Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pathogenicity and in vitro extracts inhibition of fungi causing severe leaf blight in Thaumatoccocus danielli (Benn.) Benth

Abstract Isolation and identification of fungi associated with severe leaf blight of Thaumatococcus danielli was conducted. The fungi were subjected to pathogenicity test in the screenhouse experiment. Laboratory assessment of antifungicidal activities of; Ficus asperifolia, Psidium guajava, Mormodica charantia and Anarcadium occidentales prepared at 25, 50 and 75 mg/mL concentrations against the three most virulent pathogens was carried out on PDA, V8 Agar, CZA, and MEA culture media. Data gathered were subjected to ANOVA. Aspergillus niger, A. flavus, Pythium sp. , Penicillium sp. , Fusarium oxysporum, Macrophomina phaseolina, Trichoderma viride, T. koniigi and T. harzianum were the fungi found associated with the diseased parts and the rhizospheric soil. M. phaseolina, A. flavus and A. niger were the most virulent obtained in the pathogenicity test. Growths of these pathogens were mostly inhibited by M. charantia as its efficacy increased with increase in the concentration levels. Mycelia growths were mostly supported by MEA medium.
Economic Aspects of Driving Various Types of Vehicles in Intelligent Urban Transport Systems, Including Car-Sharing Services and Autonomous Vehicles

Nowadays, the concept of new mobility solutions like shared mobility systems is becoming more and more popular in current transport systems. The next technological step will be the idea of replacing traditional vehicles with autonomous ones. Because autonomous vehicles are a new concept in the automotive market, we dedicated this article to the idea of using autonomous vehicles as a part of car-sharing systems in intelligent, urban transport systems. The research herein is focused on the economic aspects of using autonomous vehicles in comparison to the classic car fleet available in car-sharing systems and to vehicles that belong to individual owners. We present our method for appropriate fleet selection based on the Delphi method and the calculations made through a scientific experiment performed based on Hartley’s plan. The results indicate the relation of travel parameters (including vehicle type) to the total cost of travel in urban transport systems. We also present the main terms related to autonomous vehicles. This article provides support for people who want to deepen knowledge about autonomous vehicles and new mobility solutions used in urban transport systems.
Investigating the Access Point height for an indoor IOT services

The prospects of location estimation and localization approaches in Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) by using Received Signal Strength (RSS) have gained significant resonance recently. Selecting the appropriate highest for Access Point (AP) and Transmitter devices can achieve higher accuracy for different localization approaches and IoT (Internet of Things) based services. In addition, reducing the shadow fading effects and increasing the coverage area. In this paper, the effect of different AP height on the variation of signal strength was investigated with a height ranging between (1-2.5) m. The obtained RSS measurement indicates that AP height at 2.5 m can achieve best RSS measurement with respect to receiver height of (1.10) m, especially for NLoS received points. Furthermore, RSS measurement system has been designed and utilized for this investigation. The measurement system is connected with an open based cloud platform for aggregation, visualization and analysing the measurement data. The proposed system can achieve high-speed RSS measurements, low-cost implementation and provide more facilities in collecting and monitoring a huge amount of data.
Contingent Valuation by the Community of Indirect Benefits of Using Recycled Water - An Australian Case Study

Contingent valuation (CV) was used to survey an Australian community who will soon be using recycled water for non-potable purposes. Willingness to pay (WTP) for four indirect, non-market utilities of recycled water were investigated: a decreased amount of sewage going into the ocean; exemption form water restrictions; a continuously green appearance of public open space; and wetlands located in close proximity to dwellings. WTP trends were found across demographic variables (gender, age, income and education), with some significant differences between groups. Strong concern for the environment was found to influence WTP. An improved methodology for further research is suggested.
Optimal parameters in variable‐velocity scanning luminescence lifetime microscopy

We determine the optimal parameters (scan velocities) for measuring the luminescence lifetime on the microsecond scale using the recently introduced method based on scanning the excitation beam across the sample. Using simulations, we evaluate the standard deviation and bias of the luminescence decay rate determined by scanning with two different velocities. The analysis is performed for Poisson‐ and normal‐distributed signals, representing different types of detection techniques. We also show that a weak uncorrected background induces a bias in the obtained decay rate, and take this effect into account when choosing optimal measurement parameters. For comparison, the analysis is additionally performed for two conventional gating schemes for lifetime measurement. The variable‐velocity scanning method is found to be more robust to the effect of the background signal than the gating schemes.
Electronic Health Record Optimization and Clinician Well-Being: A Potential Roadmap Toward Action.

