Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Optimal Forecasting Method of Passenger Traffic in Greek Coastal Shipping

Purpose: The main goal of this study is to exact an optimal forecasting method by answering the research question: which is the best model for capturing short-term seasonal components of passenger traffic in Greek coastal shipping? Design/methodology/approach: There are not a lot of scientific efforts in forecasting passenger traffic in Greece. In order to fill this gap, we tried to find an optimal forecasting method, by comparing Box-Jenkins ARIMA, smoothing and decomposition methods. As Greek coastal shipping consists of several concentrated submarkets (lines) we remained in fourteen popular itineraries (including total passenger traffic). Taking into consideration the high seasonality and no stationarity that characterizes those routes we limited our analysis to Winter’s triple exponential smoothing, to time series decomposition method, to simple seasonal model and to seasonal ARIMA models. Findings: The analysis results show that in fourteen popular coastal routes Winters’ multiplicative method, simple seasonal model and decomposition multiplicative trend and seasonal model have the best integration to the time series data. No coastal line led to better results by seasonal Box-Jenkins ARIMA models. Research limitations/implications: The results should be treated with caution since COVID-19 pandemic does not allow safe conclusions for the forecasting period 2020-2022 in GCS. However, the forecasting results of the first quarter of 2020, when pandemic had not fully prevailed, gave encouraging results with little deviations between predicted and actual values. Originality/value: Greek coastal shipping is one of the biggest in Europe serving a large number of passengers and having a large part of the total shipping fleet. It plays an important role for Greek economy and society, as it connects the majority of inhabited islands to mainland. The finding of an optimal forecasting method of passenger traffic is very significant for both business and government policy. Decisions on the number of routes served by shipping companies, on ships by coastal line (number and size), on companies' pricing policy, on public service obligations, on state port infrastructure policy and on the amount of state funding for barren lines are typical examples.
Government Communication, Perceptions of COVID-19, and Vaccination Intention: A Multi-Group Comparison in China

Government communication has been playing an important role in mass vaccination to conduct the largest vaccination campaign of the world for COVID-19 and to counter vaccine hesitancy. This study employs the health belief model to examine the association between government communication and the COVID-19 vaccination intention. A survey of Chinese adults (N = 557) was conducted in March 2021, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed to estimate the multi-construct relationships. The findings indicate that government communication has both direct positive association with vaccination intention and indirect association with vaccination intention through the mediation of perceived severity, benefits, and barriers. Multi-group comparisons suggest that individuals from private sectors are more easily mobilized to receive COVID-19 vaccination by government communication than those from public sectors. Similarly, the correlation between government communication and the vaccination intention of individuals with a good health status was stronger than that of those with a poor health status. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are further discussed.
Application of D-S Evidence Theory to Dam Safety Monitoring

Dam safety monitoring system is complex as uncertainty exists among various indicators.D-S evidence theory as a mathematical tool has been taken seriously for its advantages in expression and combination of uncertainty.A data fusion method of D-S evidence theory is applied to dam safety monitoring in order to improve the accuracy of dam safety evaluation.A case study is made on monitoring data of Qingtongxia Hydro-complex,and results show that the D-S evidence theory as a scientific safety evaluation method is feasible and effective.
Do board characteristics mitigate real and accrual-based earnings management activities? Evidence from MENA countries

Using a sample of 915 MENA firms –year observations for the period of 2007 to 2017, we study the impact of board of directors' characteristics on accrual and real - based earnings management as measured by discretionary accruals and abnormal discretionary expense. To this end, we develop two empirical models based on ten testable research hypotheses. We find that both predictor variables – board meeting and CEO duality (partial) – are negatively associated with earnings management. While, other predictor variables, such as board size, board independence, and gender diversity, have no crucial role in alleviating earnings management. Our findings tend to confirm that an effective board director system in the Anglo Saxon may not be as effective in developing economies because of its unique characteristics of the board directors, CG system, and legal environment.
Randomized phase II trial of neoadjuvant chemotherapy with modified FOLFIRINOX versus modified FOLFIRINOX and PD-1 antibody for borderline resectable and locally advanced pancreatic cancer (the CISPD-4 study).

