Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploratory Factor Analysis of a French Adapted Version of the Substance Abuse Attitude Survey among Medical Students in Belgium

To evaluate the impact of a new Substance Use Disorder (SUD) education program on medical students’ attitudes, we selected the Substance Abuse Attitude Survey (SAAS) questionnaire, which we adapted to our curriculum and cultural context. To validate this adapted version, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis following the administration of our 29-item bSAAS questionnaire to 657 medical students in Belgium (response rate: 71.1%). Twenty-three items correlated to three factors; namely, “Stereotypes and moralism”, “Treatment optimism” and “Specialized treatment” were retained (70% of total variance explained, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.80) and constituted the new questionnaire called beSAAS. The factor “Specialized treatment” stood out from previous studies, which could be explained by our target population and the impact of the formal, informal and hidden curricula in medical education. This study was able to highlight certain factors influencing stereotypical representations such as age, gender, origin, personal or professional experience with substance use. Our study allowed us to retain the beSAAS as a good questionnaire to evaluate SUD stigma and highlighted interesting findings to improve SUD training in medicine. Further studies are needed to complete its validity and reliability.
Infectivity-Enhanced, Conditionally Replicative Adenovirus for COX-2-Expressing Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer

Background: The development of conditionally replicative adenoviruses (CRAds) for castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), particularly neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC), has two major obstacles: choice of control element and poor infectivity. We applied fiber-modification-based infectivity enhancement and an androgen-independent promoter (cyclooxynegase-2, COX-2) to overcome these issues. Methods: The properties of the COX-2 promoter and the effect of fiber modification were tested in two CRPC cell lines (Du-145 and PC3). Fiber-modified COX-2 CRAds were tested in vitro for cytocidal effect as well as in vivo for antitumor effect with subcutaneous CRPC xenografts. Results: In both CRPC cell lines, the COX-2 promoter showed high activity, and Ad5/Ad3 fiber modification significantly enhanced adenoviral infectivity. COX-2 CRAds showed a potent cytocidal effect in CRPC cells with remarkable augmentation by fiber modification. In vivo, COX-2 CRAds showed an antitumor effect in Du-145 while only Ad5/Ad3 CRAd showed the strongest antitumor effect in PC3. Conclusion: COX-2 promoter–based, infectivity-enhanced CRAds showed a potent antitumor effect in CRPC/NEPC cells.
NONPARAMETRIC EMPIRICAL BAYES ESTIMATION WITH O(n-1/2) RATE OF A TRUNCATION PARAMETER

Empirical Bayes estimation of a truncation parameter (i.e. the form of the p.d.f. is fe(x) = l(O 0)f(x)/F(e) under squared error loss is considered. We propose two classes of empirical Bayes estimators. We prove that, under mild restriction on f , all these estimators are asymptotically optimal with rate 0(τΓ) for a rich class of priors. The present results generalize and extend an earlier result of Nogami [Ann. Statist. 16 (1988) 1335-1341] for the uniform distributions. AMS 1980 subject classifications: Primary: 62C12, secondary: 62F10, 62G05.
Potential Output and Output Gap Estimates for Nepal

Estimation of potential output and output gap is one of the key issues for the conduct of macroeconomic policies and structural reforms in the long-run as the idea of output gap helps decide on the stance of such policies. A positive output gap, for instance, indicates that aggregate demand exceeds the productive capacity of the economy resulting into inflationary pressure. In contrast, a negative output gap is associated with recession, spare capacity, disinflation, and unemployment rate above the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. In case of Nepal, the potential output grew by 4.3 percent during 1976-2017. While potential output growth was above 4.5 percent during the 1980s and 1990s, fall in total factor productivity limited such growth to 4 percent on average after 2000. The results show that output gaps in Nepalese case are mainly determined by the supply shocks like weather conditions, natural disasters, and supply disruptions rather than fluctuations in aggregate demand.
Effect of salinity stress on physiological aspects of pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Duchesne. ‘Laikaotok’) under hydroponic condition

