Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Crisis Planning for Online Students: Lessons Learned from a Major Disruption

While institutions have crisis management plans, they are often focused on face-to-face students and the physical campus. In this case study, researchers investigated the crisis response for online students at one institution after Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston, Texas, area in the fall of 2017. While face-to-face students were not severely impacted, more than a thousand online students were in the impact zone and in danger of dropping out. With financial resources and student retention at risk, campus leaders approved a strategy to delay online courses for several weeks. This study examines the experiences of the front-line staff who implemented the plan. Findings suggest that institutions need a proactive crisis plan for online students that includes understanding where this population resides, how different campus units can provide support in a crisis, who should lead the crisis response, and what kind of care can be offered to the front-line responders during the crisis period.
Importance sampling with splitting for portfolio credit risk

We consider a credit portfolio with highly skewed exposures. In the portfolio, small number of obligors have very high exposures compared to the others. For the Bernoulli mixture model with highly skewed exposures, we propose a new importance sampling scheme to estimate the tail loss probability over a threshold and the corresponding expected shortfall. We stratify the sample space of the default events into two subsets. One consists of the events that the obligors with heavy exposures default simultaneously. We expect that typical tail loss events belong to the set. In our proposed scheme, the tail loss probability and the expected shortfall corresponding to this type of events are estimated by a conditional Monte Carlo, which results in variance reduction. We analyze the properties of the proposed scheme mathematically. In numerical study, the performance of the proposed scheme is compared with an existing importance sampling method.
Advanced Detecting Technologies for Aging Performances of Composite Insulators

As common electrical equipment, composite insulator played an important role on the safe and stable operation of transmission lines. Hence, it was meaningful to explore effective methods to detect the service performances of operated composite insulators. In this paper, several advanced technologies were introduced to check the performances of in-serviced composite insulators. The macroscopic properties were mainly detected by means of X-ray digital imaging system, ultrasonic phased array (UPA) and hydrophobicity measurement. In addition, the microscopic properties were analysed by the way of scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation, microscopic infrared spectral imaging system and thermogravimetric (TG) analysis. It was believed that defects such as micro-cracks, gaps etc. could be earlier and quickly found by using these detection techniques, thereby avoiding power failure accidents of the transmission lines.
Classifying the Disciplinarity of Engineering Academic Literature

Based on the appearance of the term within the academic literature, it would appear that transdisciplinarity (TD) approaches are receiving increased research attention. However, the literature suggests a lack of consensus over how TD is defined and classified. This could give rise to inconsistency and papers that claim to be TD which are not, and alternatively papers that fail to mention TD but which might be classified as such. This is significant and creates a challenge in identifying the true level of TD research. This work contributes towards understanding the state of TD within engineering. Explicitly, we address the research question: Is the engineering academic literature claiming to be TD, actually TD? Within this study we operationalise the work of Jantsch and use this as a means to classify the disciplinarity of 177 engineering journal papers which reference TD within their abstract. The results show only 24% to be TD. The majority (64%) are classified as interdisciplinary. Conclusions find that to improve consistency, a clear definition and rules for differentiation between TD and ID research are required. Future work calls for: (1) comparative studies which apply different methods for assessing disciplinarity across the dataset used within this study and which use the method employed within this study across different fields. (2) Research to analyse whether TD working is being undertaken in engineering without it being referenced within the paper.
Nutritional Quality and Antioxidant Capacity of a Combination of Pomegranate and Date Juices

ABSTRACT The present study aims to assess the nutritional quality and the antioxidant capacity of (Punica granatum L. ‘Gabsi’) and date (Phoenix dactylifera L. ‘Bouhattam’) juices and their combination at three proportions (PPD 2:1, PD 1:1, and PDD 1:2). This investigation revealed the interesting potentialities in terms of bioactive molecules, natural antioxidants, and high organoleptic characteristics of various prepared juice formulations. For all juices, the sugar contents were averaged to 16°Brix. The highest monosaccharide content was obtained at the pomegranate/date juice (PDD) (glucose: 9.52 ± 0.88 g/100 ml, fructose: 9.91 ± 0.44 g/100 ml). The comparative study of the five juice formulations based on phenolic contents showed that they are loaded with phenolic compounds. Indeed, the PD juice had the highest polyphenols content (10.77 mg GAE/ml of juice); however, the pomegranate juice had the highest flavonoids content (5.71 mg RE/ml of juice). The assessment of the antioxidant activity was conducted based on three methods: ferric reduction power, DPPH°, and ABTS+ assays. Our results confirmed that all juices were loaded with natural antioxidants. Moreover, the sensorial test of the five juice formulations showed an acceptable quality by the tasting panel. To conclude, this study reveals that the formulation of a cocktail pomegranate/date juice seems to be an interesting initiative for the processing of noncommercial varieties.
Organizing in the age of systems: Ivan Illich’s critical contributions to organization studies

