Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nitrogen Mass Balance in Waste Stabilization Ponds at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Nitrogen mass balance in waste stabilization pond system at the University of Dar es Salaam was determined using a dynamic mathematical model in order to elucidate the biological nitrogen transformation mechanisms that are effective for removal of nitrogen in this pond system. Results show that the pond system removed 4741 g/day of nitrogen from an influent load of 8036 kg/day, which is equivalent to 59% removal efficiency. The overall dominant nitrogen removal mechanism was denitrification, which was responsible for 77.5% of the removed nitrogen. Other permanent nitrogen removal mechanisms were net loss of nitrogen to sediments and volatilization, which contributed 18.2 and 4.3% of the removed nitrogen, respectively. However, sedimentation was the major nitrogen removal mechanism in primary facultative pond, which was responsible for 73.7% of the total nitrogen removed in that pond. On the other hand, denitrification was the major nitrogen removal mechanism in secondary facultative ponds (F2 and F3) and maturation pond, M, which contributed about 95.0, 89.4 and 89.1% of the total nitrogen removed from these ponds, respectively. The major nitrogen transformation routes were mineralization and ammonia uptake in the primary facultative pond F1. In secondary facultative pond F2, nitrification and denitrification were the dominant nitrogen transformation mechanisms, while in secondary facultative pond F3 and maturation pond M, ammonia uptake was the dominant transformation route. The results obtained in this work may be used as a management tool in assessing the levels of nitrogen compounds in waste stabilization ponds and thus protect the water bodies downstream. Key word s: Nitrogen dynamics, waste stabilization ponds, nitrogen removal, mathematical modeling.
Understanding public support for the welfare state

In this paper we explore to what extent and how individuals‟ welfare state attitudes relate to their subjective assessment of the available social support. Using various sociological and socio-psychological theories we first provide a theoretical analysis of the micro-macro links between perceived social support (micro), social trust in support availability (macro), and public attitudes towards welfare states (micro). An empirical test based on a large crosscountry dataset of 31,122 respondents in 25 European countries shows that the more welfare is provided by the state, the less of it is desired in countries where individuals have the general belief that they can rely on each other for support. Importantly, only when considered jointly, welfare state provision and social trust in support availability become essential in explaining welfare state attitudes.
Attentional focus strategies used by regular exercisers and their relationship with perceived exertion, enjoyment, and satisfaction

Individuals can focus their attention in different ways during exercise and different foci may influence psychological states experienced. The present study examined the distribution of attentional focus strategies in exercisers and their relationships with gender, perceived exertion, enjoyment, and satisfaction. Regular exercisers (176 females, 144 males) completed a measure of attentional focus and rated their perceived exertion, enjoyment, and satisfaction during an exercise session. All participants used more than one type of attentional focus during an exercise session. Males spent more time than females attending to task-relevant thoughts and external cues whereas females spent more time attending to task-irrelevant thoughts and external distractions. In females and males, time spent engaging in task-irrelevant thoughts was negatively correlated with perceived exertion and satisfaction with exercise. For females only, time using external distractions was negatively correlated with satisfaction and positively correlated with enjoyment. For males only, time attending to task-relevant external cues was positively correlated with perceived exertion and enjoyment. The observed gender differences in attentional focus preferences and the relationships with psychological states have implications for advice given to exercisers and approaches that aim to promote adherence to exercise programs.
Models for Hospital Location and Capacity Allocation for an Area Prone to Natural Disasters

This paper develops and analyses two basic models for hospital location and capacity allocation. The focus is on an area prone to natural disasters. The first model seeks to locate hospitals and allocate capacities so that the mean travel distance for patients to hospitals is minimised over a variety of disaster scenarios. The second model seeks to reallocate capacity among hospitals so as to maximise the system's effectiveness to the upcoming disaster event. Heuristic solution methods of the two models are investigated, so as to make the approach computationally viable and to gain insight into the location and capacity allocation strategies. A regional planner can use these models in various ways. For earthquake prone areas (where there is little forewarning), the first model's results can be compared to the current hospital locations and capacity allocations. A plan can then be developed to shift capacity between hospitals or in an extreme case to relocate hospitals so as to be better prepared for a disaster event. For hurricane prone areas (where there is considerable forewarning), the second model can be used to develop a plan for reallocation of capacities between hospitals in anticipation of the event. Furthermore, the first model can be used to better locate hospitals and select capacities for an area that is being rebuilt after a large magnitude hurricane has largely destroyed the area (as Hurricane KATRINA did to New Orleans in 2005). The results are illustrated with the help of case studies â€“ one based on earthquake scenario in Northridge, California, and another based on a hurricane scenario in New Orleans.
Female genital cutting without a cutting norm

