Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Research on English Business Negotiation Strategies in the Framework of Politeness Theory

Business negotiation is essentially a kind of economic activity by means of language. Its success depends on the use of language, especially polite wording. This article, in the framework of politeness theory, studies the politeness strategies of business negotiation and emphasizes its importance. This article mainly focuses on negative politeness strategies and positive politeness strategies raised by Brown and Levinson. It discusses specific linguistic strategies of negative politeness and positive politeness from two aspects, words and phrases as well as sentences. It is concluded that negotiators can resort to some pragmatic rules and linguistic patterns to be more polite in business negotiations but they should use these strategies flexibly to suit different situations.
Optimal Grasping Pose Synthesis in a Constrained Environment

In the last few decades, several approaches have been presented to accomplish tasks with robots or autonomous systems in a glovebox; nevertheless, in nuclear facilities, risky operations are still executed by humans that guarantee a high manipulation capability and dexterity. Inside the gloveboxes, robotic devices have to operate in cluttered environments, or environments with limited space for movement; therefore, it is of significant interest to identify grasping poses that are feasible within such constrained environments. In this paper, we present and experimentally evaluate a strategy to synthesise optimal grasps considering geometric primitives for a manipulation systems in a constrained environment. The novel strategy has been experimentally evaluated in a cluttered environment (as a glovebox mock-up) with realistic objects, and the efficacy of the proposed grasping algorithm is proposed.
A MEMS based blood glucose measurement sensor using twin-cantilever structure

This paper aims to propose a blood glucose measurement sensor using a MEMS-based twin cantilever structure, which is highly reliable and accurate. Two identical microcantilever beams featuring a dimension of 500 µm x 100 µm x 10 µm, were designed and fabricated using the IntelliFab module of the IntelliSuite MEMS software. One was deposited with a piezoelectric material Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT), which converts mechanical stress into a change in electric potential, and the other, with doped polysilicon (a piezoresistor), which translates mechanical energy in terms of a change in resistance. Glucose detection in the blood sample was achieved by coating the top surface of a cantilever beam with glucose-sensitive polymer PAA-ran-3-PAAPBA. Mechanical bending of the cantilever beam was observed due to the presence of glucose in blood sample and the output voltage proportional to glucose concentration has been measured using op-amp as a readout circuitry. The resulting output voltage corresponding to a glucose concentration of 162 mg/dL is found to be 47.49 mV.
Price Competitiveness and Supply Response of Rice Producers in Nigeria: Implications for Agricultural Trade

This study examined the price competitiveness and supply response of rice producers in Nigeria and its implication for agricultural trade. Specifically, it examined the trade balance for rice; examined price volatility; estimated supply response coefficients and the determinants of supply response of rice producers in Nigeria. Data were collected from secondary sources and covered the period 1972 to 2017. Data analyses were achieved using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results indicated a negative trade balance (x = - N20/kg) between imported rice and domestic rice. Price volatility result showed that volatility in agricultural markets was high, with that of imported rice being higher than domestic rice, then maize. Supply response coefficients for rice indicated that production output, price of maize and annual rainfall statistically and significantly influenced supply of rice while domestic price of local rice, price of imported rice and government expenditure on agriculture were not significant. All the series were stationary in the first difference and there was linear combination or long-run equilibrium relationship among the co-integrated variables. There were price adjustments between short-run to long-run equilibrium and the error correction coefficient was -0.209. Further results showed that the price and probably favoured quality of imported rice constrained domestic production and negatively impacted rice exports from Nigeria. This indicates a potentially significant impediment to the expansion of rice production in Nigeria. Government must put in place guaranteed minimum price for rice, and be ready to act as buyer of last resort, as incentives for the farmers, to sustainably increase production and the country to attain self-sufficiency in the short-run. Government and non-governmental institutions should provide improved production inputs and modern processing facilities to enhance the competitiveness of local rice against imported rice, both in terms of quality and price.
Which Audiences Engage With Advocacy Groups on Twitter? Explaining the Online Engagement of Elite, Peer, and Mass Audiences With Advocacy Groups

