Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A COMPARISON OF BIOACTIVE CONSTITUENTS AND IN VITRO ANTIOXIDANT POTENTIAL OF ASTHMA WEED (EUPHORBIA HIRTA), WITH THOSE OF OTHER ANTIASTHMATIC PLANTS GROWING IN TABUK REGION, SAUDI ARABIA

Euphorbia hirta (asthma weed) has been documented as an effective herb for the treatment of asthma and associated symptoms. This study was aimed at comparing the bioactive constituents and in vitro antiradical activity of asthma weed with other commonly growing anti-asthmatic plants such as Pergularia tomentosa, Dipterygium glaucum and Acalypha indica in Tabuk region of Saudi Arabia. The results showed that the total phenol and flavonoid content of methanolic leaf extract of E. hirta was highest compared to the other anti-asthmatic plants. E. hirta was also recorded to have the maximum total antioxidant capacity, 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) antiradical activity and nitric oxide (NOX) scavenging activity. However, hydrogen peroxide scavenging activities and metal chelating activities were as the highest for the methanolic extracts of D. glaucum and P. tomentosa, respectively compared to the other anti-asthmatic plants. It may be concluded that the abundance of phenol and flavonoids along with maximum antioxidant capacity, DPPH antiradical activity and NOX scavenging activity of E. hirta makes it worthy of using as an effective anti-asthmatic plant.
Adaptive and Personalised Robots - Learning from Users' Feedback

Service robots have become increasingly important subjects in our lives. However, they are still facing problems like adaptability to their users. While major work has focused on intelligent service robots, the proposed approaches were mostly user independent. Our work is part of the FUI-RoboPopuli project, which concentrates on endowing entertainment companion robots with adaptive and social behaviour. In particular, we are interested in robots that are able to learn and plan so that they adapt and personalize their behaviour according to their users. Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are largely used for adaptive robots applications. However, one challenging point is reducing the sample complexity required to learn an MDP model, including the reward function. In this article, we present our contribution regarding the representation and the learning of the reward function through analysing interaction traces (i.e. the interaction history between the robot and their users, including users' feedback). Our approach permits to generalise the learned rewards so that when new users are introduced, the robot may quickly adapt using what it learned from previous experiences with other users. We propose, in this article, two algorithms to learn the reward function. The first is direct and certain, the robot applies with a user what it learned during interaction with same kind of users (i.e. users with similar profiles). The second algorithm generalises what it learns to be applied to all kinds of users. Through simulation, we show that the generalised algorithm converges to an optimal reward function with less than half the samples needed by the direct algorithm.
Attitude of Postgraduate Students towards Plagiarism in University of Port Harcourt

Plagiarism remains a threat to scientific integrity and development of knowledge. This study examined postgraduate students’ attitude towards plagiarism at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Three research questions and corresponding hypotheses guided the study. The descriptive research design was used for the study with a sample size of 200 postgraduate students was drawn using the purposive non-random sampling technique, from a population size of 1762 postgraduate students of the University of Port Harcourt. A questionnaire titled "Attitude of Post- Graduate Students towards Plagiarism Questionnaire" (APSPQ) was used as an instrument for data collection. The instrument was validated by experts and the reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach alpha, Data was analyzed using mean, standard deviation, independent t-test and Two-way ANOVA at 0.05 level of significances. Findings revealed that most postgraduate students of the University of Port Harcourt had a positive attitude towards plagiarism, the male postgraduate student had a negative attitude towards plagiarism while the Master students had negative attitude towards plagiarism. Part of the recommendations was that the University of Port Harcourt from time to time should organize orientation programmes for all postgraduate students based on the concept as well as implications for plagiarism.
Expression of blaCTX-M2 and invA genes of Salmonella Heidelberg isolated from poultry by Qpcr

