Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Education Effects on Job-Related Constructs Among Frontline Employees in the Hotel Industry

To make tourism enterprises functioning harmonious and in order to achieve good business results, knowledgeable, engaged, service-oriented, and therefore satisfied staff is crucial, because human resources are one of the most important segments of the service quality in the tourism and hospitality industry. The study explored moderating effects of education on relationships between service orientation and work engagement on employees’ job satisfaction among employees in the hotel industry in Serbia. Moderating effects of education are particularly noticeable between service orientation and job satisfaction. Also, the results indicated that employees who had a high school degree showed the lowest level of job satisfaction, as well as service orientation and work engagement. On the other side, employees who have tourism education indicated less job satisfaction, service orientation and work engagement. Based on the insight into the employees' attitudes and behavior, managers can organize various training programs especially for employees with lower education level, in order to remove any obstacles in their work, to motivate them more and improve working conditions.
Vertisols characteristics in peripheral areas of Havana.

Los Vertisoles constituyen un grupo de suelos que presentan características particulares entre las cuales se tienen: presencia de bloques prismáticos con caras de deslizamiento (slickensides), agrietamiento en época de seca y muy plástico en condiciones de sobrehumedecimiento, con un microrrelieve gilgai. Ellos se forman principalmente en las regiones de clima tropical y subtropical relativamente seco, con Cultivos Tropicales, 2014, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 68-74 octubre-diciembre
Deformation of the Japanese Islands and seismic coupling: an interpretation based on GSI permanent GPS observations

SUMMARY The entire area of the Japanese Islands has been covered by the permanent GPS observation network of the Geographical Survey Institute since 1994. In this paper we use a solution for the vectors of motion during 1995 for a selection of 116 stations to discuss the origin of the observed deformation field. We refer the displacement field to Eurasia using the VLBI-determined motion of Kashima and demonstrate that other choices such as the Okhotsk or North American plates for north Japan are not compatible with the data. 1 yr GPS velocities are much higher than geological constraints would allow because these short-term measurements include transient elastic deformation. However, the good qualitative agreement between the observed geodetic deformation tensors and those inferred from active faults and earthquakes suggests that the Quaternary permanent deformation is essentially the result of the transfer of part of the subduction-induced elastic deformation into permanent plastic deformation. We then compute the elastic deformation of the Japanese Islands caused by interseismic loading of the Pacific and Philippine subduction planes. The geometry of the coupled zone and its downward extension are determined from the distribution of earthquakes for the Pacific slab. For the Philippine slab we use the geometry proposed by Hyndman et al. (1995). These elastic models account for most of the observed velocity field if the subduction movement of the Philippine Sea Plate is 100 per cent locked and if that of the Pacific Plate is 75‐85 per cent locked. We note that the boundaries of the areas where significant elastic deformation is predicted (more than 10 mm yr’1 of motion with respect to Eurasia) coincide with the main zones of permanent deformation: the Eastern Japan Sea deformation zone for the Pacific subduction elastic deformation field and the Setouchi/MTL deformation zone for the Nankai field. Each zone probably accommodates 10‐15 mm yr’1 of motion in the long term (convergence in the Eastern Japan Sea; strike-slip in the Setouchi/MTL zone). To account for this deformation, the eVect of elastic loading from the trench must be combined with 5‐10 mm yr’1 of motion of the Amur Plate with respect to Eurasia. Because loading during the subduction earthquake cycle causes an increase in stress in the Eastern Japan Sea and Setouchi/MTL deformation zones, the probability of earthquake occurrence in these zones may be higher near the end of the cycle.
Anti-hypertensive effect of a novel angiotensin II receptor neprilysin inhibitor (ARNi) -S086 in DSS rat model

Introduction Angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitor (ARNi), comprised of an angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) and a neprilysin inhibitor (NEPi), has established itself as a safe and effective intervention for hypertension. S086 is a novel ARNi cocrystal developed by Salubris for the treatment of heart failure and hypertension. Methods Dahl Salt Sensitive (DSS) hypertensive rat model and telemetry system were employed in this study to investigate the anti-hypertensive efficacy of S086 and compare it with the first ARNi-LCZ696. Results and discussion The study showed that oral administration of S086 dose-dependently lowered blood pressure (P < 0.001). The middle dosage of S086 (23 mg/kg) exhibited efficacy comparable to LCZ696 (68 mg/kg), while also demonstrating superiority at specific time points (P < 0.05). Notably, water consumption slightly decreased post-treatment compared to the vehicle group. Furthermore, there were significant increases in natriuresis and diuresis observed on the first day of treatment with 23 mg/kg and 68 mg/kg S086 (P < 0.001). However, over the course of treatment, the effects in all treatment groups gradually diminished. This study demonstrates the anti-hypertensive efficacy of S086 in DSS hypertensive rat model, offering promising avenues for the clinical development of S086 as a hypertension treatment.
A novel pattern error detecting algorithm for SEM images of mask monitoring patterns

In mask fabrication, e-beam exposure equipment malfunctioning could produce erroneous masks, several consecutive mask failures in the worst case. This type of error might unexpectedly increase mask turnaround time. Due to high cost of mask fabrication and its annual growth, it is critical detecting those errors as early as possible. Since mask SEM images at after-development inspection (ADI) phase have more visible noise, edges might be hard to detect clearly using classical edge detection algorithms. In this context, we present a novel pattern error detecting algorithm to capture pattern errors in mask monitoring patterns by inspecting mask SEM images at ADI phase. The originality of this paper lies in its use of simple but powerful techniques in a series used for automated error detection. More specifically, we inspect two specific types of errors in SEM images of monitoring patterns: bridging errors in a chessboard pattern, and CD uniformity errors in a line-and-space pattern. For a chessboard pattern, we utilize both horizontal and vertical projections of image intensity histogram to find areas for inspection automatically. From one dimensional projection of the image, we identify spatial coordinates of our interests, and define a small rectangular region, called D-region. For each D-region, we determine whether a pattern bridge is likely to occur, based on the ratio of brighter pixels in it. For a line-and-space pattern, we compute base lines for CD measurement, and detect CD uniformity errors or line shift errors by applying similar one dimensional histogram analysis and CD-computation algorithm to the image. Our experimental results using real pattern images and programmed defect images support that this technique is effective and robust in detecting errors without layout data or another SEM image for comparison.
Benefits Derived from Rehabilitating a Degraded Semi‐Arid Rangeland in Communal Enclosures, Kenya

