Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MICROCOSM EXPERIMENTS ON A COCONUT-FIBRE BIOFILM TREATMENT SYSTEM TO EVALUATE WASTE WATER TREATMENT EFFICIENCIES

Interest in utilization of locally available biomasses as biofilm support media for wastewater treatment in developing countries is increasing. In this study, microcosm experiments on a coconut-fibre biofilm treatment system were carried out to evaluate wastewater treatment efficiencies in the laboratory using two wastewaters, synthetic sewage and leachate, with different pollutant loads. Three coconut-fibre conditions were set as a single bundle (low fibre density: LFD), two bundles (high fibre density: HFD), and no coconut fibre (blank). The wastewater was first circulated in the system for six weeks (circulation stage) and then discharged from the treatment tank for 7–24 weeks (treatment stage). Water quality parameters of effluents, pH, DO, EC, BOD, COD, TC, and TN, were measured at one-week intervals, and the sedimented sludge in each treatment tank was collected to determine C, N, and P contents. Results showed effective reductions in BOD and COD in the LFD and HFD conditions for the synthetic leachate, indicating that the coconut fibre contributed to the treatment of wastewater. On the other hand, the fibre density had less or no effect on the reduction of water quality parameters in the synthetic sewage. For both synthetic sewage and leachate, the C and N consumptions generally increased in the order of blank, LFD, and HFD. In particular, sludge sedimentation contributed to C consumption under the HFD condition.
Foreign Institutional Ownership and the Valuation Effect of Investment and Payout Decisions

We study the effect of foreign ownership on firm valuation through strategic corporate decisions related to investment and payouts. Using data from Japan, we find evidence that foreign institutional investors lead to higher firm value through better and efficient investment and payout decisions. Our results indicate that through increased monitoring, foreign investors mitigate the possibility of sub-optimal investments and unnecessary payouts by the management. We also find that firms with increased foreign ownership use their cash reserves in ways that significantly compliments the operating performance. Furthermore, our results also support the conjecture of a recent decline in the influence of Japanese main banks on firm’s strategic decisions.
Transformation of NHX-1 Gene into Some Melon Varieties

In the present study, an efficient method for shoot regeneration and transformation by Agrobacterium tumefaciens strains in two different melon cultivars (Cucumis melo var. inodorus cv. ‘Kirkagac 637’ and Cucumis melo L., cv. Védrantais) have been developed. A. tumefaciens AGL1 race provide pUBINHX1 plasmid, resistant to salinity. Expression of AtNHX1 (Na-H antiporter) gene driven by CaMV 35S control in pUBINHX1 plasmid. In the structure of the plasmid hygromisin phospotransferase gene located as plant selection marker gene in T DNA region. The best regeneration result was obtained from MS medium supplemented with 2.2 μM BAP and 0.5 μM NAA. DNA isolation, PCR and gel electrophoresis were done from putative transgenic plants, 200 bp band size was obtain. Regeneration of putative transgenic plants obtained from proximal and cotyledon explants showed differences in both cultivars.
Acceptability of prebiotic fiber-treated whey drink fermented with Lactobacillus acidophilus

This work aimed to develop a fermented drink by diversifying the quantities of Lactobacillus acidophilus inoculum and prebiotic fiber in the form of inulin and using the total dry extract of whey and sucrose. After fermentation, the following measurements were made after 0, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days of storage at 6°C: titratable acidity (according to the Dornic method), pH, moisture content, fat content, ash content, protein content, lactose content and the probiotic cell count. After 28 days of storage, the viable L. acidophilus cell counts had decreased for all six treatments but were still above the minimum count of 7 log CFU/mL recommended by the Brazilian legislation. All samples presented satisfactory acceptability with the exception of treatment 6, in which the inulin was decanted, thereby altering the color and causing a decrease in acceptance. Keywords: Fermented milk, whey, probiotic microorganism, prebiotic, sensory evaluation. African Journal of Biotechnology Vol 13(25) 2565-2574
A COLLABORATIVE CROSS NUMBER PUZZLE GAME TO ENHANCE ELEMENTARY STUDENTS' ARITHMETIC SKILLS

