Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences Users' Perception of Using Web Search Engines and Their Impact on the Perceived Intention to Reuse the Systems

In today's world of information-driven society, many studies are exploring usefulness and ease of use of the technology. The research into personalizing next-generation user interface is also ever increasing. A better understanding of factors that influence users' perception of web search engine performance would contribute in achieving this. This study measures and examines how users' perceived level of prior knowledge and experience influence their perceived level of satisfaction of using the web search engines, and how their perceived level of satisfaction affects their perceived intention to reuse the system. 50 participants from an Australian university participated in the current study, where they performed three search tasks and completed survey questionnaires. A research model was constructed to test the proposed hypotheses. Correlation and regression analyses results indicated a significant correlation between (1) users' prior level of experience and their perceived level of satisfaction in using the web search engines, and (2) their perceived level of satisfaction in using the systems and their perceived intention to reuse the systems. A theoretical model is proposed to illustrate the causal relationships. The implications and limitations of the study are also discussed.
Quark Fragmentation and Hadron Formation in Nuclear Matter

The hadron formation is, in the framework of the quantum chromodynamics theory (QCD), a non-perturbative process; this characteristic leads to important theoretical challenges. This is why experimental measurements of fragmentation in nuclei are a necessity in order to obtain substantial progress in our understanding of the mechanisms of hadron formation. The thesis begins with the introduction of theoretical background, followed by an overview of theoretical models. The thesis continues with the analysis of Jefferson Lab data obtained with a 5 GeV electron beam incident on various targets ($^2$H, C, Al, Fe, Sn and Pb). The reaction products are measured with the CLAS spectrometer of Hall B. The main results are: (a) multi-dimensional analysis of the measured observables, which permits a better confrontation with theoretical models and the extraction of temporal information on fragmentation, and (b) the observation of a non linear hadronic attenuation as a function of the target's nuclear radius. The PyQM event generator, developed to reproduce the data from the HERMES collaboration, is also presented. The results are ambivalent, the theoretical basis used does not seem to apply to the studied case, however, some characteristics of the data are reproduced allowing to understand their origin, which is sometimes unexpected. Finally, the possibilities for future experiments, at Jefferson Lab and at an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), are explored.
A significant-loophole-free test of Bell's theorem with entangled photons

John Bell’s theorem of 1964 states that local elements of physical reality, existing independent of measurement, are inconsistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics (Bell, J. S. (1964), Physics (College. Park. Md). Specifically, correlations between measurement results from distant entangled systems would be smaller than predicted by quantum physics. This is expressed in Bell’s inequalities. Employing modifications of Bell’s inequalities, many experiments have been performed that convincingly support the quantum predictions. Yet, all experiments rely on assumptions, which provide loopholes for a local realist explanation of the measurement. Here we report an experiment with polarization-entangled photons that simultaneously closes the most significant of these loopholes. We use a highly efficient source of entangled photons, distributed these over a distance of 58.5 meters, and implemented rapid random setting generation and high-efficiency detection to observe a violation of a Bell inequality with high statistical significance. The merely statistical probability of our results to occur under local realism is less than 3.74×10-31, corresponding to an 11.5 standard deviation effect.
Eigen structure of a new class of structured covariance and inverse covariance matrices

There is a one to one mapping between a p dimensional strictly positive deﬁnite covariance matrix (cid:2) and its matrix logarithm L . We exploit this relationship to study the structure induced on (cid:2) through a sparsity constraint on L . Consider L as a random matrix generated through a basis expansion, with the support of the basis coefﬁcients taken as a simple random sample of size s = s ∗ from the index set [ p(p + 1 )/ 2 ] = { 1 ,. ,p(p + 1 )/ 2 } . We ﬁnd that the expected number of non-unit eigenvalues of (cid:2) , denoted E [| A |] , is approximated with near perfect accuracy by the solution of the equation
Raman scattering study of microcrystals of perovskite titanates

ABSTRACT Microcrystals of several perovskite titanates (ATiO3, A:Pb, Mn, Ni, Co, Mg) have been synthesized by the corrosion product method. The products were characterized by XRD, SEM, and Micro-Raman scattering. The average size of the microcrystals is estimated to about 2 μm by the scanning electron microscope. Micro-Raman scattering spectra show the typical line shapes corresponding to the crystal structures of ATiO3. In the trigonal MgTiO3, the intensities of the several Raman modes take the maximum value at 50°C as temperature increase from room temperature. It is indicated that the peaks are caused by the impurities rather than the structural change.
Improved confidence interval estimation of the population standard deviation using ranked set sampling: A simulation study

