Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vegetation management along roadside and railroad right-of-ways

Vegetation along railroad right-of-ways requires season-long management for motorist safety and efficient transport of freight. Traditionally, residual herbicides are applied early in the growing season followed by one or more POST applications as needed. Field studies in central Illinois (three) and Missouri (one) were established in 2015 and 2016 to compare single versus multiple application timings of residual herbicides from fall through the following summer. The objective was to optimize the timing of residual herbicides to minimize weeds over the greatest duration of the growing season. Two residual programs were compared at four timings: flumioxazin + pyroxasulfone + aminocyclopyrachlor + chlorsulfuron (F+P+A+C) and indaziflam + aminocyclopyrachlor + chlorsulfuron (I+A+C); glyphosate + triclopyr were included to control emerged weeds. Each residual program was applied at four timings: fall (full rate), fall followed by spring (split rates with half-rates each time) spring (full rate), and spring followed by summer (split rates). In early spring, split and full rates of herbicides resulted in >85% bare ground. Spring/summer split applications resulted in the most consistent weed control according to area under percent weed cover (AUPWC) throughout the growing season in all locations, ranging between 632 to 3065 and 1271 to 3672% days for F+P+A+C and I+A+C, respectively. Fall application with half-rates of an effective residual program delayed the necessary timing of spring half-rates up to 40 days
CROSS - INFECTION CONTROL IN DENTISTRY: A REVIEW

The dental environment is associated with significant amount of risk for exposure to various micro-organisms. Infection control is one of the prime elements of a successful dental practice. There are many infectious diseases that can be transmitted in a dental environment. New diseases with serious consequences and a high rate of transmission have evolved in the recent past. Infection control is directed at prevention to exposure of such infections and also to prevent it being transferred from person to person. The universal infection control policy considers that ‘Every patient should be considered Infectious’. This review article presents various aspects of cross-infection control in dental environment.
Vietnam rural financial market- Fact dianostics and the policy implications for rural development of Vietnam

The development of Vietnam rural sector has been given attention by different orientations and policy frameworks, of which rural finance is the key tool, notably the Decree 41 on cred- it for rural sector. The Vietnam rural financial sector has been growing and making significant contribution to its rural development by a rapid expansion of outreach and available fund sources. However, there have been remaining problems that are very likely to hinder the sector from its further development. Such problems are: (1) there is a lack of responsive and adequate financial services in rural areas; (2) a significant number of the poor households still do not have access to any microfinance services, to name a few. Thus, this paper is intented to focus on two main issues. The first is to analyze the causes of such problems, and the second is to pro- vide recommendations that are strongly expected to overcome such problems to enhance Vietnam rural development in the new decade with the Development Millenium Goal.
Taxonomic Classification of Diplazium molokaiense, a Fern Endemic to Hawaii, Using Molecular and Morphological Characters

Diplazium molokaiense is an endangered fern species endemic to Hawaii. There are only an estimated 61 individuals left in the wild. Taxonomic classification of this species is an important element to its conservation. Using the following morphological characters: sori size and shape, scale size and shape, and frond shape, D. molokaiense was preliminarily placed into the Diplazium genus. Six regions (rbcL, matK, atpA, atpB, trnLF, and rps4-trnS) of the chloroplast genome were amplified and sequenced using Sangersequencing. Sequences for outgroup taxa and 20 Diplazium species were downloaded from GenBank and used to infer a phylogeny. Our data provide evidence for the phylogenetic placement of D. molokaiense and can aid in its conservation.
Investigation of the Basis for Persistent Porin Serotypes of Neisseria Gonorrhoeae in Community Infections

Title of Thesis: Investigation of the Basis for Persistent Porin Serotypes of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Community Infections Lotisha Erin Garvin, Master Degree, 2006 Thesis directed by: Ann Jerse, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology Uniformed Services University Neisseria gonorrhoeae porin (por), a major outer membrane protein, has been studied extensively in vaccine research and is the basis of many gonococcal typing schemes. Epidemiological studies which utilize the porin-based typing method called variable region (VR) typing have shown certain VR types of the porB1A allele occur more frequently. Additionally, certain types may persist within communities as suggested by one study in which two P1A VR types were represented over ten years among isolates from two Baltimore clinics. Here we examined a set of isolates from this study to address the hypothesis that certain porin types give strains a functional advantage. Alternatively, porin may just be a marker of more fit clones. To investigate the issue of clonality, we utilized pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Isolates of the first and second most common VR types (1;2;1;1;1 and 1;1;1;1,4;1, respectively) fell into a total of six different PFGE clusters, which were > 85% similar in band patterns. From these results, we concluded that a porin-mediated advantage may exist in these strains. The best characterized porin-mediated phenotype that may confer a fitness advantage is the capacity of some porins to mediate resistance to the bactericidal activity of normal human serum. Accordingly, we performed bactericidal assays to determine whether there is a link between VR type and serum resistance. Fifteen of 17 (88%) isolates with the two
Training and safety: potentially lethal blue-on-blue encounters

