Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Analysis of Learners’ Self-Assessments in Comparison With Their Actual Performances in the Subject of Economics

This study compares vocational college learners’ selfassessments of their abilities and their performances with their actual examination results. Until now, the ability to self-assess has principally only been addressed in the primary school sector. However, it is of central importance specifically in the vocational college sector, where the focus is on career choice. We hypothesize that 1. Students with a lower level of education self-assess themselves more incorrectly or they overestimate their abili-ties and that 2. Female students self-assess themselves more realistically than male students do. Our hypotheses are tested and confirmed in different vocational colleges and classes. This study, then, is an important first contribution to indicating the risk of an inappropriate career choice particularly for weaker students. Furthermore, our study can provide a starting point for examining whether the focus on support and assistance for female students in their career choices mean that appropriate measures in the planning of school and educational careers for male students have been neglected.
Sustainable development: Using stone dust to replace a part of sand in concrete mixture

Stone dust is a waste material produced in stone crusher industry. Stone dust produced from the crushed stone industry is quite numerous. PT Mega Beton Jaya is a stone crushed industry, which is located in Buluri, Palu, has difficulty in providing a location to accommodate the waste of stone dust. In addition, the community around this industry is quite worried with the waste ash as the air around the industry contaminated with the stone ash. This study aims to find out the maximum percentage of stone dust to substitute sand in a concrete mix to obtain the maximum strength and good workability. The cement used throughout this work was Portland cement composite (PCC) produced by PT Semen Tonasa, the sand was taken from Palu river, while the stone dust and coarse aggregate were taken from PT Mega Beton Jaya stone crushed industry. The percentages of stone dust replacing sand were varied from 0, 20, 30, 40, 60, 80 and 100% to find out the maximum percentage of stone dust to replace sand from river to produce the maximum compressive strength of concrete. The results of this research showed that the maximum percentage of stone dust, which could replace river sand in concrete mixture was 40% with the strength 15% higher than that of concrete with natural sand only. The higher the percentages of stone dust, which were used to replace a part of sand in concrete mixtures resulted the lower slump of concrete. In addition, the replacing natural sand with stone dust higher than 20% produced the value of slump for both normal and high strength concretes lower than those concretes with natural sand only.
Review article: Current research trends in fruit and vegetables wastes and by-products management-Scope and opportunities in the Estonian context

Globally on an annual scale, considerable amounts of fruit and vegetables wastes (FVW) are generated in the agri-food industrial sector. Costs insured for safe disposal of FVW remains uneconomical and they can pose a serious environmental hazard if left untreated. However, FVW have high potential for reuse, recycle and recovery, which is an indication that there are productive, sustainable and affordable ways of reducing and tackling them at the industrial levels. Recent years have seen progressive innovative research on FVW management strategies, which has been developed with an idea of reducing wastes and fully exploiting its potential. Further, FVW represents a potential source of valuable compounds and bioactive ingredients. Today, there are many proposed innovative approaches for handling the FVW. These include reintroducing sub-standard fruit and vegetables (small sized or misshaped fruit and vegetable) in the market, reusing FVW for soil amendments, composting, or as an animal feed, and much more. In addition, the extracted bioactive compounds from FVW and by-products can find wide applications as a natural additive in food, cosmetics and/or in pharmaceutical applications. Currently, novel cost effective strategies have been developed for effective valorisation of agri-food wastes and by-products. The field of FVW management is still limited, thus leaving a wide gap for new ideas, novelty and applications of more efficient green techniques for complete utilization of agri-food wastes and by-products. Some of the interesting aspects on wastes and by-products management are discussed in relevance to Europe and in Estonia.
Complete convergence and complete moment convergence for negatively dependent random variables under sub-linear expectations

