Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial Visualization in Construction Management Education: A Review and Validation of the Literature Using Professionals and Related Practitioners

ABSTRACT Little research exists concerning the differences of spatial abilities among Construction Professionals (CP) compared to other STEM and Non-STEM Professionals. The literature on spatial abilities in STEM vocations was reviewed and summarized to form research questions to test practitioners’ perceptions on spatial abilities. This study used a survey and the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations (PSVT:R) to identify if specific activities, experiences, or education are perceived to improve mental rotation abilities among practicing construction/related fields professionals. Differences in spatial ability were measured and a statistically significant difference was found between CPs and Non-STEM Professionals (p =.016). Results suggest that the activity of drawing to enhancing spatial ability was attributed more frequently among high scoring individuals (52%) than low scoring individuals (15%). PSVT:R scores were also compared with the amount of time per day participants made use of their spatial abilities and no statistically significant difference was found. Findings from this study suggest that a high level of spatial abilities are present among Construction Professionals. Construction education curriculum benefits from the findings that suggest drawing is an important activity to increase one’s spatial ability and should remain in CM program curriculum.
Shape memory effects of EVM-GMA/PVC blends

In this paper, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) masterbatch, prepared using ethylene-vinyl acetate-glycidyl methacrylate terpolymer (EVM-GMA) as a polymer plasticizer replacing traditional harmful ester, was blended with EVM-GMA in melt and then cured by peroxide in a compression mold to prepare EVM-GMA/PVC blends. The results showed that with the increase of PVC, physical and mechanical properties have improved significantly. Two phases in blends formed a “sea-island” structure and the interface was blurred. Blends riched in EVM-GMA all had excellent dual shape memory properties. After removing applied force, there was only a slight recovery of the instantaneous elastic deformation and blends still retained the original temporary shape (the shape fixation was more than 99%). The shape recovery efficiency of specimen (EVM-GMA/PVC = 90/10) was the highest, which evidenced that entropy elastic effect of molecular chains and elastic restoring force provided by crosslinked structure achieved a balance at this point.
The relation between semantic memory structure, associative abilities, and verbal and figural creativity

Abstract Research has independently highlighted the roles of semantic memory and associative abilities in creative thinking. However, it remains unclear how these two capacities relate to each other, nor how they facilitate different creative thinking modalities, such as verbal and figural creativity. This study employed multiple cognitive tests and network science methodologies to shed light on the relationship between them. We constructed individual-based semantic networks and assessed associative abilities, verbal and figural creative thinking. In line with previous studies, we found a relation between verbal creativity and more flexible semantic memory structure (higher connectivity, shorter distances between concepts, and lower modularity). However, we did not find any such relation between figural creativity and semantic memory structure. Associative abilities mediated the relationship between semantic memory structure and verbal creativity, implying the efficient spread of information in semantic memory may facilitate verbal creative thinking via associative abilities. These findings support and extend the associative theory of creativity and shed novel light on the relationship between semantic memory structure, associative abilities, and creativity.
Influence of Irrigation, Crop Residue Mulch and Nitrogen Management Practices on Soil Physical Quality

Improvement in soil structure is a prerequisite for maintaining soil physical health/quality and for sustaining agricultural productivity at higher level. Field experiments were conducted during the kharif season of 2012 and 2013 on maize crop in a sandy loam soil to study the impact of different management practices viz., irrigation, crop residue mulch and nitrogen (N) fertilization on soil physical quality indices like least limiting water range (LLWR), S index, mean weight diameter (MWD), water stable aggregates (%WSA) and whole soil stability index (WSSI), and their impact on crop growth and yield. Maize (cv HQPM 1) was grown in a split-split plot design with two levels of irrigation (irrigated and rainfed), two levels of mulch (no mulch and wheat residue mulch @ 10 t ha−1) and three levels of N (0, 75 and 150 kg N ha−1). Soil physical quality parameters such as S index, LLWR, MWD, %WSA and WSSI increased due to irrigation, crop residue mulching and N application. Application of irrigation, mulch and N @ 150 kg ha−1 significantly increased the S index by 3.5, 9.9 and 4.3 per cent, respectively compared to the respective control treatments (rainfed, no mulch and no N treatments). Crop residue mulching significantly increased LLWR by 48.3, 11.4 and 31.6 per cent over no-mulch treatment at 0–15 cm soil depth at 67 days after sowing (DAS), 95 DAS and harvest, respectively. Application of irrigation registered significantly higher MWD by 21.4 per cent after maize harvest over the rainfed treatment, whereas, mulching increased MWD by 6.7 per cent after maize harvest than no-mulch treatment. After maize harvest, mulching registered significantly higher WSA by 7.8 per cent over the no-mulch treatment. The root growth, grain and biomass yield of maize was significantly correlated with the saturated hydraulic conductivity of soil at 0–15 cm soil depth. Therefore, growing maize crop with need based irrigation at critical growth stages, N application @ 150 kg ha−1 and crop residue mulching @ 10 t ha−1 resulted in better soil physical quality and maize yield in sandy loam soil of Delhi region.
Frequency, distribution and obturation technique of root canal retreatment among patients attending a teaching dental hospital in Chennai - A retrospective study

