Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A combined method to estimate wind speed distribution based on integrating the support vector machine with firefly algorithm

A new hybrid approach by integrating the support vector machine (SVM) with firefly algorithm (FFA) is proposed to estimate shape (k) and scale (c) parameters of the Weibull distribution function according to previously established analytical methods. The extracted data of two widely successful methods utilized to compute parameters k and c were used as learning and testing information for the SVM‐FFA method. The simulations were performed on both daily and monthly scales to draw further conclusions. The performance of SVM‐FFA method was compared against other existing techniques to demonstrate its efficiency and viability. The results conclusively indicate that SVM‐FFA method provides further precision in the predictions. Nevertheless, for daily estimations, the applicability of proposed method could not be feasible owing to high day‐by‐day fluctuations of parameters k, whereas the results of monthly estimation are completely appealing and precise. In summary, the SVM‐FFA is a highly viable and efficient technique to estimate wind speed distribution on monthly scale. It is expected that the proposed method would be profitable for wind researchers and experts to be used in many practical applications, such as evaluating the wind energy potential and making a proper decision to nominate the optimal wind turbines. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 35: 867–875, 2016
"Touching tomorrow with technology" : a case study of the impact of effective school leadership on an exemplary technology integration initiative

"The school administrator's leadership is an important factor in the integration of instructional technology into the academic program of the school. A good model for how an effective principal leads a technology initiative is needed. This in-depth case study examines the effect of a principal's leadership on the implementation of a technology initiative in what has been recognized as an exemplary school for effective technology use. Interviews, observations, and document reviews were conducted to gain insights into the principal's role and his influence on the school's technology integration. Results show that this principal was a key factor in the success of the school's technology integration. He identified teacher leaders who developed as technology leaders and worked with them in all aspects of the implementation. The faculty worked collaboratively to develop and achieve a shared vision where technology is seamlessly integrated into the instructional program. The principal created a positive environment in the school by modeling enthusiasm for the vision, focusing on the best for students, and supporting the staff. Together they developed an exemplary program where technology is used effectively to enhance teaching and learning. "--Abstract from author supplied metadata.
Factors Affecting Students’ Satisfaction and Academic Performance in Open & Distance Learning (ODL)

The worldwide education systems are crippled, inevitably leading to the near-total closure of school establishments, early childhood educations, colleges as well as universities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of May 2021, approximately 1.2 billion students from all over the world were affected. As a result, education essentials dramatically adjust with the distinctive rise of e-learning tools, wherein teaching is now undertaken remotely on digital platforms. Realizing the grave current situation and the importance of education, this study aims to understand the factors affecting student satisfaction; the effect of student satisfaction; and perceived performance with academic performance in an open and distance learning (ODL) environment. The data were collected from 239 respondents via online surveys, which comprises accounting students in the UiTM Perak branch, Tapah campus. The analysis of the findings shows that the course design is the main factor that affected student satisfaction in ODL. In terms of academic performance, the findings revealed that only perceived performance had a positive influence, whereas student satisfaction had no effect.
Genetic diversity analysis of lactic acid bacteria isolated from regional yogurt samples

Probiotics are live, non-pathogenic microorganisms which have enormous health benefits. Yogurt is a potential source of probiotic bacteria. Lactic acid bacteria are the most common and major group of probiotic bacteria that can be found easily in different dairy products. The aim of study was the genetic diversity analysis using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) marker from regional yogurt samples of Bangladesh. Ten probiotic isolates from yogurt samples of different sweet meat shops of Sylhet and Mymensingh Divisions of Bangladesh were used. Morphological and biochemical tests were performed to ensure the presumptive probiotic characteristics of isolated bacteria. All isolates were cultured in De Man, Rogosa, and Sharpe (MRS) medium to exhort the growth of lactic acid bacteria. Genomic DNA was extracted by Ampicillin Lysozyme Tandem method. Four random RAPD primers were used in this study for detecting genetic diversity of these isolated bacteria. Among them, OPA 18 showed the maximum number of reproducible bands. Nei’s genetic distance was performed for determining Pair-wise Genetic Distance. UPGMA and NJ dendrogram were performed based on molecular data showing that all the isolates could be divided into two major clusters. Data analysis revealed that isolates from the same location were closely related and showed less genetic variation whereas, isolates from geographically different regions exhibited more genetic diversity. Bang. J. Livs. Res. Vol. 27 (1&2), 2020: P. 55-63
Phthalocyanines Structure Versus Photodynamic Effectiveness towards Pathogenic Microorganisms: Our Recent Experience

