Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Systemic inequalities in indoor air pollution exposure in London, UK

Deprived communities in many cities are exposed to higher levels of outdoor air pollution, and there is increasing evidence of similar disparities for indoor air pollution exposure. There is a need to understand the drivers for this exposure disparity in order to develop effective interventions aimed at improving population health and reducing health inequities. With a focus on London, UK, this paper assembles evidence to examine why indoor exposure to PM2.5, NOx and CO may disproportionately impact low-income groups. In particular, five factors are explored, namely: housing location and ambient outdoor levels of pollution; housing characteristics, including ventilation properties and internal sources of pollution; occupant behaviours; time spent indoors; and underlying health conditions. Evidence is drawn from various sources, including building physics models, modelled outdoor air pollution levels, time–activity surveys, housing stock surveys, geographical data, and peer-reviewed research. A systems framework is then proposed to integrate these factors, highlighting how exposure to high levels of indoor air pollution in low-income homes is in large part due to factors beyond the control of occupants, and is therefore an area of systemic inequality. Policy Relevance There is increasing public and political awareness of the impact of air pollution on public health. Strong scientific evidence links exposure to air pollution with morbidity and mortality. Deprived communities may be more affected, however, with limited evidence on how deprivation may influence their personal exposure to air pollution, both outdoors and indoors. This paper describes different factors that may lead to low-income households being exposed to higher levels of indoor air pollution than the general population, using available data and models for London (i.e. living in areas of higher outdoor air pollution, in poor-quality housing, undertaking more pollution-generating activities indoors and spending more time indoors). A systems approach is used to show how these factors lead to systemic exposure inequalities, with low-income households having limited opportunities to improve their indoor air quality. This paper can inform actions and public policies to reduce environmental health inequalities, considering both indoor and outdoor air.
A N EURALLY P LAUSIBLE I MPLEMENTATION OF A V OWEL R ECOGNITION S YSTEM

We present research-in-progress aimed at developing a sensory recognition system with good performance in sparse training contexts. The system is a machine learning model, structured after a proposed neural architecture of early stage object recognition by humans. It stores representations in parallel systems that mimic associative and declarative memory systems. We present mathematical formulations of the underlying system of storage and apply this to the problem of vowel recognition by infants. The stored representation makes use of the distance between the formant frequencies of vowels, as analog magnitudes, rather than their absolute acoustic valuations. Our formulation allows for a learning strategy that is both neurally plausible and computationally tractable.The resulting system can be used in any environment that requires the system itself to recognize invariant properties of objects, visual or acoustic.
An analysis of hepatic steatosis based on radiomics and deep learning

: Objective: This study explores hepatic steatosis grading through imaging and deep learning in order to achieve an automatic classification of hepatic steatosis, therefore providing an intelligent and non-invasive method of hepatic steatosis classification. Methods: A retrospective study was performed on adult patients who underwent MR imaging of the upper abdomen with the mDixon sequence at Shanghai First People’s Hospital from June to August 2018. The MRI data and materials from the regions of interest were collected. Cases of mild to moderate hepatic steatosis were graded using radiomics and deep learning. A Spearman correlation analysis was performed comparing the clinical information and the liver steatosis grades. Results: The highest AUC obtained on the valida - tion cohort was 0.81, and the AUC of the deep learning model was 0.70. Conclusion: Radiomics and deep learn - ing can aid in automatic grading for hepatic steatosis. Correlation analysis also provides useful ideas for hepatic steatosis grading.
DEGRADACIÓN DE SUSTRATOS LIGNOCELULÓSICOS Y PRODUCCIÓN DE BIOGÁS in vitro POR FERMENTACIÓN SÓLIDA CON Pleurotus ostreatus LIGNOCELLULOSIC SUBSTRATES DEGRADATION AND in vitro BIOGAS PRODUCTION BY SOLID FERMENTATION WITH Pleurotus ostreatus

2Licenciatura de Médico Veterinario Zootecnista. 1Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia No. 2, Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero. Km 197, Carretera Acapulco-Pinotepa Nacional. 41940. Cuajinicuilapa, Guerrero. (sanchezsantillanp@gmail.com). 3Ingeniería en Agroindustrias, Universidad de la Costa. Carretera Libramiento Paraje de las Pulgas. 71600. Pinotepa Nacional. Oaxaca. 4Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias y Ambientales, Avenida Periférico Poniente s/n, Colonia Villa de Guadalupe. 40040, Iguala de la Independencia, Guerrero.
Development of cadmium-free quantum dot for intracellular labelling through electroporation or lipid-calcium-phosphate

