Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global Container Port Network Linkages and Topology in 2021

The maritime transport of containers between ports accounts for the bulk of global trade by weight and value. Transport impedance among ports through transit times and port infrastructures can, however, impact accessibility, trade performance, and the attractiveness of ports. Assessments of the transit routes between ports based on performance and attractiveness criteria can provide a topological liner shipping network that quantifies the performance profile of ports. Here, we constructed a directed global liner shipping network (GLSN) of the top six liner shipping companies between the ports of Africa, Asia, North/South America, Europe, and Oceania. Network linkages and community groupings were quantified through a container port accessibility evaluation model, which quantified the performance of the port using betweenness centrality, the transport impedance among ports with the transit time, and the performance of ports using the Port Liner Shipping Connectivity Index. The in-degree and out-degree of the GLSN conformed to the power-law distribution, respectively, and their R-square fitting accuracy was greater than 0.96. The community partition illustrated an obvious consistence with the actual trading flow. The accessibility evaluation result showed that the ports in Asia and Europe had a higher accessibility than those of other regions. Most of the top 30 ports with the highest accessibility are Asian (17) and European (10) ports. Singapore, Port Klang, and Rotterdam have the highest accessibility. Our research may be helpful for further studies such as species invasion and the planning of ports.
Using a wearable eye-tracking device on bicyclists to explore the possibity of measuring motorcyclist eye movements.

This study was aimed at exploring the possibility of using the Tobii Pro Glasses 2 wearable eye-tracker to measure motorcyclists’ eye movements. Because of ethical considerations, this study used bicycles to ascertain whether the eye-tracker might be usable in the conditions one would encounter on a motorcycle. Fifteen participants were asked to wear the eye-tracker under a full-face helmet whilst completing a preset course. The percentage of eye movements that were found, were compared to baseline conditions, namely indoors, where lighting conditions were ideal for the eye-tracker. Results show that the percentages of eye movements found on the participants outdoors was significantly lower than the percentages that were found in the baseline conditions.
The documentation of design decisions in civil engineering projects : an application in road infrastructure development

Documentation of design decisions contributes to the traceability of significant decisions that shape a project’s development process. It helps to deal with changes in the project and prevents the recurrence of old discussions. Yet little attention is given to the documentation of design decisions in SE and civil engineering literature. In this study, a theoretical framework for the key elements of this documentation process was developed. Four road infrastructure SE projects were studied and compared to this framework by means of pattern matching. This method compares theoretical and empirical patterns and determines whether they match or do not match. This analysis helped to identify if documentation of design decisions in current practices is in keeping with theory or not. The findings of the project studies demonstrate that the accessibility of documentation for all involved project parties and distribution of documentation tasks are in line with literature. However, the explicit documentation of design decisions and their rationale is not as extended as is recommended in theory. In literature, also the documentation of interrelations and context of decisions is described, but this is hardly performed in practice. Findings show that in current practices, neither immediate documentation nor periodical monitoring is applied, as recommended in literature. This research also provides a strategy for the documentation of design decisions, which aims to improve the key elements of this documentation process in civil engineering projects. This strategy was developed for a specific engineering consulting firm and it was validated by experts of this firm, specialized in other disciplines of the civil engineering sector than road infrastructure.
SDF-1/CXCR4-Mediated Stem Cell Mobilization Involved in Cardioprotective Effects of Electroacupuncture on Mouse with Myocardial Infarction

Stem cell-based therapeutic strategies have obtained a significant breakthrough in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, particularly in myocardial infarction (MI). Nevertheless, limited retention and poor migration of stem cells are still problems for stem cell therapeutic development. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop new strategies that can mobilize stem cells to infarcted myocardial tissues effectively. Electroacupuncture (EA) intervention can improve cardiac function and alleviate myocardial injury after MI, but its molecular mechanism is still unclear. This study is aimed at observing the effects of EA treatment on the stem cell mobilization and revealing possible mechanisms in the MI model of mice. EA treatment at Neiguan (PC6) and Xinshu (BL15) acupoints was conducted on the second day after the ligation surgery. Then, the number of stem cells in peripheral blood after EA in MI mice and their cardiac function, infarct size, and collagen deposition was observed. We found that the number of CD34-, CD117-, Sca-1-, and CD90-positive cells increased at 6 h and declined at 24 h after EA intervention in the blood of MI mice. The expression of CXC chemokine receptor-4 (CXCR4) protein was upregulated at 6 h after EA treatment, while the ratio of LC3B II/I or p-ERK/ERK showed a reverse trend. In addition, there was obvious difference in EF and FS between wild-type mice and CXCR4+/− mice. The infarct size, collagen deposition, and apoptosis of the injured myocardium in CXCR4+/− mice increased but could be ameliorated by EA. In a word, our study demonstrates that EA alleviates myocardial injury via stem cell mobilization which may be regulated by the SDF-1/CXCR4 axis.
Smart working perception in banking companies' employees during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional pilot study.

