Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SCORE: Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) for Sustainability Appraisal of Remedial Alternatives

For comprehensive and transparent appraisal of sustainability, multicriteria analysis (MCA) is often suggested. Development of a relevant MCA-method requires consideration of a number of key issues, e.g., (a) definition of assessment boundaries; (b) definition of performance scales, both temporal and spatial; (c) selection of relevant criteria (indicators) that facilitates a comprehensive sustainability appraisal while avoiding double-counting of effects; and (d) handling of uncertainties. Adding to the complexity is the typically wide variety of inputs, including uantifications based on existing data, expert judgments, and opinions expressed in interviews. The sustainable choice of remediation (SCORE) MCA-method is developed to provide a transparent appraisal of the sustainability of possible remediation alternatives relative to a reference alternative, considering key criteria in the economic, environmental and social domains. The criteria were identified based on extensive literature studies and focus-group meetings. The economic domain has one key criterion: social profitability, evaluated by cost-benefit analysis. The environmental domain criteria are: soil, surface water, groundwater, sediment, air, non-recyclable waste, and non-renewable natural resources. The social domain criteria are: local environmental quality & amenity; cultural heritage; equity; health and safety; local participation; and local acceptance. SCORE combines a linear additive model to rank the alternatives with outranking to identify alternatives regarded as non-sustainable. The method is capable of integrating quantitative and qualitative estimations of criteria and provides a full uncertainty analysis of the results, using Monte Carlo simulation. Most importantly, it provides a structure that allows preferences and opinions of involved stakeholders to be openly integrated into the analysis.
Compact LPF Using T-shaped Resonator

Abstract A novel microstrip lowpass filter based on a T-shaped resonator is proposed in this paper that presents wide stopband and compact size. A method of scaling is applied to and studied on the proposed resonator in order to tune its response parameters. To achieve wide stopband, a suppressing cell is designed and connected in series form to the resonator. The resulting filter is then fabricated and measured. Simulated and measured results of the proposed filter verify its advantages over those presented in the references in terms of stopband-width and physical size.
Magnetic resonance-guided ultrasound hyperthermia for prostate cancer radiotherapy: an immobilization device embedding the ultrasound applicator

Aim: To test 3D-printed immobilization device for future use in magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound hyperthermia. Material & methods: Using a surface scanner, patient-specific pelvic immobilization devices were 3D printed. The setup reproducibility was measured both on linear accelerator (LINAC) and magnetic resonance. An ultrasound imaging probe was used to acquire reference images and later to acquire images once attached into the embedded holder. Results: Prepositioning accuracy was tested at LINAC using an optical surface monitoring and MRI and showed submillimeter accuracy and small angular rotations. Agreement was high between the ultrasound reference images versus the immobilized probe. Conclusion: Reported results are considered as a promising step toward a fast and precise positioning of patients and an easier integration of radiotherapy and magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound hyperthermia.
Development and application of a dynamic transmission model of health systems’ preparedness and response to COVID-19 in twenty-six Latin American and Caribbean countries

The global impact of COVID-19 has challenged health systems across the world. This situation highlighted the need to develop policies based on scientific evidence to prepare the health systems and mitigate the pandemic. In this scenario, governments were urged to predict the impact of the measures they were implementing, how they related to the population’s behavior, and the capacity of health systems to respond to the pandemic. The overarching aim of this research was to develop a customizable and open-source tool to predict the impact of the expansion of COVID-19 on the level of preparedness of the health systems of different Latin American and the Caribbean countries, with two main objectives. Firstly, to estimate the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 and the preparedness and response capacity of health systems in those countries, based on different scenarios and public policies implemented to control, mitigate, or suppress the spread of the epidemic. Secondly, to facilitate policy makers’ decisions by allowing the model to adjust its parameters according to the specific pandemic trajectory and policy context. How many infections and deaths are estimated per day? ; When are the peaks of cases and deaths expected, according to the different scenarios? ; Which occupancy rate will ICU services have along the epidemiological curve? ; When is the optimal time increase restrictions in order to prevent saturation of ICU beds? , are some of the key questions that the model can respond, and is publicly accessible through the following link: http://shinyapps.iecs. org.ar/modelo-covid19/. This open-access and open code tool is based on a SEIR model (Susceptible, Exposed, Infected and Recovered). Using a deterministic epidemiological model, it allows to frame potential scenarios for long periods, providing valuable information on the dynamics of transmission and how it could impact on health systems through multiple customized configurations adapted to specific characteristics of each country.
Exploring the roots of local government corruption practices in rural Java: An anthropological analysis

