Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Viewport Perception Based Blind Stereoscopic Omnidirectional Image Quality Assessment

Compared with traditional 2D images, stereoscopic omnidirectional images (SOIs) usually have more complex perceptual factors due to the particularities of imaging and display, making the objective quality assessment of SOIs challenging. In this paper, we construct a large and diverse subjective SOIs database named as NBU-SOID for further research demand. And then, we propose a viewport perception based blind SOIs quality assessment (VP-BSOIQA) method by considering the impacts of viewport, user behavior and stereoscopic perception on human visual system, which is mainly composed of binocular perception model (BPM) and omnidirectional perception model (OPM). In the BPM, a binocular combination perception map is generated by the dimension reduction of stereopair and the weighting of binocular energy to reflect the binocular masking effect. In the OPM, several viewports are first created to ensure the consistency of evaluation objects. Then, the intra-viewport and inter-viewport weighting factors are designed with the common influences of visual attention and peripheral vision sensitivity to aggregate the novel multi-orientation structural features extracted from all potential viewports. Experimental results on the NBU-SOID and SOLID databases demonstrate that BPM and OPM can be robustly combined with the existing 2D image quality assessment (IQA) methods, thus averagely achieving 10.2% and 12.2% performance gain in terms of SRCC, respectively. In addition, the proposed VP-BSOIQA method outperforms the state-of-the-art blind IQA methods in predicting the quality of SOIs.
The Role of Coaching Program and Entrepreneur’s Self-Efficacy on Business Growth in SMEs Context

This explanatory research aims to examine the effect of government coaching on business growth in SMEs, either directly or mediated by entrepreneur's self-efficacy. This study was conducted on 180 SME entrepreneurs who were determined by purposive sampling technique. The data collection method is a survey using a questionnaire instrument, then the data is analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results showed that (1) Government coaching has a positive and significant effect on business growth in SMEs. (2) Government coaching has a positive and significant effect on entrepreneur's self-efficacy (3) Entrepreneur's self-efficacy has a positive and significant effect on business growth in SMEs. (4) Entrepreneur's self-efficacy is proven to partially mediate the influence of coaching on business growth in SMEs. There is a need for a sustainable coaching program to change the behavior of entrepreneurs in developing their business.
A review of personality research in sport

Background and aim. The significant role of personality in sport is often emphasized. The purpose of this article is to review the research in sport psychology that has contributed to the understanding of relationships and potential avenues for research into personality traits in sport. Matherial and method. The collected material consisted only of the works of sports psychologists available in Poland. The method of source materials analysis was used. Analysis with deductive reasoning and synthesis with inductive reasoning were used. Results. The results of research on: the relationship between personality and sports discipline, the role of personality in combat, individual and team sports, the influence of personality on sports performance and motor skills, accidental studies of personality in sports and health psychology, developmental psychology, dietetics, and gender are presented. Conclusions. Physical and sports activity affects the personality of people who train. Personality traits relate to long-term sport success, interpersonal relationships, and mental states of athletes before, during and after competition. In addition, they refer to the use of leisure time, strength and mobility in old age, and unhealthy, addictive physical behavior.
Reflecting On Teaching and Ecovid-19: An Aggressive Digital Teaching Transformation Outbreak in Higher Hospitality Education in Cyprus

The purpose of this research inquiry was to reflect on: (a) how the dynamics or synergies formed by the enforced and hostile transition from traditional to online teaching and learning have affected the quality of the teaching and learning process in higher vocational education institutions in Cyprus; and (b) what the impact on teaching and learning in the post COVID-19 period has been. The DigCompEdu digital literacy framework has been used to stimulate research because of its strict and clear focus on educator-specific digital competencies. A descriptive qualitative case-study research design was used to explore the experiences of teaching staff and how they dealt with the enforced transition to online teaching. In total, 32 participants from 11 CHEIs teaching hospitality-related majors were interviewed, electronically. The data saturation point was determined by the sample size of the study. The transcription and coding of the collected data was performed using NVivo 10. The first research question identified the following emerging themes: a) the externalization of tacit aspects of digital realities knowledge, b) Collective and intelligent actions in sharing knowledge and practicing digital competencies, c) Principles of learning organization and practicing, and d) Empathy and high levels of emotional labor. The second research question revealed the following themes: a) the Changing nature of teaching and learning methodologies and approaches in hospitality studies, b) Student centered and interactive pedagogical approaches, c) Digital-based knowledge management ecosystem approach.
Development of a 3D Printed Soft Parallel Robot

