Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teleworking: An approach to its measurement using official labor surveys in Latin America

Abstract:In this paper we propose a comparable measure of approximate teleworkers in Latin American countries using official labor surveys. To do this, we start from a review of the context and concept of teleworking that allows a better understanding of the matter. Then, we study the literature and propose a standard methodology, understanding teleworkers as homeworkers with occupations supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Finally, we apply our methodological proposal in Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina, finding that the conditions imposed by the pandemic seem to have increased levels of effective use of telework. However, the use of telework has not been "massive", even in the face of the severity of the pandemic. We close the paper by exploring the characteristics of the approximate teleworkers, obtaining that they tend to be more female, have university education, and work in small firms; they also are slightly older than other workers.
Recovering What Matters: High Protein Recovery after Endotoxin Removal from LPS-Contaminated Formulations Using Novel Anti-Lipid A Antibody Microparticle Conjugates

Endotoxins or lipopolysaccharides (LPS), found in the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacterial cell walls, can stimulate the human innate immune system, leading to life-threatening symptoms. Therefore, regulatory limits for endotoxin content apply to injectable pharmaceuticals, and excess LPS must be removed before commercialization. The majority of available endotoxin removal systems are based on the non-specific adsorption of LPS to charged and/or hydrophobic surfaces. Albeit effective to remove endotoxins, the lack of specificity can result in the unwanted loss of essential proteins from the pharmaceutical formulation. In this work, we developed microparticles conjugated to anti-Lipid A antibodies for selective endotoxin removal. Anti-Lipid A particles were characterized using flow cytometry and microscopy techniques. These particles exhibited a depletion capacity > 6 ×103 endotoxin units/mg particles from water, as determined with two independent methods (Limulus Amebocyte Lysate test and nanoparticle tracking analysis). Additionally, we compared these particles with a non-specific endotoxin removal system in a series of formulations of increasing complexity: bovine serum albumin in water < insulin in buffer < birch pollen extracts. We demonstrated that the specific anti-Lipid A particles show a higher protein recovery without compromising their endotoxin removal capacity. Consequently, we believe that the specificity layer integrated by the anti-Lipid A antibody could be advantageous to enhance product yield.
Background Masked Guided Network for Skin Lesion Segmentation in Dermoscopy Image

Skin lesion segmentation in dermoscopy images plays a critical role in the automated diagnosis of melanoma. In this study, to alleviate the impact of the background information in dermoscopy images, a novel framework dubbed Background Masked-Guided Network is proposed to utilize images with background masked to guide the backbone for final segmentation results. Moreover, because traditional CNN will bring inevitable information loss when feeding into activation functions, to alleviate this phenomenon and utilize the advantages of U-Net architecture, we propose a new backbone named U-ConvNext. In U-ConvNext, the architecture of U-Net is retained, and in the Up-Sampling Block, the inverted bottleneck architecture is imported to reduce information loss caused by dimension compression. We evaluate our proposed methods on the ISIC2017 and PH2 datasets; the experimental results demonstrated that our proposed methods could achieve excellent segmentation results on both datasets.
Constraints on Primary Production in Lake Erie

This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Trace: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Trace: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact trace@utk.edu. Recommended Citation Saxton, Matthew Alan, "Constraints on Primary Production in Lake Erie. " PhD diss. , University of Tennessee, 2011. http://trace.tennessee. edu/utk_graddiss/1023
Fractured Core Analysis: Interpretation, Logging, and Use of Natural and Induced Fractures in Core

The characterization of naturally fractured reservoirs should include core analyses that encompass interpretation of natural and induced fractures. Unfortunately, to date, the differentiation of induced fractures from natural ones in core has been somewhat speculative and often is based on improper techniques. Consequently, bad interpretations have been made and useful information contained in both natural and induced fractures is overlooked. This book addresses the problem of distinguishing natural fractures from induced fractures in both oriented and unoriented core. Natural fractures include any cored fracture that existed in a volume of rock prior to initiation of drilling or coring-related stresses. Induced fractures in core are those that develop during drilling, coring, and subsequent handling. Many of the procedures for distinguishing between the two are based primarily on recognition of fracture surface structures and fracture traces that differ between natural fractures and induced fractures.
Diabetes Self-Management Education

