Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maternal haemodynamics during labour epidural analgesia with and without adrenaline

Abstract Objectives Labour is one of the most painful experiences in a woman’s life. Epidural analgesia using low-concentration local anaesthetics and lipophilic opioids is the gold standard for pain relief during labour. Pregnancy in general, particularly labour, is associated with changes in maternal haemodynamic variables, such as cardiac output and heart rate, which increase and peak during uterine contractions. Adrenaline is added to labour epidural solutions to enhance efficacy by stimulating the α2-adrenoreceptor. The minimal effective concentration of adrenaline was found to be 2 μg mL−1 for postoperative analgesia. The addition of adrenaline may also produce vasoconstriction, limiting the absorption of fentanyl into the systemic circulation, thereby reducing foetal exposure. However, adrenaline may influence the haemodynamic fluctuations, possibly adding to the strain on the circulatory system. The aim of this study was to compare the haemodynamic changes after application of labour epidural analgesia with or without adrenaline 2 μg mL−1. Methods This was a secondary analysis of a single-centre, randomised double-blind trial. Forty-one nulliparous women in labour requesting epidural analgesia were randomised to receive epidural solution of bupivacaine 1 mg mL−1, fentanyl 2 μg mL−1 with or without adrenaline 2 μg mL−1. The participants were monitored using a Nexfin CC continuous non-invasive blood pressure and cardiac output monitor. The primary outcomes were changes in peak systolic blood pressure and cardiac output during uterine contraction within 30 min after epidural activation. The effect of adrenaline was tested statistically using a linear mixed-effects model of the outcome variables’ dependency on time, adrenaline, and their interaction. Results After excluding three patients due to poor data quality and two due to a malfunctioning epidural catheter, 36 patients (18 in each group) were analysed. The addition of adrenaline to the solution had no significant effect on the temporal changes in peak systolic blood pressure (p=0.26), peak cardiac output (0.84), or heart rate (p=0.91). Furthermore, no significant temporal changes in maternal haemodynamics (peak systolic blood pressure, p=0.54, peak cardiac output, p=0.59, or heart rate p=0.55) were associated with epidural analgesia during 30 min after epidural activation in both groups despite good analgesia. Conclusions The addition of 2 μg mL−1 adrenaline to the epidural solution is not likely to change maternal haemodynamics during labour.
Relationship Between Reaction Time, Medal Winning and Performance in the 60 m Hurdle Indoor Event Before and After the Change of False Start Rule

Summary 60 m hurdles races are included in the World Indoor Athletics Championships and consist the shortest hurdle race distance. Thus, it is possible that the reaction time (RT) affects the finish time (t60mH) and the rank of the hurdlers. The aims of this research were: a) to examine the relationship between RT and t60mH, b) the possible differentiation of RT: c) between the hurdlers who won a medal in World Indoor Athletics Championships (WM) and those who did not (NMW), d) between hurdlers who competed before (BRC) and after (ARC) the change of the starting rules in 2009. Analysis included 70 performances (WM: n = 28; NMW: n = 42; BRC: n = 32; ARC, n = 38). The differences between WM and NMW and BRC and ARC were examined with independent samples T-test, while the possible relationship between RT and t60mH with Pearson’s correlation. The results showed that RT was not significantly different (p < .05) between WM and NMW and between BRC and ARC. A weak, but significant, positive correlation (r = .228, p = .016) between RT and t60mH was observed. Results revealed that RT is a factor that affects t60mH. In conclusion, the essential focus on the reaction time at the starting blocks must be given during the training process.
ONE-POT MULTI-COMPONENT SYNTHESIS OF 1, 2, 4, 5-TETRASUBSTITUTED IMIDAZOLES USING SULFONIC ACID-FUNCTIONALIZED PYRIDINIUM CHLORIDE AS AN EFFICIENT AND RECYCLABLE CATALYST

Sulfonic acid-functionalized pyridinium chloride ionic liquid {[Pyridine–SO3H]Cl} can effectively promote the one-pot multi-component condensation reaction between benzil, aldehydes, primary amines and ammonium acetate under solvent-free conditions at 100 oC to give the desired 1,2,4,5-tetrasubstituted imidazoles, in high yields and short reaction times.
Ensuring End-to-End Dependability Requirements in Cloud-based Bluetooth Low Energy Applications

