Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Notes on the demography of Algeria.

For the demographer the statistics on the population of Algeria possess a special interest. From them he may follow over more than a century the adjustment to an inhospitable environment of two culturally contrasting populations the one akin to Western Europe the other to the traditional Moslem Middle East. These historical contrasts assume new dimensions as both populations grow and the Moslems economically retarded rapidly extend their numerical preponderance. Although in other countries of North Africa one finds a similar cultural dualism and recent heightening of the problems of growth he has less there to go on by way of demographic measurement. Even for Algeria the records have notable deficiencies. Both Moslems and non-Moslems in Algeria are composed of somewhat heterogeneous elements. The non-Moslems (one million in 1954) as defined for statistical purposes include French citizens born in Algeria or elsewhere in the French Union Algerian Jews (established there since Roman times and recognized as French citizens since the Cr‚mieux decrees of 1870) naturalized and alien immigrants from other European countries (notably Spain Italy Malta Turkey) and those Moslems who havng renounced their special status are no longer subject to Koranic law. The Moslems (eight and a half million in 1954) include two main linguistic groups in the proportion of one to four. The smaller group speaks Berber an ancient language without a written alphabet. The larger speaks Arabic. About one in ten of the Moslem population also speaks French and about one in fourteen is bilingual in Arabic and Berber. (excerpt)
Forecasting the effects of vaccination on the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia using SEIRV compartmental models

OBJECTIVES This study aimed to develop susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered-vaccinated (SEIRV) models to examine the effects of vaccination on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case trends in Malaysia during Phase 3 of the National COVID-19 Immunization Program amidst the Delta outbreak. METHODS SEIRV models were developed and validated using COVID-19 case and vaccination data from the Ministry of Health, Malaysia, from June 21, 2021 to July 21, 2021 to generate forecasts of COVID-19 cases from July 22, 2021 to December 31, 2021. Three scenarios were examined to measure the effects of vaccination on COVID-19 case trends. Scenarios 1 and 2 represented the trends taking into account the earliest and latest possible times of achieving full vaccination for 80% of the adult population by October 31, 2021 and December 31, 2021, respectively. Scenario 3 described a scenario without vaccination for comparison. RESULTS In scenario 1, forecasted cases peaked on August 28, 2021, which was close to the peak of observed cases on August 26, 2021. The observed peak was 20.27% higher than in scenario 1 and 10.37% lower than in scenario 2. The cumulative observed cases from July 22, 2021 to December 31, 2021 were 13.29% higher than in scenario 1 and 55.19% lower than in scenario 2. The daily COVID-19 case trends closely mirrored the forecast of COVID-19 cases in scenario 1 (best-case scenario). CONCLUSIONS Our study demonstrated that COVID-19 vaccination reduced COVID-19 case trends during the Delta outbreak. The compartmental models developed assisted in the management and control of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia.
Quantification of Hydrologic Response of Staggered Contour Trenching for Horti‐pastoral Land Use System in Small Ravine Watersheds: A Paired Watershed Approach

A paired watershed approach was used to quantifying the effects of staggered contour trenching (SCT) densities on runoff and soil loss from a long‐term field experiment. Four adjacent physiographical similar ravine watersheds were selected. After 2‐year calibration period, three of the four watersheds were treated with different SCT densities and leaving one watershed as untreated control (WC). The SCT densities of 139, 278 and 417 trenches ha−1 were determined based on the targeted 25, 50 and 75% runoff trapping potential of the WT1, WT2 and WT3 treatment watersheds, respectively. Runoff and soil loss were recorded for a period of 11 years including 2 years of calibration period. The calibration and treatment prediction equations for the treatment watershed with respect to untreated control watershed were developed by the simple linear regression. F‐test and t‐test (p < 0·0001) suggested that calibration predictions were highly significant and treatment prediction equations differ significantly. Results showed mean runoff reductions of 86·1, 60·5 and 37·7% in the WT3, WT2 and WT1 treatment watershed over the control, respectively. Similar trends as the runoff were also recorded in soil loss reduction by 124·9, 77·1 and 40·0% for the WT3, WT2 and WT1 over Wc, respectively. Paired t‐test (p < 0·001) indicated that the means of the treatment effects on runoff and soil loss in treatment watersheds differ significantly with control watershed. It was concluded that 417 staggered contour trenches ha−1 is an optimum trenching density for supporting the horti‐pastoral land use system in ravine lands of India. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Quality Evaluation on Tourism Environment of Coastal City ——A Case Study of Lianyungang in Jiangsu Province, China

