Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The antecedents of supply chain performance: Business analytics, business process orientation, and information systems support

This study investigates the impact of business analytics (BA) on supply chain performance (SCP) in Saudi industrial companies. It also investigates the mediating impact of information systems supporting (ISS) and business process orientation (BPO). A total of 373 respondents working in 38 manufacturing companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) were selected. A scale with acceptable validity and reliability indicators was developed to measure the study variables. The results indicated significant indirect impact of the business analytics (planning, supply, make, delivery) on supply chain performance as ISS and BPO mediate this impact. Based on the results, a set of recommendations were proposed, industrial companies in KSA must develop the analytical capabilities for managers by increasing awareness of the benefits achieved from using business analytics approaches. It is a critical precedent for supply chain SC efficiency, and for companies to enhance their analytical capabilities with good ISS and process orientation to utilize in analyzing vast amounts of internal and external data. Directions for future research are also presented in this paper.
An analysis of responses on Twitter to the English Premier League’s support for the anti-homophobia rainbow laces campaign

Abstract This article examines the responses by users of the social media platform, Twitter, to the English Premier League’s (EPL) support, via four tweets from their official Twitter account, for the annual Rainbow Laces anti-homophobia in football campaign. Locating our analysis within the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda of the EPL, the four tweets received a total of 24,997 ‘likes’, 4,951 retweets, and 1,865 comments. Of those comments directly responding to the campaign and wider CSR agenda of the EPL (n = 407), 236 contained supportive comments and 171 contained negative comments. Despite support for the Rainbow Laces campaign, the comments also reflected some resistance to the overall CSR agenda of the EPL. Here, responses called for a greater focus on issues outside of LGBT+, such as mental health and reducing the financial burden placed on fans to consume football.
Entrepreneurship and Work Motivation Training Towards Entrepreneurial Interest in Arowana Fish Pond

The research objectives are to describe the effect of entrepreneurship training towards entrepreneurial interest, to describe the effect of work motivation towards entrepreneurial interest, and to describe the effect of entrepreneurship training and work motivation towards entrepreneurial interest. The business world needs strong young entrepreneurs, especially in the era of globalization, persistence skill, strong interest attitude in being able to compete in business world. Training or practice is alternative solution that can be chosen to build the mindset of young generation of Selimbau. Entrepreneurship is cultivated through the spirit of entrepreneurship, the ability to take risks, the ability to read opportunity. According to Kuratko (2018:5), Entrepreneurship must be done, tried, implemented because it is a dynamic process of vision, change and creation. Entrepreneurial interest arises from oneself or will not arise by itself suddenly from within the individual. Interest can grow or arise in a person through an external process or influence. The method used in this research is ex post facto of entrepreneurial training variables (16 items), work motivation (14 items) and entrepreneurial interest (15), with population of 51. The approach used is qualitative and multiple regression analysis.
An experimental feasibility study of pipeline corrosion pit detection using a piezoceramic time reversal mirror

Corrosion pits on pipelines lead to the formation of small holes, which cause further pipeline damage and even catastrophic consequences. Since many pipelines are located underground, the detection of corrosion pits on pipelines in real time is still an engineering challenge. In this paper, an experimental feasibility study on pipeline corrosion pit detection using the time reversal technique with a piezoceramic transducer as a time reversal mirror was investigated. A specimen of steel pipeline section was fabricated with an artificially drilled hole, which was to mimic a corrosion pit. By gradually increasing the depth of the hole, the evolution of the corrosion pit on the pipeline was simulated and studied. Two piezoceramic transducers were employed to generate a stress wave to propagate along the pipeline and to detect the propagated stress wave. With both the properties of sensing and actuating functions, a piezoceramic transducer was used as a time reversal mirror, which first detected the propagated stress wave signal and then sent ‘back’ the time-reversed signal as a propagating stress wave. With the inherent auto-focusing property of the time reversal technique, the detected time-reversed stress wave had a distinct focused peak. A corrosion pit on a pipeline, as a structural defect, reduces the energy of the focused signal received by the piezoceramic sensor and the attenuation ratio of the focused signal depends strongly on the degree of corrosion depth. Experimental results show that the amplitudes of the focused signal peak decrease with the increase of corrosion pit depth and we can use the peak amplitude of the focused signal to determine the state of pipeline corrosion. The time reversal based method proposed in this paper shows the potential to quantitatively monitor the damage degree of corrosion pits on pipelines in real time.
Traumatic Brain Injury and Early Onset Dementia in Post 9-11 Veterans

