Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
“I’m Not a Number, I’m Someone to Them”: Supporting Commencing University Students’ Through Technology-Mediated Personalised Communication

As universities offer more flexible delivery options there are parallel concerns about increasing levels of engagement. Withdrawal and disconnection from study is most common during the first year of university as students experience social, cultural and financial adjustments and attempt to understand the nuances of academic learning. This article reports on the impact of a technology-enabled support system delivering timely, personalised and actionable feedback on online activity and support emails at critical periods in two courses. Learning analytics data was used to identify appropriate engagement metrics for personalising feedback to students with results indicating an improvement in course grades. While the learning analytics approach provides a technology-mediated means for scaling personalised feedback and communicating with large cohorts of learners, the qualitative results indicated that students felt they were noticed as individual learners, were more willing to contact educators for support, and more motivated to engage with the online course learning materials.
A review on the use of carbon nanostructured materials in electrochemical capacitors

Sustainable and renewable energy resources, as well as energy storage systems (ESSs), are amongst the current and critical global requirements. A comparative discussion on batteries, fuel cells and electrochemical capacitors (ECs) is presented. The mechanisms involved in various classes of ECs are also elaborated. Additionally, a historical background highlighting some of the major steps associated with EC development over the years is discussed in this review. In particular, carbon nanostructured materials have high potential in the development of ESSs, and hence this review presents an insight on the current ESSs with a strong bias towards these materials as ECs. The current status of carbon nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes, nanofibers, nano‐onions, nanorods, fullerenes and graphene nanosheets, in ECs is reviewed. The associated effects of nanostructural parameters, such as pore sizes and specific electro‐active areas, amongst others, in terms of energy storage capabilities are also discussed. Typical physicochemical characterisation techniques, which enrich understanding of their characteristics, are also reviewed. The discussion views set platforms for a variety of unique carbon nanomaterial designs with high prospective specific capacitance. Key porosity tailoring protocols, such as chemical activation, introduction of heteroatoms in carbon nanostructures and template synthesis methods, are also reviewed. The effects of other device components, such as electrolyte ion size and solvent system, electrode design and use of binders, to the overall capability of EC, are also discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Issues and Trends of Depression among Students in Malaysia

Depression is an emotional disease that is increasingly serious among teenagers today, mostly involving school students. This situation is very worrying when student depression can lead to worse incidents such as criminal behaviors, social problems, and suicide. Therefore, this study aims to identify the depression levels of secondary school students in North Penang, Malaysia. A total of 3932 form four students were involved as a study sample using the Depression Anxiety Stress Inventory 21 (DASS21) instrument adapted from the Ministry of Health, Malaysia (MOH). The study conducted concerning research ethics, such as obtaining permission from the Penang State Education Department, the school, and students' heirs. The result found that 72.6% of students had normal depression, and 12.5% of students found to have lite depression only. Overall, it can be concluded that most students experience depression even at the lowest level. Students need to be given due attention, including emphasizing the aspects of guidance and counseling to lead a better life in the future. Thus, preventive measures should be planned systematically. A study of the need for counseling intervention modules should be implemented to help reduce school student depression.
Comparison of Energy Efficiency Between Macro and Micro Base Stations Using Energy Saving Strategy

To meet the subscribers ever increasing traffic demand, micro and macro base stations are being deployed excessively. As the traffic pattern varies according to the user's behavior, the deployment of micro and macro base stations plays a vital role in saving energy while maintaining the traffic demand of the subscribers. A macro base station consumes more than double the energy than a micro base station. Due to the space and time characteristics of the traffic, the BS cannot allocate resources effectively, which results in wasting energy consumption and low energy efficiency. Therefore, energy saving through deployment of base stations play a significant role to increase the energy efficiency. In this paper, the user traffic pattern is determined and the resources needed to fulfill the traffic are analyzed and finally the deployment strategies for the base stations are formulated. Since the base stations are fully loaded only for few hours a day, energy saving on the stations during low traffic will be significant. The energy saving schemes saved up to 18.8 % of energy in macro and 26.9 % of energy in micro BS. So, it would be more efficient to implement a heterogeneous network with more micro cells with energy saving schemes than just macro base stations.
Strategic planning approach to the development of contract farming in the Egyptian sugar industry