Salmonellosis is a disease caused by a bacterium Salmonella, a gram negative bacilli found in many environments, responsible for significant economic losses in poultry, and of great impact on public health. Among more than 2500 serovars, S. Heidelberg seems to be more invasive causing disease of greater severity than other serovars. The objective of this study was to investigate, through real-time PCR (qPCR), differences in the expression of a virulent gene (invA) and an antibiotic resistance gene (blaCTXM-2) of S. Heidelberg isolated from poultry meat (slaughterhouses) and drag swabs (field). Even though all isolates showed the presence of the invA gene, there were differences in the expression among the isolates, where isolates from the field showed greater expression of invA compared to samples isolated from meat products. On the other hand, isolates from the slaughterhouses showed greater expression of the blaCTX-M2 than those isolated from field samples.
Attitudes and Repurchase Intention of Consumers Towards Functional Foods in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Although the demand of functional foods is increasing rapidly, and Vietnam is considered as a much potential market for the development of functional food market. However, there are many unsolved problems remaining in functional foods market, and these problems have never ceased to draw public attention and provoke debates. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate the factors affecting to consumers’ attitude and how consumers’ attitude affecting to consumer’s repurchase intention. The research will be conducted based on the questionnaires’ results collect from people who have used functional foods in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Questionnaires will be spread to consumers by hands and online survey. There are 260 responses are valid. The results show that there are four factors that positively affect to consumers’ attitude. These are (1) Consumers’ knowledge, (2) Perceived role, (3) Trust, (4) Subjective norms. Moreover, the findings also show that when people have positive feelings about products, they will increase their intention to products. Research also finds that trust is a direct relationship with consumers’ repurchases intention. From this conclusion, the study gives some recommendations to increase consumers’ attitude towards functional foods as well as the repurchase intention.
Testing Mediation of Psychological Empowerment, Work Engagement to Affective Commitment to Change

One of the causes of failure in the change process is the lack of commitment from individuals in the organization. This study proposes to explore the relation of the two variables, namely psychological empowerment, work engagement on affective commitment to change. We also tested the mediation effect of psychological empowerment on the relationship between work engagement to affective commitment to change. An online survey questionnaire was used to collect data (N=190) of the airport company on operation unit non-aeronautical. SPSS has used to analyze the data in this study using Pearson‟s Correlation, and Hayes Process Macro v.3. 0. The results of this study showed that the two variable have significant correlation on affective commitment to change, but mediation effect of psychological empowerment did not influence on work engagement and affective commitment to change.
Offline Signature Verification

— Now a day’s signature is becomes a most important biometric authentication technique. In banks or at the other necessary documents, signature plays an important role to authenticate the person. In this technique, we are going to present a deep learning approach for offline signature verification to prevent the fraud signatures by fake peoples. We are going to do deep learning with the help of Convolution Neural Network (CNN). In this study, we are going to collect dataset of different signatures from the different angles. Signature is taken as an input in the form of image. For signature recognition, it is important to make structural and some geometrical calculation getting to extract special features from the signatures then we train a man-made neural network on these features from different signers. Finally, the extracted features from the tested signature are compared with the previously trained features and that we know the signer.
SKOS and the Semantic Web: Knowledge Organization, Metadata, and Interoperability

The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a Semantic Web framework, based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) for thesauri, classification schemes and simple ontologies. It allows for machineactionable description of the structure of these knowledge organization systems (KOS) and provides an excellent tool for addressing interoperability and vocabulary control problems inherent to the rapidly expanding information environment of the Web. This paper discusses the foundations of the SKOS framework and reviews the literature on a variety of SKOS implementations. The limitations of SKOS that have been revealed through its broad application are addressed with brief attention to the proposed extensions to the framework intended to account for them. 1 University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences Correspondence email: erobinson@usa.edu
Differences in physiological traits at the initial stage of Fusarium head blight infection in wheat

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is leading cereal crop worldwide, but its yield is highly affected due to various diseases, especially Fusarium head blight (FHB), which affects the metabolism of plants. The present study was conducted at the Agricultural Institute Osijek using three winter wheat cultivars (Apache, Bezostaya1, and U1) during 2016/2017. The objectives of our studies were to examine differences in physiological characteristics of FHB resistance among wheat cultivars in the early stage of infection. The FHB incidence and severity was the highest in 'Bezostaya1'. Results suggest that activation of some anti-oxidative enzymes in the first 2 h after Fusarium attack was not efficient to prevent disease. 'Apache', which revealed an average FHB incidence, efficiently activated defence response through phenol metabolism elevation. The most effective defence response trough activation of anti-oxidative enzymes triggered by H2O2 was revealed in 'U1', which resulted in a minimal FHB incidence and disease severity. The obtained results confirm differences in defence strategies of wheat genotypes.
3-D Face Recognition Using eLBP-Based Facial Description and Local Feature Hybrid Matching

