Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A subspace type incremental two-dimensional principal component analysis algorithm

Principal component analysis (PCA) has been a powerful tool for high-dimensional data analysis. It is usually redesigned to the incremental PCA algorithm for processing streaming data. In this paper, we propose a subspace type incremental two-dimensional PCA algorithm (SI2DPCA) derived from an incremental updating of the eigenspace to compute several principal eigenvectors at the same time for the online feature extraction. The algorithm overcomes the problem that the approximate eigenvectors extracted from the traditional incremental two-dimensional PCA algorithm (I2DPCA) are not mutually orthogonal, and it presents more efficiently. In numerical experiments, we compare the proposed SI2DPCA with the traditional I2DPCA in terms of the accuracy of computed approximations, orthogonality errors, and execution time based on widely used datasets, such as FERET, Yale, ORL, and so on, to confirm the superiority of SI2DPCA.
Sistema em fluxo para determinação espectrofotométrica de uréia em plasma de sangue animal empregando leguminosa como fonte natural da enzima urease

A spectrophotometric flow injection analysis (FIA) procedure employing natural urease enzyme source for the determination of urea in animal blood plasma was developed. Among leguminous plants used in the Brazilian agriculture, the Cajanus cajan specie was selected as urease source considering its efficiency and availability. A minicolumn was filled with leguminous fragments and coupled to the FIA manifold, where urea was on-line converted to ammonium ions and subsequently it was quantified by spectrophotometry. The system was employed to determine urea in animal plasma samples without any prior treatment. Accuracy was assessed by comparison results with those obtained employing the official procedure and no significant difference at 90 % confidence level was observed. Other profitable features such as an analytical throughput of 30 determinations per hour, a reagent consumption of 19.2 mg sodium salicylate, 0.5 mg sodium hipochloride and a relative standard deviation of 1.4 % (n= 12) were also obtained.
Structural Characterization of the Mesophases Exhibited by Dicopper and Diruthenium Trialkyloxybenzoates

Abstract Binuclear Copper and Ruthenium complexes derived from long-chain 3,4,5-tiralkyloxybenzoates (noted as B3OCn), namely Ru2(B3OCn)4Cl and Cu2(B3OCn)4 with n = 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18, were synthesized. The structure of their mesophases was characterized by X-ray diffraction. Both series exhibit low-temperature liquid crystalline phases and, in particular, room temperature mesophases for the lower homologues of the ruthenium series. The mesophases exhibited by Ru2(B3OCn)4Cl were found to be hexagonal columnar (ColH) in nature, whereas the structure of the mesophases of the copper derivatives depends on the aliphatic chain length, being ColH for n = 10, 12, 14 and cubic for the longer homologues.
Multi-Task Convolutional Neural Network Leading to High Performance and Interpretability via Attribute Estimation

SUMMARY A multi-task convolutional neural network leading to high performance and interpretability via attribute estimation is presented in this letter. Our method can provide interpretation of the classiﬁcation results of CNNs by outputting attributes that explain elements of objects as a judgement reason of CNNs in the middle layer. Furthermore, the proposed network uses the estimated attributes for the following prediction of classes. Consequently, construction of a novel multi-task CNN with improvements in both of the interpretability and classiﬁcation performance is realized.
Heightened resistance to type 1 interferons characterizes HIV-1 at transmission and following treatment interruption

