Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lean Manufacturing Model of Waste Reduction Using Standardized Work to Reduce the Defect Rate in Textile MSEs

The textile industry currently represents 7.2% of the manufacturing companies’ GDP. However, it has experienced severe sales volatility owing to the high competitiveness, primarily mainly from Southeast Asian countries. Low productivity, process variability, operating cost overruns or long lead times are the main causes of the sector gap that must be attacked. Thus, this research is aims to contribute to the textile industry with methodologies and tools to gain a competitive advantage and reduce its operating cost overruns. We analyzed a real case study applied to a company called TEXTIL S.AC. , following the implementation of combined work to integrate labor, work method, and machines to reduce the manufacturing cycle time by 300 seconds and, thus, waste such as defective products that generate expenses for the company. The results of the implementation and validation through process simulation showed an 8% reduction in the defect rate and a 32% improvement in the lead times. Keywords—Waste reduction, Lean Manufacturing, Standard work, Textile industry, 5S ́s in textile industry.
Comparison of “burden of disease” in elderly and non-elderly patients with pre-diabetes: A cross-sectional study

OBJECTIVE: There are a lot of studies comparing elderly and adult patients with diabetes but not pre-diabetes systematically. We aimed to compare the discrepancies of clinical status and burden of disease in elderly (≥60 years old) versus non-elderly (18–59 years old) adult pre-diabetics. METHODS: A total of 126 pre-diabetic patients were included in the study and were compared as two groups; the elderly (n=32) and non-elderly (n=94). Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels, body mass index (BMI), the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), health-related quality of life using the short form-36 (SF-36) questionnaire, and disability using the health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) were evaluated. RESULTS: Gender, BMI, the presence of obesity, the ratio of HOMA-IR, FPG, and plasma glucose in the 2nd h oral glucose tolerance test were similar in non-elderly patients with pre-diabetes compared to the elderly ones. However, HbA1c levels were higher in elderly subjects in our study. According to the SF-36 questionnaire and HAQ score, there were no significant differences between groups. The median total HAQ scores were 0.125 (non-elderly) and 0.250 (elderly) for groups and there was no significant difference (p=0.099). CONCLUSION: In the similar gender and BMI groups, pre-diabetes in the elderly gives different outcomes according to HbA1c. Since SF-36 questionnaire and HAQ scores were not statistically different in both pre-diabetic groups, the burden of disease is thought to be basically due to the presence of the disease rather than aging.
Noninvasive prenatal detection of fetal trisomy and single gene disease by shotgun sequencing of placenta originated exosome DNA: a proof-of-concept validation

Background During human pregnancy, Placental trophectoderm cells can release exosomes into maternal circulation. Trophoblast cells also give rise to cell-free DNA (cfDNA) and has been used for noninvasive prenatal screening for chromosomal aneuploidy. We intended to prove the existence of exosomal DNA (exoDNA) in the exosomes of maternal blood and compared exoDNA with plasma cfDNA in terms of genome distribution, fragment length, and the possibility of detecting genetic diseases. Methods Maternal blood from 20 euploid pregnancies, 9 T21 pregnancies, 3 T18 pregnancies, 1 T13 pregnancy and 2 pregnancies with FGFR3 mutations were obtained. Exosomes enriched from maternal plasma were confirmed by transmission electronic microscopy (TEM), western blotting and flow cytometry. ExoDNA was extracted and its fetal origin was confirmed by realtime fluorescence quantitative PCR(Q-PCR). Besides, exoDNA content was uncovered by Q-PCR. To characterize exoDNA and compare with cfDNA, pair-end whole genome sequencing was performed. Lastly, the fetal risk of genetic diseases was analyzed using the exoDNA sequencing data. Results ExoDNA span on all 23 pairs of chromosomes and mitochondria, sharing a similar distribution pattern and higher GC content comparing with cfDNA. ExoDNA showed shorter fragments yet lower fetal fraction than cfDNA. ExoDNA could be used to determine fetal gender correctly, and all trisomies as well as de novo FGFR3 mutations. Conclusions We proved that fetal exoDNA could be identified in the exosomes extracted from maternal plasma. ExoDNA shared some similar features to cfDNA and could potentially be used to detect genetic diseases in fetus.
Communication in international collaborative research teams. A review of the state of the art and open research questions