This paper we study and establish the complete convergence and complete moment convergence theorems under a sub-linear expectation space. As applications, the complete convergence and complete moment convergence for negatively dependent random variables with CV (exp (ln? |X|)) < ? , ? > 1 have been generalized to the sub-linear expectation space context. We extend some complete convergence and complete moment convergence theorems for the traditional probability space to the sub-linear expectation space. Our results generalize corresponding results obtained by Gut and Stadtm? ller (2011), Qiu and Chen (2014) and Wu and Jiang (2016). There is no report on the complete moment convergence under sub-linear expectation, and we provide the method to study this subject.
The Titrimetric and Spectrophotometric Determination of Ascorbic acid levels in Selected Nigerian Fruits

In this study, the ascorbic acid levels in mango, pawpaw, pear, banana and plantain were determined by titrimetric and spectrophotometric methods using oxalic acid and orthophosphoric acid as extracting solvents. The yield of ascorbic acid by titrimetric method ranged from 0.20 ± 0.02 mg/100g to 13.20 ± 0.05 mg/100g while spectrophotometric method ranged from 7.76 ± 4.7 mg/100g to 87.1 ± 6.3 mg/100g. Regardless of the extracting solvents and the estimation methods, the results revealed that ascorbic acid content was very high in pawpaw and mango while it was very low in plantain, banana and pear. Comparison of the two estimation methods indicated that spectrophotometric method detected more ascorbic acid than titrimetric method in all the selected samples. While the results from both methods are generally comparable in all the samples, the spectrophotometric method is a preferred method because higher contents of ascorbic acid were obtained relative to the titrimetric method.
Modeling efforts in the key areas of thermal management and safety of lithium ion battery cells: a mini review

Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) are no doubt a primary power source for numerous applications around us. Therefore, it is intrinsic to be long lasting and safe during operation—two issues that are tackled by thermal management. The purpose of this article is to enable the reader to get an informative overview about thermal management and safety of LIB in a quick but efficient manner. In this regard, the article reviews the modeling efforts conducted in four key areas of the topics, namely, (1) electrochemical models, (2) electrochemical–thermal coupled models, (3) cooling of LIB, and (4) LIB abuse and thermal runaway. © 2016 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Spectroscopic Investigations of Phonons in Epitaxial Graphene

ABSTRACT The interaction of graphene with metallic substrates reveals phenomena and properties of great relevance for applications in nanotechnology. In this article, the vibrational characterization by means of various inelastic scattering spectroscopies are surveyed for graphene epitaxially grown on metals and transition carbides. In particular, the manifestations of electron-phonon interaction, such as Kohn anomalies, the evaluation of elastic properties and the nanoscale control of phonon modes are presented and discussed.
Forecasting Groundwater Level under Climate Change and Water Resources Management Scenarios

Groundwater is an important source of freshwater the world over, especially in arid and semiarid regions. In recent years, groundwater overextraction has led to a serious drawdown in groundwater level in many aquifers. Hence, the projecting groundwater level is essential for the planning and management of water resources in a basin scale. This study aimed to project the mean groundwater level in Najafabad Plain in central Iran. Najafabad Plain is one of the most important aquifers in the Zayandeh-Rud River basin currently facing a negative hydrologic balance, which has been aggravated by the excessive agricultural demand that has adversely affected its groundwater level. For the purpose of the study, a multilayer perceptron Artificial Neural Network (ANNs) was developed. Recently, alternative algorithms have been used for training ANNs to overcome the disadvantages of the Back Propagation (BP) algorithm that is easily stuck in local minima and slow training convergence. In this regard, the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm as the classical method and the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) as the evolutionary algorithm are adopted for training the feed forward ANNs and improving their performance. The obtained results from LM-NN were then compared with those from ANN-PSO model and observed information. Comparison of the results projected by the ANN-PSO and the observed mean groundwater levels using 58 piezometric wells with monthly time steps over a 20-year period showed that the ANN-PSO model is superior to LM in predicting groundwater level. As an illustration, for models run using nine hidden neurons for Nekouabad right zones the root mean square error (RMSE) of the testing dataset for ANN-PSO was the lowest (1.50) compared to those for LM-NN (1.76). Accordingly, the ANN-PSO models are able to be used as a reliable tool for evaluating different scenarios of the water resources management in the study aquifer. Finally, three management scenarios under two climate change scenarios, A2 and B1 (obtained from GCMs), were defined and the trained ANN-PSO was subsequently used to project the effects of each scenario on the groundwater level in the plain.
A Novel Computer-Aid Nanotechnology Targeting to Combat Antibiotics Resistance with Superbugs against COVID-19 Pandemic