Pumpkin ( Cucurbita moschata ) ‘Laikaotok’ is an important edible vegetable but growth and crop yield are affected by salinity stress. Response of physiological traits to salinity stress was investigated under hydroponic culture using Hoagland's solution at different NaCl concentrations of 0, 15, 30, 45, 60 and 120 mM. All treatments were cultured for four weeks and physiological traits were recorded. Results showed that pumpkin growth decreased after NaCl treatment, especially at 45 mM and higher concentrations. Leaf number, leaf width, leaf length, root number, stem length, stem diameter, SPAD unit, chlorophyll fluorescence in dark condition for 30 min (Fv'/Fm'), chlorophyll fluorescence in light condition (Fv/Fm), total chlorophyll, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b contents significantly decreased (p < 0.05). Results indicated that salt concentration at less than 45 mM NaCl was suitable for C. moschata ‘Laikaotok’ growth. Phenotypic correlation coefficient estimation of 12 physiological traits showed positive correlation at a highly significant level, except for the correlation between plant height - Fv/Fm; plant height - Fv'/Fm'; root number - Fv/Fm and root number - Fv'/Fm'. This is the first report on salt stress response in C. moschata ‘Laikaotok’. Knowledge gained will be useful for pumpkin culture or rootstock selection under sensitive and moderately sensitive saline conditions.
Laboratory and In Situ Observation of Deposition Growth of Frozen Drops

The water vapor deposition growth of frozen drops with diameter greater than 100 mm has been studied in a thermal diffusion chamber. For varying periods of time, it was found that frozen drops experience spherical growth. The characteristic time of spherical growth depends on supersaturation, temperature, and drop size, and it varies from minutes to tens of minutes. The average rate of frozen drop growth agrees well with that predicted by the Maxwellian growth equation for ice spheres. Observations in natural clouds conducted with a cloud particle imager probe has yielded evidence that frozen drops may retain spheroidal shapes for at least 15‐20 min under conditions close to saturation over water. These observations are in agreement with the laboratory experiments. The observation of frozen drops in natural clouds may be correlated to freezing drizzle generated by overlying cloud layers that may lead to hazardous in-flight icing.
Antibacterial Efficacy of N-(4-methylpyridin-2-yl) Thiophene-2-Carboxamide Analogues against Extended-Spectrum-β-Lactamase Producing Clinical Strain of Escherichia coli ST 131

Development in the fields of natural-product-derived and synthetic small molecules is in stark contrast to the ongoing demand for novel antimicrobials to treat life-threatening infections caused by extended-spectrum β-lactamase producing Escherichia coli (ESBL E. coli). Therefore, there is an interest in the antibacterial activities of synthesized N-(4-methylpyridin-2-yl) thiophene-2-carboxamides (4a–h) against ESBL-producing E. coli ST131 strains. A blood sample was obtained from a suspected septicemia patient and processed in the Bactec Alert system. The isolate’s identification and antibacterial profile were determined using the VITEK 2® compact system. Multi-locus sequence typing of E. coli was conducted by identifying housekeeping genes, while ESBL phenotype detection was performed according to CLSI guidelines. Additionally, PCR was carried out to detect the blaCTX-M gene molecularly. Moreover, molecular docking studies of synthesized compounds (4a–h) demonstrated the binding pocket residues involved in the active site of the β-lactamase receptor of E. coli. The result confirmed the detection of E. coli ST131 from septicemia patients. The isolates were identified as ESBL producers carrying the blaCTX-M gene, which provided resistance against cephalosporins and beta-lactam inhibitors but sensitivity to carbapenems. Among the compounds tested, 4a and 4c exhibited high activity and demonstrated the best fit and interactions with the binding pocket of the β-lactamase enzyme. Interestingly, the maximum of the docking confirmations binds at a similar pocket region, further strengthening the importance of binding residues. Hence, the in vitro and molecular docking studies reflect the promising antibacterial effects of 4a and 4c compounds.
Accretion-Disk Modeling of the UV Spectrum of Quasars