ABSTRACT Objectives To assess traumatic brain injury (TBI)-related risks factors for early-onset dementia (EOD). Background Younger Post-9/11 Veterans may be at elevated risk for EOD due to high rates of TBI in early/mid adulthood. Few studies have explored the longitudinal relationship between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the emergence of EOD subtypes. Methods This matched case-control study used data from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to identify Veterans with EOD. To address the low positive predictive value (PPV = 0.27) of dementia algorithms in VHA records, primary outcomes were Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Logistic regression identified conditions associated with dementia subtypes. Results The EOD cohort included Veterans with AD (n = 689) and FTD (n = 284). There were no significant demographic differences between the EOD cohort and their matched controls. After adjustment, EOD was significantly associated with history of TBI (OR: 3.05, 2.42–3.83), epilepsy (OR: 4.8, 3.3–6.97), other neurological conditions (OR: 2.0, 1.35–2.97), depression (OR: 1.35, 1.12–1.63) and cardiac disease (OR: 1.36, 1.1–1.67). Conclusion Post-9/11 Veterans have higher odds of EOD following TBI. A sensitivity analysis across TBI severity confirmed this trend, indicating that the odds for both AD and FTD increased after more severe TBIs.
Current update on stroke ischemic management

Stroke is one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, with survivors subjected to long-term disability. Stroke is classified as ischemic and hemorrhagic. 87 % of strokes are classified as ischemic. Except for thrombolytic therapy, there is no established treatment to reduce the neurological deficits caused by an ischemic stroke. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new therapeutic strategies designed to improve neurological functions after ischemic stroke. Stem cell-based therapies aim to promote neurogenesis and replacement of lost neurons or protect surviving neurons to improve neurological recovery. Further understanding of the mechanisms by which the stem cells exert their beneficial effect could potentially revolutionize the field. The next decade of stem cell research in stroke needs to focus on. Although still in need of exploration, stem cell treatments for stroke may offer ways to protect and replace neurons to improve outcomes for stroke patients.
INTELLIGENT SYSTEM FOR MONITORING PHYSIOLOGICAL PARAMETERS USING CAMERA

Measuring physiological parameters or vital sign using camera has become popular in recent years. Contact-less monitoring and extraction of vital signs can be important source of information in situations like medical care system and safety control system. This paper presents the implementation of real-time, non-contact method for extraction of vital signs, heart rate in this case. A better face tracking method is used for efficient face detection. This study extends some of the previous works done and have a comparison study with several methods. The developed system used filtering with window over the green channel of the signal and then Converted to frequency domain to analyze the signal to detect heart rate. The developed system achieved high correlation and showed small error while referencing with actual heart signal from ECG. This method delivers better result in better light condition but gives fairly good result on lower light as well.
Novel robust simultaneous localization and mapping for long-term autonomous robots

A fundamental task for mobile robots is simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Moreover, long-term robustness is an important property for SLAM. When vehicles or robots steer fast or steer in certain scenarios, such as low-texture environments, long corridors, tunnels, or other duplicated structural environments, most SLAM systems might fail. In this paper, we propose a novel robust visual inertial light detection and ranging (LiDaR) navigation (VILN) SLAM system, including stereo visual-inertial LiDaR odometry and visual-LiDaR loop closure. The proposed VILN SLAM system can perform well with low drift after long-term experiments, even when the LiDaR or visual measurements are degraded occasionally in complex scenes. Extensive experimental results show that the robustness has been greatly improved in various scenarios compared to state-of-the-art SLAM systems.
A fair dynamic content store-based congestion control strategy for named data networking

In this paper, the congestion control for named data networking (NDN) is studied. A novel dynamic content store-based congestion control strategy is proposed on account of the characteristic of in-network cache in NDN. A queuing network model is constructed to judge whether congestion occurs. If the network has the tendency of congestion or the congestion happened, the buffer of the output queue is dynamically expanded by borrowing NDN content store (CS), and the forwarding rates of data packets and corresponding interest packets are reduced so as to prevent or alleviate network congestion. In order to reflect fairness, the CS to be borrowed by the data output queue in the port is calculated in terms of the data output queue length and its weight. The simulation results based on ndnSIM show that the given scheme improves the bottleneck link utilization and maintains a low packet loss rate and average flow completion time.
Artificial Soils Reveal Individual Factor Controls on Microbial Processes

