Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Observation of Stage Position in a 2-Axis Nano-positioner Using Hybrid Kalman Filter

This paper presents a novel method for observation of the stage position in a 2D Nano-positioning system based on a hybrid Kalman filter. In the proposed method, there is no need to measure the stage position directly using complex and costly capacity sensors. Instead, by using traditional piezo actuators equipped with strain gauge sensors, the deflection of the magnification system at the position of actuators is measured. Then, by employing a powerful estimation algorithm named as Kalman filter, the displacements of the stage are observed. The designed hybrid Kalman filter uses dynamical equations of motion in the prediction step. The piezo actuators deflections are measured and exploited to correct the predicted values for the system state variables. In order to simulate realistic conditions, a relatively exact COMSOL model has been developed for the nano-positioner where noise has been added to the piezo displacements obtained by simulating this model and these noisy data are used as measurements in the Kalman filter algorithm. The designed hybrid Kalman filter is examined for three different updating time steps. The results show that the designed Kalman filter appropriately estimates the stage displacements, and its accuracy is improved when the filter time step reduces.
Role of Creative Economy on Local Economic Development

Local economic development in Indonesia is still quite minimal, requiring new policies and strategies such as the creative economy. This study analyzes the influence of the creative economy as represented by the concentration of the creative class and its supporting factors on local economic development. Using panel data from Barekraf / BPS statistics for 2011-2015, the results show that the concentration of the creative working class has a significant impact on local economic development including supporting factor such as proportion graduated high educated, electrification ratio and internet coverage ratio. These findings indicate that the creative working class can encourage the growth of local economic development in a region.
Personality Traits dan Dukungan Sosial sebagai Prediktor Service Orientation Tenaga Kesehatan

Personality traits are one of the intrapersonal factors that makes health workers differently doing quality of service orientation. As well as social support from family, friends, and significant others are one of interpersonal factor that assumedly can increase the desire of health workers to serve people better. This research aims to see the influence of personality traits and social support for service orientation of health worker during the Covid-19 pandemic. This research uses quantitative methods with linear regression analysis. Participants were 218 health workers who are active with various professions/jobs according definition of health workers in UU number 36 of 2014. The results show that the effectiveness of personality traits model (R2 adjusted = 0,309) and also the quality of social support (R2 adjusted = 0,166) can significantly predict (p < 0,01) service orientation. Personality traits especially agreeableness traits and conscientiousness traits were shown to be predictors. As well social support, especially from the significant other dimension has been proven to be a predictor. Thus, to improve service orientation, it is necessary to improve the quality of personality traits and social support received.
Binaural Speech Separation of Moving Speakers With Preserved Spatial Cues

Binaural speech separation algorithms designed for augmented hearing technologies need to both improve the signal-to-noise ratio of individual speakers and preserve their perceived location in space. The majority of binaural speech separation meth-ods assume nonmoving speakers. As a result, their application to real-world scenarios with freely moving speakers requires block-wise adaptation which relies on short-term contextual information and limits their performance. In this study, we pro-pose an alternative approach for utterance-level source separation with moving speakers and in reverberant conditions. Our model makes use of spectral and spatial features of speakers in a larger context compared to the block-wise adaption methods. The model can implicitly track speakers within the utterance without the need for explicit tracking modules. Experimental results on simulated moving multitalker speech show that the proposed method can signiﬁcantly outperform block-wise adaptation methods in both separation performance and preserving the interaural cues across multiple conditions, which makes it suitable for real-world augmented hearing applications.
Layer-Wise Fast Adaptation for End-to-End Multi-Accent Speech Recognition

The variety and complexity of accents pose a huge challenge to robust Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). Some previous work has attempted to address such problems, however most of the current approaches either require prior knowledge about the target accent, or cannot handle unseen accents and accent-unspecific standard speech. In this work, we aim to improve multi-accent speech recognition in the end-to-end (E2E) framework with a novel layer-wise adaptation architecture. Firstly, we propose a robust deep accent representation learning architecture to obtain accurate accent embedding, and some advanced schemes are designed to further boost the quality of accent embeddings, including phone posteriorgram (PPG) feature, TTS based data augmentation in the training stage, test-time augmentation and multi-embedding fusion in the testing stage. Then, the layer-wise adaptation with accent embeddings is developed for fast accent adaptation in ASR, and two types of adapter layers are designed, including the gated adapter layer and multi-basis adapter layer. Compared to the usual two-pass adaptation, these adapter layers are injected between the ASR encoder layers to encode the accent information in ASR flexibly, and perform fast adaption on the corresponding speech accent. The experiments on Accent AESRC corpus show that the proposed deep accent representation learning can capture accurate accent knowledge, and get high performance on accent classification. The new layer-wise adaptation architecture with the accurate accent embedding outperforms the other traditional methods, and obtains consistent $\sim$15% relative word error rate (WER) reduction on all kinds of testing scenarios, including seen accents, unseen accents and accent-unspecific standard speech.
Comparative Analysis of the Proximate Composition, Vitamins Contents, and Metals Profile of Nigerian Rice ( Oryza glaberrima) and Imported Rice ( Oryza sativa)

