Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IDENTIFYING CRITICAL SUCCESS AND FAILURE FACTORS IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN NIGERIA

Understanding those factors that contribute to success and failure of construction projects is crucial. Yet, empirical evidence on these factors remains scarce within the developing countries. This study seeks to identify the critical factors contributing to successful delivery of building projects within the Nigerian construction industry. The Mean Item Score (MIS) ranking revealed the most critical success and failure factors in relation with projects within the construction industry. While timely disbursement of payments, availability of resources as well as competency of contractors are adjudged most critical to construction project success, inadequate machinery and manpower, poor remuneration and dearth of professionalism are seen as most detrimental to effective project performance. Given the significance of these factors, improving attention on them is considered indispensable for successful delivery of construction projects.
PC-X: Profound Clustering via Slow Exemplars

Deep clustering aims at learning clustering and data representation jointly to deliver clustering-friendly representation. In spite of their significant improvements in clustering accuracy, existing approaches are far from meeting the requirements from other perspectives, such as universality, interpretability and efficiency, which become increasingly important with the emerging demand for diverse applications. We introduce a new framework named Profound Clustering via slow eXemplars (PC-X), which fulfils the above four basic requirements simultaneously. In particular, PC-X encodes data within the auto-encoder (AE) network to reduce its dependence on data modality ( universality ). Further, inspired by exemplar-based clustering, we design a Centroid-Integration Unit (CI-Unit), which not only facilitate the suppression of sample-specific details for better representation learning ( accuracy ), but also prompt clustering centroids to become legible exemplars ( interpretability ). Further, these exemplars are calibrated stably with mini-batch data following our tailor-designed optimization scheme and converges in linear ( efficiency ). Empirical results on benchmark datasets demonstrate the superiority of PC-X in terms of universality, interpretability and efficiency, in addition to clustering accuracy. The code of this work is available at https://github.com/Yuangang-Pan/PC-X/ .
FIRNet: Fundamental Frequency Controllable Fast Neural Vocoder With Trainable Finite Impulse Response Filter

Some neural vocoders with fundamental frequency ( f 0 ) control have succeeded in performing real-time inference on a single CPU while preserving the quality of the synthetic speech. However, compared with legacy vocoders based on signal processing, their inference speeds are still low. This paper proposes a neural vocoder based on the source-ﬁlter model with trainable time-variant ﬁnite impulse response (FIR) ﬁlters, to achieve a similar inference speed to legacy vocoders. In the proposed model, FIRNet, multiple FIR coefﬁcients are predicted using the neural networks, and the speech waveform is then generated by convolving a mixed excitation signal with these FIR coefﬁcients. Experimental results show that FIRNet can achieve an inference speed similar to legacy vocoders while maintaining f 0 controllability and natural speech quality.
Two Sides of the Same