Tina Shah, MD, MPH, Wellstar Health System; Andrea Borondy Kitts, MS, MPH, Lahey Hospital & Medical Center; Jeff rey A. Gold, MD, Oregon Health & Science University; Keith Horvath, MD, Association of American Medical Colleges; Alex Ommaya, DSc, Association of American Medical Colleges; Frank Opelka, MD, FACS, American College of Surgeons; Luke Sato, MD, CRICO; Gretchen Schwarze, MD, MPP, FACS, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Mark Upton, MD, Veterans Health Administration; and Lew Sandy, MD, MBA, UnitedHealth Group
On the Electrochemical Discharges for Nanoparticles Synthesis

The electrochemical discharge phenomenon is a high current density electrochemical process with intrinsic physicochemical properties suitable for the synthesis of nanosized materials. At this mesoscopic range of physics, matter takes on drastically new properties and activities different from its bulk counterpart, which explains the dynamic research activity in building nano-structures. This thesis focuses on the macroscopic and microscopic descriptions of the electrochemical discharges and on the application of the phenomenon for the synthesis of nanoparticles. It starts by establishing the leading variables to control the process from the perspective of entropy production. The nonequilibrium thermodynamics analysis is successfully adapted to the process to extract a global expression for its entropy balance. Based on the excess entropy production in the system, the conjugated thermal and electrochemical fluxes and forces are the hierarchically top constraints affecting the process and its stability. This approach is supported by experimental evidences on the dynamic analysis of the electrochemical system which is performed through a designed wavelet-based signal processing algorithm. The gas film, covering and insulating the electrode during the process from the rest of the solution, has a life-time and building-time which are respectively an increasing and decreasing positive definite functions of the applied terminal voltage and the bulk temperature. With the successful synthesis of nickel and platinum nanoparticles, characterized morphologically, chemically and electrochemically, the second part of this thesis presents a comprehensive methodological procedure to apply the process in nanoparticles manufacturing. Two synthesis mechanisms of nano-materials by the electrochemical discharges and supported by the experiment are treated in detail. The first one involves the continuous competition of direct reduction of metal ions by the hydrated electron, e^–_{aq}, the hydrogen radical, H·, and secondary generated species, versus the back reaction of oxidation by the hydroxide radical OH·. The second mechanism is based on electrode sputtering physics by which the positively charged ions are accelerated in the gas film gap and strike the outermost atoms at the electrode surface to be diffused afterwards in the bulk solution. Zero-valent atoms will then undergo time-dependent nucleation and crystal growth processes to form colloidal suspension of nano-sized particles in the bulk solution. The performances of the synthesized nickel oxide nano-materials by electrochemical discharges as supercapacitors for energy storage applications are investigated and discussed. It is shown that the pseudocapacitance behavior and consequently the energy and power densities are size-dependent.
Dignity Therapy in Pediatrics: A Case Series

Objective: To report our first case series of Dignity Therapy modified for a pediatric palliative care population. Background: Dignity Therapy has been utilized successfully with terminally ill adult patients to help restore a sense of dignity and personhood as well as cope with existential distress near the end of life. To our knowledge, there are no published reports of this treatment modality in pediatric patients. Methods: The authors report the experience of a single-center case series of Dignity Therapy in a pediatric palliative care population. The adult Dignity Therapy process was adapted to fit the pediatric population and their families. Modifications are explained in some detail, and specific cases are shared to illustrate the process. The goal of this case series is to report on the application of Dignity Therapy to the pediatric population. Setting/subjects: Inclusion criteria for the cases series consisted of children and their families who were aware that death may occur soon, were English speaking, admitted to the hospital, and receiving care from the palliative care service. Results: Eight patients or their caregivers have completed Dignity Therapy thus far through our program. Four consented to publication of their experience. Three patients were adolescents and told their own story and the story of one younger nonverbal child was told by her family. All four participants reported that the intervention was acceptable and expressed gratitude for their final generativity document. No patient or family reported distress or negative effects from participation in Dignity Therapy. Conclusions: This case series describes how Dignity Therapy is possible with adaptations in the pediatric population, and how Dignity Therapy by proxy may be possible for caregivers of patients unable to tell their own story.
Korean TableQA: Structured data question answering based on span prediction style with S3‐NET

The data in tables are accurate and rich in information, which facilitates the performance of information extraction and question answering (QA) tasks. TableQA, which is based on tables, solves problems by understanding the table structure and searching for answers to questions. In this paper, we introduce both novice and intermediate Korean TableQA tasks that involve deducing the answer to a question from structured tabular data and using it to build a question answering pair. To solve Korean TableQA tasks, we use S3‐NET, which has shown a good performance in machine reading comprehension (MRC), and propose a method of converting structured tabular data into a record format suitable for MRC. Our experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms a baseline in both the novice task (exact match (EM) 96.48% and F1 97.06%) and intermediate task (EM 99.30% and F1 99.55%).
Predictable and unpredictable phenomena in optical fibers for space-division/mode-division multiplexing transmission: statistical analysis of coupling and mysterious behavior of modes

