Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Remote Work, Work Measurement and the State of Work Research in Human-Centred Computing

Over the past few decades, a small but growing group of people have worked remotely from their homes. With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people found themselves joining this group overnight. In this position paper, we examine the kinds of work that ‘went remote’ in response to the pandemic, and consider the ways in which this transition was influenced by (and in turn came to influence) contemporary trends in digital workplace measurement and evaluation. We see that employers appeared reluctant to let certain classes of employee work remotely. When the pandemic forced staff home, employers compensated by turning to digital surveillance tools, even though, as we argue, these tools seem unable to overcome the significant conceptual barriers to understanding how people are working. We also observed that, in the United Kingdom context, the pandemic didn’t mean remote work for a significant proportion of the population. We assert that, to maximize its impact, ‘future of work’ research in human-centred computing must be more inclusive and representative of work, rather than focusing on the experiences of knowledge workers and those involved in new forms of work.
Gradual decay of auditory short-term memory

Recent work suggests that once a representation of a visual object is committed to short-term memory, its precision remains fixed until it finally disappears without trace—a phenomenon called “sudden death. ” In the present study, we investigated whether auditory representations also experience sudden death. In three experiments, listeners discriminated either the pitches or loudnesses of pairs of tones separated in time by up to 10 s. The data were analyzed using a model that allowed us to estimate both the precision of pitch/loudness representations and the probability of sudden death as a function of the interstimulus interval from listeners’ psychometric functions. Contrary to recent findings from vision, we found that auditory representations were no more likely to “die” after 10 s than 0.5 s; instead, they declined in precision (or “decayed”) gradually over time. The results point to a qualitative difference between how auditory and visual representations are forgotten from short-term memory.
From Molecule to Patient Rehabilitation: The Impact of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation and Magnetic Stimulation on Stroke—A Narrative Review

Stroke is a major health problem worldwide, with numerous health, social, and economic implications for survivors and their families. One simple answer to this problem would be to ensure the best rehabilitation with full social reintegration. As such, a plethora of rehabilitation programs was developed and used by healthcare professionals. Among them, modern techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation are being used and seem to bring improvements to poststroke rehabilitation. This success is attributed to their capacity to enhance cellular neuromodulation. This modulation includes the reduction of the inflammatory response, autophagy suppression, antiapoptotic effects, angiogenesis enhancement, alterations in the blood-brain barrier permeability, attenuation of oxidative stress, influence on neurotransmitter metabolism, neurogenesis, and enhanced structural neuroplasticity. The favorable effects have been demonstrated at the cellular level in animal models and are supported by clinical studies. Thus, these methods proved to reduce infarct volumes and to improve motor performance, deglutition, functional independence, and high-order cerebral functions (i.e., aphasia and heminegligence). However, as with every therapeutic method, these techniques can also have limitations. Their regimen of administration, the phase of the stroke at which they are applied, and the patients' characteristics (i.e., genotype and corticospinal integrity) seem to influence the outcome. Thus, no response or even worsening effects were obtained under certain circumstances both in animal stroke model studies and in clinical trials. Overall, weighing up risks and benefits, the new transcranial electrical and magnetic stimulation techniques can represent effective tools with which to improve the patients' recovery after stroke, with minimal to no adverse effects. Here, we discuss their effects and the molecular and cellular events underlying their effects as well as their clinical implications.
Investigating the Institutional Quality Integration with Islamic Banking Development in Promoting Entrepreneurship

Empirically, conventional finance has proven insufficient while providing the required finance for startups and entrepreneurs. While handling the risks, entrepreneurs tend to avoid the high-cost nature of the debt, which limits their true potential leading to sub-optimal resource utilization. For this, Islamic finance provides a participative and equitable alternative for new ventures with proven merits, but a lack of supporting regulation hinders its penetration among entrepreneurial aspirants. Islamic banks face high compliance costs to the current institutional requirements while designing the products for new ventures. This study investigates how Islamic finance assists entrepreneurial decisions and the role of institutional quality in aligning Islamic law with commercial law requirements. This study selected the unbalanced panel data of 37 countries between 2011 and 2020 and used panel quantile regression to estimate the quadratic Islamic financial development effects and the moderation of institutional quality. The results showed that generally, Islamic financial development has a U shaped relation with entrepreneurship, but with the improvement in institutions, the U shape is flipped to inverted-U shape. This study points toward the potential of Islamic financing when coupled with better regulations for the economies which are developing the nascent Islamic financing system.
Asymptotic analysis of non‐discrete radiating modes for open waveguide structures