The study was designed to determine and compare the proximate composition, metals, and vitamin levels in three Nigerian rice varieties of Oryza glaberrima (Brown, Mokwa, and Ofada rice) and one imported rice of Oryza sativa . The samples were processed and evaluated in triplicate using standard methods. Brown rice had the highest carbohydrate (76.03%) content; Mokwa had the highest moisture (12.04%); Ofada had the highest protein (10.60%), and energy value (413.75 kCal/100g); the imported rice had the highest fibre content (1.53%). In terms of minerals, Brown was highest in zinc (13.83%), Ofada was highest in iron (485 %). Ofada and Brown rice had relatively high levels of lead metal. Ofada led in thiamine (0.31 mg/100g), riboflavin (0.08 mg/ 100g) and niacin (3.03 mg 100 g -1 ). The findings revealed that O. glaberrima Nigerian rice cultivars showed higher or at least comparable nutritive values than the O. sativa counterpart but the high level of metals like lead should incite further scrutiny.
Strengthening the second pillar: a greater role for money in the ECB’s strategy

ABSTRACT Like most central banks, the European Central Bank makes and implements its monetary policy decisions by adjusting its targets for short-term interest rates in response to information gleaned from a wide range of macroeconomic indicators and projections. Unlike other central banks, however, the ECB also monitors money growth as a ‘cross check’ against the macroeconomic analysis that guides its policies of interest rate management. This paper argues that making further use of this ‘second pillar’ would help the ECB to better achieve its nominal objectives in the present environment of exceptionally low interest rates. By modifying the ‘P-star’ framework – a small-scale model with Quantity Theory foundations – the paper shows how the ECB could set a quantitative ‘reference value’ for Divisia money growth to stabilize nominal spending around a target path, even while its traditional interest rate policies are constrained by the zero lower bound.
Belatacept dosing in Lung Transplantation: is there a Method to the Madness?

Data supporting the use of belatacept in non-abdominal organs are limited to case series and small cohorts involving patients requiring conversion due to CNI intolerance or contraindication. Review articles summarizing the efficacy of belatacept salvage therapy in lung transplantation have previously been published, however, dosing regimens are highly variable and uniform guidance is lacking. In this article, indications and considerations for belatacept use in lung transplant recipients are reviewed with a specific focus on dosing regimens. Utilization of standardized dosing protocols to guide belatacept conversion will both improve the ability to directly assess outcomes and provide the opportunity to improve future patient care. A suggested framework for dosing selection and timeline for cross titration is proposed herein.
The diagnostic role of endoscopic ultrasonography, magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography in the assessment of pancreatic cystic lesions

Aim: To reveal the malignancy rates of pancreatic cyctic lesions and success rates of computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) in differentiating between malignant vs non-malignant cystic lesions of the pancreas. Methods: In this study, 138 patients were included. CT, MRI, EUS and pathology reports of the related patients were scrutinised and descriptive statistical methods were used. Sensitivity and specificity values of CT, MRI and EUS were calculated by taking the postoperative histopathology results as the gold standard. Results: In assessment the data of patients with neoplastic or non-neoplastic pancreatic cysts, the highest sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy in the malignant-benign distinction of the lesions was determined in CT. Although EUS had similar sensitivity and diagnostic accuracy rates as CT, its specificity was considered to be lower than CT. MRI had lower sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy rates compared to both of modalities (EUS and CT). The sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy of EUS guided FNA biopsies were found to be quite low than other diagnostic modalities. Conclusion: While CT and EUS showed high correlation with each other in terms of overall diagnostic compliance, there was a moderate correlation between MRI and EUS.
Impact of Workplace Bullying on Psychological Wellbeing of Doctors in Health Care Sector of Pakistan

Organizations today are globally facing the dilemma of inappropriate work behaviours especially bullying, as it has long term negative effects on target employees. Workplace bullying is a major reason for work-related distress and subsequently psychological wellbeing issues for employees. The main objective of this study was to identify the effect of bullying on the psychological well-being of doctors in Karachi, Pakistan. Data from 135 doctors were collected through a structured questionnaire. Results of the study indicated that workplace bullying significantly affects the psychological well-being of employees’ and gender plays moderating effect in the relationship between workplace bullying and the psychological well-being of the doctors. The findings of the study are very important for policymakers and top management of the hospitals, to prevent the healthcare sector from the detrimental impact of this unhealthy practice and to minimize the psychological effect of bullying. This study suggests management should pay attention to designing and executing rules and policies against bullying in order to minimize the adverse results of workplace bullying. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that bullying affects create more devastating effects on female doctors than their male counterparts. Further, it was observed that skills and experience are major factors to obtain positive outcomes of employee psychological wellbeing.
Growth or innovation? The impacts analysis of FDI on performance of China’s high-tech zones

