Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mass transfer simulation on pervaporation dehydration of ethanol through hollow fiber NaA zeolite membranes

A multi-layer series-resistance mass transfer model was developed to simulate mass transfer behaviors of water/ethanol mixture through hollow fiber NaA zeolite membranes. The mass transfer through zeolite layer was described by Maxwell-Stefan mechanism based on adsorption and diffusion parameters obtained from molecular simulation. The mass transfer through asymmetric hollow fiber support was described by dusty gas model involving Knudsen diffusion and viscous flow. It was found that the sponge-like layer of support besides of zeolite layer made an important contribution to overall membrane transfer resistance while the finger-like layer had less effect. When permeate pressure shifted from 0.2 to 7.5 kPa, the mass transfer resistance contribution of sponge-like layer varied from 27.1 to 17.8%. Effects of microstructure parameters of support on mass transfer through membrane were investigated extensively. Large pore size and thin thickness for sponge-like layer of support were beneficial to improve water permeation flux. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 2468–2478, 2016
Species Richness Interacts with Drought to Affect Litter Decomposition via its Effect on Litter Nitrogen Concentration

Biodiversity loss, exotic plant invasions and climatic change are currently the three major challenges to our globe and can each affect various ecological processes, including litter composition. To gain a better understanding of global change impacts on ecological processes, these three global change components need to be considered simultaneously. Here we assembled experimental plant communities with species richness levels (1, 2, 4, 8 or 16) and subjected them to drought (no, moderate or intensive drought) and invasion (invasion by the exotic annual plant Symphyotrichum subulatum or not). We collected litter of the native plant communities and let it decompose for nine months within the communities. Drought decreased litter decomposition, while the exotic plant invasion had no impact. Increasing species richness decreased litter decomposition under the mesic condition (no drought), but had little impact under moderate and intensive drought. A structural equation model showed that drought and species richness affected litter decomposition mainly via influencing litter nitrogen concentration, but not via altering the quantity and diversity of soil meso-fauna or soil physio-chemical properties. The negative impact of species diversity on litter decomposition under the mesic condition was mainly ascribed to a sampling effect, i.e. via particularly low litter nitrogen concentrations in the two dominant species. Our results indicate that species richness can interact with drought to affect litter decomposition via effect on litter nitrogen. We conclude that nitrogen-dependent litter decomposition should be a mechanism to predict integrated effects of plant diversity loss, exotic plant invasions and climatic change on litter decomposition.
Mortality forecasting at age 65 and above: an age-specific evaluation of the Lee-Carter model

The Lee-Carter (LC) model has been recurrently used to forecast mortality, including by national statistical offices. This model has many advantages, but tends to underpredict life expectancy due to its assumption of constant age-specific response to the time index. Does this bias emerge from all ages or from specific ages only? In this paper, we aim to provide a more detailed evaluation of the model, by evaluating its accuracy, bias and robustness by age. Our analysis is based on 806 out-of-sample forecasts using various different fitting periods and forecast horizons. We focus on age 65 and above, as most deaths occur at older ages nowadays. We showed that the LC model is not fundamentally biased, but its main assumption of constant age-specific response to the time index, often leading to constant rates of mortality improvement, is not appropriate in all populations and at all ages.
Effects of Presence and Physical Activity on Player Well-being in Augmented Reality Games: A Diary Study

ABSTRACT In this study, we investigate presence in augmented reality games and how it is related to daily physical activity levels and well-being of players. In a diary study, 49 participants played “Ingress” for 14 days and filled out a questionnaire that consisted of several Likert scales, at the end of every day. Multilevel analyses showed that presence was associated with daily walking duration and daily subjective vitality, and daily walking duration was associated with subjective vitality of players in the same-day level. It was also found that walking duration partially mediated the relationship between presence and daily subjective vitality of players at the same-day level. Lastly, cross-lagged analyses showed that presence predicted next day’s walking duration implying a causal direction from presence to walking duration, whereas walking duration did not predict next day’s presence. The results are discussed and the implications are presented.
The Production of Epistemic Culture and Agency during a First-Grade Engineering Design Unit in an Urban Emergent School

