Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A systematic review and meta-analysis of screening and diagnostic accuracy for hearing loss among under-five children in South-Asian region

Purpose Congenital hearing disabilities among children are associated with lifetime discrepancies in the attainment of speech, poor academic-performance, socio-individual isolation and emotional-maladjustments. The present study aims to combine evidence from randomized, controlled trials to assess the accuracy of hearing-screening procedures and relative diagnostic-tests concomitant with partial/permanent hearing loss (HL) among neonatal and under-five children. Design/methodology/approach The steps in this process were conducted according to the PRISMA (Preferred-Reporting-Items-for-Systematic-reviews-and-Meta-Analysis) guidelines. The PubMed, ProQuest, Science-Direct, Cochrane-Library and secondary reference databases were searched. Analyses were carried out by using fixed/random-effects-models for calculating the summary estimates on hearing-screening and test-procedure. Meta-regression-analysis is performed to explore the influence of confounders on the net-pooled effect. Findings A total of 1,656 articles were identified, and 1,575 were excluded as they were not relevant to the purpose of the study. Further, out of 81 studies, 67 were excluded with reasons and 14 were included in the final analysis. Three independent reviewers have assessed the titles/abstracts for their potential relevance. The results from meta-analysis indicate that hearing-screening was significantly higher in the intervention group (n 8,102; OR 0.52, 95% CI 0.34, 0.79; p < 0.00001), as depicted via forest plot. Meta-regression analysis indicates a positive relationship between the age and effect size (regression-coefficient 0.638, 95% CI 0.005, 0.731; p < 0.05). Research limitations/implications The evidence from the present study can be used as reference for identifying the associated risk indicators, improved hearing-screening and reduction of hearing disability among under-five children. Practical implications The results of this review will be used for implementation of a new-born hearing screening, diagnostic accuracy and understanding the risk indicators for HL among under-five children in the South-Asian region. The evidence will be helpful for strategic directions for improved hearing screening and reduction of hearing disability among under-five children. Social implications By understanding the underlying dynamics of hearing-screening procedures, hearing-impairments can be identified at an early stage and required treatment can be provided to the children. Originality/value The findings of this study indicate that early detection, screening and diagnosis of the HL among the children, especially among the infants and new-born (0–2 years of age), will be of utmost importance in reducing the prevalence of HL, especially among the South-Asian region. This study can be used as a reference for other future studies in the area of hearing-screening, diagnostic accuracy and associated risk indicators among children.
Retail Consumers’ Behavioral Intention to Use Augmented Reality Mobile Apps in Pakistan

Abstract Augmented reality is an emerging and promising technology to expand consumer shopping experiences in the retail sector. How augmented reality apps can impact consumer perceptions is still in debate. This study investigates the influence of augmented reality mobile apps on consumers’ behavioral intention to use this technology, using the technology acceptance model. Data were collected from 363 undergraduate and graduate university students in Pakistan. The partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied to check the path relationships. Study participants' experience and perception were measured through the direct and indirect effects of the augmented reality-based mobile app. The study findings indicated that augmented reality app directly influences perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and indirect influence on attitude toward use and behavioral intention to use. Thus, there is no sequential mediation effect of perceived ease of use and attitude toward use between augmented reality app and behavior intention to use. This study is the first to contribute theory toward understanding retail customer perceptions about augmented reality app and their behavioral intention to use it in Pakistan.
Enhanced Shale Gas Recovery: Gas Sorption Controls on Recoverable Gas and CO2 Storage Capacity

