Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gain, impedance measurements, and dielectric loading of ground penetrating radar (GPR) antennas using a watertank testing facility

The design and testing of suitable GPR antennas to be used in the field is both an arduous and challenging task. Presented here is a watertank testing facility incorporating a method of measuring gain and impedance of scaled-down models of prospective GPR antennas. A vertical ground plane is placed in a watertank measuring 1200 mm X 600 mm X 600 mm. A mono- pole version of the test antenna is connected to a 150 mm square plate which fits exactly into the ground plane. Underwater and air probes are placed in a semi-circular fashion on the vertical conducting ground plane around the square plate at radii of 150 mm and 300 mm respectively. Results are presented as gain and impedance plots for a monopole test antenna with two different water levels; 0 mm and 5 mm below the base of the test antenna. Results for a salty solution and Isopropylalcohol dielectrically loaded, cavity backed, slot bowtie antenna are also given. The results show the sudden change in electrical length that occurs near a half-space surface, lateral wave phenomena as an air gap appears between the antennas's base and the water's surface as well as improved fractional bandwidth through dielectric loading.
The Impact of the Fear of COVID-19 on Purchase Behavior of Dietary Supplements: Integration of the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Protection Motivation Theory

This study aimed at assessing the impacts of the fear of COVID-19 on consumer buying behavior toward dietary supplements. This investigation was a cross-sectional study in which literate adults regardless of gender over the age of 20 were recruited from three pharmacies in three different districts of Wuhan City, China. A total of 598 questionnaires were analyzed after excluding 10 with incomplete information. The current study demonstrated that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control had a positive impact on the intention of purchasing dietary supplements. Fear of COVID-19 was related to an enhanced purchase intention toward dietary supplements. Attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control were significant factors that mediated the association between the fear of COVID-19 and the purchase intention of dietary supplements. This study helps provide practical advice for stakeholders in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries to tailor appropriate strategies for improving product promotion or healthcare-related interventions.
Every Single Specimen Counts: A New Docosia Winnertz (Diptera: Mycetophilidae) Species Described from a Singleton

Simple Summary A new fungus gnat species has been described from a single specimen collected from Georgia (Sakartvelo). The new species, named after its occurrence in Caucasia as Docosia caucasica sp. n. , is distinguished from congeners by the characters in male terminalia and a unique COI sequence. As a substantial proportion of species in ecological communities tend to be rare, about 20–30% of new insect taxa have been described from a singleton so far. Therefore, following high-quality standards when describing new species, particularly when dealing with minimalistic material, is crucial. As much as possible, using multiple sets of characters, like morphology and DNA sequencing, is encouraged. Abstract A new species—Docosia caucasica sp. n. —has been described from material collected from the Lesser Caucasus Mountains in Georgia (Sakartvelo). The new species belongs to a group of Palaearctic species characterized by distinct posterolateral processes of gonocoxites and apically modified setae at the posteroventral margin of the gonocoxites medially. Within the group, D. caucasica sp. n. is most similar to D. landrocki Laštovka and Ševčík, 2006 in having a similar outline of the medial process of posteroventral margin of the gonocoxites and the gonostylus. There is also a marked difference within the partial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 gene (COI) sequence of D. caucasica sp. n. and other Docosia spp. available in public databases. As the new species is described from a single male specimen only, the adequacy and code compliance of that are discussed.
Inter-Level Feature Balanced Fusion Network for Street Scene Segmentation

Semantic segmentation, as a pixel-level recognition task, has been widely used in a variety of practical scenes. Most of the existing methods try to improve the performance of the network by fusing the information of high and low layers. This kind of simple concatenation or element-wise addition will lead to the problem of unbalanced fusion and low utilization of inter-level features. To solve this problem, we propose the Inter-Level Feature Balanced Fusion Network (IFBFNet) to guide the inter-level feature fusion towards a more balanced and effective direction. Our overall network architecture is based on the encoder–decoder architecture. In the encoder, we use a relatively deep convolution network to extract rich semantic information. In the decoder, skip-connections are added to connect and fuse low-level spatial features to restore a clearer boundary expression gradually. We add an inter-level feature balanced fusion module to each skip connection. Additionally, to better capture the boundary information, we added a shallower spatial information stream to supplement more spatial information details. Experiments have proved the effectiveness of our module. Our IFBFNet achieved a competitive performance on the Cityscapes dataset with only finely annotated data used for training and has been greatly improved on the baseline network.
DOA Estimation for Spherical Microphone Array using Spherical Convolutional Neural Networks