Corruption is a crucial issue in Indonesia, including in the administration of village government. This article aims to explain the roots of corruption seen from an anthropological analysis of corruption. This article describes the factors causing corruption practices in rural Java, i.e., local values in village governance practices. The research was conducted in several villages in Bojonegoro Regency-East Java. The data were collected through a series of participatory observations, in-depth interviews, and searching archives. The informants were divided into three groups, i.e., the village officials, the elite groups who were against the village head, and the neutral group. The findings of this study indicate that the root of corruption in the village is caused by strong local values such as loyalty to the village head from his followers, solid harmony, and the ability for the village head to manifest himself as an ideal leadership. Such values make relational models that are full of pleasantries for the sake of themselves and their groups to perpetuate power. This study concludes that non-values factors that further complicate the financial administration system in the form of supralocal interventions had a wider impact on the worsening of the deviation in budget usage.
Magnetization Loss of Multi-Layered CORC According to Various Winding Types

Conductor on round core (CORC) is one of high temperature superconducting (HTS) conductors with large current capacity. CORC stacks HTS tapes to increase the current capacity. CORC can have various structures according to how we stack HTS tapes. The direction of the spiral winding in each layer and the overlapped area of HTS tapes affect AC losses of CORC because the losses mainly depend on the perpendicular magnetic fields on the HTS tapes. We have measured the magnetization losses of CORC short samples with various structures. Each sample has a different number of layers, winding direction in each layer, and overlapped area. We confirmed the best structure of CORC with the least magnetization loss.
Amino Acid Signaling for TOR in Eukaryotes: Sensors, Transducers, and a Sustainable Agricultural fuTORe

Eukaryotic cells monitor and regulate metabolism through the atypical protein kinase target of rapamycin (TOR) regulatory hub. TOR is activated by amino acids in animals and fungi through molecular signaling pathways that have been extensively defined in the past ten years. Very recently, several studies revealed that TOR is also acutely responsive to amino acid metabolism in plants, but the mechanisms of amino acid sensing are not yet established. In this review, we summarize these discoveries, emphasizing the diversity of amino acid sensors in human cells and highlighting pathways that are indirectly sensitive to amino acids, i.e., how TOR monitors changes in amino acid availability without a bona fide amino acid sensor. We then discuss the relevance of these model discoveries to plant biology. As plants can synthesize all proteinogenic amino acids from inorganic precursors, we focus on the possibility that TOR senses both organic metabolites and inorganic nutrients. We conclude that an evolutionary perspective on nutrient sensing by TOR benefits both agricultural and biomedical science, contributing to ongoing efforts to generate crops for a sustainable agricultural future.
Causes and Consequences of Not Having a Personal Healthcare Provider Among American Indian Elders: A Mixed-Method Study