This paper presents an asymptotic analysis of non‐discrete radiating modes with applications in waveguide theory. As a main application, the radiating modes of an open waveguide structure with circular geometry is considered. A generalized Jordan's lemma is used to justify that field components can be calculated as the sum of discrete and non‐discrete modes, that is, as the sum of residues of poles and an integral along the branch‐cut defined by the transversal wavenumber of the exterior domain. An asymptotic expression is derived for field components at large distance along the waveguide and supplemented with rigorous upper and lower error bounds. A numerical example regarding the axial symmetric 0th order transverse magnetic modes of a thin copper wire in water is included to demonstrate that there may be a non‐trivial balance between the contributions from discrete and non‐discrete modes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Effectiveness of various methods of manual scar therapy

The skin is a protective barrier of the body against external factors, and its damage leads to a loss of integrity. Normal wound healing results in a correct, flat, bright, and flexible scar. Initial skin damage and patient specific factors in wound healing contribute that many of these scars may progress into widespread or pathologic hypertrophic and keloid scars. The changes in cosmetic appearance, continuing pain, and loss of movement due to contracture or adhesion and persistent pruritis can significantly affect an individual's quality of life and psychological recovery post injury. Many different treatment methods can reduce the trauma and surgical scars. Manual scar treatment includes various techniques of therapy. The most effectiveness is a combined therapy, which has a multidirectional impact. Clinical observations show an effectiveness of manual scar therapy.
Shallow donor states near a semiconductor-insulator-metal interface

Y. L. Hao,1 A. P. Djotyan,2 A. A. Avetisyan,1,2 and F. M. Peeters1,3,* 1Department of Physics, University of Antwerpen, Groenenborgerlaan 171, B-2020 Antwerpen, Belgium 2Department of Physics, Yerevan State University, A. Manoogian 1, Yerevan 0025, Armenia 3Departamento de Fisica, Universidade Federal do Ceara, Caixa Postal 6030, Campus do Pici, Fortaleza 60455-900, CE, Brazil Received 7 April 2009; revised manuscript received 8 July 2009; published 30 July 2009
Molecular characteristics and antibiotic resistance mechanisms of clindamycin-resistant Streptococcus agalactiae isolates in China

Streptococcus agalactiae (Group B Streptococcus, GBS) is a major cause of neonatal infections with high morbidity and mortality, and clindamycin is the main antibiotic used to treat GBS infections in patients allergic to penicillin. We aimed to analyse the antibiotic sensitivity, sequence types, serotypes, virulence factors, and antibiotic resistance mechanisms of clinically isolated clindamycin-resistant S. agalactiae and provide basic data for the treatment, prevention, and control of clinical infection of S. agalactiae. A total of 110 strains of clindamycin-resistant S. agalactiae were collected from two tertiary hospitals in Hebei, China. We performed antibiotic sensitivity tests for 11 antibiotics on these strains and whole-genome sequencing analysis. All the strains were susceptible to penicillin, ampicillin, linezolid, vancomycin, tigecycline, and quinupristin–dalfopristin. Resistance to erythromycin, levofloxacin, tetracycline, and chloramphenicol were also observed. Genome sequence analysis revealed that all strains belonged to 12 sequence types (STs) related to six cloning complexes (CCs), namely CC10, CC19, CC23, CC651, CC1, and CC17. Five serotypes were identified, including IA, IB, II, III, and V. The most prominent resistance genes were mreA (100%) and ermB (81.8%). Furthermore, cfb, cylE, pavA and the gene cluster related to the pili were 100% present in all strains, followed by lmb (95.5%) and srr1 (67.2%). This study found that clindamycin-resistant S. agalactiae showed polymorphisms in molecular types and serotypes. Furthermore, multiple virulence factor genes have been identified in their genomes.
Modelling the phase diagram of magnetic shape memory Heusler alloys

We have modelled the phase diagram of magnetic shape memory alloys of the Heusler type by using the phenomenological Ginzburg–Landau theory. When fixing the parameters by realistic values taken from experiment we are able to reproduce most details of, for example, the phase diagram of Ni2+xMn1−xGa in the (T, x) plane. We present the results of ab initio calculations of the electronic and phonon properties of several ferromagnetic Heusler alloys, which allow one to characterize the structural changes associated with the martensitic instability leading to the modulated and tetragonal phases. From the ab initio investigations emerges a complex pattern of the interplay of magic valence electron per atom numbers (Hume–Rothery rules for magnetic ternary alloys), Fermi surface nesting and phonon instability. As the main result, we find that the driving force for structural transformations is considerably enhanced by the extremely low lying optical modes of Ni in the Ni-based Heusler alloys, which interfere with the acoustical modes enhancing phonon softening of the TA2 mode. In contrast, the ferromagnetic Co-based Heusler alloys show no tendency for phonon softening.
Finding Values for Multi-Valued Features

