Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Flipping introductory programming class: potentials, challenges, and research gaps

This paper discusses the suitability of adopting flipped classroom model as instructional method to teach introductory computer programming courses at higher education. It explores how the potentials of this model can be used to address the reasons of difficulties of learning computer programming. However, adopting flipped classroom has some challenges, so the paper reviews these challenges in order to be considered when planning to implement this model. Finally, the paper presents some research gaps that need to be investigated in order to improve the practice of this model and to avoid any disadvantages when implementing this model in computer programming courses.
DO COMMENTS ON YOUTUBE DIFFER ACROSS GENRE?

This study examines the differences in online comments between educational videos and entertainment videos on YouTube. By employing content analysis of 2,000 comments, it examines the association between the different comment categories and the two genres of videos. For educational videos, the findings suggest that comments were enriching in terms of requesting further information, recommending videos, expressing opinion, commendation, disagreement, and sharing anecdotes as well as personal information. However, for entertainment videos, comments were enriching in terms of reflecting impression, compliments and expressing general sentiments. The potential implications from theoretical and practical perspectives are discussed.
An evaluation of the registration and use prospects for four candidate toxicants for controlling invasive mongooses (Herpestes javanicus auropunctatus)

The eradication or control of invasive small Indian mongooses from islands likely requires toxic baiting when removal by trapping proves insufficient. The one toxic bait currently registered for mongooses in the United States has relatively low palatability and efficacy for mongooses. Developing and registering a new pesticide can be very expensive, while funding for developing toxicants for mongooses is limited. Once registered, use of a toxic bait may be hindered by other factors, such as public opposition to an inhumane toxicant, poorer efficacy than expected, or if the toxic bait is difficult for applicators to apply or store. Therefore, we conducted a product feasibility assessment comparing the registration and use potential of toxic baits for mongooses containing either bromethalin, diphacinone, para-aminopropiophenone (PAPP), or sodium nitrite (SN). We estimated that a diphacinone bait would be the cheapest and fastest to register, and more application methods may be allowed compared to the others. On the negative side, we ranked diphacinone as the least humane toxicant of the four, largely due to a prolonged time to death following exposure and onset of symptoms. However, this interval also increases the probability that the antidote can be administered following an accidental exposure. If an alternative toxicant is required, use of a bromethalin, PAPP, or SN bait would likely be limited to bait stations or burrow baiting due to primary risks to non-target species. A bromethalin bait would be the cheapest and fastest to register of the three, particularly if a bait that is already commercially available proved efficacious for mongoose. However, we ranked bromethalin lower than PAPP or SN for overall humaneness. A PAPP bait would be slow and the most expensive to register. An SN bait would be challenging to formulate into a palatable bait with a reasonable shelf life. Although we focused on the U.S., mongooses are invasive in many parts of the world and the regulatory and use requirements for pesticides in other countries are generally comparable. In addition, our feasibility assessment can serve as a template or starting point for managers considering development of toxicant products for vertebrate pests.
QoS-aware Topology Discovery in Decentralized Software Defined Wireless Mesh Network (D-SDWMN) Architecture

The centralized nature of Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides the global view of the network topology at the SDN controller. Therefore, the controller should collect up-to-date information of network state, particularly its topology. Most of the current SDN controller platforms perform topology discovery using OpenFlow Discovery Protocol (OFDP) mechanism, which leverages (LLDP) the Link Layer Discovery Protocol. Unfortunately, the current topology discovery approach does not care about quality of service (QoS) information of underneath devices. But fortunately, QoS-aware topology discovery can be done with the same method, due to the structure of the LLDP packet. In this paper, we propose aggregated QoS-aware topology discovery mechanism, based on LLDP, over Decentralized Software Defined Wireless Mesh Network (D-SDWMN) architecture to collect and aggregate the topology and its corresponding QoS information, to support QoS-aware policies and decisions in SDN-based WMN. The experiment results present the efficiency of the proposed mechanism in term of QoS information collection with just slightly extra network traffic overhead, and without overall network traffic performance deteriorate.
Detection of thermodynamic “valley noise” in monolayer semiconductors: Access to intrinsic valley relaxation time scales