The thin accretion disk spectrum, including the effect of electron scattering, is calculated for a grid of the accretion parameters. It is shown that the luminosity and spectral slope in the UV and optical bands are uniquely determined by these parameters and depend only weakly on the viscosity parameter. When the model calculations are compared with observations of a sample of QSOs and Seyfert 1 nuclei, the black hole mass is in the range 10 to the 8th to 10 to the 9.5 solar for the QSOs and 10 to the 7.5 to 10 to the 8.5 solar for the Seyferts and for low-luminosity objects. The correlation between the spectral slope and luminosity of QSOs in the UV can be explained by evolution along curves of constant black hole mass and decreasing accretion rate. The relation between the spectrum and the accretion parameters can be used to constrain the cosmological evolution of the objects and imposes severe constraints on the pure luminosity evolution interpretation function for QSOs and Seyferts. 30 references.
A New Technique for Nonconvex Primal-Dual Decomposition of a Large-Scale Separable Optimization Prob

The primal-dual approach is quite effective in decomposing a convex separable optimization problem into several subproblems of smaller sizes. In this paper, we present a new technique which extends the primal-dual approach to nonconvex problems. Since a straightforward application of the multiplier method destroys separability, a new Lagrangian function is proposed which preserves separability. Based on this new function we develop a new iterative method for finding an optimal solution to the problem and show that the method is locally convergent to an optimal solution. Furthermore, the effect of certain parameters on the ratio of convergence is investigated and simple examples are given to illustrate the proposed approach.
On the first-order third-moment reliability method

In this article, the reliability evaluation with inclusion of random variable with unknown probability distribution will be discussed, in which the only information of the first three moments of the random variable will be used instead of probability distribution. The second-order polynomial normal transformation technique using the first three central moments is investigated and a pseudo standard normal space is defined based on the investigation. The first-order third-moment reliability analysis in the reduced space and that in the pseudo standard normal space are compared. Through the numerical examples presented, the proposed methods are found to be sufficiently accurate to include the random variables with unknown cumulative distribution functions in the first-order reliability analysis with little extra computational effort.
Limited information likelihood analysis of survey data

Analysts of survey data are often interested in modelling the population process, or superpopulation, that gave rise to a ‘target’ set of survey variables. An important tool for this is maximum likelihood estimation. A survey is said to provide limited information for such inference if data used in the design of the survey are unavailable to the analyst. In this circumstance, sample inclusion probabilities, which are typically available, provide information which needs to be incorporated into the analysis. We consider the case where these inclusion probabilities can be modelled in terms of a linear combination of the design and target variables, and only sample values of these are available. Strict maximum likelihood estimation of the underlying superpopulation means of these variables appears to be analytically impossible in this case, but an analysis based on approximations to the inclusion probabilities leads to a simple estimator which is a close approximation to the maximum likelihood estimator. In a simulation study, this estimator outperformed several other estimators that are based on approaches suggested in the sampling literature.
Convolutional Transformer Fusion Blocks for Multi-Modal Gesture Recognition

Gesture recognition defines an important information channel in human-computer interaction. Intuitively, combining inputs from multiple modalities improves the recognition rate. In this work, we explore multi-modal video-based gesture recognition tasks by fusing spatio-temporal representation of relevant distinguishing features from different modalities. We present a self-attention based transformer fusion architecture to distill the knowledge from different modalities in two-stream convolutional neural networks (CNNs). For this, we introduce convolutions into the self-attention function and design the Convolutional Transformer Fusion Blocks (CTFB) for multi-modal data fusion. These fusion blocks can be easily added at different abstraction levels of the feature hierarchy in existing two-stream CNNs. In addition, the information exchange between two-stream CNNs along the feature hierarchy has so far been barely explored. We propose and evaluate different architectures for multi-level fusion pathways using CTFB to gain insights into the information flow between both streams. Our method achieves state-of-the-art or competitive performance on three benchmark gesture recognition datasets: a) IsoGD, b) NVGesture, and c) IPN hand. Extensive evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed CTFB both in terms of recognition rate as well as resource efficiency.
Low-temperature properties of liquid 3He

