Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECT OF STOCK CONTROL MANAGEMENT PROCEDURES ON INVENTORY MANAGEMENT PERFORMANCE IN GOVERNMENT MINISTRIES IN KENYA

Inventory control is the supply of goods and offerings at the proper time with the right time and amount. It is a reliable approach in which organizations are being controlled to make sure that customers are satisfied and corporation stays in operations via minimization of losses. Stock management has been a trouble to many public institutions in Kenya, which experience stock outs and overstocking. The study also sought to determine the effect of stock control management procedures on inventory management performance in the government ministries. The study adopted a cross sectional survey design. The target population of this study was 680 supply chain management officers in all the 20 Government ministries in Kenya. The sample size was determined using Fishers‟ formula. Stratified random sampling was used as it gives representative sample of the whole population. Both primary and secondary data were used. This study made use of semi-structured questionnaires to collect primary data. Secondary data was extracted from records availed by the targeted population. A pilot test was conducted to test the reliability and validity of the data collection instruments. The questionnaires were administered through a drop and pick later method. The data collected from the ministries headquarters, which form the largest buyers in terms of government financial allocation was both qualitative and quantitative. Thematic content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data that is, data collected from open ended questions. The results were then presented in form of a prose. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze quantitative data. In descriptive statistics, the study used frequency, mean, standard deviation and percentages. The analyzed data was then presented in tables and figures. In relation to inferential statistics the study used analysis of variance, correlation analysis and regression analysis. The study established that there is a positive and significant relationship between stock control management procedures and inventory management performance in government ministries in Kenya. The study recommends that a manual should be developed to guide the automation of systems to regulate inventory levels. This will help in ensuring efficiency in stock monitoring. In addition, a JIT policy should also be developed to regulate stock levels because stock arrives just and when it is needed. This will help in ensuring that there is no stock outs of overstocking. With proper record keeping and management government ministries can adopt Just in Time technique so as to avoid overstocking, improve forecasting and inventory management. Therefore, it is paramount for government ministries to automate their stock records.
Regularized economic model predictive control with barrier functions

In this article, we consider the use of barrier functions as a regularizing cost in economic model predictive control (EMPC). We focus on a specific variant, EMPC with generalized terminal constraints (G‐EMPC), as it is suitable for tackling large‐scale problems commonly arising in multiagent settings, which motivates our work. The benefits of using barrier functions are providing smoothing of the constrained problem, allowing the use of second‐order methods and warm‐starting, which reduces the iteration count significantly. Apart from these numerical benefits, recentered barrier functions can be used as a regularizing cost in the EMPC problem for enhancing closed‐loop convergence properties. We show that in the case of G‐EMPC, which allows the terminal state to be any equilibrium point, regularizing the problem provides (i) convergence of the predicted terminal state to a neighborhood of a globally optimal equilibrium point, (ii) asymptotic average performance guarantees for the closed‐loop system, and (iii) empirical evidence of accelerated numerical solution of the optimal control problem. Specifically we use a proximal‐like regularization, which penalizes the deviation from the previously predicted trajectories. We analyze system theoretic properties of the proposed scheme and provide simulation examples illustrating the numerical and system theoretical benefits of using barriers.
Effective Assessment of Workplace Problem-Solving in Higher Education

Aim/Purpose: Within higher education, graduating students who are able to solve ill-structured, complex, open-ended, and collaborative, workplace problems is recognized as paramount. Because of this, there is a need to assess this skill across the curriculum. Background: This paper addresses this issue by assessing problem-solving across a computing curriculum using an assessment instrument shown to be reliable and valid. Methodology: The method is based upon the implementation of the assessment instrument that uses a scenario-based asynchronous discussion board measuring the ability of student groups to solve workplace problems. The sample are computing students from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th year, and master’s levels at a UAE university. Contribution: This paper shows the problem-solving skills of students over four years of study across a computing curriculum and demonstrates the effectiveness of the instrument. Findings: There was a general increase in student problem-solving performance from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th year, and master’s levels, but students often failed to meet the expected level of performance for their year of study. In addition, the instrument was effective in assessing problem-solving. Recommendations for Practitioners: This assessment instrument, or one similar, that uses a scenario-based asynchronous discussion board can be used to measure the ability of student groups to solve workplace problems. Impact on Society: Students must be prepared to solve workplace problems to meet the needs of 21st century employment. Future Research: Further research should be conducted with this assessment instrument, or one similar, outside of this fairly unique UAE- based context.
Loneliness and the Big Five Personality Traits: A Meta–Analysis