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is increasingly used for time-critical IoT applications, where BLE-based smart objects need to exchange data with a remote server within stringent end-to-end latency and reliability bounds. While existing research has investigated how to timely send packets between pairs of BLE devices, it is still unclear how a BLE device can sustain time-critical end-to-end communication with a remote server, for example, hosted in the cloud. In this paper, we tackle this problem and show how BLE devices can autonomously measure and cope with end-to-end network delays and loss along the path to the remote server. To this end, we ﬁrst devise an analytical model of the communication between a BLE end-node and the cloud. We then leverage this model to dynamically adapt the communication parameters of the BLE device and sustain the desired end-to-end dependability requirements while minimizing the energy expenditure. Speciﬁcally, we design and implement two adaptation strategies on the popular nRF52 platform, and experimentally show that they both allow to sustain a given end-to-end reliability and a given end-to-end latency for data transmissions from/to the BLE node, while limiting the node’s power consumption.
Effect of Phosphate Treatment on Pb Leachability in Contaminated Shooting Range Soils

ABSTRACT A cost-effective way to reduce lead released into the environment is through immobilization with readily available soil amendments. Leaching of Pb from four shooting range soils treated with two phosphate sources was evaluated in soil columns. Phosphate was applied at a P/Pb molar ratio of 4:1 with two-thirds of the P supplied from phosphate rock (PR) and one-third from phosphoric acid (PA). The soils were incubated for 18 hr and leached with toxicity characterization leaching procedure (TCLP) and synthetic precipitation leaching procedure (SPLP) fluids, respectively. PR/PA treatment reduced Pb in TCLP leachate to below regulatory limit of 5 mg/L after 18 hr of incubation. Reduction of Pb leached was more dependent on clay content than total Fe. PR/PA treatment had no effect on pH of TCLP leached soils, while it led to a drastic lowering of pH that mobilized Pb in SPLP leached soils. However, leaching of Pb reduced with time in SPLP leached soils because pH increased gradually. PR/PA treatment was more effective in SPLP leached soils with low total soil Pb because they received lower amounts of PA. PR/PA treatment may be more efficient when applied as split applications in soils with a low to medium Pb loading and a high buffering capacity.
Coordination Polymers Assembled From 3,3′,5,5′-Azobenzenetetracarboxylic Acid and Different Bis(imidazole) Ligands with Varying Flexibility

Five new mixed-ligand coordination polymers, formulated as {[Cd2(μ6-ao2btc)(μ-1,4-bmeib)(H2O)2]·2H2O}n (1), [Mn2(μ6-ao2btc)(μ-obix)2]n (2), [Cd2(μ6-ao2btc)(μ-obix)2]n (3), [Zn2(μ4-aobtc)(μ-dib)2]n (4), and {[Zn2(μ4-ao2btc)(μ-dmib)2]·2H2O}n (5) (aobtc and ao2btc = mono- and dioxygenated forms of 3,3′,5,5′-azobenzenetetracarboxylate, 1,4-bmeib = 1,4-bis(2-methylimidazol-1yl)butane, obix = 1,2-bis(imidazol-1ylmethyl)benzene, dib = 1,4-bis(imidazol-1yl)benzene, and dmib = 1,4-bis(imidazol-1yl)-2,5-dimethylbenzene) have been synthesized using different bis(imidazole) ligands and characterized by elemental analyses, IR spectra, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, powder X-ray diffraction, and thermal analyses (TG/DTA). Complexes 1–5 displayed diverse structures depending on flexible, semiflexible, and rigid bis(imidazole) linkers. Complex 1 has a three-dimensional (3D) structure with the rare sqc27 topology. Complexes 2 and 3 are isostructural with 3,6L19 topology. Complexes 4 and 5 display 2-fold interpenetrated.
Cross-Layer Approximate Hardware Synthesis for Runtime Configurable Accuracy

