Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Radiotherapy on the Quality of Life in Localized Prostate Cancer Patients

METHODS Eighty-seven localized prostate cancer patients who underwent RT between January 2011 and June 2016 were enrolled. Each patient filled the EORTC QLQC30 and QLQ-PR25 at four different times (starting and ending at RT, one and six months after RT). EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire consists of global health status, five functional (physical, role, cognitive, emotional, social) and nine symptom scales (fatigue nausea/vomiting, pain, dyspnea, insomnia, appetite loss, constipation, diarrhea and financial difficulties). EORTC QLQ-PR25 consists of two functional (sexual activity and sexual functioning) and four symptom scales (urinary, bowel, hormonal treatment-related, incontinence aid).
Monitoring System of Transmission Line in Mountainous Area Based on LPWAN

In light of the difficulty of the inspection and maintenance of a transmission line condition monitoring system in remote mountainous areas, this paper proposes a long-term online monitoring scheme based on a low power wide area network (LPWAN). Considering different failure rates, three monitoring periods of transmission lines in mountainous areas are proposed. An online monitoring framework of transmission lines in mountainous areas was designed based on long range radio (LoRa) and a cellular mobile network, and a dynamic group network model of LoRa was established. The multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm can be used to optimize the energy and delay of the system, and then the suitable working mode for the three monitoring periods can be obtained. The simulation results showed that the minimum packet loss rate of the system could be less than 1%, the energy consumption of the system was 80% lower than the existing monitoring system, and the service life of the system can reach 15.13 years under the normal failure rate. Compared with the existing schemes, the proposed work shows the advantages of high reliability transmission, low cost and long-term monitoring, which is especially for transmission line monitoring in mountainous areas.
Quantifying top-down control and ecological traits of the scyphozoan Aurelia aurita through a dynamic plankton model

Aurelia aurita (Linneaus, 1758) is a cosmopolitan scyphozoan, probably the most investigated jellyfish in temperate and highly productive coastal ecosystems. Despite a prominent top-down control in plankton food webs, a mechanistic understanding of A. aurita population dynamics and trophic interactions has been barely addressed. Here we develop a food web dynamic model to assess A. aurita role in the seasonal plankton dynamics of the Kiel Fjord, southwestern Baltic Sea. The model couples low trophic level dynamics, based on a classical Nutrient Phytoplankton Zooplankton Detritus (NPZD) model, to a stage-resolved copepod model (referencing Pseudocalanus sp.) and a jellyfish model (A. aurita ephyra and medusa) as consumers and predators, respectively. Simulations showed the relevance of high abundances of A. aurita, which appear related with warm winter temperatures, promoting a shift from a copepod-dominated food web to a ciliate and medusa dominated one. The model captured the intraspecific competition triggered by the medusae abundance and characterized by a negative relationship between population density and individual size/weight. Our results provide a mechanistic understanding of an emergent trait such as size shaping the food web functioning, driving predation rates and population dynamics of A. aurita, driving its sexual reproductive strategy at the end of the pelagic phase.
Testing Methods to Increase Consumption of Healthy Foods: Evidence From a School-Based Field Experiment in Viet Nam

Schools are an attractive entry point to improve children’s diets, as their eating habits can be shaped during childhood and the information disseminated from school can reach adults through children. We implemented a cluster-randomized trial in 12 schools in peri-urban Viet Nam to assess if two school-based interventions increased knowledge of healthy diets among children and their parents, as well as children’s consumption of healthy foods. First, children were given lessons about food before school lunch and encouraged to share the lessons with their parents. Second, children were provided with healthy snacks for five weeks to reinforce messages about healthy eating. We found that in the short term, the nutrition lessons raised the knowledge index score of the children by 0.35 standard deviation. After six months, this intervention retained its effectiveness only for the children who also received free access to fruit, emphasizing the linkage between knowledge and practice. By itself, free access to fruit at school increased the children’s daily fruit consumption by half a portion, but not at the expense of home fruit consumption. Access to healthy foods at school can therefore be an effective measure to raise children’s healthy consumption. Child-parent communication was not a reliable channel for knowledge dissemination in our setting.
VerilogAE: An Open Source Verilog-A Compiler for Compact Model Parameter Extraction

This article introduces a new open-source Verilog-A compiler, VerilogAE, purpose-built to ease compact model parameter extraction. VerilogAE retrieves all model equations, their dependencies, and relevant model parameters that are defined in a Verilog-A source. This information is made available to users by compiling the Verilog-A source file into a shared library. Herein, the features and design principles of the software and its interface are explained. Then, it is demonstrated how this eases the implementation of parameter extraction methods and steps.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE USE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) AT E-LEARNING UNIVERSITY AND FACE-TO-FACE UNIVERSITY IN YOGYAKARTA (A CASE STUDY AT UT AND UNY)