In traditional mathematics education, students have typically been asked to solve lots of tedious and uninteresting exercises for developing the arithmetic skills of addition and subtraction. The paper provides an account of learning arithmetic skills in a more interesting way through the collaborative playing of a puzzle game. 83 students in three classes in Grade 4 were asked to solve arithmetic problems with three different methods: via playing an adapted “cross number puzzle” game on Group Scribbles (GS) collaboratively, via playing the same game on GS individually, and via the traditional method of teaching and learning, i.e. with no games at all. Analysis of the pre and post learning achievement data reveals that the two classes who played the game performed better than the control class, with the collaborative class students achieving better than the individual class students. By playing the game, low-ability students, in particular, made the most significant progress in arithmetic capability and in building up their confidence in doing arithmetic calculations.
A Lightweight Surface Reconstruction Method for Online 3D Scanning Point Cloud Data Oriented toward 3D Printing

The existing surface reconstruction algorithms currently reconstruct large amounts of mesh data. Consequently, many of these algorithms cannot meet the efficiency requirements of real-time data transmission in a web environment. This paper proposes a lightweight surface reconstruction method for online 3D scanned point cloud data oriented toward 3D printing. The proposed online lightweight surface reconstruction algorithm is composed of a point cloud update algorithm (PCU), a rapid iterative closest point algorithm (RICP), and an improved Poisson surface reconstruction algorithm (IPSR). The generated lightweight point cloud data are pretreated using an updating and rapid registration method. The Poisson surface reconstruction is also accomplished by a pretreatment to recompute the point cloud normal vectors; this approach is based on a least squares method, and the postprocessing of the PDE patch generation was based on biharmonic-like fourth-order PDEs, which effectively reduces the amount of reconstructed mesh data and improves the efficiency of the algorithm. This method was verified using an online personalized customization system that was developed with WebGL and oriented toward 3D printing. The experimental results indicate that this method can generate a lightweight 3D scanning mesh rapidly and efficiently in a web environment.
An alternative model of political agency

This paper develops an alternative political agency model. We add uncertainty related to the payoff of electing the challenger and then we model effort by the politicians as an investment in a public good that will be realized if and only if the incumbent is reelected. We find that uncertainty related to the challenger has an ambiguous effect on the level of investment, but that more uncertainty makes the incumbent less willing to invest when the politicians care about the payoff from the investment. Using this model we then proceed to find that there can exist a level of uncertainty where the incumbent would be willing to invest in a non-electoral system, but the presence of elections make the incumbent unwilling to invest. In this case the voter might be better off without elections. Then we find that the effect of electoral biases on the level of investment is depending on the level of uncertainty. Longer terms of office can increase the incentives to invest in the public good.
Reliability of different predictive systems in major gastrointestinal surgical patients

APACHE II-III, SAPS II, and MPM II are commonly used predictive models. The systems designed for surgical patients include the ASA and P-POSSUM. NRS-2002 score is suggested for screening of nutritional risk. We aimed to assess the performance of prognostic models, and to compare the reliability of NRS-2002 with those, in major gastrointestinal surgical patients. APACHE II and III, SAPS II, MPM II and P-POSSUM scores, ASA grading, and NRS-2002 scores of the patients underwent major gastrointestinal surgery were collected on admission. Calculations were repeated for APACHE II and III, SAPS II, and MPM II at postoperative 24 th hour. Discrimination and calibration characteristics of the scoring systems were evaluated.APACHE II-III, and SAPS II at postoperative 24th hour, and P-POSSUM on admission, had reliable power of discrimination and calibration for mortality prediction in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery. APACHE III, SAPS II and PPOSSUM had the best performance on complication prediction. ASA, MPM II, and NRS-2002 had insufficient discrimination statistics. APACHE II and III, SAPS II, and P-POSSUM are superior to other systems in predicting mortality in gastrointestinal surgical patients. APACHE III, SAPS II, and P-POSSUM are superior in predicting
Backward elastic light scattering of malaria infected red blood cells