In this research, multi-valued vowel systems are investigated to find optimal values for features like the advancement, height, and roundedness of vowels. For this purpose, two constraints are supposed to be satisfied: Values for the roundedness feature can discriminate, and the distance between an unrounded vowel and a corresponding rounded vowel may be small enough to show.
Robust stability and performance analysis of sampled-data systems

The authors consider the robust stability and performance analysis of a general linear interconnection of a continuous-time plant and a discrete-time controller via sample-and-hold devices. They obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the robust stability of the feedback system consisting of an uncertain plant represented as a known linear time-invariant model with a time-varying norm bounded uncertainty, and a shift-invariant discrete-time controller. These results show that the condition arising from the small gain theorem is necessary and sufficient when the uncertainties belong to a class of linear systems. Also, similar results are derived for the case of structured uncertainty. Both L/sub 2/ and L/sub infinity / signal norms are considered. A robust performance analysis problem is solved by converting it to a robust stability analysis problem. <<ETX>>
Direct measurement of adhesion between viscoelastic polymers: A contact mechanical approach

We have measured the surface energies of several viscoelastic polymers, using contact mechanics methods. The materials studied were diblock copolymers of poly(ethylene)-poly(ethylene-propylene) (PE-PEP) having different PE volume fractions and molecular weights. The materials exhibit differing viscoelastic relaxation functions in the bulk. Surface energies were determined from contact mechanics experiments in the loading mode, analyzed by incorporating the bulk viscoelastic effects into the Johnson–Kendall–Roberts theory of adhesive elastic contacts. The samples were made of spherical caps of the materials formed by first melting, and then cooling to room temperature. The measured values of the surface energies are close to the reported value for that of the surface-active PEP block, based on prior contact angle measurements, indicating that reliable surface energy values can be extracted from contact mechanics experiments, suitably analyzed to account for viscoelastic behavior. We believe that this metho.
A note on dynamo action at asymptotically small Ekman number

Abstract The physically realistic value of the Ekman number in the Earth's core is E ≈ 10−15, which is much smaller than E ≈ 10-4 achieved in the self-consistent numerical models of the geodynamo. More recent models have used hyperdiffusivity to reduce E to ≈ 10-6. We derive the dispersion relation for MHD waves in an unbound domain and show that, as E = 0, small scale rapidly oscillating waves develop which can cause numerical instability. We numerically time step the magnetostrophic (E = 0) dynamo equations in the more realistic geometry of a sphere and confirm the existence of these waves. We show that hyperdiffusivity damps out the waves. Finally we discuss the results with reference to the use of this technique in numerical investigations of the geodynamo problem.
CryoEM of Viral Ribonucleoproteins and Nucleocapsids of Single-Stranded RNA Viruses

Single-stranded RNA viruses (ssRNAv) are characterized by their biological diversity and great adaptability to different hosts; traits which make them a major threat to human health due to their potential to cause zoonotic outbreaks. A detailed understanding of the mechanisms involved in viral proliferation is essential to address the challenges posed by these pathogens. Key to these processes are ribonucleoproteins (RNPs), the genome-containing RNA-protein complexes whose function is to carry out viral transcription and replication. Structural determination of RNPs can provide crucial information on the molecular mechanisms of these processes, paving the way for the development of new, more effective strategies to control and prevent the spread of ssRNAv diseases. In this scenario, cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM), relying on the technical and methodological revolution it has undergone in recent years, can provide invaluable help in elucidating how these macromolecular complexes are organized, packaged within the virion, or the functional implications of these structures. In this review, we summarize some of the most prominent achievements by cryoEM in the study of RNP and nucleocapsid structures in lipid-enveloped ssRNAv.
The two-photon laser beam as a breathing mode of the electromagnetic field

It is predicted that the beam from a two-photon laser, if it can be made to operate in a coherent mode, will have properties quite different from the classical properties of the standard single-photon laser. Whereas the coherent beam of the single-photon laser is a dipole mode of the electromagnetic field, that of the two-photon laser is expected to be a monopole or quadrupole mode. It is predicted that the coherence properties of the two-photon laser will show up rather dramatically in non-linear processes.
Fatigue properties of rolled stainless steels

