has recently struck down key provisions of the Voting Right Act mandating federal scrutiny over states with a history of black disenfranchisement. How significant was the VRA for black political empowerment? Surprisingly, the answer to this important question remains largely moot. Using a novel dataset on the universe of local elected officials, we show that the VRA significantly boosted black representation in the immediate aftermath of its introduction. To identify the effect of the act we exploit the fact that a coverage formula was used to place a group of jurisdictions in the South – our treatment – under strict federal monitoring. Using non-covered counties of the former Confederacy as a comparison group, we find that larger pre–VRA shares of blacks led to a greater increase in black office holding in the treatment than in the control group. The impact of coverage was stronger in the presence of elections by single member districts. Finally, black representation led to greater provision of local public goods, particularly education. JEL classification: D72, H7, I2, J15
Density Functional Theory Calculations of Structure-Antioxidant Activity of Selected Phenolic Acids and Flavonoids Found in Malaysian Honey (Pengiraan Teori Fungsi Ketumpatan (DFT) bagi Struktur-Aktiviti Anti-oksida untuk Beberapa Sebatian Fenolik dan Flavonoid yang didapati dalam Madu di Malaysia)

Phenolic acids and flavonoids exist naturally in Malaysian honey and contribute significantly to antioxidant contents. Antioxidants plays an important role in scavenging free radicals and prevent health deterioration. Total antioxidant content is measured using DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) radical scavenging activity. The phenolic acids such as gallic, caffeic, syringic and hydroxybenzoic acids and flavonoids like naringenin, apigenin, kaempferol, catechin and luteolin previously have been identified in Malaysian honey of tualang, gelam and borneo type using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). In order to investigate the structure-antioxidant activity relationships of these phenolic compounds using hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) mechanism, density functional theory (DFT) calculation at B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) levels of theory was performed. In this work, optimization of the compounds chemical structure and radical forms in gas-phase has been calculated with computation of bond dissociation enthalpy (BDE) as antioxidant descriptor. The finding showed that abstraction of H at different OH groups in the structure of the compound, led to a different scavenging free radical activity thus contribute to the overall variation in the antioxidant properties. Besides that, B ring of flavonoids and unsaturated bond in pyran ring are proposed factors that could lower the BDE values and consequently influence the antioxidant properties of the antioxidant compounds. Hence, DFT calculation with BDE descriptor had been successfully applied to investigate the relationship between structure of phenolic acids and antioxidant activity of Malaysian honey and the interesting results could contribute in future development of antioxidant compound.
Performance of Office Workers Under Office Sounds and Various Enclosure Conditions in Open Workplaces

Effects of physical attributes of workstation enclosures on the performance of office workers with different difficult levels of office tasks and moods are presented. Performance scores in complex tasks were expected to increase with greater workstation enclosures while those in simple tasks would be the same. Mood ratings were expected to be higher in lower workstation enclosures. Performance of 102 college students on ambient office sounds (45 dBA) with office tasks were measured for 100 minutes under three different workplace enclosures: (1) four foot partitions on two sides; (2) six foot partitions on three sides; and (3) a fully enclosed workstation with eight foot partitions. The tasks were to memorize a paragraph with 130 words (complex task) and to search phone numbers (simple task). The complex task performance in the fully enclosed workstation was increased compared to that in the workstation with four foot partitions (p < 0.001) and to that in the workstation with six foot partitions (p < 0.05). However, occupants in the fully enclosed workstation with office sounds without speech generally gave higher mood ratings. It indicates that closed individual offices may offer important contributions to collaborative work as well as individual productivity. These findings would help design community revise open plan design to increase collaboration among office workers.
EFFECTS OF GARLIC OR GINGER EXTRACTS ON QUALITY CHARACTERISTICS OF CATFISH (CLARIAS GARIEPINUS) FILLETS SMOKED DURING REFRIGERATION STORAGE PERIOD

Catfish fillets contains high amount of fatty acids making it very prone to lipid oxidation by high temperature during smoking, also makes it susceptible to microbial spoilage and proliferation of pathogenic bacteria which may cause foodborne diseases outbreaks. So must be used natural antioxidants and antimicrobial agents such as herbs and spices. This study designed to determine the antioxidant and antimicrobial effects of equivalent concentrations of both garlic (GE) and ginger (GIE) extracts separately on quality attributes of liquid smoked catfish (Clarias Gariepinus) during chilled storage were investigated for a period of 28 days. The control and the treated fish samples were analyzed periodically for physicochemical (body composition, peroxide value (PV), thiobarbituric acid (TBA), total volatile basic nitrogen, (TVB-N) characteristics and microbiological (TVC). The results showed that the percentage of moisture content decreased and protein, lipid and ash content increased significantly (p<0.05) due to water loss. Also, the results showed in all treatment compared to control from initial period to end of storage period that each spice treatment significantly (P < 0.05) reduced in growth of microorganisms, significant reduction (p<0.05) in lipid peroxidation as displayed in (PV&TBA) values and decreased significantly (p<0.05) in TVB-N values reflected in decreasing chemical spoilage, microbial activities and extending the shelf-life smoked catfish. The organoleptic showed that the highest overall acceptability was obtained in 50 g/kg ginger extract during storage period. The acceptability increased as the concentration of spice increased, they Effects Of Garlic Or Ginger Extracts On Quality Characteristics Of . 158 were significantly different (p <0.05) among the treatments and this results show that the highest concentration of ginger and garlic extracts were more acceptable compared to the control at 28 days. The results obtained from this study suggests that ginger and garlic extracts, through their combined antioxidant and antimicrobial effects, are potentially useful in preserving, extending the shelf-life through retarded the spoilage and enhancing quality attributes of liquid smoked catfish fillets stored at 4 ± 1°C.
An Empirical Study on the Impact of Class Overlapin Just-in-Time Software Defect Prediction (S)