Using light to “listen” to the noise of electrons, we reveal their intrinsic dynamics in a single semiconducting atomic layer. Together with charge and spin, many novel two-dimensional materials also permit information to be encoded in an electron’s valley degree of freedom—that is, in particular momentum states in the material’s Brillouin zone. With a view toward valley-based (opto)electronic technologies, the intrinsic time scales of valley scattering are therefore of fundamental interest. Here, we demonstrate an entirely noise-based approach for exploring valley dynamics in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenide semiconductors. Exploiting their valley-specific optical selection rules, we use optical Faraday rotation to passively detect the thermodynamic fluctuations of valley polarization in a Fermi sea of resident carriers. This spontaneous “valley noise” reveals narrow Lorentzian line shapes and, therefore, long exponentially-decaying intrinsic valley relaxation. Moreover, the noise signatures validate both the relaxation times and the spectral dependence of conventional (perturbative) pump-probe measurements. These results provide a viable route toward quantitative measurements of intrinsic valley dynamics, free from any external perturbation, pumping, or excitation.
Bruk av oksytocin som ristimulerende medikament etter spontan fødselsstart

Background. Use of oxytocin augmentation during labour is not systematically registered in Norway. We wanted to describe the use of oxytocin augmentation in Hammerfest Hospital from 1996 to 2000. Material and methods. The patient files of all women who delivered in the study period (n = 2,725) were examined retrospectively. After exclusion because of induction of labour, planned Caesarean section, breech delivery, twin delivery and intrauterine fetal death, 2,122 women were included in the study. Results. 490 of 969 nulliparas (51 %) and 233 of 1,153 multiparas (20 %) were augmented with oxytocin. 203 of the 239 nulliparas (85 %) who had epidural anaesthesia and 287 of the 730 nulliparas (39 %) without epidural anaesthesia were augmented, compared to 64 of the 96 multiparas (67 %) and 169 of the 1,057 multiparas (16 %). Interpretation. In the present study, half of the primiparas and one fifth of the multiparas had their labour augmented with oxytocin. It is not known whether this is representative nationwide. There is a need for more research about dystocia, when intervention is appropriate and which women will benefit from oxytocin augmentation. Bakgrunn. Bruk av oksytocin som ristimulerende medikament blir ikke systematisk registrert i Norge. Målet for denne studien var å registrere bruken ved Hammerfest sykehus i femårsperioden 1996–2000. Materiale og metode. Journalene til alle som fødte i femårsperioden (n = 2 725) ble gjennomgått. Etter eksklusjon for indusert fødsel, planlagt keisersnitt, setefødsel, tvillingfødsel og intrauterin fosterdød gjenstod 2 122 fødsler for analyse. Resultater. Oksytocin ble gitt som ristimulering til 490 av 969 førstegangsfødende (51 %) og til 233 av 1 153 flergangsfødende (20 %). 203 av 239 førstegangsfødende som fikk epiduralbedøvelse (85 %) og 287 av 730 førstegangsfødende som ikke fikk epiduralbedøvelse (39 %), ble stimulert, sammenliknet med henholdsvis 64 av 96 (67 %) og 169 av 1 057 (16 %) flergangsfødende. Fortolkning. I denne studien ble halvdelen av alle førstegangsfødende og en femdel av alle flergangsfødende stimulert med oksytocin. Vi vet ikke om dette er representativt for resten av landet. Det behøves mer forskning om risvekkelse og langsom fremgang, om når det er best å gripe inn og hvilke kvinner som har mest nytte av å bli stimulert med oksytocin.
The Differential Effects of Radiofrequency Ablation and Hepatic Resection on Serum IL-10 Level in Patients with Liver Cancer

