Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Various Polar Solvents to The Improvement of Supercritical CO2 Extraction of Bacterial Quinones from Activated Sludge

Extraction and identification of bacterial quinones is becoming increasingly important. The main purpose of this research is to investigate the possibility of extracting quinones from activated sludge using supercritical fluid extraction and also to investigate the effect of various polar solvents in order to improve the yield. A ± 0.1 g freeze-dried activated sludge sample was extracted at 35C, 20 Mpa using supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2). This technique was able to extract quinones, yet with very low yield. In order to enhance the yield, performance of scCO2 was improved by adding any modifiers to the fluid. Various polar solvents such as methanol, acetone, ethanol, and chloroform were investigated. By adding the modifiers, four ubiquinones and 12 menaquinones species were identified in 0.1 g dried activated sludge based on retention time and spectrum analysis. Among the tested various polar solvents, methanol showed to be the best modifier, based on the highest total quinone content extracted and the lowest dissimilarity index.
Athletic identity and psychiatric symptoms following retirement from varsity sports

Background: Despite evidence identifying adjustment difficulties among retiring athletes, research investigating factors that contribute to post-retirement complications is limited. Athletic identity may be an important determinant of adverse adaptation to sport retirement. Aims: The purpose of this study was to address the influence of athletic identity on post-retirement depression and anxiety symptoms among varsity athletes. Method: An anonymous, online survey regarding athletic identity and psychiatric symptoms was completed by 72 self-identified varsity athletes during their final season of competition and 3 months after retiring from sport. Results: After controlling for the effects of pre-retirement anxiety symptoms, endorsement of an athletic identity significantly predicted anxiety symptoms in the post-retirement period. A similar, but non-significant, pattern was observed for depressive symptoms. Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that athletes’ degree of athletic identity may be a risk factor for the emergence of psychiatric distress in the months following their retirement from sport. Identity-focused screening or intervention during athletes’ sport careers could potentially mitigate some of the psychological difficulties associated with sport retirement.
Validation of Probabilistic Predictions

Current advances in high-speed computing and increased availability of statistical software have led to widespread use of statistical methods for the development of computerized protocols predictive of binary health outcomes. If these predictive algorithms are to be used in settings other than those for which they were developed, e.g., applied in a different geographic setting or extrapolated for use in a slightly different population, then they should be carefully validated to ensure appropriate application. Miller et al. (Stat Med. 1991) provided a comprehensive methodology for external validation of logistic prediction models, and ap plied these methods in a temporal validation setting. In this article, the authors emphasize how these methods can be applied to general forms of probabilistic predictions and provide several SAS® macros for computation of the desired statistics. Key words: validation; logistic regression; predictive probabilities. (Med Decis Making 1993;13:49-58)
Review and analysis of recent development of lower extremity exoskeletons for walking assist

The past decades marked a significant progress in the development of exoskeletons in research and in industry. The increasing use of exoskeletons in a variety of fields is a testimony to the advancements made by this class of human mobility assistive devices. The following paper provides a review of current development in lower extremity exoskeletons that deliver walking assistance. The paper focuses on exoskeletons that work in parallel with user's legs. The paper categorizes such exoskeletons into two groups: powered and passive exoskeletons. For each category, most common exoskeletons are revealed. For each given example, a detailed description and analysis of the mechanical design, actuation, control scheme and distinguishable features is presented. The paper concludes with a discussion on the challenges and future directions associated with the creation of these mechanical devices.
Zap it to Me : The Impacts of a Mobile Cash Transfer Program

Conditional and unconditional cash transfers have been effective in improving development outcomes in a variety of contexts, yet the costs of these programs to program recipients and implementing agencies are rarely discussed. The introduction of mobile money transfer systems in many developing countries offers new opportunities for a more cost-effective means of implementing cash transfers. This paper reports on the first randomized evaluation of a cash transfer program delivered via the mobile phone. In response to a devastating drought in Niger, households in targeted villages received monthly cash transfers as part of a social protection program. One-third of targeted villages received a monthly cash transfer via a mobile money transfer system (called zap), whereas one-third received manual cash transfers and the remaining one-third received manual cash transfers plus a mobile phone. We show that the zap delivery mechanism strongly reduced the variable distribution costs for the implementing agency, as well as program recipients’ costs of obtaining the cash transfer. The zap approach also resulted in additional benefits: households in zap villages used their cash transfer to purchase a more diverse set of goods, had higher diet diversity, and grew more types of crops, especially marginal cash crops grown by women. These results are robust to the use of a Bonferonni correction for multiple hypothesis-testing. We posit that the primary mechanism underlying these results is the greater privacy of related to the zap mechanism, resulting in changes in intra-household decisionmaking. This suggests that m-transfers could be a cost-effective means of providing cash transfers for remote rural populations. However, research on the broader welfare effects is still needed.
Towards Qualitative Insights for Visualizing Student Engagement in Web-based Learning Environments