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to make decisions to re-assess working-time and location in order to ensure business survival. The resorting to Smart Working (SW) has been adopted to support business continuity, especially in the banking sector. OBJECTIVE This study aims at evaluating the attitude and opinions of the bank employees on SW, focusing on the demographic, social and occupational characteristics of the respondents. METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out to investigate the attitudes of the banking workers towards SW. The research was conducted from September 2020 to April 2021 through a validated questionnaire administered online. RESULTS The workers more interested in SW were younger than 45 years old (p < 0.001), with a high educational level (p = 0.001), and lived > 50 km away from the workplace (p < 0.001). Who reported an improved productivity was aged < 45 years, childless (p < 0.001), not married (p = 0.004). Who thought that working in smart mode has penalized the teamwork was older than 45 years (OR = 1.39, 95% CI: 1.12-1.73), lived near the office (OR = 1.86, 95% CI: 1.16-2.99). CONCLUSIONS SW could help finding a balance between private and working life, modifying the traditional working activity. However, it could enhance the risk of social isolation, impacting negatively on the working motivation. Establishing good practices on SW could be useful in the short-term to improve the time-management, focus better on work, and prevent possible psychological consequences on banking workers.
Design and Implementation of 3U CubeSat Platform Architecture

This paper describes the main concept and development of a standard platform architecture of 3U Cube Satellite, whose design and performance were implemented and verified through the development of KAUSAT-5 3U CubeSat. The 3U standard platform is built in 1.5U size and developed as a modular concept to add and expand payloads and attitude control actuators to meet the user’s needs. In the case of the electrical power system, the solar panel, the battery, and the deployment mechanism are designed to be configured by the user. Mechanical system design maximizes the electrical capability to accommodate various payloads and to integrate and miniaturize EEE (Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical) parts and subsystem functions/performance into limited-size PCBs. The performance of KAUSAT-5 adopting standard platform was verified by mounting the VSCMG (Variable Speed Control Moment Gyro), which is one payload for technical demonstration, at the bottom of the platform and the infrared (IR) camera, which is the other payload for science mission, on the top. The 3U CubeSat equipped with the electronic optical camera is under development implementing the standard platform to reduce development cost and schedule by minimizing additional verification.
Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulations: A Historical Overview of Engineering Challenges

The design of modern industrial products is further improved through the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation. Realistic simulation is enabled by the closed loop between the hardware under test (HUT) and real-time simulation. Such a system involves a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and digital signal processor (DSP). An HIL model can bypass serious damage to the real object, reduce debugging cost, and, finally, reduce the comprehensive effort during the testing. This paper provides a historical overview of HIL simulations through different engineering challenges, i.e., within automotive, power electronics systems, and different industrial drives. Various platforms, such as National Instruments, dSPACE, Typhoon HIL, or MATLAB Simulink Real-Time toolboxes and Speedgoat hardware systems, offer a powerful tool for efficient and successful investigations in different fields. Therefore, HIL simulation practice must begin already during the university’s education process to prepare the students for professional engagements in the industry, which was also verified experimentally at the end of the paper.
Automated detection of panic disorder based on multimodal physiological signals using machine learning

We tested the feasibility of automated discrimination of patients with panic disorder (PD) from healthy controls (HCs) based on multimodal physiological responses using machine learning. Electrocardiogram (ECG), electrodermal activity (EDA), respiration (RESP), and peripheral temperature (PT) of the participants were measured during three experimental phases: rest, stress, and recovery. Eleven physiological features were extracted from each phase and used as input data. Logistic regression (LoR), k‐nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and multilayer perceptron (MLP) algorithms were implemented with nested cross‐validation. Linear regression analysis showed that ECG and PT features obtained in the stress and recovery phases were significant predictors of PD. We achieved the highest accuracy (75.61%) with MLP using all 33 features. With the exception of MLP, applying the significant predictors led to a higher accuracy than using 24 ECG features. These results suggest that combining multimodal physiological signals measured during various states of autonomic arousal has the potential to differentiate patients with PD from HCs.
Breeding and global population sizes of the Critically Endangered Red-fronted Macaw Ara rubrogenys revisited

