Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding the democratic role of perceived online political micro-targeting: longitudinal effects on trust in democracy and political interest

ABSTRACT With the increasing availability of big digital voter data, there are rising concerns that online political micro-targeting (PMT) may be harmful for democratic societies. However, PMT may also be beneficial to democracy because it targets voters with content that matches with their predispositions, potentially increasing political interest. For both, harmful and beneficial outcomes of PMT, we lack empirical evidence on the side of citizens. In a two-wave panel survey study, we tested the reciprocal relationships over time between perceived online PMT, trust in democracy, and political interest. We found that perceived online PMT leads to a decrease of trust in democracy, but also to an increase in political interest. The effect on political interest was independent from age. No reciprocal effects of trust in democracy and political interest on perceived PMT were observed. Overall, the results suggest that the democratic implications of PMT are more nuanced than previously assumed.
Imaginative play in digital environments: designing social and creative opportunities for identity formation

ABSTRACT Digital technologies afford ample opportunities for children’s development, identity formation, imagination and sociability through free play. At stake, we argue, is children’s agency. Yet free play is under threat in both digital and nondigital contexts. Recognising that different configurations of the contexts in which play occurs affect whether and how children can play on their own terms, this article draws on the long tradition of research on child-led or free play in natural or nondigital contexts to explore children’s play in digital contexts. Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, we examine the qualities of children’s play and the factors that shape it so as to reimagine, together with children, parents and professionals working with children, a digital environment that could better serve children’s best interests. The findings show that the qualities of children’s play are strikingly similar in digital and nondigital contexts but that children find certain social-technical configurations restrictive of their agency and freedom to develop their identity through play in digital contexts. Based on children’s implicit and explicit calls for change, we propose a ‘playful by design’ approach by which designers and providers of digital products and services could urge those with the powers to redesign digital environments to prioritise digital features that promote children’s imaginative, social, open-ended, risk-taking and stimulating play while limiting the risks to children’s safety, privacy and self-determination that arise from commercial interests.
Process optimization for green synthesis of iron nanoparticles by extract of fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) seeds

Background: The green synthesis of nanoparticles using plants presents important advantages over other biological systems. Natural compounds present in plant extracts can reduce metal ions to nanoparticles in a single-step green synthesis process. Seeds of fenugreek with various compounds and antioxidant activity are suitable for green synthesis. Objective: In this study, the performance of fenugreek seeds extract was evaluated for iron nanoparticles production. Methods: The fenugreek ( Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) seeds were extracted with a distilled water solution at environmental temperature and this aqueous extract was used for the iron nanoparticles synthesis. Response surface methodology was applied to optimize nanoparticle production by considering three independent variables: the extract to metal ion ratio (1.5-6.5), incubation time (30-90 min), and temperature (35-65 °C). Results: Mixing the fenugreek seeds extract and iron salt solution with a volume ratio of 1.5 at 36.5 °C for 90 min led to the optimization of iron nanoparticle production with the narrowest size distribution. At the optimized condition, the nanoparticle size was in the range of 20-40 nm. Conclusion: Iron nanoparticles were successfully synthesized with fenugreek seed extract. Physical parameters such as time, temperature, and mixing volume ratio of the extract to metal ions can control the average size of the synthesized green iron nanoparticles.
Femoral Bone Strength Prediction Using Isotopological B-Spline-Transformed Meshes

Finite element (FE) analysis can predict proximal human femoral strength. Automated meshing and identifying subregions with high relevance for strength prediction could reduce the laborious modeling process. Mesh morphing based on free-form registration provides a high level of automation and inherently creates isotopological meshes. The goals of this study were to investigate if FE models based on free-form transformed meshes predict experimental femoral strength as well as manually created FE models and to identify regions and parameters with highest correlation to femoral strength. Subject-specific meshes and FE models were created from a set of quantitative CT images (QCT) using a B-Spline registration-based algorithm. Correlation of FE-predicted bone strength and local parameters with experimental bone strength were investigated. FE models based on transformed meshes closely resembled manually created counterparts, with equally strong correlations with experimental bone strength (R2=0.81 vs. R2=0.80). The regional analysis showed strong correlations (0.6<R2<0.7) of experimental strength with local parameters. No subregion or parameter lead to stronger correlation than FE predicted bone strength. B-spline-transformed meshes can be used to create FE models, able to predict femoral bone strength and simplify FE model generation. They can be used to reveal relations of local parameters with failure load.
Implementing Remote Collaboration in a Virtual Patient Platform: Usability Study