Gaining an audience on social media is an important goal of contemporary policy advocacy. While previous studies demonstrate that advocacy-dedicated nonprofit organizations—what we refer to as advocacy groups—use different social media tools, we still know little about what specific audiences advocacy groups set out to target on social media, and whether those audiences actually engage with these groups. This study fills this gap, deploying survey and digital trace data from Twitter over a 12-month period for the Australian case. We show that while groups target a variety of audiences online, there are differences between group types in their strategic objectives and the extent to which particular audiences engage with them. Business groups appear to target elite audiences more often compared with citizen and professional groups, whereas citizen groups receive more online engagement from mass and peer audiences.
Effect of Access to Healthcare due to Rural Electrification on the Household Wellbeing among Proprietors of Micro and Small Enterprises in Kenya

in a cycle of deprivation, Abstract: Kenya’s Medium-Term Plan III (2018-2022) promises that the health sector will pay special attention to the ‘Big Four’ initiatives with particular focus on the achievement of Universal Health Coverage by implementing programmeslike rural electrification that increase access to quality healthcare services. Kenya’s electricity demand for rural electrification has been steadily rising in the recent past. Households in Kenya are willing and able to pay for improved energy services based on renewable energy resources at reasonable rates. It’s against this background that this study sought to investigate the effect of access to healthcare due to rural electrification on household wellbeing among proprietors of micro and small enterprises in Kenya. The study adopted a cross-sectional descriptive survey design. The target population for this study comprised172,554 proprietorsofmicro and small enterprises registered in Kenya by 2015. The study used multistage sampling involving systematic and simple random sampling procedures due to the large target population involved. Primary data from proprietors of rural micro and small enterprises in eight counties namely; Kakamega, Bungoma, Nakuru, Busia, Bomet, Siaya, Kericho and Kirinyaga forming a sample size of 418 was used. The data collection instrument was pilot tested on 5% of the sample size. Pearson correlation analysis showed that there was a moderate positive relationship between access to healthcare due to rural electrification and household wellbeing among proprietors of micro and small enterprises. Regression analysis results revealed that access to healthcare contribute significantly to household wellbeing. It was concluded that there was a statistical significant relationship between access to healthcare and household wellbeing among proprietors of micro and small enterprises. It is recommended that the Kenyan government should promote universal access to electricity in all health facilities to a higher level on the political agenda, supporting these commitments with strategic plans, clear policies and dedicated establishments.
Preventive Control Policy Construction in Active Distribution Network of Cyber-Physical System with Reinforcement Learning

Once an active distribution network of a cyber-physical system is in alert state, it is vulnerable to cross-domain cascading failures. It is necessary to transit the state of an active distribution network of cyber-physical system from an alert state to a normal state using a preventive control policy against cross-domain cascading failures. In fact, it is difficult to construct and analyze a preventive control policy via theoretical analysis methods or physical experimental methods. The theoretical analysis methods may not be accurate due to approximated models, and the physical experimental methods are expensive and time consuming for building prototypes. This paper presents a preventive control policy construction method based on a deep deterministic policy gradient idea (shorted as PCMD) to generate and optimize a preventive control policy with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. It adopts the reinforcement learning technique to make full use of the available historical data to overcome the problems of high cost and low accuracy. Firstly, a preventive control model is designed based on the finite automaton theory, which can guide the data collection and learning policy selection. The control model considers the voltage stability, frequency stability, current overload prevention, and the control cost reduction as a feedback variable, without the specific power flow equations and differential equations. Then, after enough training, a local optimal preventive control policy can be constructed under the comparability condition among a fitted action-value function and a fitted policy function. The constructed preventive control policy contains some control actions to achieve a low cost and in accord with the principle of shortening a cross-domain cascading failures propagation sequence as far as possible. The PCMD is more flexible and closer to reality than the theoretical analysis methods and has a lower cost than the physical experimental methods. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, an experimental case study, China Electric Power Research-Cyber-Physical System (shorted as CEPR-CPS), which comes from China Electric Power Research Institute, is carried out. The result shows that the effectiveness of preventive control policy construction with the PCMD is better than most current methods, such as the multi-agent method in terms of reducing the number of failure nodes and avoiding the state space explosion.
Time to Suicide and Suicide Attempt among Army Enlisted Soldiers’ First Year of Service

Abstract A soldier’s first year of military service is a critical period of transition where the risk of suicidal behavior may be increased. This study described time to initial suicide attempts and death by suicide among U.S. Army soldiers in their first year of service. Between Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 and FY 2016, a retrospective cohort (n = 407,401) included 376 soldiers who attempted suicide and 29 soldiers who died by suicide in their first service year. Suicide attempt and suicide cases were identified through the Department of Defense Suicide Event Report (DoDSER). The median time to event was 6.4 months for soldiers who attempted suicide and 9 months for soldiers who died by suicide. Approximately 10% of the suicide attempts occurred during the first month, and most suicides (97%) occurred after the first three months of the study period. These results highlight an opportunity for early behavioral healthcare intervention among new soldiers. The implementation of a tailored means reduction strategy for new soldiers after the initial training period may be beneficial. Future research, including a longer follow-up period, is needed to elucidate further the characteristics and unique stressors among new soldiers and how these stressors impact suicidal behavior within this population.
MeDIP-Seq and RNA-Seq Releaved TGFB2 Associated with Disease Resistance to ALV-J Infection in Chickens

