Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Causes of culling in dairy cows and its relation to age at culling and interval from calving in Shiraz, Southern Iran

This study was designed to investigate causes of culling in industrial dairy herds in Fars province and to describe the pattern of reason-specific culling with respect to age of animal and interval from calving to culling. A total number of 9 dairy herds were selected for the study and information about culling reasons, birth date, last calving date and culling date was collected for culled cows during 2005-2006. Infertility (32.6% of all culls) was the most prevalent reason of culling followed by mastitis (6.5%). The time interval from last calving to culling averaged 240 days (SD = 176) and nearly 28% of cows were culled in the first 100 days after calving. Mean age of animals at culling was 6 years (SD = 2.7) and median was 5.7 years. In Cox proportional hazard model for calving to culling interval, infertility (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.26) showed lower risk whereas mastitis (HR = 2.40), left displaced abomasum (HR = 2.60) and peripartum problems (HR = 2.60) had higher risk of culling compared with voluntary cull. In the Cox model for age at culling, risk of culling was significantly higher for infertility (HR = 1.70), left displaced abomasum (HR = 3.15), and peripartum problems (HR = 2.10) compared with voluntary culling. In conclusion, farmers tend to keep infertile cows for longer period from calving to culling while infertile cows are generally culled at younger age. Also, early culling appeared to have a high proportion of culls in the studied herds.
Single nucleotide variants and InDels identified from whole-genome re-sequencing of Guzerat, Gyr, Girolando and Holstein cattle breeds

Whole-genome re-sequencing, alignment and annotation analyses were undertaken for 12 sires representing four important cattle breeds in Brazil: Guzerat (multi-purpose), Gyr, Girolando and Holstein (dairy production). A total of approximately 4.3 billion reads from an Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencer generated for each animal 10.7 to 16.4-fold genome coverage. A total of 27,441,279 single nucleotide variations (SNVs) and 3,828,041 insertions/deletions (InDels) were detected in the samples, of which 2,557,670 SNVs and 883,219 InDels were novel. The submission of these genetic variants to the dbSNP database significantly increased the number of known variants, particularly for the indicine genome. The concordance rate between genotypes obtained using the Bovine HD BeadChip array and the same variants identified by sequencing was about 99.05%. The annotation of variants identified numerous non-synonymous SNVs and frameshift InDels which could affect phenotypic variation. Functional enrichment analysis was performed and revealed that variants in the olfactory transduction pathway was over represented in all four cattle breeds, while the ECM-receptor interaction pathway was over represented in Girolando and Guzerat breeds, the ABC transporters pathway was over represented only in Holstein breed, and the metabolic pathways was over represented only in Gyr breed. The genetic variants discovered here provide a rich resource to help identify potential genomic markers and their associated molecular mechanisms that impact economically important traits for Gyr, Girolando, Guzerat and Holstein breeding programs.
Implicación escolar y autoconcepto multidimensional en una muestra de estudiantes de secundaria

Nowadays the study of school engagement is a subject of great interest in the field of education for its decisive role in the positive development and academic success of students. This study had three main aims: firstly, to explore the possible differences of educational stage in the multidimensional self-concept and school engagement among students; secondly, to analyze the relationship of multidimensional self-concept and school engagement; and thirdly, to test multidimensional self-concept as predictor of school engagement. The sample comprised 1034 participants from 11 to 17 years old (M = 13.84; SD = 1.38), of whom 537(51.9%) were women and 497(48.1 %) men. The Multidimensional Self-Concept Questionnaire (AUDIM) of Fernandez-Zabala, Goni, Rodriguez-Fernandez & Goni (2015) and the School Engagement Measure (SEM) of Fredericks, Blumenfeld, Friedel & Paris (2005) were administered. The results confirmed that there was a lower level in scores of multidimensional self-concept (physical, general and academic) and school engagement in the second cycle of secondary education than in the first one. There were significant correlations between the majority of dimensions of self-concept and school engagement with medium-high effect size. Academic self-concept was identified as the most important predictor variable of school engagement.
A Survey of a Lightweight Proactive Source Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a wireless communication network and the nodes that are not lies within the direct transmission range of each other depend on the intermediate nodes to forward data. Opportunistic data forwarding has drawn much attention in the research community of multi hop wireless networking, with most of the researches conducted for stationary wireless networks. Opportunistic data forwarding has not been widely utilized in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and the main reason is the lack of an efficient lightweight proactive routing scheme with strong source routing capability. So, in the existing method, a lightweight proactive source routing (PSR) protocol is used. PSR can maintain more network topology information than distance vector (DV) routing to facilitate source routing, although it has much smaller overhead than routing protocols. But the disadvantage of this method is network overwhelming due to the route update. Furthermore, due to mobility of the nodes more energy is consumed. So in the proposed system an innovative technique is introduced which is called delay and energy-aware routing (DEAR) for reducing energy consumption and reduce the overhead. In this technique the delay is selected until the end of the cycle so that only one update is broadcast in each period. Furthermore, due to the dynamic topology, node consumes more energy while roaming. The topology control approach has been introduced to reduce the energy consumption of nodes. In topology control approach, two cases are considered, i) Energy consumption of the node and routes. ii) Link stability and location stability. An experimental result shows that when compared to the existing method there is less energy consumption and high network lifetime in the proposed system.
Bias, Critical Doubt, and Fallacies