The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between modern racism and rape victim and perpetrator blame, and rape perception. Participants from both a community population ( n ¼ 211) and a student population ( n ¼ 200) read a rape vignette and provided their judgements of blame towards a victim and perpetrator, their perception of the event as rape, and later answered the modern racism scale. Results showed a significant positive relationship between modern racism and rape victim blame ( r ¼ .35, R 2 100 ¼ 12.1%), while modern racism had a significant negative relationship with perpetrator blame ( r ¼� .27, R 2 100 ¼ 7.5%) and rape perception ( r ¼� .29, R 2 100 ¼ 8.7%). Implications for the criminal justice system as well as suggestions for future research were discussed.
PREVALENCE AND FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH POSTOPERATIVE NAUSEA AND VOMITING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GONDAR TEACHING HOSPITAL, NORTHWEST ETHIOPIA, 2012: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Background : Postoperative nausea and vomiting is a common complication of anaesthesia and surgery. Despite modern anaesthetic and surgical techniques, the incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting remains high. This common complication is unpleasant for patients and delays recovery. Despite the large case load at the University of Gondar Hospital, the magnitude of this problem is not kwon. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of postoperative nausea, and vomiting, and associated factors. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from February 27 to April12, 2012 at the University of Gondar Teaching Hospital. A total of 509 patients who were operated on in this period were included in the study. We used a validated Amharic questionnaire to interview patients 24 hours postoperatively. Results: The prevalence of postoperative nausea and vomiting was 36.2% within 24 hours after operation. Factors that were associated with postoperative nausea were history of motion sickness (AOR=1.77, CI=1.14-2.75), previous history of postoperative nausea and vomiting (AOR=4.26, CI=1.70-10.69) and long duration of anaesthesia (AOR=3.49, CI=1.64-7.43). Factors associated with postoperative vomiting were previous postoperative nausea, vomiting (AOR=3.93, CI=1.70-9.07), major operation (AOR=3.07, CI=1.25-7.55), gynaecology operation (AOR=2.58, CI=1.24-5.39) and long duration of anaesthesia (AOR=3.67, CI=1.73-7.78). Conclusion and recommendations: The prevalence of postoperative nausea and vomiting was high at the University of Gondar teaching hospital compared with most studies conducted in Africa and the rest of the world. We suggest the use of anti-emetic prophylaxis and the introduction of postoperative nausea and vomiting treatment protocols at the University of Gondar teaching hospital.
Radiogenic isotope record of Arctic Ocean circulation and weathering inputs of the past 15 million years

Lead (Pb), neodymium (Nd), and strontium (Sr) isotopic analyses were carried out on sediment leachates (reflecting the isotope composition of past seawater) and digests of the bulk residues (reflecting detrital continental inputs) of Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Leg 302 and core PS2185 from the Lomonosov Ridge (Arctic Ocean). Our records are interpreted to reflect changes in continental erosion and oceanic circulation, driven predominantly by tectonic forcing on million-year timescales in the older (pre-2 Ma) part of the record and by climatic forcing of weathering and erosion of the Eurasian continental margin on thousand-year timescales in the younger (post-2 Ma) part. These data, covering the past ∼15 Ma, show that continental inputs to the central Arctic Ocean have been more closely linked to glacial and hydrological processes occurring on the Eurasian margin than on continental North America and Greenland. The constancy of the detrital input signatures supports the early existence of an Arctic sea ice cover, whereas the major initiation of Northern Hemisphere glaciation at 2.7 Ma appears to have had little impact on the weathering regime of the Eurasian continental margin.
Biologically-plausible hierarchical chunking on mixed-signal neuromorphic hardware

Humans seamlessly group perceptual sequences in units of chunks, parsed and memorized as separate entities. Chunking is a computational principle essential for memory compression, structural decomposition, and predictive processing. How can this ability be accomplished in a neural system? On an algorithmic level, computational models such as the Hierarchical Chunking Model (HCM) propose grouping frequently occurring proximal observational units as chunks. Chunks, once learned, are stored as separate entities in memory, ready for reuse and recombination. In doing so, the HCM learns an interpretable and hierarchical representation that resembles human chunk learning, without the need for gradient based training. In this work, we propose a biologically plausible and highly efficient implementation of the HCM with spiking neurons: the neuromorphic HCM (nHCM). When parsing through perceptual sequences, the nHCM uses sparsely connected spiking neurons to construct hierarchical chunk representations. Simulation on a standard computer showed remarkable improvement of nHCM in speed, power consumption, and memory usage compared to its original counterpart. Taking it one step further, we validate the model on mixed-signal neuromorphic hardware DYNAP-SE 2, which uses analog spiking neurons in an event-driven way to imitate biological computation. The transistors in the neural cores are run in sub-threshold, reducing energy requirements by more than one thousand times. We verified this implementation’s robust computing properties, overcoming the analog circuits’ heterogeneity, variability, and low precision. This work demonstrates cognitively plausible sequence learning in energy-efficient dedicated neural computing electronic processing systems.
Source localization and beamforming - IEEE Signal Processing Magazine

