Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probing the Mechanisms Through Which Social Media Erodes Political Knowledge: The Role of the News-Finds-Me Perception

ABSTRACT This study examines the causal effects of social media use on political knowledge as well as the underlying mechanisms through which such an effect occurs. The findings suggest that social media use hinders rather than enhances an individual’s learning about politics, because social media use fosters the perception that one no longer needs to actively seek news in order to stay informed (i.e., news-finds-me perception), and this in turn may have an adverse effect on an individual’s learning about politics. However, those who use traditional forms of media to a substantial degree to complement their news consumption via social media are less negatively affected than those who do not.
Is the performance of a cricket team really unpredictable? A case study on Pakistan team using machine learning

Cricket is the second most popular game around the globe, particularly it breeds a high level of enthusiasm in Asia, Australia and UK. However, it is generally known and globally mentioned that Pakistan is an “unpredictable” cricket team, which leads to extreme reactions from the citizens in case of a loss, e.g., verbal anger, breaking of television sets and burning of players’ eﬃgies. Objectives: In this study, we leverage machine learning techniques to demonstrate that the use of the “unpredictable” tag for Pakistan’s cricket performance is unjustified as the match outcome can be predicted with a pretty high confidence. Method: We produce a new dataset by scrapping latest statistics from cricinfo.com, the most reliable online source. Also, we propose a novel feature “consecutive wins” that incorporates recent performance trend of the team. With extensive experimental setup, state-of-the-art machine learning methodology was employed to prove effectiveness of proposed tool. Findings: Pakistan’s cricket performance can be predicted with 82% accuracy, i.e., it is possible to understand the patterns (in advance) which may lead to a winning or losing situation. Hence, using pre-match analysis, it is possible to avoid any prejudiced opinion or potentially dangerous reactions. Novelty: We employ state-of-the-art machine learning methodology based on application of various algorithms, feature selection and data splitting methods. Eventually, state-of-the-art prediction accuracy is achieved by exploiting all potential avenues in a structured way. Keywords: Cricket, one day international, Pakistan, machine learning, performance, unpredictable
Effect of drying processes on the final quality of potimarron pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima) powders

Abstract This research work focuses on a comparative study of the impact of four drying processes (Air Flow Drying (AFD), Freeze-Drying (FD), Vacuum Multi Flash Drying (VMFD), and Swell-Drying (SD) coupling Instant Controlled Pressure-drop (DIC) to standard Air Flow) on the biochemical, physicochemical, thermochemical, and biological properties of the pumpkin potimarron (Cucurbita maxima) powders. The main results showed that the availability of bioactive substances was much more related to the drying process and attributed to the porosity. VMFD, SD, and FD drying processes had the best preservation of Total Polyphenols (TPP) and Total Flavonoids (TF) much better than AFD. It is worth noting that FD and SD improve the availability thanks to the presence of multi-particulate pores, while VMFD keeps better preservation of thermo-sensitive products. Graphical Abstract
Secondary School Students' Identity and Citizenship Perceptions

The aim of the research is to determine the secondary school students' perceptions of identity and citizenship concepts. The research is designed in a qualitative model. The study group consists of 30 5th, 6th and 7th grade students at a public secondary school in the province of Kastamonu. In the research, 5th, 6th and 7th graders were asked to paint on identity and citizenship concepts and to indicate what they want to tell with the pictures they drew. In the research, the pictures and views of the students were taken through content analysis. Secondary school students drew the picture of identity card for identity concept and pictures of “identity card” and “social values” related to citizenship concept. With the pictures they drew, the students stated that identity is “a document containing personal information” and citizenship means “adopting social values” and “awareness of the individual rights, duty and responsibilities”.
Evaluation of the efficiency of isolated bacterial consortium PMB11 in removal of colour, degradation and reduction of toxicity from textile dye effluent

Abstract The aim of the present study was to investigate the textile effluent degrading potential of an isolated bacterial consortium PMB11. The consortium had the capacity to decolourize various textile dyes and textile effluent. Ninetyone percent textile effluent decolourization was observed within 120 hours. The physiochemical characterization of textile effluent indicates reduction in the total hardness (CaCO3), fluorides, chlorides, sulphate, chemical oxygen demand, and biochemical oxygen demand of textile effluent after treatment with consortium PMB11. Induction in the activities of NADHdichlorophenolindophenol reductase, azoreductase, and aminopyrine N-demethylase was observed after decolourization, which indicates involvement of these enzymes in the decolourization and degradation process. The biodegradation of dyes from effluent was confirmed using various analytical techniques, such as UV-Vis spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography - mass spectroscopy, and HPLC. A phytotoxicity study was performed to confirm the less toxic nature of the degradation metabolites than the effluent.
Gendered power alive and kicking? An analysis of four English secondary school PE departments

