Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of sleep duration and quality with atherosclerosis: A comparative study between diabetic and non-diabetic individuals

Tackling the global burden of diabetes and its complications continue to be a challenge. Emerging risk factors such as poor sleep have been reported to contribute significantly to this. A cross-sectional study was conducted amongst 105 individuals aged between 25 to 45 years in a South Indian population aiming to find an association between the quality and duration of sleep with atherosclerosis in diabetic and non-diabetic individuals. The sleep quality was assessed using the PSQI questionnaire, and the population was divided into 4 groups based on the sleep duration (long, normal, short, very short). The degree of atherosclerosis was measured by using the carotid in tima-media thickness (CIMT). The data was analysed using SPSS Software version 20. Descriptive statistics, Chi-Square test and Independent t-test were employed. 52.4% of the subjects were diabetic individuals and 47.6 % were non-diabetic individuals. A higher percentage of individuals in the diabetic group exhibited a poor quality of sleep and shorter sleep duration as compared to the non-diabetic group.The former also had a higher mean CIMT value when compared to the non-diabetic individuals. The difference between the mean CIMT values was found to be significant. A significant association was observed between the CIMT and PSQI score as well as the CIMT and average sleep duration in the diabetic population. However, amongst the non-diabetics, no such association between the CIMT and PSQI score was present, although a significant association was noted between the CIMT and average sleep duration.Shorter sleep durations may be associated with a higher risk for Rajgopal et al (2020): Association of sleep duration & quality with atherosclerosis Dec, 2020 Vol. 23 Issue 23 Annals of Tropical Medicine & Public Health http://doi.org/10.36295/ASRO.2020. 2323107 atherosclerosis in diabetic as well as non-diabetics individuals. Poor sleep quality is a potential risk factor for atherosclerosis.
Suffering Silence While Exposed to Workplace Bullying: The Role of Psychological Contract Violation, Benevolent Behavior and Positive Psychological Capital

Becoming impediment to organizational functioning in several ways, the prevalence of workplace bullying costs much to organizations. As in the current transition phase of Pakistan, the intentions to leave doesn’t manifest in actual turnover rates. Hence the current study is conducted to analyze the passive coping strategies of employees in the face of workplace bullying. It is theorized that the relationship is mediated by psychological contract violation. Moreover, it is predicted that the process of mediation is stronger for individuals who report high levels of benevolent behavior and perceives psychological capital to be low. Data is collected from 359 young doctors and nurses of three government administered hospitals. Results indicate a significant bullying-silence relationship where psychological contract violation plays a role of partial mediator. Moreover, benevolence and PsyCap are powerful moderators to alter the already established relationship. Conclusions of the current study are further elaborated in terms of their practical contribution and future directions. Workplace bullying is an organizational reality. Hence efforts to make an entire bullying-free environment is next to impossible. So, in addition to make an effort in ending up this maltreatment, managers must limit its consequences by understanding its dynamics. Reduce the bullying culture and save precious resources i.e. potential employees.
An Efficient Zernike Moments with Logistic Regression Classifier based Skin Lesion Diagnosis using Dermoscopic Images

Diagnosis of skin cancer acts as a vital part of the early and accurate detection of skin lesions using dermoscopic imaging. However, the automatic skin lesion diagnosis becomes hard owing to the existence of artifacts, indistinct boundary, poor contrast, and distinct size and shape of the lesion. This study introduces a novel Zernike Moments (ZM) with Logistic Regression Classifier (LRC), named ZM-LRC model for skin lesion diagnosis using dermoscopic images. The presented ZM-LRC model comprises four stages namely pre-processing, segmentation, feature extraction, and classification. The ZM-LRC model performs image segmentation using Shannon’s Entropy with Brainstorm optimization (BSO) algorithm. Besides, the ZM based feature extraction and LRC oriented classification processes are carried out. Elaborative experimental analysis was carried out on ISIC dataset and the obtained results are investigated with respect to distinct performance measures. The attained simultaion values signified the effective diagnostic outcome of the ZM-LRC model with a higher sensitivity of 95.78%, specificity of 97.86%, and accuracy of 98.56%.
Statistical Modelling of Severe Wind Gust

The modelling of severe wind gust is a fundamental part of any wind hazard assessment. Statistical modelling approaches are usually used to describe the probability of occurrences of extreme winds. The classical extreme value theory based on the generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution and the more recently developed peaks over threshold (POT) and the use of generalized Pareto distribution (GPD) are investigated. Practical issues such as the threshold selection and model validation are also discussed. Severe wind gust models were developed for a number of locations in Perth. Estimates of 50 and 100 year return period events are compared with estimates published by the Standards Australia for Perth (Region A), which are based on a single site. For coast sites, the predicted wind gust speeds are similar to those published by the Standards, while the inland sites have smaller wind gust speeds.
Integration of Functional Plans and Organizational Productivity in Some Selected Deposit Money Banks in Port Harcourt