Summary The ‘Critically Endangered’ Red-fronted Macaw is endemic to seasonally dry, rain-shadowed valleys in the south-central Andes of Bolivia. The remoteness and inaccessibility of most of this region have hampered the rigorous collection of reliable range-wide data on the species’ global, local and breeding population sizes. Such data are imperative, however, for effective conservation and management. Estimated to number up to 5,000 birds in the early 1980s, the most recent and thorough survey to date reported a total of only 807 macaws and a breeding population fraction of about 20% in 2011, disjunctly distributed across eight breeding and six foraging areas and divided into four genetic clusters. Ten years later, we reassessed the species’ population sizes and breeding distribution with increased survey effort and geographic coverage. Six teams simultaneously surveyed different sections of the species’ entire known breeding range in four watersheds focusing on nesting sites. We estimated a global population size of 1,160 macaws, a breeding population fraction of 23.8–27.4% (138–159 nesting pairs) and discovered four new breeding areas. Watersheds and breeding areas differed widely in nesting pair and total macaw numbers. The Mizque watershed held 53% of the species’ breeding and 41.5% of its global population and had the highest breeding population fraction of 30.7–34.9%; the Pilcomayo watershed obtained the lowest values (6%, 8.5% and 14.1–18.2%, respectively). Two of the four documented genetic clusters (subpopulations) each held well over 50 breeding individuals. Two of the eight breeding areas documented in 2011 were found unoccupied in 2021. Numbers of nesting pairs per breeding area in 2011 were poorly correlated with those in 2021, and timing of breeding activities also differed between years. Our new data indicate that the Red-fronted Macaw no longer meets IUCN Red List criteria for ‘Critically Endangered’ species and that it should be downlisted to ‘Endangered. ’
Objective evaluation of mechanical expressiveness in android and human faces

ABSTRACT Extensive research has been conducted to realize highly expressive android faces. In contrast, not much is being discussed which android faces are mechanically better and how advanced each android is because a fair and meaningful standard index of expressiveness does not exist. Therefore, in this study, we propose a numerical index and three types of visualization methods for facial deformation expressiveness to investigate the mechanical performance of android faces compared to humans. We used a data set of three-dimensional displacement vectors of over 100 facial points on the faces of two androids and three human males to calculate the expressiveness that reflects how diversely each facial point could move. As a result, we found that the expressiveness of the androids was significantly lower than humans, especially in the lower faces. The expressiveness of the androids was approximately only 20 that of humans even in the most expressive axis and two orders of magnitude lower than humans in three-dimensional evaluation. Thus, our method revealed the lackness of mechanical performance in recently developed androids to move facial skin widely. This method enabled us to reasonably discuss future directions to realize next generation androids with expressiveness similar to that in humans. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Precipitation extremes over the tropical Americas under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate change scenarios: Results from dynamical downscaling simulations

The Regional Atmospheric Modelling System (RAMS) driven by data from the CMIP5 Earth System Model HadGEM2‐ES was used to simulate daily precipitation over the tropical Americas for both current and future climate, including distinct scenarios (representative concentration pathways 4.5 and 8.5) and different time horizons (short‐term, mid‐term and long‐term changes). The major objective was to evaluate possible future changes in extreme events, with emphasis on the intensity of precipitation events and the duration of wet and dry spells. According to RAMS, longer dry spells are expected over most regions of the tropical Americas in the future, with indications for Northeast Brazil, Caribbean, Northern Amazon, and shorter wet spells over Central America and Amazon. With the exception of the Caribbean, there is a general tendency towards the increased frequency of intense precipitation in the tropical Americas.
Development of Clustering and Leaf Ordering Tool for Gene Expression Profiles

The hierarchical clustering algorithm is widely used for analysis of gene expression profiles. The output of the hierarchical clustering algorithms is a dendrogram, whose topology is a binary tree with the leaves corresponding to genes. A leaf ordering is a post-processing of the hierarchical clustering, which rearranges the leaves of a binary tree, while preserving its topology, so that genes with similar expression profiles get close in a new arrangement while those with dissimilar profiles part far. Most leaf ordering algorithms are designed for all leaf nodes at once [1, 2, 3]. In this paper, we first propose an approach that applies several leaf-ordering algorithms to each cluster and, then present a new tool that is an implementation of hierarchical clustering and leaf ordering algorithm including our proposed approach.
Multiobjective Optimization of Investments of two Businesses in Ghana

