Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Doctoral Students’ Perspectives on Textbooks and Open Educational Resources: Needs, Impact, and Future Directions

While discussions of textbook needs have typically focused on undergraduate students, doctoral students face some unique challenges related to course materials. Their positionality as students and also potentially future faculty, researchers, or instructors can provide useful insight as academic libraries seek opportunities to promote open textbooks. This article reports on the results of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 12 doctoral students in the College of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. Findings suggest that they obtain access to required textbooks in different ways and tend to purchase a personal copy of a textbook if they expected to use it in the future for their research. Their course selection was not impacted by the cost of the required textbook, although textbook requirements influenced their perception of the teaching faculty. Some already had experience publishing OER. Some others expressed interest in promoting OER or open access materials, while others expressed skepticism of these initiatives. Many articulated the importance of accessibility. Materials related to older seminal texts, ethnographical works, and methods textbooks were suggested as potential open textbook targets. Implications for academic libraries are discussed.
Defect Line Terahertz Quantum Cascade Laser

We present terahertz quantum cascade lasers operating at a defect mode of a photonic crystal bandgap. This class of devices exhibits single mode emission and low threshold current compared to standard metal-metal lasers. The mode selectivity is an intrinsic property of the chosen fabrication design. The lower lasing threshold effect, already reported in photonic crystal quantum cascade lasers, is further enhanced in the ultra-flat-dispersion defect line. The presented results pave the way for integrated circuitry operating in the terahertz regime and have important applications in the field of quantum cascade lasers, spectroscopy and microcavity lasers.
Measurement and characterization of engineered titanium dioxide nanoparticles in the environment

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) are common components used in sunscreens, cosmetics, industrial applications, and many other products. Concerning their high production and widespread applications, characterization and quantification of TiO2-NPs in various matrixes is a topic of great interest for researchers studying their potential environmental and health impacts. Validated and easily applicable analytical tools are required to develop and implement regulatory frameworks and an appropriate risk assessment for engineered nanoparticles (ENPs). Herein, we provide a critical review of the current knowledge available on world-wide production and measured environmental concentrations as well as on available techniques to measure and characterize these ENPs in the environment. 概要研究目的纳米二氧化钛已是防晒霜、 化妆品和光催化剂等的常用成分。 纳米二氧化钛的大量应用, 已被证明具有潜在的环境负面影响与人体健康风险。 如何分析环境中工程纳米二氧化钛的理化性质无疑是认识其潜在风险的关键课题。 研究方法从工程纳米颗粒可用的表征与测定方法 (如电镜显微方法、 色谱与质谱技术等) 的优缺点出发, 结合稳定同位素与稀有元素示踪技术来探讨环境中工程纳米二氧化钛颗粒的分析方法。 重要结论环境中工程纳米二氧化钛的表征与测定方法仍需深入的研究, 其可靠性需要现有各种分析技术的相互验证、 良好的样品预处理技术和参考物质、 以及稳定同位素与稀有元素技术示踪的配合。
AN OPTIMAL DEPLOYMENT METHOD OF UWB POSITIONING BASE-STATION

Abstract. Aiming at the prominent problem of high deployment cost of UWB (Ultra Wideband) positioning system and the waste of resources caused by repeated coverage of UWB base-station signals, the optimal deployment of the location and number of UWB positioning base stations is studied. Using Genetic Optimization Algorithm to optimize the objective function with Position Dilution of Precision (PDOP) and base-station Sharing-Value. The simulation and experimental results show that for the optimization of the location of UWB base stations, the three-dimensional average positioning error of the optimized layout method can be reduced by at least 0.3m compared with other typical layout methods; for the optimization of the number of base stations, the number by the optimized layout method is significantly lower than the typical layout method and decreases more as the actual base station deployment area increases. Therefore, the performance of the proposed method for optimal deployment of UWB positioning base stations is fully verified, which provides a reference for the optimal deployment of UWB positioning base stations in practical applications.
The Turkish Form of the Delaying Gratification Inventory: Validity and Reliability Studies