BackgroundAvian leukosis virus subgroup J (ALV-J) is an oncogenic virus that causes serious economic losses in the poultry industry; unfortunately, there is no effective vaccine. Therefore, ALV-J-susceptible and -resistant chickens had been screened in this study. DNA methylation plays a crucial role in several biological processes, and an increasing number of diseases were proven to be related to alterations of DNA methylation. Thus, we generated and provide the genome wide genome-expression and DNA-methylation profiles by MeDIP-Seq and RNA-Seq in ALV-J-susceptible and -resistant chickens.Results8304 DMRs were identified by MeDIP-Seq analyses and 515 differentially expressed genes were identified by RNA-Seq analysis. Through the results of integration analysis, we screened six candidate genes for screening ALV-J-resistant chickens that were aberrant methylation in the promoter region. Furthermore, functional analyses showed that overexpression of TGFB2 promoted ALV-J replication, which suggested TGFB2 played an important role in disease resistance to ALV-J infection in chickens.ConclusionsThe present study provides new insights into understanding epigenetic changes in ALV-J-susceptible and -resistant chickens, and results provide a basis for breeding disease-resistant-chicken lines.
A New Combined Protocol to Treat the Dentin Hypersensitivity Associated with Non-Carious Cervical Lesions: A Randomized Controlled Trial

The goal of this research is to assess the desensitizing effect of a diode laser on non-carious cervical lesions (NCCLs) responsible for dentin hypersensitivity (DH) in two separate output forces implemented both independently and in sequential combination modalities. A randomized controlled trial for this study was applied. Sixty-nine NCCLs responsible for DH pain with severity between 6 and 9 on the VAS scale were considered. Three study groups were developed using just one lesion from three different quadrants of the oral cavity of each patient. All treatment procedures were conducted using a laser diode (810 nm, 5 W) with varying power outputs used separately or in combination. The pain by DH was evaluated at baseline, at treatment completion, and at 15 days and 3 months after each laser procedure. Data analysis was performed using a Wilcoxon test for paired samples, a one-way ANOVA test, and an unpaired t-test. The significant reduction of the mean VAS score was estimated in each study group immediately and at 15 days and 3 months after the end of treatment and compared with the baseline mean VAS score (p-value < 0.0001). The best result concerning the improvement of DH symptomatology was assessed when a combined protocol of two different output powers of the diode laser was used. The authors conclude that the diode laser (810 nm) therapy procedure combining two separate output forces (low and high power) can improve the painful symptoms of DH from NCCLs.
“I’m Going to Learn, and She’s Going to Become Somebody”: Exploring the Counternarratives of Black Women on Welfare in Urban Communities

This qualitative research study explores counternarratives to stereotypes and assumptions made about Black women on welfare in low-income, urban communities. Findings, based on in-depth interviews with 33 mothers and grandmothers, challenge perceptions of “welfare queens”—breeders of children, absorbed by the culture of poverty, and disinterested in their children’s education. Participants defy stereotypes by raising children in well-supported family structures while gainfully employed, pursuing educational opportunities, or a combination of the two. The women actively contribute to their communities’ culture of wealth by investing in their children. The paper concludes with recommendations and directions for future research.
Fuzzy Entropy-Based State of Health Estimation for Li-Ion Batteries

Accurate estimation of the state of health (SOH) of batteries is essential for maximizing the lifetime of the battery and improving the safety and economy of any energy storage system. Data-driven methods can use measurement data to effectively estimate the SOH, but the estimation performance depends on the relevance between the selected feature and SOH. In this article, fuzzy entropy (FE) of battery voltage is proposed as a new feature for SOH estimation and validated on Li-ion batteries. Compared with the traditional sample entropy, the FE can capture the variation of voltage during the battery degradation more efficiently in terms of the parameter selection, data noise, data size, and test condition. Moreover, the aging temperature variation is involved in the established SOH estimator as the temperature is a disturbance variable in the real applications. The FE-SOH is used as the input–output data pair of the support vector machine, and a single-temperature model, a full-temperature model, and a partial-temperature model are established. As a result, the FE-based method has better estimation accuracy under aging temperature variation. The FE-based method also decreases the dependence on the size of the required training data. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experimental results.
LONG-TERM, ENSEMBLE, DATA-ASSIMILATED SHORELINE CHANGE MODELING