Traditional fluorescent labelling techniques has severe photo-bleaching problem such as organic dyes and fluorescent protein. Quantum dots made up of traditional semiconductor (CdSe/ZnS) material has sort of biological toxicity. This research has developed novel Cd-free quantum dots divided into semiconductor (Indium phosphide, InP) and noble metal (Gold). Former has lower toxicity compared to traditional quantum dots. Latter consisting of gold (III) chloride (AuCl3) and toluene utilizes sonochemical preparation and different stimulus to regulate fluorescent wavelength. Amphoteric macromolecule surface technology and ligand Exchange in self-Assembled are involved to develop hydrophilic nanomaterials which can regulate the number of grafts per molecule of surface functional groups. Calcium phosphate (CaP) nanoparticle (NP) with an asymmetric lipid bilayer coating technology developed for intracellular delivery and labelling has synthesized Cd-free quantum dots possessing high brightness and multi-fluorescence successfully. Then, polymer coating and ligand exchange transfer to water-soluble materials to produce liposome nanomaterials as fluorescent probes and enhancing medical applications of nanotechnology.
INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AS THE CHARACTER OF THE HIGH-PROFILE INDUSTRY

This study aims to examine the impact of this type of industry on the extent of disclosure of intellectual capital of pharmaceutical companies. The type of industry in this study is divided into two, namely the high profile and low profile industries. This study also examines the impact of firm size on intellectual capital disclosure. This research was conducted on all companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange for five years from 2014 to 2018. Path analysis was used to analyze the research data. The results showed that pharmaceutical companies, which were a high profile industry, proved to be more intense in disclosing their intellectual capital ownership than other industries. The research also found that the larger the company size, the more encouraging them to disclose their intellectual capital ownership in their annual reports.
Moving Target Classification Based on micro-Doppler Signatures Via Deep Learning

Radar-based classification of ground moving targets relies on Doppler information. Therefore, the classification between humans and animals is a challenging task due to their similar Doppler signatures. This work proposes a Deep Learning-based approach for ground-moving radar targets classification. The proposed algorithm learns the radar targets’ micro-Doppler signatures in the 2D fast-time slow-time radar echoes domain. This work shows that the convolutional neural network (CNN) can achieve high classification performance. Also, it shows that efficient data augmentation and regularization significantly improve classification performance and reduce over-fit.
Prediction Model for the Persistence of Sharia Mutual Fund Performance in Indonesian Capital Market

Over the period of 2010 to 2012, the performance of Islamic mutual funds in Indonesia saw a high degree of persistence. However, the persistence rate decreased in the period of 2014 to 2016. Given such fluctuated rate, this research tries to identify the factors that influence the persistence of the mutual fund performance and, based on these factors, creates the predictive modelling of persistence rate. The samples of the study included all sharia mutual funds offered from 2010 to 2016 in Indonesian capital market. To construct the model, we used the Logit equation, while to evaluate the accuracy of the prediction model, we used the ExpectationPrediction Evaluation with a prediction evaluation for success of 0.5. The results of this study indicate that, of the whole mutual fund, the best model is a model involving the following variables: (1) the time interval since the mutual fund was launched, (2) the rank of the mutual funds, whether it was at the top 5 within 1-2 years after the launch, and (3) the number of newcomer funds during persistence testing. The level of accuracy of this model, when it was used to predict the whole sharia mutual fund persistence, was 64%. When the model was used to predict the persistence of equity performance of mutual fund, its level of accuracy rose to 77.78%. Whereas in the use to predict the persistence of fixed income mutual funds the accuracy rate amounted to 70%. The persistence of predictive model for mixed funds was based on different factors of compositions: (1) the number of funds under management, (2) the fact whether the mutual funds are in the top 5 within 1-2 years after the launch, and (3) the number of newly coming funds during persistence testing. This model had an accuracy level of 75%. It is expected that this study be used as a guide for investors wishing to invest in sharia mutual funds.
Effect of the carbon source of plant straw supplement in constructed artificial wetland on nitrogen removal