Microbial infections are still among the major public health concerns since several yeasts and fungi, and other pathogenic microorganisms, are responsible for continuous growth of infections and drug resistance against bacteria. During COVID-19 pandemic outbreak antimicrobial resistance rate is fostering the need to develop new strategies against drug-resistant superbugs. Thus, a novel technological approach on improving existing drugs is gaining special interest. Based on nano-medicine performance, successful experiments, and considerable market prospects, nanotechnology will undoubtedly lead a breakthrough in biomedical field also for infectious diseases, as there are several nanotechnological approaches that exhibit important roles in restoring antibiotic activity against resistant bacteria. Hence, the scientific community should also pay attention to developing affordable methodologies so that nanotechnology can reach patients.
Efficient Wireless Power Transfer System for Implantable Medical Devices Using Circular Polarized Antennas

In this article, we present a novel approach for designing a rotation insensitive, biocompatible, circular polarization-based efficient wireless power transfer (WPT) system for implantable medical devices (IMDs) in the radiative near-field region. Initially, a wideband, biocompatible, flexible circular polarized (CP) slot antenna is designed inside a single-layer skin tissue model to use as a receiving (Rx) element. To create the WPT link, a simple square patch antenna with the truncated corners is constructed to utilize as a transmitting (Tx) element. Furthermore, a polarization conversion-based metamaterial (MTM) structure is built particularly to improve the power transfer efficiency (PTE) of the proposed WPT system. Also, to show the versatility, the performance analysis of the proposed MTM integrated WPT system is conducted inside the human torso and head model. Moreover, a detailed study of the specific absorption rate (SAR) is accomplished regarding the safety of the human body in the light of IEEE regulation. Finally, the prototypes of the proposed WPT system are fabricated and experimentally verified in skin-mimicking gel and minced pork. The experimental result confirms the feasibility of the proposed concept by enhancing the PTE of the presented system by the usage of the MTM slab.
Mechanisms of Fast Walker Circulation Responses to CO2 Forcing

The Walker circulation (WC) responds to CO2 forcing at both short and long timescales. In climate models, the fast response accounts for a substantial portion of the total responses, but its mechanisms, particularly those pertaining to air‐sea interactions, remain unclear. We find contrasting fast WC responses in the first 2 years of abrupt CO2 forcing, determined by the models' air‐sea coupling strength in the equatorial Pacific. In models with a strong coupling, wind anomalies induced by the instantaneous land‐sea thermal contrast trigger a Bjerknes feedback, leading to cooling in the equatorial Pacific and WC strengthening. The WC weakens gradually as the Bjerknes feedback wanes and the subsurface warm pool water migrates eastward as Kelvin waves. In models with a weaker coupling, the WC weakens monotonically. Our results suggest that the inter‐model discrepancy in WC changes is associated with the uncertainty in the fast component.
How augmented reality enhances typical classroom experiments: examples from mechanics, electricity and optics