The present review paper aims to summarize our recent experience in research and development of new phthalocyanine complexes and investigations of the main photophysical, photochemical and photobiological properties which are related to antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) as alternative method for inactivation of the resistant pathogens. The effect of functionalization of Zn(II) phthalocyanine (ZnPc) with biologically-active natural substances such as amino acids, sugars and steroids was studied in comparison to the basic ZnPc ring molecule. The structural features of the substitution groups were chosen to facilitate the main properties responsible for PDT outcome. For example, the linkage groups of amino acids tyrosine, phenylalanine, lysine and arginine have positive charge in physiological media to the better attachment to bacterial wall and some of them have a good fluorescence for a contribution to the visualization of the infected area. Also, ZnPcs linked to sugars and steroids was expecting to possess receptor specific selectivity. The physicochemical properties of the novel functionalized ZnPcs are presented in respect to their efficiency for a number of pathogenic bacterial and fungal species. Additionally, the complexes of two heavy metal ions such as lutetium(III) (Lu(III)) and tin(IV) (Sn(IV)) were synthesized and evaluated for antimicrobial PDT. These complexes were designed with the same structural skeleton as our previous water-soluble methylpiridyloxy-substituted phthalocyanine complexes with zinc (II), silicon (IV), germanium (IV), indium (III) and gallium (III), all with relatively promising antibacterial efficiency. © 2021 Journal of Biomedical Photonics & Engineering.
Role of Youth in Managing Educational Startup: Case Study of PrivatQ Startup

Technological advances in the 4.0 era have had an impact on competitive job opportunities and declining productive jobs. In addition, starting a business requires more effort. This reality encourages young PrivatQ entrepreneurial managers to accept the test of personal advantage. The research objective is to determine the role of youth in managing educational startups and assessing their implications for the manager's personal endurance. The research using qualitative research methods. Data collection is done through interviews, focus group discussions, observations, documentation, literature, and online studies. Data analysis techniques using descriptive analysis by coding and reducing data through Nvivo 12 software, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. The results showed that youth managers played a role in managing educational startups at PrivatQ based on non-formal education services. The form of the role is in the form of governance management, program innovation, increasing access to the education service system, improving the quality and welfare of teachers, acting out of the box, and increasing soft skills and experience. The management of the educational startup has implications for the manager's personal endurance. Therefore, the role of youth managers must be increased to develop the manager's personality so that the struggle and courage so that management continues well.
Non-conventional Ultra-High Dose Rate (FLASH) Microbeam Radiotherapy Provides Superior Normal Tissue Sparing in Rat Lung Compared to Non-conventional Ultra-High Dose Rate (FLASH) Radiotherapy

Conventional radiotherapy is a widely used non-invasive form of treatment for many types of cancer. However, due to a low threshold in the lung for radiation-induced normal tissue damage, it is of less utility in treating lung cancer. For this reason, surgery is the preferred treatment for lung cancer, which has the detriment of being highly invasive. Non-conventional ultra-high dose rate (FLASH) radiotherapy is currently of great interest in the radiotherapy community due to demonstrations of reduced normal tissue toxicity in lung and other anatomy. This study investigates the effects of FLASH microbeam radiotherapy, which in addition to ultra-high dose rate incorporates a spatial segmentation of the radiation field, on the normal lung tissue of rats. With a focus on fibrotic damage, this work demonstrates that FLASH microbeam radiotherapy provides an order of magnitude increase in normal tissue radio-resistance compared to FLASH radiotherapy. This result suggests FLASH microbeam radiotherapy holds promise for much improved non-invasive control of lung cancer.
Probabilistic Ensembles of Zero- and Few-Shot Learning Models for Emotion Classification

Emotion Classification is the task of automatically associating a text with a human emotion. State-of-the-art models are usually learned using annotated corpora or rely on hand-crafted affective lexicons. We present an emotion classification model that does not require a large annotated corpus to be competitive. We experiment with pretrained language models in both a zero-shot and few-shot configuration. We build several of such models and consider them as biased, noisy annotators, whose individual performance is poor. We aggregate the predictions of these models using a Bayesian method originally developed for modelling crowdsourced annotations. Next, we show that the resulting system performs better than the strongest individual model. Finally, we show that when trained on few labelled data, our systems outperform fully-supervised models.
A simple technique for the design of MMIC 90/spl deg/ phase-difference networks

In this paper, a simple technique for the design of broadband 90/spl deg/ phase-difference networks, using balanced and unbalanced all-pass network topologies, is presented. In the developed method, the element values of the structures are calculated as function of two design variables: Q/sub 0/ and r. Utilizing this approach, a 90/spl deg/ phase shifter has been realized, having less than 2/spl deg/ phase error and better than 0.5 dB amplitude error in the operating band from 0.7 to 3.5 GHz.
Asymmetrically Varying Guide Field During Magnetic Reconnection: Particle‐In‐Cell Simulations

