Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Innovating for skills enhancement in agricultural sciences in Africa: The centrality of field attachment programs

Africa remains an intensely agrarian continent, with two-thirds of its people directly or indirectly deriving their livelihood from agriculture. Higher agricultural education has thus emphasised production of graduates with the requisite skills to drive agricultural development. Despite these efforts, too few graduates in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have the employable skills necessary to transition to the labour market. A similar situation is observable among agricultural science graduates, who are vital to serving rural smallholder farmers. Most Colleges of Agriculture in Africa offer field attachment internships in agriculture and related fields but they are largely designed to cater for undergraduate students and are not part of the training programs at graduate level. To ameliorate this gap, the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), a network of 55 member universities in SSA, designed and rolled out an innovative field attachment program award (FAPA), launched in 2010, to serve graduate students. The FAPA is competitively based and designed to encourage students to follow through with the dissemination of their research and to enable them to link more closely with the communities and agencies working in the geographical area where the research was undertaken. During the period 2010–2015, five grant cycles were successfully implemented and 114 graduate students from 17 countries in SSA awarded. This article discusses the lessons learned during this period by examining two key areas: (1) the application process and implementation of the awards; and (2) the reported outcomes and challenges for grantees. Establishing the award has generated key technical and implementation lessons that the network and individual universities have been able to use to improve and institutionalise processes. Grantees have reported gaining a range of cross-cutting skills in personal mastery, initiative leadership and innovativeness, proactivity, flexibility, communication, analytical capacity, teamwork, networking and advocacy, and technical capacity, particularly in engaging with smallholder farmers. They have also noted significant challenges, in particular around establishing productive and sustainable engagement with smallholder farmers. These outcomes have influenced curricular reviews by member universities, with particular emphasis on these skills sets. Keywords: graduate employability, internships, sub-Saharan Africa, university
Ensemble Learning for Hyperspectral Image Classification Using Tangent Collaborative Representation

Recently, collaborative representation classification (CRC) has attracted much attention for hyperspectral image analysis. In particular, tangent space CRC (TCRC) has achieved excellent performance for hyperspectral image classification in a simplified tangent space. In this article, novel Bagging-based TCRC (TCRC-bagging) and Boosting-based TCRC (TCRC-boosting) methods are proposed. The main idea of TCRC-bagging is to generate diverse TCRC classification results using the bootstrap sample method, which can enhance the accuracy and diversity of a single classifier simultaneously. For TCRC-boosting, it can provide the most informative training samples by changing their distributions dynamically for each base TCRC learner. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is validated using three real hyperspectral data sets. The experimental results show that both TCRC-bagging and TCRC-boosting outperform their single classifier counterpart. In particular, the TCRC-boosting provides superior performance compared with the TCRC-bagging.
Overcoming the race-sex barrier: what matters most in the executive sponsorship of black women

6 Introduction.7 Literature Review.9 Hypotheses.14 Method.36 Results.45 Discussion.56 Conclusion.67 References.69 APPENDIX A: Research Model.84 APPENDIX B: Sponsor Survey.85 APPENDIX C: Protégé Survey.97 APPENDIX D: Recruitment Email – Protégés. 101 APPENDIX E: Recruitment EmailSponsors.102 APPENDIX F: LinkedIn Post.103 EXECUTIVE SPONSORSHIP OF BLACK WOMEN
On Consideration of Content and Memory Sizes in 5G D2D-Assisted Caching Networks

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication with caching technology has emerged as a promising technique for offloading the traffic and boosting the throughput of the fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. The combined impact of cache memory size of user equipments (UEs) and content sizes, which are two crucial factors in D2D-assisted caching networks, were usually ignored in the existing researches. In this paper, an optimization algorithm is proposed to maximize the cache hit probability and cache-aided throughput, with the consideration of various cache memory sizes of UEs and content sizes. Firstly, users are grouped according to the cache memory sizes and the content sizes. Then the general mathematical expressions for the optimization of cache hit probability and cache-aided throughput with the constraints of cache memory sizes and content sizes are obtained. Subsequently, a Packet Cache Strategy (PCS) algorithm is proposed to obtain the caching probability matrix with the maximum cache hit probability and cache-aided throughout by taking user caching probability of a file as a variable. Finally, numerical results show that the sizes of the requested files affect the caching willingness of users, and the proposed PCS can achieve the highest cache hit probability and the best cache-aided throughput comparing with two other existing methods.
Cannulation of the subclavian vein using real-time ultrasound guidance

