Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Residues of endocrine-disrupting PCBs in drinking water - influence of water and wastewater treatment in Szczecin (Poland)

ABSTRACT Drinking water is subjected to several stages of treatment, but it can still retain residues of endocrine-disrupting compounds. These include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The aim of this study was to assess the efficiency of water and wastewater treatment processes on reducing residues of endocrine-disrupting PCB congeners in drinking water and treated wastewater. The analyses were performed with liquid–liquid extraction and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. PCB congener residues were found in 18% of the drinking water samples. The water treatment process reduced the content of these compounds within a wide range of 4% to 100%. Estimates of consumer exposure to these compounds from drinking water consumption accounted for as much as 30% of the tolerable weekly intake (TWI). The wastewater treatment process reduced the concentration of PCB congeners by 38–98%, with trace contents in the treated wastewater (from 0.02 · 10–6 to 6.21 · 10–6 mg/l).
Similarity Simulation on the Movement Characteristics of Surrounding Rock and Floor Stress Distribution for Large-Dip Coal Seam

The question of how to mine safely in close multi coal seams is the main concern for coal operators, in particular for large-dip coal seams with complex geological and mechanical conditions. This paper presents a detailed similarity simulation on the movement characteristics of the overburden and the stress distribution of underlying strata in terms of a specific coal mine in the Tielieke mining area of the Kubai coalfield via a three-dimensional photogrammetry system and a high-speed static resistance analyzer. The results show that the overburden strata are asymmetrically deformed around the coal pillar and the fracture area is perpendicular to the longwall with an “M” shape when deeper coal is mined. Moreover, the asymmetric movement of overburden results in the non-uniform distribution of stress on the floor of the coal pillar and ribs. In particular, stress is closely related to the location of the longwall, and stress of the coal pillar is much larger when it is closer to the deep side. The floor stress relief degree of the longwall in the deep zone is higher than that of its counterparts, providing a theoretical foundation for a reasonable layout and a support technique for roadways. The main contribution of this research that it can be used as a reference in maintaining the integrity of surrounding rock for large-dip coal seams with close distances.
The Impact of Institutional Investor Attention on Enterprise Performance: Empirical Test Based on Chain Multiple Mediating Effect Model

: In recent years, the number and types of institutional investors in China have achieved rapid development, and gradually become an important part of China's capital market. Institutional investors pay more attention to the long-term performance of enterprises in order to maintain their long-term and stable return on investment. This paper uses the investor relationship data of the "interactive easy" platform of Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the data of listed companies of Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2019 to construct the index of institutional investor attention, and empirically examines the influence mechanism of institutional investor attention on enterprise performance. Furthermore, a chain-type multiple intermediary effect model is constructed to investigate investor attention affecting enterprise performance. The results show that institutional investor attention can significantly improve enterprise performance. The attention of institutional investors can reduce the quality of economic development by increasing the innovation investment of enterprises and strengthening the incentive intensity of executive compensation, as well as the chain-type intermediary channel of “Executive Compensation Incentive Increase → Enterprise innovation investment increase”, the independent intermediary effect of executive compensation incentive is the most prominent. Furthermore, the results show that institutional investor attention promotes the performance of non-state-owned enterprises and state-owned enterprises. However, the state-owned enterprises can only improve their performance through the compensation incentive independent intermediary channels.
Review on diameter detection of underground pipe with GPR

The development of noninvasive techniques to explore and retrieve information from underground has shown a growing interest among public as well as private entities related to different application fields.As an important instrument and technology,ground penetrating radar(GPR) has been widely used to determine the size of underground pipe buried in reinforced concrete,soil,and other underground materials ether in theoretical research or practical application.Based on the comprehensive analysis of electromagnetic wave propagation in the medium and the hyperbolic characteristics of the reflection of the underground target,this paper discusses the feasibility of detecting diameter parameter of the underground pipe using GPR technology.GPR equipment,which are the current international mainstream products,and the related research progress on diameter detection are introduced;Currently,there are different kinds of methods that are used for diameter detection,this paper also introduces the principle and different testing methods of diameter detection indifferent period on the basis of analysis of the typical examples at home and abroad.Simultaneously,the current problems in the research of non-destructive detection of buried pipe are summarized.Finally,this paper reveals that the detection work of underground pipe should focus on the portable of hardware,professionalism of software and the intelligent of data processing model,in this way this technology could has a better application in practice.
Technical Efficiency and Economic Analysis of Rice Crop in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