Using fully kinetic particle‐in‐cell modeling, we investigate how magnetic reconnection responds to a varying guide field in one of the inflow regions. We find that the reconnection rate varies significantly when the orientation of the magnetic field changes between being strictly antiparallel and having a guide field. These variations are fairly consistent with the scaling relation for asymmetric reconnection developed by Cassak and Shay (2007). However, the rate is also found to be nonlinearly modulated by changes in the ion inflow velocity. The spatio‐temporal change in the inflow velocity arises as the magnetic forces reconfigure to regions of different magnetic field strengths. The variations in the inflow magnetic field configuration allow for different gradients in the magnetic field, leading to asymmetries in the magnetic tension force. By momentum conservation, this facilitates asymmetries in the inflow velocity, which in turn affects the flux transport into the reconnection site. The outflow is found to be less laminar when the inflow varies, and various signatures of the inflow variations are identified in the outflow.
Synthesising Resource-Advantage and Hofstede Cultural Dimensions: Customer Orientation, Knowledge Creation and Firm Performance

There is a dearth of studies on synthesising the resource-advantage theory and Hofstede cultural dimensions that explore the influence of customer orientation and knowledge creation on the firm performance for small hotels. This paper reviews extant literature that provides insights on the influence of customer orientation and knowledge creation on firm performance. In-depth interviews with three hotel owners and three hotel managers were performed in this study. The results disclose that by forging memorable and positive customer experiences and developing informed knowledge databases are business practices that sustain the firm performance. From the theoretical aspect, it is a preliminary step to blend the culturally relevant customer orientation and knowledge creation elements into forming a firm performance framework designed for small hotels
Decentralization, Public Services and Neglected Children in Mataram City, West Nusa Tenggara

One of the problems that are now the concern of the local government in Mataram is the phenomenon of neglected children, where the child is the hope of the nation that has a strategic role in enhancing the continuity of the nation's existence in the future. The main issues of neglected children in Mataram are rooted in the problem of poverty, so the handling should touch on the root of the problems. Regarding the matter, the government is arranging a program for the administration and empowerment of abandoned children. The Program is a neglected children's social welfare protection with other additional activities. In this context, the government uses decentralization. Decentralization will encourage people towards a self-propelled way by enabling social capital to solve the problems they are facing. With a proper procedure in addressing social issues that have been internalized, a neglected children's completion mechanism will be more productive and more efficient. While economically, decentralization in the belief can prevent exploitation in the central government of the region and can generate the innovation of society and encourage the motivation of the community to be more productive.
Adaptive discrete thin plate spline smoother

The discrete thin plate spline smoother fits smooth surfaces to large data sets efficiently. It combines the favourable properties of the finite element surface fitting and thin plate splines. The efficiency of its finite element grid is improved by adaptive refinement, which adapts the precision of the solution. It reduces computational costs by refining only in sensitive regions, which are identified using error indicators. While many error indicators have been developed for the finite element method, they may not work for the discrete smoother. In this article we show three error indicators adapted from the finite element method for the discrete smoother. A numerical experiment is provided to evaluate their performance in producing efficient finite element grids. References F. L. Bookstein. Principal warps: Thin-plate splines and the decomposition of deformations. IEEE Trans. Pat. Anal. Mach. Int. 11.6 (1989), pp. 567–585. doi: 10.1109/34.24792. C. Chen and Y. Li. A robust method of thin plate spline and its application to DEM construction. Comput. Geosci. 48 (2012), pp. 9–16. doi: 10.1016/j.cageo. 2012.05. 018. L. Fang. Error estimation and adaptive refinement of finite element thin plate spline. PhD thesis. The Australian National University. http://hdl.handle. net/1885/237742. L. Fang. Error indicators and adaptive refinement of the discrete thin plate spline smoother. ANZIAM J. 60 (2018), pp. 33–51. doi: 10.21914/anziamj.v60i0. 14061. M. F. Hutchinson. A stochastic estimator of the trace of the influence matrix for laplacian smoothing splines. Commun. Stat. Simul. Comput. 19.2 (1990), pp. 433–450. doi: 10.1080/0361091900881286. W. F. Mitchell. A comparison of adaptive refinement techniques for elliptic problems. ACM Trans. Math. Soft. 15.4 (1989), pp. 326–347. doi: 10.1145/76909.76912. R. F. Reiniger and C. K. Ross. A method of interpolation with application to oceanographic data. Deep Sea Res. Oceanographic Abs. 15.2 (1968), pp. 185–193. doi: 10.1016/0011-7471(68)90040-5. S. Roberts, M. Hegland, and I. Altas. Approximation of a thin plate spline smoother using continuous piecewise polynomial functions. SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 41.1 (2003), pp. 208–234. doi: 10.1137/S0036142901383296. D. Ruprecht and H. Muller. Image warping with scattered data interpolation. IEEE Comput. Graphics Appl. 15.2 (1995), pp. 37–43. doi: 10.1109/38.365004. E. G. Sewell. Analysis of a finite element method. Springer, 2012. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4684-6331-6. L. Stals. Efficient solution techniques for a finite element thin plate spline formulation. J. Sci. Comput. 63.2 (2015), pp. 374–409. doi: 10.1007/s10915-014-9898-x. O. C. Zienkiewicz and J. Z. Zhu. A simple error estimator and adaptive procedure for practical engineerng analysis. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Eng. 24.2 (1987), pp. 337–357. doi: 10.1002/nme.1620240206.
An Indoor Positioning and Prewarning System Based on Wireless Sensor Network Routing Algorithm