Recent progress in extraction techniques has propelled shale gas production; however, these processes remain largely inefficient. This stems from the lack of understanding of the effect of confinement on the fluids in the shale formations, which have nanometric pores, very low permeability and porosity. While primary methods of recovery provide suitable initial production rates, enhanced means of recovery using CO2 injection [1] may be required to sustain them. An enhanced process would provide both high extraction efficiencies of shale gas and serve as a means of CO2 storage in the depleted reservoir. In shale, natural gas (a mixture of methane and ethane) is held freely in pores and fractures as well as adsorbed within the micropores of the organic matter and clay minerals [2]. Understanding gas adsorption/desorption is key, as this dictates not only production rates, but it can also be used to provide estimates of the Gas-In-Place (GIP) at subsurface conditions. This investigation aims at using new laboratory observations to (i) quantify gas adsorption in shale at subsurface conditions, (ii) assess the pore-space properties of shale and their controls on sorption (particularly the role of organics and clay minerals) and (iii) make estimates of recoverable and storable gas. Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) high-pressure adsorption isotherms have been measured using a Rubotherm Magnetic Suspension Balance over a wide range of conditions, i.e. temperatures in the range 283-353K and in the pressure range of 0-300 bar. A selection of shale samples from the Bowland formation in the UK has been used and results are compared to data measured at the same conditions on a mesoporous carbon, which serves as an analogue for the organic matter in shale. The shale samples have also been characterised by cryogenic low-pressure (<1 bar) physisorption methods including N2 at 77K and CO2 at 273K and 298K to obtain structural information of the material and key model parameters, such as the Henry constants. This comprehensive data set is used to identify useful guidelines with regards to the effect of the shale composition (i.e. clay and organic content) on properties such as specific surface area, pore volume and pore size distribution. Notably, we observe that the organic content of the shale can be used to scale adsorption isotherms measured on the mesoporous carbon, thus confirming that (i) shales are largely mesoporous and that (ii) organics play a major role in driving adsorption in shale. If this observation were to be of general validity, it could prove to be very useful in capturing the (inherent) variability in the adsorption properties of shale at the laboratory scale. Moreover, we have measured a significant adsorption selectivity of shale towards CO2 as compared to CH4, thus providing an opportunity to exploit the adsorption/desorption process to further enhance gas production and store CO2.
Political connections, government ownership, and earnings management: evidence from Jordan

This study examines the impact of political connections and government ownership on accrual and real earnings management. Based on a Jordanian sample of 310 firm-year observations, the study finds evidence that politically-connected firms exhibit a higher level of 1 Int. J. Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of Alhadab, M.M. , Abdullatif, M. , Ahmed, A.H. , Tahat, Y.A. & Mansour , I. 'Political Connections, Government Ownership, and Earnings Management: Evidence from Jordan', International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, vol. 17, no. 1/2 (2021). DOI: 10.1504/IJAAPE.2021. 117575. real earnings management, compared to non-politically-connected firms. This evidence suggests that politically-connected firms in Jordan opportunistically manipulate reported income to obtain a private gain through the use of real activities-based manipulation, at the expense of other minority shareholders. This may be caused by real earnings management activities being less subject to the risk of detection and monitoring. Further, the study finds evidence that government-connected firms engage in a lower level of accrual and real earnings management compared to non-government-connected firms, suggesting a positive effect for government ownership on the quality of financial reporting.
Sitting posture detection and recognition of aircraft passengers using machine learning

Abstract Prolonged sitting in a fixed or constrained position exposes aircraft passengers to long-term static loading of their bodies, which has deleterious effects on passengers’ comfort throughout the duration of the flight. The previous studies focused primarily on office and driving sitting postures and few studies, however, focused on the sitting postures of passengers in aircraft. Consequently, the aim of the present study is to detect and recognize the sitting postures of aircraft passengers in relation to sitting discomfort. A total of 24 subjects were recruited for the experiment, which lasted for 2 h. Furthermore, a total of 489 sitting postures were extracted and the pressure data between subjects and seat was collected from the experiment. After the detection of sitting postures, eight types of sitting postures were classified based on key parts (trunk, back, and legs) of the human bodies. Thereafter, the eight types of sitting postures were recognized with the aid of pressure data of seat pan and backrest employing several machine learning methods. The best classification rate of 89.26% was obtained from the support vector machine (SVM) with radial basis function (RBF) kernel. The detection and recognition of the eight types of sitting postures of aircraft passengers in this study provided an insight into aircraft passengers’ discomfort and seat design.
Systems Analysis of Coupled Natural and Human Processes in the Mekong River Basin

The Mekong River Basin is one of the world’s major transboundary basins. The hydrology, agriculture, ecology, and other watershed functions are constantly changing as a result of a variety of human activities carried out inside and by neighboring countries including China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in order to meet increased food and water demands for an increasing population. The Mekong River, which provides irrigation and fishing for a population of over 60 million people, also has an estimated 88,000 MW of untapped hydropower potential. The construction of dams for energy supply has a wide-ranging impact on downstream reservoir regions, resulting in unprecedented changes in hydrologic functions, the environment, and people’s livelihoods. We present a holistic view of how external stressors such as climate change and variability, land cover, and land-use change affect supply and demand. We present an integrated modeling framework for analyzing the supply–demand scenarios and tradeoffs between different sectors. Specifically, we evaluated the impacts of future climate on irrigation, hydropower, and other needs in the basin through a feedback loop. We focused on hydrologic extremes to evaluate their impacts on the reservoir operations during flood and low flow events. The inflow is projected to change by +13% to −50% in the future, while a 0.25% (15.24 billion m3) reduction is projected for the net irrigation water requirement (NIWR). A unit percentage increase in irrigation demand will reduce energy generation by 0.15%, but climate change has a beneficial impact on dam performance with a predicted increase in energy generation and supply to all sectors. Flood events will cause excessive stress on reservoir operation to handle up to six times more flow volumes; however, the low-flow events will marginally affect the system. While the flow and storage rule curves consider both supply and demand, changing human water use comes second to changing climate or other biophysical considerations. This paper emphasizes the importance of considering feedback between climate–water–human society in the systems modeling framework in order to meet societal and ecological challenges. The findings will provide information on the risks and tradeoffs that exist in the water, energy, and food sectors of the basin.
Nonlinear Dynamics of Electrostatic Comb-drive with Variable Gap Under Harmonic Excitation