The aim of the study was to determine frequency, distribution and obturation technique of root canal retreatment among patients attending a teaching dental hospital in Chennai from June 2019 to March 2020. Three hundred seventy case records of endodontic retreatment were obtained, 262 met inclusion criteria. Patients above 18 years of age, patients who visited from June 2019 to March 2020 and patients who have already finished root canal treatment and had complaints of pain were included. Data were tabulated into excel sheets under the headings age, gender, teeth no, obturation technique. Then data were analyzed using SPSS software (23.0). The statistical analysis of the data was performed using chi-square test. Out of the 262 case sheets analysed, 64.9% were male and 35.1% were female. Most commonly affected age group was 18-30 years (38.5%), the least affected age group was above 60 years (6.9%). Most commonly affected teeth were 11,21 (26%,11.8%), least commonly involved were 17,27,32,33 (0.4% - 0.8%). Matched taper single cone technique was most commonly used (57.6%) followed by lateral compaction (40.5%), least commonly preferred technique was warm vertical compaction (1.9%). Overall results of the study are statistically not significant (P>0.05). Within the limitations of this study, it was concluded that the prevalence of retreatment cases was high in upper anterior teeth followed by lower posterior. Whereas the association of retreatment cases was least in upper posterior and lower left lateral and canines. Incidence of retreatment cases in relation to root canal treated teeth was higher in male among the 18 - 30 year's age group.
Solution of multidimensional system with XY differentiation of probability density equations for identification of silver nanoparticles on fibers

The article presents the results of compiling and solving a system of multidimensional differential correlation equations of probability densities for identifying colloidal silver nanoparticles on polyester fibers with multidimensional correlation components of Raman polarization spectra. A method is proposed for increasing the accuracy and speed of identification of silver nanoparticles on polyester fibers, taking into account the longitudinal and transverse polarization of laser radiation over the entire range of the Raman spectrum with the analysis of two peaks sequentially and in order at the same time along the X-side and along the Y-side of the fibers. To implement the method, a program was developed in the Mathcad software. When solving the system using the nonlinear quadratic and differential equations with respect to XY, the probability density equations of distribution ellipses obtained very high accuracy p0 and p1 up to 10−16.
Green microalga Trebouxia sp. produces strigolactone-related compounds

Different algal species that may have germination inducing activity of holoparasitic broomrape weeds Phelipanche aegyptiaca and P. ramosa seeds were screened through germination bioassay. Green alga produce SL-related compounds. Applied extracts of biomass obtained from the culture of green alga Trebouxia arboricola increased seeds germination of both parasites. An optimatization of the alga extraction led to an increase of P. aegyptiaca germination. Exhausted medium also contained SL-related compounds. The crude extract stimulated the roots length of Arabidopsis thaliana tested in vitro. A similar effect had the algae and GR24 aplications on expression levels of the SL-related genes in Physcomitrella patens. The novel analytical method DESI-MSI detected production of carlactone in the algae. The Trebouxia sp. culture applications in pot experiments had positive effect on growth characteristics of pea plants.
Spectral, Compositional, and Physical Properties of the Upper Murray Formation and Vera Rubin Ridge, Gale Crater, Mars

During 2018 and 2019, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover investigated the chemistry, morphology, and stratigraphy of Vera Rubin ridge (VRR). Using orbital data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, scientists attributed the strong 860 nm signal associated with VRR to the presence of red crystalline hematite. However, Mastcam multispectral data and CheMin X‐ray diffraction (XRD) measurements show that the depth of the 860 nm absorption is negatively correlated with the abundance of red crystalline hematite, suggesting that other mineralogical or physical parameters are also controlling the 860 nm absorption. Here, we examine Mastcam and ChemCam passive reflectance spectra from VRR and other locations to link the depth, position, and presence or absence of iron‐related mineralogic absorption features to the XRD‐derived rock mineralogy. Correlating CheMin mineralogy to spectral parameters showed that the ~860 nm absorption has a strong positive correlation with the abundance of ferric phyllosilicates. New laboratory reflectance measurements of powdered mineral mixtures can reproduce trends found in Gale crater. We hypothesize that variations in the 860 nm absorption feature in Mastcam and ChemCam observations of VRR materials are a result of three factors: (1) variations in ferric phyllosilicate abundance due to its ~800–1,000 nm absorption; (2) variations in clinopyroxene abundance because of its band maximum at ~860 nm; and (3) the presence of red crystalline hematite because of its absorption centered at 860 nm. We also show that relatively small changes in Ca‐sulfate abundance is one potential cause of the erosional resistance and geomorphic expression of VRR.
Prediction of the VDT Worker's Headache Using Convolutional Neural Network with Class Activation Mapping