Artikel ini bertujuan untuk menemukan dan membandingkan tingkat penggunaan Open Educational Resources (OER). Penekanannya adalah pada yang mempengaruhi penggunaan OER dan persepsi tentang penggunaan OER dari dosen E-learning University dan Konvensional (Face To Face teaching) Universitas di kota Yogyakarta. Fokus studi murni melibatkan dua universitas negeri: Universitas Terbuka (UT) sebagai Universitas Elearning dan Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta (UNY) sebagai Universitas Pembelajaran Tatap Muka. Data dikumpulkan dari sampel 30 responden dari masing-masing universitas menggunakan metode kuesioner. Hasil data menunjukkan bahwa dosen di kedua universitas memiliki keterampilan teknologi ahli, dan keduanya menggunakan sumber daya digital dan OER. Para dosen UT, bagaimanapun, menunjukkan persepsi yang lebih positif tentang penggunaan OER berbeda dengan kuliah sebagai bahan pendukung daripada UNY.
The monitoring role of nonexecutive directors in Vietnam from a return-volatility perspective

This study examines the relevance of board independence to stock return volatility for a sample of 160 companies listed on the Vietnamese stock market over ten years (2008-2017). After controlling for potential endogeneity, we find that the presence of non-executive directors on the board tends to increase firm risk. The results indicate that non-executive directors do not play a supervisory role under the agency theory. Our findings remain robust when we apply alternative measures of the dependent variable.
A Personal Computer-Based Simulator for Nuclear-Heating Reactors

Abstract A personal computer (PC)-based simulator for nuclear-heating reactors (NHRs), PC-NHR, has been developed to provide an educational tool for understanding the design and operational characteristics of an NHR system. A general description of the reactor system as well as the technical basis for the design and operation of the heating reactor is provided. The basic models and equations for the NHR simulation are then given, which include models of the reactor core, the reactor coolant system, the containment, and the control system. The graphical user interface is described in detail to provide a manual for the user to operate the simulator properly. Steady state and several transients have been simulated. The results of PC-NHR are in good agreement with design data and the results of RETRAN-02. The real-time capability is also confirmed.
Impact of the stratosphere on the sea surface temperature and ENSO based on HadGEM control runs comparing high top and low top model configurations

⎯ Numerous studies on the effects of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the stratosphere have been conducted in recent years. However, few of these have examined whether the use of an adequate representation of the stratosphere might affect simulations of the ENSO. In the present work, sea surface temperature data from two numerical model configurations, namely one with a well-resolved stratosphere, the “high top configuration” (Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model, HadGEM2-CCS), and the other without a well-resolved stratosphere, the “low top configuration” (HadGEM2-CC), are employed to study the impact of the stratosphere on the surface climate, especially on the ENSO. A pre-industrial control run is performed to eliminate interference from other factors, such as greenhouse gas warming and volcanic eruptions. Based on the present research, both model configurations function reasonably well and have shown little difference from each other when analyzng the global annual and seasonal mean sea surface temperatures, except for the Northern Atlantic Ocean region. A statistical analysis performed using the t-test method shows that the significant differences in the annual and seasonal mean sea surface temperatures in the Northern Atlantic region result from real signals rather than random noises. Furthermore, the configuration with a better representation of the stratosphere simulates the quasi-period of the ENSO and the seasonal phase-locking characteristics of El Niño more precisely. Therefore, it is probably advantageous to adopt climate models that resolved stratosphere for a more realistic representation of ENSO climatology and its possible variations under certain conditions.
Enhancing discipline specific skills using a virtual environment built with gaming technology

This article describes use of a virtual environment in a multi-disciplinary context to enhance discipline specific skills. A virtual environment built by reusing gaming technology was modified in a collaboration across Computing, Construction Management and Nursing and Midwifery disciplines. A two-staged pilot evaluation considered (i) a construction management cohort engaged with regulatory building inspection critically analyzing their environment to determine compliance and (ii) a nursing cohort, building occupant's experience in a virtual fire drill. Feedback from cohorts was used to improve the virtual environment and reflect on the use of simulations in this context. Results suggest students appreciate graphical realism in the simulated environment and the ability for the virtual environment to enhance practicality in learning and to contextualize theory.
Effect of genotype imputation on integrated model for genomic selection