One of the most important means to position abnormal devices is to efficiently utilize the resources of wireless sensor network (WSN) and make proper analysis of the relevant data. Therefore, this paper constructs an indoor positioning and prewarning system that utilizes energy efficiently and achieves a long lifecycle. Firstly, the adjacent round iteration load balancing (ARILB) routing algorithm was proposed, which elects the cluster heads (CHs) by the adjacent round strategy. In this way, the random components were eliminated in CH election. Next, a short-distance multifrequency routing strategy was constructed between CHs to transmit the information to the sink, and a positioning algorithm was designed called ARILB-received signal strength (RSS). The ARILB-RSS positioning algorithm traverses the triangles formed by anchor nodes, forming multiple sets of ranging points; then, the optimal anchor node is recorded, and the path loss factor is iterated to reduce the positioning error. Simulation shows that the network survives 54.5% longer using ARILB than using the distributed energy-efficient clustering (DEEC) algorithm; the packet delivery rate using ARILB was about 139% higher than that of low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) algorithm and 35% higher than that of uneven clustering routing algorithm based on chain-cluster type (URCC) algorithm; ARILB-RSS reduced the ranging error by 14.31% and then the positioning error by 26.79%.
Spatiotemporal climate variability and trends in UNESCO designated Cultural Landscapes of Konso, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Understanding spatiotemporal patterns of climate variability and trends is essential to designing context-specific adaptation and mitigation interventions for climate change impacts. To this end, this paper examines the 1983–2016 rainfall and temperature variability and trends using merged satellite-gauge station data in the UNESCO designated Cultural Landscapes of Konso, Ethiopia. We have employed a non-parametric Mann-Kendall test to analyze rainfall and temperature trends, whereas the coefficient of variation (CV) has been used for variability analysis. The distribution and severity of meteorological droughts were mapped using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). Our findings revealed an increase in annual and summer (Kiremt) season rainfall by 3.16 mm and 0.42 mm per year, respectively. However, rainfall in the spring (Belg) season decreased by 1.12 mm per year. Our findings also showed a substantial spatiotemporal variability in drought events due to variations in rainfall and topography. Consequently, the observed increase in frequency and the spatial extent of drought pose potential threats to rainfed farming, which gradually exposes smallholders to food insecurity and socioeconomic vulnerability. Therefore, agroecological-based local adaptation and mitigation interventions to climate variability are needed to enhance the resilience of smallholder farmers and ensure the continuity of the Konso cultural landscapes.
An evaluation of total quality management practices on business performance ofthe Nigerian telecommunications sector: a case study of MTN Nigeria Limited

This study examines the effects of The Total Quality Management practices on Business Performance of the Nigerian Telecommunications Sector. A review of literatures on TQM shows that no study has been carried out on its application in the Nigerian Telecommunication sector hence the need for this research. To assess the situation One hundred and fifty (150) questionnaires were administered to customers of MTN Limited within the Lagos environ. These customers were randomly selected from five (5) different MTN customer care centres within the five divisions of Lagos State. These divisions include Epe, Ikorodu, Lagos Island, Lagos Mainland and Badagry. Thirty (30) questionnaires were administered at each centre. Fifty (50) questionnaires were also administered to employees of MTN and a total of twenty (20) questionnaires were administered to top management in the same organizations. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis. Our finding revealed that 90.7% of the changes that occurred in employees’ satisfaction could be traced to the policy and commitment of top management. It also shows that 69.4% of the changes in customer satisfaction could be attributed to continuous training in quality. The study recommended among other things the training of telecommunications personnel on Total Quality Management practices and the adoption of alternative renewable sources of energy like solar to address their energy problems.