Distributed sensor networks have been proposed for a wide range of applications. The main purpose of a sensor network is to monitor an area, including detecting, identifying, localizing, and tracking one or more objects of interest. These networks may be used by the military in surveillance, reconnaissance, and combat scenarios or around the perimeter of a manufacturing plant for intrusion detection. In other applications such as hearing aids and multimedia, microphone networks are capable of enhancing audio signals under noisy conditions for improved intelligibility, recognition, and cuing for camera aiming. Recent developments in integrated circuit technology have allowed the construction of low-cost miniature sensor nodes with signal processing and wireless communication capabilities. These technological advances not only open up many possibilities but also introduce challenging issues for the collaborative processing of wideband acoustic and seismic signals for source localization and beamforming in an energy-constrained distributed sensor network. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of these issues. Some prior systems include: WINS at RSC/UCLA [1], AWAIRS at UCLA/RSC [2]-[4], Smart Dust at UC Berkeley [5], USC-ISI network [6], MIT network [7], SensIT systems/networks [8], and ARL Federated Laboratory Advanced Sensor Program systems/networks [9]. In the first section, we consider the physical features of the sources and their propagation properties and discuss the system features of the sensor network. The next section introduces some early works in source localization, DOA estimation, and beamforming. Other topics discussed include the closed-form least-squares source localization problem, iterative ML source localization, and DOA estimation.
Penyuluhan Penanganan Nyeri Punggung Bawah Pada Guru Sekolah Dasar

Nyeri punggung bawah menjadi salah satu masalah kesehatan yang sering terjadi di masyarakat. Nyeri punggung bawah disebabkan oleh kurangnya perhatian masyarakat terhadap postur tubuh yang benar ketika bekerja. Tujuan dari penyuluhan penanganan nyeri punggung bawah adalah untuk membantu meningkatkan pemahaman tentang penanganan nyeri punggung bawah sehingga dapat meningkatkan kualitas hidup. Metode kegiatan adalah dengan memberikan materi beserta demonstrasi latihan tentang penanganan nyeri punggung bawah terhadap 8 orang guru di SDN 009 Tambusai. Hasil kegiatan ini menunjukan bahwa guru memiliki pengetahuan yang rendah terkait penanganan nyeri punggung bawah. Dari penyuluhan yang telah dilakukan dapat disimpulkan bahwa guru mengetahui penanganan nyeri punggung bawah dengan cara memperhatikan postur duduk dan latihan.
Cambodia Embraces China’s Belt and Road Initiative

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY  The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a new force shaping the global economic order, serving as China’s grand strategy to project its global influence and leadership role through economic and cultural diplomacy.  Cambodia enthusiastically supports the initiative, mainly for economic reasons, especially its infrastructure development and production-capacity cooperation elements.  BRI is complementary to Cambodia’s national development strategy as it can strengthen the country’s economic competitiveness by diversifying the sources of growth and expanding its economic horizon.  However, Cambodia needs to strengthen its governance to maximize opportunities, and the participation of the private sector in infrastructure projects remains limited. Another challenge is the lack of transparency and local community participation.
Case Report: Encephalitis with Initial Manifestation of Orientia Tsutsugamushi Infection Detected by Metagenomic Next-Generation Sequencing

Purpose Scrub typhus, caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi, is characterized by fever, eschars, lymphadenopathy, and rash. The absence of eschars in some cases makes it difficult to distinguish it from other diseases, complicating the diagnosis process. Atypical Scrub typhus is difficult to diagnose and often leads to delayed treatment. Therefore, early diagnosis and treatment through effective detection methods have high clinical value. Here, a case of scrub typhus with encephalitis symptoms is reported. Patients and Methods A 64-year-old man and mNGS testing. Results A 64-year-old man developed cough, headache, and fever, dismissing it as a respiratory tract infection. Initial treatment with cephalosporin antibiotics had minimal effect. Admission to the respiratory department showed inflammation in blood tests. Subsequent CT and further treatment provided no improvement. Multidisciplinary discussions and neurology department guidance were conducted to consider the suspected diagnosis of encephalitis in the patient. After improving the mNGS detection, the patient was diagnosed with “Orientia tsutsugamushi encephalitis”. After treatment with doxycycline, the patient’s symptoms were alleviated. He remained afebrile in follow-up and adhered well to medical advice. Conclusion Our case demonstrates that it is difficult to distinguish Orientia tsutsugamushi encephalitis from central nervous system infectious diseases such as meningitis and encephalitis using conventional diagnostic methods, which may affect the treatment plan for the disease. mNGS is a useful and valuable method for early diagnosis of scrub typhus.
Daily Functionality of People with Low Vision: The Impact of Visual Acuity, Depression, and Life Orientation—A Cross-Sectional Study

