Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intimate Partner Violence Training and Readiness to Respond among Students, Staff, and Faculty in Three Institutions in the United States

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health concern; however, limited studies have explored perceptions and experiences towards IPV among students, staff, administrators, and faculty across diverse disciplines at institutions of higher education. The purposes of this study were to (1) assess experiences of IPV among a sample of students, staff/administrators, and faculty and (2) examine the relationship among attitudes, actual and perceived knowledge, awareness, training, readiness, and personal experiences with IPV in this sample. Participants were recruited from an urban university and two university-affiliated medical institutions to participate in an online survey. Bivariate and multivariate associations were assessed. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to examine direct and indirect effects of perceived and actual knowledge and personal experiences with IPV. Of the 216 respondents, 42.6% reported personally experiencing IPV and 34.3% reported having witnessed IPV. Over 34% of participants never received training on IPV. The sub-sample with training received between one and more than 15 hours of training. Standardized total effect of training on attitudes and awareness was β = 0.42 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.30–0.51), the combined indirect effects was β = 0.18 (95% CI = 0.10–0.27) and the direct effects of β=0.23 (95% CI = 0.12–0.34), indicating that hours of training was highly associated with the participants’ perceived knowledge and actual knowledge, which improved their attitudes and awareness towards IPV survivors. Our findings suggest the need for campus-wide formal training on IPV to better prepare members in higher education to accurately identify, assess, and intervene to protect victims of abuse. Interprofessional approaches are needed that focus on the multiple and intersecting needs of victims of violence and should also enhance professional self-efficacy and increase readiness to respond to IPV survivors.
Proteomics analysis reveals a critical role for the WSSV immediate-early protein IE1 in modulating the host prophenoloxidase system

ABSTRACT White spot syndrome virus (WSSV) is a large, enveloped, double-stranded DNA virus that threatens shrimp aquaculture worldwide. So far, the mechanisms of WSSV-host interactions are ill-defined. Recent studies have revealed that IE1, an immediate-early protein of WSSV, is a multifunctional modulator implicated in virus–host interactions. In this study, the functions of IE1 were further explored by identifying its interacting proteins using GST-pull down and mass spectrometry analysis. A total of 361 host proteins that potentially bind to IE1 were identified. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that the identified IE1-interactors wereinvolved in various signaling pathways such as prophenoloxidase (proPO) system, PI3K-AKT, and MAPK. Among these, the regulatory role of IE1 in shrimp proPO system was further studied. The Co-immunoprecipitation results confirmed that IE1 interacted with the Ig-like domain of Penaeus vannamei proPO or proPO-like protein (hemocyanin). Additionally, we found that knockdown of IE1 reduced viral genes expression and viral loads and increased the hemocytes’ PO activity, whereas recombinant IE1 protein inhibited the PO activity in a dose-dependent manner. Finally, we demonstrated that WSSV could suppress the hemocytes’ PO activity at the early infection stage. Collectively, our current data indicate that IE1 is a novel viral regulator that negatively modulates the shrimp proPO system.
Complete Genome Sequence of Tea Plant Necrotic Ring Blotch Virus Detected from a Tea Plant in Japan

We report the complete genome sequence of a Japanese isolate of Tea plant necrotic ring blotch virus (TPNRBV-J). The predicted TPNRBV-J genes have the same organization as those of a Chinese isolate, and the 5′ termini of the segments have conserved nucleotide sequences. ABSTRACT We report the complete genome sequence of a Japanese isolate of Tea plant necrotic ring blotch virus (TPNRBV-J). The predicted TPNRBV-J genes have the same organization as those of a Chinese isolate, and the 5′ termini of the segments have conserved nucleotide sequences.
Conditional Convolution Projecting Latent Vectors on Condition-Specific Space

Despite rapid advancements over the past several years, the conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs) are still far from being perfect. Although one of the major concerns of the cGANs is how to provide the conditional information to the generator, there are not only no ways considered as the optimal solution but also a lack of related research. This brief presents a novel convolution layer, called the conditional convolution (cConv) layer, which incorporates the conditional information into the generator of the generative adversarial networks (GANs). Unlike the most general framework of the cGANs using the conditional batch normalization (cBN) that transforms the normalized feature maps after convolution, the proposed method directly produces conditional features by adjusting the convolutional kernels depending on the conditions. More specifically, in each cConv layer, the weights are conditioned in a simple but effective way through filter-wise scaling and channel-wise shifting operations. In contrast to the conventional methods, the proposed method with a single generator can effectively handle condition-specific characteristics. The experimental results on CIFAR, LSUN, and ImageNet datasets show that the generator with the proposed cConv layer achieves a higher quality of conditional image generation than that with the standard convolution layer.
Regulation of epitope exposure in the gp41 membrane-proximal external region through interactions at the apex of HIV-1 Env