1 Department of Community Medicine and Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Kuwait University, Kuwait 2 Department of Epidemiology, Stempel College of Public Health, Florida International University, Miami, USA 3 Department of Natural Sciences, Faculty of Science, American University of Kuwait Kuwait 4 Department of Statistics, College of Science, Florida International University Miami, Florida, USA
Digital Commons@DePaul Digital Commons@DePaul

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi form an important symbiosis with plants that make these fungi critical for plant health and ecosystem functioning. Although previous studies have shown that AM fungi disperse through the air, few studies have examined which environmental factors may be impacting their dispersal and aerial community composition, especially at large geographical scales. The goal of this study was to determine which environmental factors influenced air-dispersed AM fungal species composition across five different research sites in the Midwest and Western regions of the United States. By collecting dust at three different heights in the air, using modified Wilson and Cooke (MWAC) dust collectors, aerial AM fungal eDNA was extracted. Species were identified and then analyzed by looking at which biotic and abiotic environmental factors explained variations in aerial AM fungal species richness between the five research sites. Data trends showed that sites at higher elevation levels had greater species richness than lower elevation sites. The results suggest that elevation is a predictive environmental variable of AM fungal species richness. This could have important implications for land management as climate change and human activities continue to threaten vulnerable high-elevation ecosystems.
Factors associated with body image distortion in Korean adolescents

Purpose: Body image incorporates cognitive and affective components as well as behaviors related to own body perception. This study evaluated the occurrence of body image distortion and its correlates in Korean adolescents. Methods: In a school-based cross-sectional survey, a total of 2,117 adolescents were recruited. They filled out self-completing questionnaires on body image distortion, eating attitudes, and behaviors (Eating Attitude Test-26) and related factors. Results: Body image distortions were found in 51.8 percent of adolescents. Univariate analyses showed that boys and older adolescents had higher rates of body image distortion. In the multivariate analyses, body image distortion was associated with high risk for eating disorders (odds ratio [OR] = 1.69; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.11–2.58; P = 0.015) and being over weight (OR = 33.27; 95% CI 15.51–71.35; P  0.001) or obese (OR = 9.37; 95% CI 5.06–17.34; P  0.001). Conclusion: These results suggest that body image distortion is relatively common in Korean adolescents, which has implications for adolescents at risk of developing
ASH 2009 meeting report—Top 10 clinically‐oriented abstracts in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

TG101348 is an oral JAK2-selective inhibitor with in vitro and in vivo activity against JAK2 V617F-driven myeloproliferation [1–4]. Fifty nine patients with primary myeloﬁbrosis (PMF) or post-polycythemia vera/essential thrombocythemia myeloﬁbrosis (PV/ET MF) were treated with TG101348 in a Phase I/II study
Microsomal triglyceride transfer protein lipidation and control of CD1d on antigen-presenting cells

Microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (MTP), an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) chaperone that loads lipids onto apolipoprotein B, also regulates CD1d presentation of glycolipid antigens in the liver and intestine. We show MTP RNA and protein in antigen-presenting cells (APCs) by reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction and by immunoblotting of mouse liver mononuclear cells and mouse and human B cell lines. Functional MTP, demonstrated by specific triglyceride transfer activity, is present in both mouse splenocytes and a CD1d-positive mouse NKT hybridoma. In a novel in vitro transfer assay, purified MTP directly transfers phospholipids, but not triglycerides, to recombinant CD1d. Chemical inhibition of MTP lipid transfer does not affect major histocompatibility complex class II presentation of ovalbumin, but considerably reduces CD1d-mediated presentation of α-galactosylceramide (α-galcer) and endogenous antigens in mouse splenic and bone marrow–derived dendritic cells (DCs), as well as in human APC lines and monocyte-derived DCs. Silencing MTP expression in the human monocyte line U937 affects CD1d function, as shown by diminished presentation of α-galcer. We propose that MTP acts upstream of the saposins and functions as an ER chaperone by loading endogenous lipids onto nascent CD1d. Furthermore, our studies suggest that a small molecule inhibitor could be used to modulate the activity of NKT cells.
Validation of Himawari-8/AHI Radiometric Calibration Based on Two Years of In-Orbit Data

The new geostationary (GEO) meteorological satellite of the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), Himawari-8, entered operation on 7 July 2015. Himawari-8 features the new 16-band Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI), whose spatial resolution and observation frequency are improved over those of its predecessor MTSAT-series satellites. These improvements will bring about unprecedented levels of performance in nowcasting services and short-range weather forecasting systems. In view of the essential nature of navigation and radiometric calibration in fully leveraging the imager’s potential, this study reports on the current status of calibration for the AHI. Image navigation is accurate to within 1 km, and band-to-band coregistration has also been validated. Infrared (IR) band calibration is accurate to within 0.2 K with no significant diurnal variation and is being validated using an approach developed under the Global Space-based Inter-Calibration System (GSICS) framework. Validation approaches are currently being tested for the visible and near-IR (NIR) bands. Two such approaches were compared and found to produce largely consistent results.
Loop-Type Wave-Generation Method for Generating Wind Waves under Long-Fetch Conditions