After analyzing the different senses among tourists and the complexity of the interaction among different environmental evaluation indicators, the mathematical model of synthetical fuzzy evaluation method is set up by using the fuzzy theory and approaches. Taking Lianyungang for example, this article quantitatively evaluates the tourism environment of Lianyungang. The evaluation indicates that Lianyungang tourism environment is basically good, but still with some environmental problems. In this sense, some suggestions on the tourism environmental management are proposed in the paper, which will hopefully provide support to the sustainable tourism development in Lianyungang.
Carbon Nanomaterial-Based Hydrogels as Scaffolds in Tissue Engineering: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract Carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNs) are a category of nanomaterials with various systems based on combinations of sp2 and sp3 hybridized carbon bonds, morphologies, and functional groups. CBNs can exhibit distinguished properties such as high mechanical strength, chemical stability, high electrical conductivity, and biocompatibility. These desirable physicochemical properties have triggered their uses in many fields, including biomedical applications. In this review, we specifically focus on applying CBNs as scaffolds in tissue engineering, a therapeutic approach whereby CBNs can act for the regeneration or replacement of damaged tissue. Here, an overview of the structures and properties of different CBNs will first be provided. We will then discuss state-of-the-art advancements of CBNs and hydrogels as scaffolds for regenerating various types of human tissues. Finally, a perspective of future potentials and challenges in this field will be presented. Since this is a very rapidly growing field, we expect that this review will promote interdisciplinary efforts in developing effective tissue regeneration scaffolds for clinical applications.
Intelligent Fault Diagnosis of Rolling Bearings Based on a Complete Frequency Range Feature Extraction and Combined Feature Selection Methodology

The utilization of multiscale entropy methods to characterize vibration signals has proven to be promising in intelligent diagnosis of mechanical equipment. However, in the current multiscale entropy methods, only the information in the low-frequency range is utilized and the information in the high-frequency range is discarded. In order to take full advantage of the information, in this paper, a fault feature extraction method utilizing the bidirectional composite coarse-graining process with fuzzy dispersion entropy is proposed. To avoid the redundancy of the full frequency range feature information, the Random Forest algorithm combined with the Maximum Relevance Minimum Redundancy algorithm is applied to feature selection. Together with the K-nearest neighbor classifier, a rolling bearing intelligent diagnosis framework is constructed. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is evaluated by a numerical simulation and two experimental examples. The validation results demonstrate that the extracted features by the proposed method are highly sensitive to the bearing health conditions compared with hierarchical fuzzy dispersion entropy, composite multiscale fuzzy dispersion entropy, multiscale fuzzy dispersion entropy, multiscale dispersion entropy, multiscale permutation entropy, and multiscale sample entropy. In addition, the proposed method is able to identify the fault categories and health states of rolling bearings simultaneously. The proposed damage detection methodology provides a new and better framework for intelligent fault diagnosis of rolling bearings in rotating machinery.
Effect of Phenolics from Aeonium arboreum on Alpha Glucosidase, Pancreatic Lipase, and Oxidative Stress; a Bio-Guided Approach

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a global issue affecting over a billion people, raising the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, and other ailments. It is often characterized by hypertension, dyslipidemia and/or obesity, and hyperglycemia. Chemical investigation of Aeonium arboreum (L.) Webb & Berthel led to the isolation of six compounds, viz. β-sitosterol, β-sitosterol glucoside, myricetin galactoside, quercetin rhamnoside, kaempferol rhamnoside, and myricetin glucoside. Interestingly, A. arboreum’s dichloromethane (DCM), 100 and 50% MeOH Diaion fractions and the isolated compound (quercetin-3-rhamnoside) revealed potent α-glucosidase inhibitory activity, especially 50% Diaion fraction. In addition, they also showed very potent antioxidant potential, especially the polar fractions, using DPPH, ABTS, FRAP, ORAC, and metal chelation assays. Notably, the 50% Diaion fraction had the highest antioxidant potential using DPPH and ORAC assays, while the 100% Diaion fraction and quercetin-3-rhamnoside showed the highest activity using ABTS, FRAP, and metal chelation assays. Also, quercetin-3-rhamnoside showed a good docking score of −5.82 kcal/mol in comparison to acarbose. In addition, molecular dynamic stimulation studies illustrated high stability of compound binding to pocket of protein. Such potent activities present A. arboreum as a complementary safe approach for the management of diabetes mellitus as well as MetS.
3-D inversion of magnetic data