The aim of this research is to adapt the Delay of Gratification Inventory to a Turkish adult sample. The data for the study was obtained from adults over the age of 18 between April and May 2021. The "Personal Information Form," the "Delay of Gratification Inventory," the "Psychological Well-Being Scale," and the "Barratt Impulsivity Scale Short Form" were used to collect research data. In addition to construct validity and criterion-related validity in the validity assessment of the inventor, in the reliability evaluation, Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency, test-retest, and lower-upper 27% group difference values were examined. In exploratory factor analysis, the measurement tool consists of five sub-dimensions, and these sub-dimensions explain 52% of the variance. The conclusion of the CFA show that the five sub-dimension structure obtained has a good fit (χ2 = 352.97 N = 265, sd = 184, p = 0.00; χ2 / df = 1.92, RMSEA = .059, CFI = .90, IFI = .90, GFI = .89 and AGFI = .86). In another validity study, it was found that delaying gratification was positively related to psychological well-being and negatively related to impulsivity. Within the framework of reliability, the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient of the whole inventory was found to be . 78. The test-retest coefficient for the whole inventory was found to be . 84.
Forty years of cross-cultural advertising research in the International Journal of Advertising: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract This manuscript tracks developments in cross-cultural advertising research published over the past 40 years in the International Journal of Advertising (IJA). A bibliometric analysis was performed for the 111 investigations which examined two or more countries appearing between 1982 and 2021. The data set was analysed by decade to reveal topics addressed, theories relied upon, methodologies adopted, and countries examined. Despite variation in the topics addressed over the years, topics present in every decade included cross-cultural issues/differences and gender issues/role portrayals. Global Consumer Culture/Positioning was used as a theoretical foundation in studies published during the journal’s early years and has grown in popularity over the decades. Theories pertaining to cross-cultural differences, such as those developed by Hofstede and GLOBE were among the most frequently employed theoretical foundations. While content analyses were often utilized, surveys, experiments, and qualitative research methods are becoming more popular methods of investigation. North America and Western Europe were well represented, as were more advanced Asian markets, however there continues to be a paucity of research examining Central and Eastern European countries, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
Deep Learning of Structural Changes in Historical Buildings: The Case Study of the Pisa Tower

: Structural health monitoring of buildings via agnostic approaches is a research challenge. However, due to the recent advent of pervasive multi-sensor systems, historical data samples are still limited. Consequently, data-driven methods are often unfeasible for long-term assessment. Nevertheless, some famous historical buildings have been subject to monitoring for decades, before the development of smart sensors and Deep Learning (DL). This paper presents a DL approach for the agnostic assessment of structural changes. The proposed approach has been experimented to the stabilizing intervention carried out in 2000-2002 on the leaning tower of Pisa (Italy). The data set is made by operational and environmental measures collected from 1993 to 2006. Both conventional and recent approaches are compared: Multiple Linear regression, LSTM and Tansformer. Experimental results are promising, and clearly shows a better change sensitivity of the LSTM, as well as a better modeling accuracy of the Transformer.
Highly inclined and eccentric massive planets - II. Planet-planet interactions during the disc phase