Having a regular relationship with a healthcare provider contributes to better health outcomes and greater satisfaction with care for older adults. Although members of federally recognized American Indian tribes have a legal right to healthcare, American Indian Elders experience inequities in healthcare access that may compromise their ability to establish a relationship with a healthcare provider. This multi-year, community-driven, mixed-method study examines the potential causes and consequences of not having a personal healthcare provider among American Indian Elders. Quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews were conducted with 96 American Indian Elders (age 55 and over) in two states in the Southwestern United States. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed separately and then triangulated to identify convergences and divergences in data. Findings confirmed that having a consistent healthcare provider correlated significantly with self-rated measures of health, confidence in getting needed care, access to overall healthcare, and satisfaction with care. Lack of a regular healthcare provider was related to interconnected experiences of self-reliance, bureaucratic and contextual barriers to care, and sentiments of fear and mistrust based in previous interactions with medical care. Increasing health equity for American Indian Elders will thus require tailored outreach and system change efforts to increase continuity of care and provider longevity within health systems and build Elders' trust and confidence in healthcare providers.
Correlation of Immune-Inflammatory Markers with Clinical Features and Novel Location-Specific Nomograms for Short-Term Outcomes in Patients with Intracerebral Hemorrhage

(1) Background: We investigated the association of four immune-inflammatory markers with clinical features and established location-specific nomograms to predict mortality risk in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). (2) Methods: We retrospectively enrolled 613 inpatients with acute ICH. (3) Results: Overall mortality was 22%, which was highest in pontine hemorrhage and lowest in thalamic hemorrhage. All four immune-inflammatory markers exhibited a positive linear correlation with glucose, ICH volume, ICH score, and discharge Modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score. Significant predictors of death due to lobar/putaminal hemorrhage were age, glucose and creatinine levels, initial Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score, ICH volume, and presence of intraventricular hemorrhage. None of the immune-inflammatory markers were significant predictors of unfavorable outcome or death. We selected significant factors to establish nomograms for predicting death due to lobar/putaminal, thalamic, pontine, and cerebellar hemorrhages. The C-statistic for predicting death in model I (comprising factors in the establishment of the nomogram) in each type of ICH was higher than that in model II (comprising ICH score alone), except for cerebellar hemorrhage. These nomograms for predicting death had good discrimination (C-index: 0.889 to 0.975) and prediction probabilities (C-index: 0.890 to 0.965). (4) Conclusions: Higher immune-inflammatory markers were associated with larger ICH volume, worse initial GCS, and unfavorable outcomes, but were not independent prognostic predictors. The location-specific nomograms provided novel and accurate models for predicting mortality risk.
Jdebug: A Fast, Non-Intrusive and Scalable Fault Locating Tool for Ten-Million-Scale Parallel Applications

This article presents Jdebug, a fast, non-intrusive and scalable fault locating tool for extreme-scale parallel applications. Large-scale debugging has drawn more attention with the increasing scale of supercomputers and applications. To eliminate program intrusion caused by traditional instrumentation or interception during debugging information acquisition, we introduce the out-of-band management into large-scale debugging. We propose a rapid information gathering scheme that separates user and debugging traffic to solve scalability problem and to eliminate program interference during merging data. Observations of Program Counters (PC) and performance characteristics in suspended applications find abnormalities and help locate abnormal threads caused by software errors or hardware failures effectively. Evaluation shows that Jdebug collects PCs of over 20 million cores on the new Sunway supercomputer within 1.97 seconds, and can locate the abnormal threads in 1.4 seconds with an accuracy of 92.5%. In the running test of three fundamental benchmarks (HPL, HPCG, Graph500) and seventeen real-world applications, Jdebug quickly and accurately locates abnormal threads to help find scalability errors and hardware failures including memory access failures, communication failures, and execution component failures, which validates its effectiveness.
Rare microbial populations as sensitive indicators of bacterial community dissimilarity under different agricultural management practices