The transmission capacity of single-mode single-core fibers is approaching the limit of about 100 Tbps owing to nonlinearity and the fiber fuse, which limit the input signal power To avoid the so-called capacity crunch and dramatically increase the transmission capacity, a new approach utilizing space-division multiplexing (SDM) and mode-division multiplexing (MDM) has been proposed and demonstrated In these new multiplexing technologies, a problem that is unprecedented in conventional single-mode fibers, namely, the crosstalk between transmission channels, arises Although the input signal channels are mixed through at the output end, the signal channel can be identified using multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signal processing technology at the output end However, even using the MIMO digital signal processing technology, the problem that the computation time increases with the number of channels remains, resulting in increased latency, and so the number of channels is limited To design a transmission system using the SDM and MDM technologies, the crosstalk should be analyzed precisely However, the origin and behavior of crosstalk are different in SDM using multicore fibers (MCFs) and in MDM using few-mode fibers (FMFs) The behavior of crosstalk in single-mode MCFs is predictable to some extent by statistical analysis, and the system can be designed by considering the results of the analysis On the other hand, the behavior of crosstalk of FMFs is less predictable Since the mode launched at the input end is not the eigenmode, mode discrimination or accurate mode demultiplexing is difficult using a conventional mode demultiplexer In addition, the eigenmode itself of FMFs is not always the hybrid mode predicted by the conventional theory but sometimes a linearly polarized (LP) mode, contradicting the conventional theory In other words, the demultiplexed signal always involves crosstalk regardless of the transmission distance, and the quantity of crosstalk cannot be analyzed statistically Therefore, the crosstalk and its behavior are unpredictable In spite of these unpredictable phenomena, the signal channel can be identified using the MIMO signal processing as in single-mode MCFs This means that the MDM technology using FMFs is established in the engineering or inductive logic sense, but still involves unexplained phenomena in the scientific or deductive logic sense In this review, we discuss the predictable behavior of crosstalk in single-mode MCFs and also the unpredictable behavior of crosstalk in FMFs
Species’ cultural heritage inspires a conservation ethos: The evidence in black and white

Birds feature prominently in the arts and folklore of practically every culture. Yet, in industrialized countries, this rich cultural heritage is largely ignored by conservation biologists. Taking the Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica) as a focal species, we conducted a classroom‐based survey to test the value of avian cultural heritage for inspiring a conservation ethos among UK schoolchildren, comparing it with the effects of other information types and factors. Although identified effects were not strong, species’ cultural heritage was found to be valued and a positive driver of conservation concern—one, we suggest, that has the potential to endure into adulthood when certain other conservation motivations may fail. We therefore encourage its more widespread incorporation into conservation education and outreach programs. Our findings constitute an important “first word” on the potential value of species’ cultural heritage for inspiring a lasting conservation ethos.
Survey on signal processing for GNSS under ionospheric scintillation: Detection, monitoring, and mitigation

Ionospheric scintillation is the physical phenomena affecting radio waves coming from the space through the ionosphere. Such disturbance is caused by ionospheric electron‐density irregularities and is a major threat in Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). From a signal‐processing perspective, scintillation is one of the most challenging propagation scenarios, particularly affecting high‐precision GNSS receivers and safety critical applications where accuracy, availability, continuity, and integrity are mandatory. Under scintillation, GNSS signals are affected by amplitude and phase variations, which mainly compromise the synchronization stage of the receiver. To counteract these effects, one must resort to advanced signal‐processing techniques such as adaptive/robust methods, machine learning, or parameter estimation. This contribution reviews the signal‐processing landscape in GNSS receivers, with emphasis on different detection, monitoring, and mitigation problems. New results using real data are provided to support the discussion. To conclude, future perspectives of interest to the GNSS community are discussed.
Frequency Maps as Expert Instructions to lessen Data Dependency on Real-time Traffic Light Recognition

Research on Traffic Light Recognition (TLR) has grown in recent years, primarily driven by the growing interest in autonomous vehicles development. Machine Learning algorithms have been widely used to that purpose. Mainstream approaches, however, require large amount of data and a lot of computational resources. In this paper we propose the use of Expert Instruction (EI) to reduce the amount of data required to provide accurate ML models for TLR. Given an image of the exterior scene taken from the inside of a vehicle, we stand the hypothesis that the picture of a traffic light is more likely to appear in the central and upper regions of the image. Frequency Maps of traffic light locations were thus constructed to confirm this hypothesis. Results show increased accuracies for two different benchmarks, by at least 15%. The inclusion of EI in the PCANet achieved a precision of 83% and recall of 73% against 75.3% and 51.1% of its counterpart. We finally presents a prototype of a TLR Device with such EI model to assist drivers. To show the feasibility of the apparatus, a dataset was obtained in real time usage and tested in an AdaBSF and SVM algorithms to detect and recognize traffic lights. Results show precision of 100% and recall of 90.9%.
Moderating Effect of Playfulness on the Correlation between Optimism and Creativity of New Immigrant Schoolchildren in Taiwan