Bias is a failure of critical doubt to function correctly in argumentation in a given context of dialogue. Critical doubt, in turn, is a kind of attitude one participant has toward the attitude of another participant in dialogue. Bias is associated with failure to be open to new or contrary evidence that comes into a critical discussion. Bias is also shown to be associated with certain kinds of failures of good argumentation associated with several of the traditional informal fallacies. After examining the role of the concept of critical doubt in defining bias, the article concludes by offering a provisional definition of bias that brings together what appear to be the most valuable and useful of the various hypotheses and proposed characteristics arising from the discussion.
Accurately Predicting Functional Connectivity from Diffusion Imaging

Understanding the relationship between the dynamics of neural processes and the anatomical substrate of the brain is a central question in neuroscience. On the one hand, modern neuroimaging technologies, such as diffusion tensor imaging, can be used to construct structural graphs representing the architecture of white matter streamlines linking cortical and subcortical structures. On the other hand, temporal patterns of neural activity can be used to construct functional graphs representing temporal correlations between brain regions. Although some studies provide evidence that whole-brain functional connectivity is shaped by the underlying anatomy, the observed relationship between function and structure is weak, and the rules by which anatomy constrains brain dynamics remain elusive. In this article, we introduce a methodology to predict with high accuracy the functional connectivity of a subject at rest from his or her structural graph. Using our methodology, we are able to systematically unveil the role of structural paths in the formation of functional correlations. Furthermore, in our empirical evaluations, we observe that the eigen-modes of the predicted functional connectivity are aligned with activity patterns associated with different cognitive systems. Our work offers the potential to infer properties of brain dynamics in clinical or developmental populations with low tolerance for functional neuroimaging.
Factors influencing cultural event tourism in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa

ABSTRACT Cultural tourism has established a market share of approximately 20% in the tourism sector globally. In addition, it fosters socio-economic benefits for a destination and its residents. This study explores residents’ attitudes towards cultural events in Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB), South Africa, to enhance the destination image and induce stakeholder engagement. In this study, 3659 residents of NMB either completed an online questionnaire or a face-to-face interview. The results indicate that the residents of NMB have a positive attitude to cultural events. Notably, the demographic profile of the respondents is representative of the country and may be transferred to a national level to assist the South African tourism industry. The findings clarify insights to the market needs and cultural differences that may be used to tailor unique selling propositions in culturally diverse destinations.
Assistive System For Product Label Detection With Voice Output For Blind Users

We propose a camera-based assistive text reading framework to help blind persons read text labels and product packaging from hand-held objects in their daily lives. We first propose an efficient and effective motion based method to define a region of interest (ROI) in the video by asking the user to shake the object. To automatically localize the text regions from the object ROI, we propose a novel text localization algorithm by learning gradient features of stroke orientations and distributions of edge pixels in an Ada boost model. Text characters in the localized text regions are then binarized and recognized by off-the-shelf optical character recognition (OCR) software. The recognized text codes are output to blind users in speech.
The Semantic Web and Turns of Social Science

This research is a theoretical investigation of the semantic Web in light of the turns of social science. Social science has experienced several turns to have better understandings of social realities. If it is consistent with the turns, then the semantic Web is expected to have better representation of social realities than the conventional information systems. There are two major languages in the semantic Web: RDF and OWL. It is revealed that describing concepts by RDF conforms to the idea of phenomenology. Since RDF and OWL are based on the open-world assumption, the semantic Web is considered to be consistent with the linguistic turn. With the high consistency with social science, the semantic Web can be a good candidate of IS research topics. IS research is expected to contribute to the development of the semantic web, and the development of methodology in particular.
Navigating Multidimensional Data Using Sk-Association Rules

