Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Item Response Theory Analysis of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S): A Systematic Review

Background The COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing and is not yet under control. Evidence regarding the impacts of COVID-19 on psychological distress has been widely reported worldwide, and one of the primary concerns regarding psychological distress is fear (ie, fear of COVID-19). Therefore, having a robust instrument for assessing fear of COVID-19 is important. The present systematic review aimed to synthesize the psychometric evidence evaluated using item response theory (IRT) on the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S). Methods Utilizing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, four academic databases (Scopus, PubMed Central, ProQuest, and ISI Web of Knowledge) were used to search target papers. Keywords used for search were “Fear of COVID-19 Scale” and its abbreviation (ie, “FCV-19S”) and IRT-related terms. The COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health status Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) checklist was then applied to evaluate the methodological quality of the reviewed papers. Moreover, psychometric properties using IRT methods were synthesized using a qualitative method. Results The initial search resulted in 552 papers (73 duplicates) and 479 were screened based on their titles and abstracts. Finally, 16 papers were included for review regarding their methodological quality (via COSMIN) to synthesize the psychometric evidence for FCV-19S. The 16 papers included 21 countries with 16 language versions of FCV-19S. Conclusion All the psychometric evidence indicated that the seven items in the FCV-19S fit with the concept of fear. The FCV-19S is a strong and valid instrument for assessing fear across different languages. The seven items in the FCV-19S appear to be unidimensional in assessing fear, which indicates that all items are necessary in the FCV-19S.
Evaluation of Zinc Status and Socio-Economic Profile of Pregnant Women in Osogbo Metropolis, South-Western Nigeria

Purpose: Zinc status during gestation affects both maternal and fetal health. The study was designed to investigate maternal zinc status and relate it with dietary zinc and socioeconomic levels in first, second and third trimester pregnant women. Methods/Patients: Forty-five [15 for each trimester] pregnant women and thirty non-pregnant women that served as control were recruited for the study. Serum zinc concentrations were determined using atomic absorption spectrometry. From structured questionnaire, information was obtained on age, dietary zinc content, and socioeconomic status [education, occupation]. Zinc status was summarized as mean ± standard deviation. Data were analyzed using Student t- test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Chi-square test. P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Only first but not second and third trimester pregnant women featured significantly lower zinc levels compared with control. Non-significant difference in zinc levels were observed when the three trimesters were compared. Of the women in first trimester which featured significantly lower serum zinc level compared with control, all were of high educational status although only < 50% were of high occupational status yet over 70% belong to high dietary zinc sub-group. Conclusion: Data obtained from the study revealed that depleted serum zinc level was observed in the first trimester and educational status rather than socioeconomic status played a role in choice of zinc- rich containing food.
Influence of Data Filters on the Position and Precision of Paleomagnetic Poles: What Is the Optimal Sampling Strategy?

To determine a paleopole, the paleomagnetic community commonly applies a loosely defined set of quantitative data filters that were established for studies of geomagnetic field behavior. These filters require costly and time‐consuming sampling procedures, but whether they improve the precision and influence the position of paleopoles has not yet been systematically analyzed. In this study, we performed a series of experiments on four datasets which consist of 73–125 lava sites with 6–7 samples per lava. The datasets are from different regions and ages, and are large enough to represent paleosecular variation, yet include demonstrably unreliable paleomagnetic directions. We show that the systematic application of data filters based on within‐site scatter (a maximum angular deviation filter on individual directions, a k‐cutoff, a minimum number of samples per site, and eliminating the farthest outliers per site) cannot identify unreliable directions. We find instead that excluding unreliable directions relies on the subjective interpretation of the expert, highlighting the importance of making all data available following the FAIR principles. In addition, data filters that decrease the number of sites even have an adverse effect; they decrease the precision of the paleopole. Between‐site scatter often outweighs within‐site scatter, and when collecting paleomagnetic poles, the extra efforts put into collecting multiple samples per site are more effectively spent on collecting more single‐sample sites.
Mitigation of Calcium-Related Disorders in Soilless Production Systems

In the current scenario of human-driven climate change, extreme weather events will likely affect agricultural production worldwide. Soilless production systems have recently arisen as a solution to optimize the use of natural resources, such as water and soil, and hence will contribute to reducing the environmental impact of agriculture. However, nutritional imbalance due to adverse environmental factors, such as drought, high temperatures, and salinity, might produce calcium-related physiological disorders during plant growth, such as blossom-end rot (BER) in fruits and tipburn (TB) in leaves, which are a serious problem in crop production. Here, we discuss the different agronomic, physiological, and genetic factors that favor the induction of BER in tomato and TB in lettuce and anticipate the use of an integration of breeding and technological approaches to alleviate nutritional disorders in soilless production systems.
Residential Mobility of a Cohort of Homeless People in Times of Crisis: COVID-19 Pandemic in a European Metropolis