This paper examined how Integration of functional plan influences the Organisational productivity of deposit money banks in Port Harcourt, Rivers State . The cross sectional survey design was adopted. The population of this study consist of (186) Management staff of the deposit money banks, these includes.Taro Yamane formulawas used to determinea sample size of the mmanagement staff of the deposit money banks which constitute the Unit of Analysis of the study. Research questions were used to determine the extent to which Integration of functional plan enhanced Organisational productivity. Null Hypotheses was employed to predict the relationship between Integration of functional plan and Organisational productivity . Linear Regression Analysis was used to test the Null Hypotheses. Integration of functional plan was used to check the level Organisational productivity of Deposit money banks with measures such as Output quality and Profitability. It is therefore concluded that Integration of functional plans is an effective tool to improve Organisational productivity. The research further recommended that Integration of functional plans should be properly implemented in the database of the deposit money banks to enhance better productivity.
Talent Management and Competitiveness of Oil Drilling and Well Servicing Companies in Rivers State

This paper examined the relationship between talent management and competitiveness in oil drilling and well servicing companies in Rivers State. Data was gathered from 36 top and middle level managers of the aforementioned companies through a well-structured questionnaire and was analyzed using univariate and bi-variate analytical tools such as the mean score and the Spearman rank order correlation coefficient to test the study hypotheses. The analysis of this paper was conducted using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences and after analyses, the results revealed that talent management is positively and significantly correlated with competitiveness in terms of flexibility and innovation. Thus it was concluded that talent management is a precursor to competitiveness and it was therefore recommended among other things that oil drilling and well servicing companies should put more emphasis on the human capital approach to gain competitive advantage in their industry because ‘human capital’ represents an inimitable asset of any organization.
Comparing methods of tree-construction across mildly context-sensitive formalisms

A central constraint on minimalist derivations is cyclicity, as instantiated in the extension condition ( Ext ), which permits trees to grow only at (or near) the root. A second key idea concerns the notion of derivational state : how much information about the derivational past can the applicability of a certain operation be contingent on? Conditions along the lines of Phase Impenetrability and Shortest Move, for example, can sometimes limit the amount of information that conditions subsequent derivational steps; some versions of such conditions result in a ﬁnite bound ( Fin ).
NAY IS A “ PARADIGM SHIFT ” IN BOOK OF MORMON STUDIES POSSIBLE ? By

MARCH 2005 PAGE 69 P RESENTLY, THE CONTROVERSY between Book of Mormon apologists and critics rages mainly because both are seeking the unconditional acquiescence of the other. At the center of the discussion is disagreement over the historicity of the Book of Mormon and an either/or dichotomy: either the Book of Mormon is real history and Joseph Smith is a real prophet, or, as apologist William J. Hamblin has insisted, the Book of Mormon is fiction and Joseph Smith is a false prophet.1 Given this binary stance, it is little wonder the apologists for historicity are willing to go to extreme, even unconventional measures to fend off all attacks. One of these extreme tactics has been to align themselves with philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn’s discussion of paradigms, in his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,2 as an entry into postmodernist theories of the social construction of truth. Their motivation for so doing seems to be to create a space for their apologetic claims by arguing that if science is actually a subjective enterprise, then believing that the Book of Mormon is historical is neither more nor less “scientific” than not believing. Although Kuhn’s discussion of paradigms remains useful, various aspects of his thesis have been rejected by philosophers of science. Yet it is on these extremely controversial aspects that apologists have placed the most emphasis. They do so as a means to justify mixing religious values with scientific criteria, privileging positive over negative evidence, creating ad hoc question-begging responses to counter evidence and, ironically, resisting “paradigm shift. ” This essay examines the apologists’ paradigm to show that their appropriation of Kuhn is not only highly questionable but at odds with his original thesis. Drawing on Kuhn myself, I will suggest another paradigm, one that might actually be a paradigm shift—one, I believe, capable of creating common ground upon which the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith might be more fruitfully approached.
Empirical Performances of Divisia versus Traditional Monetary Aggregates in BEAC and BCEAO

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate empirical performances of Divisia relative to traditional monetary aggregates in terms of growth and inflation within the period 1992.12009. 4 in BEAC2 and BCEAO3. The methodology of the paper is focused on variance decomposition analysis derived from VAR/VECM specification to evaluate the contribution to price level and real GDP’s fluctuations of each type of monetary aggregate. The following conclusions are derived from the empirical analysis. Traditional monetary aggregates have better empirical performances. In BEAC, traditional M2 perform better in explaining price and real GDP fluctuations. The variations of price level are mostly due to traditional monetary aggregate M1 while simple sum monetary aggregate M2 is the best indicator of real GDP in BCEAO. JEL Classification: B22 C32 C43 E52
Dollarization and Monetary Unions: Implementation Guidelines-CLAE Working Paper 0102-Dallas Fed