Approximate computing trades off computation accuracy against energy efficiency. The extent of approximation tolerance, however, significantly varies with a change in input characteristics and applications. We propose a novel cross-layer approach for the synthesis of runtime accuracy-configurable hardware that minimizes energy consumption at area expense. To that end, first, we explore instantiating multiple hardware blocks in the architecture with different fixed approximation levels. These blocks can be selected dynamically and thus allow to configure the accuracy during runtime. They benefit from having fewer transistors and also synthesis relaxations in contrast to state-of-the-art gating mechanisms that only switch off a group of paths of the circuit. Our cross-layer approach combines instantiating such blocks in the architecture with area-efficient gating mechanisms that reduce toggling activity, creating a fine-grained design-time knob on energy versus area. We present a systematic methodology to explore this joint design space and find energy–area optimal solutions as a function of required accuracies, their utilization in the workload, together with hardware parameters: dynamic power savings, area of the hardware block, and leakage of the technology. Examining total energy savings for a range of circuits under different workloads and accuracy tolerances shows that our method finds Pareto-optimal solutions providing up to 32% and 60% energy savings compared to state-of-the-art accuracy-configurable gating mechanism and an exact hardware block, respectively, at $2\times $ area cost.
Development of Knowledge Management Performance Metrics for Enterprise Social Software

This is a summary of a planned dissertation research. Goal is to develop knowledge management metrics that can be used to measure the performance of enterprise social software. To achieve this goal an ontology will be developed showing all entities and properties of enterprise social software. Indicators will then be extracted and new ones generated using natural language processing, graph theory and psychometrics to enrich the data. In the end a visualisation of the indicators (knowledge map) will be developed to present and verify the indicators.
Super-Resolution of Sentinel-2 Images at 10m Resolution without Reference Images

Sentinel-2 can provide multi-spectral optical remote sensing images in RGBN bands with a spatial resolution of 10m, but the spatial details provided are not enough for many applications. WorldView can provide HR multi-spectral images less than 2m, but it is a commercial paid resource with relatively high usage costs. In this paper, without any available reference images, Sentinel-2 images at 10m resolution are improved to a resolution of 2.5m through super-resolution (SR) based on deep learning technology. Our model, named DKN-SR-GAN, uses degradation kernel estimation and noise injection to construct a dataset of near-natural low-high-resolution (LHR) image pairs, with only low-resolution (LR) images and no high-resolution (HR) prior information. DKNSR-GAN uses the Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) combined of ESRGAN-type generator, PatchGAN-type discriminator and the VGG-19-type feature extractor, using perceptual loss to optimize the network, so as to obtain SR images with clearer details and better perceptual effects. Experiments demonstrate that in the quantitative comparison of the non-reference image quality assessment (NR-IQA) metrics like NIQE, BRISQUE and PIQE, as well as the intuitive visual effects of the generated images, compared with state-of-the-art models such as EDSR8-RGB, RCAN and RSESRGAN, our proposed model has obvious advantages.
Analyzing the Role of Board Independence towards Corporate Cash Holding: Evidence from Listed Family Firms of Emerging Economy

Family businesses are a valuable and well-known corporate name all over the world. However, controlling families have a clear incentive to obtain private benefits via asset expropriation from minority owners and to take activities that diminish the firms' value especially in emerging economies. A strong governance structure protects against these practices and affects long-term success by lowering them. This study adds to this scope by examining the effect of board independence, board size, leverage, dividend distribution, and company size on cash holding in the case of Pakistani listed family firms. Secondary data of sample of 212 family listed firm for the period of 2010-2017 from published annual reports and corporate governance reports are used. The static and dynamic models: fixed effect (F.E.), random effect (RE), and generalized method of moment (GMM) are the critical tools of evaluation in this study. Results show that board independence negatively affects cash holding, indicating that governance plays an active part in family businesses, whereas board size positively impacts cash holding, and demonstrating inefficient governance. Finally, study has policy guidelines for shareholders, and all other stakeholders.
Novel Protein Kinase

