Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The treatment of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP)—focus on thrombopoietin receptor agonists

Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune disease characterized by increased platelet destruction along with reduced platelet production. All treatments attempt either to reduce the rate of platelet production or increase the rate of platelet production. There is no known cure but most patients attain a hemostatic platelet count. New treatment guidelines have supported a shift from corticosteroids and splenectomy to newer medical treatments that mitigate the thrombocytopenia and avoid splenectomy. The thrombopoietin receptor agonists (TPO-RA), romiplostim, eltrombopag, and avatrombopag, have markedly altered the treatment of ITP. Response rates of 80–90% are routinely obtained and responses are usually maintained with continued therapy. Data shows that TPO-RA are just as effective in early ITP as in chronic ITP and current guidelines encourage their use as early as 3 months into the disease course, sometimes even earlier. TPO-RA do not need to be continued forever; about a third of patients in the first year and about another third after two years have a remission. Whether TPO-RA affect the ITP pathophysiology and directly cause remission remains unclear. This review provides a personal overview of the diagnosis and treatment of ITP with a focus on the mechanism of action of TPO-RA, their place in the treatment algorithm, unique aspects of their clinical use, adverse effects, and options should they fail.
Does the Leadership of the Board of Directors Affect Corporate Performance? Based on the Empirical Research of China’s SMEs

ABSTRACT This study takes the chairman as the starting point to study whether the chairman-CEO duality can affect the performance, with a sample of 3568 the board of directors of the listed company leadership characteristics and performance during 2008–2018 in NEEQ market. The results found that the chairman as CEO is conducive to improving the business performance. Through the sample study of enterprise size division, it is found that in small enterprises, the chairman as CEO has a more significant positive impact on business performance than in large enterprises.
Seasonal trends of Influenza in Islamabad, Pakistan

Background: Viral outbreaks have always been a challenging task for clinicians and Influenza virus has been on top of the list. The history of influenza epidemic reveals its devastating effects in the form of multiple deaths and economic burden. Hence this study was planned to recognize the peak activity time span of Influ enza infection and its frequency in our set-up at Shifa International Hospital, Islamabad Pakistan. Material and Methods: A cross sectional study was performed in Pathology Laboratory, Shifa international hospital Islamabad from April 2016 to March 2019. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from patients of all age groups, with clinically suspected influenza infection throughout the year, irrespective of gender, according to hospital’s standard policy. Samples were analysed on GeneXpert kit (Xpert Flu Assay). Data collected was entered and then analysed in SPSS version 17. Results: Of the total 591 samples included in study, 233 (39.4%) were positive for influenza (Flu A or Flu B), while 358 (60.6%) showed negative results. Total 172 (73.8%) were positive for Flu A while 61 (26.1%) were positive for Flu B. Among Flu A cases, 107 (62.2%) were positive for H1N1. Most of the positive cases (n=206; 88.4%) were reported in the months of January and February during the three-year period (2016-2019) of this study. Conclusions: Influenza virus has peak activity in the months of January and February. Both Influenza A and B are circulating in the environment but Flu A is predominant and H1N1 is more prevalent.
A positivity-preserving finite volume scheme for convection–diffusion equation on general meshes

A new positivity-preserving finite volume scheme is proposed for solving the convection–diffusion equation on 2D or 3D distorted meshes. The nonlinear two-point flux approximation is applied to the discretization of diffusion flux. The discretization of convection flux is based on the second-order upwind method with a slope limiter. The cell centres are employed to define the primary unknowns. The cell vertexes are devoted to define the auxiliary unknowns, which can be computed from the primary unknowns. And the interpolation method of this scheme is not required to be positivity-preserving. Numerical results illustrate that the scheme is effective in solving the convection–diffusion problem and has second-order convergence rate on the distorted meshes.
Pengembangan LKPD Materi Arthropoda Berbasis STEM Berteknologi Augmented Reality

Informasi Artikel ABSTRAK Submit: 19 – 10 – 2020 Diterima: 29 – 03 – 2021 Dipublikasikan: 31 – 03 – 2021 LKPD merupakan bahan ajar yang terstruktur, dengan bantuan LKPD tersebut maka dapat membuat pembelajaran lebih aktif dan berfikir kreatif. Ditambah lagi LKPD yang dibuat berbasis STEM dan bantuan teknologi Augmented Reality yang inovatif, sehingga pembelajran daring menjadi interaktif. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengembangkan LKPD Arthropoda berbasis STEM berteknologi Augmented Reality yang valid. Metode yang digunakan yaitu pengembangan dengan model ADDIE yang telah dimodifikasi sampai tahap development. Berdasarkan hasil validasi didapatkan LKPD dengan hasil valid dan layak untuk digunakan. Kata kunci: augmented reality; LKPD; STEM. Penerbit ABSTRACT Program Studi Pendidikan Biologi, Fakultas Sains dan Teknologi, UIN Walisongo Semarang Student worksheets are structured teaching materials, with the help of these student worksheets it can make learning more active and think creatively. Besides, student worksheets are made based on STEM and the help of innovative Augmented Reality technology, so that online learning becomes interactive. This study aims to develop valid STEM-based Arthropoda student worksheets with Augmented Reality technology. The method used is development with the ADDIE model that has been modified until the development stage. Based on the results of the validation, it was found that student worksheets were valid and suitable for use.
Assessing the Impact of Urban Expansion on Surrounding Forested Landscape Connectivity across Space and Time