Liver cancer is a rapidly lethal cancer and is on the rise worldwide. Surgery is a gold standard treatment for primary liver cancer and liver metastases, however, non-surgical locoregional treatment options are of increasing clinical interest when tumor size, number and sites permit. Previous studies underline immunomodulatory effects of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) in patients with liver cancer. RFA seems to promote effector immune cell frequencies and diminishing immunosuppressive leukocytes. Nevertheless its impact on extracellular tumor matrix is practically uncovered. Herein we report on the differential effects of RFA and surgical liver resection on serum level of anti-inflammatory marker IL-10 in patients with hepatic cancer.
A tablet-type acoustic digital pen that presents pen strokes with music tones

This study presents a tablet-type acoustic digital pen that presents pen strokes in handwriting with music tones. An acoustic digital pen for the visually impaired has been previously proposed, and it is shown that the pen-tip position (sound localization) can be identified by continuously changing the volume and acoustic frequency in correspondence with the pen strokes in space. In the tablet-type acoustic digital pen proposed in this study, we change the musical scale in the horizontal direction and the octave in the vertical direction on a spatially discretized 2D grid. By enabling the grid to be adjusted to the desired size using the pinch in/out operation on the tablet touch screen, it is possible to efficiently practice writing letters of various scales in a balanced manner. Furthermore, by changing the music tone (frequency distortion) in accordance with the pen touch at character feature points, such as the start point, via the end point of each pen stroke, the proposed design eases learning of the Tome, Hane, and Harai accents.
Assessment of Left Ventricular Myocardial Diseases with Cardiac Computed Tomography

Rapid advances in cardiac computed tomography (CT) have enabled the characterization of left ventricular (LV) myocardial diseases based on LV anatomical morphology, function, density, and enhancement pattern. Global LV function and regional wall motion can be evaluated using multi-phasic cine CT images. CT myocardial perfusion imaging facilitates the identification of hemodynamically significant coronary artery disease. CT delayed-enhancement imaging is used to detect myocardial scar in myocardial infarction and to measure the extracellular volume fraction in non-ischemic cardiomyopathy. Multi-energy cardiac CT allows the mapping of iodine distribution in the myocardium. This review summarizes the current techniques of cardiac CT for LV myocardial assessment, highlights the key findings in various myocardial diseases, and presents future applications to complement echocardiography and cardiovascular magnetic resonance.
ANTIBODY FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION CURVE FOR RISK ASSESSMENT OF A MALARIA EPIDEMIC

A seroepidemiological study of the prevalence of malaria, employing the frequency distribution curve of ELISA titers, was conducted. Comparison of the shape of the curves obtained in the two villages in the Sudan before and after the flood of the Blue Nile in 1988, clearly demonstrated the existence of certain malarial foci which might pose a potential risk for development of malaria epidemics in the area, although these malarial foci could not be detected by either slidepositivity rate or seropositivity rate. Thus, application of this method is of considerable value in identifying latent malarial foci where control measures should be strengthened.
Atrial Fibrillation Detection with Convolutional Neural Network

We propose an algorithm for the atrial fibrillation(AF) detection a short single-lead electrocardiogram(ECG) records using convolutional neural networks. In this work, we creatively convert time series problem into space problem to solve, and several comparison experiments were conducted to adjust and optimize the parameters. Finally, the algorithm with a 52-layer convolutional neural network(CNN) could obtain the best performance. Besides, residual connections have been employed to optimize the model and a simple data augmentation was introduced to prevent overfitting during training procedure. We evaluate the performance of our algorithm on the 2017 PhysioNet/ Computing in Cardiology(CinC) Challenge dataset, obtaining an accuracy of 83.8%. And the experimental results are about 1.5 percentage points higher than that obtained by CRNN which ranks top-five in the competition.
The Prevalence of Different Types of Accidents Among Elderly People Residing in Khorramabad, Iran: A Descriptive-Analytical Study