The strategies required to develop contract farming in the Egyptian sugar industry were examined by applying the Strength-Weakness-OpportunitiesThreats (SWOT) approach in combination with an analytic hierarchy process. Data were collected from sugar beet farmers, extension workers, experts, and employees of the Dakhalia Sugar and Refining Company in Egypt. Market risk has the highest overall priority score among the strengths. Noncommitment of farmers to harvest time received the highest overall priority score among the weaknesses, while valorization of sugar industry wastes had the highest overall priority score among the opportunities, and accumulation of large reserves of sugar at the factory was perceived as the most important threat to the sugar industry. These findings can be used to formulate strategies based on current situation analysis and create suitable conditions for successful contract farming in the sugar sector. Keywords: strategies; SWOT-AHP; contract farming; sugar industry; Egypt
Serum Neutrophil Gelatinase- Associated Lipocalin as a Marker of Malnutrition in Maintenance Hemodialyzed Patients

Background: Neutrophil Gelatinase- Associated Lipocalin (NGAL) is a useful clinical biomarker for early diagnosis, predicting disease severity, therapeutic monitoring, and for predicting clinical outcomes. Aim: The current study aimed to investigate serum Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin ( NGAL ) levels as a marker of malnutrition in maintenance hemodialysis patients. Subjects and methods: This study was conducted on 50 subjects. Subjects were divided into three groups . Group (1): Hemodialyzed patients : Included 30 patients before starting hemodialysis (HD). Group (2): The same 30 patients after hemodialysis. Group (3): Included control group. Serum levels of NGAL was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA ). Results: There is high statistically significant decrease in NGAL in dialyzed patients after dialysis when compared to the same patients before dialysis (p < 0.001). There is statistically significant positive correlation between NGAL after dialysis and albumin, pre-albumin, serum iron, serum ferritin, TLC and neutrophils %. There is a statistically significant decrease in the serum level of NGAL (before and after) in dialysis patients with malnutrition when compared to ( before and after ) dialysis patients without malnutrition. Conclusion: Serum level of NGAL seems to be a reliable marker of malnutrition appearance, allowing early diagnosis and preventive therapy.
Isolation of Some Derivatives of Phenylcarbamic Acid from Human Plasma using Molecularly Imprinted Polymers

Abstract Two molecularly imprinted polymers for 1–methyl–2–piperidinoethyl ester of 4–decyloxyphenylcarbamic acid (template) have been synthesized using a non–covalent imprinting approach. Acrylamid and methacrylic acid, respectively, were used as the functional monomers. Imprinted polymers were used as the sorbents for solid phase extraction (MISPE). The capacity and selectivity of prepared imprinted polymers was investigated. The non-imprinted (blank) polymers were prepared by the same way, without the template, to study the non-specific interactions. Molecularly imprinted polymers were used to extract derivatives of alkoxyphenylcarbamic acid from spiked human plasma. C18 sorbent was also used for SPE to compare the efficiency of the procedure.
Causal Effects of Body Mass Index and Maternal Age on Oocyte Maturation in Assisted Reproductive Technology: Model-Average Causal Effect and Bayesian LASSO Method

Background: Body Mass Index (BMI) and maternal age are related to various disorders of the female reproductive system. This study aimed to estimate the causal effects of BMI and maternal age on the rate of meta-phase II oocytes (MII) using a new statistical method based on Bayesian LASSO and model averaging. Methods: This investigation was a historical cohort study and data were collected from women who underwent assisted reproductive treatments in Tehran, Iran during 2015 to 2018. Exclusion criteria were gestational surrogacy and donor oocyte. We used a new method based on Bayesian LASSO and model average to capture important confounders. Results: Overall, 536 cycles of 398 women were evaluated. BMI and Age had inverse relationships with the number of MII based on univariate analysis, but after adjusting the effects of other variables, there was just a significant association between age and the number of MII (adjusted incidence rate ratio (aIRR) of age =0.989, 95% CI: [0.979, 0.998], P=0.02). The results of causal inference based on the new presented method showed that the overall effects of age and BMI of all patients were significantly and inversely associated with the number of MII (both P<0.001). Therefore the expected number of MII decreased by 0.99 for an increase of 1 year (95% CI: [−1.00, −0.97]) and decreased by 0.99 for each 1-unit increase in BMI (95% CI: [−1.01, −0.98]). Conclusion: Maternal age and BMI have significant adverse casual effects on the rate of MII in patients undergoing ART when the effects of important confounders were adjusted.
Clinical implications of Delphian lymph node metastasis in papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Background As is known, identifying risk factors precisely for lymph node metastasis (LNM) plays a vital role in initial treatment for papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). Nonetheless, whether Delphian lymph node (DLN) metastasis has value in predicting LNM remains an open question. This study covered a sample of 1,575 patients, which is the largest sample group so far, aiming to assess the predictive validity of DLN metastasis in PTC. Methods This retrospective cohort study was conducted with 1,575 eligible PTC patients who underwent thyroid operation between July 2013 and December 2018 and clinicopathologic parameters of patients with DLN metastasis were compared with those without DLN metastasis. Results The incidence of DLN metastasis, according to our research samples, is 24.4% (384/1,575 patients). And results show that DLN positivity was closely associated with adverse prognostic factors including younger age, larger tumor size, extrathyroid extension, tumor location in the isthmus or upper lobe of the thyroid, number of LNM >5, higher recurrence. After carefully adjusting important confounding factors, we find that in multivariate logistic regression analyses, DLN metastasis is an independent predictor for both central LNM (CLNM, adjusted OR =7.81, P<0.001) and lateral LNM (LLNM, adjusted OR =3.40, P<0.001). Moreover, the stratified analyses also show convincing evidence of a positive correlation between DLN metastasis and LNM in levels II-IV in the vast majority of subgroups. Conclusions The present study suggests that DLN metastasis is an independent risk factor for CLNM and LLNM of levels II-IV. The cervical lymph nodes should be meticulously evaluated to guide tailored treatment during operation in patients with DLN involvement.
Psychometric Properties of an Instrument Developed to Assess Students’ Evaluation of Teaching in Higher Education