Primary school practices are often bound by traditions that perpetuate compliance and skills-based, decontextualized, rote memorization activities. These histories of practice, prevalent in schools serving mostly Black and Brown children, make it inordinately difficult for students to author themselves as knowledge builders (i.e., with epistemic agency), which is a form of injustice. Engineering is a potentially fertile context to support the creation of epistemic culture, whereby young students’ assets are recognized, named, and leveraged as they create and shape the group’s disciplinary knowledge. The authors investigated this potential. The primary research question was: How do first-grade students in an urban emergent school author themselves as epistemic agents during an engineering design unit? Using a social practice theory lens and ethnographic methods, the authors studied 29 days of a materials engineering unit focusing on the teacher’s epistemic commitments, implicit meanings of knowledge in classroom discourse, and practices that opened space for students’ epistemic agency. Data collection included fieldnotes and video of class activities and teacher and student interviews. Class discussions about the properties and uses of materials yielded a rich context for studying epistemic culture. The teacher’s epistemic commitments included an eschewing of disciplinary silos, recognizing the nonlinear nature of knowledge-building about engineering, and acknowledging children’s thinking as an asset for engineering knowledge production. Examples of students’ discursive moves demonstrating epistemic agency included: reminding others about the relevance of previous lessons to the current topic, mirroring the teacher’s instructional moves, claiming voice, space, time, and material resources for knowledgebuilding, translating one another’s ideas, and making unsolicited connections to their lives. Young children’s intellectual assets can too easily be overlooked in traditional learning contexts. This study demonstrates the affordances of responsive engineering instruction in recognizing and building on youths’ intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for substantively contributing to the classroom’s knowledgegenerating practices.
Assessing the Effects of University Reputation and City Image on International Student Destination Choice: Evidence from a Flagship University in Taipei

University reputation and destination image are key factors shaping the choice to study in developed Western countries. While East Asia is emerging as a new contender in the international higher education market, little is known about how international students perceive and are attracted to the higher education institutions in this region. Moreover, while the destination image was represented by the host country image in most studies, the effect of city image on study destination choice should be given more attention due to the geographic and social embeddedness of universities in cities. This study drew the survey data from a flagship university in Taipei to examine the impact of university reputation and city image on international student destination choice, and employed factor analysis to identify the dimensions of university reputation and city image. The analysis confirms university reputation and city image as important elements in international student destination choice in the Asian context. It further identifies four factors creating discrepant weighting of these two elements in study destination choice: degree/non-degree program, level of study, type of international student identity, and region of origin. Theoretical and policy implications of findings are discussed at the end of the paper.
Bioremediation of hexavalent chromium by an indigenous bacterium Bacillus cereus S10C1: optimization study using two level full factorial experimental design

The present study is focussed on chromium removal by indigenous chromium-resistant microorganisms isolated from soil and sludge samples of an industrial site. The optimal bioremediation conditions, namely temperature, hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) initial concentration, pH and time were determined by using a full factorial design at two levels. The results showed that from the 54 bac-terialstrains,S10C1identiﬁedas Bacilluscereus 4080LBK(NCBI:txid1396)wasthemoste ﬃ cientstrain in removing Cr(VI). The analysis of variance (ANOVA) results indicated that pH, Cr(VI) initial concentration, time and the interaction terms (T°–pH), (T°–time) and (Cr(VI) initial concentration–pH), have a signiﬁcant inﬂuence on Cr(VI) removal yield. Moreover, the prescribed ﬁrst-order regression model ﬁtted well to the experimental data with a high coe ﬃ cient of determination ( R 2 = 0.969). According to the response optimizer of Design-Expert software, the optimum conditions for chromium biodegradation were: a pH of 3, a temperature of 55 °C, a Cr(VI) initial concentration of 0.5 mM and a contact time of 20 hours. Under these conditions the experimental Cr(VI) removal percentage was found to be about 92.9% which is close to the predicted value by the statistical design (94.4%).
Scarcity in the Theories of Value

Building on Krishna Bharadwaj’s analysis of the differences between neoclassical economics and classical political economy and her careful historical reconstruction of the process that culminated in the birth of the former, this article focuses on the characterisation of neoclassical theories as ‘scarcity’ theories of value. The article intends, in the first place, to analyse the relation that neoclassical theories bear to earlier theoretical developments, particularly the earlier conception of value based on the demand-and-supply interaction, in which the notion of scarcity played a crucial role, a conception entertained both by pre-classical authors and contemporaries of Ricardo. In the second place, it aims to show that the scarcity conception of value is at the root of some basic inconsistencies of the neoclassical approach. Attention will thus be devoted to a particular expression of the latter, the so-called Walras–Cassel system of general equilibrium, and to the discussions that took place in the 1930s on the properties of such system—afterwards culminating in the Vienna debate over the formal properties of the system—in which the limitations of the scarcity conception of value were clearly addressed. JEL Code: B12, B13, D51
Revised Atomistic Models of the Crystal Structure of C–S–H with high C/S Ratio