Navigating through multidimensional data cubes is a non-trivial task. Although On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) provides the capability to view multidimensional data in different perspectives through roll-up, drill-down, and slicing-dicing, it offers only minimal guidance to end users in the actual knowledge discovery process. It is impractical to navigate through the enormous numbers of cuboids that usually make up data cubes, and consequently users are likely to miss out valuable information in their cube navigation. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing a DIscovery of Sk-Association Rules (DISAR) algorithm to drive the knowledge discovery process. First, we develop a new set of rules known as skassociation rules using a powerful test of skewness on the pairs of lattice nodes. Second, we capture the navigation paths in the data cubes by using sk-association rules. Third, we use the sk-association rules to enhance the navigation capabilities in the data cubes. Experimental results demonstrate detailed evaluation of sk-association rules.
Investigation of Fear of Childbirth, Attitude and State Anxiety among Primigravid Women

Abstract This paper was done as a descriptive to determine the fear and anxiety of 509 primigravid women related to birth. The data was collected from government hospital in Gaziantep. A Survey Form, Birth Attitude Scale and Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory were used as the data collection tools. The average total score they received from birth attitudes scale was found to be 39.90±11.36. When pregnant women’s status of fear was examined according to the fear birth attitude scale, majority of pregnant women had fear about birth due to the possibility of injury to their infant during birth, many of them stated fear about having painful contractions and had fear about delivery. The mean anxiety score was 43.89±8.04, majority of the pregnant women had high state anxiety. It was found that the majority of pregnant women suffer from a high state anxiety and there was a relationship between state anxiety and fear of birth.
An Empirical Study on C++ Concurrency Constructs

Nowadays concurrent programming is in large demand. The inherent support for concurrency is therefore increasingly important in programming languages. As for C++, an abundance of standard concurrency constructs have been supported since C++11. However, to date there is little work investigating how these constructs are actually used in developing real software. In this paper, we perform an empirical study to investigate the adoption of C++ concurrency constructs in open-source applications, with the goal to provide insightful information for practitioners to use concurrency constructs efficiently. To this end, we analyze 127 open-source applications that adopt C++ concurrency constructs, comprising 34 million lines of C++ code, to conduct the experiment. The experimental results show that: (1) to implement concurrency code, thread-based constructs are significantly more often used than atomics-based constructs and task-based constructs; (2) to manage synchronization, lock-based constructs are significantly more often used than lock-free constructs and blocking constructs; (3) among the key thread-based constructs and task-based constructs (i.e. mutex, promise, and future), there is not a construct significantly more commonly misused than others; (4) small-size applications introduce concurrency constructs more intensively and more quickly than medium-size applications and large-size applications; and (5) an increasing use of standard concurrency constructs does not result in a substantially decreasing use of unstandardized concurrency constructs. Based on these findings, we make actionable suggestions for language designers, developers, and novices to assist them in designing and using C++ concurrency constructs.
Evaluation of an experience-based program to understand the concept of recovery among hospital-based psychiatric nurses

ABSTRACT This study aimed to implement an experience-based program to promote the understanding of the concept of recovery, which is defined as a meaningful life and valued sense of integrity based on subjective and individual viewpoints, among psychiatric nurses working in hospitals in Japan and to evaluate this program. Methods: We conducted a preliminary survey of nurses at six facilities with psychiatric wards. The experience-based program was conducted for 12 nurses who expressed a wish to participate. The program spanned three days and consisted of lectures, assertive community treatment (ACT) staff visits for recovery orientation, and group work. Results: The mean Recovery Knowledge Inventory of nine participants ultimately included was 3.41 points (SD, 0.28) before the program and 3.69 points (SD, 0.24) after the program, indicating a significant difference (p = .004). Categories obtained from ACT support experiences included the following: “Continuing to attend to the need to live in one’s community/home regardless of how bad psychiatric symptoms become without the use of medicines,” “Viewing the person living their life in a place where they belong and in their own individual style,” “Valuing the patient’s wishes is the slow but sure way to a fruitful relationship,” and “Become familiar to the patient and their family’s lifestyle by carefully listening to the family’s feelings”. Discussion: We believe that this program can help establish the concept of recovery in hospital, which tend to rely on the medical model, and enable daily nursing practice to be implemented from a strength-based viewpoint.
The effect of caching in sustainability of large wireless networks