AbstractIt is important to develop a wave-generation method for extending the fetch in laboratory experiments, because previous laboratory studies were limited to the fetch shorter than several dozen meters. A new wave-generation method is proposed for generating wind waves under long-fetch conditions in a wind-wave tank, using a programmable irregular-wave generator. This new method is named a loop-type wave-generation method (LTWGM), because the waves with wave characteristics close to the wind waves measured at the end of the tank are reproduced at the entrance of the tank by the programmable irregular-wave generator and the mechanical wave generation is repeated at the entrance in order to increase the fetch. Water-level fluctuation is measured at both normal and extremely high wind speeds using resistance-type wave gauges. The results show that, at both wind speeds, LTWGM can produce wind waves with long fetches exceeding the length of the wind-wave tank. It is observed that the spectrum of wind wave.
Towards Versatile Embodied Navigation Supplementary Material

Training Details. We apply max clip gradient normalization to all models to stabilize the training. To encourage the agent to explore different actions in reinforcement learning, we add the entropy of predicted action distribution to the loss as a regularizer. We observe that the target position in most episodes can be reached within 50 steps following the shortest path, hence we set the length of the rollout sequence to 100 steps during the frame collection, which allows extra exploration steps. For each round of frame collection, we update the agent for 2 epochs. We use 32 NVIDIA RTX 2080 GPUs to train the agents. Each GPU runs 4 training processes. It results in 128 training processes in total. In single task learning, all 32 GPUs are assigned to one task. In multi-task learning, each task is assigned with 8 GPUs. The format of visual observations in the four tasks are identical, where the vertical FOV of the camera is 90◦, the size of RGB observation is 224 × 224, and the size of depth observation is 256× 256. In image-goal nav. task, the size of the goal image is 224× 224. In audio-goal nav. task, the sampling rate of the binaural audio is 16000Hz. Following [2], we transform the binaural audio wave to 41 × 44 × 2 spectrogram map through Short-time Fourier transform. The hyperparameters used in the quantitative experiments are listed in Table. I. We utilize these hyperparameters across the learning of VIENNAST/MT and Seq2SeqST/MT. Network Architecture Details. For fair comparison, the following encoders are used to encode sensory observations and target instructions for Seq2Seq and VIENNA in experiments: • Visual Encoder. Following [3–5], for RGB observation, we apply an ImageNet [6]-pretrained ResNet50 [7] where the last linear classifier is removed to extract semantic visual features. Similarly, for depth observation, we use a modified ResNet50 pretrained in point-goal navigation. The pretrained ResNet50 backbones are frozen during training. Learnable spatial embeddings are concatenated to the visual features to encode spatial features.
A Simple Mathematical Model for the Effects of the Growth of Tourism on Environment

While many authors have discussed the evolution of tourism flow, few are concerned with how tourism flow starts to evolve and the mechanism behind that evolution. The purpose of this work is to propose a mathematical model that may assist understanding of the mechanism. Assuming basic relationships between the resources, number of visitors and their respective rates of growth, we derive a model defined by two Ordinary Differential Equations whose solutions describe the evolution of both variables in time. As a study case for the model, we use data collected at the Juatinga Ecological Reserve, 23.2o S, 44.5o W , in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We conclude that the model fits the data well and the values that can be obtained for the parameters characterize qualitatively the type of visitors.
Airfoil shape optimization using output-based adapted meshes

In this paper, gradient-based aerodynamic shape optimization with output constraints is implemented using adaptive meshes updated via adjoint-based error estimates. All the constraints, including geometry and trim conditions, are handled simultaneously in the optimization. The trim constraints may involve outputs that are not directly targeted for optimization, and hence also not for error estimation and mesh adaptation. However, numerical errors in these outputs often indirectly affect the calculation of the objective. The method adopted in this work takes this effect into account, so that the mesh is adapted to predict both objective outputs and constraint outputs with appropriate accuracy. In other words, the entire optimization problem is targeted for adaptation. Instead of optimizing with a single fixed mesh resolution, the objective function is first evaluated on a relatively coarse mesh, which is subsequently adapted as the shape optimization proceeds. As the shape approaches the optimal design, the mesh becomes finer, in necessary regions, leading to a multi-fidelity optimization process. The multi-fidelity framework saves computational resources by reducing the mesh size at early stages of optimization, when the design is far from optimal and most of the shape changes happen. The optimization at each fidelity terminates once the change of the objective is smaller than the tolerance (estimated error) at the current fidelity mesh, reducing unnecessary effort in optimizing on low-fidelity meshes. The use of output-based error estimates prevents over-optimizing on a coarse mesh, or over-refining on an undesired shape. The proposed framework is demonstrated on several optimization problems, starting with a NACA 0012 airfoil. In each case, the shape is optimized to minimize the drag given a target lift and a minimum airfoil area. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method are investigated through comparisons with existing optimization techniques. We expect the framework to be even more important for more complex configurations, dramatic shape changes, or high-accuracy requirements.
Multilevel Modelling with Eigenvector Spatial Filtering and its Application to UN Score Data in Kendari