Resumo Este artigo apresenta a crítica de Ivan Illich à institucionalização na sociedade moderna, seu desenrolar na era dos sistemas e os problemas dela decorrentes por conta de suas escolhas tecnológicas. O objetivo é apresentar o pensamento do autor e suas contribuições aos estudos organizacionais. Para tal, adotou-se um formato ensaístico, visando a demonstrar as contribuições do autor e seus possíveis diálogos com a área. Assim, apresenta-se a ideia de desequilíbrio institucional, correlacionando-a com o conceito de ferramentas manipulativas em oposição a ferramentas conviviais. Nesse sentido, assume-se a técnica como não sendo neutra. Em seguida, aborda-se como a sociedade industrial reifica o ser humano e, nesse processo, transforma-se em um grande sistema social funcional, um corpo com órgãos, necessitando das instituições escola e saúde, além da indústria. Ela cria profissões incapacitantes que especializam os indivíduos até sua plena alienação e mediação. Por fim, incorpora um sistema de vigilância em massa na subjetividade de cada um. Diante disso, diferentes proposições são possíveis, como em Giorgio Agamben, de retirar o poder e desconstituir regras.
Person-relation extraction using bert based knowledge graph

Arti(cid:12)cial intelligence technology has been actively researched in the areas of image processing and natural language processing. Recently, with the release of Google’s language model BERT, the importance of arti(cid:12)cial intelligence models has attracted attention in the (cid:12)eld of natural language processing. In this paper, we propose a knowledge graph to build a model that can extract people in a document using BERT, and to grasp the relationship between people based on the model. In addition, to verify the applicability of person extraction techniques using BERT based knowledge graphs, we conduct a performance comparison experiment with other person extraction models and apply our proposed method to the case study
Listening to the unseen: Passive acoustic monitoring reveals the presence of a cryptic fish species

Rare and cryptic fish species such as the cusk‐eel Ophidion rochei (Műller, 1845) (Ophidiiformes), an endemic sand‐dwelling Mediterranean fish, are likely to go undetected by traditional non‐invasive monitoring techniques commonly used to survey biodiversity. Although the cusk‐eel is distributed along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, no study to date has reported its presence along the north‐western coastline. Despite this, passive acoustic monitoring carried out during summer 2009 at the WWF‐Miramare Marine Protected Area, located on the northernmost shore of the Adriatic Sea (Trieste Gulf, Italy), revealed loud sounds with characteristics similar to those of O. rochei. The sounds were long trains of low‐frequency pulses, showing the typical and unique pulse period alternation pattern of O. rochei adult male reproductive calls. The consistency of these peculiar call features indicates that O. rochei is present in the marine protected area, where it is likely to reproduce. The results are further discussed in light of the occasional presence of the congeneric snake blenny Ophidion barbatum (Linnaeus, 1975). This is the first reported case in which passive acoustic monitoring enabled the identification of a cryptic fish species in a marine protected area where visual census surveys of the fish fauna, carried out for decades on a monthly basis, failed to detect the presence of this species. Passive acoustic monitoring is a powerful tool for both conservation and fishery science that should be coupled with visual surveys in order to improve the resolution of fish biodiversity assessments.
Attributions as Anchors: How the Public Explains School Shootings and Why It Matters

Abstract From Columbine to Sandy Hook to Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the American public has repeatedly witnessed the carnage and tragic consequences of mass school shootings. Using a national survey of American adults (N = 1,100) conducted between May 30 and June 6, 2018 in the aftermath of the Parkland tragedy, this project explores public opinion on why these events occur. Informed by sociological scholarship on social movements and framing, the analysis shows that the public endorses both gun and non-gun attributional frames for school shootings. What appears to most strongly influence the resonance of both types of attributional frames, by affecting their narrative fidelity, is racial resentment, seeing the world as dangerous, and ideological beliefs. The attributional frames that respondents endorse, in turn, serve as “anchors” for their social action beliefs—or vocabularies of motive—with gun attributions increasing both confidence in and support for the #NeverAgain movement.
Evolution of influenza genome diversity during infection in immunocompetent patients