This study recruited 483 new immigrant children in the fifth and sixth grades of elementary schools in Tainan to determine the correlation between various aspects of their optimism and creativity and the moderating effect of playfulness. Statistical methods involving items, reliability, analysis, descriptive statistics, two-way analysis of variance, and the moderating effect test were applied to questionnaire data. Significant positive relationships between optimism, playfulness, and creativity were identified with the schoolchildren, and playfulness moderated the relationship between their optimism and creativity.
Serum Netrin-1 and Asymmetric Dimethylarginine as Biomarkers of Acute and Chronic Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

Diagnosis of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is done traditionally by detecting carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) level. However, the severity of clinical manifestations is unrelated to the absolute levels of COHb. Netrin-1 (Net-1) is a protein with anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic properties while asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) is an oxidative stress indicator. This study aimed at assessing and comparing between Net-1, ADMA and COHb as biomarkers in CO poisoning. This cross-sectional clinical study was carried out on 30 acutely CO poisoned adults admitted to Benha Poisoning Control Unit, Benha University Hospitals; 30 chronic CO exposed workers at four different car service centres, plus 30 healthy controls. Results showed a positive correlation between serum levels of Net-1 and ADMA and the severity of acute CO poisoning both on admission, and after oxygen therapy. There was a positive correlation between COHb level and both serum levels of Net-1 and ADMA in chronic cases. In conclusion: COHb level can only support the initial diagnosis of acute CO poisoning. Both ADMA and Net-1 are better biomarkers in assessing the severity of acute CO poisoning, where ADMA is better than Net-1. In diagnosis of chronic CO poisoning, both ADMA and Net-1 are as dependable as COHb.
Energy storage in long-term system models: a review of considerations, best practices, and research needs

Technological change and policy support have heightened expectations for the role of energy storage in power systems, creating a need to enhance representations of energy storage in long-term models to inform decision-making. Energy storage technologies have complex and diverse cost, value, and performance characteristics that make them challenging to model, but there is limited guidance about best practices and research gaps for energy storage analysis. This paper reviews the literature and draws upon our collective experience to provide recommendations to analysts on approaches for representing energy storage in long-term electric sector models, navigating tradeoffs in model development, and identifying research gaps for existing tools and data. The review focuses on national-scale models with technological, temporal, and regional detail given their prevalence in planning and policy, though many insights are transferable to other modeling contexts. It also offers guidance to consumers of model outputs on proper use and interpretation based on model strengths and limitations. In particular, this review demonstrates the importance of capturing how the values of energy storage and other resources change as the system composition changes (e.g. with different levels of storage, renewables deployment, and emissions outcomes). These considerations require model detail like high spatiotemporal resolutions and endogenous investments that global integrated assessment models and price-taker frameworks do not typically resolve. Research gaps include linking tools of different resolutions, developing reduced-form representations of value streams, incorporating hybrid energy storage and renewable systems, and representing longer-duration energy storage technologies.
A novel holistic approach for performance evaluation in Internet of Things

The deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in smart cities or industrial environments (Industrial IoT, IIoT) demands careful consideration in terms of user‐centric or system‐centric target metrics. A better monitoring system able to transform performance outputs into decision‐making and intelligent actions requires less restrictive performance evaluation methods. Classic approaches to performance evaluation in telecommunication networks rely on Quality of Service (QoS) and/or Quality of user Experience (QoE) assessment models. However, the new IoT paradigm establishes a completely different scenario, where, for instance, consumers might no longer be users but machines. In this paper, we propose the evaluation of the performance of IoT services and applications comprising the combination of four quality measures, namely, Quality of Data (QoD), Quality of Information (QoI), Quality of user Experience (QoE), and Quality Cost (QC). The proposal is analyzed using computing simulations. Specifically, we improve the simulation tool FLoRa (Framework for LoRa) incorporating additional LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) features. LoRaWAN is a Low‐Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology that operates on the LoRa modulation scheme. Long coverage ranges, low power consumption, and support for a massive number of IoT devices using a limited infrastructure are the main assets of LoRaWAN, establishing it as one of the top IoT technologies. Results show that it is easier and more efficient to disassociate metrics into different dimensions in order to provide a clear vision of the performance of IoT services. This performance evaluation method can be customized and applied to different IoT markets.