ABSTRACT Scraton’s [1992. Shaping up to womanhood: Gender and girls’ physical education. Open University Press] ground breaking research highlighted how Physical Education (PE) contributed to the reproduction of gender power relations; more specifically, how three messages around motherhood, sexuality and physicality, reflected through PE’s structures, activities and delivery, contributed to young women’s sense of self. Twenty five years on, this paper explores how contemporary PE reproduces and challenges gender power relations in four English secondary schools. Data were generated from eighty hours of observations of PE lessons, and eight semi-structured interviews with PE teachers. Guided by Hill Collins’ [2000. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge] four domains (structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, interpersonal) underpinning the matrix of domination the findings demonstrate that gender remains a visible organising feature in the structural arrangements of PE. Moreover, teachers’ gendered beliefs and assumptions circulating within the hegemonic domain, and actions in the disciplinary domain, ensure that students embody their gender in appropriate ways. Furthermore, a consistency of practice was evident in teachers’ pedagogy despite differences in the schools’ cohorts. Similar blocks of teaching activities and a performance-based pedagogy failed to include difference. We suggest this is unsurprising and unlikely to change with the current National Curriculum promoting a performative, PE as sport discourse, and teacher training not conducive to developing teachers who can engage with difference and challenge inequalities. As such, PE continues to reinforce gender power relations and gender differences. By drawing upon the matrix, the need for change to occur at different levels and contexts is identified. To this end, teacher training must do better in developing the next generation of teachers who are willing and able to critique the status quo and work with girls to advocate for change. Relatedly, we draw attention to what can be achieved when power is shared through a democratic pedagogy that values girls’ voices and recognises them as co-collaborators in curriculum design.
The influence of oceanographic conditions and larval behaviour on settlement success—the European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax (L.)

The European Seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) is a slow-growing late maturing fish. The northern stock has been declining since 2010 and is thought to be caused by a combination of fishing and weak year classes. Large inter-annual variation in settlement has been observed, so a better understanding of the mechanisms driving settlement success will aid interpretation of the variation between years, and help to improve the stock assessment models and management strategies. In this study, an individual-based model (IBM) was developed to investigate the factors affecting sea bass settlement on nursery grounds of the northern sea bass stock. The IBM was coupled with hydrodynamics to track particles, whereas egg and larval development, and vertical migration behaviour are fully incorporated. The IBM successfully predicted inter-annual differences in settlement regardless of larval behaviour. The highest settlement success was predicted with neutrally buoyant eggs, hatchlings, and larval stages, in combination with tidal migration at the final larval stage. Dispersal was driven mainly by the influence of wind on residual currents and water temperature, with warmer temperatures reducing the duration of the pelagic phase and stronger current increasing the potential to drift further. Eggs spawned in the central western English Channel settled in both England and France, with movement from the central to the eastern English Channel occurring only in warm years. Larval duration was driven by water temperature and showed an increase in duration from the southwest to northeast areas of the northern stock. The results are discussed in the context of sea bass management and conservation strategies.
Genotype-independent regeneration of hybrid maize cultivated at the coastal region of Kenya

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the most important cereal food crop in many tropical and subtropical regions. Though the demand is steadily increasing, the productivity of maize has been declining due to several production factors over the past years. Statistics have shown that the world population is expected to double by 2050. With this population growth, food insecurity in the tropics is expected to increase. Therefore, reliable technologies that ensure enhanced production of food crops, such as maize, should be adopted to meet the increasing demand. Despite conventional breeding having contributed significantly toward maize production it is faced by many limitations such as time resources, low accuracy and limited genetic biodiversity. Biotechnology, that entails transformation of maize, demands an efficient and reproducible regeneration system from totipotent explants, in which immature zygotic embryos have mostly been used. However, one striking feature in all previous research is that callus induction and somatic embryogenesis is genotype dependent. The objective of this study was to develop an efficient and reproducible regeneration protocol for PH4 and DK 8031 maize genotypes cultivated at the coastal region of Kenya as a prerequisite for its improvement through genetic engineering technology using Agrobacterium tumefaciens mediated transformation. Immature embryos harvested at the age of 8 to 18 days after pollination were tested for their response to callus induction and regeneration efficiency using 2,4-D and dicamba as growth regulators. Through this research, a reproducible protocol for embryonic callus induction and regeneration of maize genotypes cultivated at the coastal region of Kenya was established. Enhanced capacity in tissue culture and genotypes of maize adapted to coastal conditions with excellent regeneration potentials has been released for incorporation in breeding programs. Minitab was used to calculate one way and two-way ANOVA to determine the influence of the age of immature embryo, growth regulator concentrations and genotypes on embryonic callus induction and regeneration frequency. To achieve genotype independent embryogenic callus induction, immature embryos of PH4 and DK 8031 should be harvested at 12 days after pollination. The optimum concentrations of growth regulators for callus induction is 3mg/l dicamba and 2mg/l 2,4-D. Immature embryos older than 12DAP can induce the same number of embryogenic calli obtained at 12DAP by increasing the concentrations of the growth regulator. Research findings in this study, revealed genotype independent embryogenesis on MS medium supplemented with 2, 4-D and dicamba. The younger the embryos (10-12 days after pollination) the less the hormone required for embryogenesis. Older embryos of PH4 (16-18DAP) require higher hormoneconcentration for embryogenesis. In this study, it is recommended that further research should be carried out on regeneration potential of other hybrid maize genotypes adapted to coastal regions of Kenya using other auxins such as picloram
Transcriptomics of the Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) Species Complex

Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis), widely known as a herbal tea, is endemic to the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa (SA). It produces a wide range of phenolic compounds that have been associated with diverse health promoting properties of the plant. The species comprises several growth forms that differ in their morphology and biochemical composition, only one of which is cultivated and used commercially. Here, we established methodologies for non-invasive transcriptome research of wild-growing South African plant species, including (1) harvesting and transport of plant material suitable for RNA sequencing; (2) inexpensive, high-throughput biochemical sample screening; (3) extraction of high-quality RNA from recalcitrant, polysaccharide- and polyphenol rich plant material; and (4) biocomputational analysis of Illumina sequencing data, together with the evaluation of programs for transcriptome assembly (Trinity, IDBA-Trans, SOAPdenovo-Trans, CLC), protein prediction, as well as functional and taxonomic transcript annotation. In the process, we established a biochemically characterized sample pool from 44 distinct rooibos ecotypes (1–5 harvests) and generated four in-depth annotated transcriptomes (each comprising on average ≈86,000 transcripts) from rooibos plants that represent distinct growth forms and differ in their biochemical profiles. These resources will serve future rooibos research and plant breeding endeavours.
A Study of Injection Locking in Optoelectronic Oscillator

The random fluctuations of signal phase of an oscillator limit the precision of time and frequency measurements. The noise and longterm stability of the system’s oscillator or clock is of major importance in applications such as optical and wireless communications, high-speed digital electronics, radar, and astronomy. The Optoelectronic Oscillator (OE Oscillator), a new class of time delay oscillator with promise as a low-phase noise source of microwave carriers, was introduced by Steve Yao and Lute Malek in 1996. The OE Oscillator combines into a closed loop an RF photonic link and an RF chain. The RF photonic link consists of a laser, electro-optic modulator, optical fibre delay line, and a photo-receiver that together provide an RF delay. An RF chain consists of one or more amplifiers and a RF resonator that together provide the sustaining amplification and the frequency selectivity necessary for single mode oscillation of the loop. The low loss of optical fibres enables the attainment of delays that correspond to optical fibre lengths of several kilometers. It is the long delay, unattainable in an all-electronic implementations that is responsible for the superior phase noise performance of an OE Oscillator. In this thesis the fundamental principles of operation of an OE Oscillator are described and the principal sources of in-loop phase fluctuations that are responsible for phase-noise identified. This lays the ground for an exposition of the mechanism that describes the perturbation of a time delay oscillator by injection into the loop of a carrier that is detuned in frequency from the natural frequency of the oscillator. For sufficiently small detuning the oscillator can become phase locked to the injected carrier. The model presented in the thesis
EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT LIGHT QUALITY ON GROWTH, PHOTOSYNTHETIC CHARACTERISTIC AND CHLOROPLAST ULTRASTRUCTURE OF UPLAND COTTON (GOSSYPIUM HIRSUTUM L.) SEEDLINGS

In this work, we evaluated our results showed that the mixture blue plus red LED light might be propitious to upland cotton seedling growth and can be used as a primary lights for cotton seedling cultivation. This study might be the first paper of determining different light qualities on growth, photosynthetic characteristic and chloroplast ultra-structure of upland cotton cultivar Sumian 22. The mixture blue plus red (BR1:8) LEDs light might be propitious and necessary to upland cotton seedling growth and can be used as a primary lights for cotton seedling cultivation.
Lateral inhibition and spectral opponency in the outer retina of primate