Cannulation of the subclavian vein has many advantages when compared to other anatomical sites for central venous access. Difficulty in its ultrasonic visualisation, and the perceived consequent ‘higher’ complication rate, mean that this approach has fallen out of favour. This barrier, however, may now have disappeared. In this article, we discuss the indications, contraindications and complications associated with subclavian vein cannulation, and present an ultrasound-guided approach to infraclavicular subclavian cannulation.
Infarto agudo de miocardio lejos de los centros de hemodinamia, percepción de la calidad de vida postratamiento con fibrinolíticos y factores relacionados

Resumen Introducción: la mortalidad en el infarto agudo de miocardio con elevación del segmento ST (IAMCEST) ha disminuido, pese a ello, existe evidencia que sugiere un deterioro de la calidad de vida (CV) a largo plazo en estos pacientes. Objetivo: evaluar la CV percibida y los factores relacionados en pacientes que presentaron un IAMCEST y recibieron tratamiento de reperfusión con fibrinolíticos. Material y métodos: aplicación de cuestionario EQ-5D-5L para valorar CV de pacientes con IAMCEST seleccionados entre los ingresados en el período junio de 2007 a junio de 2017 en una unidad de cuidados intensivos (UCI) privada del interior del país. Resultados: se analizaron 86 pacientes con una mediana de edad de 67,5 años (intervalo intercuartil= 59-77,5). El 77% recibió fibrinolíticos, de los cuales 74% presentó criterios de reperfusión. El tratamiento fue iniciado antes de los 120 minutos en el 74% de los casos. Entre los sobrevivientes al iniciar el estudio se seleccionaron al azar 30 pacientes para evaluación de la CV. La media de seguimiento fue de 6 años (4-8) desde el IAMCEST. Los aspectos de CV alterados fueron: movilidad 6/23 (26%), autocuidado 4/23 (17%), actividades usuales 6/23 (26%), dolor 4/23 (17%) y una CV global alterada 8/30 (27%). En una escala de 0-100, el nivel de CV global percibido fue de 90 (70-99). La CV global alterada se asocia a insuficiencia cardíaca (IC) posterior al evento (67% con IC vs 17% sin IC, p: 0,05) y a un tiempo desde el IAMCEST menor a cinco años (38% vs 6%, p:0,02). Las alteraciones en la movilidad son más frecuentes en mujeres (57%) que en hombres (12%), p: 0,02, y en pacientes con dolor (43%) vs sin dolor (6%), p: 0,03. Una mayor edad se asocia con autocuidado alterado (69 años [58-78] vs 92 años [87-93], p=0,013). El retraso en el tratamiento (>120 minutos) se asocia a alteraciones en la movilidad (80% vs 13%, p: 0,005), en el autocuidado (60% vs 7%, p: 0,01) y a limitación en actividades usuales (60% vs 13%, p: 0,03). Conclusiones: los pacientes con IAMCEST que reciben tratamiento de reperfusión con fibrinolíticos en nuestro medio pueden presentar compromiso de la CV. El retraso en el tratamiento se asociaría a CV alterada a largo plazo. Palabras clave: INFARTO DEL MIOCARDIO FIBRINOLÍTICOS CALIDAD DE VIDA
Use of Optical Fiber Sensor for Monitoring the Degradation of Ac-Dex Biopolymeric Nanoparticles