This preregistered meta–analysis (k = 113, total n = 93 668) addressed how the Big Five dimensions of personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness) are related to loneliness. Robust variance estimation accounting for the dependency of effect sizes was used to compute meta–analytic bivariate correlations between loneliness and personality. Extraversion (r = −.370), agreeableness (r = −.243), conscientiousness (r = −.202), and openness (r = −.107) were negatively related to loneliness. Neuroticism (r = .358) was positively related to loneliness. These associations differed meaningfully in strength depending on how loneliness was assessed. Additionally, meta–analytic structural equation modelling was used to investigate the unique association between each personality trait and loneliness while controlling for the other four personality traits. All personality traits except openness remained statistically significantly associated with loneliness when controlling for the other personality traits. Our results show the importance of stable personality factors in explaining individual differences in loneliness. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology
Psychological well-being of an individual as a phenomenon

The article discusses the phenomenon of individual psychological well-being, its origin and development in the process of continuous education, focusing on the complexity and ambiguity of the concept of well-being from the standpoint of individual moral development, the motivations and emotions that determine one’s sense of satisfaction with oneself, one’s actions and life experiences. Psychological well-being is seen as an indicator of psychological health of a growing and maturing person, which includes mental health, is propped up by psychological literacy and is determined by the psychological culture of the person. Thus, the psychological health itself emerges as a result of deep interaction of development, training and education at each stage of ontogenesis. It is shown that the sensitive period for the feeling of psychological well-being and its development is preschool and school childhood, and its main condition is the experience of the child’s environment and their place in this environment, that is, the social development environment. Since the issues associated with psychological well-being of preschool and school age children fall within the realm of clinical psychologists working in institutions of public education, it is posited that: (1) students’ psychological well-being can become a major task and one of the important metrics of the psychological service within the education system; (2) solving these challenges requires dedicated professional training for teacher psychologists, aimed at developing their abilities and building their skills to analyze and transform the educational environment together with teachers and parents in terms of changing it in line with psychological and pedagogical conditions conducive to strengthening the feeling of psychological well-being of preschool and school age children.
Protein evolution is structure dependent and non-homogeneous across the tree of life

Motivation Protein sequence evolution is a complex process that varies among-sites within proteins and across the tree of life. Comparisons of evolutionary rate matrices for specific taxa (‘clade-specific models’) have the potential to reveal this variation and provide information about the underlying reasons for those changes. To study changes in patterns of protein sequence evolution we estimated and compared clade-specific models in a way that acknowledged variation within proteins due to structure. Results Clade-specific model fit was able to correctly classify proteins from four specific groups (vertebrates, plants, oomycetes, and yeasts) more than 70% of the time. This was true whether we used mixture models that incorporate relative solvent accessibility or simple models that treat sites as homogeneous. Thus, protein evolution is non-homogeneous over the tree of life. However, a small number of dimensions could explain the differences among models (for mixture models ~50% of the variance reflected relative solvent accessibility and ~25% reflected clade). Relaxed purifying selection in taxa with lower long-term effective population sizes appears to explain much of the among clade variance. Relaxed selection on solvent-exposed sites was correlated with changes in amino acid side-chain volume; other differences among models were more complex. Beyond the information they reveal about protein evolution, our clade-specific models also represent tools for phylogenomic inference. Availability Model files are available from https://github.com/ebraun68/clade_specific_prot_models. Contact ebraun68@ufl.edu Supplementary information Supplementary data are appended to this preprint.
Transdermal Oxybutynin for Overactive Bladder: Satisfaction and Perceived Effectiveness

Hypothesis / aims of study The Multicenter Assessment of Transdermal Therapy in Overactive Bladder with Oxybutynin (MATRIX) study examined the safety and effectiveness of the oxybutynin transdermal system (OXY-TDS) in a community-based population of adults with overactive bladder (OAB) [1]. In this analysis, we describe participant perceptions of OXYTDS and of their OAB condition during the MATRIX study.
Review on Nitric Oxide, Carbon Monoxide and Antisense Based Therapytowards Treatment of Restenosis

Balloon angioplasty has shown tremendous improvement in the treatment of atherosclerosis, but arterial renarrowing (restenosis) exists despite the benefits of intravascular devices called stents. Nitric Oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO) and Antisense therapy is some of the new potential treatment modalities. NO deficiency is associated with several vascular occlusive diseases, since NO regulates diverse aspects of blood vessel functions. More restricted human studies and several preclinical studies suggest that, NO supplement may solve the restenosis problem, although the data do not conclusively demonstrate this effect. CO, similar to NO, inhibits vascular smooth muscle cells (VSCM) proliferation and in turn relaxes blood vessels and inhibits platelet aggregation. Thus it is recently suggested that inhaling CO could address the restenosis problem. Recent advances in vascular gene transfer have shown positive results for cardiovascular diseases, particularly in the treatment of restenosis. Uncoiling the DNA, transcription of DNA, export of RNA, DNA splicing, RNA stability or RNA transcription involved in the synthesis of proteins in cellular proliferation are some of the process involving antisense based approach. This review focuses on discussing the recent advancements in the treatment of restenosis.
T-SHAPED I/O FEED BASED DIFFERENTIAL BANDPASS FILTER WITH SYMMETRICAL TRANSMISSION ZEROS AND HIGH COMMON MODE REJECTION RATIO

