Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combating Novel COVID-19: Guidelines for the Periodontal Practitioner

In the history of medicine there have been many outbursts of morbid infectious diseases and it is challenging to every health care professional to reduce and prevent its burden. The field of Dentistry is always a source of high-risk infectious material generation owing to its professional nature. Most of the morbid infections are viral in origin and quite often transmit via droplet or aerosols. In this context, the field of Periodontology is not an exception. The recent pandemic spread of novel corona virus infectious disease (COVID-19) is alarming the community and has gained focus in terms of prevention at each echelon in the chain of transmission of infection. It becomes a mandatory duty as responsible clinicians in combating against the spread of such an infection.
Super-fast three-dimensional focused x-ray luminescence computed tomography with a gated photon counter

X-ray luminescence computed tomography (XLCT) is a hybrid molecular imaging modality combining the merits of both x-ray imaging (high spatial resolution) and optical imaging (high sensitivity to tracer nanophosphors). Narrow x-ray beam based XLCT imaging has shown promise for high spatial resolution imaging, but the slow acquisition speed limits its applications for in vivo imaging. We introduced a continuous scanning scheme to replace the selective excitation scheme to improve imaging speed in a previous study. Under the continuous scanning scheme, the main factor that limits the scanning speed is the data acquisition time at each interval position. In this work, we have used a gated photon counter (SR400, Stanford Research Systems) to replace the high-speed oscilloscope (MDO3104, Tektronix) to acquire measurement data. The gated photon counter only counts the photon peaks in each measurement interval, while the oscilloscope records the entire waveform including both background noise data and photon peak data. The photon counter records much less data without losing any relevant information, which makes it ideal for super-fast three-dimensional (3D) imaging. We have built prototype XLCT imaging systems of both types and performed both single target and multiple target phantom experiments in 3D. The results have verified the feasibility of our proposed photon counter based system and good 3D imaging capabilities of XLCT within a reasonable time, yielding a 14 times faster scanning time compared with the oscilloscope based XLCT system. Now, the total scan time is reduced to 27 seconds per transverse section.
Using Metabarcoding to Investigate the Strength of Plant-Pollinator Interactions From Surveys of Visits to DNA Sequences

The ongoing decline in pollinators and increasing concerns about pollination services require a better understanding of complex pollination networks, particularly their response to global climate change. While metabarcoding is increasingly used for the identification of taxa in DNA mixtures, its reliability in providing quantitative information on plant-pollinator interactions is still the subject of debate. Combining metabarcoding and microscopy, we investigated the relationships between the number and composition of sequences and the abundance and composition of pollen in insect pollen loads (IPL) and how the two are linked to insect visits. Our findings confirm that metabarcoding is more effective than microscopy in identifying plant species in IPL. For a given species, we found a strong positive relationship between the amount of pollen in IPL and the number of sequences. The relationship was stable across species even if the abundance of co-occurring species in IPL (hereafter “co-occurring pollen”) tended to reduce the sequence yield (number of sequences obtained from one pollen grain) of a given species. We also found a positive relationship between the sequence count and the frequency of visits, and between the frequency and the amounts of pollen in IPL. Our results demonstrate the reliability of metabarcoding in assessing the strength of plant-pollinator interactions and in providing a broader perspective for the analyses of plant-pollinator interactions and pollination networks.
Enhancing men's awareness of testicular diseases (E-MAT) feasibility trial: Protocol for a mixed method process evaluation

Background: Testicular cancer (TC) is the most common malignancy in men under 50 years. Athletes are particularly at risk of testicular trauma and diseases. Experiencing negative testicular symptoms does not necessarily imply that men seek help. Men’s awareness of testicular diseases is often lacking and their intention to seek help for testicular symptoms is sub-optimal. The use of virtual reality (VR) may be effective in promoting men’s awareness of testicular diseases. The Enhancing Men's Awareness of Testicular diseases (E-MAT) feasibility trial aims to test the effect of E-MAT VR (intervention; interactive experience using virtual reality [VR]) compared to information delivered Electronically E-MAT E (control; same information as E-MAT VR delivered as plain text and images) on testicular knowledge, and testicular self-examination among male athletes affiliated with a national sports organisation. The overall aim of this mixed method process evaluation will be to describe (i) the experiences of participants and key stakeholders (e.g., researchers); (ii) the perceived effectiveness of intervention components; (iii) acceptability of the feasibility trial and intervention procedures; (iv) the relationship between implementation, mechanisms, and context; and (v) the barriers and facilitators to support effective conduct of a future definitive trial. Methods: This mixed method process evaluation will use a descriptive realist evaluation. Quantitative data will be gathered using a usability and satisfaction survey, in addition to fidelity checks during intervention delivery. Quantitative data will be analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data will be gathered from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with participants and key stakeholders to investigate their experiences of E-MAT VR and E-MAT E, and explore areas for improvement. Thematic analysis of transcripts will be conducted. Conclusions: This process evaluation will provide an in-depth understanding of how the interventions worked within this cohort and lessons for a future definitive trial.
Evaluation in Germany: An Overview