Background: Nowadays, accidents among the elderly are of great importance due to the increasing population of the elderly and the eﬀects of their lifestyles. Objectives: Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the epidemiology of accidents among the elderly in Khorramabad, Iran, during 2016 - 2017. Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 434 elderly individuals aged 60 years old and older who had experienced accidents and had referred to hospitals in Khorramabad. The census sampling method was used. The data collection instrument was a checklist to investigate the types of accidents among the elderly. Data were entered into SPSS software version 22 and analyzed using the chi-squared test at the signiﬁcance level of 0.05. Results: The most common types of accidents were falls (64.5%), burns (14.7%), poisoning (14.5%), trauma (6%) and drowning (0.2%). There was a signiﬁcant diﬀerence between the two sexes in terms of type of accident (P = 0.002). The prevalence of the above-mentioned incidents was higher in females than males, except for poisoning, which was more common in males. There were no signiﬁcant relationships among the type of accident with age and the location of the accident. Conclusions: Fall as the most common accident in the elderly calls for the design of preventive programs to enhance both the lifestyle and the safety of the living environment. The higher prevalence of poisoning in men can be attributed to opioid abuse, which is more common among males.
Towards a phonetically grounded diachronic phonology of basque

This dissertation analyzes Basque diachronic phonology within a phonetically informed approach to sound patterns and sound change as well as being grounded in cross-linguistic typological tendencies and incorporates results from laboratory phonology. Linguistic contact is also taken into account. This approach not only calls for the inclusion of phonetic explanations for the historical processes of Basque, it also aims to find typological parallels in genetically unrelated languages, in order to shed light on the processes under analysis. The general hypothesis is that typologically common sound changes and sound patterns are precisely those with well understood phonetic origins (Blevins 2004). In short, typological parallels and phonetic bases provide a deeper understanding of Basque historical phonology and illuminate the important contributions isolates can make to theories of sound change.
How to Manage Generations? An Approach based on the Quality of Work Life

The objectives of this research are to examine whether there are significant differences in the perception of quality of work life among employees of three generational cohorts (i.e., Baby Boomers, Generation Xers and Millennials) and to propose some strategies from HRM in order to manage these differences. We used survey data collected from 522 employees of the logistic sector in Colombia and conducted internal consistency analysis, correlation analyses and one-way ANOVA. Results of ANOVA indicate that variables of quality of work life significantly differ depending on the generational membership of the employees. For example, Millennials were found to be a more distinct cohort from Gen Xers and Baby Boomers in terms of their relationship between promotion and career. However, the results suggest that employees in the older generations are likely to be more dedicated to, engrossed in, and even vigorous at work. For future studies, we recommend discussing how the knowledge on each generation in the workplace can inform specific HRM practices, such as how to train each generation effectively or to encourage each generation to improve work performance.
Toxicants Associated with Spontaneous Abortion in the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD)