In Communication Science, international scholarly communication and collaboration practice still remain unknown territory. Therefore, a systematic review of the state of the art on scholarly communication practice in international research collaborations (IRCs) was carried out that included a broad spectrum of disciplines and research fields such as Communication Science, Business and Management Studies, Sociology, science studies, and the science of team science. A sample of 168 contributions focusing on IRCs were identified. The paper outlines focus and methodological designs of those contributions, provides insights into the composition of the observed IRCs, summarizes the perspectives of the disciplines and research fields, presents the insights into communication structures and processes in IRCs, and discusses the aspect of team diversity, which some studies indicate as relevant for communication practice in IRCs. Overall, research largely focuses on the structural dimension of communication, while empirical analyses on the actual communication processes among scientists in IRCs are still rare. Secondly, research is missing on how team complexity is dealt with in IRCs and what impact it has on collaboration processes and success. A third and fourth research gap are identified regarding the use of a joint collaboration language and the communication processes in Social Sciences and Humanities. Future research should broaden its analytical focus to fill those gaps. This would provide important insights from an epistemological and a practical perspective, by offering the foundation for the development of guidelines and toolkits for future IRCs, thus contributing to the success of such forms of research and knowledge creation.
Annotated checklist of the endemic Tetrapoda species of Iran

ABSTRACT During past years different studies have attempted to describe the tetrapod fauna of Iran, most of which have focused on the herpetofauna. However there is no coherent study of the endemic species of Tetrapoda in Iran. In this study, we provide a list of endemic species of Tetrapoda in Iran, mention their habitat, distribution, their conservation status (IUCN) and important biological note. Eighty endemic species of Tetrapoda occur in Iran, of which 82.50% are reptiles. Thirty-eight species (47.50% of total endemic species of Tetrapoda) have no submitted data to IUCN; of which 35 species are reptiles. Additional studies are needed to provide data about the conservation status of tetrapod fauna of Iran, especially the endemic fauna.
The identification of the species of the ‘Spilogona contractifrons species-group’ and the ‘Spilogona nitidicauda species-group’ (Diptera, Muscidae) based on morphological and molecular analysis

Muscid species of the ‘Spilogona contractifrons species-group’ (Spilogona alticola (Malloch, 1920), S. arctica (Zetterstedt, 1838), S. contractifrons (Zetterstedt, 1838), S. orthosurstyla Xue & Tian, 1988) and of the ‘Spilogona nitidicauda species-group’ (S. nitidicauda (Schnabl, 1911), S. hissarensis Hennig, 1959, S. imitatrix (Malloch, 1921), S. platyfrons Sorokina, 2018) are notoriously difficult to distinguish. In this paper, their morphological features are analysed, images of the male head, frons and abdomen of all the species are given, and the male terminalia are figured. The study of extensive material has shown that all the morphologically recognised species in each of these groups are valid species. An identification key is provided for both groups of species. To confirm the morphological differences, genetic differences in the cytochrome oxidase I gene of flies of the ‘Spilogona contractifrons species-group’ and of the ‘Spilogona nitidicauda species-group’ were analysed. It is shown that members of both groups of species have not only distinguishing morphological characters but also fixed substitutions in the DNA sequences. Since a low interspecific polymorphism is known in the Muscidae Latreille, 1802, the revealed genetic distances confirm the existence of separate species or subspecies in each of the groups studied.
Dual Iterative Hard Thresholding

Iterative Hard Thresholding (IHT) is a popular class of ﬁrst-order greedy selection meth-ods for loss minimization under cardinality constraint. The existing IHT-style algorithms, however, are proposed for minimizing the primal formulation. It is still an open issue to explore duality theory and algorithms for such a non-convex and NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. To address this issue, we develop in this article a novel duality theory for (cid:96) 2 -regularized empirical risk minimization under cardinality constraint, along with an IHT-style algorithm for dual optimization. Our sparse duality theory establishes a set of suﬃcient and/or necessary conditions under which the original non-convex problem can be equivalently or approximately solved in a concave dual formulation. In view of this theory, we propose the Dual IHT (DIHT) algorithm as a super-gradient ascent method to solve the non-smooth dual problem with provable guarantees on primal-dual gap convergence and sparsity recovery. Numerical results conﬁrm our theoretical predictions and demonstrate the superiority of DIHT to the state-of-the-art primal IHT-style algorithms in model estimation accuracy and computational eﬃciency. 1
Molecular characterization of methicillin resistant Staph. aureus from poultry farms in Kano State, Nigeria