We present an ensemble Kalman filter shoreline change model to predict long-term coastal evolution due to waves, sea-level rise, and other natural and anthropogenic processes responsible for sediment transport. The model utilizes ensemble simulations to improve both reliability (via data assimilation) and uncertainty quantification. Coastal change projections exhibit significant differences when simulated with and without ensemble wave conditions. Many long-term coastal change projections rely on a single realization of the future wave climate, often derived from atmospheric conditions simulated by a global climate model. Yet, the single realization approach does not account for the stochastic nature of future wave conditions across a variety of temporal scales (e.g., daily, weekly, seasonally, and interannually). Here, by applying ensemble time series of wave forcing conditions, we demonstrate a sizable increase in model uncertainty compared with the unrealistic case of model projections based on a single realization (e.g., a single time series) of wave forcing.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/V-VwC-cIiQ0
A Human-Like Dual-Forklift Collaborative Mechanism for Container Handling

At present, container handling facilities are huge in size, low in automation, and complicated to operate, which are not suitable for applications in the limited spaces. Inspired by humans’ flexible collaboration when carrying a heavy and large object, in this article we devise a novel dual-forklift collaborative mechanism to address this problem. Specifically, we design a turn lock and hydraulic lifting structure to enable a rigid connection between each forklift and the target container, deploy a four-wheel steering structure in each forklift for omnidirectional motion, and construct a novel vision system by leveraging both RGB camera and time-of-flight depth camera. Furthermore, to provide visual feedback to the controller such that the dual forklift can connect, lift, and handle the container successfully, we devise a coarse-to-fine container detection and corner junction location model. Experiments demonstrate that our model outperforms representative models in terms of both precision and efficiency. Besides, the designed dual-forklift system can accomplish the handling tasks at narrow spaces, confirming its practical value in industrial applications.
Trauma, Psychopathy, and Antisocial Outcomes Among Community Youth: Distinguishing Trauma Events From Trauma Reactions

Psychopathy and trauma exposure are robustly associated with youth conduct problems, but the interrelation of these constructs is unclear. The objective of the present study is to examine psychopathy mediation effects related to trauma events and trauma reactions and juvenile delinquency, conduct disorder, crime seriousness, and proactive overt aggression outcomes. The sample consisted of N =388 (M = 16.01 years, SD = 1.03 years, age range = 13–18 years) male youths from Portugal. Path analysis procedures revealed that psychopathy partially mediates the relation between trauma events and the juvenile delinquency, conduct disorder, crime seriousness outcomes, and fully mediates the relation between trauma events and the proactive overt aggression outcome. Trauma reactions have no direct significant effect on psychopathy, and psychopathy does not mediate the relation between trauma reactions and the examined outcomes. Research on trauma and adverse childhood experiences should encompass both events and reactions to those events as they have differential associations with psychopathy and externalizing outcomes. Trauma-informed service, supervision, and treatment is essential for understanding antisocial development and psychological maladjustment among youth.
Financial Distress premium in Pakistan’s Banking Stocks

This paper examines the role of financial distress premium in explaining the stock returns of banking sector in Pakistan using the sample of twenty listed banks for the period of 2008 to 2018. The study has used two methodologies. Firstly, multifactor model approach of Fama and French (1992) is used to test the financial distress premium (additional risk factor) where portfolio returns are regressed with factor premiums in time series framework. Fama and French (1993) argue that the relationship between the stock return and the selected characteristics occur for that reason these characteristics are proxies for non-diversifiable factor risk. So, the characteristic based model approach of Huang (2009) is used in cross-sectional regression framework where stock returns are regressed with the characteristics. The results indicate that the proposed four factor model is applicable in the banking sector of Pakistan where financial distress premium is priced by the market. The characteristic based model shows insignificant impact of distress proxy of Altman Z score on the banking returns. It suggests that the cross-sectional returns are explained on the covariance structure of returns not the characteristics in the Pakistani banking stocks. The findings of the study suggests that the financial distress is important and consider while forming their portfolios.
Comparison of fermentation properties in raw and boiled legumes after simulated digestion

This study compared the fermentation properties of selected raw and boiled legumes after simulated digestion. Raw and boiled; mung bean, two cowpea cultivars (Waruni and Dhawala), horse gram, and chickpea were subjected to simulated digestion and fermentation using swine gastric and intestinal juices and cecal bacteria. Simulated digestion significantly (p