Real situations are overlaid with virtual information using augmented reality technology. In a learning environment, this technology could give everyday relevance to abstract concepts. In this paper, we will show how physical structures in typical experiments can be simply augmented by virtual objects in physics classes. This is achieved by modelling objects with the GeoGebra software and overlaying visualisations of non-tangible, physical properties such as force arrows, colour-coded potential and light rays. Using the GeoGebra 3D Calculator app on a smartphone or tablet, these models can be displayed on any surface seen through the camera and dynamically adapted to real structures such as inclined planes, simple circuits or plane mirrors. As a result, elements that are normally not observable are visualised and contribute to understanding the phenomenon. Based on these ideas, further so-called augmented reality experiments can be devised from these examples. Augmenting real experiments with representations of physical concepts should enable students to see the world through the lens of a scientist and gain a deeper understanding.
Formulation And Evaluation Of Sustained Release Dosage Form Of Theophlline Using A Combined Hydrophobic And Hydrophilic Matrix

Combination of aliphatic alcohol (cetyl alcohol)and partially hydrated methylcellulose was investigated as a sustained release matrix. Theophylline is used as a model drug for evaluating the matrix system. Cetyl alcohol and methyl cellulose were used in different proportions i.e., 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1 along with usual tablet additives, lactose and talc. The matrix component was varied from 20,25 and 30% w/w of total tablet weight. The in vitro release data showed that 30% w/w total matrix component gave extended release of theophylline for more than 8 h. Analysis of drug release rate from the matrix system indicated that the drug was released by anomalous diffusion obeying first order rate kinetics.
Evaluation Criteria for Reduced Graphene Oxide

Reduced graphene oxide (RGO) is an intriguing nanomaterial with tremendous potential for many applications. Although considerable efforts have been devoted to develop the reduction methods, it still needs further improvement, and how to choose an appropriate one for a specific application is a troublesome problem. In this study, RGOs were prepared by six typical reduction methods: N2H4·H2O, NaOH, NaBH4, solvothermal, high-temperature, and two-step. The samples were systematic compared by four aspects: dispersibility, reduction degree, defect repair degree, and electrical conductivity. On the basis of the comparison, a simple evaluation criterion was proposed for qualitatively judging the quality of RGO. This evaluation criterion would be helpful to understand the mechanism of reduction and design more ideal reduction methods.
Numerical Tests of Vanishing Diffusion Stabilization in Oldroyd-B Fluid Flow Simulations

This work presents some numerical tests of finite element solution of incompressible Oldroyd-B fluids flows, using different types of numerical stabilization. In this study the diffusive term (Laplacian of extra stress) is added to the tensorial constitutive relation where it is multiplied by a coefficient, that is variable in time. The goal is to make this diffusion coefficient vanish in time, so that the final solution remains unaffected by the added diffusion term. A series of numerical tests was performed for the steady two-dimensional Oldroyd-B fluid flow in corrugated channel (tube) to compare different versions of the vanishing stabilization terms and assess their efficiency in enforcing the solution convergence, without affecting the final steady state.
Application of Natural Polymer Extracted Moringa Oleifera in the Treatment of Drinking Water

In this work, we conducted a study on the extraction of natural polymer and use of natural polymer such as coagulating agent in the process of coagulation/flocculation for water treatment, which was carried out to study the removal of turbidity parameter. The natural polymer was extracted from the plant Moringa oleifera, and the extraction occurred in saline, and saline solutions were employed, so did the monovalent (KCl and NaCl) and divalent (BaCl2, CaCl2 and MgCl2). Therefore, given that the laws are becoming increasingly rigid and the requirements of the standard improvement on health is increasingly drawn attention worldwide, water treatment coagulant using natural provides greater efficiency to water treatments. Thus the use of natural polymer such as coagulating agent extracted from Moringa oleifera amid saline BaCl2 was more efficient in the removal of turbidity parameter reaching removal percentage of 99%, to water with starting turbidity of 50 and 150 y uT respectively .
One-pot synthesis of graphene/zinc oxide by microwave irradiation with enhanced supercapacitor performance