Genomic selection is a very recent area of study in case of molecular breeding of livestock or crop species. There are various statistical models available for genomic selection. The performances of these models depend on several factors like sampling population, genetic architecture of target species, statistical models as well as missing genotypes. Missing genotype is very common problem in high throughput sequencing data. These missing genotypes are necessary to be imputed in order to implement the genomic selection models. Different statistical models of genomic selection behave differently in imputed data. So, it is highly imperative to evaluate the performances of statistical models under different levels of imputations to know the behavior of the models. In this article, performance of three statistical models viz. Sparse Additive Models (SpAM), Hilbert-Schmidt Independence Criterion Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (HSIC LASSO) and Integrated Model for genomic selection are compared after incorporating the various degree of imputation (0, 2, 5 and 10%) in the real data. Results indicate that integrated model is found to be more robust against the level of imputation of the genotypic data.
Robust Trajectory Tracking Control for Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in Uncertain Environments

This article addresses the tracking control problem of 3-D trajectories for underactuated underwater robotic vehicles operating in a constrained workspace including obstacles. More specifically, a robust nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) scheme is presented for the case of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) (i.e., unicycle-like vehicles actuated only in the surge, heave, and yaw). The purpose of the controller is to steer the unicycle-like AUV to the desired trajectory with guaranteed input and state constraints (e.g., obstacles, predefined vehicle velocity bounds, and thruster saturations) inside a partially known and dynamic environment where the knowledge of the operating workspace is constantly updated via the vehicle’s onboard sensors. In particular, considering the sensing range of the vehicle, obstacle avoidance with any of the detected obstacles is guaranteed by the online generation of a collision-free trajectory tracking path, despite the model dynamic uncertainties and the presence of external disturbances representing ocean currents and waves. Finally, realistic simulation studies verify the performance and efficiency of the proposed framework. Note to Practitioners—This article was motivated by the problem of robust trajectory tracking for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) operating in an uncertain environment where the knowledge of the operating workspace (e.g., obstacle positions) is constantly updated online via the vehicle’s onboard sensors (e.g., multibeam imaging sonars and laser-based vision systems). In addition, there may be other system limitations (e.g., thruster saturation limits) and other operational constraints, induced by the need of various common underwater tasks (e.g., a predefined vehicle speed limit for inspecting the seabed, and mosaicking), where it should also be considered into the control strategy. However, based on the existing trajectory tracking control approaches for underwater robotics, there is a lack of an autonomous control scheme that provides a complete and credible control strategy that takes the aforementioned issues into consideration. Based on this, we present a reliable control strategy that takes into account the aforementioned issues, along with dynamic uncertainties of the model and the presence of ocean currents. In future research, we will extend the proposed methodology for multiple AUV performing collaborative inspection tasks in an uncertain environment.
Techniques and adjustments in valuing privately-held enterprises in Thailand

How to cite this paper: Terdpaopong, K. , Rickards, R. C. , & Yesseleva-Pionka, M. (2020). Techniques and adjustments in valuing privately-held enterprises in Thailand [Special issue]. Corporate Ownership & Control, 17(4), 268-278. http://doi.org/10.22495/cocv17i4siart5 Copyright © 2020 The Authors This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
Analysis of Inter-Core Crosstalk in Weakly-Coupled Multi-Core Fiber Coherent Systems

The influence of the inter-core crosstalk (ICXT) on the performance of weakly-coupled multi-core fiber (WC-MCF) systems with coherent detection and arbitrary inter-core skew is studied numerically and analytically. We analyze the evolution of the instantaneous ICXT power, induced by polarization division multiplexed quadrature amplitude modulation signals, short term average crosstalk (STAXT), and detected ICXT components along the time to get insight on how the ICXT affects the coherent system performance. Numerical results show that, with low skew-symbol rate product ($\ll$1), the STAXT can have large fluctuations along the time and the variance of the detected ICXT can also have large fluctuations along the time, causing large variations of the bit error rate (BER) along time. With large skew-symbol rate product ($\gg$1), the STAXT is almost constant along the time and, although the detected ICXT varies along time, the detected ICXT variance is almost constant along time leading to very small fluctuations of BER along time. Analytical expressions for the variance of the coherently detected ICXT, average BER and optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) penalty are proposed and shown to agree with Monte-Carlo simulation results for arbitrary skew, modulation format order, and roll-off factor of the transmitted signals. Numerical results show that the maximum allowable ICXT level for 1 dB OSNR penalty increases when the skew augments and can reach 1.3 dB for a roll-off factor of 1. For most cases of interest of low roll-off factor, the increase of the maximum allowable ICXT level is very small. It is shown that the OSNR penalty estimates agree quite well with other authors’ experimental results (with nearly zero roll-off factor).
A Fast and Accurate Single-Diode Model for Photovoltaic Design