Background Learning with virtual patients is highly popular for fostering clinical reasoning in medical education. However, little learning with virtual patients is done collaboratively, despite the potential learning benefits of collaborative versus individual learning. Objective This paper describes the implementation of student collaboration in a virtual patient platform. Our aim was to allow pairs of students to communicate remotely with each other during virtual patient learning sessions. We hypothesized that we could provide a collaborative tool that did not impair the usability of the system compared to individual learning and that this would lead to better diagnostic accuracy for the pairs of students. Methods Implementing the collaboration tool had five steps: (1) searching for a suitable software library, (2) implementing the application programming interface, (3) performing technical adaptations to ensure high-quality connections for the users, (4) designing and developing the user interface, and (5) testing the usability of the tool in 270 virtual patient sessions. We compared dyad to individual diagnostic accuracy and usability with the 10-item System Usability Scale. Results We recruited 137 students who worked on 6 virtual patients. Out of 270 virtual patient sessions per group (45 dyads times 6 virtual patients, and 47 students working individually times 6 virtual patients minus 2 randomly selected deleted sessions) the students made successful diagnoses in 143/270 sessions (53%, SD 26%) when working alone and 192/270 sessions (71%, SD 20%) when collaborating (P=.04, η2=0.12). A usability questionnaire given to the students who used the collaboration tool showed a usability score of 82.16 (SD 1.31), representing a B+ grade. Conclusions The collaboration tool provides a generic approach for collaboration that can be used with most virtual patient systems. The collaboration tool helped students diagnose virtual patients and had good overall usability. More broadly, the collaboration tool will provide an array of new possibilities for researchers and medical educators alike to design courses for collaborative learning with virtual patients.
AN APPLICATION OF DIRECTIONAL FRACTAL PARAMETER VEHICLE LICENSE PLATE LOCATION

An algorithm for locating in practical application is proposed,by which texture character of license plate is described in the view of fractal.Eight fractal parameters in four directions are constructed based on Discrete Fractal Brownian Increase Random(DFBIR) field image model.Horizontal fractal parameter βis selected as pre-processing parameter through texture analysis of vehicle license plate. 'βdistribution map' of original picture is calculated as pre-processing map,and license plate is located quickly by simple image-segmentation methods.The results show that the algorithm is suitable for describing license-plate texture character,and the locating method is easy and effective.
Patients’ Health Literacy in Rehabilitation: Comparison between the Estimation of Patients and Health Care Professionals

The term health literacy (HL) comprises the handling of health information and disease-specific and generic self-management skills, especially relevant for patients with chronic conditions. Health care professionals (HCPs) should correctly identify patients’ communication needs and their HL levels. Therefore, the aims of the study were (1) to determine inpatient medical rehabilitation patients’ HL based on self-assessment, (2) to evaluate changes from admission to discharge, (3) to identify HCPs estimation of patients’ HL, and (4) to compare the estimated patient HL by patients and HCPs. A combined cross-sectional and longitudinal study was conducted in an orthopedic rehabilitation center in Germany. The multidimensional Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) was filled in by patients (admission, discharge). An adapted version was administered to HCPs (n = 32) in order to assess HL of individual patients. Data from 287 patients were used for the longitudinal analysis, and comparison was based on n = 278 cases with at least two HL estimations. The results showed a significant increase in HL in five of nine scales with small effect sizes. Moreover, HCPs mostly provided higher scores than patients, and agreement was poor to fair. Differences between the HL estimation might lead to communication problems, and communication training could be useful.
Optimization of damping pad distribution on body-in-white car structure

Structure-born noise is one of the most important contributors to the interior noise in a vehicle cabin. This can be effectively reduced by placing damping pads with special material properties along the chassis and on the large, radiating panels. This paper proposes a new methodology for the optimization of placing these pads as a part of a full vehicle acoustic simulation in Actran Virtual SEA. With this new strategy, it was possible to reduce the among of damping pads on a real car structure by 33 % while keeping the same acoustic performance. This was validated by investigating the mean velocity of the floor panel in two load cases and compared to the original damping pad layout to the optimized one.
Simulation Strategy For Impact Against AReinforced Concrete Industrial Building

In the context of nuclear projects, Electricite de France (EDF) studies the mechanical consequences of impact loads on reinforced concrete shell structures. We developed a numerical methodology to simulate this kind of accident. Both local behaviour in the impact zone and vibration of the whole structure are considered even if they belong to different fields: during impact, the local behaviour is a fast dynamics issue with strong material non-linearity whereas the structure shaking is a slow dynamics linear elastic problem which is similar to a seismic analysis. To treat properly the physical phenomena taking place on different time scales, our modelling strategy is based on a domain decomposition method implemented into EUROPLEXUS, a fast dynamic software. The non-linear local behaviour is described by a material law using resultant shell variables and accounts for plasticity and damage.
Biofilm on Toothbrushes of Children with Cystic Fibrosis: A Potential Source of Lung Re-Infection after Antibiotic Treatment?