Understanding environmental controls on soil microbes is difficult because many abiotic parameters vary simultaneously and uncontrollably when different natural soils are compared, preventing mechanistic determination of any individual soil parameter’s effect on microbial behaviors. We describe how soil texture, mineralogy, pH, and organic matter content can be varied individually within artificial soils to study their effects on soil microbes. ABSTRACT Soil matrix properties influence microbial behaviors that underlie nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas production, and soil formation. However, the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of soils makes it challenging to untangle the effects of different matrix properties on microbial behaviors. To address this challenge, we developed a tunable artificial soil recipe and used these materials to study the abiotic mechanisms driving soil microbial growth and communication. When we used standardized matrices with varying textures to culture gas-reporting biosensors, we found that a Gram-negative bacterium (Escherichia coli) grew best in synthetic silt soils, remaining active over a wide range of soil matric potentials, while a Gram-positive bacterium (Bacillus subtilis) preferred sandy soils, sporulating at low water potentials. Soil texture, mineralogy, and alkalinity all attenuated the bioavailability of an acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) signaling molecule that controls community-level microbial behaviors. Texture controlled the timing of AHL sensing, while AHL bioavailability was decreased ~105-fold by mineralogy and ~103-fold by alkalinity. Finally, we built artificial soils with a range of complexities that converge on the properties of one Mollisol. As artificial soil complexity increased to more closely resemble the Mollisol, microbial behaviors approached those occurring in the natural soil, with the notable exception of organic matter. IMPORTANCE Understanding environmental controls on soil microbes is difficult because many abiotic parameters vary simultaneously and uncontrollably when different natural soils are compared, preventing mechanistic determination of any individual soil parameter’s effect on microbial behaviors. We describe how soil texture, mineralogy, pH, and organic matter content can be varied individually within artificial soils to study their effects on soil microbes. Using microbial biosensors that report by producing a rare indicator gas, we identify soil properties that control microbial growth and attenuate the bioavailability of a diffusible chemical used to control community-level behaviors. We find that artificial soils differentially affect signal bioavailability and the growth of Gram-negative (Escherichia coli) and Gram-positive (Bacillus subtilis) microbes. These artificial soils are useful for studying the mechanisms that underlie soil controls on microbial fitness, signaling, and gene transfer.
Rising bubbles and falling drops

The fascinating behaviour of bubbles and drops rising or falling under gravity, even without the presence of any impurities or other forces (such as electric, magnetic and marangoni forces), is still a subject of active research. Let alone a uni fied description of the dynamics of bubbles and drops, a full description of a single bubble/drop is out of our reach, as of now. The thin skirted bubbles, for instance, may rise axisymmetrically or may have travelling waves in azimuthal or vertical direction; may or may not remain axisymmetric; may eject satellite bubbles, or they may form wrinkles in their skirt. The length scales may vary across 3 or more orders of magnitude. A rising bubble may change its topology to become a toroidal bubble and become unstable to break into smaller bubbles, which may further break into even smaller bubbles. Bubbles which attain a terminal shape and velocity may change their fi nal behaviour depending on the initial conditions of release. Ellipsoidal bubbles, released axisymmetrically, may often take a zigzag or a spiral path as they rise. On the other hand, drops have a completely di ff erent dynamics. Drops have been studied due to their importance in atomization, rain drop size distribution, emulsi fi cation and many other problems of industrial importance. Apart from the low Reynolds number regime and density ratios close to 1, any literature seldom compares bubbles and drops because of the inherent difference in their dynamics.The reason for this difference has been investigated in
ORFanID: A web-based search engine for the discovery and identification of orphan and taxonomically restricted genes

With the numerous genomes sequenced today, it has been revealed that a noteworthy percentage of genes in a given taxon of organisms in the phylogenetic tree of life do not have orthologous sequences in other taxa. These sequences are commonly referred to as “orphans” or “ORFans” if found as single occurrences in a single species or as “taxonomically restricted genes” (TRGs) when found at higher taxonomic levels. Quantitative and collective studies of these genes are necessary for understanding their biological origins. However, the current software for identifying orphan genes is limited in its functionality, database search range, and very complex algorithmically. Thus, researchers studying orphan genes must harvest their data from many disparate sources. ORFanID is a graphical web-based search engine that facilitates the efficient identification of both orphan genes and TRGs at all taxonomic levels, from DNA or amino acid sequences in the NCBI database cluster and other large bioinformatics repositories. The software allows users to identify genes that are unique to any taxonomic rank, from species to domain, using NCBI systematic classifiers. It provides control over NCBI database search parameters, and the results are presented in a spreadsheet as well as a graphical display. The tables in the software are sortable, and results can be filtered using the fuzzy search functionality. The visual presentation can be expanded and collapsed by the taxonomic tree to its various branches. Example results from searches on five species and gene expression data from specific orphan genes are provided in the Supplementary Information. Availability and Implementation The ORFanID web application and database can be accessed at http://www.orfangenes. com/. The website provides textual and video instructions on how to use the tool. The Source Code for ORFanID is available at https://github.com/orfanid.
Design optimization of switching voltage regulators with power factor correction