All three authors are economists at the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. William C. Gruben: Vice-President and Director of the Center for Latin American Economies; Mark A. Wynne: Assistant Vice-President; Carlos E. J. M. Zarazaga: Senior Economist and Executive Director of the Center for Latin American Economies. Corresponding author: Carlos Zarazaga, FRB Dallas, 2200 N. Pearl St., Dallas, TX 75201, USA. E-mail: clae@dal.frb. org. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.
Redefining Indexing Using Smart Beta Strategies

The Wealth Allocation Framework helps you put your goals and aspirations at the center of decisions about allocating your financial resources. This paper focuses on strategies that may be appropriate for the Personal, Market and Aspirational asset categories. Personal: Individual investors have a desire for safety and personal financial obligations they want to meet regardless of market conditions. To safeguard essential goals, investors can hold lower-risk assets—but they have to accept lower returns in exchange.
Nanotechnology: Review on Emerging Techniques in Remediating Water and Soil Pollutions

Environmental Pollution is becoming a global challenge in both developing and the developed countries, pollutants discharge from oil and gas industries and or agricultural practices continue effecting the health of human and other animal in an ecosystem in one way or the other. This necessitated the development of a techniques to clean up of the polluted environment. Remediation of pollutants relies mainly on using various techniques like physical, chemical and or biological methods for the removal of contaminants from different environmental media be it soil, water, and or air. These techniques have their own limitations as the toxicity of the degrading agents, time consuming and the fate of the environment after remediation matters a lot. Therefore, nanotechnology is gaining interest in remediating pollutions as nanoparticles are relatively cost effective, sensitive and selective and can be used as sensors to monitor toxins, organic contaminants and heavy metals in land, water and or air. The enhanced properties and effectiveness of nanotechnology-based materials makes them suitable for nano remediation. This review provides an overview of the nanomaterials: Organic based nanomaterials (Dendrimers), inorganic (TiO2, nZVI), carbon-based (Carbon nanotubes, (CNTs)), and composite-based materials) used in environmental remediation. These nanomaterials were reported to remediate different contaminants in the environment such as heavy metals, pathogens, pesticides, dyes, chlorinated organic compounds, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. DOI: https://dx.doi. org/10.4314/jasem.v24i5. 31 Copyright: Copyright © 2020 Yarima et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCL), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Dates: Received: 10 March 2020; Revised: 29 April 2020; Accepted: 28 May 2020
Generating Furry Face Art from Sketches using a GAN (Shitpost for 6.869, December 2019)

I generate furry face artwork from color sketches. The sketches are procedurally generated from a data set of furry artwork. Sketches are translated back into artwork via a Generative Adversarial Network. I implement the GAN us-ing a U-Net autoencoder with encoder-decoder skip connections and experiment with adding adaptive instance normalization into upsampling layers. The results show effective mapping of training and dev set sketches back to their input style. However, the model does not perform as effectively on novel user sketches and often fails to add stochastic textures like hair details.
FRAMEWORK PARA CONVERTER IMAGENS RGB PADRÃO EM DADOS NEUROMÓRFICOS

Dispositivos neuromórficos são instrumentos que podem ser utilizados em diversas aplicações robóticas e computacionais a fim de solucionar e otimizar cada uma. Estas, podem ser câmeras baseadas em eventos, que com uma alta capacidade de processamento, podem detectar variações de luminosidade em uma cena, porém estas câmeras, para muitos grupos de pesquisa ainda é muito cara, tornando-a inacessível. Dessa forma, propomos um software capaz de converter informações advindas de câmeras RGB padrão em dados neuromórficos. Com isso, os horizontes do campo da visão neuromórfica poderão ser ampliados, podendo os pesquisadores desenvolver novos algoritmos neuromórficos a partir de datasets da visão computacional, sendo esses convertidos através do software criado. Nós obtivemos resultados similares, comparando informações convertidas pelo framework com uma câmera neuromórfica usual.
Ab‐initio study of excitonic effects in conventional and organic semiconductors