Most vulnerable individuals are particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study takes place in a large city in France. The aim of this study is to describe the mobility of the homeless population at the beginning of the health crisis and to analyze its impact in terms of COVID-19 prevalence. From June to August 2020 and September to December 2020, 1272 homeless people were invited to be tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and virus and complete questionnaires. Our data show that homeless populations are sociologically different depending on where they live. We show that people that were living on the street were most likely to be relocated to emergency shelters than other inhabitants. Some neighborhoods are points of attraction for homeless people in the city while others emptied during the health crisis, which had consequences for virus circulation. People with a greater number of different dwellings reported became more infected. This first study of the mobility and epidemiology of homeless people in the time of the pandemic provides unique information about mobility mapping, sociological factors of this mobility, mobility at different scales, and epidemiological consequences. We suggest that homeless policies need to be radically transformed since the actual model exposes people to infection in emergency.
Recent Developments in Steelmaking Industry and Potential Alkali Activated Based Steel Waste: A Comprehensive Review

The steel industry is responsible for one-third of all global industrial CO2 emissions, putting pressure on the industry to shift forward towards more environmentally friendly production methods. The metallurgical industry is under enormous pressure to reduce CO2 emissions as a result of growing environmental concerns about global warming. The reduction in CO2 emissions is normally fulfilled by recycling steel waste into alkali-activated cement. Numerous types of steel waste have been produced via three main production routes, including blast furnace, electric arc furnace, and basic oxygen furnace. To date, all of the steel waste has been incorporated into alkali activation system to enhance the properties. This review focuses on the current developments over the last ten years in the steelmaking industry. This work also summarizes the utilization of steel waste for improving cement properties through an alkali activation system. Finally, this work presents some future research opportunities with regard to the potential of steel waste to be utilized as an alkali-activated material.
Simvastatin Downregulates Cofilin and Stathmin to Inhibit Skeletal Muscle Cells Migration

Statins are the most effective therapeutic agents for reducing cholesterol synthesis. Given their widespread use, many adverse effects from statins have been reported; of these, musculoskeletal complications occurred in 15% of patients after receiving statins for 6 months, and simvastatin was the most commonly administered statin among these cases. This study investigated the negative effects of simvastatin on skeletal muscle cells. We performed RNA sequencing analysis to determine gene expression in simvastatin-treated cells. Cell proliferation and migration were examined through cell cycle analysis and the transwell filter migration assay, respectively. Cytoskeleton rearrangement was examined through F-actin and tubulin staining. Western blot analysis was performed to determine the expression of cell cycle-regulated and cytoskeleton-related proteins. Transfection of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) was performed to validate the role of cofilin and stathmin in the simvastatin-mediated inhibition of cell migration. The results revealed that simvastatin inhibited the proliferation and migration of skeletal muscle cells and affected the rearrangement of F-actin and tubulin. Simvastatin reduced the expression of cofilin and stathmin. The knockdown of both cofilin and stathmin by specific siRNA synergistically impaired cell migration. In conclusion, our results indicated that simvastatin inhibited skeletal muscle cell migration by reducing the expressions of cofilin and stathmin.
O planejamento colaborativo no ensino da estatística: instrumento para formar discentes e docentes

O trabalho em colaboração é hoje valorizado nas empresas e nos setores de governo, mas é raro que o planejamento de um componente seja realizado por equipes de docentes. O isolamento da Universidade em relação à sociedade e a interpretação de que a autonomia universitária refere-se à individualidade do docente, são fatores que não incentivam à constituição de equipes para planejar e executar. A experiência relatada demonstra como o estabelecimento desta parceria pode ser mais eficiente e prazeroso para os docentes e discentes.
Circular Hough Transform to improve viable Saccharomyces cerevisiae identification

Yeast counting is an important step in monitoring the fermentation process in sugarcane mills to optimize ethanol production. There is a need for a faster method to count viable cells in place of the fastidious and operator-dependent traditional method. In this paper, the application of a slightly modified version of the standard Circular Hough Transforms to automate the inoculated fermentation process of Saccharomyces cerevisae is reported. The results of several experiments with different preprocessing algorithms and parameter adjustments are presented. The resulting system will be part of a microbiological control procedure that is being developed to respond to Brazilian ethanol sugarcane mill's demands.
Adoption of IP Truncation in a Privacy-Based Decision Tree Pruning Design: A Case Study in Network Intrusion Detection System