Abstract: Acetalated dextran (Ac-Dex) is a promising pH-sensitive biocompatible and biodegradable polymer for nanomedicine applications. In this work, Ac-Dex nanoparticles were synthesized by two different solvent evaporation methods, the single nanoemulsion and the double nanoemulsion. The Ac-Dex particles were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and the synthesis of highly homogeneous spherical particles was verified. Then, an optical fiber sensor based on quasi-elastic light scattering and comprised of only single-mode optical fibers and standard telecommunication devices showed sensitivity regarding the nanoparticles concentrations and was used for monitoring their degradation over 12 h under pH and temperature conditions of cancerous tissues. The results revealed a well-controlled degradation pattern, corroborating the suitability of the modified polymer to the release of active compounds in a sustainable manner and also demonstrating the applicability of the sensor for the in situ evaluation of the degradation.
Robust feedback stabilization using high‐gain observer via event triggering

In this article, the problem of robust output feedback stabilization of single‐input single‐output nonlinear systems is studied in the event‐triggering framework. In this work, an event‐triggered output feedback law based on a high‐gain observer is constructed, which guarantees the stability of closed‐loop system. First, the high‐gain observer with a triggering scheme is designed to estimate the plant state in the presence of external disturbances subject to any satisfactory accuracy of the estimation error. The observer‐based triggering mechanism decides the transmission of plant output to the observer by observing a certain event condition. Similarly, another triggering mechanism is designed using the estimated state of observer that triggers the control signal to be updated only when it is satisfied. Under this proposed event‐triggering framework, the stability of closed‐loop system is then analyzed. Here, we provide the simplified design technique, in which the high‐gain parameter and the triggering thresholds can be selected independently to achieve any desired bound for the plant trajectory. The results are finally demonstrated through simulation of a numerical example.
Determining International Parasport Success Factors For Para-Athletics In The UK

This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version PEAKE, Rebecca and DAVIES, Larissa (2019). Determining International Parasport Success Factors For Para-Athletics In The UK. In: BREITBARTH, Tim, BODET, Guillaume, LUNA, Álvaro Fernández, NARANJO, Pablo Burillo and BIELONS, Gerardo, (eds.) Book of abstracts: 27th EASM European Sport Management Conference: Connecting Sport Practice and Science, Seville, Spain, 3-6 September 2019. Universidad Europea, 691 -692.
Evaluation of noise pollution in Shiraz hospitals

Introduction: High sound, is an occupational and environmental hazard common. Hospitals as medical and health care setting are affected by noise sources. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the noise pollution in Shiraz hospitals. Methods: A cross-sectional study in different parts and the area around the 8 educational and non-educational hospitals in Shiraz was performed. For all hospitals Indices Leq (inside and outside), lmax, lmin, and SIL were measured in the morning, afternoon and night by Sound level meter TES 1358. Data was analyzed by SPSS 16 and Test ANOVA and t-test and Measurement Repetitive were performed. Correspondence: Zahra Zamanian, PhD. Facukty of Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Shiraz, Iran Tel:+98 9177168775 Email: zamanianz@sums.ac. ir Results: Average measured parameters Leq (inside and outside), lmax, lmin, and SIL in all hospitals and in different shifts was more than limits of the country. The average leq inside and outside were between 53 to 60 and 65 to 85 dB, respectively in teaching hospitals and 49 to 58 and 48 to 71 dB in non-teaching hospitals were variable. Average all parameters in teaching hospitals was more than for non-teaching hospitals. Conclusion: In all sites and times of day and night, even at night shifts, the noise pollution is a serious problem in all hospitals. Thus, engineering control and management measures are recommended to improve the environment of medical and choice of appropriate equipment.
Tonology and sentence structure in Greek

The view that human communication is essentially a matter of sharing mental states, especially communicative intentions, has been immensely influential in pragmatics and beyond. Drawing together and elaborating various lines of criticism, I argue that this influence has been mostly harmful; in particular, it has misdirected research on the evolution and development of language and communication.
Hedonic Price Functions and Wine Price Determinants: A Review of Empirical Research