The precise extraction of the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$I-V$ </tex-math></inline-formula> curve of photovoltaic (PV) cells is necessary for designing an efficient PV system. To achieve this, this article examines different models to investigate the best fit for the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$I$ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$V$ </tex-math></inline-formula> curve of a PV solar module. Those models are based on using different sets of equations and assumptions. New PV single-diode models are then proposed which consist of the Lambert W-function, iterative loop, and approximate equations. Furthermore, a substitution method is proposed to reduce the complexity that emerges when using the Newtown–Raphson method to solve a set of nonlinear equations. Those processes allow solving the complex nonlinear PV model in a simple way, thus making the proposed model fast, straightforward, and easy solution.
Multiple mechanisms link prestimulus neural oscillations to sensory responses

Spontaneous fluctuations of neural activity may explain why sensory responses vary across repeated presentation of the same physical stimulus. To test this hypothesis, we recorded electroencephalography in humans during stimulation with identical visual stimuli and analyzed how prestimulus neural oscillations modulate different stages of sensory processing reflected by distinct components of the event-related potential (ERP). We found that strong prestimulus alpha- and beta-band power resulted in a suppression of early ERP components (C1 and N150) and in an amplification of late components (after 0.4 s). Whereas functional inhibition of sensory processing underlies the reduction of early ERP responses, we found that the modulation of non-zero-mean oscillations (baseline shift) accounted for the amplification of late responses. Distinguishing between these two mechanisms is crucial for the understanding of how internal brain states modulate the processing of incoming sensory information.
Assessing Cultural Drivers of Safety Resilience in a Collegiate Aviation Program

Organizational safety resilience is a key factor in sustaining an effective safety management system (SMS) in high-reliability organizations (HROs) such as aviation. Extant research advocates for monitoring, assessing and continuously improving safety in an organization that has a fully-functional SMS. Safety resilience provides a buffer against vulnerabilities. Extant research also suggests a paucity in terms of a measurement framework for organizational safety resilience in collegiate aviation operations. A quantitative approach using Reason’s safety resilience concept (Reason, 2011) is used to assess organizational safety resilience in a collegiate aviation program with an active conformance SMS accepted by the FAA. A sample of 516 research participants responded to an online survey instrument derived from Reason (2011). Structural Equation Model (SEM)/Path Analysis (PA) techniques are used to assess models that measure the strength of relationships between three cultural drivers (Commitment, Cognizance, Competence) of safety and safety resilience. There were strong significant relationships between these cultural drivers and safety resilience. Path analysis suggests that Commitment significantly mediates the path between Cognizance and Competence and highlights its important role in sustaining safety competencies. There were significant differences in the perceptions of safety resilience among top-level leadership, flight operations and ground operations. Flight operations and ground operations had higher mean scores on safety resilience than top-level leadership. Study provides a validated model of safety resilience that is essential for SMS improvements in collegiate aviation programs. Future studies will utilize this safety resilience model to assess other collegiate aviation programs in various phases of SMS implementation, airlines, and air traffic control operations. and competence. Their study analyzes the distinction between ‘work as imagined’ and ‘work as done’ as originally suggested by Hollnagel (2009). ‘Work as imagined’ assumes that if the correct standard procedures are known, understood and followed, safety will follow as a matter of course. However, staff at the ‘sharp end’ of organizations know that to create safety in their work, variability is not only desirable but essential. This positive adaptability within systems that allows good outcomes in the presence of both favorable and adverse conditions is termed resilience. They further argue that clinical and organizational work can be made safer, not only by addressing negative outcomes, but also by fostering excellence and promoting resilience through non-punitive safety reporting. Traffic Management, Airports and Unmanned Aerial Systems operations. Another significant benefit of this study is the capacity to assess operational vulnerabilities and strengthen safety resilience in collegiate aviation programs as part of continuous monitoring and improvements of SMS.
Effects of Various Drying Methods on Selected Physical and Antioxidant Properties of Extracts from Moringa oliefera Leaf Waste

This study aims to evaluate the effects of different drying methods on the physical properties, total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, and antioxidant activity of extracts from Moringa oliefera L. (MO) leaf waste. The effects of two drying techniques, namely, sun drying (A1) and tray drying (A2), on the physical and antioxidant properties of the extracts obtained using three extracting solvents, i.e., water (b1), ethanol (b2), and ethyl acetate (b3), were investigated. These extracts were analyzed for their physicochemical and antioxidant properties. The antioxidant properties were determined with the Folin Ciocalteau, aluminum chloride, and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assays. Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry (FTIR) was used to identify functional groups in the active compounds. It was found that the physical properties of the MO extract, including yield, pH, total solids, and color, showed significant differences for the two drying methods (p < 0.05). The b3 extract had the highest value for total phenolic contents, total flavonoid contents, and antioxidant activities, followed by b2 and b1, respectively, for both the sun drying and tray drying methods. There was a significant correlation between the total phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant activity (IC50). This study reveals that waste material from MO leaves could be utilized as an antioxidant agent, which is expected to reduce environmental pollution from the MO processing industry.