Introduction Minor frequency viruses play many important roles during viral infection that cannot be explained by the consensus sequence alone. In influenza, immunosuppressed individuals appear to generate numerous viral variants, leading to subpopulations with important role in infection. The objective of the present study was to describe viral diversification over time in immunocompetent patients during influenza virus infection. Methods All clinical records of patients admitted to the Lyon university hospital (Lyon, France) during the influenza infection epidemics of the 2010-2015 period and sampled at least twice during their clinical management were retrospectively analyzed. To estimate performance of the sequencing procedures, well-characterized plasmids containing each of the 8 segments of influenza viruses were used as quality controls. Diversity, i.e. the number of validated single nucleotide variants, was analyzed to compare characteristics over time and according to clinical severity (mild, severe with neurological complications, severe with respiratory complications). Results After validation on quality controls (n=51), and verification of possible confusion bias, a 5%-threshold of detection was applied to clinical viral sequences (n=29). At this threshold, amino-acid coordinates (n=183/4,246, 4.31%) were identified as having at least one mutation during clinical course, independently of the clinical severity. Considering a threshold of 4 days of symptoms, as a limit for early and late sampling, diversity was significantly higher in late samples for the mild group, compared to both early mild and severe groups (p<0.05). At a single-segment scale, for PB2-coding segment, diversity was significantly higher in early samples of the neurological group than in both early and late samples in the respiratory group and for late samples in the mild group (p<0.05). For the NS1-coding segment, significant differences were observed between initial diversity of mild and severe patients, as for early and late samples in mild patients (p<0.01). Discussion. This study is the first describing diversity through time, associating biological and clinical information during viral diversification, during the infection of an immunocompetent human host. This latter opens a large field of investigation in infectious disease management using next-generation sequencing and suggest development of new therapies, focusing on non-antigenic viral properties, in non-vaccine fields of research
Hybrid CMOS-PCM temperature sensor

In this paper, we propose a hybrid CMOS and phase-change memory (PCM)-relaxation-oscillator based circuit for temperature-sensing applications. Unlike conventional CMOS temperature sensors based on ring- or relaxation-oscillators, the proposed sensor does not require any curvature calibration technique for linearity improvement of the thermal response. The presented system explores the temperature dependence of Ovonic-threshold-switching voltage (Vth) and DC OFF state resistance (ROFF) of a PCM device. The proposed temperature sensor exhibits a resolution of ∼0.04 °C (for the 0 °C to 80 °C temperature range) with 0.51 nJ energy consumption per conversion in simulations.
Forecasting receiving water response to alternative control levels for combined sewer overflows discharging to Toronto’s Inner Harbour

This article evaluates the role that different levels of control for combined sewer overflows have in addressing the recreational water quality objectives of the Toronto Inner Harbour of the Toronto and Region Remedial Action Plan. Three models are used to establish the predictive methodology: the Infoworks model for the combined sewer service area, the Hydrologic Simulation-F model for the remainder of the watershed, and the MIKE 3 computer code to evaluate Lake Ontario response to control. Each model was calibrated with E. coli densities observed respectively in sewer discharges, instream, and in the Inner Harbour. Two indices are used to evaluate the response of water quality in the Inner Harbour – fraction of the surface area achieving Blue Flag status, and portion of the swimming season (June to August) above recreation objectives. Analyses of control options led to the recommendation that virtual elimination of combined sewer overflows (one overflow per season control strategy) should be pursued, rather than the lower level of control of 90% volumetric control, which is the minimum provincial environmental requirement. Implementation of priority projects for improving water quality along the Toronto waterfront, including the Don River and Central Waterfront project, are integral to delisting Toronto as a Great Lakes Area of Concern.
Abstract A06: Multiplatform analysis of early-stage cancer signatures in blood

Background: Detection of cancer in its early stages is likely to be the most effective way to improve clinical outcome. In patients with cancer, a portion of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in the blood stream is tumor derived, providing an opportunity to analyze the cancer genome in real time noninvasively. MERMAID is a retrospective multicenter case-control study to investigate early tumor signatures in blood using different platforms. Methods: The study was conducted among 452 surgery-resectable patients with lung cancer (N=180), colorectal cancer (N=210), liver cancer (N=62), and 290 age-/sex- matched non-cancer controls. Patients who were recognized to have anemia, autoimmune diseases, treated with neoadjuvant therapy were excluded from the study. The non-cancer controls were recruited with the criteria of showing no clinical symptoms or history of cancer at time of administration. The participants were divided into subgroups and analyzed by ultra-deep mutation sequencing (HS-UMI), droplet digital PCR (ddPCR), and deep methylation sequencing (ELSA-seq) singly or in combination. Results: Overall, the highest accuracy was achieved using ELSA-seq and will be reported in full. Highly similar classification results were obtained in training and test sets, with the area under the curve (AUC) value ranging from 0.90-0.97. The specificity for each cancer type ranged from 96-99%, and the average sensitivities with 95CI were lung cancer (61%, 53-70%), colorectal cancer (82%, 76-87%), and hepatocellular cancer (91%, 80-96%). Moreover, incorporation of somatic variants and epigenetic alterations improved the overall accuracy. Conclusions: This study highlighted the potential of machine learning-aided deep methylation sequencing as a sensitive ctDNA profiling approach for early cancer detection. Further investigation in large-scale clinical studies is ongoing. Citation Format: Bingsi Li, Chenyang Wang, Jiayue Xu, Shuai Fang, Fujun Qiu, Jing Su, Huiling Chu, Han Han-Zhang, Xinru Mao, Hao Liu, Xianling Liu, Wei Zhang, Heng Zhao, Zhihong Zhang. Multiplatform analysis of early-stage cancer signatures in blood [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Liquid Biopsies; Jan 13-16, 2020; Miami, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2020;26(11_Suppl):Abstract nr A06.
Association of work-life balance and job satisfaction in commercial pilots: a case study of Pakistan