There is presently an increased rate of resistance by methicillin resistant Staph. aureus against commonly prescribed antibiotics for Staph aureus infection. This strain of Staph. aureus is not only a problem in clinical sector but also in livestock disease treatment and management as transferability of this resistant gene in zoonotic outbreak might be possible. This study was set out to evaluate the incidence of methicillin resistant Staph. aureus from poultry farms birds and the farm workers, and also to evaluate the likelihood of cross-infection between the birds and the farm workers in Kano State, Nigeria. Samples were collected using standard microbiological techniques. Antibiotic susceptibility was also carried out using disc diffusion method while genes that influence methicillin resistant were evaluated using PCR method. The results showed that out of the 1260 samples collected, 98 isolates were confirmed to be Staph. aureus. The antibiotics susceptibility test results showed that 30.6% (30) of the Staph. aureus isolates were resistant to cefoxitin (a phenotypic test for methicillin resistant) while 69.4% (68) were susceptible. The methicillin resistant isolates were observed to exhibit (100%) resistant to Ampicillin and Amoxicillin, 93.3% to Oxytetracycline, 90% to Chloramphenicol, 80% to Erythromycin, 76.7% to Oxacillin, 63.3% to Trimethroprim/Sulphamethozaxole, 30% to Ciprofloxacin and 26.7% to Gentamicin. The result also showed that 83.3% (25) of the isolates had multiple antibiotic resistance index (MARI) of > 0.3 and were also multidrug resistant (MDR) while 16.7% had MARI ≤ 0.3. The molecular analysis showed that all the isolates were Staph. aureus of 800bp, 66.7% of the MDR isolates harbored MecA gene (162bp), while 33.3% had MecA of 500bp. Further analysis showed that 3 of the 7 housekeeping genes (pta, gmk and yqil) were also present in the MDR isolates at 43.3, 20 and 16.7% respectively while 10% express spa typing. The results also showed that there is a correlation between phenotypic cefoxitin resistance and carriage of MecA gene.
Recent Research Progress of Long Non-coding RNA

In general, long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) refers to the transcripts that are greater than 200 nucleotides in length which cannot encode a protein but have influential functions. Recently, lncRNA has gradually become a hot spot in the study of biology. This review summarized the advances in understanding the roles of lncRNA in human disease, plant biology among many other directions and how these results would affect us. An increasing number of lncRNA software has been developed to predict lncRNA with the increasing attention paid to lncRNA. We mainly introduced several related software for lncRNA predictions, including their sorting algorithms, and different advantages and disadvantages in their performance and accuracy. With the improvement of sequencing technologies, the approaches for predicting lncRNA have also changed accordingly. In this review, the lncRNA prediction and quantitative processes of different sequencing technologies were introduced in detail. Finally, we summarized some of the challenges in lncRNA research as well as future prospects of lncRNA research, hoping to provide some help for future lncRNA research.
Effect of Different Sugar Solutions, Temperature and Relative Humidity on Uredospore Germination of Cerotelium fici (Cast.) Arth. Causing Rust Disease on Fig (Ficus carica Linn.)

Fig (Ficus carica L.) is an important deciduous fruit crop of tropical and subtropical countries. It belongs to the family, Moraceae. Edible fig is known for its fruits and has been cultivated for thousands of years. The latin name, carica comes from the location Caria in Asia Minor which is supposedly the home of the fig (Starr et al., 2003). The pollination of fig is very special and reflects symbiotic relationships. It is carried out by a parasitic species-specific wasp (Blastophaga psenes) whose life-cycle is synchronized with that of the tree.
Designing Anonymous Signature-Based Authenticated Key Exchange Scheme for Internet of Things-Enabled Smart Grid Systems

Recent technological evolution in the Internet of Things (IoT) age supports better solutions to magnify the management of the power quality and reliability concerns, and imposes the measures of a smart grid. In smart grid environment, a smart meter needs to securely access the services from a service provider via insecure channel. However, since the communication is via public channel, it imposes various security threats by an adversary. To deal with this, in this article we design a new anonymous signature-based authenticated key exchange scheme for IoT-enabled smart grid environment, called AAS-IoTSG. The dynamic smart meter addition phase is also permissible in AAS-IoTSG after initial deployment. The security of AAS-IoTSG has been tested rigorously using formal security analysis under the real-or-random (ROR) model which is one of the broadly-accepted standard random oracle models, formal security verification under the broadly-used automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool and also using informal security analysis. Finally, an exhaustive comparative study unveils that AAS-IoTSG supports better security and functionality features and requires less communication and computation overheads as compared to the existing state-of-art authentication mechanisms in smart grid systems.
Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons: Formation, metabolism and measurement

This book discusses the Seventh International PAH (Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons) Symposium which showed the continuing expansion of interest in the study of these materials. Several papers were presented on the ability of microorganisms to metabolize PAH into derivative molecules, both from the view of microbes as degraders of hazardous materials, and as a source of potentially dangerous intermediate compounds that could affect humans. Also was presented a view of the fate of PAH in species of animals in aquatic environments, and how these chemicals can be maintained in lower species for availability to higher animal species which man routinely uses as direct food sources. The authors continued to learn how PAH, when attached to the surface of apparently inert particles, can have dramatically altered effects in the lungs of higher animals. They learned the way in which PAH can be formed in the hot gas streams of combusting hydrocarbon fuels and in so learning, can devise better methods for utilizing carbon-based fuels.
GraphIPS: Calibration-Free and Map-Free Indoor Positioning Using Smartphone Crowdsourced Data