A decision tree is a transparent model where the rules are visible and can represent the logic of classification. However, this structure might allow attackers to infer confidential information if the rules carry some sensitive information. Thus, a tree pruning methodology based on an IP truncation anonymisation scheme is proposed in this paper to prune the real IP addresses. However, the possible drawback of carelessly designed tree pruning might degrade the performance of the original tree as some information is intentionally opted out for the tree’s consideration. In this work, the 6-percent-GureKDDCup’99, full-version-GureKDDCup’99, UNSW-NB15, and CIDDS-001 datasets are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed pruning method. The results are also compared to the original unpruned tree model to observe its tolerance and trade-off. The tree model adopted in this work is the C4.5 tree. The findings from our empirical results are very encouraging and spell two main advantages: the sensitive IP addresses can be “pruned” (hidden) throughout the classification process to prevent any potential user profiling, and the number of nodes in the tree is tremendously reduced to make the rule interpretation possible while maintaining the classification accuracy.
Novel techniques for fault location, voltage profile calculation and visualization of transients

Novel Techniques for Fault Location, Voltage Profile Calculation and Visualization of Transients. (December 2006) Cansın Yaman Evrenosog̃lu, B.S.; M.S., Istanbul Technical University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Ali Abur This dissertation addresses three different problems in power systems. The first problem is related to the fault location in complex topologies such as three terminal circuits with series compensation and mutually coupled line sections and distribution networks with distributed generation. Novel methods are presented by using traveling wave approach and wavelet transformation technique to overcome the difficulties introduced by the discontinuities and integrated components such as Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV) protected series capacitors and distributed generation in complex topologies. Simulation results show good correlation between the actual and estimated fault locations for all the studied cases. The second problem concerns the calculation techniques of voltage profiles along transmission lines. A simple yet effective approach to accurately and rapidly obtain the voltage profile along a transmission line during fault transients is presented. The objective of the presented method is to eliminate the need to use wave equations and line parameters provided that an electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP) type transients simulator is available for generating bus voltage transients for a given fault. This is accomplished by developing a time series model to estimate the voltage at an intermediate point along the transmission line. The model is formed for each intermediate point separately. Once the model is obtained it can be used to predict the transient voltage at that point along the line during any fault in the system. The approach can potentially be useful
Transcriptomic Stress Response in Streptococcus mutans following Treatment with a Sublethal Concentration of Chlorhexidine Digluconate

Despite the widespread use of antiseptics such as chlorhexidine digluconate (CHX) in dental practice and oral care, the risks of potential resistance toward these antimicrobial compounds in oral bacteria have only been highlighted very recently. Since the molecular mechanisms behind antiseptic resistance or adaptation are not entirely clear and the bacterial stress response has not been investigated systematically so far, the aim of the present study was to investigate the transcriptomic stress response in Streptococcus mutans after treatment with CHX using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). Planktonic cultures of stationary-phase S. mutans were treated with a sublethal dose of CHX (125 µg/mL) for 5 min. After treatment, RNA was extracted, and RNA-seq was performed on an Illumina NextSeq 500. Differentially expressed genes were analyzed and validated by qRT-PCR. Analysis of differential gene expression following pathway analysis revealed a considerable number of genes and pathways significantly up- or downregulated in S. mutans after sublethal treatment with CHX. In summary, the expression of 404 genes was upregulated, and that of 271 genes was downregulated after sublethal CHX treatment. Analysis of differentially expressed genes and significantly regulated pathways showed regulation of genes involved in purine nucleotide synthesis, biofilm formation, transport systems and stress responses. In conclusion, the results show a transcriptomic stress response in S. mutans upon exposure to CHX and offer insight into potential mechanisms that may result in development of resistances.
Modelling the Compression Ignition Engine for Control: Review and Future Trends.