Abstract This paper empirically investigates the impacts of FDI on operation and innovation performance of China’s national high-tech zones by using the SBM-VRS and Tobit model. The results show that in general, FDI promotes the growth of operation performance of high-tech zones, but has no significant effect on their innovation performance, after controlling the characteristics in cities and high-tech zones level. Furtherly, the paper finds that FDI increases per expenditure on R&D activity, but decreases ratio of technical income, which explains why FDI doesn’t have significant effect on innovation performance. Different regions make different sense. FDI has significantly positive effect on operation performance of all high-tech zones located on eastern, central and western regions, while FDI only makes a positive effect on innovation performance of those high-tech zones on western and central region.
Dynamic User Activity and Data Detection for Grant-Free NOMA via Weighted ℓ2,1 Minimization

Grant-free non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has recently received wide attention for reducing signaling overhead and transmission latency in massive machine-type communications (mMTC). In grant-free NOMA systems, user activity and data (UAD) has to be detected, which is challenging in practice. As an emerging technique, compressive sensing (CS) shows great promise in solving this problem by exploiting the inherent sparsity nature of user activity. This paper proposes to use the weighted $\ell _{2, 1}$ minimization (WL21M) to jointly detect UAD in realistic dynamic scenarios. At first, the average recoverability of the WL21M is analyzed. This analysis reveals the fact that the WL21M can improve the detection performance by means of an appropriate weighting and the incorporation of intrinsic temporal correlation. Motivated by the analysis, a collaborative hierarchical match pursuit (C-HiMP) algorithm is proposed for dynamic UAD detection. In the C-HiMP, a sequence of WL21M problems are solved in the subspaces spanned by all of the components in the hierarchical estimated support sets, where the weights are collaboratively updated by the solutions in previous time slots so that an attractive self-correction capacity is obtained. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed C-HiMP can obtain significant performance improvements, in terms of detection accuracy and computational complexity, compared with several state-of-the-art CS-based detection algorithms.
Computational Fluid-Structure Interaction Framework for Simulating Characteristic Deformations in Insect Flapping Wings

In this study, a computational fluid–structure interaction (FSI) framework for characteristic deformations in insect’s wings is proposed. The proposed framework consists of a pixel wing model using a structured shell finite element mesh, a projection method for the monolithic FSI monolithic equations using an algebraic splitting, and the FSI dynamic similarity law to measure dynamic similarity between model’s and actual insect’s flights. It is shown that the proposed framework can directly simulate passive feathering and cambering in insect’s wings caused by the FSI, whose magnitudes are very close to those of actual insects.
1,5-Anhydroglucitol in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction.

Aim: The study aimed to investigate the potential association of 1,5-AG and cardiovascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Methods: The study was an observational non-matched case-control study. The study included 114 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus; 42 were with STEMI (STEMI group) and 72 without STEMI (non-STEMI group). Clinical data, fasting blood glucose, HbA1c, and 1,5 Anhydro-D-glucitol were analyzed. The Mann-Whitney U-test and the χ2 test was used for categorical variables to assess the significance of differences between the groups. The binary logistic regression was used to determine the association of 1,5-AG and STEMI. Results: There were 43.86% men and 56.14% women among the investigated patients. The median age of patients in the STEMI and non-STEMI groups were 61 (Q25-75 54-71) and 53 (Q25-15 75 57-60) years of age, р=0.027. Median fasting plasma glycemia in the STEMI group was 9.81 mmol/l (Q25-75 7.7-14.8), in the non-STEMI group (8.55 mmol/l, Q25-75 6.72-10.07, р=0.012). 1,5-AG was significantly lower in the STEMI group than in the non-STEMI (the STEMI group: Ме=215.85, Q25-75 186.35-19 280.77; the non-STEMI group Ме=314.64, Q25-75 250.83-415.08, р=0.000). No significant difference in concentration of HbA1c was found between the groups. The logistic regression model adjusted on confounders demonstrated that low plasma 1,5-AG concentration increases the odds ratio of STEMI in diabetic patients [OR 3,217 (95% CI 2,567–7,732), p = 0,002]. Conclusion: The association between 1,5-AG and STEMI in patients with T2DM suggests the potential beneficial role of 1,5-AG as a cardiovascular risk marker in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Trust and Control in the Context of Integrated Project Delivery