This paper reports on design, fabrication, and kinematics modeling of a 3D printed soft parallel robot equipped with soft pneumatic actuators. Soft robotics is an emerging field of research which facilitates safe human machine interface. Soft elastomeric actuators made through molding process are one of the key elements of soft robotic systems. However, molding process is tedious and time consuming making the fabrication process undesirable. Recently reported 3D printed soft pneumatic actuators pave the way for manufacturing of novel soft actuators and robots with complex geometries. The current work can be considered as a proof of concept for 3D printing of a soft parallel robot. The robot consists of two soft pneumatic actuators that are connected to two passive links by mean of flexible hinges. The robot has two degrees of freedom and can be used in planar manipulation tasks. Moreover, a number of robots can be configured to operate in a cooperative manner to increase the manipulation dexterity. A kinematic model is developed to simulate the motion of robot end-effector. Through application of the kinematic model it has been shown that the robot is capable of following any planar trajectories within its workspace. Also, pseudo-rigid-body model (PRBM) is used to develop a dynamic model of the soft robot to more accurately predict the robot interaction with its environment and also develop advanced control system for robust position control of the robot.
Improvement of Domperidone Solubility and Dissolution Rate by Dispersion in Various Hydrophilic Carriers.

The aim of this work was to improve the solubility and dissolution rate of poorly-soluble, weakly-basic, anti-emetic drug; domperidone (DMP) using solid dispersion technique. Solubility studies of DMP with various hydrophilic carriers including sorbitol, mannitol, PEG 4000,PEG 6000, pluronic F-68 and pluronic F-127 were performed. Pluronic F-68 and pluronic F-127 showed the highest solubilizing effect on DMP and therefore; they were selected for the preparation of solid dispersions in different weight ratios by the fusion method. The solid dispersions were characterized using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Powder X-ray Diffractometry (P-XRD), solubility determination and in-vitro dissolution rate studies. FT-IR and DSC studies confirmed the absence of incompatibilities between DMP and the used carriers. DSC and P-XRD studies proved the transformation of drug from crystalline to amorphous state in the prepared solid dispersions. The results showed marked improvement of DMP solubility and dissolution rate from the solid dispersions compared with the pure drug and indicated the superiority of solid dispersions prepared with pluronic F-68 over those prepared with pluronic F-127. It can be concluded that solid dispersion technique was an effective tool in the enhancement of DMP dissolution.
Model-Free Control of Flexible Manipulator Based on Intrinsic Design

