Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MSc in Environment and Development

ii Statement of Originality: I hereby declare that this dissertation has been composed by me and is based on my own work. ABSTRACT Scotland hosts the most concentrated pattern of private land ownership in Europe, with sporting estates covering 43% of rural land. In the last two decades a growing land reform movement, advocating greater power over land use and greater diversity of land ownership, has led to the rapid expansion of community landownership, with local people now owning approximately 500,000 acres of some of Scotland's most iconic landscapes. This governance model is rooted in narratives of sustainability and has been embraced by the current Scottish Government, leading to the building of new political momentum. Research in the past has focused on the economic and social impacts of community landownership. Therefore, this study considers the third pillar of sustainability: environmental responsibility. Through consideration of three framing narratives finding common expression in land reform and land use debates, an investigation was made of four community landowning areas to establish the influence of this transformative change. Results showed that community landownership contains the potential to recast relations with the environment by introducing a new pluralistic narrative of interpretation. This new narrative favours open, accountable, local governance and provides opportunities for broadening partnerships, leading to an approach to environmental management and land use characterised by its diversity and renewed confidence.
Given Enough Eyeballs, all Bugs are Shallow - A Literature Review for the Use of Crowdsourcing in Software Testing

Over the last years, the use of crowdsourcing has gained a lot of attention in the domain of software engineering. One key aspect of software development is the testing of software. Literature suggests that crowdsourced software testing (CST) is a reliable and feasible tool for manifold kinds of testing. Research in CST made great strides; however, it is mostly unstructured and not linked to traditional software testing practice and terminology. By conducting a literature review of traditional and crowdsourced software testing literature, this paper delivers two major contributions. First, it synthesizes the fields of crowdsourcing research and traditional software testing. Second, the paper gives a comprehensive overview over findings in CST-research and provides a classification into different software testing types.
Treatment-seeking behaviour of nasopharyngeal cancer patients in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Introduction Nasopharyngeal cancer ranks first among head and neck cancer. About 60-95% of nasopharyngeal cancer patients seek for treatment at advanced stage. Attitudes and behavior of cancer patients in choosing healthcare is affected by the level of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Surgery and treatment costs are also the reasons patients to late seek treatment. This study aims to explore what contributes the treatment seeking behavior of nasopharyngeal cancer patients. It conducted in the Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Methods As many as 20 patients were interviewed using questionnaire. All interviews were done using Opencode 3.6. To ensure the data validity, triangulation approach, peer debriefing and thick description were done. Results it showed that there are five factors that affect the patients in seeking treatment: disease perception, medical services perception, medical expenses, external support and assessment of treatment process. Conclusion This study may help to design health education programs to raise public awareness of nasopharyngeal cancer.
Is water exchange superior to water immersion for colonoscopy? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background/Aims: Recently, water exchange (WE) instead of water immersion (WI) for colonoscopy has been proposed to decrease pain and improve adenoma detection rate (ADR). This systematic review and meta-analysis is conducted to assess whether WE is superior to WI based on the published randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Materials and Methods: We searched studies from PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, EMBASE, and MEDLINE. Only RCTs were eligible for our study. The pooled risk ratios (RRs), pooled mean difference (MD), and pooled 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated by using the fixed-effects model or random-effects model based on heterogeneity. Results: Five RCTs consisting of 2229 colonoscopies were included in this study. WE was associated with a significantly higher ADR than WI (RR = 1.18; CI = 1.05–1.32; P = 0.004), especially in right colon (RR = 1.31; CI = 1.07–1.61; P = 0.01). Compared with WI, WE was confirmed with lower pain score, higher Boston Bowel Preparation Scale score, but more infused water during insertion. There was no statistical difference between WE and WI in cecal intubation rate and the number of patients who had willingness to repeat the examination. Furthermore, both total procedure time and cecal intubation time in WE were significantly longer than that in WI (MD = 2.66; CI = 1.42–3.90; P < 0.0001; vs MD = 4.58; CI = 4.01–5.15; P < 0.0001). Conclusions: This meta-analysis supports the hypothesis that WE is superior to WI in improving ADR, attenuating insertion pain and providing better bowel cleansing, but inferior in time and consumption of infused water consumption during insertion.
10, 000 Steps a Day for Health? User-based Evaluation of Wearable Activity Trackers

We present the results of a survey on perceived service quality and service acceptance of activity trackers with a focus on country-based differences (US and Germany). The mutual influence of perceived service quality and service acceptance is being investigated. A new research focus based on activity trackers is the topic of medical health funds. Are users ready to share activity data with health insurance and expecting rewards in return? This study (N=803) supplements previous research which is mainly based on small sample sizes or qualitative results. Our research model is based on the Information Service Evaluation (ISE) model which includes common models such as TAM and UTAUT. Results show that aspects such as Fun, Gamification, Impact and Usefulness are very important regarding activity tracker use. Furthermore, user’s opinion on the support of medical healthcare funds and reducing medical fees is rather positive and significantly differentiates between US and German participants.
Extendible simulation software for dynamic systems