Context. Observational evidence indicates that the orbits of extrasolar planets are more various than the circular and coplanar ones of the solar system. Planet-planet interactions during migration in the protoplanetary disc have been invoked to explain the formation of these eccentric and inclined orbits. However, our companion paper (Paper I) on the planet-disc interactions of highly inclined and eccentric massive planets has shown that the damping induced by the disc is significant for a massive planet, leading the planet back to the midplane with its eccentricity possibly increasing over time. Aims. We aim to investigate the influence of the eccentricity and inclination damping due to planet-disc interactions on the final configurations of the systems, generalizing previous studies on the combined action of the gas disc and planet-planet scattering during the disc phase. Methods. Instead of the simplistic K-prescription, our N-body simulations adopt the damping formulae for eccentricity and inclination provided by the hydrodynamical simulations of our companion paper. We follow the orbital evolution of 11 000 numerical experiments of three giant planets in the late stage of the gas disc, exploring different initial configurations, planetary mass ratios and disc masses. Results. The dynamical evolutions of the planetary systems are studied along the simulations, with a particular emphasis on the resonance captures and inclination-growth mechanisms. Most of the systems are found with small inclinations (≤10°) at the dispersal of the disc. Even though many systems enter an inclination-type resonance during the migration, the disc usually damps the inclinations on a short timescale. Although the majority of the multiple systems in our simulations are quasi-coplanar, ∼5% of them end up with high mutual inclinations (=10°). Half of these highly mutually inclined systems result from two-or three-body mean-motion resonance captures, the other half being produced by orbital instability and/or planet-planet scattering. When considering the long-term evolution over 100 Myr, destabilization of the resonant systems is common, and the percentage of highly mutually inclined systems still evolving in resonance drops to 30%. Finally, the parameters of the final system configurations are in very good agreement with the semi-major axis and eccentricity distributions in the observations, showing that planet-planet interactions during the disc phase could have played an important role in sculpting planetary systems. (Less)
Prostate gland volume estimation: anteroposterior diameters measured on axial versus sagittal ultrasonography and magnetic resonance images

Purpose The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of prostate volume estimates calculated from the ellipsoid formula using the anteroposterior (AP) diameter measured on axial and sagittal images obtained through ultrasonography (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Methods This retrospective study included 456 patients with transrectal US and MRI from two university hospitals. Two radiologists independently measured the prostate gland diameters on US and MRI: AP diameters on axial and sagittal images, transverse, and longitudinal diameters on midsagittal images. The volume estimates, volumeax and volumesag, were calculated from the ellipsoid formula by using the AP diameter on axial and sagittal images, respectively. The prostate volume extracted from MRI-based whole-gland segmentation was considered the gold standard. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to evaluate the inter-method agreement between volumeax and volumesag, and agreement with the gold standard. The Wilcoxon signedrank test was used to analyze the differences between the volume estimates and the gold standard. Results The prostate gland volume estimates showed excellent inter-method agreement, and excellent agreement with the gold standard (ICCs >0.9). Compared with the gold standard, the volume estimates were significantly larger on MRI and significantly smaller on US (P<0.001). The volume difference (segmented volume–volume estimate) was greater in patients with larger prostate glands, especially on US. Conclusion Volumeax and volumesag showed excellent inter-method agreement and excellent agreement with the gold standard on both US and MRI. However, prostate volume was overestimated on MRI and underestimated on US.
Ruprecht 147: A Paradigm of Dissolving Star Cluster

We employed recent Gaia/DR2 data to investigate the dynamical status of the nearby (300 pc), old (2.5 Gyr) open cluster Ruprecht 147. We found prominent leading and trailing tails of stars along the cluster orbit, which demonstrates that Ruprecht 147 is losing stars at fast pace. Star counts indicate the cluster has a core radius of 33.3 arcmin and a tidal radius of 137.5 arcmin. The cluster also possesses an extended corona, which cannot be reproduced by a simple King model. We computed the present-day cluster mass using its luminosity and mass function, and derived an estimate of 234 ± 52 M⊙. We also estimated the cluster original mass using available recipes extracted from N-body simulations obtaining a mass at birth of 50,000 ± 6500 M⊙. Therefore dynamical mass loss, mostly caused by tidal interaction with the Milky Way, reduced the cluster mass by about 99%. We then conclude that Ruprecht 147 is rapidly dissolving into the general Galactic disk.
The Co-evolution of Disks and Stars in Embedded Stages: The Case of the Very-low-mass Protostar IRAS 15398–3359