A headache and drowsiness are the most common symptoms of fatigue caused by a long duration of work using a visual display terminal (VDT). A sign of the headache generally involves placing a hand on the head, eyes, nose, or face. The recognition of these gestures is a challenging problem due to the difficulty in similar skin color of hands and face. In this paper, a method for classifying six hand over face poses, which can identify the signs of headache for the VDT workers is presented. In the proposed method, a deep learning based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) for the classification of the hand poses is applied. In addition, a class activation map (CAM) to visualize the prediction of the classification network for localization of the hand over face poses was implemented. From the experimental results, the hand poses as the signs of frontal, and unilateral headaches without the classification overfitting and data biasing errors were successfully classified. Our proposed method has achieved high accuracy recognition ratio of 98.5% for classification of the hand over face poses as the prediction of headaches. © 2020 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
Sustainability Policy Objectives, Centralized Decision Making, and Efficiency in Public Procurement Processes in U.S. Local Governments

Some U.S. local governments are leveraging public procurement to meet their sustainability goals. However, does the simultaneous pursuit of multiple sustainability objectives potentially slow down the speed of procurement processes? We suggest that the simultaneous pursuit of multiple sustainability objectives through procurement is related to decision making speed. Additionally, we argue that centralized decision-making structures might moderate this relationship. Drawing on a representative sample of more than 200 U.S. local governments, we demonstrate that for low-cost purchases, as the number of policy objectives increases, so too does the average length of time for approval. We also find evidence of an interactive relationship between decision-making structures and the number of existing sustainability policies pursued simultaneously. For routine low-cost and routine high-cost purchases, we find evidence that as the centralization of procurement decision making increases, the marginal effect of purchasing complexity on approval times decreases. These findings offer important evidence about how pursuing multiple sustainability objectives affect decision-making efficiency and how decision-making structures might facilitate U.S local governments’ integration of sustainability objectives into their existing internal processes.
Percentage of Niesseria Gonorrhea among Symptomatic Women Attending Infertilty Clinic of Baghdad Teaching Hospital

Background: Niesseria Gonorrhea is a major cause of morbidity among sexually- active individualworldwide. The precise global burden of N. Gonorrhea is difficult to establish because of the lack ofdiagnostic capability and/or reporting system in many parts of the world.Aim of the Study: To assess the percentage of Neisseria Gonorrhea in infertile women detected byconventional agar and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Study design: A cross sectional studySetting: carried out in infertility clinic/Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Baghdad TeachingHospital/Medical city for Ten months duration from the 1st of Feb 2017 to the 1ST of Dec 2017.Patients and method: one hundred infertile women were included in the study. From each patient twoendocervical sterile swabs were obtained.Results: The mean age of the studied group was (27.8±4.2) years, more than one fourth (27%) of infertilewomen had previous history of sexually transmitted infection. Only 3 (3%) infertile women had positiveculture test for Niesseria Gonorrhea while 17 (17%) infertile women had positive PCR test for NiesseriaGonorrhea. The validity results of PCR regarding diagnosis of Niesseria Gonorrhea in comparison to culturewere sensitivity (100%), specificity (85.5%), +ve predictive value (82.4%), -ve predictive value (100%) andaccuracy (86%)Conclusion: The PCR is more accurate than culture for diagnoses of Niesseria Gonorrhea infection.
ComFlex: Composable and Flexible Resource Management for the IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables new services, such as smart home and smart healthcare integrating various resources of networked devices. However, managing IoT resources is very challenging because a device may have multiple different resources and the service accesses subsets of the resources in multiple devices. To simplify the resource management, the existing IoT frameworks provide resource models and protocols for manufacturers and programmers, but their access granularity is too coarse grained causing overprivilege problems, or too fine grained causing management overheads. To avoid the overprivilege problems without the management overheads, this work proposes a new composable and flexible resource management scheme and implements its prototype compiler-runtime framework called ComFlex. The ComFlex compiler allows manufacturers to register their devices as composition of fine-grained resources by inheriting the existing interfaces of the resources, and programmers to define their own access granularity as a virtual resource that consists of the fine-grained resources of multiple devices. The ComFlex runtime supports fine-grained access control without additional overheads by mapping the fine-grained resources of the virtual resource into physical resources of different devices. To evaluate the ComFlex framework, this work implements 52 resources on 14 devices and six IoT services with ComFlex and an existing fine-grained resource management scheme. Compared to the existing scheme, the ComFlex framework supports the IoT services with 40.2% fewer lines of code and 80.9% less discovery time, without any overprivilege problem and response time delay.
High Performance and Sustainable Copper-Modified Hydroxyapatite Catalysts for Catalytic Transfer Hydrogenation of Furfural