Since the earliest days of insulin therapy, health care providers have discovered that simply prescribing the correct dose of insulin, oral agents, or correct meal plans is not enough to achieve adequate metabolic control or to prevent medical crises resulting from diabetes. Severe knowledge deficits in self-management skills such as medication administration, glucose testing, diet, sick day guidelines, and foot care have been identified in 50-80% of diabetic adults (1-6) and children (7). Patient hospitalizations for uncontrolled diabetes are often attributed to deficiencies in diabetes knowledge and self-management skills. A survey of hospitals in Rhode Island revealed poor diabetes control as the cause for admission of 33% of patients with diabetes during a 4-year period (8). Similar potentially preventable conditions (hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and diabetic ketoacidosis) accounted for 24% of emergency room visits by patients with diabetes at one hospital (9). It may be argued that these adverse events resulted from poor adherence to self-management skills rather than a knowledge deficit. However, inappropriate self-care behaviors may reflect poor understanding about diabetes or the rationale for treatment (1) or prior exposure to misguided treatment or teaching (10). Background and definition Diabetes self-management education is the process of providing the person with diabetes with the knowledge and skills needed to perform self-care, manage crises, and make lifestyle changes required to successfully manage this disease. The goal of the process is to enable the patient to become the most knowledgeable and hopefully the most active participant in his or her diabetes care. The term selfmanagement education emphasizes the need for people with diabetes to manage their diabetes on a day-to-day basis. For this reason the terms diabetes education and self-management education will refer to the same process. More than 50% of people with diabetes receive limited or no diabetes selfmanagement education. In a nationwide sample, 41% of people with type I diabetes, 51% of people with insulin-treated type II diabetes, and 76% of people with non-insulin-treated type II diabetes reported having never attended a diabetes education class, course, or any other education program about diabetes (11).
Design and Process Co-Optimization of 2-D Monolayer Transistors via Machine Learning

Machine learning (ML) algorithms have been widely adopted in the industry for optimizing semiconductor process modules. However, the final device performance may depend on a myriad of variables, including process conditions and device design parameters in an entangled fashion. This makes gaining detailed physical insights necessary to disentangle all these factors effectively. Here, we propose a design and process co-optimization framework using ML to improve the performance of 2-D transistors in analogy to conventional process optimization-design of experiments (DOEs). In particular, we utilize the “feature importance score” to quantitatively evaluate the impact of each process step or design feature on the final device performance. Example given, through the utilization of a random forest ML algorithm, we can design distinct threshold voltages by combining suitable process and design parameters. This framework aims at unrevealing the ultimate performance of 2-D field-effect transistors (FETs) through an expedited process that allows for quick experimental turnaround.
Liquid–Liquid Phase Separation Can Drive Aerosol Droplet Growth in Supersaturated Regimes

It is well known that atmospheric aerosol size and composition impact air quality, climate, and health. The aerosol composition is typically a mixture and consists of a wide range of organic and inorganic particles that interact with each other. Furthermore, water vapor is ubiquitous in the atmosphere, in indoor air, and within the human body’s respiratory system, and the presence of water can alter the aerosol morphology and propensity to form droplets. Specifically, aerosol mixtures can undergo liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) in the presence of water vapor. However, the experimental conditions for which LLPS impacts water uptake and the subsequent prediction of aerosol mixtures are poorly understood. To improve our understanding of aerosol mixtures and droplets, this study explores two ternary systems that undergo LLPS, namely, the 2MGA system (sucrose + ammonium sulfate + 2-methylglutaric acid) and the PEG1000 system (sucrose + ammonium sulfate + polyethylene glycol 1000). In this study, the ratio of species and the O:C ratios are systematically changed, and the hygroscopic properties of the resultant aerosol were investigated. Here, we show that the droplet activation above 100% RH of the 2MGA system was influenced by LLPS, while the droplet activation of the PEG1000 system was observed to be linearly additive regardless of chemical composition, O:C ratio, and LLPS. A theoretical model that accounts for LLPS with O:C ratios was developed and predicts the water uptake of internally mixed systems of different compositions and phase states. Hence, this study provides a computationally efficient algorithm to account for the LLPS and solubility parameterized by the O:C ratio for droplet activation at supersaturated relative humidity conditions and may thus be extended to mixed inorganic–organic aerosol populations with unspeciated organic composition found in the ambient environment.
The MOA framework and behavioural response