—Just-in-time software defect prediction (JIT-SDP) is an active research topic in the ﬁeld of software engineering, aiming at identifying defect-inducing code changes. Most of the current JIT-SDP work focused on model construction. It is often ignored that the performance of classiﬁers often depends on high quality data. In this paper, we ﬁrst investigate the impact of the class overlap problem on the performance of the classiﬁers in JIT-SDP, and propose a new effective preprocessing method (IKMCCA-TL) combining improved K-Means clustering cleaning approach and Tomek-link method. In order to objectively estimate the impact of class overlap on the classiﬁers in JIT-SDP, we conduct a large-scale empirical study on the data sets of six open source projects and compare the performance of LR, RF and KNN classiﬁers by using IKMCCA or KMCCA or NCL and without cleaning data. Experimental results show that after removing overlapping instances, the performance of the classiﬁers is signiﬁcantly improved in terms of balance, recall and AUC and our proposed method achieves the best performance.
Short-Term Impacts of Targeted Cash Grants and Business Development Services: Experimental Evidence from Entrepreneurs in Burkina Faso

IZA DP No. 14892 NOVEMBER 2021 Short-Term Impacts of Targeted Cash Grants and Business Development Services: Experimental Evidence from Entrepreneurs in Burkina Faso* Most support programs targeted at small firms in lowand middle-income countries fail to generate transformative effects at a large scale due to bad targeting, too little flexibility, and the limited size of the support, among others. This paper assesses the short-term effects of a randomized targeted Government support program to small and medium-size firms that have been selected based on a business plan competition. One group received large cash grants of up to US$8,000, with flexible conditions of use. A second group received grants of an equally important size but earmarked to business development services and thus less flexible and with a required own contribution of 20 percent. A third group serves as a control group. All firms operate in agribusiness or related activities in a semi-urban area. An assessment of the short-term impacts shows that beneficiaries of cash grants engage in better business practices, such as formalization and bookkeeping. They also invest more. Yet, this does not translate into higher profits and employment. There is no effect on investment and business practices among beneficiaries of grants for business development services. Yet, both treatment groups show a higher ability to innovate relative to the control group. The results also show that cash grants cushioned the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. A further round of data collection will soon allow to assess the longer-term effects of both interventions which may differ from the short-term effects analyzed here as both interventions may need time to unfold their
Real Time Virtual Human Hand Using Leap Motion Controller

— the research of robotics needs a good and accurate control. The proposed concept is touch less and non-verbal communication with the use of leap motion controller. The concept has two major parts: first part is “device perceive hand finger moments and send signal”, second part is robotic hand interfaced with PIC microcontroller which receives signal and controls robotic hand. The paper aims to link virtual environment with real time environment. The virtual environment is consisting of leap motion controller and laptop, real time environment is consisting of microcontroller and robotic arm. In real time environment parodist is converts into virtual environment.
A source voltage-clamped resonant link inverter for a PMSM using a predictive current control technique

A simple source voltage-clamped resonant link (SVCRL) inverter is proposed to clamp the DC-link voltage to the input source voltage and reduce the current rating of a resonant inductor. The current control of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) employing a predictive current control technique (PCCT) for the SVCRL, inverter is also investigated to overcome the disadvantage of the current-regulated delta modulation (CRDM) control technique. By employing the PCCT based on the discrete model of a PMSM and estimation of back electromotive force (EMF), the minimized current ripple with a small number of switchings can be obtained. Finally, the comparative computer simulation and experimental results are given to show the usefulness of the proposed technique.
Optical Phase Modulation Behaviour of an Injection-Locked Semiconductor Laser for an Optical Transmission System

Optical phase modulation obtained by modulating the current of an injection locked semiconductor laser is analyzed. The maximum phase deviation permitted with regard to the limit of the locking bandwidth is evaluated as a function of the current modulation frequency for various optical injected powers. An experimental study is reported and the application of this technique to a coherent PSK or DPSK transmission system are discussed.