Normal cell multiplication requires that the events of mitosis occur in a carefully ordered fashion. Cells employ checkpoints to prevent cycle progression until some prerequisite step has been completed. To explore the mechanisms of checkpoint enforcement, we previously screened for mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae which are unable to recover from a transient treatment with a benzimidazole-related microtubule inhibitor because they fail to inhibit subsequent cell cycle steps. Two of the identified genes, BUB2 and BUB3, have been cloned and described (M. A. Hoyt, L. Totis, and B. T. Roberts, Cell 66:507-517, 1991). Here we present the characterization of the BUB] gene and its product. Genetic evidence was obtained suggesting that Bubl and Bub3 are mutually dependent for function, and immunoprecipitation experiments demonstrated a physical association between the two. Sequence analysis ofBUB] revealed a domain with similarity to protein kinases. In vitro experiments confirmed that Bubl possesses kinase activity; Bubl was able to autophosphorylate and to catalyze phosphorylation of Bub3. In addition, overproduced Bubl was found to localize to the cell nucleus.
An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of Service Quality Dimensions on Guests Satisfaction: A Case Study of Dubai Hotels

Customers' satisfaction is one of the most important indicators to identify the hotel sector's service quality level. The study's main purpose was to measure the impact of service quality dimensions on customer satisfaction in the hotel industry in the United Arab Emirates. In particular, this study examines why service quality is a critical determinant of the hotel sector's organisational performance. The study used quantitative methods to achieve the objectives of the research. A self-administered questionnaire was designed to collect the data using the drop-off technique. The questionnaires were distributed to 5000 in-house customers (domestic and international) at the hotels. In total, 3748 customer questionnaires were used in the study, yielding a 75% response rate. In this study, hypotheses were tested through the multiple regression model using SPSS 25.00. Multiple regression analysis showed that tangibles, 20, = . 495, ρ < 0.01, respectively). The study found that service quality helped organisations meet customers' needs and expectations and enhanced satisfaction. Organisations could, therefore, achieve improved financial performance by offering excellent quality services that meet customer needs and expectations. Therefore, improving hotel service quality could result in higher satisfaction levels of hotel customers.
Opleiding Informatica Predicting the characteristics of successful cyclists in multi-week races

Due to technological advances it is possible to collect, store, and process more and more data nowadays. By applying data mining techniques to this data we can ﬁnd previously unknown, and useful insights such as consumer patterns, ﬂu epidemic predictions, or which cyclist will win a race. In this thesis, our Data Science challenge is ﬁnding out what makes a professional cyclist successful during the three main multi-week cycling races, which are also known as Grand Tours. Speciﬁcally we will use data mining techniques in order to ﬁnd an answer to the question: what are the characteristics, of successful cyclists in a Grand Tour? To ﬁnd these characteristics we have started by scraping cycling performance statistics from a website, and from this raw data we have built features that are related to a cyclist’s physique, form, and experience. Since our data set contained a class imbalance, we ﬁrst applied SMOTE to obtain a data set with a similar number of successful and unsuccessful cyclists. Hereafter we have built a decision tree that we have used to gain insight in which characteristics determine whether a cyclist is in the top-10 or not. After comparing models with diﬀerent splitting criterion, and and class balancing techniques we obtain one ﬁnal model. This model has an AUC-score of 0 . 905. From our ﬁnal model we have concluded that the most important characteristic upon deciding the successfulness of a cyclist is that he has obtained a top-10 ﬁnish in the general clas-siﬁcation in a Grand Tour in the past two years. This implies that strong performances in the past two years determine whether a cyclist will be successful nowadays. When leaving previously achieved results out of our data set we obtain a model that has an AUC-score of 0 . 77. This model shows us that cyclist’s that have a BMI value ≤ 21 . 16, and have participated in at least 3 Grand Tours have a large chance of being classiﬁed as top-10.
Investigating Mobility-aware Strategies for IoT Services Placement in the Fog under Energy and QoS Constraints