Frequent recurrent lung infections result in irreversible lung damage in children with cystic fibrosis (CF). This study aimed to determine if toothbrushes contain biofilms of pathogens, and act as potential reservoirs for lung re-infection following antibiotic treatment of acute exacerbations. Toothbrushes were collected from children with CF of lung infection before, during and after antibiotic treatment. Toothbrushes were rinsed with sterile saline and cultured. Bacterial isolates from toothbrushes were identified by 16s rRNA gene sequencing and compared with isolates from a sputum sample of the same patient. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to visually confirm the presence of bacterial biofilms and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) combined with Live/Dead stain to confirm bacterial viability. Large numbers of bacteria and biofilms were present on all toothbrushes. SEM confirmed the presence of biofilms and CLSM confirmed bacterial viability on all toothbrushes. Pathogens identified on toothbrushes from children before and during antibiotics treatment were in concordance with the species found in sputum samples. Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus was able to be cultured from children’s toothbrushes despite antibiotic treatment. Toothbrushes were shown to be contaminated with viable pathogens and biofilms before and during antibiotic treatment and could be a potential source of lung re-infections.
Real-Time Fault Diagnosis for EVs With Multilabel Feature Selection and Sliding Window Control

Real-time fault diagnosis on vehicles can effectively avoid potential accidents, which, however, is difficult and challenging to be widely deployed due to the low computational capability and limited data storage of electric vehicles (EVs). To address this issue, we propose a vehicle-mounted fault diagnosis system with low computational complexity and small data storage, for achieving real-time monitoring of vehicle status. To facilitate the accurate and optimized feature selection, we had been collecting 6.52-GB real data from three EVs in 12 months. Motivated by those data, we first propose a multilabel feature selection algorithm to obtain the feature weights, based on which the optimal number of features is then calculated through the backpropagation neural network (BPNN), thus minimizing the computational cost of real-time fault diagnosis regarding sample dimensions. To further simplify the fault diagnosis system, i.e., reducing the minimum required capacity of data storage, we design a real-time diagnosis sliding window (RDSW) where the window moves forward as new samples arrive and the stale data outside the window are discarded. In particular, we calculate the optimal size of RDSW, which controls the minimum required number of samples to guarantee the accuracy of real-time fault diagnosis. Owing to the mechanism of RDSW, vehicles no longer need to store massive data to guarantee the accuracy of real-time fault diagnosis. In addition, the results of real-time fault diagnosis at each vehicle can be shared with other vehicles in cooperative intelligent transportation systems (C-ITS). Finally, comprehensive simulation is conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed diagnosis system in terms of accuracy, complexity and storage capacity.
Issues and Challenges in Securing the Cloud Environment: A Literature Review

The emerging awareness and implementations of cloud services and its underlying technologies instigate the urge for security requirements being up to date, despite of the fact that this technology and its application are not latest. It is still challenging to assess what types of requirements have been researched most, and which are still under-researched even though cloud computing security requirements have been inscribed in publications earlier as well. A systematic literature review has been carried out by this paper by describing cloud computing security requirements from publications between January 2012 and December 2013. Requirements will be categorized in a framework and their frequency of research will be assessed by this. Changes will be identified in the assessment of requirements and proposed solutions. It has been observed that the most researched subfactors of security requirements are: Access Control, Data Integrity and Privacy & Confidentiality. Most under-researched areas are Recovery and Prosecution, with Non-repudiation and Physical Protection closely followed. Instead of the new solutions several enhancements and nested methodologies in current approaches were identified.
Usability Evaluation of an Online Resource Designed to Help Educators Recognize and Respond Appropriately to a Concussion

Concussions are serious brain injuries that can significantly influence the brain's ability to function at its normal capacity. Following a concussion, it is common for students to experience difficulties in the classroom. If unrecognized and untreated, these problems have the potential to significantly impact the student's academic career as a whole. By understanding concussive neurological issues, educators can use their expertise to create flexible, temporary, and fluid academic adjustments allowing the student to continue to learn during recovery from a concussion. A private school on Oahu created a website to provide instruction and resources for educators to help them to recognize and respond appropriately to a concussion. This usability study evaluated the content and organization of the website. Usability participants navigated the website to complete four tasks that the target audience might encounter. Content and navigation of the website were well received and feedback for improved ease-of-use was discussed.
Meso e macrofauna de solo cultivado com milho e irrigado com água residuária da suinocultura