Type 1 interferons (IFN-I) are potent innate antiviral effectors that constrain HIV-1 transmission. However, harnessing these cytokines for HIV-1 cure strategies has been hampered by an incomplete understanding of their anti-viral activities at later stages of infection. Here, we characterized the IFN-I sensitivity of 500 clonally-derived HIV-1 isolates from the plasma and CD4+ T cells of 26 individuals sampled longitudinally following transmission or after antiretroviral therapy (ART) and analytical treatment interruption. We determined the concentration of IFNα2 and IFNβ that reduced viral replication in vitro by 50% (IC50), and found consistent changes in the sensitivity of HIV-1 to IFN-I inhibition both across individuals and over time. IFN-I resistance was uniformly high during acute infection, decreased in all individuals in the first year post-infection, was reacquired concomitant with CD4+ T cell loss, and remained elevated in individuals with accelerated disease. Isolates obtained by viral outgrowth during suppressive ART were relatively IFN-I sensitive, resembling viruses circulating just prior to ART initiation. However, viruses that rebounded following treatment interruption displayed the highest degree of IFNα2 and IFNβ resistance observed at any time during the infection course. These findings indicate a dynamic interplay between host innate immune responses and the evolving HIV-1 quasispecies, with the relative contribution of IFN-I to HIV-1 control impacted by both ART and analytical treatment interruption. Although elevated at transmission, host innate pressures are the highest during viral rebound, limiting the viruses that successfully reactivate from latency to those that are IFN-I resistant. One Sentence Summary Interferon-mediated pressures vary throughout HIV-1 infection but are the highest during viral rebound after treatment interruption.
Using Logistic Regression to Identify Leading Factors to Prepare for an Earthquake Emergency during Daytime and Nighttime: The Case of Mass Earthquake Drills

Historical data have demonstrated that earthquakes can happen any time of the day and night. Drills may help communities to better prepare for such emergencies. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from 4 October to 20 November 2017, in Mexico City. The sample size was 2400. The addressed research questions were “what factors predict the likelihood that respondents would report that they agree on conducting mass evacuation drills: (a) any time of the day and (b) any time at night? ” The logistic regression technique was employed to identify the factors leading to the outcome. In relation to (a), five variables were significantly associated with the outcome, i.e., age, frequency of drills, warning time, knowledge on what to do, and “perception vulnerability city”. Regarding (b), five variables were also significantly associated with the outcome variable, i.e., age, level of education, frequency of drills, negative emotions, and fear of house/building collapsing. More generally, several drills should be conducted any time of the day and night; further, 50% of them should be announced and 50% unannounced. Furthermore, the time of earthquake drills should be randomly selected. In this way, we may just match the spatial–temporal dimension of an earthquake emergency. It is hoped that the findings will lead to better preparedness of the residents of the capital city during an earthquake occurrence.
Airway Management in Critical Settings

Airway management continues to be a challenging task for healthcare practitioners and when it comes to critical settings; it carries more challenges even for the skilled persons. Critical settings could be in fact of suits; where intervention takes place, equipment or practitioners taking care of airway management. Critically ill patients with multiple comorbidities, increasing oxygen demand and high respiratory work; that may require elective airway securing. Various protocols, guidelines and recommendations advocated for this task with the prospects of less hemodynamic alteration and prevention of pulmonary aspiration. In the former, starting oxygen therapy for all critical patients on admission was a routine following the concept; if some is good, more must be better. Nowadays excess oxygen may be unfavorable in some acute critical conditions e.g. ischemic strokes, post-acute myocardial infraction and those with hypercapnic respiratory failure. However, still high flow inspired oxygen concentration is the protocol until they are stable then its reduction to reach the targeted arterial oxygen saturation. Oxygen devices used for oxygen delivery are plenty and its selection depends on the many factors; airway patency, patient’s conscious level and compliance, and assessment of gas exchange based on arterial blood sample which is recommended for all critically ill patients. Early prompt evaluation of the airway and assessment of gas exchange using arterial blood sample analysis is curial in all critically ill patients to guide for subsequent oxygen supply and whether the patient needs ventilatory support or not. This chapter will focus on airway management, oxygen therapy and types of ventilatory support required for adult critically ill patients, while other situations’ airway management’s tools and skills will be discussed in another ones.
Isolation and Antibiotic Susceptibility Pattern of Bacterial Uropathogens and Associated Factors Among Adult People Living with HIV/AIDS Attending the HIV Center at Wolaita Sodo University Teaching Referral Hospital, South Ethiopia