A T-shaped feed based differential microstrip bandpass filter (BPF) with high commonmode (CM) rejection ratio is presented. The filter comprises two magnetically coupled conventional square open-loop resonators (SOLRs), with capacitive coupled T-shaped input-output (I/O). The choice of the T-shaped I/O coupling feed enables a higher common-mode suppression of −57 dB at fd 0 that extends up to 4.1fd 0 with a value better than −30 dB. Frequency fd 0 is the cutoff frequency of the differential-mode (DM) passband. Moreover, this feed can symmetrically position two transmission zeros (TZs) at the upper and lower stopbands. This yields a highly selective and compact filter. Additionally, a T-shaped feed only excites the odd mode of the filter resulting in a wide stopband with high out of band rejection. The upper and stopband rejection of the filter is better than −50 dB. To demonstrate the design, DM and CM lumped models of the filter are proposed and studied. The filter operates at 1.263 GHz with a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 3.9%. The design is validated experimentally by characterizing DM, CM, common-mode to differential-mode (CD), and differential-mode to common mode (DC). Moreover, the group delay (GD) response of the filter is measured, and a significantly flat response is observed with a maximum delay variation of only 0.88 ns in the 3 dB bandwidth.
A Python Algorithm for Shortest-Path River Network Distance Calculations Considering River Flow Direction

Vector based shortest path analysis in geographic information system (GIS) is well established for road networks. Even though these network algorithms can be applied to river layers, they do not generally consider the direction of flow. This paper presents a Python 3.7 program (upstream_downstream_shortests_path_dijkstra.py) that was specifically developed for river networks. It implements multiple single-source (one to one) weighted Dijkstra shortest path calculations, on a list of provided source and target nodes, and returns the route geometry, the total distance between each source and target node, and the total upstream and downstream distances for each shortest path. The end result is similar to what would be obtained by an “all-pairs” weighted Dijkstra shortest path algorithm. Contrary to an “all-pairs” Dijkstra, the algorithm only operates on the source and target nodes that were specified by the user and not on all of the nodes contained within the graph. For efficiency, only the upper distance matrix is returned (e.g., distance from node A to node B), while the lower distance matrix (e.g., distance from nodes B to A) is not. The program is intended to be used in a multiprocessor environment and relies on Python’s multiprocessing package.
Successful Treatment of Dysphagia in a Case of Lateral Medullary Syndrome

Background: Lateral medullary syndrome is a known cause for apraxia, dysarthria, and dysphagia. It is caused by lesion in the posterolateral area of the medulla oblongata. Dysphagia, being a life-threatening condition, deserves immediate attention of the medical team and is of prime concern to Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs). Aim: The aim of the study was to document a successful case of dysphagia management in lateral medullary syndrome (LMS). Case report: This study documents a successful management of dysphagia in an individual with LMS. Assessment (perceptual and instrumental) showed reduction of peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO2) during feeding, slow laryngeal elevation with pooling of food and saliva in bilateral pyriform fossa, along with a high risk of penetration followed by aspiration. Weak tongue movement and improper lip closure were observed. Combinations of manual therapy and compensatory techniques were used for treating dysphagia. Oromotor exercises and respiratory exercises were used along with supraglottic maneuver, Masako maneuver, chin-tuck with effortful swallow, and Shaker’s exercise. Within 2 weeks of initiation of swallow therapy, the subject could start safe oral intake with pureed food and maintain normal SpO2 level during feeding. Conclusion: This case report demonstrates that dysphagia in LMS can be successfully treated with appropriate selection of combination of techniques in swallow therapy. Supraglottic swallow, Masako maneuver, chin-tuck, and Shaker’s exercise were found effective in this case study. We further conclude that early initiation of therapy is the key to faster recovery. Clinical significance: It is often seen in many of the patients with LMS that they end up with either Rhyle’s tube or percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube feeding until complete recovery. This case report highlights the importance of early initiation of therapy and combination of swallowing therapy techniques in order to avoid prolonged artificial tube feeding in these patients. Case RePORt 1,2,4Speech Swallow Pathologist, 3Consultant, 5,6Director 1,2,5,6Department of Neurology, AMRI Hospitals Mukundapur Kolkata, West Bengal, India 3Department of ENT, AMRI Hospitals Mukundapur, Kolkata West Bengal, India 4OKTO Health Care Unit, Kolkata, West Bengal, India Corresponding Author: Bhaskar Dey, Speech Swallow Pathologist, Department of Neurology, AMRI Hospitals Mukundapur, Kolkata, West Bengal, India, Phone: +917980182679 e-mail: dj.bd2009@gmail.com 10.5005/jp-journals-10023-1146
Validación del instrumento de recogida de información para evaluar la percepción de riesgo en hipertensos