Landscape connectivity is important for all organisms as it directly affects population dynamics. Yet, rapid urbanization has caused serious landscape fragmentation, which is the primary contributor of species extinctions worldwide. Previous studies have mostly used spatial snap-shots to evaluate the impact of urban expansion on landscape connectivity. However, the interactions among habitats over time in dynamic landscapes have been largely ignored. Here, we demonstrated that overlooking temporal connectivity can lead to the overestimation of the impact of urban expansion. How much greater the overestimation is depends on the amount of net habitat loss. Moreover, we showed that landscape connectivity may have a delayed response to urban expansion. Our analysis shifts the way to understand the ecological consequences of urban expansion. Our framework can guide sustainable urban development and can be inspiring to conservation practices under other contexts (e.g., climate change).
Understanding service quality attributes that drive user ratings: A text mining approach

Studies based on online textual data are increasingly used in the hospitality sector to gain better consumer insights. Using text mining of TripAdvisor reviews and mapping it to hard and soft attributes of SERVQUAL dimensions, this research attempts to identify service quality characteristics that influence the customers’ online ratings of hotels. The moderating effects of the reviewer characteristics, namely (a) domestic vs foreign (b) novice vs experienced, (c) less vs more popular and (d) brief vs elaborate writing, on the relationship between quality attributes and online hotel ratings are also analyzed. The results imply that reviewers emphasize hard attributes of service quality in general, such as tangibles, reliability, and responsiveness, while providing online ratings to hotels. Furthermore, reviewer characteristics also influence the attributes emphasized in reviews and the resultant ratings. Finally, along with the theoretical contributions, managerial contributions, such as the usefulness of service planning outcomes, are discussed.
Infrared Small Target Detection via Nonconvex Tensor Fibered Rank Approximation

Infrared small target detection plays an important role in precision guidance, infrared warning, and other applications. The infrared patch-tensor (IPT) model has good detection performance, but some challenges still exist, such as the inaccurate representation of the background rank and poor robustness against noise and sparse interference. In order to solve these problems, a new IPT model is proposed in this article. First, to approximate the tensor rank more reasonably, t-SVD is generalized to multimodal t-SVD, and the tensor fibered rank is introduced. Moreover, the tensor fibered nuclear norm based on the Log operator (LogTFNN) is used to nonconvex approximate tensor fibered rank. Second, to suppress sparse interference such as strong edges and corner points, the prior information is extracted by the local structure tensor. Third, the hypertotal variation (HTV) is used as a joint regularization term to remove noise. Then, the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is used to solve the model. The proposed algorithm was tested on the 20 single-frame infrared images and six sequences of real scenes. Lots of experiments demonstrate that this algorithm has the robustness to noise and different scenes. Different evaluation metrics also show that the proposed algorithm has a significant superiority in detection performance compared with various state-of-the-art methods.
DNA-catalyzed efficient production of single-stranded DNA nanostructures

Summary Single-stranded (ss) DNA nanostructures (DNs), created by unimolecular folding of kilo-based ssDNA, represent a new class of DNA constructs suitable for biomaterial and biomedical applications. Here, using DNA-cleaving DNA enzymes (deoxyribozymes), we present a strategy for the efficient and cost-effective production of milligrams of ssDNs. We designed “genes” of ssDNs flanked by self-cleaving deoxyribozymes and amplified the genes in the single-stranded form. Upon autoprocessing, the resulting amplicons release a quadrillion copies of the ssDNA that self-folds into the desired structures. By engineering trans-acting deoxyribozymes, we showed that several ssDNs of different shapes can be encoded and amplified in tandem with controllable release of specific shapes from the amplicons, thereby providing a convenient yet economical way to safely store “genetic codes” of nanostructures on DNA for selective mass production on demand. We demonstrated ssDNs’ ability to assist liposome sorting and expect the approach will promote the development of ssDNs’ applications in broad areas.
Closed-Loop Black Start-Up of Dual-Active-Bridge Converter With Boosted Dynamics and Soft-Switching Operation