Background Low vision (LV) has a significant negative impact on the activities of daily life as well as on the psychological health of patients. Objectives The objective of this study is to investigate psychological, clinical, and demographic factors that may impact the daily functionality of patients with LV. Methods A convenience sample of 53 patients, meeting the WHO criteria for LV, was recruited. Questionnaires on daily functionality, depression, and life orientation (in terms of optimism/pessimism) were administered along with a semistructured personal interview. Key Findings. The main results revealed a significant negative correlation between daily functionality and depression (r = −0.423, p < 0.001). Conversely, there is a positive correlation between daily functionality and visual acuity (r = 0.415, p < 0.001), while years since diagnosis were negatively correlated with depression (r = −0.345, p < 0.001). Depression seems to be a moderate predictor of a person's daily functionality (β = −0.389, p < 0.002), followed by visual acuity (β = −0.344, p = 0.006), explaining the 31.1% of the total variance. Conclusions The study supports a correlation between daily functionality and both depression and visual acuity. Optimism as a personality characteristic did not factor into the prediction model for daily functionality, but it showed a strong correlation with lower levels of depressive symptoms. This highlights the potential for developing coping strategies for chronic disease management. Recommendations. The study could serve as a useful guide and may urge clinicians to pay attention to the psychological evaluation of these patients, supporting their unique emotional needs. Mental health professionals can use patients' positive resources to provide appropriate counseling and embrace the coping skills that encourage their engagement in activities of daily life.
Prospective Longitudinal Study of Dynamics of Human Papillomavirus 6 and 11 Infection in Anogenital Hairs and Eyebrows of Male Patients with Anogenital Warts and Age-Matched Controls

To better understand the natural history of anogenital warts (AGWs) and the dynamics of HPV6/11 infection in regional hairs, 32 newly diagnosed male patients with AGWs and 32 age-matched healthy controls were closely followed. During enrollment and six follow-up visits (every 2.6 months), 43 AGW tissues and 1232 anogenital and eyebrow hair samples were collected. This is the closest longitudinal monitoring of AGW patients to date. Patients were treated according to standards of care. The HPV6/11 prevalence was 19.9% in the patients’ hair samples (HPV6 B1 in 53.1%) and 0% in the controls. The highest HPV6/11 prevalence was found in pubic hairs (29.0%) and the lowest in eyebrows (7.1%). The odds of having HPV6/11-positive hairs increased with smoking, shaving the anogenital region, and age. A close association between HPV6/11 presence in hairs and clinically visible AGWs was observed. The proportion of patients with visible AGWs and HPV6/11-positive hairs declined during follow-up with similar trends. No particular HPV6/11 variant was linked with an increased AGW recurrence, but the sublineage HPV6 B1 showed significantly higher clearance from hairs. Despite treatment, 78.1% and 62.5% of the AGW patients experienced one and two or more post-initial AGW episodes, respectively. The patients with HPV6/11-positive hairs or visible AGWs at a preceding visit demonstrated substantially higher odds of presenting with visible AGWs at a subsequent visit.
Updates in the pathophysiology of COVID-19 infection in male reproductive and sexual health: a literature review