Introduccion: en el municipio de Remedios, Villa Clara, se desarrolla una estrategia para promover la adherencia terapeutica en pacientes hipertensos, que asume la percepcion de riesgo como ente modulador; en este marco, se hizo necesaria la construccion y validacion de un instrumento para su medicion. Objetivo: presentar el proceso de construccion del cuestionario, asi como la validacion de contenido, criterio, constructo, y la evaluacion de su confiabilidad. Metodos: la muestra empleada fue de 444 hipertensos esenciales, de las tres areas de Remedios. La validacion de contenido se realizo segun expertos; la de criterio por la correlacion de Spearman y la de constructo por analisis de componentes principales. La confiabilidad se calculo por el coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach. Resultados: el coeficiente de concordancia entre expertos fue de 0,80 para los criterios: razonable, comprensible y sensible a variacion. Esto demostro que las categorias incluidas en el instrumento son apropiadas. El estadigrafo Rho de Spearman fue de 0,77 con significacion bilateral en el nivel de 0,01, para la correlacion entre adherencia terapeutica y percepcion de riesgo. El analisis multivariado por componentes principales sugirio la presencia de tres dimensiones: cognitivo-valorativa, afectivo-motivacional, e intencional-conductual. El Alfa de Cronbach fue de 0,82, lo que confirmo la confiabilidad del cuestionario. Conclusiones: los resultados mostrados a traves de las pruebas de validez y confiabilidad demostraron que el cuestionario es un instrumento apto para su uso y aplicacion, segun los objetivos perseguidos en su construccion, tanto para la investigacion como para el trabajo del medico de la atencion primaria.
The Lanata trichome mutation increases stomatal conductance and reduces leaf temperature in tomato

Background and aims Trichomes are epidermal structures with an enormous variety of ecological functions and economic applications. Glandular trichomes produce a rich repertoire of secondary metabolites, whereas non-glandular trichomes create a physical barrier against biotic and abiotic stressors. Intense research is underway to understand trichome development and function and enable breeding of more resilient crops. However, little is known on how enhanced trichome density would impinge on leaf photosynthesis, gas exchange and energy balance. Methods Previous work has compared multiple species differing in trichome density, instead here we analyzed monogenic trichome mutants in a single tomato genetic background (cv. Micro-Tom). We determined growth parameters, leaf spectral properties, gas exchange and leaf temperature in the hairs absent (h), Lanata (Ln) and Woolly (Wo) trichome mutants. Key results Shoot dry mass, leaf area, leaf spectral properties and cuticular conductance were not affected by the mutations. However, the Ln mutant showed increased carbon assimilation (A) possibly associated with higher stomatal conductance (gs), since there were no differences in stomatal density or stomatal index between genotypes. Leaf temperature was furthermore reduced in Ln in the early hours of the afternoon. Conclusions We show that a single monogenic mutation can increase glandular trichome density, a desirable trait for crop breeding, whilst concomitantly improving leaf gas exchange and reducing leaf temperature. HIGHLIGHT A monogenic mutation in tomato increases trichome density and optimizes gas exchange and leaf temperature
The Number of Maximal Independent Sets in the Pm-extended of Graphs

A maximal independent set is an independent set that is not a proper subset of any other independent set. Given a graph G of order n, we define the m P -extended of G, denoted G(m), as the graph consisting of G together with n copies of m P , a leaf of each path attached to exactly one vertex of G. In this paper, we determine the number of maximal independent sets of the m P -extended of a star and a path.
Phase Ib trial of ALT-803, an IL-15 superagonist, plus BCG for the treatment of BCG-naïve patients with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

510Background: The current standard of care for patients with high risk NMIBC is a TURBT or biopsy followed by a 6-week induction course of intravesical BCG and supplementary maintenance therapies every 3 months thereafter (Lamm 2000). While clinical response is significantly improved with BCG, 50% of patients are still expected to recur within 12 months (Sfakianos 2014). The pursuit of novel agents to prevent progression and recurrence of NMIBC remains critical. This phase Ib clinical trial evaluates the safety and tolerability of ALT-803, an IL-15 superagonist, plus BCG in BCG-naive NMIBC patients. Methods: A dose escalation 3+3 design was employed to evaluate intravesical ALT-803 plus 50 mg BCG in BCG-naive patients with intermediate or high-risk Ta, T1 or Tis stage NMIBC. Patients received intravesical ALT-803 in conjunction with BCG weekly for 6 consecutive weeks (induction) and then encouraged (but not required) to receive maintenance BCG alone as per standard practices. Patients had a routine cysto.