Even though often considered being a “late-starter” concerning evaluation, the beginnings for systematic inquiry into impacts of governmental programs in Germany parallel the developments in the U.S. where evaluation became particularly prominent during the 1960s and from then on. As a modern democracy, too, German government and public administration were concerned with the effects of their actions, be it in the form of laws or programs or other measures of public intervention. So, for example, in 1970 the federal law was passed that there had to be “success controls” (“Erfolgskontrollen”) for governmental measures. Indeed, this law caused a leap in the market for such “success control” studies, though for the most part not academics but commercial research and consultancy firms succeeded to produce the lion’s share of the evaluation research funding (Wollmann, 1997). The relative absence of the academic world regarding evaluations sustained for another 20 years. That does not mean, however, that research and research findings did not pick up matters of broad public interest. For example, large-scale studies were undertaken to explore the effects of different forms of schooling starting at the end of the 1960s and coming to an end early 1980s (Stockmann, 2004b: 29). However, seldom such studies were called evaluation or program evaluation or evaluation research. The
Enhanced Degradation of Paracetamol by the Fe(III)-Sulfite System under UVA Irradiation

The Fe(III)-S(IV) system used for advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) at acidic pH has just been proposed and demonstrated valid for very few contaminants in the last several years. In this work, we investigated the effect of ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation on the degradation efficiency of the Fe(III)/S(IV) system at near-neutral pH. Paracetamol (PARA) was selected as a model contaminant. The influencing factors, such as initial pH and Fe(III)/S(IV) molar ratio on chemical kinetics, and the mechanism of PARA degradation are investigated, with an emphasis on the determination of dominant oxidant species. Our results show that irradiation enhances the PARA degradation by accelerating the decrease of pH to acidic levels, and the optimal pH for the degradation of PARA in the Fe(III)/S(IV)/O2 system was around 4.0. At near-neutral pH, more than 60% of PARA was decomposed within 40 min under irradiation, whereas no significant degradation of PARA was observed using Fe(III)/S(IV) at pH 7.0 without irradiation. Mechanism investigation revealed that sulfate radical (SO4•‒) is the main oxidant species generated and responsible for the PARA degradation under these conditions. This finding may have promising implications in developing a new degradation process for dealing with wastewater at near-neutral pH by the Fe(III)/S(IV)/O2 system under UVA irradiation.
Investigation of combustive flows and dynamic meshing in computational fluid dynamics

Investigation of Combustive Flows and Dynamic Meshing in Computational Fluid Dynamics. (December 2004) Steven B. Chambers, B.S., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Paul G. A. Cizmas Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a field that is constantly advancing. Its advances in terms of capabilities are a result of new theories, faster computers, and new numerical methods. In this thesis, advances in the computational fluid dynamic modeling of moving bodies and combustive flows are investigated. Thus, the basic theory behind CFD is being extended to solve a new class of problems that are generally more complex. The first chapter that investigates some of the results, chapter IV, discusses a technique developed to model unsteady aerodynamics with moving boundaries such as flapping winged flight. This will include mesh deformation and fluid dynamics theory needed to solve such a complex system. Chapter V will examine the numerical modeling of a combustive flow. A three dimensional single vane burner combustion chamber is numerically modeled. Species balance equations along with rates of reactions are introduced when modeling combustive flows and these expressions are discussed. A reaction mechanism is validated for use with in situ reheat simulations. Chapter VI compares numerical results with a laminar methane flame experiment to further investigate the capabilities of CFD to simulate a combustive flow. A new method of examining a combustive flow is introduced by looking at the solutions ability to satisfy the second law of thermodynamics. All laminar flame simulations are found to be in violation of the entropy inequality.
LINA: A Linearizing Neural Network Architecture for Accurate First-Order and Second-Order Interpretations