This paper provides an extensive study of the nonlinear dynamics of a variable gap electrostatic comb-drive. The amplitude- and phase-frequency response, as well as the amplitude- and phase-force response of the comb-drive were obtained and analyzed with and without taking into account the cubic nonlinearity of the suspension. A significant variation in the frequency and force response is demonstrated in the presence of nonlinearity of the elastic suspension. Using numerical methods of bifurcation theory, solutions are obtained that correspond to the resonance peak of the frequency response when the constant and variable components of the voltages change. The result obtained makes it possible to determine the range of excitation voltage values that provide the required vibration amplitude in the resonant mode. The influence of the second stationary electrode on the dynamics of the system is estimated. The significant influence of this factor on the resonant-mode characteristics is revealed.
After egg collection, can we predict the chance of embryos for day 5 transfer or freezing?

Lay summary Even partway through an IVF cycle, at the point when a woman’s eggs have been collected, it is hard to provide reliable answers to the common question of ‘Am I likely to have a good embryo to transfer? ’ Sometimes, it only takes one good egg to be successful. However, doctors and patients are acutely aware that low egg numbers, older age and having conditions such as endometriosis can stack the odds against success. We have developed a model to try and answer this question for those patients who wish for more information to help guide their expectations after egg collection. A new tool is presented to predict whether a woman having IVF treatment will have a good enough embryo either to transfer on day 5 or freeze. It was built using information from all 2015 to 2016 UK cycles and predicts using age, number of eggs collected and cause of subfertility.
Leftists Possess More National Consensus in Europe in One of Two Data Sets

A regularity in the U.S. American politics is that liberals have more policy consensus than do conservatives, and both ideological groups have more consensus than moderates. One explanation for this is that conservatives’ local conformity paradoxically results in less consensus than liberals at the national level. If so, then the liberal consensus effect should also be observed in other countries. We test this using data from Europe. In the European Social Survey (country N = 38, participant N = 376,129), we find that on average leftists have more consensus than do rightists; however, we do not find this using the Eurobarometer (country N = 18, participant N = 375,830). In both data sources, we also observe variation in ideological differences between countries. These results suggest that there is a liberal/leftist consensus effect on average, that can be found in Europe and the United States, but there are also exceptions.
Ageing drivers’ mental workload in real-time driving tasks based on subjective and objective measures

The ageing drivers’ population is increasing rapidly, and they are exposed to disabilities due to degenerative processes, thus affecting their driving performance. The main objective of this study is to determine the mental workload of ageing drivers, while the second objective is to compare the mental workload between ageing drivers and control group. The methodology consisted of on-the-road experimental driving tasks that comprised three levels of situation complexity. The NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) and electroencephalogram (EEG) were measured on 30 drivers. The NASA-TLX scores revealed that the ageing drivers’ mean physical demand score was the highest compared to others in moderately complex situation and very complex situation, scoring 37.25 and 43.50, respectively. Meanwhile, for electroencephalogram signals’ fluctuation, results showed that situation complexity had significant effects on RPθ and RPα of channel locations FZPZ and O1O2. There was a significant difference in the weighted workload scores for the ageing drivers and control group in simple situation, while there was no significant difference found in RPθ and RPα bands at all channel locations. The findings would be beneficial as a guideline for designers, manufacturers, developers, and policy makers in designing better driving environment for ageing drivers.
Machine Learning-based Approaches for Identifying Human Cells Harboring Fetal Chromatin Domain Ablations