We present a method for inverting surface magnetic data to recover 3-D susceptibility models. To allow the maximum flexibility for the model to represent geologically realistic structures, we discretize the 3-D model region into a set of rectangular cells, each having a constant susceptibility. The number of cells is generally far greater than the number of the data available, and thus we solve an underdetermined problem. Solutions are obtained by minimizing a global objective function composed of the model objective function and data misfit. The algorithm can incorporate a priori information into the model objective function by using one or more appropriate weighting functions. The model for inversion can be either susceptibility or its logarithm. If susceptibility is chosen, a positivity constraint is imposed to reduce the nonuniqueness and to maintain physical realizability. Our algorithm assumes that there is no remanent magnetization and that the magnetic data are produced by induced magnetization only. All minimizations are carried out with a subspace approach where only a small number of search vectors is used at each iteration. This obviates the need to solve a large system of equations directly, and hence earth models with many cells can be solved on a deskside workstation. The algorithm is tested on synthetic examples and on a field data set.
Benthic communities in the northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic area: potential prey for demersal fish

Bottom-water hypoxia ( < 2 mg O2 l) usually occurs on an annual basis on the Louisiana/Texas continental shelf from mid-May through mid-September over a large area (up to 20,000 km in mid-summer). The effects of hypoxia on the benthic infauna (potential prey) for demersal fish were examined, because changes in optimal diet can lead to negative impacts on growth and reproduction. Benthic samples were taken in three areas (inshore and offshore out of hypoxia and in the hypoxic area) during August 2003. Samples were also taken monthly from September 2003 to October 2004 at a fixed station (C6B) where summer hypoxia occurs consistently. The mean abundance of the benthic infauna in the three summer areas were not significantly different indicating similar prey abundances found in the study area. Diverse infaunal communities exist offshore of the hypoxic zone with similar species composition compared to the inshore but different compared to the hypoxic area. An abundance of benthos at the surface was not found at the summer 2003 hypoxic stations; therefore there was not an abundance of available prey at the surface. However, benthos migrated toward the surface at station C6B in June and July 2004 during hypoxia, providing an increase of prey at the surface compared to other months. During the spring months, the infaunal community was more diverse and abundant compared to the post hypoxic months (August, September, and October), which suggests fewer and less diverse potential prey in the fall for demersal predators. The most abundant prey items for demersal fish in the study area were polychaetes and secondarily molluscs. The benthic community abundances during the summer 2003 and 2004 were not expected and may be due to the storm events in summer 2003 and shorter duration of hypoxia in summer 2004.
A copper(ii) peptide helicate selectively cleaves DNA replication foci in mammalian cells

The use of copper-based artificial nucleases as potential anticancer agents has been hampered by their poor selectivity in the oxidative DNA cleavage process. An alternative strategy to solve this problem is to design systems capable of selectively damaging noncanonical DNA structures that play crucial roles in the cell cycle. We designed an oligocationic CuII peptide helicate that selectively binds and cleaves DNA three-way junctions (3WJs) and induces oxidative DNA damage via a ROS-mediated pathway both in vitro and in cellulo, specifically at DNA replication foci of the cell nucleus, where this DNA structure is transiently generated. To our knowledge, this is the first example of a targeted chemical nuclease that can discriminate with high selectivity 3WJs from other forms of DNA both in vitro and in mammalian cells. Since the DNA replication process is deregulated in cancer cells, this approach may pave the way for the development of a new class of anticancer agents based on copper-based artificial nucleases.
Accuracy of Palatal Orthodontic Mini-Implants Placed Using Fully Digital Planned Insertion Guides: A Cadaver Study

Digital workflows have become integral in orthodontic diagnosis and therapy, reducing risk factors and chair time with one-visit protocols. This study assessed the transfer accuracy of fully digital planned insertion guides for orthodontic mini-implants (OMIs) compared with freehanded insertion. Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) datasets and intraoral surface scans of 32 cadaver maxillae were used to place 64 miniscrews in the anterior palate. Three groups were formed, two using printed insertion guides (A and B) and one with freehand insertion (C). Group A used commercially available customized surgical templates and Group B in-house planned and fabricated insertion guides. Postoperative CBCT datasets were superimposed with the planning model, and accuracy measurements were performed using orthodontic software. Statistical differences were found for transverse angular deviations (4.81° in A vs. 12.66° in B and 5.02° in C, p = 0.003) and sagittal angular deviations (2.26° in A vs. 2.20° in B and 5.34° in C, p = 0.007). However, accurate insertion depth was not achieved in either guide group; Group A insertion was too shallow (−0.17 mm), whereas Group B insertion was deeper (+0.65 mm) than planned. Outsourcing the planning and fabrication of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing insertion guides may be beneficial for certain indications; particularly, in this study, commercial templates demonstrated superior accuracy than our in-house–fabricated insertion guides.
Nuevas técnicas de clasificación probabilística de imágenes hiperespectrales