ABSTRACT Potentially lethal blue-on-blue (i.e. officer-on-officer) encounters result in the use-of-force against an unidentified officer, such as an off-duty or undercover officer (OD/UC), and have not been empirically investigated. A vignette involving an ambiguous situation involving a plainclothes individual with a gun and 6-item survey were used to determine (a) how oﬃcers would respond to ensure the safety of those on scene and (b) how well responses from participants with blue-on-blue training or lived experience adhered to recommendations from the New York Task Force on Police-on-Police Shootings. A secondary aim was to investigate near misses (i.e. almost using force against a fellow officer in the field). In the vignette, a uniformed officer arrives at a scene where one plainclothes individual is holding another plainclothes individual at gunpoint. Thematic analysis revealed variables perceived to maximize safety. Less than half of the sample received blue-on-blue training, and exposure to training was not significantly related to previous recommendations. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
Secrecy Performance Analysis of Wireless Communications in the Presence of UAV Jammer and Randomly Located UAV Eavesdroppers

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been undergoing fast development for providing broader signal coverage and more extensive surveillance capabilities in military and civilian applications. Due to the broadcast nature of the wireless signal and the openness of the space, UAV eavesdroppers (UEDs) pose a potential threat to ground communications. In this paper, we consider the communications of a legitimate ground link in the presence of friendly jamming and UEDs within a finite area of space. The spatial distribution of the UEDs obeying a uniform binomial point process (BPP) is used to characterize the randomness of the UEDs. The ground link is assumed to experience log-distance path loss and Rayleigh fading, while free space path loss with/without the averaged excess path loss due to the environment is used for the air-to-ground/air-to-air links. A piecewise function is proposed to approximate the line-of-sight (LoS) probability for the air-to-ground links, which provides a better approximation than using the existing sigmoid-based fitting. The analytical expression for the secure connection probability (SCP) of the legitimate ground link in the presence of non-colluding UEDs is derived. The analysis reveals some useful trends in the SCP as a function of the transmit signal to jamming power ratio, the locations of the UAV jammer, and the height of UAVs.
Mother’s Role and Knowledge in Young Children Feeding Practices on the Nutritional Status of Infant and Toddler

Adequate nutrition, beginning in early stages of life, is crucial to ensure good physical and mental development as well as long-term health. Efforts in improving nutritional status in Indonesia are mostly focused to the vulnerable groups, mainly infant (baby under one year old) and toodler (baby under two years old). Childhood underweight and overweight are an important public health problem, as these conditions tend to have a chronic condition that cause a wide range of future morbidity. Overweight in young children is associated with future cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and psychosocial problems and stunted children suffer from impaired growth with permanent consequences in their adult life that face a high risk of morbidity and mortality. In this case, parents (especially mothers as the role models) are mostly responsible on healthy eating behaviors of their young children. With refers to this empirical fact, the objective of this study was to assess the association of mother’s role and knowledge in feeding young children practices on the nutritional status of their infants and toddlers. Analytical cross-sectional study was used in this study. The sampling technique was purposive sampling and a total of samples were 136 mothers. Data were processed and analyzed by using a computer program with a chi-square test at a significance level of 95%. Overall, results of the statistical test showed that there were no significant associations between role and knowledge of the mothers and adequate nutritional status of their infants and toddlers at a p-value of 0.544> 0.05 and p-value of 0.749 > 0.05 respectively. Based on results of this study, more intensive nutrition intervention programs are necessary to prevent poor nutritional status of young children particularly for infant and toddler, conducting more active coordination in health cross-programs, and improving nutrition counseling programs and suitable health services for the concerned public.
Occupational science research and practice: A brief report on European perspectives based on an online-survey