Indoor positioning plays an important role in a variety of applications under Internet of Things (IoT). Conventional WiFi fingerprinting-based indoor positioning systems (IPSs) usually require extensive manual calibrations to construct radio maps. This process severely limits the system scalability and adaptiveness. Pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) is a popular method that can avoid the calibration process. However, PDR-based IPSs typically suffer from accumulated errors. To tackle this problem, many refinement methods require map information or floorplans which may not be available or up-to-date in practice. With the development of IoT, various types of crowdsourced data become available. In this work, we propose GraphIPS, a calibration-free and map-free IPS which dynamically generates accurate radio maps by utilizing smartphone crowdsourced WiFi and inertial measurement unit (IMU) data. GraphIPS fuses the crowdsourced data into a graph-based formulation and applies the multidimensional scaling (MDS) algorithm to compute the positions of the user’s steps. The experimental results show that GraphIPS achieves comparable accuracy to the calibration-based method in a significantly shorter run time than optimization-based methods. In addition to smartphones, GraphIPS is also potentially applicable for the smart wearables with embedded WiFi modules and IMUs.
Price dynamics of major high valued seed spices in India: an econometric insight

Modelling and forecasting of volatility has attracted the attention of researchers for decades now. Agricultural commodity prices are characteristically fluctuating. In this paper volatile price series of spices namely Black pepper, Cardamom and Cumin are modelled and forecasted using family of Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic(GARCH) model. For Cumin series due to presence of kurtosis in its residual series we have fitted GARCH model using t distributed error term. For Cardamom and Black pepper series, owing to its asymmetric nature Exponential GARCH model fitted the best. The forecasting efficiency of these models was compared with Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model using root mean squared error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). Superior results were obtained for GARCH models over the basic ARIMA model. Further, to understand the price behaviour, Coppocks Instability Index (CII) and Growth Rates (GR) for all selected spices were calculated. The study concludes by stating number of policy implications which could be advocated based on the findings.
Development of PolyParGenv2 Software for Determination of Molecular Dynamics Simulation Parameters for Molecules with Crosslinked or Condensed Ring Structures

We had previously developed o2p, a parameter conversion semi-automation program for polymers with repeating structures, and PolyParGen, a parameter acquisition program primarily meant for chainlike macromolecules. These programs use the parameters obtained via the automatic parameter generation tool. However, with these programs, it is difficult to acquire parameters of molecules with crosslinked structures or large condensed ring structures. To acquire these parameters, herein we improved the algorithm to develop PolyParGen v2. Further, this program adds Antechamber as the automatic parameter generation tool and can obtain the Amber force field parameter for polymers. This program was evaluated via simulations using graphene, carbon nanotubes, and fullerene. Our results agree with those of previous studies and verify the effectiveness of the proposed program.
Examining the Impacts of Human Capital Flight on Economic Growth: A Case Study of Pakistan

Human capital is one of the key drivers of economic development and sustainable competitive advantage in the global market. Human capital flight or Brain drain can lead to a permanent impact on the growth process of the country of emigration. Like numerous other developing countries, Pakistan has also been experiencing both the negative and positive consequences of human capital flight. To examine these impacts of international movements on Pakistan economy we retrieved data from different sources. The fundamental objective is to examine the consequences of international migration and its associations with poverty, economic growth, and human development. To keep this in mind, we employed the ARDL approach on three different models for the period of 1975 to 2017. District wise analysis of all provinces states that the international migration is playing a key role in the reduction of poverty level except in KPK. In addition, empirical evidence describes that international migration is positively associated with economic growth and human development while negatively associated with poverty level. The study is concluding that there are enormous potential benefits exists in international migration process because it boosts the economic growth of Pakistan via personal remittances inflow. Likewise, it smoothes out the consumption pattern of ordinary households due to the direct transfer of remittances to them. This monograph is also suggesting some useful policy recommendations for instance, if we export our manpower to highly developed countries then reverse brain drain will encourage the innovation practices along with improvement in economic growth.
Expanding Pouch Motor Patterns for Programmable Soft Bending Actuation: Enabling Soft Robotic System Adaptations

The use of soft robots to interact with soft, fragile, and even living things has spurred interest in the development of soft robotic systems that can deform and adapt themselves to their environment through their inherent compliance. Current soft pneumatic actuator concepts require significant redesign to be repurposed from one function to another, and a complete soft robotic system may be composed of multiple types of actuators with varying materials, designs, and manufacturing methods. This complicates the process of designing and manufacturing soft robots that can tackle new tasks and environments. This work introduces a repeatable pattern of pouch motors with geometric constraints allowing the actuator to produce a programmable bending deformation. By varying the dimensions of the pattern, it is possible to produce different motions that can be used to build diverse robotic components, such as a soft robotic arm or a large soft robotic gripper.