ABSTRACT Revealing the composition and role of rare and abundant microbial groups is crucial to understand ecosystem processes and function. In 2018, we characterized soil bacterial community, abundant (AMPs) and rare microbial populations (RMPs) with mineral fertilizer and mineral fertilizer combined with straw return under continuous maize (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max Merr.)-maize rotation systems in a Mollisol in Northeast China. The results showed that the effects of fertilization on total bacterial community, AMPs and RMPs were greater than cropping systems. The cropping systems had a stronger effect on α diversity of bacterial community than fertilization. The RMPs accounted for 50.1% of the relative abundance and contributed 64.3% to the community dissimilarity. The RMPs accounted for 96.7% of the amount of operational taxonomic units (OTUs), thus became the most important contributors to community diversity. The OTUs with lower relative abundance had a narrower niche range, indicating that rare OTUs were more easily affected by habitat uniqueness. The RMPs were important contributors to chemoheterotrophs and were more closely correlated with variations in soil functions than AMPs. Our results provided deep insight into the ecological role of RMPs, which is useful for rational management and improving agricultural ecosystem sustainability.
Joint Inter-Core Crosstalk- and Intra-Core Impairment-Aware Lightpath Provisioning Model in Space-Division Multiplexing Elastic Optical Networks

Recently, space-division multiplexing (SDM) has been incorporated with elastic optical networks (EONs) to enhance the fiber capability, which forms space-division multiplexing-based elastic optical networks (SDM-EONs). During transmission of optical signals through multi-core fibers, inter-core crosstalk (XT) and intra-core physical layer impairments (PLIs) arise, which deteriorate the signal quality. Existing models typically handle inter-core XT and intra-core PLIs separately and set a single XT threshold for each modulation format, which results in an unacceptable lightpath due to the degradation of signal quality or leads to inefficient spectrum utilization. This paper proposes a routing, modulation, spectrum, and core allocation (RMSCA) model for SDM-EONs to consider inter-core XT and intra-core PLIs jointly. For each modulation format, it sets different XT thresholds and transmission reaches according to inter-core XT and intra-core PLIs. An optimization problem is formulated as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem. We prove that the RMSCA decision problem is NP-complete. We introduce a heuristic algorithm when the ILP problem is not tractable. Numerical results demonstrate that, by setting several XT limits for each modulation format, the proposed model increases spectrum efficiency compared to a benchmark model based on the literature.
The Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management Tool in the Textile Sector

This paper aims to develop a proposal for implementing the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) in a large Portuguese company that operates in the textile sector, intending to promote its subsequent implementation. Through a qualitative research approach, a case study was carried out, using interviews, which allowed clarification of the strategic guidelines of the company under study. It was found that the organization under analysis has defined the main pillars for building the BSC: the mission, values and vision. It was also found that this is an organization with an open culture, concerned with developing efforts to create and implement tools that allow clear and fluid communication of strategic objectives in all sectors that incorporate it. It was also possible to assess that the BSC is a tool known to all employees. Everyone recognized that it would be a useful tool for improving organizational performance to meet strategic objectives. However, some factors were also found that can hinder its implementation, such as the availability of time, the organizational culture and everyone’s commitment to the execution of this strategic management tool.
Low‐Temperature‐Processed Stable Perovskite Solar Cells and Modules: A Comprehensive Review

The impending commercialization of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is plodding despite the booming power conversion efficiencies and high stabilities. Most high‐performance, stable PSCs are often processed partially with high‐temperature processes, increasing the cost of production and energy payback time. Low‐temperature‐processed PSCs are crucial as they cut down the expenses lowering the barriers to industrial use. In addition, low‐temperature‐processed methods have a wide range of applicability in flexible devices and for tandem applications with other photovoltaic technologies where the temperature budget is limited. Therefore, making stable PSCs under ambient conditions as well as providing low‐cost fabrication techniques is highly desirable. Here, a detailed review is presented on the development of the low‐temperature process strategies for fabricating highly stable PSCs and perovskite solar modules. The effectiveness of low‐temperature processing in various classes of materials is also discussed. First, the authors introduce some major degradation processes in PSCs. Then, the developments and evolving strategies of notable materials using low‐temperature processing routes and a correlation with stability are summarized. A few general trends which are related to stability are also discussed. Overall, this review contributes to a better understanding of the status of low‐temperature‐processed cells and modules.
lncRNA SLC9A3-AS1 Promotes Oncogenesis of NSCLC via Sponging microRNA-760 and May Serve as a Prognosis Predictor of NSCLC Patients