The use of soil fauna as bioindicator of anthropogenic and environmental changes has been growing in recent years. However, there are still few long-term studies relating these organisms to application of organic wastes to the soil. This study aimed at evaluating the effects of swine wastewater (SW) application with or without mineral fertilization on soil meso and macrofauna within two cycles of maize harvest. We used four doses of SW (0, 100, 200, 300 m3ha-1), which was treated in an anaerobic digester in the first year and raw waste thereafter. We performed 24 experimental plots, among which, 12 underwent mineral fertilization. Pitfall traps were set up in each plot to sample soil fauna. Data were analyzed by multivariate techniques as NMS and PERMANOVA. We concluded that SW application, both treated and raw, had no influence on soil fauna, even if mineral fertilizer was or not used. Chemical soil parameters had affected soil meso- and macro-fauna only as years pass.
Dispersion Parameter Extension of Precise Generalized Linear Mixed Model Asymptotics

We extend a recently established asymptotic normality theorem for generalized linear mixed models to include the dispersion parameter. The new results show that the maximum likelihood estimators of all model parameters have asymptotically normal distributions with asymptotic mutual independence between ﬁxed effects, random effects covariance and dispersion parameters. The dispersion parameter maximum likelihood estimator has a particularly simple asymptotic distribution which enables straightforward valid likelihood-based inference.
DYNAMICAL SIMULATION APPARATUS FOR MARINE PROPELLER LOAD

This paper presented an experimental apparatus for dynamically simulating marine propeller load.The apparatus can simulate the stable and dynamic property of marine propeller that works under different conditions,and provide verisimilar shaft load for propulsive motor.The main body of the system is a torque servo system.A torque sensor installed at the shaft is used to provide feedback signal.The paper built the mathematic model of the system,and designed the torque servo system.The simulation result based on the designed apparatus is consistent with the response of the propeller load.
New Core-Shell Nanostructures for FRET Studies: Synthesis, Characterization, and Quantitative Analysis

This work describes the synthesis and characterization of new core-shell material designed for Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) studies. Synthesis, structural and optical properties of core-shell nanostructures with a large number of two kinds of fluorophores bound to the shell are presented. As fluorophores, strongly fluorescent rhodamine 101 and rhodamine 110 chloride were selected. The dyes exhibit significant spectral overlap between acceptor absorption and donor emission spectra, which enables effective FRET. Core-shell nanoparticles strongly differing in the ratio of donors to acceptor numbers were prepared. This leads to two different interesting cases: typical single-step FRET or multistep energy migration preceding FRET. The single-step FRET model that was designed and presented by some of us recently for core-shell nanoparticles is herein experimentally verified. Very good agreement between the analytical expression for donor fluorescence intensity decay and experimental data was obtained, which confirmed the correctness of the model. Multistep energy migration between donors preceding the final transfer to the acceptor can also be successfully described. In this case, however, experimental data are compared with the results of Monte Carlo simulations, as there is no respective analytical expression. Excellent agreement in this more general case evidences the usefulness of this numerical method in the design and prediction of the properties of the synthesized core-shell nanoparticles labelled with multiple and chemically different fluorophores.
Design, Development, and Performance of a Turbine Research Facility to Study Rotor Stator Interaction Effects

A description of the Axial Flow Turbine Research Facility (AFTRF) installed at the Turbomachinery Laboratory of the Pennsylvania State University is presented in this paper. The facility diameter is 91.66 cm (3 feet) and the hub-to-tip ratio of the blading is 0.73. The flow path consists of turbulence generating grid, 23 nozzle vanes and 29 rotor blades followed by outlet guide vanes. The blading design, carried out by General Electric Company personnel, embodies modem HP turbine design philosophy, loading and flow coefficient, reaction, aspect ratio, and blade turning angles, all within current aircraft engine design turbine practice. State-of-the-art quasi-3D blade design techniques were used to design the vane and the blade shapes. The vanes and blades are heavily instrumented with fast response pressure, shear stress, and velocity probes and have provision for flow visualization and laser doppler anemometer measurement. Furthermore, provision has been made for detailed nozzle wake, rotor wake and boundary layer surveys. A 150 channel slip ring unit is used for transmitting the rotor data to a stationary instrumentation system.
Modeling and simulation of dissolution and erosion of porous solids

OF THE THESIS Modeling and Simulation of Dissolution and Erosion of Porous Solids by Daniel Braido Thesis Director: Professor Alberto Cuitino Tablet dissolution modeling has seen multiple efforts from both empirical and physical approaches. We present an expandable 3-D Cartesian framework for modeling many of the physical processes involved in tablet dissolution, which allows for powerful model manipulation. The primary focus of this framework is the way in which the moving boundaries are handled, while the internal mechanisms represent one possible set of physical process interaction. The effects of external fluid shear and internal density profiles are compared for several cases including active and inactive internal processes.