Spatial dependence is a condition where locations will affect its neighborhood that tend to have the same characteristics or attributes. Eigenvector spatial filtering (ESF) is a method initially used to overcome spatial dependence in one-level linear regression by adding the eigenvector function that describes spatial effect from model. This research aims to combine ESF with multilevel modelling and applied them into the data that has both spatial dependence and hierarchy effect and compare the results with those of conventional multilevel model (without ESF). The results indicate that ESF method gave a smaller variance of level-2 random effect and AIC value. It also can be shown that the students-teachers ratio is the only significant predictor that affect UN score in Kendari at the alpha level of 5%.
Multivariate Analyse der Basistypisierung von Bakterien unter Berücksichtigung epidemiologischer Informationen

As Salmonella enterica is seen to be one of the most important zoonotic bacteria, the base typing of Salmonella isolates in Germany comprises susceptibility tests against several antimicrobial agents. These are conducted by the national reference centres by broth microdilution observing minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC). In addition to data from resistance monitoring programs, these data can be used to investigate the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance. For a systematic analysis of large datasets, multivariate statistical methods are needed to assess changes in resistance patterns and to identify factors, which have an influence on the antimicrobial resistance. Within the scope of this thesis, methods were developed and methods from other research fields were described, which can be used to analyse multivariate resistance profiles. Besides regarding techniques for analysing qualitative susceptibility data, it was especially focussed on finding appropriate methods for analysing the ordinal scaled MIC values. To investigate the influence of several factors on the antimicrobial resistance, the multivariate distance-based permutation test was suggested, which was originally used to analyse ecological studies. The simple matching coefficient was chosen as distance measure for binary coded resistance profiles. The Manhattan distance, which is applicable on ordinal data, was chosen for log transformed MIC profiles and sir profiles. Furthermore, the resistance score was suggested, which summarises the multivariate resistance information to one value and can be interpreted as degree of resistance. This score can be calculated for qualitative and quantitative susceptibility data and can be analysed as a outcome in univariate regression models. For a reasonable interpretation of risk factor analyses results, it is important to know linkages between resistance properties of the tested antimicrobial agents. To estimate associations in qualitative susceptibility data, the resistance index and the susceptibility index were defined. Correlation coefficients and scatter plots were used to describe the relationships between MIC values. The application of the presented methods on Salmonella Typhimurium isolates, observed in a case-control study on sporadic salmonellosis in humans, showed that the developed methods may provide further insight into the occurrence of antimicrobial resistance.
Octopaminergic Modulation of Temporal Frequency Coding in an Identified Optic Flow-Processing Interneuron

Flying generates predictably different patterns of optic flow compared with other locomotor states. A sensorimotor system tuned to rapid responses and a high bandwidth of optic flow would help the animal to avoid wasting energy through imprecise motor action. However, neural processing that covers a higher input bandwidth itself comes at higher energetic costs which would be a poor investment when the animal was not flying. How does the blowfly adjust the dynamic range of its optic flow-processing neurons to the locomotor state? Octopamine (OA) is a biogenic amine central to the initiation and maintenance of flight in insects. We used an OA agonist chlordimeform (CDM) to simulate the widespread OA release during flight and recorded the effects on the temporal frequency coding of the H2 cell. This cell is a visual interneuron known to be involved in flight stabilization reflexes. The application of CDM resulted in (i) an increase in the cell's spontaneous activity, expanding the inhibitory signaling range (ii) an initial response gain to moving gratings (20–60 ms post-stimulus) that depended on the temporal frequency of the grating and (iii) a reduction in the rate and magnitude of motion adaptation that was also temporal frequency-dependent. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that the application of a neuromodulator can induce velocity-dependent alterations in the gain of a wide-field optic flow-processing neuron. The observed changes in the cell's response properties resulted in a 33% increase of the cell's information rate when encoding random changes in temporal frequency of the stimulus. The increased signaling range and more rapid, longer lasting responses employed more spikes to encode each bit, and so consumed a greater amount of energy. It appears that for the fly investing more energy in sensory processing during flight is more efficient than wasting energy on under-performing motor control.