The World Health Organization defines female genital cutting as any procedure that removes or otherwise injures any part of a female’s external genitalia for non-medical reasons (1). Females are typically cut when they are young girls. Although different forms of cutting exist, the most aggressive forms involve extensive tissue removal followed by a procedure known as infibulation. To infibulate a female, the wounds produced by cutting are sewn up so that they heal to leave only a small opening for urine and menstrual blood. Female genital cutting brings no documented health benefits, and it can lead to serious health problems throughout life. These health problems include severe pain, bleeding, infection, psychological trauma, infertility, and a variety of obstetric complications that in the worst cases lead to death. In Sudan, as but one example, obstetric complications related to cutting account for approximately 1% of all government health spending on women between the ages of 15 and 49 (2). More broadly, across six African countries, a single cohort of 15-year-old girls is expected to lose altogether nearly 130,000 years of life because of problems during pregnancy and childbirth due to genital cutting (2).
Chemical composition and antioxidant activity of essential oil, various organic extracts of Cistus ladanifer and Cistus libanotis growing in Eastern Morocco

In the present work, we studied the chemical composition of the essential oil of Cistus ladanifer and Cistus libanotis growing in Eastern Morocco. The essential oils were obtained by hydrodistillation and their chemical composition was analysed using gas chromatography- mass spectrometry (GC–MS). Camphene, borneol, cyclohexanol-2, 2, 6 tremethyl, terpineol-4 and α-pinene were the main constituents of the essential oil of C. ladanifer, while in the essential oil of C. libanotis we obtained terpineol-4, γterpinene, camphene, sabinene, α-terpinene and α-pinene. The antioxidant potential of various extracts (water, ethanol, ethanol: water (50:50), methanol, methanol: water (50:50), acetonitrile) and essential oils of C. ladanifer and C. libanotis were carried out by the method of 1,1-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazylhydrate (DPPH) free radical scavenging. Total phenolic and flavonoid contents were determined. The result show that C. ladanifer of the leaves of methanol: water (50:50) extract had the highest value of total phenolic content and the lowest was present in ethanol: water (50:50) extract of the stem and acetonitrile extract of the flowers of C. libanotis. From our experimental results, the extract of flowers, fruit, stem and leaves of those plants showed highest potential as free radical scavengers.
A New Class of Dantzig Selectors for Censored Linear Regression Models

The Dantzig variable selector has recently emerged as a powerful tool for fitting regularized regression models. A key advantage is that it does not pertain to a particular likelihood or objective function, as opposed to the existing penalized likelihood methods, and hence has the potential for wide applicability. To our knowledge, limited work has been done for the Dantzig selector when the outcome is subject to censoring. This paper proposes a new class of Dantzig variable selectors for linear regression models for right-censored outcomes. We first establish the finite sample error bound for the estimator and show the proposed selector is nearly optimal in the `2 sense. To improve model selection performance, we further propose an adaptive Dantzig variable selector and discuss its large sample properties, namely, consistency in model selection and asymptotic normality of the estimator. The practical utility of the proposed adaptive Dantzig selectors is verified via extensive simulations. We apply the proposed methods to a myeloma clinical trial and identify important predictive genes for patients’ survival.
Analysing jet breakup: An experimental study on Rayleigh-Plateau instability and subsequent droplet formation

This report aimed to investigate jet-breakup through nozzles and its dependencies on viscosity, flowrate and nozzle diameter. By measuring the transition point from dripping to jetting as a function of nozzle diameter and viscosity, it was found that increasing nozzle diameters require increasing flowrates to reach jetting mode, while increasing viscosity lowers the critical flow-rate for the transition point. The breakup length was also observed to be influenced by both viscosity, flow-rate and nozzle size: increasing either viscosity or flow-rate resulted in an increase of the breakup length. Matching these results in dimensionless form to predictions in literature proved to be difficult, presumably due to the relatively small nozzle diameters used in this research.
Machine-Learning Attacks on PolyPUFs, OB-PUFs, RPUFs, LHS-PUFs, and PUF–FSMs

A physically unclonable function (PUF) is a circuit of which the input–output behavior is designed to be sensitive to the random variations of its manufacturing process. This building block hence facilitates the authentication of any given device in a population of identically laid-out silicon chips, similar to the biometric authentication of a human. The focus and novelty of this paper is the development of efficient impersonation attacks on the following five Arbiter PUF–based authentication protocols: 1) the so-called Poly PUF protocol of Konigsmark et al. as published in the IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems in 2016; 2) the so-called OB-PUF protocol of Gao et al. as presented at the IEEE Conference PerCom 2016; 3) the so-called RPUF protocol of Ye et al. as presented at the IEEE Conference AsianHOST 2016; 4) the so-called LHS-PUF protocol of Idriss and Bayoumi as presented at the IEEE Conference RFID-TA 2017; and 5) the so-called PUF–FSM protocol of Gao et al. as published in the IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems in 2018. The common flaw of all five designs is that the use of lightweight obfuscation logic provides insufficient protection against machine-learning attacks.
A simple spectrophotometric quantitative determination of Cilostazol in bulk and pharmaceutical dosage forms using DNPH reagent.