Two common hemoglobinopathies, sickle cell disease (SCD) and β-thalassemia, arise from genetic mutations within the β-globin gene. A 500-bp motif termed Fetal Chromatin Domain (FCD), upstream of human ϒ-globin locus, may function as a transcriptional regulatory element driving inhibition of the ϒ-globin gene. Here, we hypothesize that the removal of this motif using CRISPR technology may reactivate the expression of ϒ-globin and subsequently restore fetal hemoglobin functionality. In this work we present two different cell morphology-based machine learning approaches that can be used identify cells that harbor FCD genetic modifications. Three candidate models from the first, which uses multilayer perceptron algorithm (MLP 20–26, MLP26-18, and MLP 30 − 26) and flow cytometry-derived cellular data, yielded 0.83 precision, 0.80 recall, 0.82 accuracy, and 0.90 area under the ROC (receiver operating characteristic) curve when predicting the edited cells. In comparison, the candidate model from the second approach, which uses deep learning (T2D5) and DIC microscopy-derived imaging data, performed with less accuracy (0.80) and ROC AUC (0.87). We envision both assays could be valuable and complementary to currently available genotyping protocols for specific genetic modifications which result in morphological changes in human cells.
Security‐centric ranking algorithm and two privacy scores to mitigate intrusive apps

Smartphone users are constantly facing the risks of losing their private information to third‐party mobile applications. Studies have revealed that the vast majority of users either do not pay attention to privacy or unable to comprehend privacy messages. Developers though have exploited this fact by asking users to grant their apps an enormous number of permissions. In this article, we propose and evaluate a new security‐centric ranking algorithm built on top of the Elasticsearch engine to help users evade such apps. The algorithm calculates an intrusiveness score for an app based on its requested permissions, received system actions, and users' privacy preferences. As such, we further propose a new approach to capture these preferences. We evaluate the ranking algorithm using a million Android applications, contextual data and APK files, that we collect from the Google Play store. The results show that the scoring and reranking steps add minor overhead. Moreover, participants of the user studies gave positive feedback for the ranking algorithm and the privacy preferences solicitation approach. These results suggest that our proposed system would definitely protect the privacy of mobile users and pushes developers into requesting least amount of privileges. Still, there are many risks that endanger the users' privacy.
Application of first‐order finite similitude in structural mechanics and earthquake engineering

An important experimental approach for the testing of earthquake‐resistant structures is scaled experimentation with experimental designs impacted upon by the similitude theory of dimensional analysis. Unfortunately, the type of similitude provided by dimensional analysis seldom applies to complex structures, which is particularly problematic when scaling ratios are large. The issue is one of scale effects where the behaviour of the scaled version of any full‐size structure can be markedly different. Recently however a new theory of scaling called finite similitude has emerged in the open literature that confirms that the similitude offered by dimensional analysis is just one of a countable infinite number of alternative possibilities. The new theory of scaling raises the possibility that buildings and structures can be designed and tested in new ways and this aspect is the focus of this paper. Similitude rules for single and two scaled experiments are examined to illustrate the benefits provided by alternative forms of similitude. The two types of similitude examined are termed zeroth order and first order finite similitude, which are shown to be two forms in an infinite number of alternative possibilities efficiently defined using a recursive relationship. The theory of scaling is founded on the metaphysical concept of space scaling yet provides the means to establish all scale dependencies for structural components and high‐rise steel buildings along with buildings equipped with nonlinear‐fluid viscous dampers for resisting earthquake loading conditions. It is shown through case‐studies of increasing complexity how the new theory can be applied to reconstruct full‐scale behaviours but also revealed are some of the limitations of the new approach.
Is it a rally or a riot? Racialized media framing of 2020 protests in the United States

Abstract This article draws on race relations arguments to explore the nexus between the media, race, and protest policing. The media’s coverage of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and protests opposing COVID-19 restrictions bring to light differences in police intervention at these events. How the media portrays this apparent imbalance is the focus of the current study. Using news reports from major U.S. outlets (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post), we find that protests anchored to racial justice issues are more often framed as a threat to the public interests. Our results highlight the media’s role in promoting notions of racial threat and exacerbating state repression. We discuss the implications of these findings for constitutional rights, social control, and journalism.
New robust ridge estimators for the linear regression model with outliers

Abstract The ridge regression estimator (RRE) is a widely used estimation method for the multiple linear regression model when the explanatory variables are correlated. The situation becomes problematic for the RRE when the data set contains outliers in the y-direction. The use of the RRE in the presence of outliers may have some adverse effects on parameter estimates. To address this issue, the robust ridge estimators based on M-estimator are available in the literature which are less sensitive to the presence of outliers. It is a well-known fact that the selection of ridge parameter k is very crucial while using the RRE and the same phenomenon may happen in the case of robust ridge estimators. This study proposes some robust ridge estimators for the ridge parameter k. The performance of proposed estimators is evaluated with the help of the Monte Carlo simulations and a real application where the mean squared error (MSE) is considered as a performance evaluation criterion. Results show a better performance of the proposed robust ridge estimators as compared to the RRE, least square and M-estimation methods. While for modified ridge M-estimator, different ridge parameters found to be better for different conditions.