While neural networks can provide high predictive performance, it was a challenge to identify the salient features and important feature interactions used for their predictions. This represented a key hurdle for deploying neural networks in many biomedical applications that require interpretability, including predictive genomics. In this paper, linearizing neural network architecture (LINA) was developed here to provide both the first-order and the second-order interpretations on both the instance-wise and the model-wise levels. LINA combines the representational capacity of a deep inner attention neural network with a linearized intermediate representation for model interpretation. In comparison with DeepLIFT, LIME, Grad*Input and L2X, the first-order interpretation of LINA had better Spearman correlation with the ground-truth importance rankings of features in synthetic datasets. In comparison with NID and GEH, the second-order interpretation results from LINA achieved better precision for identification of the ground-truth feature interactions in synthetic datasets. These algorithms were further benchmarked using predictive genomics as a real-world application. LINA identified larger numbers of important single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and salient SNP interactions than the other algorithms at given false discovery rates. The results showed accurate and versatile model interpretation using LINA.
Investigating the corrosion mechanism of Morinda lucida leaf extract admixtures on concrete steel rebar in saline/marine simulating environment

In this paper, measurements of corrosion test data from steel reinforced concrete samples immersed in 3.5% NaCl, for simulating saline/marine environment, were analysed for investigating corrosion mechanism by Morinda lucida leaf extract admixtures on the steel rebar. Corrosion potential as per ASTM C876-95 R99, corrosion current by zero resistance ammeter and corrosion rate from linear polarization resistance instrument were subjected to the Weibull probability distribution as per Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit criteria. From this, electrochemical noise resistance was modelled through the ratio of Weibull standard deviation of corrosion potential to that of Weibull standard deviation of corrosion current after which the modelled noise resistance and the plant extract concentration were correlated with the corrosion rate. Results from these analyses of electrochemical test data showed that excellent correlation, of R = 98.07%, Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency = 96.18% and ANOVA p-value = 0.0456, exists between the corrosion rate as a function of the plant extract concentration and the noise resistance. The correlation model obtained exhibited good agreements with experimental results in inhibition efficiency performance of the admixture on steel reinforcement corrosion in the test medium. By these, 3.333 g/L Morinda lucida (per volume of concrete mixing water) exhibited optimal inhibition efficiency, η = 90.59±2.52 (by correlation prediction) or η = 89.27±3.94 (by experimental model), on the concrete reinforcing steel corrosion in the study. Adsorption isotherm fittings of the correlation prediction and experimental results showed that they both followed the Langmuir isotherm, which indicated physical adsorption (physisorption) as the prevalent mechanism of Morinda lucida leaf extract on the concrete steel rebar. © 2015 The Authors.
Proximity of public schools to major highways and industrial facilities, and students’ school performance and health hazards

Children with consistent exposure to air pollution have increased asthma, chronic respiratory problems, and neurobehavioral dysfunction. However, many schools are located in close proximity to highways and industrial facilities which are key sources of air pollution to children. The goal of this study is to explore the association between the proximity from schools to highways and industrial facilities, and children’s school performance and health hazards. We measured the distances from 3,660 Michigan public schools to highways and industrial facilities, and linked these to the Michigan Educational Assessment Program test performance rate and the National Air Toxics Assessment’s respiratory and neurological hazards. We found that schools located closer to highways and industrial facilities had higher risks of respiratory and neurological diseases than those located farther away. We also found that schools located closer to major highways had a higher percentage of students failing to meet the state standards than the latter after controlling for the location of schools, student expenditure, school size, student–teacher ratio, and free lunch enrollment. In addition, a larger percentage of black, Hispanic, or economically disadvantaged children attended schools nearest to pollution emissions than white students.
Spectral-spatial nearest subspace classifier for hyperspectral image classification

ABSTRACT Nearest subspace classifier (NSC) is a simple classifier that works on the assumption that samples from the same class must approximately lie on the same subspace. However, NSC only considers the spectral information and neglects the spatial information. Several studies have tried to eliminate this drawback of NSC. Still, they either are not robust against outliers in the neighbourhood of the test sample or have too many parameters which need to be tuned manually. In this paper, we present a practical and straightforward method that improves the existing NSC-based approaches that utilise spatial information. In our proposed method, in addition to the assumption in NSC that samples from the same class must approximately lie on the same subspace, we assume that spatially adjacent pixels quite likely belong to the same class. By combining these two assumptions, we conclude that spatially adjacent pixels must approximately lie on the same subspace as well. Then, we propose a method that analyses the closeness between two subspaces, where one subspace is the space spanned by the neighbourhood of the test sample and the other subspace is the space spanned by the within-class training samples. The proposed method has a closed-form solution, is easy to implement, and outperforms the existing solutions when the number of labelled training samples is scarce. The source code of the paper is available at https://github.com/kgtoker/SSNSC-for-HSIC.
Optimization of tamoxifen-induced gene regulation in cardiovascular research