—Mobility of Internet of Things (IoT) objects is a key characteristic of IoT environments. It brings dynamicity, uncertainty and raises many challenges when it is associated with computation and network resources management for IoT applications. The resources management problem under objects mobility consideration is even more sensitive if we consider that various IoT applications have stringent Quality of Service (QoS) needs. Fog Computing is a distributed computation paradigm that increases data centers computation and storage abilities with nodes between end-users and the Cloud. Fog computing offers a large distributed infrastructure to support IoT applications needs by bringing services closer to end users. However, Fog infrastructures inherit the energy greediness characteristics of both data centers and network infrastructures. This work investigates the IoT services placement problem in the Fog as an optimization problem to minimize energy consumption and enhance QoS while considering mobility of IoT objects. We model the placement problem as a multi-objective optimization problem and we propose a location history based mobility model (HTM) to estimate future locations of IoT mobile nodes. We propose a framework composed of online strategies for IoT services placement and a Mobility-aware Genetic Algorithm (MGA) for services migrations. We evaluate our strategies through iFogSim simulator and compare the proposed framework to migrations and placement strategies from the literature based on Shortest Access Point migration strategy (SAP) and with Penguins Search Optimization Algorithm (PeSOA). Experiments show that the proposed framework outperforms literature approaches for the considered objectives and for various conﬁgurations of the mobile environment.
Impact of Urbanization and Energy Consumption on CO2 Emissions in Bangladesh: An ARDL Bounds Test Approach

the aim of this study is to investigate the impact of urbanization and energy consumption on CO2 emissions under the theoretical framework of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The EKC hypothesis for CO2 emissions reveal that at the initial path of economic development CO2 emissions increase with the level of development but start to decline after reaching a maximum point with higher level of economic development. Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root tests are performed to check the order of intrigation of the variables. ARDL bounds test approach has been employed for empirical works. Empirical results confirm that our variables are cointegrated, and the short-run deviations from the long-run equilibrium are corrected by 77.19% towards long-run equilibrium path each year. Empirical results confirm that EKC hypothesis is valid for both short-run and long-run in Bangladesh. Moreover urbanization and energy consumption have statistical significant positive impact on CO2 emissions, while impact of Economic openness and FDI is found statistically insignificant. To conclude, we can say that economic growth need not to be controlled to reduce CO2 emissions, instead, we can think about controlling urbanization and energy use to reduce CO2 emissions.
Networked Digital Whiteboard with Handwritten-Symbol Interpreter and Dynamic-Display-Object Creator

We present a unique Tcl/Tk-based whiteboard system that facilitates discussions among multiple participants located at remote sites as well as in classroom or conference-room setups. One of its uniquenesses is its capability to convert handwritten complex-structured math/scientiﬁc symbols to clean custom-font-based presentations. Another uniqueness is that it enables the user to easily create dynamic discussion tools incorporating various widgets in-stantly during a discussion
A Review on Filtering Techniques used in Restaurant Recommendation System﻿

— These days, recommendation systems are extremely common. Recommendation systems are used in suggesting personalized content and services. These are the following recommendation techniques described in this paper: collaborative-based filtering, Content-based filtering, demographic-based filtering, hybrid filtering, along with some applicational research. The paper points over some of the drawbacks and benefits of these techniques. And How with the use of Hybrid filtering these techniques are combined together to remove these individual drawbacks and improve effectiveness. Further with reviews of some research based on these techniques, this paper studies on restaurant recommendation system, mainly suggesting restaurant to the customer based on similar customer satisfaction rating. This model uses content-based filtering for suggesting.
Diffusion Patterns of Social Network Posts

—Social network posts as an efﬁcient means of com- munication directly reﬂect users’ interests and engagements. Despite challenges there are strong interests in understanding how social network posts efﬁciently spread information. In this article some diffusion patterns of social network posts are explored. The information spreading via post chains based on partial data of popular social network is studied to gain insights of the problem of information diffusion. Mathematical models for information cascades are proposed and future research directions are discussed.
Piezoelectric energy production

The concept of piezoelectric energy production is based on energy harvesting devices using as generation materials single crystals, ceramics, polymers and composites. These production systems can harvest wasted environmental energy and convert it essentially into electrical energy. There are different nanoand micro-scale power harvesters which are increasingly useful for powering mobile electronics and low power devices, even in hardly accessible areas. Despite many efforts in the development of new materials, the most widely used materials in device applications remain the ceramics of the PZT family, since they still present the higher output performances in the range of mW of generated power.