562 Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is recommended for BRPC and LAPC planned resection. PD-1 antibody alone was failed in advanced pancreatic cancer, but chemotherapy combined with PD-1 antibody are promising. Methods: This is a randomized, controlled, open-label phase II study including patients with BRPC or LAPC. Modified FOLFIRINOX (mFFX) is used as neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Patients will be randomly allocated into two groups: mFFX group and mFFX plus PD-1 antibody group (PD-1 group). Imaging evaluation will be discussed by the MDT. Surgical resection will be performed if the MDT confirms the resectability. (NCT03983057). Results: From March 4, 2019 to August 1, 2021, 146 patients (62 BRPCs and 84 LAPCs) were enrolled. 115 patients received at least four cycles of therapy. In PD-1 group, irAEs happened in seven patients (9.7%), including rash (3 patients, Grade 1), hepatic AE (2 patients Grade 3, 1 patient Grade 2), renal AE (2 patients, Grade 2), and hyperglycemia (2 patients). Radiological PR were noted in 13.3% patients in mFFX group, and 26.9% in PD-1 group. For BRPC patients, the radiological PR was 13.0% and 36.3%, respectively. The resection rate was similar in two groups (47.4% and 51.7%). R0 resections were performed in 70.3% and 86.6% patients, respectively. For LAPC patients, PD-1 group has a higher resection rate (37.1% vs. 48.0%). The survival data are not mature at present. Conclusions: Modified FOLFIRINOX plus PD-1 antibody is feasible and well-tolerated for BRPC and LAPC patients. The study will be continued and the detailed data will be reported. Clinical trial information: NCT03983057.
Age and Appearance Shape Behavioral Responses of Phasmids in a Dynamic Environment

Although morphological adaptations leading to crypsis or mimicry have been studied extensively, their interaction with particular behaviors to avoid detection or recognition is understudied. Yet animal behaviors interact with morphology to reduce detection risk, and the level of protection conferred likely changes according to the surrounding environment. Apart from providing a locational cue for predators, prey motion can also serve as concealing behavior in a dynamic environment to prevent detection by potential predators or prey. Phasmids are conventionally known to rely on their adaptive resemblance to plant parts for protection, and this resemblance may vary across life stages and species. However, little is known about how their behaviors interact with their appearance and their environment. We investigated two species of phasmids with varying morphology and color patterns at different ontogenetic stages and examined their behavioral responses to a wind stimulus as a proxy for a dynamic environment. While adult behaviors were mostly species-specific, behavioral responses of nymphs varied with appearance and environmental condition. Display of different behaviors classified as revealing was positively correlated, while the display of concealing behaviors, except for swaying, was mostly negatively correlated with other behaviors. Exhibition of specific behaviors varied with appearance and environmental condition, suggesting that these behavioral responses could help reduce detection or recognition cues. We discuss the differences in behavioral responses in the context of how the behaviors could reveal or conceal the phasmids from potential predators. Our results provide a novel investigation into adaptive resemblance strategies of phasmids through the interaction of behavior and morphology, and highlight the importance of considering the effects of dynamic environments on sending and receiving cues.
Efficient (k, n)-threshold secret sharing method with cheater prevention for QR code application

To protect secret message, secret sharing technique divides it into n shares and distributes them to n involved participants. However, it is hardly to prevent a dishonest participant to cheat other by providing a fake share. To overcome this weakness, this paper presents an efficient (k, n)-threshold secret sharing approach with the functionality of cheater identification using meaningful QR codes. The secret message would be split into k pieces, and used as the coefficients of polynomial function to generate n shares. These shares would be concealed into cover QR codes based on its fault tolerance to generate meaningful QR code shares. The meaningful QR code shares are helpful to reduce the curiosity of unrelated persons when transmitted in public channel. The legitimacy of QR code share would be verified before secret reconstruction to prevent cheater in secret revealing procedure. Some experiments were done to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme is efficient, highly secure and highly robust, and it also achieves a higher embedding capacity compared to previous methods.
Liver Function and Lipid Profile in adult Men in Eastern Zone of Kogi State, Nigeria

Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) are enzymes found mainly in the liver. When the liver is diseased or damaged, additional aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase are released into the blood stream, causing the levels of the enzymes to rise. Therefore, the amount of aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase in the blood is directly related to the extent of the tissue damage. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in mammals is found mainly in the liver. Increase in serum alkaline phosphatase level is associated with malignant biliary obstruction, primary biliary cirrhosis, primary sclerosing cholangitis, hepatic lymphoma and sarcoidosis. Cholesterol is component of plasma membranes. Triglycerides are found in adipose tissue, some triglycerides are stored in the blood to provide fuel for the muscles. This work was aimed at providing information on the values of liver function indices and lipid profile in apparently healthy ageing men residing within Kogi Eastern zone of Nigeria. This is as a result of the curiosity to know and make comparison between their parameters with those of the standard/reference or normal laboratory values. The subjects were divided into different groups 25 – 75 years and the mean and standard deviation of each parameter was calculated. Test for Liver function and lipid profile were carried out to determine the level of alkaline phosphatase, AST, ALT, TG, LDL, HDL and VLDL. There was a significant increase (p < 0.05) in the alkaline phosphatase of group 6 (75 years and above) when compared to the standard while the AST and ALT showed no significant difference. The lipid profile showed no significant difference as they were in tandem with the reference values. Keywords: Low Density Lipoprotein, High Density Lipoprotein, Triacylglycerides, Very Low Density Lipoprotein, Aspartate Aminotransferase, Alanine Aminotransferase
Fundamental limitations on efficiently forecasting certain epidemic measures in network models

Significance We show that under widely believed complexity theoretic hypotheses, one cannot expect to find provably correct and efficient algorithms for predicting epidemic dynamics on general networks. These results hold even under idealized problem formulations, where all the model parameters are known and are insensitive to changes in environment. Further, they hold even for a small time horizon with just one random parameter, namely, the transmission probability. Thus, computational complexity poses an inherent challenge to effective and efficient epidemic forecasting in network models. Our results do not rule out heuristics that work well in practice or algorithms that provide provable guarantees for restricted networks. Rather, they suggest that algorithms working across a range of inputs should exploit properties of problem instances. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of developing reliable forecasts that would allow decision makers to devise appropriate response strategies. Despite much recent research on the topic, epidemic forecasting remains poorly understood. Researchers have attributed the difficulty of forecasting contagion dynamics to a multitude of factors, including complex behavioral responses, uncertainty in data, the stochastic nature of the underlying process, and the high sensitivity of the disease parameters to changes in the environment. We offer a rigorous explanation of the difficulty of short-term forecasting on networked populations using ideas from computational complexity. Specifically, we show that several forecasting problems (e.g., the probability that at least a given number of people will get infected at a given time and the probability that the number of infections will reach a peak at a given time) are computationally intractable. For instance, efficient solvability of such problems would imply that the number of satisfying assignments of an arbitrary Boolean formula in conjunctive normal form can be computed efficiently, violating a widely believed hypothesis in computational complexity. This intractability result holds even under the ideal situation, where all the disease parameters are known and are assumed to be insensitive to changes in the environment. From a computational complexity viewpoint, our results, which show that contagion dynamics become unpredictable for both macroscopic and individual properties, bring out some fundamental difficulties of predicting disease parameters. On the positive side, we develop efficient algorithms or approximation algorithms for restricted versions of forecasting problems.
Utility of Ultrasonography for Diagnosis of Salivary Gland Sialolithiasis: A Meta‐Analysis

We hypothesized that ultrasonography for salivary gland stone detection would have a diagnostic accuracy similar to that confirmed by sialendoscopy, sialography, or surgery. Therefore, we evaluated the diagnostic characteristics of ultrasonography in terms of submandibular and parotid stone detection compared to confirmatory methods.
Syntactic and Prosodic Processing of Quantifier Ambiguity in Turkish

There is a robust debate on different linguistic levels of quantifier ambiguity resolution. Many accounts of the quantifier ambiguity are extensively examined in Turkish by semantic-prosodic and syntactic-semantic levels in previous studies. In this study, we aimed to investigate the prosodic and syntactic processes of the universal quantifier (her (‘every’) and existential quantifier bir (‘a/an’)) by using an on-line picture matching experiment with 75 young adults and native speakers of Turkish. Our stimuli consisted of 120 sentences (30×4) for each of the conditions with order (her–bir (‘every–a/an’) vs. bir–her ‘a/an–every’) × focus (subject position vs. object position), respectively. In each trial, participants were asked to listen to the auditory stimuli and to judge sentences they heard. Our findings showed that the focused existential quantifier bir (‘a/an’) assigned wider scope than the universal quantifier her (‘every’) for the judgment task rates. This finding suggested that participants preferred the collective reading both for the focused universal quantifier her (‘every’) and focused existential quantifier bir (‘a/an’). For reaction times (RTs), participants favored distributive reading since the reaction times were faster in distributive reading than collective reading. This study supported the previous claims that syntactic processing has an initial role in disambiguation between collective and distributive readings.
First DNA barcodes of Bembidion species (Coleoptera: Carabidae) from Iran