This paper discusses the application of a conceptual social marketing model, the MOA (motivation, opportunity and ability) framework, in the context of an environmental management case study relating to land management. The main objectives involved examination of the relationships between the MOA constructs and the relationships between these constructs and socially desirable behaviour. Structural Equation Modelling was chosen to examine the relationships in data collected from a telephone survey. The results from the analysis of the data revealed that the relationships between the MOA components could be used to explain changes in durable socially desirable behaviour. In particular, intrinsic motivation is more likely than extrinsic motivation to produce a durable socially desirable behaviour change.
Export-Platform Foreign Direct Investment

Export-platform foreign direct investment in which the affiliate’s output is (largely) sold in third markets rather than in the parent or host markets has received empirical attention recently, but little theoretical analysis. This Paper is an attempt to make some sense of this phenomenon. We use a three-region model in which there are two identical, large, high-cost economies and a small low-cost economy. Pure export-platform production arises in a symmetric case, when a firm in each of the high-cost economies has a plant at home, and a plant in the low-cost country (the South) to serve the other high-cost country. This occurs when trade costs for intermediates (components) and plant-fixed costs are moderate and the South has a moderate cost advantage in assembly. Another interesting and empirically important case arises when there is trade liberalization between one of the high-cost countries and the small, low-cost country. The outside high-cost country may wish to build a branch plant inside the free trade area due to market size, but chooses the low-cost country on the basis of cost. Or a firm headquartered in the large country inside the free-trade area might build a single plant in its low-wage partner in order to serve their joint free-trade area and to export to the outside high-cost country.
Probiotic Characteristics of Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus as Influenced by New Food Sources

The current research aimed to evaluate the potential effects of Solanum mammosum, Dioon mejiae, and Amanita caesarea on Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus survival and performance after exposure to different harsh conditions such as bile, acid, gastric juice, and lysozyme to mimic the digestive system from mouth to the intestine. Probiotic protease activity was observed to evaluate the proteolytic system. Probiotics were cultured in a broth mixed with plant material, and after incubation, the results were compared to the control sample. Therefore, plant material’s total phenolic compound, total carotenoid compound, antioxidant activity, sugar profile, and acid profile were obtained to discuss their impact on the survival of probiotics. The results indicate that Amanita caesarea negatively affected probiotic survival in the bile tolerance test and positively affected Lactobacillus bulgaricus in the protease activity test. Otherwise, the other plant material did not change the results significantly (p > 0.05) compared to the control in different tests. Consequently, Solanum mammosum and Dioon mejiae had no significant effects (p > 0.05) in increasing probiotic survival.
How to Enhance Circular Agriculture Models at Micro-Level in Vietnam? A Review

Vietnam's agricultural sector has achieved remarkable progress in recent years, ensuring both food security and export turnover for the country. However, the current focus on productivity and output alone is wasteful and detrimental to the environment. To address this, a shift from linear to circular agriculture is advocated, encompassing not only production but also consumption. While circular economy (CE) in agriculture is a new concept in Vietnam, various stakeholders at the micro-level, such as farmers, cooperatives, and enterprises, have been practicing circular agriculture for some time. Nevertheless, most of these models have emerged spontaneously without cohesive development across regions. Although the Vietnamese government have introduced policies promoting green production and CE, they have provided little guidance on promoting circular agricultural models at the micro-level. This paper presents a concise overview of CE in agriculture, synthesizes typical micro-level models of CE in Vietnam, and proposes policy recommendations to enhance existing circular agriculture models, including raising awareness among stakeholders about circular agriculture, encouraging investment in circular agriculture, enhancing the capacity of agricultural producers in recycling and reusing by-products, and establishing an appropriate legal framework.
Mining Task-Specific Lines of Code Counters