The excitonic effects on the optical absorption properties of organic semiconductors as well as gallium nitride are studied from first‐principles. The Coulomb interaction between the electron and the hole is accounted for by solving the two‐particle Bethe–Salpeter Equation. In the organic semiconductors the exciton binding energies strongly depend on the molecular size, the crystalline packing, as well as the polarization direction of the incoming light. We show that the electron–hole interaction can lead to strongly bound excitons with binding energies of the order of 1 eV or to a mere redistribution of oscillator strength. In several cases, the screening is efficient enough such that free charge carriers govern the optical absorption process. In the inorganic counterparts the sensitivity of the exciton binding energy is tested against the structural parameters and the screening of the electron–hole Coulomb interaction. (© 2005 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
TRIAZOLE INDUCED MODIFICATION OF BIOCHEMICAL AND ANTIOXIDANT METABOLISM IN Capsicum annuum L. UNDER DROUGHT STRESS *Gabriel

In the present study, a pot culture experiment was conducted to estimate the ameliorating effect of Triadimefon (TDM), Hexaconazole (HEX) and Propiconazole (PCZ) on drought stress in Capsicum annuum L. plant belongs to solanaceae family. From 30 days after sowing (DAS), the plants were subjected to 3 days interval drought (DID) stress and drought stress with TDM @ 10 mg l, HEX @ 10 mg l and PCZ @ 15 mg l and one day interval irrigation was kept as control. The plant samples were collected on 40, 50 and 60 DAS. The plants were separated into root, stem and leaf for estimating the biochemical, antioxidant and antioxidant enzymes. Combined drought stress treatments increased biochemical, antioxidant contents and antioxidant enzymes activities when compared to control. The triazole treatment mitigated the adverse effects of drought stress by increasing the antioxidant potentials and thereby paved the way for overcoming drought stress in C. annuum L.
Engineered nano-in-micro drug delivery scheme against sars-Cov2: A hypothesis

In late 2019, a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2) evolved in Wuhan city of China, which rapidly surfaced across the globe conducing to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic The SARS-CoV-2 infection may progress from mild to severe and critically state, however a plethora of cases are either asymptomatic or mild An excessive release of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines delineates the severity of the disease and the condition is called as the cytokine storm The multiplication of the virus and depletion of T cells up-regulates the macrophages and monocytes to generate the cytokine storm Tremendous efforts are being made to unearth an effective and efficient therapeutic strategy to contain the pandemic These attempts are focused on discovering a vaccine, virus elimination, interrupting the virus-host interaction or host modulations and many of them have demonstrated good clinical prognosis The delivery approach of a potential drug is also pivotal into the bargain Drug administration off target will not only deteriorate the ability but also delay the mechanism of action of that molecule Synthetic nanosilicates (Laponite XLG) nanoparticles possesses a dichotic charge that makes them a classic drug carrier for targeted and sustained drug release However, drug delivery into the lungs using only nanosilicates may be ineffective, as these particles will be cleared off from the pulmonary passage due their Nano size Therefore, a mucoadhesive polymer like chitosan may serve as a secondary carrier to the drug loaded nanosilicates and can deliver the molecules at the targeted biological site This nano-in-micro drug delivery system may tailor the therapeutic modality of SARS-CoV-2 infection and establish good clinical outcomes © 2020 Ubiquity Press All rights reserved
Online Learning Cognition as Perceived by Undergraduate Students in China Eastern Province

--Company with global educational reform brought by digital governance and the challenge of COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2020, it is quite necessary to explore learners’ recognition behaviors for on-line learning in the context of locked environment. By investigating on-line learning practices in China eastern provincial regions, the study attempts to disclose the undergraduate students’ perceptions on the issues pertaining to on-line learning and the innate critical factors for individual intention through the selected region of relatively-developed eastern China. A survey design was used for the study, and a closeended questionnaire with the six point Likert scale was developed regarding the issues over on-line learning practices. The findings indicate that instructor characteristics and teaching resources are the predictors of the perceived usefulness of on-line learning, and perceived usefulness coupled with the joyfulness are the predictors of on-line learning recognition. While statistically significant, perceived adaptability was shown to own the weakest effect for on-line learning recognition among the predictors. All these results are consistent with previous studies in other China regions, proving the universal trait of learners’ perception and individual behavior towards on-line learning. Implications and future research are discussed eventually.
A Plant-Wide Dynamic Model of a Continuous Pharmaceutical Process

The pharmaceutical industry has historically benefited from high profit margins for their products, and over the years limited efforts have been made to change the main manufacturing concept from batch into continuous. However, over the past decade, as a result of an increased demand for more efficient and cost-effective processes, interest has grown in the application of continuous manufacturing to address economical and technical issues in the pharmaceutical field. This option is becoming more viable, particularly with the implementation of new process analytical technology (PAT). In this paper, we present a plant-wide mathematical model inspired by a recently developed continuous pharmaceutical pilot plant. This model is first used to simulate a base case that shows typical limitations in achieving simultaneously high productivity and quality. The main critical quality attribute considered is the purity of the final product. To alleviate the base case limitations and improve the pilot plant performance.