Pakistan is one of the world’s leading producers, exporters, and consumers of rice. This study analyzes the technical efficiency of rice growing farmers in the Swat district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. A three-stage sampling procedure was used to interview 204 rice growers through a well-structured and pretested interview schedule. The maximum likelihood function results showed that chemicals, urea, diammonium phosphate (DAP), labor, and farmyard manure (FYM-dummy) were positive and had a statistically significant effect on rice yield; this implies that a 1% increase in chemicals, urea, DAP, labor, and FYM leads to an increase in rice production by 0.22%, 0.25%, 0.02%, 0.03%, and 0.01%, respectively. The estimated results of model 2 reported that respondents’ age had a positive significant effect on inefficiency, showing that with a rise in farmers’ age, the farmers’ inefficiency significantly increased. The education and experience of farmers were negative and significant, implying that these variables significantly decreased the farmers’ inefficiency. Furthermore, the results showed the mean technical efficiency as 87%, with a minimum of 66% and a maximum of 99%. The study recommends that the extension department needs to arrange training programs for the rice growers in this specific area to boost rice yield, enhance agronomic skills, and facilitate these farmers with the technical knowledge for efficient production.
The Impact of Remote Education on University Students at Cadi Ayyad University in Morocco: Situation and perceptions

This study analyzes the impact of remote education on the students of open-access institutions affiliated with Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, Morocco. This study is based on the collection of qualitative and quantitative data from questionnaires answered by 1760 students, 193 professors and 51 administrative executives. To ensure a better understanding of the impacts of the pandemic on a context afflicted by vulnerability, this study chooses four focal points to its analysis of remote education’s impact on the aforementioned population: Perceptions, Costs, Student Experience and Attendance. In so doing, this study encourages the production of scholarship on educational experiences in times of crisis in Global South countries. Keywords: Remote Education; Lockdown; Higher-Education; UCA. eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i19. 3195
Determinants of product innovativeness on innovation performance for pharmaceutical business in Thailand

Emotional capability is an important part of firm capabilities that play a crucial factor in improving the existing innovation performance of the sector, this capability should be expanded by firms to get better performance in the field of innovation. The main objective of this research paper is to find the impact of emotional capability on the innovation performance of the pharmaceutical sector of Thailand. The model of this research study includes many dimensions of emotional capability such as dynamics of display freedom, identification, reconciliation, and experience. The mediating role of product innovativeness was also been identified in enhancing the relationship between emotional capability and innovation performance. For this purpose, most of the data and information of this research were collected from employees and managers of different pharmaceutical firms of Thailand using the technique of a questionnaire survey. The structural equation modeling technique is used to check the validity of hypotheses along with KMO method. The findings of this research paper indicate that all the proposed hypotheses are accepted which means that the independent variable of the emotional capability of a firm can significantly improve the innovation performance.
Utility of Continuous Disease Subtyping Systems for Improved Evaluation of Etiologic Heterogeneity

Simple Summary This paper presents an extended version of the Cox regression model to examine heterogeneous effects of risk factors on disease subtypes defined by a continuous biomarker. This approach can be easily applied to cancer studies and is accessible to researchers via user-friendly R scripts. Abstract Molecular pathologic diagnosis is important in clinical (oncology) practice. Integration of molecular pathology into epidemiological methods (i.e., molecular pathological epidemiology) allows for investigating the distinct etiology of disease subtypes based on biomarker analyses, thereby contributing to precision medicine and prevention. However, existing approaches for investigating etiological heterogeneity deal with categorical subtypes. We aimed to fully leverage continuous measures available in most biomarker readouts (gene/protein expression levels, signaling pathway activation, immune cell counts, microbiome/microbial abundance in tumor microenvironment, etc.). We present a cause-specific Cox proportional hazards regression model for evaluating how the exposure–disease subtype association changes across continuous subtyping biomarker levels. Utilizing two longitudinal observational prospective cohort studies, we investigated how the association of alcohol intake (a risk factor) with colorectal cancer incidence differed across the continuous values of tumor epigenetic DNA methylation at long interspersed nucleotide element-1 (LINE-1). The heterogeneous alcohol effect was modeled using different functions of the LINE-1 marker to demonstrate the method’s flexibility. This real-world proof-of-principle computational application demonstrates how the new method enables visualizing the trend of the exposure effect over continuous marker levels. The utilization of continuous biomarker data without categorization for investigating etiological heterogeneity can advance our understanding of biological and pathogenic mechanisms.
Food Habits: Insights from Food Diaries via Computational Recurrence Measures