Learning Sciences argue that student engagement is composed of behavioral, motivational and cognitive dimensions. Many proposals in Learning Analytics have provided teachers with quantitative indicators focusing only on students' behaviors, such as the number and the duration of their actions with the learning environment. In this paper, we propose visual representations of cognitive indicators to add explanatory elements to behavioral indicators. We describe our general architecture for collecting and aggregating data used to build the proposed visualizations. We illustrate the use of these indicators in various pedagogical scenarios oriented towards supporting teachers in students' actions and performances understanding.
Inter-Viewing Foregrounds

The notion of foreground refers to a person’s interpretation of his or her learning possibilities and ‘life’ opportunities, in relation to what the socio-political context seems to make acceptable for and available to the person. Students’ foregrounds are part of a learning landscape , which we define as a set of inter-related dimensions implicated in the constitution of mathematics education practices. In this paper we present a case drawn from an empirical investigation of foreground, based on inter-views with 14-15 years old students from multicultural classrooms in Denmark. The purpose is to explore if there are or could be any ‘learning motives’ that connect mathematics in school and possible out-of-school practices either in terms of possible future work practices or possible further studies.
Preemptive mobile assisted and guard channel based handoff queuing scheme

Mobility is an important aspect of any time, any where next generation wireless communication networks. Handoff supports this mobility of the users and allows them to move from one cell to another without service interruption or degradation and in true sense makes a user mobile. Handoff failure results in forced termination of an ongoing call so the handoff requests need to be prioritized over originating call requests. This paper discusses a preemptive scheme which uses channel reservation for handoff requests as well as allows ongoing non-real time calls to be preempted by real-time handoff calls arriving in the network. Handoff decisions are assumed to be Mobile-Assisted and hence calls are handed over to Base stations with good-quality signals. Markov chain model of the proposed scheme has been designed and dropping and blocking probabilities of the calls arriving at the network have been computed.
Földrajzi analógia alkalmazása klímaszcenáriók elemzésében és értékelésében

Az időjaras egy meghatarozott helyen es időszakban ertelmezett „szokasos alakulasat”, amit az egyes meteorologiai parameterek varhato ertekeivel jellemezhetunk, az adott terulet es időszak klimajanak nevezzuk. A klima alapvetően meghatarozza a kerdeses foldrajzi terulet okologiai letviszonyait, jellemző potencialis vegetaciotipusat, florajat es faunajat, az ott hosszabbtavon kialakulo talajtipusokat es azok aktualis allapotat, valamint (reszben az előbbieken keresztul is) az adott teruleten lehetseges emberi tevekenysegek kereteit is. A kerdeses teruleten tortenetileg kialakult emberi tevekenysegek a tarsadalomnak a klimahoz valo alkalmazkodasat fejezik ki. A főbb tarsadalmi szintű emberi tevekenysegek tobbsege valamilyen mertekben fugg az uralkodo klimatol, de ezek klimaerzekenysege jelentősen elter egymastol. A klimara leginkabb erzekeny tevekenysegeknek az alabbiakat tekinthetjuk: 1. mezőgazdasag, 2. erdőgazdalkodas, 3. vizgazdalkodas, 4. kornyezet- es termeszetvedelem, 5. human- es allategeszsegugy.
Knowledge Retention: Minimizing Organizational Business Loss

Purpose – Knowledge retention is becoming a main challenge in many countries, as knowledge becomes a main asset of organizations. The research questions the challenge of how can organizations minimize the loss of important knowledge while experiencing high levels of retiree? The research aims to suggest a framework for knowledge retention initiatives in organizations.Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology is multi‐case research. The unit of analysis is organization (eight organizations analyzed, overall more than 30 retiree knowledge retention mini projects). Data linkage to the propositions and method of interpretation – explanation building technique.Findings – This research suggests that successful knowledge retention can be achieved in three primary stages: defining scope; documenting (planning and implementation); and integrating knowledge back into the organization. Special care must be dedicated throughout the process to: retaining best practices and unexpected situations; structuri.
Multi-Linguistic Optical Font Recognition Using Stroke Templates

One of the essential distinctions between different fonts is their stroke shape. A method is presented to automatically extract representative stroke templates from a text image, which contains characters of the same typeface. The collected stroke templates are classified and saved to a font database. To recognize an unknown font for an input text image, a Bayes decision rule is used to determine which font entrant in the database provides the best matching to the unknown font. The experiment demonstrates that this approach can distinguish between Chinese and English fonts without the prior information of their script. Another advantage is that it can learn a new font very quickly. Forty fonts (twenty English and twenty Chinese) are used in our experiment. An average recognition accuracy of 97 percent can be achieved in the present system
RETRACTED ARTICLE: Novel drug delivery system based on doxorubicin-encapsulated magnetic nanoparticles modified with PLGA-PEG1000 copolymer