Background Up to 70% of all pregnancies result in either implantation failure or spontaneous abortion (SA). Many events occur before women are aware of their pregnancy and we lack a comprehensive understanding of high-risk SA chemicals. In epidemiologic research, failure to account for a toxicant’s impact on SA can also bias toxicant-birth outcome associations. Our goal was to identify chemicals with a high number of interactions with SA genes, based on known toxicogenomic responses. Methods We used reference SA (MeSH: D000022) and chemical gene lists from the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database in three species (human, mouse, and rat). We prioritized chemicals (n=25) found in maternal blood/urine samples or in groundwater, tap water, or Superfund sites. For chemical-disease gene sets of sufficient size (n=13 chemicals, n=20 comparisons), chi-squared enrichment tests and proportional reporting ratios (PRR) were calculated. We then cross-validated enrichment results. Finally, among the SA genes, we assessed enrichment for gene ontology biological processes and for chemicals associated with SA in humans, we visualized specific gene-chemical interactions. Results The number of unique genes annotated to a chemical ranged from 2 (bromacil) to 5,607 (atrazine), and 121 genes were annotated to SA. In humans, all chemicals tested were highly enriched for SA gene overlap (all p<0.001; parathion PRR=7, cadmium PRR=6.5, lead PRR=3.9, arsenic PRR=3.5, atrazine PRR=2.8). In mice, highest enrichment (p<0.001) was observed for naphthalene (PRR=16.1), cadmium (PRR=12.8), arsenic (PRR=11.6), and carbon tetrachloride (PRR=7.7). In rats, we observed highest enrichment (p<0.001) for cadmium (PRR=8.7), carbon tetrachloride (PRR=8.3), and dieldrin (PRR=5.3). Our findings were robust to 1,000 permutations each of gene sets ranging in size from 100 to 10,000. SA genes were overrepresented in biological processes: inflammatory response (q=0.001), collagen metabolic process (q=1×10−13), cell death (q=0.02), and vascular development (q=0.005). Conclusion We observed chemical gene sets (parathion, cadmium, naphthalene, carbon tetrachloride, arsenic, lead, dieldrin, and atrazine) were highly enriched for SA genes. Exposures to chemicals linked to SA, thus linked to probability of live birth, may deplete fetuses susceptible to adverse birth outcomes. Our findings have critical public health implications for successful pregnancies as well as the interpretation of environmental pregnancy cohort analyses.
Copulation Exerts Significant Effects on mRNA Expression of Cryptochrome Genes in a Moth

Abstract It is recognized that the behavioral rhythms of organisms are controlled by the circadian clock, while the reverse direction, i.e., whether changes in physiology and behavior react to the internal rhythms, is unclear. Cryptochromes (CRYs) are photolyase-like flavoproteins with blue-light receptor function and other functions on circadian clock and migration in animals. Here, we cloned the full-length cDNA of CRY1 and CRY2 in Spodoptera litura (Fabricius, 1775) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). Sl-CRYs show high similarity to orthologs from other insects, and their conserved regions contain a DNA photolyase domain and a FAD-binding seven domain. The expression levels of both genes were relatively low during the larval stage, which increased during the pupal stage and then peaked at the adult stage. The expression of Sl-CRY1 and Sl-CRY2 showed differences between males and females and between scotophase and photophase. Further, our study demonstrated that copulation has a significant effect on the expression of Sl-CRYs. More interestingly, the changes in the expression of Sl-CRY1 and Sl-CRY2 due to copulation showed the same trend in both sexes, in which the expression levels of both genes in copulated males and females decreased in the subsequent scotophase after copulation and then increased significantly in the following photophase. Considering the nature of the dramatic changes in reproductive behavior and physiology after copulation in S. litura, we propose that the changes in the expression of Sl-CRYs after copulation could have some function in the reproductive process.
A new filtering-based query processing: improving semantic caching efficiency in mediation systems

Due to the exponential increase in information requirements on the one hand1, and in the number of heterogonous and distributed sources on the other. Several integration approaches, including information mediation have been suggested. The main purpose of information mediators is to let end users consume data sets that can be issued from a multitude of heterogeneous sources without paying attention to their specific characteristics. Nevertheless, involved sources might be geographically dispersed and therefore inaccessible from time to time. It is in this context that numerous studies on semantic caching have been carried out to speed up mediation process. To this end, previous user queries are cached so their results can be reused to answer future queries. However, existing semantic caching approaches might lead to extra costs in case the cache does not contain enough results. In this paper, we describe a new semantic caching mechanism that makes it possible to both reduce response delays and to avoid extra costs generated by the usage of caching.
Drug Discovery Handbook

This comprehensive, practical guide presents an explanation of the latest techniques and methods in drug discovery, including: • Genomics, proteomics, high-throughput screening, and systems biology • Summaries of how these techniques and methods are used to discover new central nervous system agents, antiviral agents, respiratory drugs, oncology drugs, and more • Specific approaches to drug discovery, including problems that are encountered, solutions to these problems, and limitations of various methods and techniques The thorough coverage and practical, scientifically valid problem-solving approach of Drug Discovery Handbook will serve as an invaluable aid in the complex task of developing new drugs.