Abstract The objective of this paper is to present a descriptive review of all the studies published on wine price determinants. The selection process has been carefully designed to assure that we cover the complete literature of hedonic price functions and wine price determinants. Because of the heterogeneity among these studies, the objective was to classify all the determinants in clusters related to geographical and agricultural factors, time horizon, public information and, supply factors (production costs and volume of production). For this review, we have identified a list of 117 papers published on price determinants over the period 1993 to 2018.
Standardization of durian fruit peels (Durio zibethinus Murr.) extract and antioxidant activity using DPPH method

Durian fruit peels (Durio zibethinus Murr.) has been studied previously and reported to have pharmacological activity that has the potential to be antioxidant and antihypercholesterol. The ethanolic extracts of Durian fruit peels contained secondary metabolites, namely flavonoids, polyphenols, carotenes, and saponins. The purpose of this study to determine the non-specific parameters and specific parameters of the ethanol extract of durian fruit peels and to evaluate the antioxidant activity with the DPPH method. Standardization of herbal ingredients is an important thing to do so that the safety and quality of herbal medicines can be maintained. Two different cultivars of durian fruit peels are used, there are Medan and Monthong. The results of non-specific parameters between Medan and Monthong cultivars showed different moisture content (9.71 ± 0.96; 12.06 ± 0.34%, respectively), ash values (1.03 ± 0.20; 1.78 ± 0.07%, respectively), and water content (6.12 ± 0.29; 7.16 ± 0.25% respectively). Medan and Monthong cultivar extracts showed specific parameters showed different organoleptic information such as odor, color, and physical appearance, the content of water soluble compounds (36.39 ± 1.90%), the value of ethanol soluble compounds (40.20 ± 0.19; 45.27 ± 1.02%, respectively), and flavonoid value (472 ± 49.00; 310 ± 13.45 mg/g sample), phenolic value (245 ± 5.15; 148 ± 8.54 mg/g sample). Antioxidant activity was indicated by IC 50 values of each extract, namely Medan of 78.83 ± 1.67 µg/mL and Monthong of 72.77 ± 6.60 µg/mL. Statistical tests showed the value of non-specific parameters and specific parameters of the two cultivars not differed significantly.
Method for extracting current envelope for broken rotor bar fault detection of induction motors at time‐varying loads

When the broken rotor bar (BRB) fault occurs in induction motors, the amplitude of stator fundamental current is modulated by fault components, forming the current envelope with a particular frequency, which can be considered as a powerful criterion for BRB detection. However, it is relatively difficult to extract especially at time-varying loads due to the non-stationary characteristics. Thus, a novel envelope extraction method (EEM) combining fast Fourier transform and sliding overlapping window is proposed and the overall performance is tested by simulation. The results show that the method is capable to effectively extract the current envelope, but the extraction accuracy is unsatisfied due to the spectrum leakage in the case of non-integer periodic truncation. The technique of discrete spectrum correction is then introduced into EEM to improve its extraction accuracy, and then, an improved EEM (IEEM) is proposed and then tested by simulation. The results show that the IEEM is able to eliminate the impact of non-integer periodic truncation, effectively and accurately extract the current envelope. Finally, the two methods are applied in BRB fault online detection of 1.1 and 2.2 kW induction motors at time-varying loads. The corresponding experimental results demonstrate its validity and universality again.
Piezoelectric Response of Polycrystalline Silicon‐Doped Hafnium Oxide Thin Films Determined by Rapid Temperature Cycles

The in‐plane piezoelectric response of 20 nm thick Si‐doped HfO2 is examined by exploiting thermal expansion of the substrate upon rapid temperature cycling. The sample is heated locally by a deposited metal film, and the subsequently registered pyroelectric current is found to be frequency dependent in the observed range of 5 Hz to 35 kHz. While the intrinsic response remains constant, the secondary contribution can be switched off in the high‐frequency limit due to substrate clamping. As this secondary response is generated by thermal expansion and the piezoelectric effect, this allows for extraction of the corresponding in‐plane response. By comparing pyroelectric measurements in low‐ and high‐frequency limits, a piezoelectric coefficient d31 of −11.5 pm V −1 is obtained, which is more than five times larger than that of AlN. The magnitude of piezoelectric response increases upon electric field cycling, which is associated with a transition from antiferroelectric‐like behavior to a purely ferroelectric polarization hysteresis. The hafnium oxide material system is proposed as a promising candidate for future CMOS compatible piezoelectric micro‐ and nano‐electromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS).
Response of Barley Genotypes to Weed Interference in Australia