A simple, sensitive, cost effective spectrophotometric method developed and validated for the determination of Cilostazol (CIL), in bulk drug and its pharmaceutical formulations. The method is rely on the formation of a hydrazone with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH); the reaction of drug with reagent gives a bright yellow colour. The obtained coloured species absorbance was measured at its absorption maximum (λmax) 355 nm. The Beerâ€™s law has been obeyed in the concentration range 2-20 Âµg/ml. The optical parameters were calculated as 2.2980x104 (L mol-1 cm-1), 0.0161 (Âµg/cm2), molar absorptivity and Sandell sensitivity respectively. The analytical parameters of interest LOD and LOQ of the proposed method were calculated 0.1079 (μg/ml), 0.3594 (μg/ml) respectively. All the variables were examined to optimize the reaction conditions. There was no interference observed in the presence of common pharmaceutical excipients. The validity of the method was established by analyzing CIL in its pharmaceutical formulations and critically tested for its accuracy by statistical tests. Good recoveries were obtained by the developed method; the obtained results were critically analyzed and successfully employed for the determination of CIL in its pharmaceutical dosage forms.
Characterizing topological charge of optical vortex using non-uniformly distributed multi-pinhole plate

We propose an efficient method for characterizing the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of an optical vortex with a large topological charge (TC) through distinguishing the interference pattern of the non-uniformly-distributed multi-pinholes using fewer pinholes. This method overcomes the limit on large TC detection by multi-point interferometer and can be used to probe optical vortices with arbitrary sizes. In addition, it also has potential application in measuring light beam with OAM from astronomical sources.
Linguistic Perception, Planning, and Control

We present the Motion Grammar: a novel unified representation for task decomposition, perception, planning, and hybrid control that provides a computationally tractable way to control robots in uncertain environments with guarantees on completeness and correctness. The grammar represents a policy for the task which is parsed in real-time based on perceptual input. Branches of the syntax tree form the levels of a hierarchical decomposition, and the individual robot sensor readings are given by tokens. We implement this approach in the interactive game of Yamakuzushi on a physical robot resulting in a system that repeatably competes with a human opponent in sustained game-play for matches up to six minutes.
Modeling of supercritical fluid extraction of flavonoids from Calycopteris floribunda leaves

The aim of this study was to obtain flavonoids extracts from Calycopteris floribunda leaves using supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) with CO2 and a co-solvent. Pachypodol, a potential anticancer drug lead compound separated from the extracts, was examined. Classical organic solvent extraction (CE) with ethanol was performed to evaluate the high pressure method. HPLC analysis was introduced to interpret the differences between SFE and CE extracts in terms of antioxidant activity and the concentration of pachypodol. SFE kinetics and mathematical modeling of the overall extraction curves (OEC) were investigated. Evaluation of the models against experimental data showed that the Sovová model performs the best. The supercritical fluid extraction process was optimized using a central composite design (CCD), where temperature and pressure were adjusted. The optimal conditions of SFE were: pressure of 30 MPa and temperature of 35°C.
Flexible Covariate-adjusted Exact Tests for Randomized Studies

Incorporating auxiliary covariates in the analysis of randomized trials can increase power, but questions remain about how to preserve type I error when incorporating such covariates in a flexible way, particularly in small samples. This paper investigates properties of covariate-adjusted tests for both independent and multivariate outcomes. Through simulation, we evaluate several covariate-adjusted tests of intervention effects when baseline covariates are selected adaptively and the number of randomized units is small. We demonstrate that randomization inference preserves type I error under model selection while tests based on asymptotic theory break down. We also demonstrate that covariate adjustment generally increases power, except at extremely small sample sizes using liberal selection procedures. Methods are illustrated by application to data on the Young Citizens study, a cluster randomized trial of behavioral HIV intervention.
Formal verification using model checking