In general, a switching regulator with power-factor-correction (PFC) is composed of a PFC preregulator and a voltage regulator in order to satisfy both low input harmonic current distortion and fast voltage regulation simultaneously. The simplest approach to construct the switching regulator is to cascade the PFC pre-regulator with the voltage regulator. The input power of the switching regulator is processed by the PFC pre-regulator and the voltage regulator serially, so the efficiency of this switching regulator is inevitably deteriorated. Although the noncascading connection between the PFC pre-regulator and the voltage regulator is an effective method for constructing efficient switching regulators which can satisfy the relevant regulatory requirements for harmonic emissions, there is a lack of detailed discussion on the analyses of the achievable performances of different types of noncascading PFC switching regulators. This thesis presents the theoretical analysis with simulation results of the achievable performances of different types of noncascading PFC switching regulators and discusses the design aspects of implementing two types of noncascading PFC switching regulators at different output power levels. The particular design considerations such as the gained efficiency, the input current harmonics, and the size of the energy storage for load voltage regulation of each type of noncascading PFC switching regulators are discussed. This thesis also investigates the output load transient characteristics of PFC pre-regulators. The cause of sluggish load transient response of PFC pre-regulators is explained and an analog implementation to accelerate the load transient response without degrading the quality of the input current of PFC pre-regulators is proposed. Experiments are conducted to validate the analog implementation that provides sufficient improvement in the load transient response of PFC pre-regulators. An analytical approach to calculating the relationship between the inductor current, the output capacitance, and the output voltage ripple of continuous-conduction-mode (CCM) boost PFC pre-regulators is presented and some dynamic characteristics of output voltage are studied for different waveshapes of the input current.
Computational investigation of Schiff bases from tryptamine as COX-2 inhibitors with potential anti-inflammatory activity

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are the most used drugs to inhibit cyclooxygenases (COX). Understanding the structure of COX isoforms is required for the research for more selective and less toxic anti-inflammatory agents. Also, computational methods can help to predict drug interaction. In this work, tryptamine Schiff bases, retrieved from literature, were screened to evaluate their ADMET profiles. After the initial screening, the compounds with better parameters were subjected to molecular docking interactions with the crystal structure of the COX-2 enzyme to verify binding affinities and the compound’s disposition as anti-inflammatory drugs. All compounds obeyed the Veber rule, and only one of them violated the Lipinski rule. Additionally, ten tryptamine Schiff bases presented equal or fewer toxicity alerts than Celecoxib (≤1). The binding affinities obtained through molecular docking for these Schiff bases varied from -9.974 to -8.765 kcal/mol. The results demonstrated that the chosen compounds showed higher binding affinities when compared to Celecoxib (-8.655 kcal/mol); this suggests a significant ability to inhibit the COX-2 enzyme. It has been proposed that the presence of phenolic hydroxyl is significant for the observed binding affinities. The results of this study indicate that tryptamine Schiff bases are promising candidates to treat inflammatory disorders, with the potential to be used as suitable medicines for pain and inflammation treatment.
VE607 Stabilizes SARS-CoV-2 Spike In the “RBD-up” Conformation and Inhibits Viral Entry

SARS-CoV-2 infection of host cells starts by binding of the Spike glycoprotein (S) to the ACE2 receptor. The S-ACE2 interaction is a potential target for therapies against COVID-19 as demonstrated by the development of immunotherapies blocking this interaction. Here, we present the commercially available VE607, comprised of three stereoisomers, that was originally described as an inhibitor of SARS-CoV-1. We show that VE607 specifically inhibits infection of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 S-expressing pseudoviral particles as well as authentic SARS-CoV-2. VE607 stabilizes the receptor binding domain (RBD) in its “up” conformation. In silico docking and mutational analysis map the VE607 binding site at the RBD-ACE2 interface. The IC50 values are in the low micromolar range for pseudoparticles derived from SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan/D614G as well as from variants of concern (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Omicron), suggesting that VE607 has potential for the development of drugs against SARS-CoV-2 infections.
Performance Assessment of Penalized Variable Selection Methods Using Crop Yield Data from the Three Northern Regions of Ghana

Time and money can be saved by measuring only relevant predictors. Measuring relevant predictors also ensures a noise free estimation of parameters and preserves some degrees of freedom for a given predictive model. By comparing the performance of SCAD, LASSO and H-Likelihood, this study seeks to select among access to credit, training, study tour, demonstrative practicals, networking events, post-harvest equipments, size of plot cultivated and number of farmers; variables (fixed and interaction terms) that significantly influences crop yield in the three Northern regions of Ghana. Our simulation as well as real life results gives evidence to the fact that H-Likelihood method of penalized variable selection performs best followed by SCAD, with LASSO coming last. It does both selection of significant variables and estimation of their coefficients simultaneously with the least penalize cross-validated errors compared to the SCAD and the LASSO. The study therefore recommends that deliberate efforts be put into strengthening the Agricultural support systems as a form of strategy for increasing crop production in Northern Ghana.