Portfolio optimization is a major concern of individuals and businesses across the world for sustainable financial and economic management of their funds. This work, as a first part of a portfolio optimization study of two selected businesses in Ghana, is aimed at optimizing separately the investments of the two businesses, to maximize their returns and minimize their risks under their operational constraints. The problems, being multi-objective in character, were modeled with the expected returns on their investments and the variances/standard deviations of the returns over fixed periods of time as the objective functions. To ensure dimensional uniformity, the objective functions were normalized and the Weighted Sum scalarization method employed in MATLAB to find Pareto optimal solutions of the models, using data from the two businesses. The results reveal that weight variations do not necessarily lead to many varied or diversified Pareto optimal solutions. The three distinct Pareto optimal solutions obtained for one of the businesses, however, suggest that the business could make respectively about 104.45M, 15.70M, and 15.72M Ghana Cedis returns on its investments with risk to return margins of 0.225%, 1.77%, and 1.76% respectively. The other business with only two distinct Pareto optimal solutions could make 14.67M or 30.36M Ghana Cedis returns with corresponding risk to return margins of 0.016% and 0.017% respectively. It is recommended therefore that the businesses could select the solution with the least risk to return margins for implementation. A second part of the work, which will be reported in another paper, would investigate the models under post-optimality analysis and the prospects for a joint investment by the two businesses.
Emotion-Based Classification and Indexing for Wallpaper and Textile

This study, based on human emotions and visual impression, develops a novel framework of classification and indexing for wallpaper and textiles. This method allows users to obtain a number of similar images that can be corresponded to a specific emotion by indexing through a reference image or an emotional keyword. In addition, a predefined color–emotion model is applied to deal with the transference between emotions and colors in the paper. Besides color and emotion, the other significant feature for indexing is texture. Therefore, two features—the main colors (the representative colors) and the foreground complexity of a color image—are adopted in the method. The foreground complexity (a pattern complexity) is also called the texture of the pattern in an image. Another contribution of this study is the new algorithms of Touch Four Sides (TFS) and Touch Up Sides (TUS), which can aid in extracting an accurate background and foreground for color images. The potential applications of this study can support non-professionals in finding suitable color-combinations based on emotions for many applications with the transference between emotions and colors, and to imitate the professional operation of the color matching such as interior design, product design, advertising design, image retrieval and other relative applications.
The mediating role of positive reappraisal and self-compassion on the relationship between mindfulness and posttraumatic growth in patients with cancer

The beneficial effect of mindfulness in promoting posttraumatic growth has been well established in research, but it remains unclear what psychological mechanisms mediate it. This study examined the mediating roles of positive reappraisal and self-compassion on the relationship between mindfulness and posttraumatic growth in patients with cancer. A random sample of 550 patients drawn from two medical health care institutions in southeast, Nigeria participated in this study. Results of mediation analysis showed that positive reappraisal and self-compassion independently mediated the relationship between mindfulness and posttraumatic growth. These findings underscore the usefulness of mindfulness-based therapies in promoting cognitive emotional processes such as positive reappraisal abilities and self-compassion, which are essential in facilitating posttraumatic growth in patients with cancer.
The Influence of Brand Image and Lifestyle on Purchase Intention Mediated by Consumer Attitude on Personal Care Products with Regional Comparison as Multigroup Moderator (Study on Consumers in Banda Aceh VS Lhokseumawe)

This study aims to examine the effect of brand image and lifestyle on purchase intention which is mediated by consumer attitudes towards personal care products with regional comparisons as moderating multigroup (Study on Consumers in Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe). The population was consumers who bought personal care products from the Nivea brand in Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe. The sampling technique used was Quota Sampling with the number of respondents as many as 200 people consisting of 100 people in the Banda Aceh area and 100 people in the Lhoksumawe area. Data were collected by distributing questionnaires directly to all respondents and measured using a Likert scale and tested using SEM-AMOS. The results reveal that brand image and consumer attitude affect purchase intention, lifestyle does not affect purchase intention, brand image and lifestyle affect consumer attitudes, consumer attitude partially mediates the brand image role in purchase intentions, and consumer attitude fully mediates the lifestyle role in consumer purchase intention. The result of different test on two groups of consumers in Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe proves that the lifestyles of consumers in Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe are different. This is because the impact of consumer lifestyle on the intention to buy Nivea personal care products will increase if sold in Banda Aceh City compared to sales in Lhokseumawe City.
Sodium Phenylbutyrate and Ursodoxicoltaurine (Albrioza)

CADTH recommends that Albrioza be reimbursed by public drug plans for the treatment of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) if certain conditions are met. Albrioza should only be covered to treat those who have a diagnosis of definite ALS, have had symptoms for 18 months or less, have a forced vital capacity (FVC) of at least 60% of predicted, and do not require permanent noninvasive or invasive breathing support. Albrioza should only be reimbursed if prescribed by a specialist with experience diagnosing and managing ALS and if the cost is reduced.