We investigated the backward light scattering pattern of healthy and malaria (Plasmodium falciparum) parasitized red blood cells. The spectrum could clearly distinguish between predominant ring stage infected blood cells and healthy blood cells. Further, we found that infected samples mixed with different stages of P. falciparum showed different signals, suggesting that even variance in parasite stages could also be detected by the spectrum. These results together with the backward scattering technique suggest the potential of non-invasive diagnosis of malaria through light scattering of blood cells near the surface of human body, such as using eyes or skin surface.
Influence of model resolution on the atmospheric transport of 10 Be

Abstract. Understanding the transport path of the solar activity proxy 10 Be from source to archive is crucial for the interpretation of its observed variability. The extent of mixing of the strong production signal has been quantified in a previous study (Heikkila et al., 2009). In this study we perform sensitivity studies to investigate the influence of model resolution on the degree of mixing and transport path of 10 Be in the atmosphere using the ECHAM5-HAM aerosol-climate model. This study permits us to choose an acceptable resolution, and so minimum CPU time, to produce reconstructions as physically accurate as possible. Five model resolutions are applied: T21L19: a coarse horizontal and vertical resolution with model top at ca. 30 km, T42L31: an average horizontal and fine vertical one, T42L39: similar vertical resolution than L19 but including the middle atmosphere up to ca. 80 km, T63L31: a fine horizontal and vertical resolution and T63L47: a fine resolution horizontally and vertically with middle atmosphere. Comparison with observations suggests that a finer horizontal and vertical resolution might be beneficial, producing a reduced meridional gradient, although the spread between observations was much larger than between the five model runs. In terms of atmospheric mixing the differences became more distinguishable. All resolutions agreed that the main driver of deposition variability, observed in natural archives, is the input of stratospheric 10 Be (total contribution 68%) which is transported into the troposphere at latitudes 30–50°. In the troposphere the model resolutions deviated largely in the dispersion of the stratospheric component over latitude. The finest resolution (T63L47) predicted the least dispersion towards low latitudes but the most towards the poles, whereas the coarsest resolution (T21L19) suggested the opposite. The tropospheric components of 10 Be differed less between the five model runs. The largest differences were found in the polar tropospheric components, which contribute the least to total production (≈ 4%). We conclude that the use of the T42 horizontal resolution seems to be sufficient in terms of atmospheric mixing of a stratospheric tracer because no substantial improvement was seen when the resolution was increased from T42 to T63. The use of the middle atmospheric configuration is a trade-off between correctly describing stratospheric dynamics and having to reduce vertical resolution. The use of a high vertical resolution seemed more beneficial than the middle atmospheric configuration in this study. The differences found between the T42L31 and T63L31 resolutions were so small that T42L31 is a good choice because of its computational efficiency.
Website Usability in Context: An Activity Theory Based Usability Testing Method

Traditional laboratory based usability testing methodologies are plagued with shortcomings which affect the results of the testing process and their validity. The results of a preliminary study of this type of usability testing with 34 users indicate two categories of key shortcomings. A new summative website usability testing methodology based on the notion of distributed usability and Activity Theory is presented as a means of overcoming these problems. This paper describes the theoretical foundations and development of the methodology which is currently being evaluated and refined.
Irrigation water management during the ripening of tomato aiming fruit quality

