Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MULTI-INSTRUMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF DECORATIVE LAYERS IN GLAZED CERAMIC RELIEFS FROM THE SCHWARZENBERG PALACE IN PRAGUE

This paper presents recent research results on glazes and ceramic bodies in glazed ceramic lunette reliefs from the second half of the 16 century. The main objective was to identify dyes in the coloured coatings and defects in the glazes using multiple instrumental techniques (X-ray fluorescence, portable X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, micro-Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and elemental SEM-EDS analysis, dilatometry and thermomechanical analysis). The research confirmed the presence of ionic dyes (Cu, Fe, Co, Sb, Mn ions) in medium lead glazes (approx. 28 – 63 wt. %), but also various types of yellow pigments in the Pb–Sb, Pb–Sn and the Pb–Sb–Sn systems were identified. Various defects were observed on the surface of glazes. In the case of the yellow glaze, the examination showed a lower lead content in the top layer. The defects – corrosion holes – were caused by selective corrosion in the environment of the waste pit. The green glazes in the lunette reliefs were damaged due to ageing of ceramics fired at low temperatures or due to irreversible moisture expansion of ceramic bodies.
Anti and Promelanogenic Activity of Oxidized and Non-oxidized Piper betle Leaf Extract on B16-F1 Melanoma Cells

The current study was attempted to investigate the effect of melanogenesis and the mechanism behind both hypo and hyperpigmentation by oxidized and non-oxidized Piper betle extracts and on B16F1 melanoma cells. Supplementation with oxidized or non-oxidized Piper betle extracts did not show any significant cytotoxicity (90 % intact cells) in B16F1 melanoma cells. However, the activity of tyrosinase and the levels of lipid peroxidation product (thiobarbituric acid reactive substances), and melanin secretion was significantly decreased with improved antioxidant status after 48 h of incubation with increasing dose (25/35/50 µg/ml) of non-oxidized Piper betle extract in B16F1 melanoma cells. However, slightly decreased antioxidant status with increased melanin content was observed at 72 h (Piper betle extract). The above results indicated that as the duration increased the effect of non-oxidized Piper betle extract on melanin synthesis started to decline. In addition, when oxidized Piper betle extract (35/50 µg/ml) was incubated with B16F1 cells hyperpigmentation was noted within 48 h by enhancing the levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (35 %) and melanin secretion as well as tyrosinase activity (max at 72 h) with lowered tyrosinase inhibitory activity. Taking together that oxidized Piper betle extract might be the reason for the hyperpigmentation and might contribute to various dermal disorders and thus non-oxidized Piper betle extract to be recommended for treating various dermal disorders.
Transparent metals and inhomogeneous meta-surfaces

We present a short overview on the research works related to two hot topics in metamaterials: transparent metals and inhomogeneous meta-surfaces. For the first topic, we first introduce a scattering-cancellation mechanism for making continuous metals optically transparent, and then propose a realistic design in optical domain, and finally experimentally prove the idea in both microwave and terahertz frequency domains. For the second topic, we show that light reflection/refraction at a carefully designed gradient-index meta-surface follows a generalized Snell’s law, and then demonstrate that such a system can perfectly convert a propagating electromagnetic wave to a surface wave under certain conditions, and finally introduce several interesting applications of this type of systems.
mHealth and patient generated health data: stakeholder perspectives on opportunities and barriers for transforming healthcare.

Background Wearable devices, mobile health apps, and geolocation technologies place the ability to track, monitor and report data in the individuals' hands - or on their bodies. These innovations create an opportunity for "connected health," where individuals collect data outside of the healthcare encounter and report it to care providers. Collection of such patient-generated health data (PGHD) has the potential to impact the delivery of healthcare through remote monitoring, and by allowing patients and healthcare teams to provide targeted and efficient care that aligns with the health status of individual patients. Methods To understand the value and barriers associated with clinical integration of PGHD we engaged a range of stakeholders, examining their perspectives and experiences of PGHD use. We conducted open-ended interviews with healthcare consumers (patients and care partners), healthcare providers, and healthcare administrators. Open recruitment and purposive sampling were utilized to identify participants that represented the breadth of PGHD use in research and clinical care. Interview guides focused on the value and barriers of PGHD use. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for emergent themes. Results Themes emerged around the value of PGHD to support care decisions and improve patient-provider communication and engagement, and the promise of applying PGHD to formal care pathways and measurement-based care. Significant barriers included data validity and actionability, and the burden of integrating PGHD into existing care processes. Interviews highlighted areas for future research to better understand how PGHD can advance care transformation. Conclusions These findings provide rich context for understanding the experiences and needs of the individuals who interface with PGHD. Translating advances in technology and data tracking into successful clinical implementation requires understanding how stakeholders conceptualize and make use of PGHD, the potential value that PGHD can add to care, and the challenges that may limit PGHD's promise. Our results illustrate the value and challenges associated with health-system implementation of PGHD. Efforts to increase the scale and spread of PGHD will benefit from an approach that addresses the value and challenges PGHD brings to clinical care.
PERCEPTUAL AND CONTROL PROPERTIES OF A HAPTIC UPPER-LIMB PROSTHETIC INTERFACE