Background Urinary tract infection remains one of the major public health problems in developing countries, including Ethiopia. Its prevalence is fuelled by human immunodeficiency virus infection which represents a considerable health problem amongst these populations. This study aimed to assess the prevalence, antimicrobial susceptibility pattern and associated factors of bacterial urinary tract infections among adult PLHIV. Methods Cross-sectional study was conducted from May to December, 2018 among adult people living with HIV/AIDS in Wolaita Sodo University Teaching and Referral Hospital. The socio-demographic data and clinical data were collected using structured questionnaire. Mid-stream urine sample was collected for bacterial isolation and identification. Antimicrobial sensitivity testing was done by Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion technique. Logistic regression was conducted to check the association between UTI and associated factors. Results The overall prevalence of urinary tract infection was 29 (14.1%). The predominant bacteria isolated was E. coli 13 (44.8%) followed by S. aureus 5 (17.2%). Gender, CD4 count, history of catheterization, history of hospitalization, and DM status were independent factors for the occurrence of urinary tract infection. E. coli species were 100% and 84.6% susceptible to ciprofloxacin and norfloxacin, respectively; whereas, there was a complete resistance to amoxicillin-clavulanic acid and ampicillin. K. pneumoniae was pan resistant to gentamicin, amikacin and ampicillin, whereas 100% sensitive to nitrofurantoin. The rate of MDR was 23 (79.3%) with the majority, 16 (69.6%), gram negative and seven (30.4%) gram positive. Conclusion The burden of UTI among people living with HIV was considerably high. The findings of this study will help policy makers and other stakeholders as baseline information.
Simultaneous determination of seven preservatives in cosmetics by dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction coupled with high performance capillary electrophoresis

A simple, rapid, inexpensive and efficient method based on dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled with high performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE) has been developed for the extraction and determination of methylparaben (MP), ethylparaben (EP), propylparaben (PP), butylparaben (BP), sorbic acid (SOA), benzoic acid (BA), and salicylic acid (SA) in cosmetic products. A dispersive solution composed of 50 μL trichloromethane and 0.45 mL isopropyl alcohol was used to extract the target analytes from acidified sample solution quantitatively in the DLLME procedure. A suitable amount of lower layer was transferred into a vial and evaporated to dryness under nitrogen gas. The residue was reconstituted in methanol–water (20:80, v/v) solution, and separated using bare fused-silica capillary (50 μm i.d., 50 cm of total length, and 41 cm effective length) and detected at 230 nm. Urobenzoic acid was used as the internal standard. The calibration curves were linear in the range of 0.05 to 5.0 μg mL−1 for MP and SA, and 0.025 to 5.0 μg mL−1 for the rest with the coefficients of correlation ranging from 0.9978 to 0.9995. The limits of detection were in the range of 0.200–0.375 mg kg−1 with enrichment factors ranging from 41 to 133 for all target analytes. Recoveries of the method were in the range of 71.1–112.6%, with the intraday RSDs and interday RSDs in the range of 2.22–4.51% and 3.05–4.89%, respectively. This method has been successfully applied for analysis of the preservatives in different samples of cosmetic.
AUDIT COMMITTEE CHAIR’S LEGAL EXPERTISE AND REAL ACTIVITIES MANIPULATION: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM MALAYSIAN ENERGY AND UTILITIES SECTORS

Recent studies claim that improvements in regulations and corporate governance law in different countries are restricting accrual-based earnings management and encouraging managers to shift to real earnings management (REM). However, it is not yet clear whether audit committee (AC) directors with legal expertise are associated with higher or lower REM. Thus, this study aims to investigate the relationship between the AC chair’s legal expertise and REM in the energy and utilities sectors in Malaysia. The study uses a sample of all energy and utilities companies listed on Bursa Malaysia between 2013 and 2018. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is applied to analyse the study data. The study finds that AC chairs with legal expertise are positively and significantly associated with REM, suggesting that they have not yet ceased REM practices. The findings add to the corporate governance and earnings management literature, and inform regulators and other readers of financial reports about the monitoring role of the AC chair.
Design and Preparation of Molecularly Imprinted Atrazine-Receptor Polymers: Investigation of Functional Monomers and Solvents