Context: Lines of code (LOC) is a fundamental software code measure that is widely used as a proxy for software development effort or as a normalization factor in many other software-related measures (e.g., defect density). Unfortunately, the problem is that it is not clear which lines of code should be counted: all of them or some specific ones depending on the project context and task in mind? Objective: To design a generator of task-specific LOC measures and their counters mined directly from data that optimize the correlation between the LOC measures and variables they proxy for (e.g., code-review duration). Method: We use Design Science Research as our research methodology to build and validate a generator of task-specific LOC measures and their counters. The generated LOC counters have a form of binary decision trees inferred from historical data using Genetic Programming. The proposed tool was validated based on three tasks, i.e., mining LOC measures to proxy for code readability, number of assertions in unit tests, and code-review duration. Results: Task-specific LOC measures showed a “strong” to “very strong” negative correlation with code-readability score (Kendall’s <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\tau $ </tex-math></inline-formula> ranging from −0.83 to −0.76) compared to “weak” to “strong” negative correlation for the best among the standard LOC measures (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\tau $ </tex-math></inline-formula> ranging from −0.36 to −0.13). For the problem of proxying for the number of assertions in unit tests, correlation coefficients were also higher for task-specific LOC measures by ca. 11% to 21% (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\tau $ </tex-math></inline-formula> ranged from 0.31 to 0.34). Finally, task-specific LOC measures showed a stronger correlation with code-review duration than the best among the standard LOC measures (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\tau $ </tex-math></inline-formula> = 0.31, 0.36, and 0.37 compared to 0.11, 0.08, 0.16, respectively). Conclusions: Our study shows that it is possible to mine task-specific LOC counters from historical datasets using Genetic Programming. Task-specific LOC measures obtained that way show stronger correlations with the variables they proxy for than the standard LOC measures.
Benthic diatom community dynamics in the Colorado River: Interactive effects of periodic dessication and current regime

The response to periodic desiccation of periphyton communities developed in eddy environments or in areas exposed to variable, direct current was examined. Algal communities were incubated on clay tiles for between 2 and 12 weeks in the Colorado River, directly below Hoover Dam from October, 1983 January, 1984. Mean daily discharge from the dam decreased over this period. To assess the influence of these discharge changes on community dynamics, samples collected over the first 12 weeks of the investigation were compared to samples of the same age collected over the final 8 weeks. The small diatom taxon Achnahthes spp. , a composite of A. , minutissima Kutz. and A. , microcephala (Kutz.) Grun. , was the numerical dominant in all collections, accounting for 50-80% of the diatoms identified from a given sample. Relative abundances of other diatom taxa varied with . community age, current regime, and desiccation frequency. Undesiccated algal communities sheltered from direct current developed more rapidly and exhibited both higher biomass and diatom densities than communities established in fast current. Diatom species diversity on undesiccated tiles did not differ among current regimes. ill Low frequency desiccation (LFD) reduced biomass and diatom densities in eddy environments while enhancing biomass accumulation and cell accrual on fast current tiles. These responses weakened with age, disappearing in 8, 10, and 12 week old assemblages. Diatom species diversity increased with LFD in all current regimes. Differences in LFD reactions were attributed to higher initial mucilage concentrations in communities exposed to direct current and to increased community mucilage production in response to desiccation. The presence of filamentous cyanophytes also enhanced diatom colonization and diversity. Hoover Dam discharge reductions resulted in lower biomass and cell densities in undisturbed eddy communities, and increases in these 2 parameters in assemblages exposed to the ambient river current. Species composition was more affected by discharge changes in eddy environments than in fast current habitats. Periphyton communities developed on tiles removed from direct current were less resilient and exhibited lower resistance to perturbation than those communities established under more physically rigorous conditions. Both colonization potential and community desiccation resistance appear to be strongly influenced by mucilaginous material produced within the periphyton community itself. i.v
Demonstration of Low DV/DT Class-Ф2 DC-DC Converter With 50% Duty Cycle

This article presents the frequency-domain-based modified impedance tuning analysis (ITA) method and its demonstration in designing a class-Ф2 dc–dc converter with load-independent zero voltage switching (ZVS) characteristics. By adjusting the second-order harmonic voltage, a near trapezial drain-to-source voltage (VDS) is achieved with beneficially reduced voltage stresses across the main power devices. A complete non-iteration design procedure is established. Comparing to traditional ITA design theory, this modified ITA method leads to low dv/dt and low VDS stress, even at 50% switching duty cycles. In addition, thanks to the finite input resistance of the rectifier, the output resonant network and rectifier designed following this frequency-domain method feature the extensive load-independent ZVS characteristic. The 5 MHz prototype aiming for a true short-circuit to open-circuit load-independent ZVS is designed using modified ITA method, assembled, and measured. Under 16 V input, the measured conversion efficiency maintains 76.8%–89.5% in the testable load range from 7.4 to 16.8 W.