We, the Editors and Publisher of the journal Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology, have retracted the following article: Eommolbanin Ebrahimi, Abolfazl Akbarzadeh, Elham Abbasi, Amir Ahmad Khandaghi, Farhad Abasalizadeh & Soodabeh Davaran (2016) Novel drug delivery system based on doxorubicin-encapsulated magnetic nanoparticles modified with PLGA-PEG1000 copolymer. Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology, 44(1), 290–297, DOI: 10.3109/21691401.2014. 944646 Since publication, a reader alerted the Publisher that Figures 5, 6 and 7 appear to have been previously published in Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology and other journals, specifically: Figure 5 appears to have been duplicated with Figure 6 from Ebrahimi et al., 2014 (https://doi.org/10.3109/21691401.2014.968822). Figure 6 appears to have been duplicated with Figure 7 from Ebrahimi et al., 2014 (https://doi.org/10.3109/21691401.2014.968822) Figure 6 appears to have been duplicated with Figure 11 from Akbarzadeh et al., 2012 (https://doi.org/10.2147/IJN.S24326) Figure 7 appears to have been duplicated with Figure 8 from Ebrahimi et al., 2014 (https://doi.org/10.3109/21691401.2014.968822). The reused images have been described as originating from a new study with no reference to the previous studies. We contacted the corresponding author and second author, and they acknowledged the similarities in the data published. As this error directly impacts the reported results and conclusions, the Editor and Publisher have agreed to retract the article to ensure correction of the scholarly record. The corresponding author has been informed. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.
Performance monitoring during sleep inertia after a 1‐h daytime nap

Performance monitoring is an essential function involved in the correction of errors. Deterioration of this function may result in serious accidents. This function is reflected in two event‐related potential (ERP) components that occur after erroneous responses, specifically the error‐related negativity/error negativity (ERN/Ne) and error positivity (Pe). The ERN/Ne is thought to be associated with error detection, while the Pe is thought to reflect motivational significance or recognition of errors. Using these ERP components, some studies have shown that sleepiness resulting from extended wakefulness may cause a decline in error‐monitoring function. However, the effects of sleep inertia have not yet been explored. In this study, we examined the effects of sleep inertia immediately after a 1‐h daytime nap on error‐monitoring function as expressed through the ERN/Ne and Pe. Nine healthy young adults participated in two different experimental conditions (nap and rest). Participants performed the arrow‐orientation task before and immediately after a 1‐h nap or rest period. Immediately after the nap, participants reported an increased effort to perform the task and tended to estimate their performance as better, despite no objective difference in actual performance between the two conditions. ERN/Ne amplitude showed no difference between the conditions; however, the amplitude of the Pe was reduced following the nap. These results suggest that individuals can detect their own error responses, but the motivational significance ascribed to these errors might be diminished during the sleep inertia experienced after a 1‐h nap. This decline might lead to overestimation of their performance.
Asthma and Allergy 4 Oral Presentations

Introduction: Studies suggest that 10% of children with an ARI have persistent cough at day 21. There are no studies in Indigenous children who have a high risk of chronic lung disease. We aimed to identify the incidence and outcomes of ARI with cough as a symptom in urban Indigenous children. Methods:This is a prospective study of Indigenous children aged<5 years registered with a primary health service. Children are followed for a period of 12 months via monthly contacts. Children who develop cough as a symptom at any time are followed weekly for 4 weeks to ascertain cough outcomes. Results: To date, 162 children are enrolled, totalling 1065 child-months of observation. Two-hundred ARI episodes with cough have been reported (29.6 episodes/100 child-months at risk). Thirty-four ARIs (17%) have progressed to persistent cough at day 28 in 24 children. Of these, 15 children had 1 episode, 5 had 2, 4 had 3 and 1 had 4 during the follow-up period. The majority of children with persistent cough were diagnosed (by a respiratory physician) with protracted bacterial bronchitis and/or bronchiectasis. Conclusions:The proportion of children developing persistent cough postARI is higher than that currently reported (10%) with the majority suggesting protracted bacterial infection. GrantSupport:AQUTAPAaward, aQCMRIProgramGrant, UQFoundation Research Excellence Award, a QUT Indigenous Health Research StartUpGrant and the NHMRCCRE for LungHealth in Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander Children. Declaration of Interest: None to Declare
General score tests for associations of genetic markers with disease using cases and their parents