Current upper-limb prostheses fail to meet user expectation. Common complaints are the large control forces for body-powered prostheses (BPP) and the lack of proprioceptive feedback in myo-electric prostheses (MEP). This study investigates sensitivity and control accuracy and feedback sensitivity of a haptic (master-slave) interface that combines BPP-like control for a MEP utilizing low control forces in the presence of proprioceptive feedback. This first step focuses on static forces. One experiment focused on the just noticeable differences (JND) and the Weber fraction (WF) of the shoulder, and a second on force control. JND and WF were determined by a two-alternative-forcedchoice-method at 4 forces levels (2, 4, 6, and 8 N). Force control was evaluated by a visual matching task and blind reproduction task at the same force levels, and force error (FE) and force variability (FV) were obtained. WF results (7% for 2 N, 3% for 4 N, 3% for 6 N and 2% for 8 N) indicated a level of sensitivity comparable to human weight perception. FE and FV values were small enough as not to affect usability when grasping objects. We conclude that forces of 2-10 N are sufficient to operate an externally powered prosthesis while maintaining a sufficient level of proprioceptive feedback.
Effect of Cognitive Rehabilitation Intervention on Hope and Depressive Mood State of the Elderly Cognitive Rehabilitation in Elderly

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the effects of cognitive rehabilitation intervention on hope and depressive mood state of the elderly. Methods: In this field trial, 70 retired elderly people were recruited via convenience sampling method and were randomly allocated into intervention and control groups (n=35 per group). The intervention group participated in 12 one-hour sessions of cognitive rehabilitation program, whereas the control group received no intervention. Data were collected using a demographics form, Geriatric Depression Scale (Yesavage, 1983), and Snyder et al.’s Hope Scale (1991). Results: The mean depression score after intervention was significantly less in the intervention group than in the control group (P=0.004, t= 3.02). The mean hope score after intervention was significantly higher in the intervention group than in the control group (p <0.001, t= 4.38). Conclusion: Cognitive rehabilitation program can be a useful instrument for healthcare specialists to yield promising results. It can improve both the depressive mood and hope status in the elderly.
Surface processes in the 7 November 2014 medicane from air–sea coupled high-resolution numerical modelling

Abstract. A medicane, or Mediterranean cyclone with characteristics similar to tropical cyclones, is simulated using a kilometre-scale ocean–atmosphere coupled modelling platform. A first phase leads to strong convective precipitation, with high potential vorticity anomalies aloft due to an upper-level trough. Then, the deepening and tropical transition of the cyclone result from a synergy of baroclinic and diabatic processes. Heavy precipitation results from uplift of conditionally unstable air masses due to low-level convergence at sea. This convergence is enhanced by cold pools, generated either by rain evaporation or by advection of continental air masses from northern Africa. Back trajectories show that air–sea heat exchanges moisten the low-level inflow towards the cyclone centre. However, the impact of ocean–atmosphere coupling on the cyclone track, intensity and life cycle is very weak. This is due to a sea-surface cooling 1 order of magnitude weaker than for tropical cyclones, even in the area of strong enthalpy fluxes. Surface currents have no impact. Analysing the surface enthalpy fluxes shows that evaporation is controlled mainly by the sea-surface temperature and wind. Humidity and temperature at the first level play a role during the development phase only. In contrast, the sensible heat transfer depends mainly on the temperature at the first level throughout the medicane lifetime. This study shows that the tropical transition, in this case, is dependent on processes widespread in the Mediterranean Basin, like advection of continental air, rain evaporation and formation of cold pools, and dry-air intrusion.
An Exploratory Study of the Relationship between the Openness and Effectiveness of Strategic Planning

This paper focuses on a new approach for facilitating the participation of stakeholders in a process of strategic planning known as open strategic planning (OSP). OSP is recognised through three characteristics: inclusiveness, transparency, and the use of information technology (IT) tools. Drawing on the theoretical foundations of OSP, the research explores moderating factors impacting the relationship between these characteristics and OSP effectiveness by referring to qualitative data obtained from two open strategic planning projects. A secondary aim was to examine how stakeholders interpret the effectiveness of OSP in an organisational setting. Results indicate various moderating factors (level of trust, IT literacy, and diversity of participants) impacted the relationship between the characteristics of OSP and strategic planning effectiveness. The study formulates eight propositions, each is discussed in relation to the existing literature on strategic planning effectiveness. This paper is significant as it is the first exploratory research linking openness and strategic planning outcomes.
Factors inhibiting the reduction of policeable crime in Gauteng Province