Computational models of biological systems are usually encoded using high level modelling formalisms such as (ordinary) differential equations [3, 5], Petri nets [2, 11, 14], process algebras (e.g. Bio-PEPA [7, 13]), software-specific (e.g. BIOCHAM [6], BioNetGen [9, 12]) rule-based modelling languages, or timed automata [4, 18]. However for model checking purposes these computational models are usually translated to a single common low level (probabilistic) labelled state transition (LSTS) [1, Chapters 2 and 10] representation. The main reason for this is that the model checking algorithms can then be defined only once relative to a single rather than multiple modelling formalisms. Executions or simulations of LSTSs are represented as discrete sequences of states where transitions between states are triggered by events and are executed instantaneously. Relevant system properties are encoded by state variables whose values may change between states. Therefore the behaviour of the system is usually defined by time series data describing how the values of the state variables change over time.
Conceptual aspects and factors associated with Functional Health Literacy : a literary review

The purpose of this study is to revise scientific productions concerning the evaluation of health functional literacy which is associated with the quality of life and analyze methodologically the observational studies about this theme. An integrative review has been produced using papers related to the following themes: health functional literacy and quality of life which had a research done in the PubMed, Lilacs and “Biblioteca Virtual de Saúde” databases. After applying the inclusion criteria, 538 articles were obtained, also, after applying the exclusion criteria, 11 articles were selected. Nine out of the eleven articles are international and the remain 2 are national. The review stated the compilation and construction of the publication historical lines, the methodological analysis of observational studies and the elaboration of cloud texts. Most part of the articles have quantitative analysis, adults and elders as target groups and the measurement of the levels of health functional literacy. This study verified the positive interaction between health functional literacy, low education, advanced age, the male gender and low income. The main scenarios were the assistencialist environments. The health functional literacy presented an association with social-demographic variables, such as sex, age and education. Most studies presented in this research had the goal of relating the literacy to pathologies and they were done in clinic environments such as hospitals and health clinics. All eight observational articles included in the review could totally fit the methodological criteria for the elaboration of this type of study.
Selected Fitness and Motor Behavior Parameters of Children and Adolescents with Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus

Few studies have investigated the fitness levels of children and adolescents with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM), with no data presently available on such children’s level of motor proficiency. The present investigation was prompted by this lack of information. Twenty-one girls (mean age = 11.0 years, range = 7-14) and 23 boys (mean age =11.5 years, range = 8-15) with IDDM were tested on selected fitness and motor behavior parameters. Results indicated that children and adolescents with IDDM follow similar fitness and motor behavior profiles of their nondiabetic peers: Boys tended to be in better physical condition than girls of similar ages, particularly in the 12-15 year range. In the areas of body composition and abdominal strength/endurance, subjects displayed values below those obtained in studies of nondiabetic subjects. Subjects’ scores on the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency for each age grouping were relatively high, indicating that children and adolescents with IDDM need.
Numerical Simulation of H 2/Air Deto nation Using Detailed Reaction M odels

A code to simulate chemically reacting flows has bee n developed. The code considers a detailed chemical reaction model and proper schemes were adopted to treat the chemical re actions. The code was tested and validated against a series of 1 -D experiments with several chemical reaction models . The core subroutines de veloped under this study w ere incorporated into FEFLO . FEFLO with chemical reaction model was tested with 1 -D compu tation of detonation, and 3-D computation of detonation propagating in a tube with a spiral obstacle was conducted.
POSTTRAUMATIC GROWTH AMONG FEMALE SURVIVORS OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE IN RELATION TO THE PERPETRATOR IDENTITY

The objective of this study was to examine the extent of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology and posttraumatic growth in young adult female survivors of childhood sexual abuse in relation to the identity of the perpetrator. Two hundred and forty-six non-clinical female university students were administered self-report questionnaires with regard to negative life events, PTSD symptoms, and posttraumatic growth. A sample of 93 participants who reported having been sexually abused during childhood either by a family member or a stranger were drawn for the study purpose. Comparison between the survivors in relation to the identity of the perpetrator, family member versus a stranger, revealed that the levels of PTSD and posttraumatic growth were both higher among survivors who were sexually abused by a family member compared to those who were sexually abused by a stranger. Mediational analysis revealed that levels of PTSD mediated the identity of the perpetrator effect on posttraumatic growth. Rachel Lev-Wiesel, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work, Ben Gurion University. She serves as the Director of the Graduate Art Therapy Program and the Undergraduate Social Work Program. Her main research interests are trauma, PTSD, and coping. Avi Besser, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Sapir Academic College, D.N. Hof Ashkelon, Israel. His main research interest is in the area of personality and social psychology, specifically, vulnerability factors to depression across the lifespan and interpersonal functioning.