In this article, a model-free controller is proposed to suppress residual vibration caused by the linkage flexibility after the positioning process. The controller is designed to release the potential energy rapidly by repeating a sequence comprising two steps. In the first step, the controller acts as a damper to absorb the deformation energy, whereas in the second step, neural network control is introduced for the purpose of returning to the target position smoothly. The controller is simple, and the only required feedback signal is from the motor encoder. The position error is proved to converge to zero within a small neighborhood through Lyapunov stability analysis. The effectiveness of the controller is tested in three applications, an experiment study on a single-link flexible manipulator in horizontal plane and two simulation studies on a two-link flexible manipulator in horizontal plane and vertical plane, respectively. The settling time is decreased and energy efficiency is improved in all the three applications comparing with other controllers.
Genetic diversity of Entamoeba Species among Children Under 5 years in the Vhembe District, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Background: Our understanding of the disease caused by the various Entamoeba species and its epidemiology is changing with time, and very little is known about their genetic diversity. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the prevalence and genetic diversity of Entamoeba species among children under 5 years in the Vhembe District, South Africa.Methods: A total of 534 stool samples from 313 children (both males and females) aged under 5 were collected from 12 villages in Vhembe District, Limpopo. The prevalence of Entamoeba infections was examined by microscope and PCR, followed by Sanger sequencing for specific regions of 18S rRNA gene to identify and differentiate the circulating species of Entamoeba in the study population. Results: Of the 313 children recruited in the study, 163 were females and 150 were males, the ages ranged from 1 to 3 years. Of the 534 samples, 130/534 (24.3%) were microscopically positive for Entamoeba cysts. However, Entamoeba genus-specific DNA ampliﬁcation using PCR identiﬁed 43/534 (8%) of Entamoeba species. Twenty positive amplicons were sequenced by Sanger sequencing technologies. Out of the twenty samples, twelve (60%) were confirmed to be Entamoeba species. The Entamoeba species identified in the study as evidenced by BLAST calls in the NCBI database and phylogenetic tree after narrowing the search using the option Entamoeba taxid (5758) from the NCBI database included 4 E. polecki (33.3%), 6 E. coli (50%), one E. muris (8.3%) and one E. hartmanni (8.3%). The phylogenetic tree showed the close relationship between isolated species and the ones in the GenBank.Conclusion: The current study has shown for the first time the presence of E. polecki in humans and the existence of possibly two types of E. coli infecting humans. Our findings further emphasize the need for the re-evaluation of the pathogenicity of species such as E. polecki which are quite common in the study population and might be responsible for some of the health complications.
AHP BASED SELECTION OF THIRD-PARTY LOGISTICS SERVICE PROVIDER

Today, as in all other sectors, competition in the logistics sector is getting harder day by day. In order to be successful, firms should be able to take the right decisions and fast as they can to be able to catch changing competition conditions. The first stage of making the right decisions is to reach the correct and necessary data quickly. Although the concept of big data, which is one of the innovations brought by the Industry 4.0 revolution, has significantly facilitated access to information, it is still considered an important challenge to analyze this data obtained by companies during daily business processes in a meaningful way. Like many other sectors, the import / export sector has difficulties in the selection process of third party logistics companies in outsourcing activities. Hence, the purpose of this study is to decide the criteria that import export companies should pay attention while choosing a 3rd party logistics company and to determine the priority and importance of these criteria. Both qualitative and quantitative methods used in the study, in the criteria selection phase, one of the directors of Turkey's leading import / export company’s was interviewed, in the second phase of the study, obtained criteria were prioritized using the AHP methodology. As a result of the study, a total of 16 criteria, 4 main and 12 sub-criteria were determined, and cost was determined as the most important main criterion in 3rd party logistics company selection process.
EdgeKE: An On-Demand Deep Learning IoT System for Cognitive Big Data on Industrial Edge Devices

Motivated by the prospects of 5G communications and industrial Internet of Things (IoT), recent years have seen the rise of a new computing paradigm, edge computing, which shifts data analytics to network edges that are at the proximity of big data sources. Although deep neural networks (DNNs) have been extensively used in many platforms and scenarios, they are usually both compute and memory intensive, thus, difficult to be deployed on resource-limited edge devices and in performance-demanding edge applications. Hence, there is an urgent need for techniques that enable DNN models to fit into edge devices, while ensuring acceptable execution costs and inference accuracy. This article proposes an on-demand DNN model inference system for industrial edge devices, called knowledge distillation and early exit on edge (EdgeKE). It focuses on the following two design knobs: first, DNN compression based on knowledge distillation, which trains the compact edge models under the supervision of large complex models for improving accuracy and speed; second, DNN acceleration based on early exit, which provides flexible choices for satisfying distinct latency or accuracy requirements from edge applications. By extensive evaluations on the CIFAR100 dataset and across three state-of-art edge devices, experimental results demonstrate that EdgeKE significantly outperforms the baseline models in terms of inference latency and memory footprint, while maintaining competitive classification accuracy. Furthermore, EdgeKE is verified to be efficiently adaptive to the application requirements on the inference performance. The accuracy loss is within 4.84% under various latency constraints, and the speedup ratio is up to 3.30× under various accuracy requirements.
The impact of droughts and climate change on electricity generation in Ghana