Weed-competitive genotypes could be an important tool in integrated weed management (IWM) practices. However, weed competitiveness is often not considered a priority for breeding high-yielding cultivars. Weed-competitive ability is often evaluated based on weed-suppressive ability (WSA) and weed-tolerance ability (WTA) parameters; however, there is little information on these aspects for barley genotypes in Australia. In this study, the effects of weed interference on eight barley genotypes were assessed. Two years of field experiments were performed in a split-plot design with three replications. Yield loss due to weed interference ranged from 43% to 78%. The weed yield amongst genotypes varied from 0.5 to 1.7 Mg ha−1. Relative yield loss due to weed interference was negatively correlated with WTA and WSA. A negative correlation was also found between WSA and weed seed production (r = −0.72). Similarly, a negative correlation was found between WTA and barley yield in the weedy environment (r = −0.91). The results suggest that a high tillering ability and plant height are desirable attributes for weed competitiveness in the barley genotypes. These results also demonstrated that among the eight barley genotypes, Commander exhibited superior WSA and WTA parameters and therefore, could be used in both low- and high-production systems for weed management. Westminster had a superior WSA parameter. Therefore, it could be used for weed management in organic production systems. These results also implied that genotypic ranking on the basis of WSA and WTA could be used as an important tool in strengthening IWM programs for barley.
Sir2 tempers an intrinsic imbalance in origin licensing efficiency between early and late replicating euchromatin

The duplication and stability of a eukaryotic chromosome requires the function of multiple spatially distributed DNA replication origins. The chromosomal positions of MCM complexes determine where origins can function. While the biochemistry of MCM complex assembly onto DNA, or origin licensing, is defined, it is unclear how the chromosomal distribution of MCM complexes is achieved. We have elucidated a role for the Sir2 histone deacetylase in establishing the normal distribution of MCM complexes over Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosomes. In the absence of Sir2, MCM complexes accumulated within early replicating euchromatin, which enhanced origin activity within these regions at the expense of late replicating euchromatin; thus late replicating euchromatin remained unduplicated at the end of S-phase. We conclude that Sir2-mediated attenuation of MCM complex assembly within regions of the genome most receptive to origin licensing is necessary for the normal spatial distribution of MCM complexes and efficient duplication of yeast chromosomes.
Optimal Multiplexed Erasure Codes for Streaming Messages With Different Decoding Delays

This paper considers multiplexing two sequences of messages with two different decoding delays over a packet erasure channel. In each time slot, the source constructs a packet based on the current and previous messages and transmits the packet, which may be erased when the packet travels from the source to the destination. The destination must perfectly recover every source message in the first sequence subject to a decoding delay <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${T}_{\mathrm{ v}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and every source message in the second sequence subject to a shorter decoding delay <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${T}_{\mathrm{ u}}\le {T}_{\mathrm{ v}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. We assume that the channel loss model introduces a burst erasure of a fixed length B on the discrete timeline. Under this channel loss assumption, the capacity region for the case where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${T}_{\mathrm{ v}}\le {T}_{\mathrm{ u}}+{B}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> was previously solved. In this paper, we fully characterize the capacity region for the remaining case <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${T}_{\mathrm{ v}}> {T}_{\mathrm{ u}}+{B}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The key step in the achievability proof is achieving the non-trivial corner point of the capacity region through using a multiplexed streaming code constructed by superimposing two single-stream codes. The main idea in the converse proof is obtaining a genie-aided bound when the channel is subject to a periodic erasure pattern where each period consists of a length-<italic>B</italic> burst erasure followed by a length-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${T}_{\mathrm{ u}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> noiseless duration.