The Cre-loxP system is a powerful and versatile tool to control site-specific recombination of mammalian genomic DNA. Site-specific Cre recombinase-mediated DNA recombination allows for the conditional control of gene expression within transgenic animals in a tissuespecific manner by employing a promoter known to be expressed specifically in such tissue of interest. More specifically, the gene of interest is flanked (floxed) by two loxP (locus of x-over, P1) sites in the presence of Cre recombinase, which then catalyzes the site-specific recombination of DNA between those loxP sites, leading to tissue-specific gene editing. However, the approach is flawed by the lack of control over the timing of Cre recombinase expression which often parallels the expression of the chosen promoter. Consequently, Cre-
Exchange Rate and Monetary Fundamentals: A Panel Data
Analysis of Emerging and Developing Asian Countries

This study's main objective is to estimate the long-run relationship between exchange rate and monetary fundamentals by using annual balanced panel data of eight selected emerging and developing Asian countries. We employed a panel cointegration methodology to estimate the exchange rate cointegration connection among monetary fundamentals by using annual balanced panel data of eight selected emerging and developing Asian countries such as Pakistan, China Mainland, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, India for the period of 1998-2016. The results concluded that the exchange rate has a cointegration connection with monetary variables (money supply, GDP real index, GDP deflator, producer price index. Further, the Granger causality test supported the money model by explaining that emerging and developing countries' currencies exchange rate converges towards long-run equilibrium. Therefore, we concluded that in emerging and developing Asian countries, the performance of the nominal exchange rate is comparatively better, as suggested by the monetary model.
Loading Analysis of Modular Multi-level Converter for Offshore High-voltage DC Application under Various Grid Faults

Abstract The modular multi-level converter has become an interesting candidate in high-voltage DC systems due to its higher voltage levels and modular construction. Low-voltage ride-through is an important grid requirement for modular multi-level converter–high-voltage DC since not only causes control challenges but may also result in overstressed components for the modular multi-level converter. However, the thermal loading of the modular multi-level converter under various grid faults has not yet been clarified. In this article, the power loss and thermal performance of the modular multi-level converter during grid voltage dips are studied. The impacts of two typical grid faults to the modular multi-level converter in terms of operating and loading conditions are analytically researched and simulated. It has been found that the operating and loading conditions of the modular multi-level converter under low-voltage ride-through strongly depend on the types and severity values of grid voltage dips. The thermal distribution among the three phases of the modular multi-level converter may be quite uneven, and some devices are much more stressed than the normal operating condition, which may be of importance for the design of the cooling system.
Computational Study of Charge Density Produced in N2:H2 Plasma Actuator

Numerical simulation of charge density produced in plasma actuators is dependent upon the development of models dealing with electrical properties. The main aim of this work is to investigate the characteristics surface charge density and space charge density of DBD plasma actuator. A simple design of surface dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator is used in the study. The discharge gas was N2:H2 mixture with applied voltage equal to 1.5 kV. A theoretical plasma model is used to establish the charge density details. Results show that surface charge density increased in value and spread in width alone the exposed electrode as the voltage increased and reached to the amplitude value. HIGHLIGHTS In plasma diagnostics studies, charge density is one of the important parameter The paper includes simulation to charge density in plasma actuator with two gases which are N2 and H2 The results very useful to follow up the electric field and flow of gases GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Research on the Inquiry Teaching Model of Men's Basketball Teaching in College Physical Education based on Network Information Technology

Network education is a new concept of modern information technology applied to education, which is the education of the use of network technology, according to a series of outstanding problems in the traditional basketball teaching, we discussed the application value and effect of inquiry teaching in college basketball education. The data was collected from Jiangxi Normal University; experiment object is 36 students, and we put them in the experimental group (18) and the control group (18). By using interview method and empirical analysis, the result shows that in 50 meters (F=4.227, P=0.048<0.05); standing long jump (F=5.495, P=0.025<0.05); 1000 meters (F=4.702, P=0.037<0.05); Run-up to touch high( F=6.398 P=0.016<0.05); 1 minute shot (F=9.396 P=0.004<0.01); basketball technology F=9.116 P=0.005<0.01; basketball interest (F=16.279, P=0.000<0.01); basketball theory results (F=12.066 P=0.001<0.01). Inquiry teaching method can effectively improve the normal teaching, not only promote students to actively take the basketball class, but also strengthen comprehensive physical education, as the effect is significant, so this education model is worth to promote.