In this study, we explore a direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation approach using the steered response power with phase transform (SRP-PHAT) and DeepSphere, a graph-based spherical convolutional neural network (CNN) suitable for spherical topology. The SRP-PHAT maps were adjusted to the Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelization (HEALPix) algorithm. We performed simulations for an Eigenmike spherical microphone array and different resolutions of the SRP-PHAT maps. Results show an improvement for the lower resolution maps, as the mean angular error for the Spherical CNN-derived maps was reduced by about half when compared with the original maps.
Developing the Value Management Maturity Model (VM3

Value management (VM) practices have been expanded and became a well-received technique globally. Organisations are now progressing towards a better implementation of VM and should be assessing their strengths and weaknesses in order to move forward competitively. There is a need to benchmark the existing VM practices to reflect their maturing levels which is currently not available. This paper outlines the concept of Value Management Maturity Model (VM3©) as a structured plan of maturity and performance growth for businesses. It proposes five levels of maturity and each level has its own criteria or attributes to be achieved before progressing to a higher level. The framework for VM3© has been developed based on the review of literatures related to VM and maturity models (MM). Data is collected through questionnaire surveys to organisations that have implemented VM methodology. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted to select individuals involved in implementing VM. The questions were developed to achieve the research objectives; investigating the current implementation of VM and, exploring the organisation’s MM knowledge and practices. However, this research was limited to VM implementation in the Malaysian government’s projects and programmes. VM3© introduces a new paradigm in VM as it provides a rating method for capabilities or performance. It is advocated that this VM3© framework is still being refined in the advance stage in order to provide a comprehensive and well accepted method to provide ratings for organisations’ maturity. Keywords: Value Management, Maturity Model, government project
D-Shaped Plastic Optical Fibers: Fabrication and Characterization as Refractive Index Sensor

This work presents the fabrication and characterization of a D-shaped plastic optical fiber based refractive index sensor. It is used in sensing the refractive index of different liquids and solutions with glycerin. The sensor fabrication process is based on the side polishing of a plastic optical fiber to build the structure known as the D-shaped section. The performed measurements allowed the characterization of the sensor sensitivity and resolution, and they indicate the device has potential application as a concentration sensor in liquid mixtures or as a contaminant detector.
DBID: Analogy‐Based DSS for Bidding in Construction

This paper presents a decision‐support system (DSS) that aids contractors in preparing competitive bids for building projects. The DSS uses neural networks for markup estimation that derive solutions for new bid situations based on analogy with past projects using information elicited from contractors in Canada and the United States. The neural networks were trained to generalize the projects' knowledge and thus become able to predict the outcomes of a project when fed with the contractor's assessment of various project risks. The proposed DSS is coded in a user‐friendly software called DBID. The software enables the contractor to retrain the neural networks on some of his or her past bid encounters and accordingly adapt the model to his or her own environment. In estimating the optimum markup for a new project, the uncertainty in the contractor's assessment of project risks is accounted for by a sensitivity analysis conducted using the Monte Carlo simulation technique. Such analysis produces a measure of.
Development of a Tool for the Analysis of Plant Stress Proteins

The recent explosion of biological data and the accompaniment proliferation of distributed databases make it challenging for biologists and bioinformatists to discover the best and concise data resources for their needs, and the most efficient way to access and use them. For the biologist, running bioinformatics analyses involve a time-consuming management of data and tools. Users need support to organize their work, retrieve parameters and reproduce their analyses. They also need to be able to combine their analytic tools using a safe data flow software mechanism. Finally we have designed a system, Stress Gene catalog, to provide a flexible and usable web environment for defining and running bioinformatics analyses for the ease of researchers working in plants sciences. It embeds simple yet powerful data management features that allow the user to reproduce analyses and to combine tools using an adobe flex tool. Rice Stress gene catalog can also act as a front end to provide a unified view of already-existing rice stress gene families and their protein members along with their FASTA sequences. Users can analyze genomic and proteomic data by using the tools that has been integrated in the software (tools for alignments, multiple sequence comparison and to compare a novel sequence with those contained in nucleotide and protein databases).
Clutter modelling for space-time adaptive processing in airborne radar

The presence of clutter can be highly detrimental to detection of targets in airborne radar systems. Space–time adaptive processing (STAP) attempts to alleviate the problem by exploiting angle–Doppler inter-relationships to suppress clutter. The requirements for modelling of clutter data that are suitable for the application of STAP are considered in this study. Examples of clutter generated using the ELMBAARC program in bistatic and monostatic applications are provided. Modelling of internal clutter motion is considered, together with its effect on the clutter domain in angle–Doppler space. Modelling of non-homogeneous clutter is also considered.
Joint power control and user grouping for uplink power domain non-orthogonal multiple access