Zinn (2010) points out that despite emphasis and police effort to deal with and contain business robberies, house robberies and car hijacking, these crimes increased nationally by 22 per cent in the 2008/09 financial year. Between 2015/16 and 2016/17 financial years, aggravated robberies went up by 8 per cent (SAPS Annual Report, 2016/17). The question is, 'what inhibits the reduction of policeable crime in Gauteng? ' To answer this question, we developed an interpretive and conceptual framework to be published in a peer reviewed journal, but whose summary we share in this paper. Based on this proposed research framework, this paper shares some empirical evidence on factors that inhibit the reduction of policeable crime in Gauteng Province. The research results and findings show that South African Police Service (SAPS) leadership in Gauteng Province still rely on traditional forms of policing that have failed to adapt to strategies crime perpetrators are using. Hough and others (2008) have argued that for an organisation to be successful, its strategy should be aligned with its environment. Further, the inability to adapt explains why the South African Police Service in Gauteng Province lacks a credible strategy, leading to management inefficiency save for a few police clusters whose commanders have introduced credible strategies limited to their clusters only. Such a status quo is attributable to a lacking Provincial leadership, if not national. As Newham (2015, p.43) sums it up, there is a "serial crisis of top management in the police, which has started to take its toll on the effectiveness and public credibility of the South African Police Service".
Assessment of urban aerosol pollution over Moscow megacity by
MAIAC aerosol product

Abstract. We estimated the distribution of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) with a spatial resolution of 1 km over Moscow megacity using MAIAC aerosol product based on MODIS satellite data (Lyapustin et al., 2018) for the warm period of year (May–September). AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network)-based validation near the city centre at Moscow_MSU_MO and over Moscow suburbs at Zvenigorod revealed that MAIAC AOT at 470 nm is in agreement with AERONET AOT though underestimated by 0.05–0.1 for AOT 1. The MAIAC AOT biases were almost the same for the Moscow_MSU_MO and Zvenigorod AERONET sites, which indicated that MAIAC effectively removed the effect of the bright urban surface in the city centre. For the ground-based measurements, the annual median AOT difference between Moscow_MO_MSU and Zvenigorod (ΔAOT) varied within −0.002±0.03 with statistically significant positive bias for most years and an average ΔAOT of ~ 0.02. According to MAIAC dataset, ΔAOT varied within ±0.01 and was not statistically significant. The ΔAOT started decreasing recently due to intensive urban development of the territory around Zvenigorod and the decrease of pollutant emissions in Moscow, which is mainly caused by the environmental regulations. According to the MAIAC dataset, the most pronounced spatial AOT difference over the territory of Moscow was observed at 5 % quantile level, where it reached 0.05–0.06 over several locations and could be attributed to the stationary sources of aerosol pollution, for example, power plants, or aerosol pollution from roads. The difference between the maximum and the mean AOT for different quantiles, except the 95 % quantile, within the Moscow region, was about 0.02–0.04 which could be attributed to the local aerosol sources. The application of the MAIAC algorithm over the whole Moscow region has revealed a decreasing AOT trend over the centre of Moscow and an increasing trend over the New Moscow territory which experienced an intensive build-up and agricultural development in the north and the south parts of this district, respectively.
ROBUSTNESS OF REGRESSION-BASED MYOELECTRIC CONTROL IN A CLINICAL SETTING

A miniaturized low-cost, low-power embedded system for regression-based simultaneous and proportional myoelectric control of a hand prosthesis with two degrees of freedom is presented. In a case study on one subject with transradial amputation, this system outperformed two commonly used conventional control techniques. Furthermore, the robustness of the approach against changing arm position and across sessions without retraining the regression model was demonstrated.
Temporal variation in physico-chemical characteristics, phytoplankton composition and biomass in Lake Solai, Kenya