ABSTRACT This paper reports the results of a survey conducted by the Occupational Science Europe Research Committee (OSERC), a subsidiary of Occupational Science Europe (OSE). Its aim was to explore perceptions of the relationship between occupational science and occupational therapy in Europe, and the state of the art in European occupational science research, to inform OSERC about the future development of occupational science in Europe. Fifty-four people with different practice, academic, and research expertise from 15 countries, across Europe and beyond, completed the online survey. Qualitative data from open-ended questions were analysed using Shkedi’s (2010) three-stage approach to develop a concept mapping categories tree. Identified categories were linked to the results of quantitative data from closed questions. The analysis generated three main themes: ‘occupational science is the study of human occupation’; ‘relationship between occupational science and occupational therapy’ and ‘breadth and variety of research’. The findings reveal a broad understanding of occupational science as a growing discipline and different perspectives on the relationship between occupational science and occupational therapy. Along with growing perspectives on occupation and the range of research and network activities evidenced in this survey, Europe, with its diversity in culture and language, has the potential to add new perspectives and theories to the discourses within occupational science. Facilitation of networking across European occupational scientists through an increase of intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogues and research are future concerns of OSERC.
Bridging the Theory-Practice Gap of Laplacian Linear Solvers

Author(s): Deweese, Kevin | Advisor(s): Gilbert, John R | Abstract: Solving Laplacian linear systems is an important task in a variety of practical and theoretical applications. Laplacians of structured graphs, such as two and three dimensional meshes, have long been important in finite element analysis and image processing. More recently, solving linear systems on the Laplacians of large graphs without mesh-like structure has emerged as an important computational task in network analysis. A number of theoretical solvers with good asymptotic complexity have been proposed over the past couple decades, but these ideas have not made their way into practical solvers. Nor is it clear that a class of challenging problems exist which would benefit from asymptotically fast solvers. Yet it seems that one of the following should be true: either existing solvers have tighter Big-O bounds than currently believed, or there are some problems where recent asymptotically fast (but theoretical) algorithms should be useful.This work considers the latter possibility; we aim to bridge the gap between theoretical and practical Laplacian algorithms by experimenting with Laplacian solvers and by searching for difficult test problems. We examine the performance of existing algorithms for solving Laplacian linear systems and identify the strengths and weaknesses of different methods on different test problems. We perform an extensive evaluation of the KOSZ solver, one of the recently proposed O(m) Laplacian algorithms. We test various extensions of KOSZ which we propose to try and improve its performance in practice. We introduce heavy path graphs, a novel class of graphs for experimenting with Laplacian solvers.To challenge existing solver implementations, we propose the use of genetic algorithms to create difficult test graphs for existing solvers. At the same time, these algorithms could be used to find graphs with good performance for recently proposed solvers. Searching for graphs which satisfy both objectives could be instrumental towards bridging the theory-practice gap of Laplacian solvers. We demonstrate the successful evolution of graphs which are difficult for conjugate gradient with diagonal scaling, while relatively simple for KOSZ. Such graph evolution techniques could be useful for finding graphs with a variety of combinatorial properties.
Nonlinear forced vibration of graphene/piezoelectric sandwich nanoplates subjected to a mechanical shock

The nonlinear frequency response of graphene/piezoelectric sandwich nanoplates under the electric voltage exerted on piezoelectric layer and a shock force pulse is the objective of the present paper. First, using von Karman nonlinear relations, Kelvin–Voigt model, piezoelectric nonlocal elasticity theory and Hamilton's principle, the nonlinear governing differential equation of motion is derived. In the second step, to transform the partial differential equations to the ordinary differential ones, Galerkin technique is employed. Then, governing equation is solved based on multiple scale method. At the end, modulation equation of graphene/piezoelectric sandwich nanoplate is obtained. Emphasizing the effect of the electric voltage and the shock force pulse, the results for fundamental frequency response are obtained. The results emphasize that the exciting loads can cause multivaluedness in frequency response and intensify the jump phenomenon. Also, they can be effective to amplify the vibration behavior of the structure to make resonance. In addition, the thickness of piezoelectric layer plays a significant role in nonlinear frequency response.
An Extensive Approach to Features Detection and Description for 2-D Range Data Using Active B-splines

This letter presents three novel contributions for the two-dimensional laser scan data. First, a low-level point feature detector for stable interest point detection. Second, an approach for high-level B-splines features extraction, and finally, a local descriptor for the interest points based on the shape context representation of the uniformly distributed points on the B-splines features. The clues of stable interest points obtained from the detector are used in the B-splines features extraction from the scan data, which enables lightweight and accurate mapping of the environment using fewer control points instead of scan data points. This letter also proposes benchmark metrics to evaluate the performance of the extracted high-level features approach in comparison with the state-of-the-art methodology. A robust descriptor for the interest points offers an efficient association and correspondence matching. Consistent results compared with the state-of-the-art FALKO-BSC and FLIRT-β-Grid features in experiments with standard datasets prove the stability of our proposed interest point detector and the proficiency of the descriptor. The results of efficient localization using the pair are also presented.
The Influence of Investment on Generation 1.5