Orthogonal multiple access schemes based on assignment of communication resource blocks among multiple contenders, although widely available, still necessitate an upper limit on the number of concurrent users for minimization of multiple-user interference. The feature thwarts efforts to cater for pressing connectivity demands posed by modern-day cellular communication networks. Non-orthogonal multiple access, regarded as a key advancement towards realization of high-speed 5G wireless communication networks, enables multiple users to access the same set of resource blocks non-orthogonally in terms of power with controllable interference, thereby allowing for overall performance enhancement. Owing to the combinatorial nature of the underlying optimization problem involving user pairing/grouping scheme, power control and decoding order, the computational complexity in determining optimal and sub-optimal solutions remains considerably high. This work proposes three novel alternative approaches (Randomly, 2-Opt and Hybrid) for arriving at a near-optimal solution for the problem of user pairing/grouping. The algorithms not only offer reduced computational complexity but also outperform orthogonal multiple access and existing schemes reported in the literature for uplink non-orthogonal multiple access systems.
Stress and Maladaptive Coping of Italians Health Care Professionals during the First Wave of the Pandemic

Stress during the pandemic has had an impact on the mental health of healthcare professionals (HCPs). However, little is known about coping and “maladaptive” coping behaviours of this population. This study investigates “maladaptive” coping behaviours and their correlation with stress, anxiety and insomnia of Italian HCPs during the pandemic. It reports on a cross-sectional, descriptive and correlational study based on a survey of 1955 Italian HCPs. Overall participants reported increases in cigarette smoking, time spent online and video playing. Overall reported alcohol consumption decreased but increased in those reporting drinking more than once a week. Those reporting starting smoking during the pandemic were found to have higher SAS and PSS scores. Those reporting being online for 3 or more hours were found to have higher ISS scores. Doctors who reported playing video games were found to have higher PSS, ISS and SAS scores whilst nurses who reported playing video games were found to have higher ISS scores. Doctors who reported playing for longer than one hour had higher PSS scores. Online behaviours may be a coping behaviour of HCPs affected by the pandemic. However, this is an underexplored area for the wellbeing of HCPs. These deficits need to be addressed going forward.
Plastic responses of survival and fertility following heat stress in pupal and adult Drosophila virilis

Abstract The impact of rising global temperatures on survival and reproduction is putting many species at risk of extinction. In particular, it has recently been shown that thermal effects on reproduction, especially limits to male fertility, can underpin species distributions in insects. However, the physiological factors influencing fertility at high temperatures are poorly understood. Key factors that affect somatic thermal tolerance such as hardening, the ability to phenotypically increase thermal tolerance after a mild heat shock, and the differential impact of temperature on different life stages are largely unexplored for thermal fertility tolerance. Here, we examine the impact of high temperatures on male fertility in the cosmopolitan fruit fly Drosophila virilis. We first determined whether temperature stress at either the pupal or adult life history stage impacts fertility. We then tested the capacity for heat‐hardening to mitigate heat‐induced sterility. We found that thermal stress reduces fertility in different ways in pupae and adults. Pupal heat stress delays sexual maturity, whereas males heated as adults can reproduce initially following heat stress, but become sterile within seven days. We also found evidence that while heat‐hardening in D. virilis can improve high temperature survival, there is no significant protective impact of this same hardening treatment on fertility. These results suggest that males may be unable to prevent the costs of high temperature stress on fertility through heat‐hardening, which limits a species’ ability to quickly and effectively reduce fertility loss in the face of short‐term high temperature events.
A low-loss bandpass filter using electrically coupled high-Q TM/sub 01 delta / dielectric rod resonators

For a TM/sub 01 delta / mode dielectric rod resonator placed coaxially in a TM/sub 01/ cutoff circular waveguide, characteristics such as the resonant frequency, its temperature coefficient, the unloaded Q, and the other resonances are discussed on the bases of accurate calculations using the mode-matching method. The results show that this resonator compares favorably with a conventional TE/sub 01 delta / mode dielectric resonator, particularly for realization of a high unloaded Q. Analytical results also verify that interresonator coupling between these two resonators can be expressed equivalently by a capacitively coupled LC resonant circuit. A four-stage Chebyshev filter having a ripple of 0.035 dB and an equiripple bandwidth of 27 MHz at a center frequency of 11.958 GHz was fabricated using these resonators. Its insertion loss is 0.5 dB, which corresponds to an unloaded Q of 17000, and no spurious response appears in the frequency range below 17 GHz. >
Engendering a Sense of Belonging to Support Student Well-Being during COVID-19: A Focus on Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 4