This extensive comprehensive review explores the impact of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on men’s sexual and reproductive health. We conducted a literature review focusing on the possible pathophysiology by which severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) affects men’s sexual and reproductive systems. We reviewed most of the studies that reported the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the Testicular, Epididymal, Prostatic, and Penile tissue. Also, we focused on evaluating the SARS-CoV-2 infection on semen parameters and male reproductive hormones. Finally, we reviewed the COVID-19 vaccine’s effect on male reproductive and sexual health. Findings revealed the adverse consequences of SARS-CoV-2 at cellular and organ levels on the male genital tract. However, the reported data are still controversial. The initial data regarding COVID-19 vaccination was promising promoted safety for men’s reproductive and sexual health. We conclude this paper by offering recommendations to address these adverse consequences and potentially improve sexual and reproductive health among men in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era.
Cognitive Impairment following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI): A Review

Background: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) has been increasingly recognized as a public health concern due to its prevalence and potential to induce long-term cognitive impairment. We aimed to consolidate this observation by focusing on findings of neuropsychological assessments, neuroimaging, risk factors, and potential strategies for intervention to prevent and treat mTBI-associated cognitive impairments. Methods: A thorough search of PubMed, PsycINFO, and Embase databases was performed for studies published until 2024. Studies focusing on cognitive impairment after mTBI, with neurocognitive assessment as a primary outcome, were included. Results: We found consistent evidence of cognitive deficits, such as memory and attention impairments, and affected executive functions following mTBI. Neuroimaging studies corroborate these findings, highlighting structural and functional changes in the brain. Several risk factors for developing cognitive impairment post-mTBI were identified, including age, gender, genetics, and pre-existing mental health conditions. The efficacy of interventions, including cognitive rehabilitation and pharmaceutical treatment, varied across studies. Conclusions: Mild TBI can lead to significant long-term cognitive impairments, impacting an individual’s quality of life. Further research is necessary to validate and standardize cognitive assessment tools post-mTBI, to elucidate the underlying neural mechanisms, and to optimize therapeutic interventions.
Signatures of Palaeofloods in Sandbar-Levee Deposits, Ganga Plain, India

Based on architectural element analysis of Sandbar-Levee deposits an attempt has been made to identify recurring floods in the alluvial rivers. Point bar deposits characterized by Low-Angled lateral accretion( LA) elements exhibit some Channel-Ward steeply dipping (18-20°)discordant surfaces. These High-Angled surfaces are erosional and show change of facies across them. Such discordant planes present within the point bar deposits most probably indicate phases of exceptional floods, when the bar was mostly eroded and remodelled under High-Energy conditions. Similarly, in the braid bar deposits superimposed Bar-Building events separated either by mud drapes or marked erosional contacts are restimony to High-Energy floods. At flood times, a new bar may form and can migrate over Pre-Existing sand bar, forming huge sandflat. Alternatively, a new channel may develop cutting across the existing bar complex producing a channel bar having a different orientation Multi-Stoned levee deposits developed at the bank of the channels, and characterized by decimeter to meter scale Fining-Up sequences, are the best indicators of exceptionally large floods overtopping the channels. The flood events are commonly separated by erosional contacts and mottled horizons containing organic matter, root burrows and Faecal-Pellet filled earthworm burrow network.
Study on the Purification Effect of Clean Fresh Air on PM2.5 in the Bedroom

In order to study the purification effect of clean fresh air on PM2.5 in bedroom, the concentration distribution of PM2.5 in bedroom was numerically simulated using RNG k-e turbulence model based on DPM discrete phase model. In the case of severe haze, clean fresh air is introduced to meet the needs of indoor personnel. Aiming at two common types of airflow in the bedroom (same side/opposite side upper and lower back) and two different air supply speeds, studied the purification effect of fresh air on PM2.5. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the decrease rate of PM2.5 in the respiratory surface under the two inlet velocities. In the first 600s, the concentration of PM2.5 decreased by 75% with the inlet and outlet were on the same side, while the PM2.5 concentration decreased by 63% with the inlet and outlet were on the opposite side. The PM2.5 concentration distribution was more uniform when the inlet and outlet were on the same side than the opposite side. It is concluded that the air supply position has a greater influence on the purification effect than the air inlet velocity when the fresh air volume is constant. When the inlet and outlet were on the same side the introduction of the clean fresh air in the bedroom is more effective in purifying the PM2.5 than the opposite side.