Hyperspectral sensors provide hundreds of images, corresponding to different wavelength channels, for the same area on the surface of the Earth. Since different materials show different spectral properties, hyperspectral imagery is an effective technology for accurately discriminating and classifying materials. However, issues such as the high dimensionality of the data and the presence of noise and mixed pixels in the data, present several challenges for image classification. Dealing with these issues, this thesis proposes several new techniques for hyperspectral image classification. Developing subspace-based techniques for probabilistic classification is the main focus of the thesis. Specifically, we propose subspace-based multinomial logistic regression methods for learning the posterior probabilities. Furthermore, in order to better characterize mixed pixels in the scene, we propose an innovative method for the integration of the global posterior probability distributions and local probabilities which result from the whole image and a set of previously derived class combination maps, respectively. Another contribution of the thesis is the integration of spatial-contextual information using a robust relaxation method, which includes the information from the discontinuity maps estimated from the original image cube. Finally, the thesis introduces a new multiple features learning method which does not require any regularization or weight parameters. We apply the proposed method for fusion and classification of hyperspectral and LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques is illustrated by using several simulated and real hyperspectral data sets and comparing with state-of-the-art methods.
Sport schools in Europe: a scoping study of research articles (1999–2022)

Sport schools have increased in popularity over the past three decades, and research in the area has proliferated. This study presents an overview of sport school literature, by investigating peer-reviewed articles, summarising the findings of relevant articles, and identifying possible gaps in this research area. In total, 55 articles are included. The descriptive summary reports publication year, study location, research design, methods, theoretical perspectives, population, and sport(s) studied. The thematic overview comprises two primary sections – research about sport schools and research in sport schools . The former cover ‘outside’ perspectives, such as socio-political and educational policy issues while the latter cover ‘inside’ perspectives focusing on the actors – student athletes and coaches. In the discussion it is acknowledged that pedagogical perspectives in sport school literature are limited, that research on sport schools’ admissions processes is overlooked, and concerns raised as to if sport schools are or should be socially inclusive.
A review of geology and engineering geology in Singapore

Summary A mass rapid transit (MRT) railway system is soon to be constructed in Singapore. Attention is being paid to details of the engineering geology of the island, which are generally not well documented or understood. The main solid formations, both igneous and sedimentary, are deeply weathered, often with an abrupt boundary between completely weathered and slightly to moderately weathered rocks. They have a high degree of fracturing and the sedimentary Jurong Formation has a high but variable dip. They are overlain by Quaternary deposits, many of which have poor geotechnical properties. A soft marine clay and overlying peaty deposits present particular problems in excavations. Each has a low strength and high compressibility and water tables are close to the ground surface. Variations in the geotechnical characteristics of the marine clay are now being recognized. The soft deposits are mainly found in buried channels cut during lower stands of sea level in the recent geological past. The channels have steep sides, and at many sites geotechnical conditions change very rapidly.
Remote Versus Local Impacts of Energy Backscatter on the North Atlantic SST Biases in a Global Ocean Model

The use of coarse resolution and strong grid‐scale dissipation has prevented global ocean models from simulating the correct kinetic energy level. Recently parameterizing energy backscatter has been proposed to energize the model simulations. Parameterizing backscatter reduces long‐standing North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) and associated surface current biases, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we apply backscatter in different geographic regions to distinguish the different physical processes at play. We show that an improved Gulf Stream path is due to backscatter acting north of the Grand Banks to maintain a strong deep western boundary current. An improved North Atlantic Current path is due to backscatter acting around the Flemish Cap, with likely an improved nearby topography‐flow interactions. These results suggest that the SST improvement with backscatter is partly due to the resulted strengthening of resolved currents, whereas the role of improved eddy physics requires further research.
The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom

An attachment is provided for "hot sticks" of the type used for raising or lowering hot lines or power lines used for transmitting high voltage current. To facilitate the engagement, a radially projecting arm is provided for hooking the attachment over the wire. A pair of upwardly and downwardly inclined arms are attached to the attachment in angularly spaced relation to the radial arm. By twisting the pole about its axis, the wire may be engaged between the ends of the inclined ends to permit the line to be raised and lowered.
Approximate Bayesian Computation in Evolution and Ecology

In the past 10 years a statistical technique, approximate Bayesian computation (ABC), has been developed that can be used to infer parameters and choose between models in the complicated scenarios that are often considered in the environmental sciences. For example, based on gene sequence and microsatellite data, the method has been used to choose between competing models of human demographic history as well as to infer growth rates, times of divergence, and other parameters. The method fits naturally in the Bayesian inferential framework, and a brief overview is given of the key concepts. Three main approaches to ABC have been developed, and these are described and compared. Although the method arose in population genetics, ABC is increasingly used in other fields, including epidemiology, systems biology, ecology, and agent-based modeling, and many of these applications are briefly described.