Ghana has occasionally being experiencing harsh weather conditions such as flooding and hydrological droughts. Electricity power for the country depends mainly on hydropower generated from a hydropower dam at Akosombo built in 1965. light in 48 hrs was the severest power rationing ever witnessed in Ghana and the consequences were catastrophic. Out of about 1180MW generated by the two hydropower dams, only about 400MW was produced. This affected all sectors of the economy including industry, mining and domestic. Manufactures were reducing output, shortening the workweek and contemplated investments in power generators. Revenue to the state dwindled due to shortfalls in production by several million dollars in 2006. Power rationing left factories idle and broad swaths of Accra and other cities dark at night with the most feared result that years of efforts spent creating an image of Ghana as receptive to foreign investment could be jeopardized. This paper analysis 37 years of rainfall in the Volta basin and intake water levels in the Dam site on the Volta lake for hydropower generation to establish whether in reality, the main causes of the power rationing due to low water levels in the Akosombo dam was due to drought. The paper establishes that the 1983, 1997 and 2006/7 power rationing was truly as a result of hydrologic drought whereas the
Controlling Spontaneous Emission from Perovskite Nanocrystals with Metal–Emitter–Metal Nanostructures

We show the increase of the photoluminescence intensity ratio (PLR) and the emission rate enhancement of perovskite cesium lead bromide (CsPbBr3) and formamidinium lead bromide (FAPbBr3) nanocrystals (NCs) in the presence of single and double gold layer cavities, which we refer to as Metal-Emitter (ME) and Metal-Emitter-Metal (MEM) nanostructures. Up to 1.9-fold PLRs and up to 5.4-fold emission rate enhancements were obtained for FAPbBr3 NCs confined by double gold layers, which are attributed to plasmonic confinement from the gold layers. The experimentally obtained values are validated by analytical calculations and electromagnetic simulations. Such an effective method of manipulation of the spontaneous emission by simple plasmonic nanostructures can be utilized in sensing and detection applications.
Analysing the relationship between weather, built environment, and public transport ridership

For a sustainable public transport system, it is important to unveil the spatiotemporal characteristics of ridership and identify the influence mechanisms. Some studies analysed the effects of weather and built environment separately, however, their effects when incorporated remains to be determined. Using smart card data, weather information, and point of interest data from Beijing, the Light Gradient Boosted Machine was employed to investigate the relative importance of weather and built environment variables contributing to daily ridership at the traffic analysis zone level, and investigate the non-linear relationship and interaction effects between them. Weather conditions and built environment contribute 30.22 and 55.83% to ridership fluctuations, respectively. Most variables show complex non-linear and threshold effects on ridership. The interaction effects of weather and weekend/public holiday have a more substantial influence on ridership than weekdays, indicating weather conditions have less impact on regular commuting trips than discretionary trips. The ridership fluctuations in response to changing weather conditions vary with spatial locations. Adverse weather, such as strong wind, high humidity, or heavy rainfall, has a more disruptive impact on leisure-related areas than on residence and office areas. This study can benefit stakeholders in making decisions about optimising public transport networks and scheduling service frequency.
Family of novel titanium complexes with catechol ligands: structural investigation and catalytic application