The premise of this research was to investigate the state of work-life balance in commercial pilots of Pakistan. The objective was to investigate the impact of family-work conflict and work-family conflicts on job satisfaction. This study focused on commercial pilots of Pakistan that are currently employed by the four commercial aviation organizations of Pakistan. The sampling method utilized will be convenience sampling specifically focusing on chief pilots, captains and first officers who are flying commercially. The research was conducted on 192 pilots. It was concluded that Family-work conflict results in a higher level of job satisfaction, Work-family conflict leads to a lower level of job satisfaction and amid family-work conflict and work-family conflict; Work-Family conflict has a stronger correlation with job satisfaction.
A curated list of genes that control elemental accumulation in plants

Understanding the mechanisms underlying plants’ adaptation to their environment will require knowledge of the genes and alleles underlying elemental composition. Modern genetics is capable of quickly, and cheaply indicating which regions of DNA are associated with particular phenotypes in question, but most genes remain poorly annotated, hindering the identification of candidate genes. To help identify candidate genes underlying elemental accumulations, we have created the known ionome gene (KIG) list: a curated collection of genes experimentally shown to change uptake, accumulation, and distribution of elements. We have also created an automated computational pipeline to generate lists of KIG orthologs in other plant species using the PhytoMine database. The current version of KIG consists of 176 known genes covering 5 species, 23 elements and their 1588 orthologs in 10 species. Analysis of the known genes demonstrated that most were identified in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, and that transporter coding genes and genes altering the accumulation of iron and zinc are overrepresented in the current list.
An update on the distribution and diversification of Rhabdomys sp. (Muridae, Rodentia)

Abstract. During the last two decades, genotyping of African rodents has revealed important hidden diversity within morphologically cryptic genera, such as Rhabdomys. Although the distribution of Rhabdomys is known historically, its diversity has been revealed only recently, and information about the distribution range of its constituent taxa is limited. The present study contributes to clarifying the distribution of Rhabdomys taxa, primarily in southern Africa, and identifies gaps in our knowledge, by: 1) compiling the available information on its distribution; and 2) significantly increasing the number of geo-localised and genotyped specimens (n = 2428) as well as the localities (additional 48 localities) sampled. We present updated distribution maps, including the occurrence and composition of several contact zones. A long-term monitoring of three contact zones revealed their instability, and raises questions as to the role of demography, climate, and interspecific competition on species range limits. Finally, an analysis of external morphological traits suggests that tail length may be a reliable taxonomic trait to distinguish between mesic and arid taxa of Rhabdomys. Tail length variation in Rhabdomys and other rodents has been considered to be an adaptation to climatic (thermoregulation) and/or to habitat (climbing abilities) constraints, which has still to be confirmed in Rhabdomys.
Polydopamine Mediated Growth of Ag Nanostructures on ZnO Thin Films for Catalytic Degradation of Organic Dyes

In this study, multi-functional films were produced by the solution-phase growth of plasmonic Ag nanostructures (NSs) on ZnO fabricated by RF magnetron sputtering technique. The Ag NSs was grown on ZnO coated surface by functionalizing the thin film with mussel-inspired polydopamine. The structural analysis was performed by Grazing Incident X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and Fouirer Transform Infrared Spectrometer (FTIR) technique in order to observe the effect of the Ag NSs deposition times. The effect of growth conditions on the structure and size of Ag NSs was investigated by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) imaging technique. The chemical compositions of as-deposited and Ag decorated ZnO films confirms using Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) analysis. The catalytic performance of the multi-functional films was investigated by the degradation of organic dyes (methyl orange (MO) and rhodamine B (RhB)). The catalytic activity of Ag on the is examined in details where it is found that maximum catalytic performance was observed within first 15 min for the ZnO thin films that were decorated with Ag NSs for 24h. The rate constant for the degradation reaction was 33.8x10-3 min-1 and 43.2x10-3 min-1 for MO and RhB, respectively. These results show the promise of integrating metal oxide films with plasmonic structures for efficient degradation of organic dyes.