This paper presents an effective method for 3-D face recognition using a novel geometric facial representation along with a local feature hybrid matching scheme. The proposed facial surface description is based on a set of facial depth maps extracted by multiscale extended Local Binary Patterns (eLBP) and enables an efficient and accurate description of local shape changes; it thus enhances the distinctiveness of smooth and similar facial range images generated by preprocessing steps. The following matching strategy is SIFT-based and performs in a hybrid way that combines local and holistic analysis, robustly associating the keypoints between two facial representations of the same subject. As a result, the proposed approach proves robust to facial expression variations, partial occlusions, and moderate pose changes, and the last property makes our system registration-free for nearly frontal face models. The proposed method was experimented on three public datasets, i.e. FRGC v2.0, Gavab, and Bosphorus. It displays a rank-one recognition rate of 97.6% and a verification rate of 98.4% at a 0.001 FAR on the FRGC v2.0 database without any face alignment. Additional experiments on the Bosphorus dataset further highlight the advantages of the proposed method with regard to expression changes and external partial occlusions. The last experiment carried out on the Gavab database demonstrates that the entire system can also deal with faces under large pose variations and even partially occluded ones, when only aided by a coarse alignment process.
The role of previous visual experience in the acquisition of object permanence skills in bottlenose dolphins: a pilot study*

Object permanence, the ability to represent hidden objects, has not been extensively assessed in cetaceans, and the available evidence is contradictory. Although bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are thought to be endowed with cognitive capacities required to pass complex object permanence tests, they have failed a series of tasks involving invisible displacements, which raises the question of whether they do master object permanence. Lack of understanding of containment or lack of experience tracking objects hidden from both sight and echolocation may explain such unexpected results. e goal of the current pilot study was to test these two hypotheses in a series of visible and invisible displacement tasks with bottlenose dolphins. Our results suggest that dolphins are indeed able to succeed in complex object permanence tasks but only if they have previous visual experience with the movements of objects inside other objects. us, these outcomes point to an important role of visual experience in the development of object permanence skills.
POWER REQUIREMENT FOR SOWING PATTERNS ON TWO FALLOW LANDS UNDER WHEAT PRODUCTION

An experiment related to wheat cultivation was conducted at south of Sulaimani province, Kurdistan region- Iraq during autumn in 2016-2017. Completely Randomized Block Design was applied with split-split plot arrangement, and the experiment was conducted on two fallow lands, the first land was plowed in the spring and the other remained unplowed, two different sowing modes with rotary seed broadcaster were used, namely conventional and overlapped prose lines, and two similar sets of tillage systems were chosen for the study. The averages were compared by using Duncan’s test. The coefficients of variance (CV) for overlapped and conventional seed spreading were 9.2% and 48.4%, respectively. The spring-plowed fallow land proved to obtain significantly different values compared to the unplowed land, which were higher by 51.9%, 48.5%, 47.1%, 26.9%, 31.6%, 6.7% and 30.1% for fuel consumption, draft, power losses due to slippage, working time, energy utilization, wheat yield and total cost, respectively. The average results for overlapped seed broadcasting were higher than those of the conventional manner by: 0.8%, 0.3% 1%, 0%, 3.3%, 6.7% and 14.5%. The lowest values were resulted from applying: MB plus seed distributor plus MB, while, the maximum yield was given by applying: cultivator plus seed distributor plus cultivator.
A Theoretical Analysis for relevancy of files in Enhanced Ranking Based Cloud Search with Improved Metadata Storage

With the outgrowth of cloud computing, a large amount of private information is stored over cloud servers, which is in encrypted format. But searching over encrypted data is very difficult. Earlier search schemes were based on Boolean search through keywords. But don’t consider relevance of files. After that ranked search comes into its role, which uses searchable symmetric encryption (SSE). To achieve more practical and efficient design method was further modified to “Order preserving symmetric encryption” (OPSE), which uses primitives and indexed metadata files used in ranked SSE. In this proposed work further enhancements are done to reduce storage space for encrypted metadata using Porter Stemming method. Improvements in retrieval time are also done by using Boyer Moore’s searching algorithm.
Online Transportation Technology and Women’s Driver Communication Skills

This is a qualitative descriptive research. The aim of this study is to examine how communication technology apps able to support communication skills of women drivers who work for online transportation companies in serving international guests. The study uses a saturation sampling technique where all populations (motorbikes and cars’ drivers of online transportation) are used as samples. The samples or informants were females who work for the Gojek and Grab companies in Palembang, Indonesia. The means-end of laddering was designed to understand the cognitive relationship between the values chosen for services provided by drivers, the service attributes (means) of knowledge, skills and their attitudes, to create the individual communication skills (ends) of drivers. Cognitive can be interpreted as intellectual potential regarding the ability to develop rational abilities. To analyse data 'Themes and Open Coding' is used to interpret data obtained from interviews, FGDs and observations. The study found there are 67% of drivers were grouped to who do not care about the English prepared by the application. Around 77% of them find the language prepared by the application was confusing, and who prefer to use the Indonesian language more or less 69%. While there were 71% of drivers assumed the language prepared in the application is not correct English. More than 80% of them need help from others in operating the communication application, the remaining 54% was shy and do not know to start communication approximately 74%. In conclusion, almost there was no communication between drivers and foreign passenger. The apps were not able to support and facilitate communication of female drivers.
Towards an Operational Definition of Critical Thinking