This letter proposes a closed-loop black start-up control for the dual-active-bridge (DAB) converter. With a simple combination of the extended phase-shift and triple phase-shift modulation schemes, the DAB converter can start up with the maximum allowable precharge current while realizing soft-switching operation in the trapezoidal current mode simultaneously. Compared to the conventional start-up procedure that usually requires multiple steps of operation and parameter fine-tuning, the proposed start-up method can be implemented simply into the existing closed-loop controller and can shorten the start-up transients of the DAB converter significantly. The presented methods are validated experimentally on a downscaled DAB converter prototype.
Fermi blockade of the strong electron-phonon interaction in optimally doped high temperature superconductors

We study how manifestations of strong electron-phonon interaction (EPI) depend on the carrier concentration by solving the two-dimensional Holstein model for the spin-polarized fermions using an approximation free bold-line diagrammatic Monte Carlo (BDMC) method. We show that the strong EPI, obviously present at very small Fermion concentration, is masked by the Fermi blockade effects and Migdal's theorem to the extent that it manifests itself as moderate one at large carriers densities. Suppression of strong EPI fingerprints is in agreement with experimental observations in doped high temperature superconductors.
An Enhanced Spectral Clustering Algorithm with S-Distance

Calculating and monitoring customer churn metrics is important for companies to retain customers and earn more profit in business. In this study, a churn prediction framework is developed by modified spectral clustering (SC). However, the similarity measure plays an imperative role in clustering for predicting churn with better accuracy by analyzing industrial data. The linear Euclidean distance in the traditional SC is replaced by the non-linear S-distance (Sd). The Sd is deduced from the concept of S-divergence (SD). Several characteristics of Sd are discussed in this work. Assays are conducted to endorse the proposed clustering algorithm on four synthetics, eight UCI, two industrial databases and one telecommunications database related to customer churn. Three existing clustering algorithms—k-means, density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise and conventional SC—are also implemented on the above-mentioned 15 databases. The empirical outcomes show that the proposed clustering algorithm beats three existing clustering algorithms in terms of its Jaccard index, f-score, recall, precision and accuracy. Finally, we also test the significance of the clustering results by the Wilcoxon’s signed-rank test, Wilcoxon’s rank-sum test, and sign tests. The relative study shows that the outcomes of the proposed algorithm are interesting, especially in the case of clusters of arbitrary shape.
From fun-lovers to institutionalists: uncovering pluralism in IT occupational culture

PurposeThe study aims to explore whether there is diversity of occupational culture among IT workers. Prior work conceptualizes IT occupational culture (ITOC) as based around six distinctive values (ASPIRE) but has not explored whether there is variation in ITOC.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data from 496 New Zealand IT workers was used to create factors representing IT occupational values based on the ASPIRE tool. Hierarchical cluster analysis and discriminant analysis were applied to identify distinctive segments of ITOC.FindingsFour ITOC segments were identified: fun-lovers, innovators, independents and institutionalists. These differed in the relative emphasis ascribed to the ITOC values with each segment being distinguished by 1–2 dominant values. Segment membership varied according to level of responsibility and birth country. Institutionalists and innovators had higher concern about organizational and IT issues than fun-lovers and independents. Job satisfaction was lowest among innovators and highest along institutionalists.Research limitations/implicationsThis study challenges the concept of a unified ITOC, suggesting that ITOC is pluralistic. It also theorizes about interactions between ITOC, individual motivation and values and national culture.Practical implicationsManagement needs to be cognizant of the fact that IT occupational culture is not homogeneous and different IT occupational segments require unique management approaches, and that their own values may not match those of others in IT work. By understanding ITOC segments, managers can tailor support, assign tasks appropriately and design teams to optimize synergies and avoid conflict.Originality/valueThis study reveals the existence of ITOC segments and theorizes about the relationship of these to innovation-orientation, job satisfaction, individual motivation, work styles and national culture. The combination of cluster and discriminant analysis is a valuable replicable inductive method that is underrepresented in Information Systems (IS) research.
Performance assessment of orthogonal space-time block codes in Nakagami- m / inverse Gaussian fading MIMO channels

This paper evaluates the performance of multiple-input multiple-output systems with orthogonal space-time block code transmit diversity technique experiencing over  composite fading channels. Particularly, closed form expressions for ergodic capacity, average symbol error rate and outage probability are presented in high SNR regime. The ergodic capacity of multiple-input multiple-output systems with orthogonal space-time block code is also measured in low signal-to noise ratio regime. Other essential statistical properties such as variance and probability density function of capacity are also explored for comprehensive analysis. Compared to the exact expressions, the derived analytical formulations are found to be involved with considerably less mathematical exercise and provide additional insights into the implications of model parameters on system performance. The accuracy of  distribution in approximating Nakagami- m ∕ lognormal over several realistic scenario are examined and simultaneously the efﬁciency of distribution is compared with that of Nakagami- m ∕ Gamma distribution. The obtained analytical expressions are corroborated using Monte-Carlo simulations where it is observed that the approximated results remain notably tight in asymptotically high signal-to noise
Development of a Fermentation Process for the Manufacture of Riboflavin