The physico-chemical properties and phytoplankton community structure of Lake Solai were investigated between April 2018 and August 2018. Water temperature, conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO) content and pH were measured in-situ. Nutrient content and phytoplankton biomass were determined in the laboratory. All the water properties; temperature (mean: 23.19 ± 0.13 °C), DO (mean: 6.35 ± 0.03 mgL-1 ), total suspended solids (TSS) (mean: 220.85 ± 8.11 mg L-1), turbidity (mean: 702.51 ± 9.40 NTU), nitrate nitrogen (NO3-N) (mean: 0.75 ± 0.02 mg L-1)total phosphorus (TP) (mean: 20.57 ± 0.51 mg L-1) showed significant temporal variation (P<0.001). Five groups of phytoplankton were identified; Cyanobacteria, was the most dominant with 14 species, Chlorophyta (11 species), Bacillariophyta (8 species), Euglenophyta (3 Species) and Chrysophyta (2 species). The high TP concentration makes it a eutrophic system. The high turbidity create a poor light climate that select against a number of biota that could inhabit the lake allowing for few algal organisms, especially the Cyanobacteria that have the potential to exploit this niche and establish potentially harmful algal blooms. The DO levels were within the permissible limits recommended for fisheries and aquatic life. Hence, the possibility of introducing salt tolerant fish should be explored.
2D HYDRODYNAMIC MODELLING FOR IDENTIFICATION OF DEWATERED OR FLOODED STREAM CHANNEL AREAS DOWNSTREAM LARGE HYDROPOWER PLANT

Hydropower is oldest available source for renewable energy generation in Lithuania and the world. However, because of unequal demand of electricity during the day large hydropower plants are adapted to work in hydropeaking regime, which causes rapid water level and discharge fluctuations and has impact on the environment. To assess the extent of this impact in this study 2D numerical hydrodynamic modelling was carried out to reveal the dewatered or flooded stream channel areas at the Nemunas River downstream Kaunas Hydropower Plant. Such estimation of dewatered or flooded areas, considering different operating modes of hydropower plant, was carried out for the first time in Lithuania. It was revealed that largest areas are flooded when Kaunas hydropower plant starts its operation with two and four turbines and accordingly are dewatered when the plant stops such operations. During this study the impact of water level and discharge fluctuations on river ecosystems was not analysed, however the obtained results will be the initial data for more detailed assessment of fish habitats quality under impact of hydropeaking.
A TCP-layer name service

Internet is the largest network deployed worldwide but besides that it’s also and essentially a way of accessing and distributing knowledge and a way to to interact with services. By using the IP routing protocol it’s possible to address and communicate with other persons, services, hosts or network enabled devices. An usual way for establishing a dialogue between internet endpoints is based on the TCP protocol, permitting a bidirectional, reliable and fault-tolerant data exchange. In TCP a service is identified by an associated port number which by itself has some less positive consequences. The obvious one consists on guessing which services are available by find out the available port numbers (port scanning) so that attacks on service vulnerabilities can take place. The purpose of this thesis is to extend the current concept used for addressing TCP services by associating them with names, or simply to provide TCP an in-band name resolution. The connection establishment phase, three-way handshake, can be improved in order to support simple name resolution mechanisms or even complex authentication. Security aspects towards avoiding attacks was a major concern that is present in the foundations of the proposed architecture. The name resolution model can be integrated with several mechanisms for authentication/validation, implemented as logic defined within domains of interpretation (DOI). DOIs allow a flexible and extensible way for adding those mechanisms to the connection establishment procedures of TCP.
A comparative study on the cardiac functioning of endurance athletes, speed athletes, and untrained individuals

Background: The cardiac morphology and functioning undergoes a variety of changes on physical training, and it depends on the type of training the person undergoes. Endurance training and speed training are the two major classifications in it, and it is essential to know which type overruns the other in increasing the cardiac functioning. Aims and Objective: To compare the cardiac functioning of three groups of human participants viz., endurance athletes, speed athletes, and untrained individuals, by measuring their VO2 max and QRS wave amplitude. Materials and Methods: Fifteen endurance athletes (mean age ± SD: 20.27 ± 1.58 years), 15 speed athletes (mean age ± SD: 20.15 ± 1.85 years), and 15 control subjects (mean age ± SD: 19.33 ± 0.82 years) were recruited into the study. VO2 max was obtained from three tests (beep test, UthSorensenOvergaardPedersen method, and Cooper variation method), and mean QRS wave amplitude was measured using Minnesota code of classification.Statistical analysis was done using ANOVA test. Result: The VO2 max (V) and QRS wave amplitude (R) of endurance (V: P < 0.001; R: P < 0.001) and speed athletes (V: beep testP < 0.05, othersP < 0.001; R: P < 0.05) were significantly higher than that of the untrained individuals. When compared between the two athletic groups, endurance athletes showed significantly higher values than the speed athletes in both the parameters (V: P < 0.001; R: P < 0.001). Conclusion: Both endurance and speed training enhance the cardiac functioning when compared with the untrained individuals significantly. But, endurance training shows an edge over speed training in increasing the effectiveness of working of heart.