This paper offers a state-of-the-art working definition for the concept of Critical Thinking (CT hereafter) in an attempt to provide a framework for the development of an operational definition for this complex concept. Having studied various definitions and models, proposed for CT by major figures in the field, the key defining features of this rich concept were identified and classified. Based on these key descriptors, a working definition consisting of three main components namely Mind Analysis, Data Evaluation, and Thinking in Education has been proposed and then each dimension of this definition is defined and elaborated further so that the complexity of the concept could be framed in an extended model. The elaborated conception of CT proposed in this paper seeks to include the core elements of CT so that it can be expandable into an operational definition with measurable items. There are two main reasons for conducting this research: Firstly, CT has evolved into a multifaceted construct with a broad range of cognitive abilities and intellectual dispositions. Secondly, although CT has been recognized as a significant concept in education, its full potential has not been achieved yet.
JUKES-CANTOR EVOLUTIONARY MODEL BASED PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIP OF ECONOMICALLY IMPORTANT ORNAMENTAL PALMS USING MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD APPROACH

Ornamental palms are famous for their patterned leaves, which make them quite suitable for indoor and outdoor decors. Hitherto, palms were identified morphologically resulting in ambiguous identification. Hence, to stitch this loophole in phylogenetic studies, DNA barcoding is a remarkable way for correct identification and evolutionary study of ornamental palms. We investigated phylogenetic relationship of commonly used ornamental palms in Pakistan. We focused on two genetic regions, rbcL and matK, which had been proved as potential DNA barcodes for species identification and phylogenetic studies. In this study, fifteen ornamental palms were investigated for their evolutionary relationship and molecular identification. This study resolved their evolutionary history using Maximum Likelihood method based on Jukes-Cantor evolutionary model. Among them, nine ornamental palm shared evolutionary history, though four showed evolutionary distinctness from the rest. Chamaedorea seifrizii and Chamaedorea costaricana revealed close residence in the evolutionary tree with 70% bootstrap support. Syagrus romanzoffiana resolved as independent lineage with distinct and highly diverse evolutionary history. Furthermore, Wodyetia bifurcata and Dypsis lutescens nested together with 61% bootstrap though, they belong to different genera. This showed that the genus Wodyetia and Dypsis had very close evolutionary history. The evolutionary forces either geographical isolation or genetic drift could be the reason for the divergence of these palms into two distinct genera, though being the lineages of the same parent.
Brown spot disease severity, yield and yield loss relationships in pigmented upland rice cultivars from East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Abstract. Mau YS, Ndiwa ASS, Oematan SS. 2020. Brown spot disease severity, yield and yield loss relationships in pigmented upland rice cultivars from East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 21: 1625-1634. Brown spot is one of the most devastating diseases of rice, which could lead to total yield loss. The disease has a worldwide distribution, more specifically in areas where water supply is scarce, most specifically in the dry upland areas. Almost all stages of rice are affected by the disease, where leaves and grains are mostly affected. Considerable differences exist in susceptibility to brown spot among rice varieties, which may cause a large variation in yield loss caused by the disease. Therefore, the resistance level of rice varieties and their yield reduction has to be regularly evaluated and updated. There are only a few reports on the relationship between brown spot severity with yield and yield loss of upland rice, and is even lacking in pigmented upland rice. The objectives of the present study were to assess the brown spot severity and resistance level in pigmented upland rice cultivars from East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia, and to elucidate their relationships with yield and yield reduction. Twenty four pigmented upland rice genotypes were evaluated in the field during May to October 2019, and their disease responses and yields were recorded. Disease severity was observed weekly and used to calculate Area Under the Disease Progress Curve (AUDPC) for comparison among the genotypes. The relationships between disease severity and AUDPC with yield and yield loss were also examined. The results showed significant variation in brown spot severity and AUDPC, ranging from, respectively, 11.11% to 40.70% and 398.42%-days to 1081.30%-days. Yields and yield losses of test genotypes also varied substantially. Yields under diseased-free and diseased plots ranged from, respectively, 2.34 t ha-1 to 6.13 t ha-1 and 1.68 t ha-1 to 3.74 t ha-1 while yield loss was between 10.46% and 56.15%. Six genotypes were moderately resistant, four genotypes were moderately susceptible and 14 genotypes were susceptible to brown spot. Neither disease severity nor AUDPC had a linear relationship with yield but both exhibited positive and linear relationships with yield loss.