Simulation of dynamic physical system models is an integral part of the engineering design process. The software used to perform simulations and the language used to develop that software are, in themselves, important issues to the simulation commu nity. Some significant characteristics of simulation software are: robustness, solution efficiency, ease of learning, ease of regular use, range of modeling features, maintain ability, and extendibility. This work investigates the extendibility properties of the relatively new software methodology- object oriented programming - in a simula tion context. The reason is that many existing softwares seem to have reached an effective limit with respect to enhancing their capabilities within their original design framework. Object oriented programming, on the other hand, promises to provide good extendibility features by the very nature of its basic concepts. Our investigation, which involved the development of a pilot simula tion program in a series of planned stages, shows that this promise is soundly based for dynamic physical system simulation software.
Molecular con irmation of ovine herpesvirus 2-induced malignant catarrhal fever lesions in cattle from Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil1

Headley S.A. , Sousa I.K. F. , Minervino A.H. H. , Barros I.O. , Barrêto Júnior R.A. , Alieri A.F. , Ortolani E.L. & Al ieri A.A. 2012. Molecular con irmation of ovine herpesvirus 2-induced malignant catarrhal fever lesions in cattle from Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Pesquisa Veterinária Brasileira 32(12):1213-1218. Laboratório de Patologia Veterinária, Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária, Universidade Norte do Paraná, PR 218 Km 1, Cx. Postal 560, Arapongas, PR 86702-670, Brazil. E-mail: headleysa@gmail.com Molecular indings that con irmed the participation of ovine herpesvirus 2 (OVH-2) in the lesions that were consistent with those observed in malignant catarrhal fever of cattle are described. Three mixed-breed cattle from Rio Grande do Norte state demonstrated clinical manifestations that included mucopurulent nasal discharge, corneal opacity and motor incoordination. Routine necropsy examination demonstrated ulcerations and hemorrhage of the oral cavity, corneal opacity, and lymph node enlargement. Signi icant histopathological indings included widespread necrotizing vasculitis, non-suppurative meningoencephalitis, lymphocytic interstitial nephritis and hepatitis, and thrombosis. PCR assay performed on DNA extracted from kidney and mesenteric lymph node of one animal ampli ied a product of 423 base pairs corresponding to a target sequence within the ovine herpesvirus 2 (OVH-2) tegument protein gene. Direct sequencing of the PCR products, from extracted DNA of the kidney and mesenteric lymph node of one cow, ampli ied the partial nucleotide sequences (423 base pairs) of OVH-2 tegument protein gene. Blast analysis con irmed that these sequences have 98-100% identity with similar OVH-2 sequences deposited in GenBank. Phylogenetic analyses, based on the deduced amino acid sequences, demonstrated that the strain of OVH-2 circulating in ruminants from the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Norte and Minas Gerais are similar to that identi ied in other geographical locations. These indings con irmed the active participation of OVH-2 in the classical manifestations of sheep associated malignant catarrhal fever.
Advanced DSL management

Today's digital subscriber line deployments are often conservatively engineered to function in a statistically worst case environment. Crosstalk is treated as unknown and uncontrollable random noise, even though it is manmade. Other impairments are often treated by simply adding margin to crosstalk. While this simplistic practice currently suffices, it often provisions unnecessarily low bit rates. This article shows methods that can increase these bit rates and decrease DSL failure rates. Data can be collected about individual telephone lines and cables from loop databases, by automated test equipment, or from DSL modems. This data may then be fed into an advanced DSL management system with a database of DSL loop and noise characteristics, and an analysis engine that tailors DSL deployments to the actual individual line characteristics, to increase provisioned DSL bitrates while simultaneously increasing reliability and lowering maintenance costs. The maximum service can be provisioned with high accuracy, eliminating many service activation failures. Automated maintenance routines can even isolate faults before a customer experiences them. Dynamic spectrum management (DSM) treats crosstalk as the manmade noise it is, and jointly optimizes DSL transmit spectra and signals to minimize crosstalk and maximize received signals, allowing substantially higher DSL speeds than current practice. This opens the door for new services, including symmetric enterprise services and full video service, with minimal physical plant upgrade.
TCIApathfinder: an R client for The Cancer Imaging Archive REST API