We have observed the CCH (N = 3–2, J = 7/2–5/2, F = 4–3 and 3–2) and SO (67–56) emission at a 0. ″2 angular resolution toward the low-mass Class 0 protostellar source IRAS 15398–3359 with ALMA. The CCH emission traces the infalling-rotating envelope near the protostar with the outflow cavity extended along the northeast–southwest axis. On the other hand, the SO emission has a compact distribution around the protostar. The CCH emission is relatively weak at the continuum peak position, while the SO emission has a sharp peak there. Although the maximum velocity shift of the CCH emission is about 1 km s−1 from the systemic velocity, a velocity shift higher than 2 km s−1 is seen for the SO emission. This high-velocity component is most likely associated with the Keplerian rotation around the protostar. The protostellar mass is estimated to be from the velocity profile of the SO emission. With this protostellar mass, the velocity structure of the CCH emission can be explained by the model of the infalling-rotating envelope, where the radius of the centrifugal barrier is estimated to be 40 au from the comparison with the model. The disk mass evaluated from the dust continuum emission by assuming the dust temperature of 20–100 K is 0.1–0.9 times the stellar mass, resulting in the Toomre Q parameter of 0.4–5. Hence, the disk structure may be partly unstable. All these results suggest that a rotationally supported disk can form in the earliest stages of the protostellar evolution.
A Lower HCC Incidence in Chronic HBV-Infected Patients Recovered from Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure: A Prospective Cohort Study

Background Activation of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an important cause of acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF). However, the effect of HBV-ACLF episode on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) occurrence remains largely unknown. Methods A total of 769 HBV-ACLF patients and 2114 HBV-related chronic liver disease (HBV-CLD) patients diagnosed between August 1998 and December 2011 were enrolled in this prospective cohort study. Of the HBV-CLD patients, 380 received lifetime antiviral treatment with nucleos(t)ide analogues. Propensity score matching was applied to reduce baseline differences between HBV-ACLF and HBV-CLD cohorts. Results The survival rate of HBV-ACLF patients was 53.6%, 50.3%, 47.8%, and 46.2% at 90-day, 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year, respectively. The cumulative incidence of HCC was lower in HBV-ACLF cohort with 369 eligible patients survived for >90 days than in HBV-CLD cohort with the 380 patients (5.77/1,000 vs. 9.78/1,000 person-years, p = 0.0497). HBV-ACLF episode decreased HCC risk regardless of liver cirrhosis, and in patients without family history of HCC. Multivariate Cox analyses indicated that male, increasing age, liver cirrhosis, and platelet count (≤100 × 109/L) increased, whereas HBV-ACLF episode decreased, HCC risk independently. In the propensity score-matched cohorts, HBV-ACLF episode reduced HCC incidence (10.20/1,000 vs. 4.66/1,000 person-years, p = 0.0326). The area under curve of nomogram was 0.812 for 3-year HCC probability. Conclusions HBV-ACLF episode decreases HCC occurrence in chronic HBV patients. Older age and liver cirrhosis independently increased HCC occurrence. A nomogram-enrolled episode of ACLF reliably predicts the occurrence of HCC.
Unsupervised Aspect Term Extraction for Sentiment Analysis through Automatic Labeling

: In sentiment analysis, there has been growing interest in performing ﬁner granularity analysis focusing on entities and their aspects. This is the goal of Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis which commonly involves the following tasks: Opinion Target Extraction (OTE), Aspect term extraction (ATE), and polarity Classiﬁcation (PC). This work focuses on the second task, which is the more challenging and least explored in the unsupervised context. The difﬁculty arises mainly due to the nature of the data (user-generated contents or product reviews) and the inconsistent annotation of the evaluation datasets. Existing approaches for ATE and OTE either depend on annotated data or are limited by the availability of domain-or language-speciﬁc resources. To overcome these limitations, we propose UNsupervised Aspect Term Extractor (U N ATE), an end-to-end unsupervised ATE solution. Our solution relies on a combination of topic models, word embeddings, and a BERT-based classiﬁer to extract aspects even in the absence of annotated data. Experimental results on datasets from different domains have shown that U N ATE achieves precision and F-measure scores comparable to the semi-supervised and unsupervised state-of-the-art ATE solutions.
On the Energy of Gamma-Ray Bursts