Despite the shortage of water resources be evident worldwide, turning prosperous lands into unproductive and affecting the existence of humidity, there is a great fraction of producers who still do not implement the proper management of the irrigation water in their properties. The poor management of irrigation is still a reality for most of the producers located in Brazil Middle Cerrado, which continue irrigating the tomato crop using empirical methods, resulting in economic, environmental and social damage. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of different irrigation depths and different times of suspension in irrigation during the ripening stage in tomato in productivity and quality of fruit for processing. The experiment was conducted under a Center pivot irrigation system and a split plot experimental design. The study showed that the higher irrigation depth (100% of ETc) resulted in higher yield (104 t ha-1) with lower soluble solids. The irrigation suspension at the beginning of fruit maturation increased soluble solids accumulation (4.2°Brix), providing higher quality and production of fruits to tomato industry. Key words: Productivity, Solanum lycopersicom, L. , water deficit.
Analysis of Public Choice on Environmental Health Management: The Case of Dengue Fever Control in Kandy District

Dengue has become a major environmental health issue in Sri Lanka. Although many programmes have been implemented, yet a remarkable success has not been achieved mainly due to lack of cooperation from the public. In this study, the public choice on dengue control strategies was studied. The study was conducted in Kandy Municipality area, which has the highest risk of dengue in the Kandy district. A choice experiment was carried out with four environmental management attributes with three levels each. The attributes included were: improved cleaning, infrastructure provision, motivation of the public to continue control activities and willingness to pay for dengue control. A multinomial logit model (MNL) was estimated and the analysis revealed that people prefer improved cleaning by the neighbours in surroundings and provision of efficient water supply as effective strategies for dengue control. Furthermore, motivation strategies, which included larger spot fines, appeared to be important. Keywords: Dengue fever; environmental management; choice experiment; public choice DOI: 10.4038/sjae.v9i0. 1832 Sri Lankan Journal of Agricultural Economics , Vol. 9, 2007 pp.43-54
Probing cluster dynamics in RXC J1504.1-0248 via radial and two-dimensional gas and galaxy properties

500 = (1.18 ± 0.03) Mpc south-east of the cluster centroid, which is also indicated in the X-ray two-dimensional (2D) temperature, density, entropy, and pressure maps. The dynamical mass estimate is 80% of the hydrostatic mass estimate at r H.E. 500 . It can be partially explained by the ∼20% scatter in the 2D pressure map that can be propagated into the hydrostatic mass estimate. The uncertainty in the dynamical mass estimate caused by the substructure of the high velocity group is ∼14%. The dynamical mass estimate using blue members is 1.23 times that obtained using red members. The global properties of R1504 obey the observed scaling relations of nearby clusters, although its stellar-mass fraction is rather low.
Active Control of a Pan-Tilt-Zoom Camera for Vision-Based Monitoring of Equipment in Construction and Surface Mining Jobsites

Automated monitoring systems have proven to be effective in improving the productivity of equipmentintensive operations in the construction and mining sectors. Vision-based systems are the most recent methods employed to detect, track, and monitor construction equipment. The currently developed systems, however, analyze video frames captured by a stationary camera, which dramatically limits their coverage area and requires manual adjustment of the viewfinder. This research paper introduces methods to proactively steer a pan-tilt-zoom camera to localize, track, and identify objects of interest in construction jobsites. This automated camera control system uses a number of image and video processing algorithms to detect objects and estimate their trajectory and velocity, and then uses the extracted information to set the camera movement parameters, including direction and magnitude. The experimental results of this system showed promising performance for equipment monitoring in construction and mining jobsites.
The grading of cognitive state comparisons with different distances across three conditions in stroke survivors

Corresponding author: Yuhyung Park Rehabilitation Medicine Center, Bobath Memorial Hospital, 155-7 Daewangpangyo-ro, Bundang-gu, Seongnam 463-869, Republic of Korea Tel: 82-31-786-3250 Fax: 82-31-786-3026 E-mail: pyh0627@hanmail.net This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licens es/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright © 2014 Korean Academy of Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Science http://dx.doi. org/10.14474/ptrs.2014. 3.2. 134 Phys Ther Rehabil Sci pISSN 2287-7576 2014, 3 (2), 134-141 eISSN 2287-7584 www.jptrs. org
Bio-printing Damaged Tissues: A Novel Approach in Regenerative Medicine