Association studies of genetic markers with disease play a critical role in the dissection of genetically complex traits because they are relatively easy to conduct and are useful for fine‐scale mapping of genetic traits. The advantage of family‐based controls has recently received much attention because spurious associations caused by population structure can be controlled for, and marker genotype information on diseased cases and their parents can be used to test the compound hypothesis of both linkage and linkage disequilibrium. However, debate still exists regarding the statistical methods of analysis. Herein are presented statistical methods to test for linkage (in the presence of linkage disequilibrium) between multiallelic genetic markers and disease when diseased subjects (cases) and their parents are sampled. Theoretical considerations for the development of general statistical tests are presented as well as asymptotic formulas to compute their power when planning a study. Furthermore, simulation results for nine specific statistics are used to contrast the power of these methods under different genetic mechanisms leading to disease (dominant vs. recessive, one vs. two high‐risk alleles). These results demonstrate substantial gains in power for specific statistical tests designed to detect specified genetic mechanisms. However, without a priori knowledge of the likely genetic mechanism, it is desirable to rely on a fairly robust statistical method, robust so that power is not drastically lost when either dominant or recessive mechanisms are acting, and when either one or more than one marker alleles are associated with disease. Based on both theoretical and simulation results, a general score statistic, which generalizes the transmission/disequilibrium test, tends to offer sufficient power for a variety of genetic mechanisms, so that it is worth considering for broad use in studies which use genetic marker information from both diseased cases and their parents. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
EBSD for analysing the twinning microstructure in fine‐grained TWIP steels and its influence on work hardening

A 22 Mn–0.6 C twinning induced plasticity steel with an average grain size of 2.6 μm was deformed in tension at room temperature. The electron backscattered diffraction technique was used to characterize the twinning structure in relation with the local texture evolution. For nanoscale analysis, additional transmission electron microscopy analysis was performed. Nanotwins were activated in the largest grains from the beginning of the deformation. They interacted with a well‐developed dislocation structure that induced detectable intragranular orientation variations. With increasing deformation, dense bundles of nanotwins preferentially developed in grains oriented close to the <111>//tensile direction fibre (promoted by the deformation) as well as medium to high angle sub‐boundaries. These key features of the twinned microstructure were finally related to the remarkably high strain hardening, which evolved according to different stages.
Modeling of VSC Connected to Weak Grid for Stability Analysis of DC-Link Voltage Control

In this paper, a small-signal model of voltage source converter (VSC) is developed to investigate the stability of dc-link voltage control. This model contributes to representing the dc-link voltage dynamics characteristics of VSC integrated to weak grid. Effects of grid strength, operating point, and control loops' interactions on the performance of VSC are taken into consideration. Based on the proposed small-signal model, eigenvalue analysis is employed to study the stability of dc-link voltage control with varying operating conditions. Analysis results show that control loops' interactions introduce a partial positive feedback to the dc-link voltage control in weak grid. Furthermore, the effect of control loops' interactions on dc-link voltage control stability reaches largest when the bandwidth of the phase-locked loop is close to that of the dc-link voltage control. Time-domain simulations and experiments were conducted to validate the analysis.
A Dynamic Programming Algorithm For (1, 2)-Exemplar Breakpoint Distance

The exemplar breakpoint distance problem is motivated by finding conserved sets of genes between two genomes. It asks to find respective exemplars in two genomes to minimize the breakpoint distance between them. If one genome has no repeated gene (called trivial genome) and the other has genes repeating at most twice, it is referred to as the (1, 2)-exemplar breakpoint distance problem, EBD(1, 2) for short. Little has been done on algorithm design for this problem by now. In this article, we propose a parameter to describe the maximum physical span between two copies of a gene in a genome, and based on it, design a fixed-parameter algorithm for EBD(1, 2). Using a dynamic programming approach, our algorithm can take O(4(s)n(2)) time and O(4(s)n) space to solve an EBD(1, 2) instance that has two genomes of n genes where the second genome has each two copies of a gene spanning at most s copies of the genes. Our algorithm can also be used to compute the maximum adjacencies between two genomes. The algorithm has been implemented in C++. Simulations on randomly generated data have verified the effectiveness of our algorithm. The software package is available from the authors.
A short-term traffic flow forecasting method based on Markov chain and grey Verhulst model

The traffic system is a nonlinear and time-varying complex system with the human body being involved. At the same time, the highly uncertain and nonlinear of short-term traffic flow has been presented due to the complicated factors such as road construction, traffic accident, complex weather and trip distribution. et. So the short-term traffic flow prediction is more difficult than the long-term forecast. First of all, aiming at the uncertain and time-varying characteristics of the short-term traffic flow, the main single-model prediction methods and the combination forecast models are summarized and analyzed. Finally, a combined forecasting method based on Markov chain theory and grey Verhuls model with less data demand and parameter is proposed. The experimental results show that the combined model can obtain a high prediction accuracy.