Effect of the carbon sources of three plant straws-reed,branch and reed+branch supplement in constructed wetland.The straws filling surface layer (0-5cm) and middle layer (30-35cm) on nitrogen removal was studied.Experimental result shows that,supplement constructed wetland with plant straw under the condition of experimental influent could enhance system TN removal rate from 44%to 53%-66%,and the type difference of plant straws has no significant effect on nitrogen removal.Supplement of these three plant straws in middle layer can reach better nitrogen removal efficiency and have stronger ability to resist the impact of influent nitrogen loading.Nitrogen form variation with distance indicates that,supplement of plant straw can clear nitrate nitrogen and nitrite nitrogen accumulation induced by lack of organic carbon,thus improves nitrogen removal efficiency.The plant straw supplement in middle layer,because of not interfering with the process of nitrification of influent ammonia nitrogen can produce more denitrification substrates-nitrate nitrogen and nitrite nitrogen,having better nitrogen removal efficiency than supplement in surface layer.
Zeolite-Filled Porous Mixed Matrix Membranes for Air Separation

This work introduces the preparation of zeolite-filled porous mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) and discusses their potential use for air separation. Porous polysulfone (PSF) matrix membranes were prepared using the nonsolvent-induced phase separation process. Scanning electron microscope and gas permeation experiments suggested the presence of closed pores in the porous matrix membranes. Furthermore, porous MMMs containing zeolite 4A particles as filler were prepared and characterized. The permeation properties of porous MMMs were highly dependent on the zeolite content. The introduction of zeolite particles distorted the closed pores in the PSF matrix and formed nonselective voids which resulted in very high oxygen flux but low O2/N2 selectivity. The annealing technique for modifying the nonselective pores present in the polymer–zeolite interface is also described in this study. The resulting annealed porous MMMs had the ability to separate O2 from N2 more effectively than traditional dense MMMs.
DIESEL NOx REDUCTION BY PREHEATING INLET AIR

This study shows the effect of inlet air preheating by exhaust gases on diesel combustion and exhaust emission with neat diesel fuel and diesel kerosene blend in a diesel engine. The experimental results show that at an elevated inlet air temperature after warming up the engine, oxides of nitrogen (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and engine noise decrease for medium load condition using the newly designed system. Comparatively better overall engine performance is found for high load condition with the new set up. The reduction in emissions with the new set up may be due to significant reduction in ignition delay and better combustion because of higher inlet air temperature.
Dysfunction in differential reward-punishment responsiveness in conduct disorder relates to severity of callous-unemotional traits but not irritability

Abstract Background Conduct disorder (CD) has been associated with dysfunction in reinforcement-based decision-making. Two forms of affective traits that reflect the components of CD severity are callous-unemotional (CU; reduced guilt/empathy) traits and irritability. The form of the reinforcement-based decision-making dysfunction with respect to CD and CU traits remains debated and has not been examined with respect to irritability in cases with CD. The goals of the current study were to determine the extent of dysfunction in differential (reward v. punishment) responsiveness in CD, and CU traits and irritability in participants with CD. Methods The study involved 178 adolescents [typically developing (TD; N = 77) and cases with CD (N = 101)]. Participants were scanned with fMRI during a passive avoidance task that required participants to learn to respond to (i.e. approach) stimuli that engender reward and refrain from responding to (i.e. passively avoid) stimuli that engender punishment. Results Adolescents with CD showed reduced differential reward-punishment responsiveness within the striatum relative to TD adolescents. CU traits, but not irritability, were associated with reduced differential reward-punishment responsiveness within the striatum, rostromedial, and lateral frontal cortices. Conclusions The results suggest CD is associated with reduced differential reward-punishment responsiveness and the extent of this dysfunction in participants with CD is associated with the severity of CU traits but not irritability.
Testing for Structural Breaks – A New Self-Normalization Approach Based on the Adjusted Sample Range

In this paper, we introduce the adjusted-range based Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test statistic and the extended adjusted-range based KS (EKS) test statistic to test for structural break in the mean, in the general setting and the constancy of parameters in a regression setting. Instead of using the self-normalization proposed by Shao (2010) and Lobato (2001), which utilizes the variance of a partial sum process, we propose the use of its adjusted-range, which is also stochastically proportional to the true long-run variance (LRV) and is nuisance parameter and distribution free; yet it is robust to persistent autocorrelation. We find, through simulation studies, that the proposed adjusted-range based test statistic can rectify the nonmonotonic power issue identified by Shao (2015) without the need of involving backward and forward summation as the G test statistic in Shao and Zhang (2010), offering better performance than KS based on either standard asymptotics or the fixed-b approach (Kiefer and Vogelsang, 2005), and better sizes and adequate powers in the multivariate context. Finally, empirical studies also demonstrated the suitability of KS and EKS tests.
Green Bonds: The Sovereign Issuers’ Perspective