We study the scalability of multihop wireless communications, a major concern in networking, for the case that users access content cached across the nodes. In contrast to the standard paradigm of randomly selected communicating pairs, content replication is efficient for certain regimes of content volume and popularity, cache and network size. Assuming the Zipf popularity law, and investigating on the relative ways that the number of files, the cache size and the network nodes can all jointly scale to infinity, we derive asymptotic laws about the required link capacity, which range from O(√N) down to O(1), and identify the associated regimes of network operation.
Simple model for the mode-splitting effect in whispering-gallery-mode resonators

In this paper, we present a model describing the mode-splitting effect in a whispering-gallery (WG)-mode resonator. The WG mode is represented by an equivalent transmission-line ring resonator in which a localized perturbation is introduced. This perturbation induces a coupling between the two counter propagating waves, which, in turn, lifts the degeneracy of the WG modes. This simple model explains almost all the line shapes experimentally observed. It shows in a straightforward way how the coupling on the two twin modes are affected by changing the coupling probe and the perturbation angular positions. In that sense, it is useful to make the resonator adjustment easier. Moreover, the same approach can be used to simulate any microstrip ring resonator with localized perturbation.
A New Cyber Security Alert System for Twitter

This study proposes an autonomous early decision system for cyber security related contents of Twitter. In the context, both cyber and non-cyber security related tweets are collected and the obtained data is trained by means of Naive Bayes Classifier. Besides, Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) term weighting method is used for vectorization purpose. Experimental results show that, the developed system can classify the tweets in terms of their cyber security related or non-related security with the 70.03% success rate. It can be included that the system can be used as an alert system on Twitter for early cyber-attack detection.
The Interactions between Blood and Polymeric Nanoparticles Depend on the Nature and Structure of the Hydrogel Covering the Surface

Polymeric surfaces in contact with blood in vivo are foreign bodies and are quickly isolated from blood by the non-specific defense systems. Nanoparticles (NP) used as drug carriers are normally quickly taken up by phagocytes and sequestered in liver and spleen to which they can deliver drugs. Long-circulating and/or low complement activating core-shell NPs can be obtained from PEO/PEG amphiphilic copolymers forming brush or loops on the surface. Core-shell NPs can also be obtained from polysaccharidic graft or block amphiphilic copolymers. Complement activation by the NPs and protein adsorption both depend on the structure, nature and molecular weight of the polysaccharide chains composing the shell. NPs showing low complement activation can be obtained if the polysaccharide on the surface is long and in a brush configuration. Fragile molecules such as hemoglobin or siRNA can be loaded and protected by appropriate brush shells without modifying the low complement activation properties.
Functional Assessment of EnvZ/OmpR Two-Component System in Shewanella oneidensis

EnvZ and OmpR constitute the bacterial two-component signal transduction system known to mediate osmotic stress response in a number of Gram-negative bacteria. In an effort to understand the mechanism through which Shewanella oneidensis senses and responds to environmental osmolarity changes, structure of the ompR-envZ operon was determined with Northern blotting assay and roles of the EnvZ/OmpR two-component system in response to various stresses were investigated with mutational analysis, quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR), and phenotype microarrays. Results from the mutational analysis and qRT-PCR suggested that the EnvZ/OmpR system contributed to osmotic stress response of S. oneidensis and very likely engaged a similar strategy employed by E. coli, which involved reciprocal regulation of two major porin coding genes. Additionally, the ompR-envZ system was also found related to cell motility. We further showed that the ompR-envZ dependent regulation of porin genes and motility resided almost completely on ompR and only partially on envZ, indicating additional mechanisms for OmpR phosphorylation. In contrast to E. coli lacking ompR-envZ, however, growth of S. oneidensis did not show a significant dependence on ompR-envZ even under osmotic stress. Further analysis with phenotype microarrays revealed that the S. oneidensis strains lacking a complete ompR-envZ system displayed hypersensitivities to a number of agents, especially in alkaline environment. Taken together, our results suggest that the function of the ompR-envZ system in S. oneidensis, although still connected with osmoregulation, has diverged considerably from that of E. coli. Additional mechanism must exist to support growth of S. oneidensis under osmotic stress.