From the reaction of Ti(OCH3)4 with catechols in methanol, four new titanium catecholate complexes have been obtained and structurally characterized: [Ti2(Cat)2(CatH)2(OCH3)2(CH3OH)2] (1) (Cat = C6H4O22-), [Ti2(4tBuCat)4(CH3OH)2] * 2 CH3OH(2 * 2 CH3OH) (4tBuCat=[4-tC4H9-C6H3O2]2-), [Ti(Cat)2(dmf)2] (3) (dmf = N,N-dimethylformamide), [Na(dme)Ti(Cat)3]2[Na(DME)CH3OH]2 (4) (dme = 1,2-dimethoxyethane). Complex 3 is the first example of the neutral mononuclear titanium catecholate, having more than 1 catechol molecule per titanium atom. Complexes 1 and 2 are neutral dimers, in the solid state, with a catechol/Ti ratio equals to 2, both having one of the catechol ligands bridging two titanium centers in a singly bridging chelate µ2-(O,О'O') mode. The other catechol molecule is either a terminal bidentate chelating ligand (2), or Ti monodentate ligand (1). Complex 4 is a heterometallic aryloxide complex with tetrameric[(Na(dme)Ti(Cat)3)2]2- (Ti2Na2) core, as an anionic moiety, and Na ions, solvated by methanol and dme ligands, [(Na(dme)(CH3OH))2]2+, as a cationic counterpart. Each Ti centre in 4 is octahedrally coordinated by three catechol ligands, demonstrating three distinct types of bridging modality. It was shown that 1-4 effectively catalyze selective homogeneous hydrogenation of acetylene to ethylene. Various kinetic dependencies were obtained and analyzed enabling to propose the reaction pathway for this catalytic reaction.
Facile Fabrication of Anisotropic Colloidal Particles with Controlled Shapes and Shape Dependence of Their Elastic Properties

A facile technique with only one step for fabrication of anisotropic colloidal particles at the air/water interface is demonstrated. Anisotropic colloidal particles with controlled shapes can be easily obtained by tuning the incubation time in solvent vapor at room temperature. The formation of separate anisotropic particles is attributed to the lateral stretch on the particles by the interfacial forces and repulsion among the neighboring particles by the generation of the polymer solution flows. To further explain the proposed formation mechanism of the colloidal particles with shape anisotropy, an in situ experiment is designed for direct observation of the arrangement change of the colloidal particles. This fabrication technique is general and applicable to polymer colloidal particles with various initial sizes ranging from microscale to nanoscale. Moreover, the elastic properties of the anisotropic colloidal particles are measured which exhibit a prominent change with different shapes and the change trend of the elastic moduli is similar for particles with different original sizes. This work provides a versatile approach for fabrication of anisotropic colloidal particles with tunable shapes and sizes and establishes the interplay between particle shape and elastic property, which is much valuable for further research on the effect of particle parameters on drug delivery process.
Fortification of Commercial Nixtamalized Maize (Zea mays L.) with Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Increased the Nutritional and Nutraceutical Content of Tortillas without Modifying Sensory Properties

Common beans have been used to fortify maize tortillas increasing nutritional properties but affecting sensorial properties. The aim of this study was to evaluate the physicochemical and nutraceutical composition; and acceptability of tortillas formulated with maize and common bean. The physicochemical characterization showed no significant differences between common bean-fortified (CBMF) and maize (CMF) tortillas regarding texture, rolability and puffing. Nutritionally, CBMF had higher protein (10.89%) and dietary fiber (12.76%) levels than CMF tortilla (9.47 and 5.78%, respectively). Compared with CMF tortilla, CBMF had higher content of bound phenolics (2.13 and 1.84 mg eq. gallic acid/g, respectively). CBMF tortillas contained higher flavonoids concentration (62.59 mg eq. rutin/g) than CMF tortilla (33.73 mg eq. rutin/g). According to the sensory evaluation, there were no differences of general acceptance. The results suggest that the addition of bean to maize flour increased the nutraceutical value in tortillas without modifying their sensory attributes. Practical Applications Tortillas are widely consumed in Latin American countries. Tortilla flour industry is well positioned in the market; however, looking for a healthier lifestyle, the consumption of tortillas is starting to decrease. The fortification of maize tortillas with common bean in the formulation proposed in this work represents an alternative of nutritional improvement for this product maintaining its sensory and technological properties.