This study seeks to look at the relationship between Generation 1.5 language learners, and the investment that is made. It reflects on the influence that student language investment in an English-speaking high school has on the language identity and social capital of Generation 1.5. Following the learning patterns of three different immigrant students, readers will observe the differences and effects of investment in school programs, as well as the involvement and availability of ESL programs in public school systems. 3 RYAN | THE INFLUENCE OF INVESTMENT ON GENERATION 1.5 The Influence of Investment on Generation 1.5
Coupled recursive estimation for online interactive perception of articulated objects

We present online multi-modal perception systems for extracting kinematic and dynamic models of articulated objects from physical interactions with the environment. The systems rely on a RGB-D stream, contact wrenches, and proprioception. The proposed systems share an algorithmic foundation: they are based on an architecture of coupled recursive estimation processes. We present and advocate this architecture as a general, versatile, and robust solution for online interactive perception problems. We validate the architecture in extensive experiments to extract kinematic models interactively, varying the appearance, size, structure, and dynamic properties of objects for different tasks and under different environmental conditions. In addition, we experimentally show that the information acquired by the online perception systems enables robot manipulation of articulated objects. Furthermore, we discuss the relationship between the proposed architecture for robot perception and insights about biological perception systems.
Similarity-based knowledge graph queries for recommendation retrieval

This paper investigates how similarity-based retrieval strategies can be combined with graph queries to enable users or system providers to explore repositories in the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud more thoroughly. For this purpose, we developed a content-based recommender system (RS). It relies on concept annotations of Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) vocabularies and a SPARQL-based query language that facilitates advanced and personalized requests for openly available and interlinked datasets. We have comprehensively evaluated the novel search strategies in several test cases and example application domains (i.e., travel search and multimedia retrieval). The results of the web-based online experiments showed that our approaches increase the recall and diversity of recommendations or at least provide a competitive alternative strategy of resource access when conventional methods do not provide helpful suggestions. The findings may be of use for Linked Data-enabled recommender systems (LDRS) as well as for semantic search engines that can consume LOD resources.
The Frequency and Usage of Foreign Language Learning Strategies: A Comparative Study

The aim of the paper is to explain the frequency and usage of the foreign language learning strategies (LLS) as one of the very important preconditions for the successful individual learning at the university level. Both efficacy and the teaching quality of the English language represent significant factors of the university learning improvement. Furthermore, the students’ competency depends on the quality and the achievement of the English language educational tasks both in the language area and in reading the English literature for specific purposes. Reading the foreign language literature would contribute to students’ effective dealing with the future professional tasks. The main purpose of the research was to determine the frequency of using the language learning strategies in learning English as a foreign language at the Faculty of Education in Jagodina and Faculty of Philology and Arts in Kragujevac. The focus of this research was to compare two groups of students in terms of LLS usage and to explain the differences that emerged. The potential of the research results lies in the prepositions of teaching the language learning strategies at the university level with
Combinatory Feeding Method for Mobile Applications

This letter presents a method for implementing frequency reconfigurability without lumped elements. The method is based on feeding an antenna element simultaneously at different locations with differently delayed and amplified signals and dynamically manipulating the number of active feeds. To demonstrate the concept, an example design of a handset antenna that is compatible with most modern mobile phones is presented. The proposed antenna geometry is simple and practical, consisting only of a folded rectangular sheet and four feeding points. The simulated efficiency of the antenna is higher than <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${{50\%}}$</tex-math></inline-formula> from nearly 0.7 to 7 GHz with the highest efficiency being above <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${{90\%}}$</tex-math></inline-formula> in <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times 2$</tex-math></inline-formula> multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) operation.
Identification, evolution and functional inference on the cold-shock domain protein family in Pak-choi (Brassica rapa ssp. chinensis) and Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa ssp. pekinensis)

ABSTRACT The cold shock domain proteins (CSPs) play important roles in plant developmental processes and stress responses. Multiple sequence alignments found that these CSPs all have a cold shock domain fragment. Phylogenetic tree analysis found that most BcCSPs were more closely related to BrCSPs than other crops. Furthermore, we observed the conserved intron/exon structural patterns of these CSP genes in Pak-choi, Chinese cabbage and Arabidopsis, all motif were observed to be conserved among several boxes subgroups. Comparative analysis of expression patterns of CSP genes in Pak-choi, Chinese cabbage and Arabidopsis suggest that the CSP genes play various roles in plants through qRT-PCR analysis. Further, the CSP expression pattern in different tissues (roots, stems and leaves) of Chinese cabbage was also studied. This study showed that these gene family members might play roles in abiotic stresses responses, and might benefit from their functional characterization and utilization in the resistance engineering of Pak-choi and Chinese cabbage.