This paper aims at providing an assessment of green bonds from the perspective of sovereign issuers. After a brief depiction of green bonds’ features, we describe the market evolution, present the EU regulatory framework and identify the main benefits and costs for sovereign issuers. We focus on the financial performance of these securities in primary and secondary markets. First, we compare the yields at issuance of sovereign green bonds with non-green bonds of the same issuer with the same maturity. Then we analyse the secondary market performance of green bonds issued by France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, and we do not find, any remarkable price difference between green and conventional bonds, even after controlling for their different degree of liquidity. Nevertheless, this should not discourage Sovereigns from entering the market since the reason for issuing these securities does not simply hinge upon short-term financial convenience. Green bonds can actually help Sovereigns to mitigate environmental risks and to cope with the intergenerational trade-off in climate-related policies.
Impacts of Corporate Announcements on Stock Returns during the Global Pandemic: Evidence from the Indian Stock Market

PurposeThe authors examine the impacts of corporate announcements on stock returns during the pandemic stress.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employ the event study methodology with the market model on a sample of 90 events (announcement and ex-date). FindingsThe authors find that all the corporate announcements do not impact the stock returns in a similar pattern. While the bonus announcement, ex-bonus and ex-split events led to positive significant abnormal returns on the event date, the rights issue and stock-split announcements failed to influence the stock returns. The findings suggest that before making such announcements, the corporates should wait until the market recovers because even the positively impacting events result in negative market responses during pandemic stress.Practical implicationsThis study will guide the policymakers to stimulate share prices during such pandemics with the help of various corporate announcements. The investors will be assisted in understanding the stock market mechanism and making wise decisions before reacting to corporate actions during a pandemic or emergency period. While the policymakers are concerned with influencing the share prices, the investors are concerned with the composition of the risk-return parameters in their portfolio. This study will act as an essential investment tool for both.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors conduct the first-ever study to examine the impacts of corporate announcements during a pandemic stress period that significantly contributes to the literature. The authors examine the announcement effects in India and accurately anticipate that this study will be a pioneer in this field. This study also paves the way for future researches in this area.
Study of Airport Service Quality and Profitability in Indonesia

This study was about the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) measurement and its relation to profitability in the airport industry. The main purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of the ASQ measurement in Airports by investigating the relationships of service quality in terms of creating purchase intentions. In specific to ASQ, the surveys have been systematically carried out by many airport operators all over the world. ASQ has 8 components: access; check-in; passport/personal ID control; security; finding your way; airport facilities; airport environment; and arrival services. This is different from PZB’s (1985) Service Quality dimensions. This suggests that an effective process of measuring and analyzing passenger perceptions of ASQ is not easily achieved. These concerns are certainly relevant to avoid misinterpreting passenger perceptions. The measurement model should be considered for a multidimensional approach in the context of airport performance measurement regarding service quality.The study, however, included the perceptions of both international passengers and domestic concerning the current service levels, more specific was using the measurement model of Cronin and Taylor (1992). Cronin and Taylor (1992) say that perception alone is enough and even better than other models i.e, PZB (1988) model. This study analyzes whether passengers may stay longer in the airport, recommend the airport to other people or pay higher tax if they are satisfied with the service offers by airport. This also included an assessment the ability ASQ to explain the variation in repeat purchase intention including interaction among variables. The results of this study show ASQ has a moderately low effect of purchasing intentions.
Oil Price Shocks and Economic Growth in Oil-Exporting Countries

The aim of this paper is to investigate how major net oil exporter economies react to oil price shocks. We contribute to the literature by considering, at the same time, the possible nonlinearity and asymmetry of this relationship with respect to sign, size and causes of the oil price shocks, as well as the state of the economy in which the shocks occur. We apply a Threshold Structural VAR approach, characterized by a separation of the observations into different regimes based on a threshold variable, to model time series non-linearities. We use the economic activity as the threshold variable, as it divides economic development in two regimes under which we expect the effects of oil price shocks to differ. First, We find that the effects of oil price shocks on oil exporting economies greatly depend on the underlying cause of the shocks as well as the state of the economy. Second, we find little evidence of asymmetric response of output to the sign of oil price shocks. Our main findings warn decision makers in the area of macroeconomic planning that, when making decisions based on the oil price, the underlying causes of its variations as well as the state of the economy in which the oil price shocks occur have to be considered.