Reviews the theory describing the low-temperature properties of liquid 3He, and in particular the superfluid A and B phases. It emphasises basic physical concepts rather than detailed quantitative calculations. Advanced formal techniques such as Green functions are avoided. The low-temperature properties of liquid 3He are explained in terms of a gas of elementary excitations or quasiparticles, as proposed by Landau (1956). The superfluid phases are described by a straightforward generalisation of the concept of quasiparticle pair correlations introduced by Bardeen et al. (1957) in the context of superconductivity, with the exception of very few qualitative properties, such as the stability of model states (strong coupling effects), or the behaviour very close to the transition (pair fluctuation effects). The identification of 3He-A and 3He-B with the p-wave spin triplet pairing model states introduced by Anderson and Morel (1961) and Anderson and Brinkman (1973), and by Balian and Werthamer (1963), respectively, leads to good agreement with the bulk of experimental observations.
Solution to Morgan's problem

A necessary and sufficient condition is presented for the solution of the row-by-row decoupling problem (known as Morgan's problem) in the general case, that is, without any restrictive assumption added to the system to the feedback law u=Fx+Gy (G may be noninvertible). This is a structural condition in terms of invariant lists of integers which are easily computable from a given state realization of the system. These integers are the infinite zero orders (Morse's list I/sub 4/) and the essential orders of the system, which only depend on the input-output behavior, and Morse's list I/sub 2/ of the system, which depends on the choice of a particular state realization. >
Engineering behavior of ambient-cured geopolymer concrete activated by an alternative silicate from rice husk ash

Abstract Manufacturing of commercialized silicate is a highly polluting source in geopolymer production. To reduce these emissions, rice husk ash has been considered as an option for synthesizing alternative silicate. However, available research has been focused on the study of geopolymer pastes and mortars, but unknowns remain on its reliability to manufacture plain geopolymer concrete, motivating this research. Goals were synthesizing an unfiltered-alternative sodium silicate from rice husk ash at room conditions (21 °C − 65 ± 5%RH − atmospheric pressure) for manufacturing plain ambient-cured geopolymer concrete and assess its engineering properties. Results shown that the proposed concrete reached 21 MPa, 17959 MPa, 0.183, and 2.13 MPa for 28-day compressive strength, modulus of elasticity, Poisson’s ratio, and splitting tensile capacity, respectively. Results also portrayed that all these properties of the proposed concrete were comparable to those of geopolymer concrete with commercial silicate and traditional Portland-cement concrete. Its elasticity modulus was 44% higher than that of the geopolymer concrete with commercial silicate, which is considered as serviceability proxy. Based on the results, three equation models were developed to predict the engineering properties of the proposed concrete. Results demonstrate that the use of alternative silicate from rice husk ash provides an innovative-cheaper and eco-friendlier geopolymer concrete exhibiting suitable properties for structural applications. HIGHLIGHTS Alternative sodium silicate from rice husk ash has not been assessed in geopolymer concrete An alternative sodium silicate from rice husk ash was prepared at room temperature Geopolymer concrete shows 44% higher modulus of elasticity with alternative silicate Empirical models were developed to predict the engineering properties of the geopolymer concrete with alternative silicate Geopolymer concrete with alternative silicate is reliable for structural applications
Observation of Shock Wave Collision by Shaping of a Plane Shock Front in Solids

We have proposed a new experimental method of generating Mach reflection phenomena in solids. The method is based on the refraction of a plane shock wave by a shaped material interface. The plane shock wave is generated in a target assembly by a flat plate impact of a highspeed projectile driven by a high-pressure gas gun.The shock collision phenomena have been studied by observing the sudden drop in the reflectivity of a mirror placed on a target material free surface. A compact high-speed streak camera system has been used for this purpose. We have made several experiments, and found that the present method is effective in observing the shock collision phenomena.
Inter-Intra Modal Representation Augmentation With Trimodal Collaborative Disentanglement Network for Multimodal Sentiment Analysis