Designing and developing non-noble metal-based heterogeneous catalysts have a substantial importance in biomass conversion. Meerwein-Ponndorf-Verley (MPV) reaction is a significant pathway for eco-friendly catalytic transfer hydrogenation (CTH) of biomass derived furfural into furfuryl alcohol. In this work, a series of copper-supported hydroxyapatite (HAp) catalysts with different copper loadings (2–20 wt.%) were prepared by a facile impregnation method and tested in the reduction of furfural to furfuryl alcohol using 2-propanol as a hydrogen donor. The structural and chemical properties of the synthesised catalysts were analysed by using various techniques (XRD, N2 sorption, SEM, TEM, UV-DRS, ICP, FTIR, TPR, TPD-CO2 and N2O titration). The effect of copper loading was found to be significant on the total performance of the catalysts. The results demonstrate that 5CuHAp catalyst possess highly dispersed copper particles and high basicity compared to all other catalysts. Overall, 5CuHAp exhibited highest conversion (96%) and selectivity (100%) at 140 °C at 4 h time on stream. The optimised reaction conditions were also determined to gain the high activity.
Corporate Social Responsibility and Earnings Management of Listed Companies in Power Industry

Due to the particularity of business operation of electric power industry enterprises, their social responsibility will have an important impact on national economic development and residents’ life. In this paper, 303 Listed Companies in the power industry from 2013 to 2018 are taken as samples to measure the degree of social responsibility of the power industry based on the contribution of the power industry enterprises to the government, employees, shareholders, creditors, suppliers and customers, and to test the correlation between the Listed Companies in the power industry and earnings management. The empirical results show that the more the power industry enterprises pay to the outside world, the lower the degree of earnings management, that is, the better the degree of social responsibility of listed companies in the power industry, the lower the degree of earnings management. Through the research results of this paper, we can think that the social responsibility behavior of power industry enterprises is “altruistic” rather than “egoistic”, which explains the importance of non-marketization of large state-owned power enterprises such as State Grid Corporation of China.
Characterization of Bio-active Compounds Essential for Blood Coagulation in the Crude Extracts of Tradescantia zebrina, Tagetes minuta and Codiaeum variegatum Leaves

Aims: Many commercial drugs used for blood clotting are expensive and have associated sideeffects. The extracts of Tagetes minuta, Codieum variegatum and Tradescantia zebrine are used for blood clotting. These extracts are highly efficient and have no known side-effects. This study aimed at characterizing crude extracts of these plant species used to accelerate blood clotting. Study Design: An independent measures experimental design was used in the study. Place and duration of study: The research was conducted between 21 st September, 2018 and 21 st May, 2019. The study was conducted in Maasai mara university, Kenya and Multimedia university of Kenya. Methodology: Extracts of these herbs were obtained and analyzed for absorption bands, functional groups, bio-metal concentrations, physical-chemical parameters, phytochemicals and antimicrobial activity. Test for blood clotting factors (calcium and vitamin K) was also conducted. Results: All extracts had common functional group peaks at 2800-3500 cm (carboxylic OH), 1680 Original Research Article Grace et al.; AJACR, 6(3): 41-52, 2020; Article no.AJACR. 59950 42 cm (carbonyl), and 1035cm (C-Ostretch). The extracts had an average pH of 6.590 ±0.702 and conductivity of 0.580 ±0.079mS. The average solubility in distilled water was 16.670 ±1.534 g/100 ml water at 37°C. The extracts were found to be abundant in iron, copper and phytochemicals. All extracts portrayed moderate inhibition to E. coli bacteria and C. albicans fungi but mild inhibition towards S. aureus bacteria. The extracts had trace amounts of Vitamin K and moderate amounts of calcium.
Chicken ( Gallus gallus domesticus L.) Cuts Yield Specifics of Cobb 500 Slow and Hubbard Flex Hybrids

Chicken (Gallusgallusdomesticus L.) cuts yield of wing (drummette / middle joint / tip), breast (fillet / tenderloin) and leg (drumstick / thigh / feet) of two specific hybrids (Cobb 500 Slow - CB-Slow and Hubbard Flex - HB-Flex) were evaluated. A total of 150 birds of each hybrid (grown in separate sheds under same management) were utilized for the study. The trials were carried out under randomly design with 24 replicated for each lineage. From the data obtained it was observed that the cuts yield of CB-Slow birds was higher for breast when compared to HB-Flex. On the other hand, the HB-Flex birds had higher cut yields for leg (drumstick - meat & bone) and wing(drummette / middle joint / tip). Yields for tenderloin, breastbone and upperdrumstick (meat) both hybrids did not show significant differences. The knowledge of specific chicken hybrid cuts differences, enables more accurate choices that best fits the consumer’s market needs.