Humans are creatures of habit, and hence one would expect habitual components in our diet. However, there is scant research characterizing habitual behavior in food consumption quantitatively. Longitudinal food diaries contributed by app users are a promising resource to study habitual behavior in food selection. We developed computational measures that leverage recurrence in food choices to describe the habitual component. The relative frequency and span of individual food choices are computed and used to identify recurrent choices. We proposed metrics to quantify the recurrence at both food-item and meal levels. We obtained the following insights by employing our measures on a public dataset of food diaries from MyFitnessPal users. Food-item recurrence is higher than meal recurrence. While food-item recurrence increases with the average number of food-items chosen per meal, meal recurrence decreases. Recurrence is the strongest at breakfast, weakest at dinner, and higher on weekdays than on weekends. Individuals with relatively high recurrence on weekdays also have relatively high recurrence on weekends. Our quantitatively observed trends are intuitive and aligned with common notions surrounding habitual food consumption. As a potential impact of the research, profiling habitual behaviors using the proposed recurrent consumption measures may reveal unique opportunities for accessible and sustainable dietary interventions.
Impact of Unbalance Grid Voltage on the Performance of Doubly-fed Induction Machine at Motoring Mode

Abstract Hydro-turbines are usually optimized for an operating points defined by speed, head, and discharge. At fixed-speed operation, limited deviations from head and discharge are allowed. However, to improve operational efficiency of hydro turbines with partial loads and varying heads, variable-speed turbine and generator operation offers an attractive solution. Variable-speed operation is achieved using a doubly-fed induction machine with power electronics. During hybrid power generation, stable interconnected system is achieved with pumped storage schemes as renewable energy sources are highly erratic, especially solar and wind. Application of doubly-fed induction machine in pumped storage scheme is equivalently significant in both motoring and generating modes. In practice, the doubly-fed induction machine experiences power quality problems, depending upon the location of pumped storage scheme and the length of the distribution feeder. The objective of this study is to analyze the effects of voltage unbalance on a 2.2-kW doubly-fed induction machine at motoring mode through computer simulations and laboratory experiments. The test results and subsequent analysis confer hidden damage of negative-sequence voltage and effects of positive-sequence voltage magnitude on the performance of doubly-fed induction machine, particularly ripples in torque and speed and reduction in overall machine efficiency, which makes pumped storage scheme economically unviable.
Long-Term Care Insurance Pilot Programme in China: Policy Evaluation and Optimization Options—Taking the Pilot Programme in the Northeast of China as an Example

China’s population is ageing rapidly and the increase in life expectancy is accompanied by a loss of capability with advancing age, especially in the Northeast. This study adopts qualitative research methods to analyze the overall status and problems of China’s LTCI policy pilots. Taking four LTCI pilot cities in three northeastern provinces as samples, we used purposive sampling to recruit 10 beneficiaries and providers of LTCI in nursing homes of different kinds, as well as 2 operators (Medical Insurance Bureau staff) for semi-structured in-depth interviews. We developed a social welfare policy analysis framework based on Gilbert’s framework, designed interview outlines and conducted a thematic analysis of the interview data along five dimensions: allocation base, type of provision, delivery strategy, finance mode, and external environment. The results of the research indicate that the coverage of the system is narrow and that disability assessment criteria are fragmented; that the substance of service provision is lacking, both in terms of precision and dynamic adjustment mechanisms; that socialized care synergy cannot be achieved, informal care lacking policy support; that there is an over-reliance on medical insurance funds and that unfair financing standards are applied; and that economic and social development is insufficient to cope with ageing needs and uncertain risks. Accordingly, this research proposes several optimization options to promote the full establishment of LTCI.
Representation in music: College students’ perceptions of ensemble repertoire