Background Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a prevalent type of lung cancer worldwide. Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) SLC9A3-AS1 is reported to play a carcinogenic role in nasopharyngeal carcinoma, but its full-scale role in NSCLC remains elusive. Methods SLC9A3-AS1 expression was detected in serum and tissue of NSLCC patients and NSCLC cell lines. The effects of SLC9A3-AS1 on NSCLC proliferation, migration and invasion were evaluated using CCK-8 and transwell assays. In addition, the potential downstream molecules of SLC9A3-AS1 were searched and explored by bioinformatics analysis, RT-qPCR, dual-luciferase reporter, and rescue experiments. Results SLC9A3-AS1 was upregulated in NSCLC tissues and cell lines. SLC9A3-AS1 possessed a favorable ability in diagnosing NSCLC. A high level of SLC9A3-AS1 was associated with poor prognosis in NSCLC patients. Functionally, SLC9A3-AS1 knockdown inhibited cell proliferation, migration, and invasion of NSCLC cells. Mechanistically, SLC9A3-AS1 acted as competing endogenous RNA for miR-760 to regulate NSCLC progression. In addition, rescue assay showed that downregulation of miR-760 could reverse the modulatory activity of SLC9A3-AS1 knockdown on NSCLC cells. Conclusion SLC9A3-AS1 was upregulated in NSCLC, and SLC9A3-AS1 knockdown hindered NSCLC progression through targeting miR-760, suggesting that it may prove to be a novel biomarker and therapeutic target for NSCLC.
Technological Efforts, Firm Ownership and Productivity: A Study of Information Technology Service Firms in India

The article presents differences in firm-level total factor productivity in the information technology (IT) service firms in India over the period 2000–2016. It is an attempt to study whether technological efforts contribute to productivity differences in the firms in conjunction with several other firm specific characteristics. Controlling for endogeneity in inputs, the estimation of productivity through semi-parametric techniques indicates considerable heterogeneity in productivity across firm types. Technological efforts of firms have a significant impact on the productivity of IT firms. Both embodied technology imports and in-house R&D contribute to higher productivity. While the Indian firms are observed to be more productive compared to their foreign counterparts, the technological efforts also differ due to ownership factors and that contributes to changes in productivity. JEL: D24, O14, O39
Mendesain Pembelajaran IPS dan PKn Berbasis Literasi ICT (Information and Communication Technology) pada Tingkat Sekolah Dasar

Pembelajaran IPS dan PKn memiliki peran yang penting dalam praktik kehidupan sehari-hari dan harus didesain secara baik serta menyesuaikan dengan perkembangan teknologi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis desain pembelajaran IPS dan PKn berbasis Literasi ICT (Information and Communication Technology) pada tingkat sekolah dasar. Desain pembelajaran berbasis Literasi ICT berpusat pada siswa dengan kombinasi teknologi digital. Literasi ICT (Information and Communication Technology) dapat memberikan pengalaman belajar menyenangkan bagi siswa dan dapat meningkatkan inovasi serta kreatifitas pada siswa. Metode penelitian yang digunakan ialah metode deskriptif-kualitatif dengan pendekatan studi pustaka, sumber data diproleh dari hasil analisis dan pengumpulan data dilakukan secara online serta simpulan yang diperoleh dari jurnal yang relevan. Kesimpulan dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa desain pembelajaran IPS dan PKn berbasis Literasi ICT (Information and Communication Technology) di sekolah dasar perlu dikembangkan oleh guru dalam proses pembelajaran seperti pemanfaatan media digital dalam mengembangkan media, mengembangkan sumber belajar dan mengembangkan evaluasi agar memberikan pembelajaran yang bermakna dan menyenangkan bagi setiap siswa.