The preparation of atrazine-receptor polymers by molecular imprinting was explored, focusing upon the role of functional monomer and solvent used for the preparation. Three functional monomers and six different solvents were examined from the viewpoint of the efficiency for molecular imprinting. Polymers were prepared using methacrylic acid, a stronger acid 2-(trifluoromethyl)acrylic acid and a three-point hydrogen bond donor/acceptor, glutethimide derivative. Methacrylic acid displayed the best effectiveness as functional monomer, which leads to an understanding that a functional monomer is required to have both strong binding and multiple binding capacity. By choosing less polar solvents for polymerization, polymers having better retention ability and higher selectivity were obtained. Those polymers exhibited capacity factors 2 - 2.5 times as large as that for chloroform. It was also suggested that the molecular shape and size of the solvent used have influence on the resultant polymer’s binding ability.
Synthesis of Polymer Grafted Starches and Their Flocculation Properties in Clay Suspension

Starch-based flocculants have been emerged as a promising alternative to conventional synthetic flocculants in wastewater treatment, especially for the treatment of oil sand tailings, as they are low cost, safe, biodegradable, fairly shear-stable, readily available from reproducible agricultural resources, and do not result in secondary pollution. In this paper, three types of polymer-grafted starches (St-g-Polymer) with different charge properties were synthesized and their molecular structures were controlled by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The correlations between the charge properties of starch-based flocculants, external environmental parameters, and flocculation performance were systematically investigated by conducting jar tests under various environmental conditions. It was found that the charge properties of the branch chain had a significant impact on flocculation performance. The cationic St-g-Polymer demonstrated the best performance due to the grafting of the cationic monomer to the starch backbone which improved the solubility of the copolymer and aided in the removal of small/water-soluble particles. The results obtained could assist in guiding the selection and design of suitable biodegradable flocculants when treating targeted wastewater.
A Study on the Structure of Rock Engineering Coatings Based on Complex Network Theory

As one of the most basic materials of engineering coatings, rock has complex structural characteristics in its medium space. However, it is still difficult to quantitatively characterize the microstructure of rock coatings, such as connectivity and aggregation degree. For this paper, based on a CT-scan model of rock coating, we extracted the network topology of a rock coating sample and verified that its microstructure parameter distribution accords with Barabasi and Albert (BA) scale-free theory. Based on this result, relying on the BA scale-free theory, a dual-porosity network model of rock coating was constructed. We extracted the network structure of the model to verify it, and analyzed the distribution of the microstructure parameters of the model, such as degree distribution, average path length and throat length distribution. At the same time, we analyzed the evolution trend of the permeability of the coating model with the microscopic parameters. Then we discuss the influence of the change of structural parameters on the microstructure of the coating model, and compared with the mainstream rock models at the present stage, the rationality and accuracy of the models are analyzed. This provides a new method for studying the mechanical and permeability properties of engineering coating materials.
Indoor bacterial pollution, antimicrobial susceptibility patterns and associated risk factors of bacterial isolates among residences of Gondar town, Northwest Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, there is not enough information about indoor air bacterial pollution. Therefore, this study aimed to determine bacterial indoor air pollution and its associated risk factors among residences of Gondar town. A cross-sectional survey of indoor air pollution was conducted on 259 selected houses from February to May 2019. Sociodemographic and housing characteristics were collected using a questionnaire and checklist. Passive settle plate method using blood culture media was employed to collect samples and identification of isolates done by both quantitative and qualitative analysis. A total of 259 houses were investigated, and 13 different types of bacterial species were isolated. Of these, Bacillus species 259 (100%) and coagulase-negative Staphylococcus species 101 (34.4%), Enterobacter cloacae, Klebsiella species, Citrobacter diversus, Escherichia coli, and Pantoea species were isolates. Tetracycline and cotrimoxazole were ineffective, but ciprofloxacin and ceftriaxone were efficient antibiotics. Educational status, presence of domestic animals within the house, and integrated toilets were significantly associated with indoor bacterial pollution ( p < 0.05). Indoor air pollution was higher in this study than international quantification limit (5 colony-forming unit/4 h) of clean rooms. So, periodic surveillance of indoor air quality and assessing risk factors should be addressed to assess the burden and intervene accordingly.
Tribological Properties of Poly(methyl methacrylate) Brushes Prepared by Surface-Initiated Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization

Surface-initiated living radical polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) using copper/bipyridyl complex was carried out from silicon wafer immobilized with a 2-bromoisobutylate moiety, resulting in the assembly of polymer chains tethered by one end to a surface, a so-called “polymer brush”. The thickness of the PMMA brush, which was estimated by ellipsometry and atomic force microscopy, increased linearly with the molecular weight of the chains, and was controlled by the free initiator concentration. The graft density of the PMMA brushes was estimated to be as high as 0.56 chains/nm2. The frictional properties of the high density PMMA brush were characterized by sliding the stainless ball probe on its surface across a width of 20 mm at a rate of 90 mm/min under loading of 0.49 N in air at room temperature. The PMMA brush was found to have a lower frictional coefficient and much better wear resistance than the corresponding spin-coated PMMA film because of the anchoring of the chain ends in the brush. In addition, the friction coefficient of the polymer brush significantly decreased in response to soaking in acetone and toluene, and increased in response to immersion in hexane. The tribological properties depended on the solvent quality.
An Innovative Grandmother-Inclusive Approach for Addressing Suboptimal Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices in Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT Background Suboptimal infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices contribute to child undernutrition. Sierra Leone Demographic and Health Survey data show that IYCF practices remain poor despite modest improvements. Recent studies have identified the role of grandmothers as critical to child nutrition; however, in Sierra Leone to date, the potential for grandmothers to influence IYCF practices has not been investigated. Objectives We examined how an innovative grandmother-inclusive approach (GMIA) can be used to address suboptimal IYCF practices. Methods Using a quasi-experimental design, we compared IYCF beliefs and practices between GMIA intervention communities (receiving monthly dialogue sessions on nutrition, quarterly community praise sessions, and intergenerational forums) and comparison communities (receiving standard nutrition education) in Bum chiefdom from 2013 and 2016. The quantitative endline survey targeted 101 pregnant women, 291 women with children aged <2 y, and 219 grandmothers. Statistical analyses utilized t tests and χ2 tests to examine differences between intervention and comparison communities at endline. Multivariate regression was used to determine the intervention's effect on IYCF outcomes of interest. Results Awareness of and participation in the GMIA was high among mothers and grandmothers in intervention communities. The percentage of infants and young children aged 0–23 mo (n = 291) exclusively breastfed during the first week of life was significantly higher in the intervention group (90.2% compared with 79.4%, P = 0.01). Among infants aged 6–23 mo (n = 219), the percentage achieving minimum dietary diversity and minimum acceptable diet was significantly higher in the intervention group (77.2% compared with 51.8%, P < 0.001; and 53.8% compared with 22.6%, P < 0.001, respectively). Differences in percentages achieving minimum meal frequency (MMF) were only significant for infants aged 9–23 mo, with the intervention group achieving a higher MMF (54.6% compared with 36.9%, P = 0.02). Conclusions Results suggest that a GMIA that recognizes grandmothers’ roles and strengthens their knowledge can contribute to improved IYCF practices.