Summary The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) hosts publicly available de-identified medical images of cancer from over 25 body sites and over 30, 000 patients. Over 400 published studies have utilized freely available TCIA images. Image series and metadata are available for download through a web interface or a REST API. We present TCIApathfinder, an R client for the TCIA REST API. TCIApathfinder wraps API access in user-friendly R functions that can be called within an R session or easily incorporated into scripts. Functions are provided to explore the contents of the large database and to download image files. Availability and implementation TCIApathfinder is available under the MIT license as a package on CRAN (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/TCIApathfinder/index.html) and at https://github.com/pamelarussell/TCIApathfinder. Contact pamela.russell@ucdenver.edu
A Role for Nrf2 Expression in Defining the Aging of Hippocampal Neural Stem Cells

Redox mechanisms are emerging as essential to stem cell function given their capacity to influence a number of important signaling pathways governing stem cell survival and regenerative activity. In this context, our recent work identified the reduced expression of nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2, or Nrf2, in mediating the decline in subventricular zone neural stem progenitor cell (NSPC) regeneration during aging. Since Nrf2 is a major transcription factor at the heart of cellular redox regulation and homeostasis, the current study investigates the role that it may play in the aging of NSPCs that reside within the other major mammalian germinal niche located in the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus. Using rats from multiple aging stages ranging from newborn to old age, and aging Nrf2 knockout mice, we first determined that, in contrast with subventricular zone (SVZ) NSPCs, Nrf2 expression does not significantly affect overall DG NSPC viability with age. However, DG NSPCs resembled SVZ stem cells, in that Nrf2 expression controlled their proliferation and the balance of neuronal versus glial differentiation particularly in relation to a specific critical period during middle age. Also, importantly, this Nrf2-based control of NSPC regeneration was found to impact functional neurogenesis-related hippocampal behaviors, particularly in the Morris water maze and in pattern separation tasks. Furthermore, the enrichment of the hippocampal environment via the transplantation of Nrf2-overexpressing NSPCs was able to mitigate the age-related decline in DG stem cell regeneration during the critical middle-age period, and significantly improved pattern separation abilities. In summary, these results emphasize the importance of Nrf2 in DG NSPC regeneration, and support Nrf2 upregulation as a potential approach to advantageously modulate DG NSPC activity with age.
Scalable parallel processing design for real time handwritten OCR

This paper presents a generalised technique for parallelising embedded computer vision and pattern recognition applications and shows how it has been applied to the recognition of handwritten postcodes on envelopes. The technique is based upon the utilisation of pipelines of processor farms (PPF), and is applicable to any embedded system with continuous input/output data streams. The postcode recogniser combines temporal multiplexing and data parallelism to achieve a speedup of 21.4 compared with the original sequential application, using a total of 52 transputers.
Determinants and barriers of e-procurement: A European comparison of public sector experiences

Despite recent studies on determinants of adoption and diffusion of e-procurement, the existing literature is still scant on how different variables affect eprocurement adoption, diffusion and upscaling by type of adopter. Using qualitative data from interviews, this paper aims at contributing to fill this gap by examining how outer and inner variables influence the adoption and upscaling of e-procurement in two European regions that can be considered as innovators (Valencia in Spain and Lombardy in Italy). Our findings show that 1) the role of inner factors is clearer than that of outer ones in adoption processes, 2) in particular, organizational (mainly slack resources in both cases) and individual determinants seem to be the most important inner factors, 3) change management strategies and activities have a key role in upscaling processes, and 4) the internal organizational context and the type of technological innovation may act as moderators/mediators of the effects.
Classifying Motivations in Social Product Development Networks: a Discriminant Analysis of Actor Profiles

This study develops a classification model to predict social actors’ co-innovation behavior in social product development (SPD) networks based on motivational differences. The study first identifies motivations for actors to continuously participate in co-innovation activities. Then, three discriminant functions are developed and cross-validated to classify actor groups, based on their level of willingness to participate in three types of behaviors: ideation, collaboration, and socialization. The results indicate that financial gains, entrepreneurship, and learning are significant predictors of ideation behaviors. Enjoyment and learning are strong indicators of collaboration, whereas networking, enjoyment, and altruism are most strongly related to socialization behaviors. These findings highlight three classes of SPD actors (Ideators, Collaborators, and Networkers) based on motivational differences. These classes provide a theoretically parsimonious model to predict the co-innovation behaviors in SPD and highlight the importance of platform design to appeal to different classes of potential contributors.
Gamification of Older Adults' Physical Activity: An Eight-Week Study