Horizontal cells in vertebrate retina provide the first layer of lateral inhibition in the visual stream. They have been hypothesized to play important roles in gain scaling photoreceptor signals to control for fluctuations in brightness and are assumed to play a role in color processing. We describe here a model of the outer retina that includes a trichromatic cone mosaic and two types of horizontal cell populations. Parameters of the horizontal cell network that influence the spatial sampling and chromatic opponency of first-order projection neurons, bipolar cells, were examined. The results point to substantial differences in the parameters necessary to produce dynamics mimicking those observed experimentally in two subpopulations of horizontal cells. Our analysis further highlights the potential impact of a previously overlooked retinal pathway for S-cone signals on color vision and offers insights into the visual functioning of individuals with congenital stationary night-blindness.
Preclinical development of DNA vaccine candidates for the treatment of HPV16 induced malignancies

High-risk Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) induced malignancies are an interesting target for immunotherapy as they invariably express the viral proteins E6 and E7 that allow specific recognition of tumor cells without the risk of inducing autoimmunity. This thesis describes the preclinical development of pDNA vaccine candidates for the treatment of HPV16 induced malignancies. For this purpose gene-shuffled (SH) versions of HPV16 E6 and E7 were used to avoid the risk of transformation at the vaccination site. To improve the immunogenicity of E6SH and E7SH several optimizations strategies were evaluated. First it is shown that genetic fusion with Tetanus Toxin Fragment C (TTFC), results in a dramatic increase in immunogenicity. The resulting vaccine candidates TTFC-E6SH and TTFC-E7SH were also demonstrated to have lost their transforming potential. Secondly it is demonstrated that the mere addition of an endoplasmatic reticulum targeting sequence and a set of promiscuous CD4 helper epitopes results in an enormous increase of the immunogenicity of E6SH and E7SH. This design decreases the risk of raising competing carrier specific immune responses. Finally several nanoparticle based formulations of a model pDNA vaccine were evaluated and it is demonstrated that for in vivo applications it is essential to shield the cationic charge of such nanoparticles.
Factors Explaining Post Harvest Practices Adoption among Fruit Farmers in Johor

Nowadays, postharvest practices play an important role in the development of fruit production. Thus, this research investigates the relationship between effort expectations, performance expectations, social influence, facilitating conditions, and attitudes towards postharvest practices adoption among fruit farmers in Johor. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) were utilized to explain the purpose of this study. This study has employed a cross-sectional study with a survey method via self-administered questionnaire. A total of 150 fruit farmers in Johor were chosen by a simple random sampling technique. The data collected were analysed by using descriptive analysis and Spearman’s correlation. The analysis indicated that there was a positive significant relationship between performance expectations, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and attitude towards postharvest practices adoption among fruit farmers in Johor. This study will be significant for farmers in order to help them increase the yield by reducing the postharvest losses and for other researchers to understand the level of postharvest technology acceptance.
NIHAO – XXV. Convergence in the cusp-core transformation of cold dark matter haloes at high star formation thresholds

We use cosmological hydrodynamical galaxy formation simulations from the NIHAO project to investigate the response of cold dark matter (CDM) haloes to baryonic processes. Previous work has shown that the halo response is primarily a function of the ratio between galaxy stellar mass and total virial mass, and the density threshold above which gas is eligible to form stars, $n [{\rm cm}^{-3}]$. At low $n$ all simulations in the literature agree that dwarf galaxy haloes are cuspy, but at high $n\ge 100$ there is no consensus. We trace halo contraction in dwarf galaxies with $n\ge 100$ reported in some previous simulations to insufficient spatial resolution. Provided the adopted star formation threshold is appropriate for the resolution of the simulation, we show that the halo response is remarkably stable for $n\ge 5$, up to the highest star formation threshold that we test, $n=500$. This free parameter can be calibrated using the observed clustering of young stars. Simulations with low thresholds $n\le 1$ predict clustering that is too weak, while simulations with high star formation thresholds $n\ge 5$, are consistent with the observed clustering. Finally, we test the CDM predictions against the circular velocities of nearby dwarf galaxies. Low thresholds predict velocities that are too high, while simulations with $n\sim 10$ provide a good match to the observations. We thus conclude that the CDM model provides a good description of the structure of galaxies on kpc scales provided the effects of baryons are properly captured.
Efficient lentiviral transduction of different human and mouse cells

Background Lentiviral vectors (LVs) allowing efficient establishment of stable transgene overexpression mammalian and human cell lines are invaluable tools for genetic research. Currently, although LV transductions are broadly adopted, they are often limited due to their low titers for efficient transduction. Results Here, we described a set of optimized, efficient techniques, which could produce sufficiently high LV titers, and, provide efficient transduction of cells. According to these optimizations, most of the mammalian and human cells, both primary cells and cell lines, could be transduced successfully with high levels of transgene stable expression, including both constitutive and induced expressions. Conclusions Our data demonstrated the highly usefulness of our optimized methods. Therefore, this study provided an efficient method for most of LV transduction experiments in vitro.