Glycoprotein Env of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) mediates viral entry through membrane fusion. Composed of gp120 and gp41 subunits arranged as a trimer-of-heterodimers, Env adopts a metastable, highly dynamic conformation on the virion surface. This structural plasticity limits the temporospatial exposure of many highly conserved, neutralizing epitopes, contributing to the difficulty in developing effective HIV-1 vaccines. Here, we employed antibody neutralization of HIV-1 infectivity to investigate how inter- and intra-gp120 interactions mediated by variable loops V1/V2 and V3 at the Env apex regulate accessibility of the gp41 membrane-proximal external region (MPER) at the Env base. Swapping the V3 loop from EnvSF162 into the EnvHXB2 background shifted MPER exposure from the prefusogenic state to a functional intermediate conformation that was distinct from the prehairpin-intermediate state sensitive to gp41-targeted fusion inhibitors. The V3-loop swap had a profound impact on global protein dynamics, biasing the equilibrium to a closed conformation resistant to most anti-gp120 antibodies, stabilizing the protein to both cold- and soluble CD4-induced Env inactivation, and increasing the CD4 requirements for viral entry. Further dissection of the EnvHXB2 V3 loop revealed that residue 306 uniquely modulated epitope exposure and trimer stability. The R306S substitution substantially decreased sensitivity to antibodies targeting the gp41 MPER and, surprisingly, the gp120 V3-loop crown (residues 312–315), but had only modest effects on exposure of intervening gp120 epitopes. Furthermore, the point mutation reduced soluble CD4-induced inactivation, but had no impact on cold inactivation. The residue appeared to exert its effects by electrostatically modifying the strength of intra-subunit interactions between the V1/V2 and V3 loops. The distinct patterns of neutralization and stability pointed to a novel prefusogenic Env conformation along the receptor activation pathway and suggested that apical Env-regulation of gp41 MPER exposure can be decoupled from much of the dynamics of gp120 subunits.
Mental Health Among College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

This study examines the prevalence and severity of stress, anxiety, depression, and substance use among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic at a Hispanic-serving institution. The aim of the study is to increase knowledge about student mental health during a public health emergency in order to help develop strategies that promote student success. Using the Perceived Stress Scale-4 (PSS-4) and the Patient Health Questionnaire for Depression and Anxiety–4 (PHQ-4), we found high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety in the sample. Based on these findings, we propose a greater investment of time and resources to promote mental health and positive coping strategies among college students through culturally competent mental health and supportive programs.
Preliminary Feasibility Study of a Water Space Reactor with an Innovative Reactivity Control System

Power limitation represents a major issue within space applications aimed to human settlements on solar system planets. Among these planets, Mars is considered the most attractive because of its nearness to the Earth and the probable presence of minerals which can be used by the settlers to live off the land. In this frame, small size nuclear power plants can be an interesting solution to overcome the energy supply problem. This paper presents a preliminary feasibility study of a 100 kW e self-pressurized water space reactor, with the aim to design a system characterized by compactness, intrinsic safety and simplicity of the main reactor control components. To this end an innovative reactivity control system, based on the control of the primary coolant mass flow rate, was adopted. The introduction of this system in the reactor design required a comprehensive core neutronics analysis in order to properly quantify the effect of the coolant on the reactor behaviour also as a function of the fuel burn-up. Here only the main results of this analysis, concerning neutron flux profiles and multiplication factors, are discussed. Moreover preliminary results on long term reactivity control are presented, showing the possibility to operate the reactor for as long as 7 years with no need of human intervention. radiation shielding, vessel fluence, safety features, overall layout, containment, leakage control, coolant and radiolysis.
Effects of Number of Apprentices on Financial Performance of Firms in the Furniture and Wood Industry of Ghana

This study examined the relationship between the number of apprentices in a firm and the financial performance of the firm, using the RPED/CSAE Ghana Manufacturing Enterprise Survey (GMES) covering the period of 1991 to 2002. The dynamic panel model estimation technique was employed to investigate the effect of the number of apprentice on gross profit per capital of firms in the furniture and wood processing industry of Ghana. The findings of the study indicate that the financial performances of firms deteriorate during the apprenticeship period, as they take up more apprentices but increase in wages of apprentices had direct significant effect on financial performance. Other dynamics of the apprentice and the master were discovered to be important variables in explaining firm’s financial performance. The average age of an apprentice in the Furniture industry was about 24 years while that of the Wood industry was about 29 years which is clearly very high. It has been suggested that firms may need incentives other than the services of the apprentice to increase their demand for apprenticeship. The incentive may include tax exemption which should be proportional to the number of apprentices engaged and a proper contract must be signed that will allow apprentices to serve the firm for a specified period after training before being released. The youth must also be advised to begin the apprenticeship process early. Keywords: Apprenticeship, Financial performance, Dynamic panel model, Gross profit, Contract
A random synchronous-asynchronous particle swarm optimization algorithm with a new iteration strategy

Particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is a population-based stochastic optimisation algorithm. Traditionally the particles update sequence for PSO can be categorized into two groups, synchronous (S-PSO) or asynchronous (A-PSO) update. In S-PSO, the particles’ performances are evaluated before their velocity and position are updated, whil e in A-PSO, each particle’s velocity and position is updated immediately after individual performance is evaluated. Recently, a random asynchronous PSO (RA-PSO) has been proposed. In RA-PSO, particles are randomly chosen to be updated asynchronously, the r andomness improves swarm’s exploration. RA -PSO belongs to the asynchronous group. In this paper, a new category; hybrid update sequence is proposed. The new update sequence exploits the advantages of synchronous, asynchronous, and random update methods. The proposed sequence is termed as, random synchronous-asynchronous PSO (RSA-PSO). RSA-PSO divides the particles into groups. The groups are subjected to random asynchronous update, while the particles within a chosen group are updated synchronously. The performance of RSA-PSO is compared with the existing S-PSO, A-PSO, and RA-PSO using CEC2014’s benchmark functions. The results show that RSA -PSO has a superior performance compared to both A-PSO and RA-PSO, and as good as S-PSO.
Thermal NDT applying Candid Covariance-Free Incremental Principal Component Thermography (CCIPCT)

Thermal and infrared imagery creates considerable developments in Non-destructive Testing (NDT) area. An analysis for thermal NDT inspection is addressed applying a new technique for computation of eigen-decomposition (factor analysis) similar to Principal Component Thermography(PCT). It is referred as Candid Covariance-Free Incremental Principal Component Thermography (CCIPCT). The proposed approach uses a computational short-cut to estimate covariance matrix and Singular Value Decomposition(SVD) to obtain faster PCT results, but while the dimension of the data increases. The problem of computational cost for high-dimensional thermal image acquisition is also investigated. Three types of specimens (CFRP, plexiglass and aluminum) have been used for comparative benchmarking. Then, a clustering algorithm segments the defect at the surface of the specimens. The results conclusively indicate the promising performance and demonstrated a confirmation for the outlined properties.
THE IMPACT OF INTERNAL SERVICE QUALITY DIMENSIONS ON STUDENTS' SATISFACTION: A CASE STUDY OF THE ARAB ACADEMY FOR SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MARITIME TRANSPORT (AASTMT)

Higher education in developing countries has serious quality problems. In order to change this scenario, it is necessary to invest in quality systems and tools for improvement. The SERVQUAL scale is one of these alternatives. It is used to measure the gap between quality expectations and perceptions in services making it possible to establish action plans. The late peter Drucker said literally that customer research is more important than market research; customer is the core of the whole business process. The researcher had to look to the students as customers of education. Capitalizing on this, service quality enhancement will be a necessity not a luxury nor an option. Continuous improvement will be the challenge after all through working on the service quality dimensions to maximize the level of student's satisfaction. We believe that student satisfaction is the clue for the success of any educational institution; we are trying to prove this through the research Working on the satisfaction of students is a great source of competitive advantage for any educational institution this is not an easy mission, although ignoring the satisfaction of students will cost us a long term disadvantage. How shall we overcome these barriers that may hinder the enhancement of service quality to satisfy students? This important question must be answered through our research. This research is just a start or opening the gate for the continuous improvement of service quality to maximize the level of student satisfaction With the growth of private education sector in Egypt, we are trying through this dissertation (Case study of AASTMT) to test the impact of service quality dimensions on students satisfaction.
Clothing fashion style recommendation system

This thesis proposes a clothing recommendation system that can recommend clothing images based on the fashion style of the provided clothing images. In this work, we focus on the images of upper body clothing and with human model in the images. In the ﬁrst part, we present a clothing dataset collected from Internet containing 27,375 men’s and women’s clothing images of 11 clothing categories. We develop a recommendation system that can differentiate fashion categories of query images. We propose a framework that divides the system into three decoupled and autonomous components in order to provide a highly ﬂexible and extensible system. Then we describe an implementation of this framework on a Linux server. To demonstrate this clothing recommendation system we also develop two user interfaces, including a Web Application and an iOS App. Lastly, we discuss the approaches to secure the system and user privacy. We set up a Demo of this clothing recommendation system running on iPhone, which can achieve promising results within 5 seconds.
Laser direct-writing for microfabrication