We show that γ-ray burst (GRB) afterglow observations strongly suggest, within the fireball model framework, that radiating electrons are shock accelerated to a power-law energy distribution, dne/dγe ∝ γ, with universal index p ≈ 2.2, and that the fraction of shock energy carried by electrons, ξe, is universal and close to equipartition, ξe ~ . For universal p and ξe, a single measurement of the X-ray afterglow flux on the timescale of a day provides a robust estimate of the fireball energy per unit solid angle, ε, averaged over a conical section of the fireball of opening angle θ ~ 0.1. The energy estimate ε varies by ~50% as p is modified over the range of values p = 2.2 ± 0.2 typically inferred from observations. Applying our analysis to BeppoSAX afterglow data, we find that (1) fireball energies are in the range of 4πε = 1051.5-1053.5 ergs; (2) the ratio of observed γ-ray to total fireball energy per unit solid angle, εγ/ε, is of order unity, satisfying |(εγ/ε)| ≲ 0.5; and (3) if fireballs are jet-like, their opening angle should satisfy θ ≳ 0.1. Our results imply that if typical opening angles are θ ~ 0.1, a value consistent with our analysis, the total energy associated with a GRB event is in the range of 1050-1051.5 ergs.
Recurrent Neural Network-FitNets: Improving Early Prediction of Student Performanceby Time-Series Knowledge Distillation

This study helps improve the early prediction of student performance by RNN-FitNets, which applies knowledge distillation (KD) to the time series direction of the recurrent neural network (RNN) model. The RNN-FitNets replaces the teacher model in KD with “an RNN model with a long-term time-series in which the features during the entire course are inputted” and the student model in KD with “an RNN model with a short-term time-series in which only the features during the early stages are inputted. ” As a result, the RNN model in the early stage was trained to output the same results as the more accurate RNN model in the later stages. The experiment compared RNN-FitNets with a normal RNN model on a dataset of 296 university students in total. The results showed that RNN-FitNets can improve early prediction. Moreover, the SHAP value was employed to explain the contribution of the input features to the prediction results by RNN-FitNets. It was shown that RNN-FitNets can consider the future effects of the input features from the early stages of the course.
Fuzzy and Evidential Contribution to Multilevel Clustering

: Clustering algorithms based on split-and-merge concept, divisive or agglomerative process are widely developed to extract patterns with different shapes, sizes and densities. Here a multilevel approach is considered in order to characterise general patterns up to ﬁner shapes. This paper focus on the contribution of both fuzzy and evidential models to build a relevant divisive clustering. Algorithms and both a priori and a posteriori split criteria are discussed and evaluated. Basic crisp/fuzzy/evidential algorithms are compared to cluster four datasets within a multilevel approach. Finally, same framework is also applied in embedded spectral space in order to give an overall comparison.
Establishment of mountain birch (Betula pubescens ssp. tortuosa) on a glacial outwash plain: Spatial patterns and decadal processes

Abstract Most of the Earth's surface has now been modified by humans. In many countries, natural and semi‐natural ecosystems mostly occur as islands, isolated by land converted for agriculture and a variety of other land‐uses. In this fragmented state, long‐distance dispersal may be the only option for species to adapt their ranges in response to changing climate. The order of arrival of species may leave a lasting imprint on community assembly. Although mostly studied at and above the species level, such priority effects also apply at the intraspecific level. We suggest that this may be particularly important in subarctic and arctic ecosystems. Mountain birch (Betula pubescens ssp. tortuosa) is characterized by great intraspecific variation. We explored spatio‐temporal patterns of the first two mountain birch generations on a homogeneous, early successional glacial outwash plain in SE Iceland that was the recipient of spatially extensive long‐distance dispersal ca. 30 years ago. We evaluated the decadal progress of the young population by remeasuring in 2018, tree density and growth form, plant size, and reproductive effort on 30 transects (150 m2) established in 2008 at four sites on the plain and two adjacent sites ca. 10 km away. All measured variables showed positive increases, but contrary to our predictions of converging dynamics among sites, they had significantly diverged. Thus, two of the sites (only 500 m apart) could not be distinguished in 2008, but by 2018, one of them had much faster growth rates than the other, a higher growth form index reflecting more upright tree stature, greater reproductive effort, and much greater second‐generation seedling recruitment. We discuss two hypotheses that may explain the diverging dynamics, site‐scale environmental heterogeneity, and legacies of intraspecific priority effects.