Student evaluation of teaching is a global predominant practice in higher education institutions. Therefore, a major university in Jordan developed a questionnaire for students’ use in evaluating their instructors’ teaching effectiveness. Since student evaluation of teaching is an important process, the present study tried to examine the psychometric properties of the instrument. Item-total correlations showed acceptable internal consistency. In addition, a two-factor structure of the scale (teaching effectiveness and course attributes) was supported by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis from two independent samples. Convergent validity was supported by a moderate correlation coefficient between course averages of students’ ratings on the first factor and course averages of students’ final grades in each course. Finally, students’ responses on the factor that captures teaching effectiveness were found to have very high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.96). However, this instrument lacks evidences of content validity and convergent validity. Therefore, it is important to be cautious in evaluating faculty members and making promotion decisions that is based solely on the scores obtained using this instrument.
Assessment of genetic diversity using mitochondrial DNA variation in Gir cattle of India

© Abstract: The present study is carried out with the aim to study the genetic diversity of 60 Gir cattle in the newly adopted herd of NDRI on the basis of mitochondrial D-loop hyper variable region. The animals were purchased from 4 major locations-IGFRI-Jhansi, Bhilwara, Ajmer and Kisangarh. After aligning the sequences a total of 53 haplotypes were identified. The Overall haplotype Diversity was observed to be 0.996±0.003 which shows that the population is diverse. Nucleotide diversity ranged from 0.693 ±0.35 to 0.707± 0.35 with overall diversity of 0.704±0.34 across all 60 sequences and the average no. of nucleotide difference varied from 279.45±125.42 to 285.16±128.36. F ST value is significantly different from 0 for all pair wise combinations representing significant amount of Genetic differentiation. F ST estimates between the population shows that animals from Ajmer and Bhilwara are more genetically differentiated (0.02987) while animals from Kisangarh and Bhilwara are genetically more closer (0.00440). All the above results show substantial variability between populations. These findings can be used for designing proper breeding and management strategies for Gir cattle in NDRI
Fault Tolerant Control of Multirotor UAV for Piloted Outdoor Flight

The thesis aims to develop a Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) architecture, for the case of a damaged actuator for a multirotor that can be applied across multirotor platforms based on their Attainable Virtual Control Set (AVCS). The research is aimed to study the AVCS and identify the parameters that limit the controllability of multirotor UAV post an actuator failure. Based on the study of controllability, the requirements for a FTC is laid out. The implemented control solution will be tested on a quadrotor, Intel® Shooting StarTM UAV platform in indoor and outdoor flights using only the onboard sensors. The attitude control solution is implemented with reduced attitude control, and the control allocation is performed with pseudo-inverse based model inversion with sequential desaturation to ensure tilt priority. The model is identified with an offline Ordinary Least Squares routine and subsequently updated with the Recursive Least Squares method. An offline calibration routine is implemented to correct IMU offset distance from the centre of rotation to correct for accelerometer bias caused during the high-speed spin after failure in a quadrotor.
Improving the quality and the taste of green tea ice cream by identifying suitable cultivar, agronomic practices and processing techniques of Assamica tea grown in Sri Lanka