La fabricacio digital de dispositius tecnologics requereix el desenvolupament de noves i millors tecniques per al microprocessament de materials que al mateix temps siguin compatibles amb metodes de produccio en serie a gran escala com el roll-to-roll processing. Aquestes tecniques han de complir certs requisits relacionats amb la possibilitat de realitzar canvis de disseny rapids durant el proces de fabricacio, alta velocitat de processament, i al mateix temps permetre la produccio de motius de forma controlada amb altes resolucions espacials. En la present tesi es proposen i implementen solucions viables a alguns dels reptes presents a la microfabricacio amb laser tant substractiva com additiva. D'una banda, es presenta un nou metode d'enfocament del feix laser sobre la mostra per l'ablacio superficial de materials transparents que permet obtenir resolucions espacials que superen el limit de difraccio del dispositiu optic. D'altra banda, es duu a terme un estudi de la dinamica de la impressio de liquids mitjancant laser a alta velocitat, de gran interes de cara a la implementacio industrial de la tecnica. A mes, es presenten estrategies d'impressio de tintes conductores amb l'objectiu de produir linies continues amb alta qualitat d'impressio. Finalment s'inclouen dues propostes que son producte de la combinacio d’ambues tecniques, la impressio de liquids i l'ablacio amb laser.
Development of the Order-to-Delivery Process from a Transportation Perspective

KATI POLLARI: Development of the Order-to-Delivery Process from a Transportation Perspective Tampere University of Technology Master of Science Thesis, 174 pages, 5 Appendix pages November 2016 Master’s Degree Programme in Information and Knowledge Management Major: Transportation, Logistics and Information Examiner: Assistant Professor Heikki Liimatainen
Capabilities for Joint Analysis in the Department of Defense: Rethinking Support for Strategic Analysis

Abstract : The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has long had broad capabilities for joint analysis, whether for planning future forces or supporting field commanders during current challenges. DoD is envied by other government agencies for its analytic capabilities and processes. Nonetheless, some issues have arisen. This report stems from a congressional request for an independent report about DoDs capabilities for joint analysis and ways to improve them. Congressional concerns largely involved the activity called support for strategic analysis (SSA). In 2011, the director of the Office of the Secretary of Defenses (OSDs) Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) disbanded campaign-modeling and reduced CAPEs participation in the SSA activity, weakening SSA significantly. This report is largely about SSA and how and whether to revise it.
Feasibility testing of 4D seismic monitoring with full-waveform tomography.

Full waveform tomography reveals subtle sub-wavelength perturbations in the velocity model, given a sufficiently accurate starting model. 4D seismic surveys over reservoirs are typically intended to detect small changes in a relatively well-known overall velocity field due to localized effects such as CO2 injection, steam injection, petroleum production, and more. Full waveform tomography is ideally suited to detect and reveal the extent of these effects, both spatially and in terms of the magnitude of the effect on the velocity. Our early investigations strongly suggest that waveform tomography deserves serious consideration as a primary analysis tool for 4D seismic analysis.
Image-based window detection: an overview

Automated segmentation of buildings’ facade and detection of its elements is of high relevance in various fields of research as it, e. g. , reduces the effort of 3 D reconstructing existing buildings and even entire cities or may be used for navigation and localization tasks. In recent years, several approaches were made concerning this issue. These can be mainly classified by their input data which are either images or 3 D point clouds. This paper provides a survey of image-based approaches. Particularly, this paper focuses on window detection and therefore groups related papers into the three major detection strategies. We juxtapose grammar based methods, pattern recognition and machine learning and contrast them referring to their generality of application. As we found out machine learning approaches seem most promising for window detection on generic facades and thus we will pursue these in future work.
Automatic Positioning and Design of a Variable Baseline Stereo Boom

Conventional stereo vision systems rely on two spatially fixed cameras to gather depth information about a scene. The cameras typically have a fixed distance between them, known as the baseline. As the baseline increases, the estimated 3D information becomes more accurate, which makes it advantageous to have as large a baseline as possible. However, large baselines have problems whenever objects approach the cameras. The objects begin to leave the field of view of the cameras, making it impossible to determine where they are located in 3D space. This becomes especially important if an object of interest must be actuated upon and is approached by a vehicle. In an attempt to overcome this limitation, this thesis introduces a variable baseline stereo system that can adjust its baseline automatically based on the location of an object of interest. This allows accurate depth information to be gathered when an object is both near and far. The system was designed to operate under, and automatically move to a large range of different baselines. This thesis presents the mechanical design of the stereo boom. This is followed by a derivation of a control scheme that adjusts the baseline based on an estimate object location, which is gathered from stereo vision. This algorithm ensures that a certain incident angle on an object of interest is never surpassed. This maximum angle is determined by where a stereo correspondence algorithm, Semi-Global Block Matching, fails to create full reconstructions.