In this present study, rotating bending fatigue tests and compressive tensile fatigue tests had been performed on notched martensitic stainless steel and austenitic stainless steel specimens, respectively. Fatigue limit tests were done on notched non-deformed and notched deformed specimens in order to evaluate the effect of plastic deformation due to roller-working on fatigue behavior of notched deformed specimens. The result showed that according to increase of deformation value on surface layer of martensitic stainless steel specimens from 0, 0.5 and 1.0 mm, the fatigue limit of those specimens also increase to 485, 730 and 800 MPa, respectively. In case of austenitic stainless steel specimen, the fatigue limit of 0, 0.5 and 1.0 mm deformed specimens are 260, 470 and 500 MPa, respectively Fatigue limit of rolled specimens does not linearly increase with increase in plastic deformation value. Hardness number improvement and notch root residual stress are the most responsible in fatigue strength improvement of the rolled specimens.
Cool Discs, Hot Flows: The Varying Faces of Accreting Compact Objects, edited by M. Axelsson

Magnetic fields are involved in many aspects of solar and stellar physics, and they play crucial role in fundamental physical processes, such as accretion, mass-loss, diffusion, convection and rotation. In other words, magnetic fields deeply influence the solar and stellar evolution. Thanks to combined breakthroughs in observing techniques and numerical simulations, our understanding of the origin and impact of magnetic fields in solar-type stars have benefited greatly from tremendous progress during the last decade. Many open issues related to solar and stellar magnetism, however, still remain, and they are subject to active research and debate by scientists in this exciting field. The textbook entitled ‘Solar and Stellar Magnetic Activity’ provides the reader with basic knowledge and understanding of magnetic fields of the Sun and other Sun-like stars of late spectral type. It discusses all the fundamental topics defining the solar and stellar magnetism, namely: (i) creation of magnetic fields by dynamo processes in the solar and stellar interiors; (ii) emergence of magnetic fields from the convection zone; (iii) evolution of magnetic fields in the solar and stellar coronae, (iv) diffusion and annihilation of the magnetic fields and (iv) transport of the magnetic fields by solar and stellar winds, among other processes. The book also provides a state-of-the-art review of all of the observed phenomena resulting from the active solar/stellar magnetism and their physical interpretation. The authors review the most recent advances in this field in regard to the Sun and Sun-like stars in great length and depth, and they present the underlying physics in a systematic manner at a very basic level. They attempt to connect the various phenomena resulting from the solar and stellar magnetic activity – by first presenting the state-of-the art observations of these phenomena and then discussing their physical interpretation based on recent theories and numerical simulations – and they try to make the solar–stellar connection whenever possible throughout the book. This is what makes this textbook one of the most comprehensive and systematic reviews on solar and stellar magnetism published in recent years, if not the best. The overall quality of production of the book is very good, but some of the figures, for example the four panels of Figure 1.2 and the bottom panel of Figure 2.12, are not of satisfactory appearance. The references cited in the book are up-to-date, and include articles containing the most important scientific discoveries on the subject being discussed. To conclude, the authors of this textbook have succeeded in making the solar–stellar connection in great detail using the most recent advances in the field achieved from observations, theory and numerical modelling. The pedagogical style of the textbook makes it very suitable for graduate students studying solar and stellar physics, as well as for instructors; the book may be also of interest to undergraduate students.
The relationship between tumor infiltrating immune cells and the prognosis of patients with lung adenocarcinoma

Background To depict the immune infiltration characteristics of tumor cells in patients with lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and evaluate the predictive value and significance of tumor immune cells on the prognosis of LUAD patients. Methods The clinical characteristics and transcriptome of LUAD patients were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and the immune cell abundance in LUAD tissue was evaluated using the CIBERSORT algorithm. We created a simplified immune cell-based Cox regression model according to the survival status of patients and clarified the correlation between the survival status of patients and seven types of immune cells. An immune cell-based risk prediction model was created by Cox proportional hazards regression. Subsequently, the gene expression profile of LUAD patients was obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database to validate the tumor immune infiltration and patient prognosis prediction model attained using the CIBERSORT algorithm. Results The abundance of 22 tumor-infiltrating immune cells in these patients was detected using the CIBERSORT algorithm. According to Pearson correlation analysis, the immune cells appeared to be closely related to each other. The immune cell composition was remarkably different between the LUAD tumor tissue and paracancerous tissue. The simplified COX model showed that seven kinds of immune cells have predictive value for the prognosis and survival status of LUAD. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) curve confirmed that the prediction model performed well for 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival status. The calibration curve suggested that the prediction model was consistent with the clinical results. Correlation analysis revealed that the clinical features were significantly related to immune cell infiltration. A total of 246 LUAD specimens were from the GEO database, and the risk score model suggested that high risk scores were indicative of a poor prognosis. Finally, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) revealed that the expressions of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin 8 (IL-8), IL-6, and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) in tumor tissues were remarkably higher compared with those in adjacent tissues. Conclusions There is a close correlation between the tumor-infiltrating immune cells and the prognosis and clinical characteristics of LUAD patients. The risk score model based on TCGA and GEO designed in this study can be applied in clinical practice.