1. Dept. of Medical Biotechnology, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 2. Dept. of Stem Cells and Developmental Biology at Cell Science Research Center, Royan Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Technology, ACECR, Tehran, Iran 3. Dept of Regenerative Medicine, Cell Science Research Center, Royan Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Technology, Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research, Tehran, Iran
Critical phenomena in periodic stratified media due to time-varying dielectric permittivity functions

The critical phenomena in a one-dimensional periodic stratified medium with time-varying dielectric permittivity functions are theoretically investigated for both TM and TE waves by solving the time-dependent electric displacement equation and the magnetic field equation, respectively. It is found that there exists a critical value of the varying amplitude when the dielectric permittivity function is changing with time. When the varying amplitude is below or at the critical value, the periodic structure can reflect an incident plane wave into a periodic femtosecond pulse train with respect to time. On the other hand, when the varying amplitude is much above the critical value, the reflectivity is descending more rapidly with time, which means that, at one moment, the incident light is transmitted thoroughly and the periodic structure is becoming transparent. The effect of the layer number on the reflectivity is also presented. Especially at the critical value, the pulse train generated is periodic with almost 100% peaks and zero troughs for both TM and TE waves when the layer number is up to 11. These interesting conclusions could find potential realistic applications in the future.
Supersymmetric response of a Bose-Fermi mixture to photoassociation

We study supersymmetric (SUSY) responses to a photoassociation (PA) process in a mixture of Bose molecules b and Fermi atoms f which turn to mutual superpartners for a set of proper parameters. We consider the molecule b to be a bound state of the atom f and another Fermi atom F with different species. The b-f mixture and a free F atom gas are loaded in an optical lattice. The SUSY nature of the mixture can be signaled in the response to a photon-induced atom-molecule transition: While two new types of fermionic excitations, an individual b particle-f hole pair continuum and the Nambu-Goldstone-fermion-like (or "goldstino-like") collective mode, are concomitant for a generic b-f mixture, the former is completely suppressed in the SUSY b-f mixture and the zero-momentum mode of the latter approaches an exact eigenstate. This SUSY response can be detected by means of the spectroscopy method, for example, the PA spectrum which displays the molecular formation rate of Ff -> b.
The effect of the Reynolds number on lateral migration of nonneutrally-buoyant spherical particles in poiseuille flow

Abstract: The lateral migration of nonneutrally-buoyant spherical particles in Poiseuille ﬂow is investi-gated numerically using the boundary element method.In particular, the steady, Navier-Stokes equations aresolved using a classical domain integrationmethod treat-ing the nonlinear terms as pseudo-body forces. Thenumerical results for the lateral migration velocity arecompared with experimental data [Jeffrey and Pearson(1963)]. The numerical results indicate that the lat-eral migration velocity does not scale linearly with theReynolds number. The methodology is extended to in-clude non-Newtonian power-law ﬂuids. The migrationvelocity is signiﬁcantly affected for particles suspendedin this class of ﬂuids and can actually change directionfor large values of the power-law index.keyword: lateral migration, low Reynolds numberﬂow, non-Newtonian ﬂuids, boundary element method.1 IntroductionParticles suspended in pressure-driven ﬂows play an im-portant role in many engineering applications such assecondarypetroleum recovery processes, paper manufac-turing, chromotography, environmental waste treatment,and composite material processing. As a result, manyanalytical and experimental studies have been performedto characterize particle behavior in nonlinear shear ﬂows[Segr´e and Silberberg (1961); Ho and Leal (1974); Jef-frey and Pearson (1963); Cox and Hsu (1977); Vasseurand Cox (1976a); Vasseur and Cox (1976b)]. In addi-tion, several numerical studies have been performed forthis class of ﬂows based on traditional boundary elementmethods both in the zero-Reynolds number limit [Ingber(1991); Tran-Cong and Phan-Thien (1989); Fang, Mam-moli, and Ingber (2001)] and at low, but ﬁnite, Reynoldsnumbers [Li and Ingber (1994)]. Recently, a class of