Culturally responsive pedagogy in music education is becoming increasingly crucial for all students, in all types of music programs, and at all levels of education as demographic shifts occur in schools. In music ensembles, the selection of repertoire is a critical component of culturally responsive pedagogy. The purpose of this study was to investigate student perceptions of repertoire in college music ensembles. This study was guided by the following research questions: (a) Do students perceive current ensemble repertoire as representative and supportive of their self-identities? (b) What are these perceptions according to students’ race or ethnicity, gender, and ensemble type? (c) What factors do students consider important in directors’ selection of repertoire? (d) How are directors’ current repertoire selection practices, as experienced by the respondents, informed by or responsive to gender and racial diversity in the ensembles? Respondents (N = 278) were graduate and undergraduate college students enrolled in band, choir, or orchestra. Data were collected through an online questionnaire. Overall, respondents felt that current repertoire practices were representative and supportive, although male respondents rated composer gender as lower in importance in repertoire selection than both females and those not identifying as male or female. White students indicated that they felt repertoire selection was more representative of their gender than Black, Indigenous, and other students of color. Respondents also indicated a desire for more underrepresented composers in ensemble repertoire. Numerous implications are provided, including the need for an increased focus on culturally responsive repertoire selection processes in teacher preparation programs.
Blood miRNAs Are Linked to Frequent Asthma Exacerbations in Childhood Asthma and Adult COPD

Abstract: Rationale MicroRNAs have been independently associated with asthma and COPD; however, it is unclear if microRNA associations will overlap when evaluating retrospective acute exacerbations. Objective: We hypothesized that peripheral blood microRNAs would be associated with retrospective acute asthma exacerbations in a pediatric asthma cohort and that such associations may also be relevant to acute COPD exacerbations. Methods: We conducted small-RNA sequencing on 374 whole-blood samples from children with asthma ages 6–14 years who participated in the Genetics of Asthma in Costa Rica Study (GACRS) and 450 current and former adult smokers with and without COPD who participated in the COPDGene study. Measurements and Main Results: After QC, we had 351 samples and 649 microRNAs for Differential Expression (DE) analysis between the frequent (n = 183) and no or infrequent exacerbation (n = 168) groups in GACRS. Fifteen upregulated miRs had odds ratios (OR) between 1.22 and 1.59 for a doubling of miR counts, while five downregulated miRs had ORs between 0.57 and 0.8. These were assessed for generalization in COPDGene, where three of the upregulated miRs (miR-532-3p, miR-296-5p, and miR-766-3p) and two of the downregulated miRs (miR-7-5p and miR-451b) replicated. Pathway enrichment analysis showed MAPK and PI3K-Akt signaling pathways were strongly enriched for target genes of DE miRNAs and miRNAs generalizing to COPD exacerbations, as well as infection response pathways to various pathogens. Conclusion: miRs (451b; 7-5p; 532-3p; 296-5p and 766-3p) associated with both childhood asthma and adult COPD exacerbations may play a vital role in airflow obstruction and exacerbations and point to shared genomic regulatory machinery underlying exacerbations in both diseases.
Data Protection by Design Tool for Automated GDPR Compliance Verification Based on Semantically Modeled Informed Consent

The enforcement of the GDPR in May 2018 has led to a paradigm shift in data protection. Organizations face significant challenges, such as demonstrating compliance (or auditability) and automated compliance verification due to the complex and dynamic nature of consent, as well as the scale at which compliance verification must be performed. Furthermore, the GDPR’s promotion of data protection by design and industrial interoperability requirements has created new technical challenges, as they require significant changes in the design and implementation of systems that handle personal data. We present a scalable data protection by design tool for automated compliance verification and auditability based on informed consent that is modeled with a knowledge graph. Automated compliance verification is made possible by implementing a regulation-to-code process that translates GDPR regulations into well-defined technical and organizational measures and, ultimately, software code. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the tool in the insurance and smart cities domains. We highlight ways in which our tool can be adapted to other domains.
Macular edema degeneration classification on OCT and fundus images with portable platform based on artificial intelligence methods

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of permanent vision loss and visual impairment in people over 60. Early detection of the disease is essential to prevent the evolution of the disease into an advanced stage. An eye care specialist has to perform a dilated eye exam, fundoscopy, a visual acuity test, and fundus photography to determine if a patient has macular degeneration and the stage of the disease. Most of the equipment used nowadays in eye care clinics is equipped in one system with both fundus camera and OCT technology that provides more comprehensive clinical evaluations. In most countries the healthcare system suffers from a low doctor to patient ratio; due to it, diagnosis can become time-consuming and error-prone. To minimize this downfall, a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) strategy is proposed using machine learning techniques to predict the presence of age-related macular degeneration using both OCT and fundus images. The computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is using a portable device, Jetson TX2 board, a powerful AI computer device, to predict the presence of an abnormality in the retina. A dataset composed of three categories: normal retina, dry AMD, and wet AMD from both OCT and fundus images have been used to evaluate the performance of different neuronal networks. Cost reduction and system portability are implemented with the proposed system for point of care in ophthalmology applications.