ABSTRACT In this study, we examined members of the ground-beetle genus Bembidion Latreille, 1802 from northern Iran using a combination of COI sequences and morphological data. A total number of 29 specimens belonging to 12 species of the genus Bembidion and one species of the genus Trechus from the Alborz Mountains were collected and analysed. 107 sequences from NCBI Genbank were added for molecular analysis. Our results confirm a high efficiency of DNA barcodes to resolve species of the genus. A clear barcoding gap, allowing a robust identification of the analysed species, was observed. Based on our results we propose species status for Bembidion haupti Reitter, 1908, formerly ranked as subspecies of Bembidion dalmatinum Dejean, 1831. This study represents the first effort generating DNA sequence data for members of the genus Bembidion in Iran and is a starting point for more local barcoding studies in the high-diversity regions of Iran.
Application of Java-based GIS in the Telecom Network Management System

With the rapid development of computers and communication industries,telecom network management systems for the increasingly high demands not only need the topography,but also call for a rapid fault location system,so we need the integration of network management systems with GIS systems.This paper focus on the presentation of the development of java-based GIS,and details the integration of GIS systems and telecom network management systems,and also does a presentation on several issues discussed with the corresponding solution.
Metabolic Rate Diversity Shapes Group Performance in Honeybees

The metabolic theory of ecology posits that the functional properties at any level of biological organization are a function of the metabolic rate (MR) of its constituent units, although we know little about how heterogeneity among them shapes group-level performance. Using honeybees as a model system, we leveraged the differences in MR associated with “slow” and “fast” malate dehydrogenase alleles to breed genetic lines with low MR and high MR, respectively, and created four experimental groups with different phenotypic compositions. We then measured MR, energetic intake, thermoregulation, and survival of these groups in low- and high-resource conditions. Contrary to expectations, neither the monomorphic fast groups nor the polymorphic (1∶1 slow-to-fast) groups showed a consistent advantage over other groups, but the performance of all groups was consistently better under high-resource conditions. MR had a strong influence on the other performance traits, more so under low-resource conditions. We quantified the effect of heterogeneity in the polymorphic groups as a diversity effect and found different impacts of metabolic heterogeneity, depending on the specific performance measure in question. We discuss these results in the context of how MR plays an important role in shaping division of labor and social evolution.
Metaorganizing Collaborative Innovation for Action on Grand Challenges

Grand Challenges are complex issues that require collaborative innovation among heterogeneous actors who draw upon contradictory institutional logics. While existing literature shows how social enterprises and individual organizations reconcile tensions between economic and environmental logics, scholars know less about how and when a broad set of actors adopt practices and priorities that balance economic and environmental values. This article explores how three agricultural cooperatives act as metaorganizations and facilitate collaborative innovation and sustainable transitions to address grand challenges regarding land use. We find that the cooperatives stimulate awareness of environmental challenges and local experimentation, orchestrate collaborative solutions by enrolling and engaging a broad set of actors, and coordinate the diffusion of novel practices across the institutional field. We add new insights into producer cooperatives' role as metaorganizations in facilitating the creation, validation, and diffusion of practices that balance business and sustainability. Based on our findings, we argue that by metaorganizing, producer cooperatives can galvanize field-level shifts in institutional logics through framing, knowledge sharing, and knowledge brokering mechanisms.
Contribution of Remanufacturing Engineering and Surface Engineering to Cycle Economy

The status and development background of remanufacturing engineering in cyclic economy were described, the energy conservation profit and environmental protection effect of failed engines were analyzed, and the relationship between remanufacturing engineering and surface engineering was discussed. The results showed that the energy conservation profit and environmental protection effect are the best when the failed engines are overall remanufactured. Remanufacturing 10000 engines, the energy could be saved by 14.5 millions kilowatt-hours and the emission of CO2 could be reduced by 0.6 thousands tons. The application of surface techniques in remanufacturing engineering could improve the utilization rato of old engine parts from 72.3 % to 90 %.
Case-Based Bidding Scheme Design System of Large-Scale Hydraulic Generator

In order to improve the competition of enterprise for bidding and make the enterprise provide the technology bidding scheme quickly and qualitatively, this paper develops the bidding scheme design system of large-scale hydraulic generator based on the PDM. This system introduces the technology of case-based reasoning, that is, by analyzing the comparability between the historical cases in database and the current scheme design requirement, to find out the best analogical case, and then by adopting the technology of optimizing based on knowledge, to realize the optimization of the scheme and make it fit the current design requirement. This system integrates the successful cases, design knowledge and experiences accumulated by enterprises and improves the practicability and intelligence of the bidding scheme design.