Recently, Multimodal Sentiment Analysis (MSA) is a challenging research area given its complex nature, and humans express emotional cues across various modalities such as language, facial expressions, and speech. Representation and fusion of features are the most crucial tasks in multimodal sentiment analysis research. However, in the current research, most methods ignore the importance of eliminating potential irrelevant features in the original features of each modality and cross-modal common feature. Moreover, the features extracted from all the modalities contain cluttered background noise and different occlusions noise, which negatively affects feature alignment. Different from these methods, we propose a novel Trimodal Collaborative Disentanglement Network (TCDN) to solve these problems in this paper. This work can obtain effective sentiment results on two aspects: i) Trimodal collaborative uses L1-norm to eliminate irrelevant features and unify the characteristics of the three modals (inter-modal). ii) Disentanglement network introduces an adversary noise by combining the original features of various single modalities and the common representation, alleviating the background noises within each modality (intra-modal). This inter-intra modal feature augmentation method is the first work to obtain the common representation by implementing data augmentation as far as we know. Extensive experiments are completed on two benchmark datasets, including MOSI and MOSEI, demonstrating the superiority of the TCDN model over the state-of-the-art methods.
Marches quantiques et mécanique quantique relativiste

Cette these etudie deux modeles de calcul: les marches quantiques (QW) et les automates cellulaires quantiques (QCA), en vue de les appliquer en simulation quantique. Ces modeles ont deux avantages strategiques pour aborder ce probleme: d'une part, ils constituent un cadre mathematique privilegie pour coder la description du systeme physique a simuler; d'autre part, ils correspondent a des architectures experimentalement realisables.Nous effectuons d'abord une analyse des QWs en tant que schema numerique pour l'equation de Dirac, en etablissant leur borne d'erreur globale et leur taux de convergence. Puis nous proposons une notion de transformee de Lorentz discrete pour les deux modeles, QW et QCA, qui admet une representation diagrammatique s'exprimant par des regles locales et d'equivalence de circuits. Par ailleurs, nous avons caracterise la limite continue d'une grande classe de QWs, et demontre qu'elle correspond a une classe d'equations aux derivees partielles incluant l'equation de Dirac massive en espace-temps courbe de $(1+1)$-dimensions.Finalement, nous etudions le secteur a deux particules des automates cellulaires quantiques. Nous avons trouve les conditions d'existence du spectre discret (interpretable comme une liaison moleculaire) pour des interactions a courte et longue portee, a travers des techniques perturbatives et d'analyse spectrale des operateurs unitaires.
International or Internationalised? Exploring issues faced by international schools in local markets: a Cyprus case study

The growing popularity and diversity of international schools worldwide has resulted in the identification of several typologies of such schools based on different factors of significance. The largest growth in numbers of international schools is now occurring in local markets, with many having a large number of host-country students and to some extent incorporating both national and international curriculum and customs. In this article we discuss the institutional and social issues that may be faced by such schools in terms of their curriculum and their identity, as well as socio-linguistic aspects. We discuss the global and local perspectives that drive and challenge the internationalisation of these schools, with a focus in particular on the context of Cyprus.
Theory of dispersive wave frequency shift via trapping by a soliton in an axially nonuniform optical fiber

We extend the analytical theory explaining the trapping of normally dispersive waves by a Raman soliton in an axially uniform optical fiber to include axially nonuniform fibers. It is shown how a changing group velocity in such a fiber leads to the same trapping mechanism as for a decelerating Raman soliton in a uniform fiber. In contrast to this latter case, where the trapping always leads to a blueshift of the confined radiation, the additional design flexibility inherent in the nonuniform geometry permits the redshift of dispersive waves trapped by an accelerating soliton, which itself may blueshift as a result of the associated spectral recoil.