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a plethora of inequalities in South Africa. These inequalities have had a direct impact on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 4 (quality education) were the focus of this article. This article investigated how students enrolled at a South African residential university perceived the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their well-being, their success in completing their studies and their future career prospects. A quantitative survey research design was followed. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire from 537 students in a South African university. Statistical Package for Social Sciences software version 27 was used to analyze the data. The results indicated direct influences on student well-being from concerns that arose from COVID-19 about future job concerns, degree completion, social support and belonging. The relationship between concerns about degree completion was moderated by a sense of belonging (social identification) but not by social support. The study has significant implications for how higher education institution governors and academics might consider reconceptualizing notions of student support, beyond the narrow, technical and basic curriculum support for degree completion, towards the affective and social as it relates to creating conditions for students to identify with and experience a profound sense of belonging.
Preparation of Highly Porous Thiophene-Containing DUT-68 Beads for Adsorption of CO2 and Iodine Vapor

Zirconium-based metal-organic frameworks (Zr-MOFs) have great structural stability and offer great promise in the application of gas capture. However, the powder nature of MOF microcrystallines hinders their further industrial-scale applications in fluid-phase separations. Here, Zr-based DUT-68 was structured into nontoxic and eco-friendly alginate beads, and the gas capture properties were evaluated by CO2 and volatile iodine. DUT-68 beads were synthesized via a facile and versatile cross-linked polymerization of sodium alginate with calcium ions. The composite beads keep the structural integrity and most of the pore accessibility of DUT-68. The resulting DUT-68@Alginate (2:1) porous bead processes a surface area of 541 m2/g and compressive strength as high as 1.2 MPa, and the DUT-68 crystals were well-dispersed in the alginate networks without agglomeration. The DUT-68@Alginate bead with a 60% weight ratio of MOFs exhibits a high carbon dioxide capacity (1.25 mmol/g at 273 K), as well as an excellent high adsorption capacity for iodine, reaching up to 0.65 g/g at 353 K. This work provides a method to construct thiophene-contained composite beads with millimeter sizes for the capture of gases in potential industrial applications.
Parameters for Evaluation of Speed Differential

This paper describes the results of a study performed with the interactive fixed-base driving simulator of the Inter-University Research Center for Road Safety and seeks (a) to select, from the parameters proposed in the literature for the evaluation of the speed differentials between tangents and curves, those that best reflect the real speed reductions experienced by drivers and (b) to develop new models for estimating speed differential values. Thirty people drove the driving simulator on a two-lane rural road with 16 different tangent-curve configurations. On the basis of measured speeds, the parameters were calculated for the 85th-percentile of the distribution of maximum speed reduction experienced by each driver (85MSR) as well as the differential speed not exceeded by 85% of the drivers traveling under free-flow conditions (Δ85V). The statistical analysis performed reveals that the differences between the two parameters were statistically significant and, in so doing, indicates that using Δ85V to measure speed differentials leads to an underestimation of the speed differences adopted by drivers. Three speed differential predicting models were also developed. The models being proposed are similar to those in the literature. These models show that speed differentials are influenced by the same variables that were uncovered in previous field research. The results of the present study corroborate the outstanding potential of the driving simulator as a useful instrument for the analysis of speeds on two-lane rural roads as well as for the effects of road alignment configurations on drivers.
Applicability of CHIRPS-based satellite rainfall estimates for South Africa

Long-term rainfall data with good spatial and temporal distribution is essential for all climate-related analyses. The availability of observed rainfall data has become increasingly problematic over the years due to a limited and deteriorating rainfall station network, occasioned by limited reporting and/or quality control of rainfall and, in some cases, closure of these stations. Remotely sensed satellite-based rainfall data sets offer an alternative source of information. In this study, daily and monthly rainfall data derived from Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation (CHIRPS) is compared with observed rainfall data from 46 stations evenly distributed across South Africa. Various metrics, based on a pairwise comparison between the observed and CHIRPS data, were applied to evaluate CHIRPS performance in the estimation of daily and monthly rainfall. The results show that CHIRPS data correlate well with observed monthly rainfall data for all stations used, having an average coefficient of determination of 0.6 and bias of 0.95. This study concludes that monthly CHIRPS data corresponds well, with good precision and relatively little bias when compared to observed monthly rainfall data, and can therefore be considered for use in conjunction with observed rainfall data where no or limited data is available in South Africa for hydrological analysis.