Abstract The atomic structure of calcium-silicate-hydrate (C1.67–S–Hx) has been studied. Atomistic C–S–H models suggested in our previous study have been revised in order to perform a direct comparison of energetic stability of the different structures. An extensive set of periodic structures of C–S–H with variation of water content was created, and then optimized using molecular dynamics with reactive force field ReaxFF and quantum chemical semiempirical method PM6. All models show organization of water molecules inside the structure of C–S–H. The new geometries of C–S–H, reported in this paper, show lower relative energy with respect to the geometries from the original definition of C–S–H models. Model that corresponds to calcium enriched tobermorite structure has the lowest relative energy and the density closest to the experimental values.
Predicting a User’s Numeric Identity from the Search of Attribute Data

In common Internet environments, most of the websites or services constrain the user account creation. Since the Internet is accessible by all and offers more and more services, a user has several accounts on the web. The difficulty in controlling their accounts does not leave indifferent to the users of the web. Hence the use of easy or insecure passwords. This is why we are victims of attacks and forgetting our passwords. Large companies such as Facebook, Google, etc., offer authorization and authentication mechanisms using the Oauth and OpenID protocol, which requires the opening of an account. To be independent of a social network or a site, it would be important to develop a model to make a statistical analysis between the attributes of the profiles of the same user and to create an account. Using the same password for all its different accounts could be an approach but avoiding the proliferation of data by proposing a model of identity analysis would be even more interesting. That is why this article proposes a centralized account management model by making a comparative and statistical study of the identity attributes and proposing a single account to the user to manage all its different accounts. So, we have a horizontal analysis between the attributes of the identity categories and a vertical analysis between these categories. This study allowed us to find a threshold to conclude that an account belongs to a user.
Outdoor play activities and outdoor environment of early childhood education in Turkey: a qualitative meta-synthesis

ABSTRACT The aim of the study is to explore outdoor play activities and outdoor environment of early childhood education in Turkey by presenting findings from a qualitative metasynthesis of research. The data was derived from 20 studies done in Turkey. Content analysis was performed to examine how outdoor play and activities in Turkish preschools were conceptualized and justified by teachers, parents, and children. The result showed three themes: (1) A prominent theme is the main actors of the studies’ subjects, namely the teachers, parents, and children. (2) The studies are based on different dimensions of theoretical perspectives which can be grounded in developmental, pedagogical, sociological, and ecological dimensions. (3) Finally, an emerging theme is related to the accessibility of outdoor spaces, the quality, and adequacy of these existing spaces.
Assessment of quality of life among HIV infected people on antiretroviral therapy in a tertiary hospital, Karnataka

Background: With the availability of highly effective antiretroviral treatment, HIV is transforming into a chronic condition, whose management is now experiencing problems of other chronic diseases, where quality of life (QOL) has become an important component of overall assessment of health care and management. This study was conducted with the objective of assessing the QOL and factors influencing it in HIV infected people on antiretroviral therapy (ART). Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at district ART center, Hassan. Purposive sampling was used to identify 148 HIV infected people on antiretroviral therapy, who were interviewed using a pretested questionnaire, assessing QOL with the World Health Organization (WHOQOL) HIV‑BREF.Results: The average age of the study population was 37.69 years. Majority of them were males 54.7% compared to 45.3% of females. Most of them resided in rural areas (87.8%). The educational status of the subjects was poor with 33.8% of them being illiterates. The mean score was highest for spirituality and social relationships domain and least for psychological domain. Age, education and socioeconomic status did not have any influence on the QOL. There was significant difference between QOL scores and clinical stages. Individuals in stage I and II had better scores compared to stage 3 and 4. QOL scores decreased with decreasing CD4 count.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that patient-reported measures of health status and related concepts may help provide a feasible, reliable and valid method to assess the impact of HIV/AIDS improve patient outcomes.
Assessing Good Governance in Protected Areas (PA) Co-management: A Case Study of the Sundarbans Mangrove Forests of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Co-management has been adopted in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh since 2008 toward biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement of local communities. However, we have limited research on how good governance was maintained and practiced in co-managed mangrove protected areas (PA). Drawing on a case study, this research assessed stakeholders’ perception on good governance in PA co-management in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh. We adopted a ‘good governance framework’ consisting of six governance principles (stakeholders’ participation, transparency, responsiveness, legitimacy, fairness and organizational capacity) and deployed both qualitative (11 key-informants’ interviews and 4 focus group discussions) and quantitative methods (135 structured interviews) for data collection. Median, frequencies (percent), contingency table chi-square tests were performed for quantitative data. About 30–35% of the respondents perceived neutral in their responses to good governance principles (stakeholders’ participation, transparency, responsiveness, legitimacy, fairness and organizational capacity) indicating moderate level of governance in PA co-management in the Sundarbans. This study has demonstrated a wider implementation gap between the ambitious intent enshrined in the new policy framework and actual rollout of PA governance on the ground. These results would be useful to policy-makers, development agencies and PA managers in formulating and implementing effective policies for PA co-management in Bangladesh and elsewhere.
Development and Testing of a Mobile Application for Management of Gestational Diabetes: A Qualitative and Randomized Trial Protocol

The prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is increasing, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as Nepal. GDM self-management, including intensive diet/lifestyle modifications and glucose monitoring, is critical to maintain glycemic control and prevent adverse maternal and child outcomes. The objective of this study is to develop a culturally appropriate mobile app that supports self-management of GDM, and additionally, test its usability and preliminary efficacy, among patients in a peri-urban hospital setting in Nepal. Dhulikhel Hospital, a community-based tertiary level university hospital in Dhulikhel, Nepal, is the data collection site for this study. In the app development phase, paper prototypes for the GDM app were developed based on expert review and user-centered design approach. Focus groups and in-depth interviews were conducted with GDM patients (n = 6), healthcare providers (n = 5), and family members of GDM patients (n = 3) in order to understand facilitators and barriers to GDM self-management and to gather feedback on the paper prototypes. The final GDM app will be developed based on the user feedback and following an iterative process of product design and user testing. In the clinical trial phase, newly diagnosed GDM patients (n = 60) will be recruited, and randomized to either GDM app + standard care or standard care alone from 28 weeks gestation until delivery. In this proof-of-concept trial, feasibility outcomes will be app usage, self-monitoring adherence, and app usability and acceptability. Exploratory treatment outcomes will be glycemic control measures at 6 weeks postpartum, neonatal birthweight, and rates of labor induction and caesarean delivery. Qualitative data from focus groups and in-depth interviews have been collected and analyzed, and we anticipate that the clinical trial will be completed in 2022. App-based lifestyle interventions for GDM management are not common, especially in LMICs where its prevalence is rapidly increasing, and as such, our study findings will have important public health relevance for a broader population. NIH/FIC.
The shadow of the Pithead: Understanding social and political attitudes in former coal mining communities in the UK

The economic plight and consequent social and political attitudes of ‘left behind’ communities have become subjects of intense focus across a world impacted by inequality, social unrest, and political populism. We examine whether particular forms of long-term economic decline affect how residents in different places view the world; here in former coalmining communities of the UK which remain economically peripheral, and are home to community narratives that emphasise the shared economic, political and cultural heritages that are often fundamental those places’ very existence. We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to contrast political views and social attitudes in communities that were, in 1981, economically dependent on coal mining, with other communities that are similarly economically peripheral in contexts and challenges, but without a shared history of economic decline. We find that residents of former coalmining communities are highly politically disengaged, with low levels of trust and political efficacy, and low involvement in the political process. Moreover, our analysis shows an increase in political engagement over the Brexit campaign period, which directly addressed some of the grievances felt by these communities. We conclude that community narratives of economic peripherality are strongly inter-linked with trust in government and political engagement.
Pretreatment of Loblolly Pine Tree Needles Using Deep Eutectic Solvents

Deep eutectic solvents (DES) are new ‘green’ solvents that have a high potential for biomass processing because of their low cost, low toxicity, biodegradability, and easy recycling. When Loblolly pine trees are harvested, their branches with needles are typically left in brush piles and decompose very slowly. Exploring the effect of DES pretreatment on waste pine needles was the goal of the present work. Loblolly pine needles were treated with three types of DES to prepare the biomass for enzymatic hydrolysis to glucose, a subject not readily found in the literature. The resulting products were analyzed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, fiber analysis, and high-performance liquid chromatography. Glucose yields after pretreatment and hydrolysis were found to be six times that for untreated biomass with two of the DES. Fiber analysis indicated removal of lignin, hemicellulose, and ash from the needle biomass. Enhanced glucose yield was due to removal of lignin and disruption of biomass structure during pretreatment, so that the pretreated biomass was rich in cellulosic content. Based on the results shown in this study, among the three types of DES, formic acid:choline chloride and acetic acid:choline chloride pretreatment had better potential for biomass pretreatment compared to lactic acid:choline chloride.