Constraints change as pollutant standards or embedded diagnosis demands require improvements in model accuracy and their suitability for control algorithm synthesis. From th ermodynamic mathematical modelling to non-parametric models, a wide range of techniques has been investigated for the last thirty years involving both physicists and control engineers. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of current modelling techniques oriented control analysis and design for compression ignition engines. Short examples illustrate each tech niques and existing applications are considered. Comparison of various engine models exhibit the trend to include more physical knowledge inside model-based control design.
Production of antioxidants through lactic acid fermentation: current developments and outlook

Antioxidants are essential in maintaining physical health as they reduce the adverse effects caused by free radical attacks. Free radicals involve in many oxidation processes in the body and may lead to malfunctions of tissues, resulting in degenerative diseases. This article comprehensively reviews the possible mechanisms of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in increasing the antioxidant capacity of fermented foods and the mechanisms of the resulted antioxidant compound in terminating oxidation chain reactions. During food fermentation, LAB could produce antioxidant compounds, increase their bioavailability, or perform both processes simultaneously. Phenolic compounds are the primary antioxidants in plant-based foods. LAB could improve the bioavailability of phenol-based antioxidant compounds by increasing the solubility, converting isoflavone glucosides to aglycones or both. In proteinaceous foods, LAB hydrolyzes parent proteins into smaller fractions, including peptides or free amino acids. Some peptides are known as bioactive peptides owing to antioxidant activity and hence, increase the antioxidant capacity of fermented foods. Exopolysaccharides (EPS) produced by LAB also show antioxidant activity. Production of organic acids, such as lactic acid and acetic acid, change the environmental pH that influences the radical scavenging activity of some compounds. An increase in antioxidant capacities of foods through LAB fermentation supports the development of fermented foods as a part of functional foods that can provide additional health benefits beyond their basic nutritional functions.
Electronic authentication for e-Government services - a survey

Electronic authentication (a.k.a e-Authentication) is the process of establishing confidence in a user's identity electronically presented to an information system. In today's world of exploding internet usage and adoption of eGovernance and e-Commerce initiatives in countries across the world, it is imperative that a user is identified with confidence. In the last 5 years or so, there have been many cases of fraud or misappropriation that could have been avoided had there been a proper e-Authentication system in place. In this paper we present a survey of different eAuthentication systems and standard guidelines being followed for Electronic Government in countries across the world. The aim of this paper is to do a comparative study of various national and international e-Authentication frameworks and to map them with the guidelines of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [13] for eAuthentication. We explored USDA e-Authentication [12], National e-Authentication Framework of Australian Government [5], Qatar's e-Authentication Framework [10], Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Recommendation on Electronic Authentication [9], ePramaan eAuthentication framework of India [7] and Norwegian FANR [8]. Recently, there has been an increasing emphasis on additional functionalities such as Single-Sign-On (SSO), two-way authentication to guard against phishing attacks; and federated electronic authentication. In this paper we also present a case study of a framework that takes into account federated architecture for authentication as well as SSO for e-Government and public services. e-Pramaan can also be integrated with mobile based signature service.
Shortening Passengers’ Travel Time: A Dynamic Metro Train Scheduling Approach Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Urban metros have become the foremost public transit to modern cities, carrying millions of daily rides. As travel efficiency matters to the work productivity of the city, shortening passengers’ travel time for metros is therefore a pressing need, which can bring substantial economic benefits. In this paper, we study a fine-grained, safe, and energy-efficient strategy to improve the efficiency of metro systems by dynamically scheduling dwell time for trains. However, developing such a strategy is very challenging because of three aspects: 1) The objective of optimizing the average travel time of passengers is complex, as it needs to properly balance passengers’ waiting time at platforms and journey time on trains, as well as considering long-term impacts on the whole metro system; 2) Capturing dynamic spatio-temporal (ST) correlations of incoming passengers for metro stations is difficult; and 3) For each train, the dwell time scheduling is affected by other trains on the same metro line, which is not easy to measure. To tackle these challenges, we propose a novel deep neural network, entitled AutoDwell. Specifically, AutoDwell optimizes the long-term rewards of dwell time settings in terms of passengers’ waiting time at platforms and journey time on trains by a reinforcement learning framework. Next, AutoDwell employs gated recurrent units and graph attention networks to extract the ST correlations of the passenger flows among metro stations. In addition, attention mechanisms are leveraged in AutoDwell for capturing the interactions between the trains on the same metro line. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets collected from Beijing and Hangzhou, China, demonstrate the superior performance of AutoDwell over several baselines, capable of saving passengers’ overall travel time. In particular, the model can shorten the waiting time by at least 9%, which can boost passengers’ experience significantly.
EMC analysis of mri environment in view of optimized performance and cost of image-guided interventions

In this work an electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) analysis is performed by means of a dedicated finite element simulation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment to determine the impact of hosting in the scenery different materials and structures necessitated in guided interventions. The results obtained by simulation could be used for the design and optimization of devices used in such environment (actuator, mechatronics.).