The objectives of this study were to find the most suitable tea cultivar, shading effect and best tea processing technique for production of green tea powder with low astringency and amount of green tea addition to produce ice cream with best flavor and medicinal values. Green tea powder was manufactured using five different cultivars i.e. TRI 2023, TRI 2026, TRI 2027, TRI 4042 and TRI 4047 grown under shaded and un-shaded conditions with three processing techniques namely; steaming, pan firing and freeze drying and green tea ice cream was prepared using processed green tea powder. To reveal the health benefits of green tea powder and green tea ice cream, total phenolic content (TPC) , total flavonoid content (TFC) and Total antioxidant capacity (TAC) were checked by using modified folin-ciocalteu method , colorimetric method and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay respectively. The best quality green tea in terms of colour and flavour can be produced from tea leaves of TRI 4047 cultivar which was cultivated under shaded conditions with freeze drying processing technique. In terms of colour and flavour, 15 g of green tea added for ice cream mixture (500 mL of milk, 125 mL of whipping cream and 150 g of sugar) is the most suitable amount to add for green tea ice cream preparation. Significantly, higher TAC, TPC and TFC in green tea ice cream when compared to normal ice cream (without green tea powder) indicating the importance of consuming value added green tea ice cream as a healthy food.
Optimal Network Defense Strategy Selection Method Based on Evolutionary Network Game

The basic hypothesis of evolutionary game theory is that the players in the game possess limited rationality. The interactive behavior of players can be described by a learning mechanism that has theoretical advantages in modeling the network security problem in a real society. The current network security evolutionary game model generally adopts a replicator dynamic learning mechanism and assumes that the interaction between players in the group conforms to the characteristics of uniform mixed distribution. However, in an actual network attack and defense scenario, the players in the game have limited learning capability and can only interact with others within a limited range. To address this, we improved the learning mechanism based on the network topology, established the learning object set based on the learning range of the players, used the Fermi function to calculate the transition probability to the learning object strategy, and employed random noise to describe the degree of irrational influence in the learning process. On this basis, we built an attack and defense evolutionary network game model, analyzed the evolutionary process of attack and defense strategy, solved the evolution equilibrium, and designed a defense strategy selection algorithm. The effectiveness of the model and method is verified by conducting simulation experiments for the transition probability of the players and the evolutionary process of the defense group strategy.
Distribution of endocrine disrupting semivolatile organic compounds in several compartments of a terrestrial ecosystem

Concentrations of semivolatile organic compounds – most of them known or suspected endocrine disrupters – were monitored in different compartments of a forested region in Northeast Bavaria. Considered compartments included precipitation (rain, snow), aerosol particles and vapour phase, soil and spruce needles ( Picea abies ). Investigated compounds comprised 4 phthalate acid esters, 14 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and 8 pesticides. While nearly all PAHs and phthalate acid esters were found in significant concentrations in the different compartments, pesticide concentrations were low, perhaps due to sampling in winter conditions. Regarding literature data about receptor affinity, the estrogen potential of the investigated compounds were evaluated.
What motivates and hinders people from travelling alone? A study of solo and non-solo travellers

ABSTRACT Contemporary lifestyles and social changes have precipitated the popularity of solo travel. Despite the growing prominence of the solo travel market, it remains an under researched area. This study explores the definitions, motivations, and constraints of solo travel, taking into consideration both existing and potential solo travellers, and provides a gender-balanced investigation and subsequent in-depth understanding of the underlying factors that drive solo travel motivations and constraints. Interviews were conducted with 14 solo travellers and 14 non-solo travellers. The findings suggest that solo travel as an evolving and fluid concept, varies according to individual travel experiences and personal circumstances. Solo travel motivations can be broadly categorized into ‘solo by circumstances’ and ‘solo by choice’. Transformative experience, freedom, and flexibility are key motivators for solo travellers, while anticipated self-discovery and freedom inspire the potential solo travellers. Safety, cost, and social constraints emerged as the top three inhibitors impeding or constricting solo travel participation and experience. The findings reveal the institutionalization of solo travel and proclivity to join tours as strategies to build confidence and overcome safety and social constraints. Recommendations for the travel industry to cater to the solo travel market were also examined from the travellers’ perspectives.
Youth Labour Market Frictions in Main MENA Region Countries: Sources and Consequences

We propose to evaluate the impact of education/skill mismatch through an extended version of Duncan and Hoffman equation and matching method by using the SWTS conducted by ILO for the main MENA region countries. Our empirical findings reveal that the youth labor market of these countries did not exhibit the same pattern of frictions. We find that Tunisian youth is more affected by over education phenomenon which implies the analysis of the return to education. More particularly, our findings show that concerning Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, the marginal benefits that individuals expected to obtain at university level are significant. However, the return to education, especially for Tunisia, is largely attenuated when workers are overeducated. These findings suggest that over education introduces a wage penalty, which is more pronounced for Tunisian.