Designing fitness programs to combat a sedentary lifestyle and foster older adults’ motivation and goalsetting is not yet well-understood beyond point-based systems. To improve older adults’ (over 50 years) health and wellness, we studied a gamified physical activity intervention over eight weeks in an experiment (N=30) with three conditions (gamified, non-gamified, control). Our qualitative analysis showed the gamified group exhibited more engagement and interest in performing physical activity facilitated by technology. Results from our quantitative analysis indicated significance in the perceived competence dimension compared to the nongamified and the control group. Perceived autonomy was significant for the non-gamified group against the control group. The findings from qualitative and quantitative analysis show motivation, enjoyment, and engagement were higher in the gamified group. This provides support for successfully facilitating older adults’ physical activity through gamified technology, which helped us create guidelines for older adults’ adaptive engagement.
Reconstruction of 24 Penicillium genome‐scale metabolic models shows diversity based on their secondary metabolism

Modeling of metabolism at the genome‐scale has proved to be an efficient method for explaining the phenotypic traits observed in living organisms. Further, it can be used as a means of predicting the effect of genetic modifications for example, development of microbial cell factories. With the increasing amount of genome sequencing data available, there exists a need to accurately and efficiently generate such genome‐scale metabolic models (GEMs) of nonmodel organisms, for which data is sparse. In this study, we present an automatic reconstruction approach applied to 24 Penicillium species, which have potential for production of pharmaceutical secondary metabolites or use in the manufacturing of food products, such as cheeses. The models were based on the MetaCyc database and a previously published Penicillium GEM and gave rise to comprehensive genome‐scale metabolic descriptions. The models proved that while central carbon metabolism is highly conserved, secondary metabolic pathways represent the main diversity among species. The automatic reconstruction approach presented in this study can be applied to generate GEMs of other understudied organisms, and the developed GEMs are a useful resource for the study of Penicillium metabolism, for example, for the scope of developing novel cell factories.
2 Matching Text to Entities : Quiz Bowl

Text classification methods for tasks like factoid question answering typically use manually defined string matching rules or bag of words representations. These methods are ineffective when question text contains very few individual words (e.g., named entities) that are indicative of the answer. We introduce a recursive neural network (rnn) model that can reason over such input by modeling textual compositionality. We apply our model, qanta, to a dataset of questions from a trivia competition called quiz bowl. Unlike previous rnn models, qanta learns word and phrase-level representations that combine across sentences to reason about entities. The model outperforms multiple baselines and, when combined with information retrieval methods, rivals the best human players.
Adaptive meshes and nonrigid motion computation

We describe a new method for computing displacement field for sequences of temporal images. It involves minimizing the energy defined on the space of correspondence functions. This energy is divided in two terms: one which matches the contour points and particularly high curvature points, and one which regularizes the field. We introduce an adaptive mesh the resolution of which depends on the presence of edges and/or points of high curvature, and we show how to use it to reduce the computational time for our method. We present experimental results on medical images which prove the validity of the approach and the accuracy of the computed displacement fields.
Design Recommendations for Web-based Career Guidance Platforms - Let Young Women Experience IT Careers!

Despite a variety of intervention programs in the western society over the last decades, still too few young women are interested in an information technology (IT) career. While looking for career information and guidance, young women consult family and friends but also the internet. Although there is already a plethora of career information websites, those are seldom tailored to the interests of young women. To address the IT-gender gap with the design of a platform that appeals to the needs of the target group, we firstly analyzed existing German websites for career information and guidance. The analysis was framed by literature on women’s IT career choice barriers. Secondly, we evaluated selected websites with focus groups of female students. Finally, we present design recommendations to enhance web-based career information and guidance platforms for young women to raise their interest in IT-related careers.
Longitudinal Changes in Neural Connectivity in Patients With Internet Gaming Disorder: A Resting-State EEG Coherence Study

Aims: The present study investigated neural connectivity associated with treatment responses in patients with Internet gaming disorder (IGD) using resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) coherence analyses. Methods: We included 30 patients with IGD and 32 healthy control subjects (HCs). Of the IGD patients, 18 completed an outpatient treatment that included pharmacotherapy with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for 6 months. Resting-state EEG coherence and self-report questionnaires were used to evaluate clinical and psychological features pre- and post-treatment, and data were analyzed using generalized estimating equations. Results: Compared with HCs, patients with IGD showed increased beta and gamma intrahemispheric coherence and increased delta intrahemispheric coherence of the right hemisphere at baseline. After 6 months of outpatient management, patients with IGD exhibited improvements in IGD symptoms compared with baseline, but they continued to show increased beta and gamma intrahemispheric coherence compared with that of HCs. No significant EEG coherence changes between the pre- and post-treatment assessments were detected in any band in the IGD group. Conclusion: These findings suggest that significantly greater intrahemispheric fast-frequency coherence may be an important neurophysiological trait marker of patients with IGD.