DL-PL repeated reactions for 180 times (i.e., 180 d), the immobilized mycelia retained more than 90% of their initial activity. The overall process for the present enzymatic resolution is compared with the conventional chemical process in Scheme 2. The enzymatic process can skip several tedious steps which are necessary in chemical resolution and is highly advantageous for the practical purpose.
Designing a curriculum for the networked knowledge facet of systems thinking in secondary biology courses: a pragmatic framework

ABSTRACT Systems thinking is a powerful concept in biology which can help students understand how the diversity of contexts in the biology curriculum all have similar underlying characteristics. However, it is not currently a common feature in secondary education as it is not part of the National Curriculum of England. Research on systems thinking has suggested that students struggle with systems thinking in secondary school biology but there is little consensus on how systems thinking can be implemented in schools. Most research focuses on developing pedagogical activities that function as stand-alone units. In this article I complement this work by suggesting that systems thinking needs to be an integrated component of the entire biology curriculum and I offer a simple framework for analysing the extent of systems thinking in curricula, assessments, and student thinking. The intention is that with the creation of pragmatic frameworks and simple pedagogy for systems thinking, the latter will become more prevalent in secondary school biology curricula.
Usefulness of Echocardiography for General Surgery Patients on Intensive Care Units: When and How?

Purpose: Echocardiography is useful in the management of critically ill patients, but there are few studies on the usefulness of an echocardiography for critical general surgery patients. This study aimed to address this by analyzing the indications and findings for and clinical outcomes between (1) chest trauma; (2) cardiac specific pathology; and (3) hemodynamic instability groups of critical general surgery patients
Microcomputed tomography used to link head morphology and observed feeding behavior in cichlids of Lake Malaŵi

Abstract Cichlids inhabiting the Great Lakes of Africa have radiated extremely rapidly, with Lake Malaŵi harboring some 850 species. This rapid radiation may be linked to the diversity in behaviors, sexual selection, and phenotypic plasticity. To determine the relationships between morphology and behaviors, microcomputed tomography (microCT) was used to observe internal morphological structures. Observed morphological adaptations were linked with observed behavior of cichlids in Lake Malaŵi with respect to the various available food resources. Many of these adaptations have parallels, sometimes into the finest details, in other drainage systems and can thus be considered as variations of how cichlids in general respond to environmental opportunities and challenges. Variations in the structure and teeth of the pharyngeal jaws and the oral jaws allowed for fine tuning of specializations, so that various species can utilize the same source without direct competition. We suggested that high‐resolution X‐ray computed tomography will permit scientists to infer life history and behavior characters of rare or extinct taxa from a detailed examination of morphology and linkages between morphology and behavior found in extant species.
Synthesis of Zwitterionic Diblock Copolymers with Cleavable Biotin Groups at the Junction Points and Fabrication of Bioconjugates by Biotin–Streptavidin Coupling

Combinations of synthetic polymers and natural proteins provide a route to the synthesis of new biomaterials. The bioconjugates combining tunable properties of polymers with functionalities of proteins have found broad applications. One of the most challenging problems in this research field is the self-assembly behaviors of responsive polymer–protein bioconjugates. In this research, synthesis and self-assembly of bioconjugates composed of zwitterionic block copolymer and streptavidin were investigated. Block copolymers of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and poly[3-dimethyl(methacryloyloxyethyl)ammonium propanesulfonate] (PDMAPS) with cleavable biotin groups at the junction points were synthesized. The zwitterionic block copolymers exhibit phase transitions with upper critical solution temperatures (UCSTs) in aqueous solutions. The concentration of sodium chloride exerts a significant influence on the UCST. The zwitterionic block copolymer chains self-assemble into vesicles in aqueous solution at a temperatur.
Indigenous knowledge in field education – expanding Praxis

ABSTRACT Social work education faces the challenge of overcoming the dominance of teaching and learning approaches that originate in the global north. Both professional standards and ethical principles in Aotearoa New Zealand require social work educators to be informed about indigenous models of practice and utilise cultural perspectives in their work. This article reports one aspect of an exploratory qualitative research project that investigated the factors that influence how social workers engage in the teaching and learning process with students on practicum. The research involved 20 individual interviews and five focus groups with field educators from two academic institutions. Participants were aware of the importance of facilitating student learning about culturally informed practice and discussed creative ways they achieved this. Although participants suggested that field education is inherently informed by indigenous knowledge and values, applied thematic analysis indicated that Māori pedagogical models were not intentionally utilised. Limited management support, insufficient development time, and the marginalisation and isolation of field educators were highlighted as inhibiting the transformation of practice to address this gap. The article proposes a professional learning community model that has the potential to support field educators to develop their practice when these kinds of tensions and limitations are identified.