Im Ausland kommen seit vielen Jahren erfolgreich Projektabwicklungsmodelle wie „Project Alliancing“ und „Integrated Project Delivery“ zum Einsatz. Diese Modelle unterscheiden sich insbesondere durch frühe Integration wesentlicher Projektbeteiligter und auf den Projekterfolg ausgerichtete gemeinsame Anreizsysteme von traditionellen Modellen. In Deutschland werden diese Modelle unter dem Begriff „Integrierte Projektabwicklung“ (IPA) subsumiert. Die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von IPA erfordert in der Regel ein hohes Maß an Vertrauen. Gleichzeitig kann eine gewisse Form der Kontrolle sinnvoll oder dringend erforderlich sein. Der folgende Beitrag geht daher der Frage nach, welche Elemente den Grad des Vertrauens zwischen den Partnern in einem IPA-Projekt beeinflussen und inwieweit im Gegenzug Kontrolle erforderlich ist. Dazu wurden Aspekte der IPA, die Vertrauen erfordern beziehungsweise beeinflussen, identifiziert und deren Ausgestaltung in Abhängigkeit vom Vertrauensgrad analysiert.
Improving the students’ writing skill using weblog

This study used weblog to improve the students’ writing skill and took the second-grade students at junior high school Sentosa Bhakti Baturaja. Then, to take the data, the reserchers used the pre-experimental design. The objective was to find out whether there was any significantly effective to improve students in writing skill by the use weblog to the eighth-grade student of SMP Sentosa Bhakti Baturaja. This study took VIII.B that consisted of 18 students as the sample by applying cluster random sampling. The data was collected by using test. The test was in from of writing test. The data obtained through test and analysis was done by using statistical analysis (paired sample t-test). The result it was found the mean score of pretests was 50 and the mean score of posttests was 73,55. Based on the data analysis the researcher concluded there was significantly effective to use weblog to improve students writing skill descriptive text at SMP Sentosa Bhakti Baturaja before and after treatment. Since, the sig. (2-tailed) =0.000 less than significant level (? =0.05), the writers concludes that the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted, and the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected. It means that there is significant effect in using a weblog to improve students writing skill at SMP Sentosa Bhakti Baturaja. Keywords: writing skill; weblog; descriptive text
Ecological restoration of fly‐ash disposal areas: Challenges and opportunities

Fly‐ash (FA) is a by‐product or residue that is produced during the combustion of coal for energy production in thermal power plants. The huge amount of FA generation is a global problem; and coal power generators still can find no safe and sustainable approach to FA disposal. FA dumps not only create air, water, and soil pollution but also pose a noxious impact on human health by introducing toxins in the food chain through biomagnification. A non‐food vegetation cover can help to mitigate FA dump‐related environmental health issues. However, alkaline pH, toxic metals, lack of soil microbes, and pozzolanic properties of FA limit plant growth. In this regard, ecological restoration of FA dumps through phytoremediation should be a holistic approach. This review focuses on the role of naturally occurring plants, tree plantation, and microbial inoculation in the ecological restoration of FA dumps and their role in the physicochemical changes of FA substrate. Application of organic material has been proved to help establish vegetation cover on FA dumps as they provide essential nutrients for plant and microbial growth. Morphological, physiological, and antioxidant responses of plants grown on FA dumps are also discussed in this study in detail. Overall, this review summarises the different comprehensive approaches of FA dump restoration and compiles ways to convert barren FA dumps into useful sites for deriving bioeconomy with phytoproducts. The outcomes of this study should be beneficial helping identify site‐specific ecorestoration of FA dumps through an integrated approach.
The Effect of Accounting Record Keeping Practices on Financial Performance: Special Reference to Small and Medium Enterprises in Anuradhapura District

In Sri Lankan context Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role and contribute in significantly to the economic growth and social development through job creation, poverty alleviation and new business development, but on the other hand there are many failures of SMEs due to poor record keeping practices, inaccurate accounting information, reason to inaccurate financial performance and to make poor financial decisions. Therefore, many of SMEs die off soon after their establishments and face financial and management challenges. The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of accounting record keeping practices on financial performance of SMEs in Anuradhapura district. Preparing accounting records (PAR), preparing financial statements (PFS), computer utilization (CU) and respondents’ perception (RP) used as independent variables to measure the accounting record keeping practices. Financial performance (FP) was used as the dependent variable of this study. The research was based on the quantitative research method and the data were collected from 152 SMEs in Anuradhapura district using a structured. Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis used to analyze collected data according to SPSS 25 version. Results revealed that accounting record keeping practices show a positive effect on financial performance of SMEs and preparing financial statements have a significant effect on SMEs financial performance. So, SMEs should highly concern about record keeping practices as one of the tool to improve and increase the financial performance and relevant authorities should develop specific guidelines and must provide templates of account record keeping practices for SMEs to make them very easier and familiar with account practices.