A facile one-step microwave irradiation method is developed to synthesize a composite of graphene and zinc oxide, which is quick and environmentally friendly. The obtained nanostructured hybrid material was utilized for the fabrication of a supercapacitor electrode and the electrochemical performance was investigated intensively. The electrode with the as-prepared graphene/zinc oxide composite displayed a specific capacitance as high as 201 F g−1 in 1 M Na2SO4 at a current density of 1 A g−1, which is much higher than those of pure microwave reduction graphene oxide (77 F g−1) and zinc oxide (5 F g−1) at the same current density. In addition, the specific capacitance of the MRGO/ZnO electrode presented an outstanding cycling stability with capacitance retention of 93% even after 3000 cycles. This research provides a feasible method for low-cost manufacture of other graphene-based materials with high-performance applications in energy-storage.
Ixodes Scapularis SRC Kinase Is Required for Rickettsial Pathogen Survival in Ticks

IXODES SCAPULARIS SRC KINASE IS REQUIRED FOR RICKETTSIAL PATHOGEN SURVIVAL IN TICKS Jeremy W. Turck Old Dominion University, 2020 Director: Dr. Hameeda Sultana Anaplasma phagocytophilum is an obligate intracellular bacterium that causes disease in humans and animals. It is the causative agent for human anaplasmosis. A. phagocytophilum uses certain strategies to infect both vertebrates and invertebrates. It uses Ixodes scapularis ticks as a vector for spreading infection to other mammal species. This bacterium has a specific path for infection through the salivary glands of its vector host. It also suppresses certain functions such as the inhibition of apoptosis and ROS production in order to increase its survival in ticks. Src kinase, a non-receptor protein-tyrosine kinase, is a major player in cell signaling. Src kinase has an impact on the spread and survival of A. phagocytophilum in ticks. Studies on Src kinase in I. scapularis show that there is a downregulation of Src in unfed ticks and an upregulation after tick feeding. These results show that Src kinase is manipulated differentially by this bacterium for its survival in the vector host and during transmission from vertebrate host to ticks. Furthermore, RNAi-mediated interference of arthropod src kinase gene expression or inhibition of Src kinase activity by inhibitor treatment resulted in dramatic reduction in bacterial loads in ticks and tick cells. Collectively, the findings from this study show that Src kinase plays a major role in tick-A. phagocytophilum interactions. Understanding the role of Src kinase in tick-A. phagocytophilum interactions could lead to identification of vaccine targets that eventually could lead to preventing the spread of this disease.
Predicting Customers Use of Electronic Government Services in Nigeria

This study examined how customers’ use of electronic government services in Nigeria were being predicted by supply- and demand-side variables such as; ICT deployment, customer readiness, perceived quality of e-government services, perceived satisfaction with e-government services, web readiness, and web presence quality. The results showed that for business organizations, only web presence quality of government websites, perceived satisfaction with the use of e-government services, and perceived quality of e-government services had predictive relationships with the use of e-government services. For the citizens, all the independent variables significantly predicted the use of e-government services, although ICT deployment predicted negatively citizens’ use of e-government services. The study recommends among others that government agencies should deploy e-government services and channels that will improve the satisfaction to customers rather than providing only sophisticated services.
A Depthwise Separable Fully Convolutional ResNet With ConvCRF for Semisupervised Hyperspectral Image Classification

Hyperspectral images classification relies on the accurate and efficient extraction of discriminative features, detail preservation, and efficient learning with limited training samples. This article, therefore, presents an advanced neural network architecture combined with convolutional conditional random fields (ConvCRF) and region growing (RGW) approaches to address these key issues. First, a depthwise separable fully convolutional residual network (DFRes) is proposed for efficient feature learning, where a fully convolutional operation ensures a larger field of view, and residual learning and depthwise separable convolution can mitigate the problem of vanishing gradient and overfitting. Second, because the collection of ground-truth labels is usually difficult, the proposed architecture integrates the RGW method to effectively overcome the problem of limited training samples. Third, ConvCRF is used to preserve the image details for fine-grained predictions. Finally, the abovementioned key components are coherently integrated into the new semisupervised framework, i.e., DFRes with conditional random fields and RGW. Experimental results on three hyperspectral datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms other state-of-the-art methods.