Combating land degradation in the semi‐arid rangeland of sub‐Saharan Africa is essential to ensure the long‐term productivity of these environments. In the Lake Baringo basin in Kenya, communities and individual farmers restored indigenous vegetation inside enclosures in an effort to combat severe land degradation and address their livelihood problems. This study quantified the benefits of rangeland rehabilitation using yearly communal enclosures' utilisation data compiled by Rehabilitation of Arid Environments (RAE) Trust over a 6‐year period (2005–2010). Results showed that communal enclosures provide a source of income through the sale of fattened livestock, harvested grass seeds, hay, honey and charcoal, among other products. Regression analysis showed an increasing total enclosure income with time. The enclosures also provide grasses for thatching, livestock feed and dry season grazing. Indirect products like milk, blood and meat are essential for household nutrition and food security. These benefits reinforce the management through incentive to maintain existing enclosures and establish new ones and therefore the increasing trend in rangeland enclosure. Increased soil and biomass carbon storage could come with other indirect environmental benefits including improvement in soil quality, land productivity for pasture production and food security, and prevention of land degradation, thus leading to economic, environmental and social benefit for the local agropastoralist communities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Development of metal tolerance in soil bacterial communities exposed to experimentally increased metal levels

The development of metal tolerance in soil bacterial communities exposed to different heavy metals was examined under laboratory conditions. An agricultural soil amended with different Zn concentrations was studied most intensively, and measurements were made over a 28-month incubation period by means of the thymidine incorporation technique. Tolerance levels were not affected by metal concentrations lower than 2 mmol of Zn kg (dry weight) of soil(sup-1), but above this value, the level of Zn tolerance increased exponentially with the logarithm of the soil Zn concentration. An increased metal tolerance was detected after only 2 days of Zn exposure. Thereafter, stable tolerance values were observed at different sampling times for bacterial communities exposed to up to 8 mmol of Zn kg (dry weight)(sup-1), indicating no changes in tolerance with time. The tolerance of bacterial communities exposed to 32 mmol of Zn kg (dry weight)(sup-1) increased rapidly within the second week of incubation, but then the values remained unchanged until the end of the experiment. Bacterial communities from soil contaminated with 16 mmol of Zn kg (dry weight)(sup-1) showed an increase of the same magnitude, but the increase started later, after 4 months of incubation, and took place for a much longer period (more than 1 year). Cd, Cu, and Ni addition also resulted in metal-tolerant communities, and the level of tolerance increased with prolonged incubations of the soils. The bacterial community at the end of the incubation period also exhibited a lower pH optimum and an increased tolerance to low osmotic potential. The results suggest that the increase in metal tolerance of the community after adding metals can be attributed to an immediate effect due to the death of sensitive species and a later effect due to different competitive abilities and adaptation of surviving bacteria.
Development of retinal transplants.

General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal
Severe Dysbiosis and Specific Haemophilus and Neisseria Signatures as Hallmarks of the Oropharyngeal Microbiome in Critically Ill Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Patients

Background. At the entry site of respiratory virus infections, the oropharyngeal microbiome has been proposed as a major hub integrating viral and host immune signals. Early studies suggested that infections with severe acute respiratory syndrome corona-virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are associated with changes of the upper and lower airway microbiome, and that specific microbial signatures may predict coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) illness. However, the results are not conclusive, as critical illness can drastically alter a patient’s microbiome through multiple confounders. Methods. To study oropharyngeal microbiome profiles in SARS-CoV-2 infection, clinical confounders, and prediction models in COVID-19, we performed a multicenter, cross-sectional clinical study analyzing oropharyngeal microbial metagenomes in healthy adults, patients with non-SARS-CoV-2 infections, or with mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19 (n = 322 participants). Results. In contrast to mild infections, patients admitted to a hospital with moderate or severe COVID-19 showed dysbiotic microbial configurations, which were significantly pronounced in patients treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics, receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, or when sampling was performed during prolonged hospitalization. In contrast, specimens collected early after admission allowed us to segregate microbiome features predictive of hospital COVID-19 mortality utilizing machine learning models. Taxonomic signatures were found to perform better than models utilizing clinical variables with Neisseria and Haemophilus species abundances as most important features. Conclusions. In addition to the infection per se, several factors shape the oropharyngeal microbiome of severely affected COVID-19 patients and deserve consideration in the interpretation of the role of the microbiome in severe COVID-19. Nevertheless, we were able to extract microbial features that can help to predict clinical outcomes.
App-Based, On-Demand Ride Services: Comparing Taxi and Ridesourcing Trips and User Characteristics in San Francisco

The rapid growth of on-demand ride services such as uberX and Lyft, or “ridesourcing,” has prompted debate among policy makers and stakeholders. At present, ridesourcing’s usage and impacts are not well understood. Key questions include: how ridesourcing and traditional taxis compare with respect to trip types, customers, and locations served; whether ridesourcing complements or competes with public transit; and potential impacts on vehicle kilometers traveled. The authors address these questions using an intercept survey. In spring 2014, 380 complete surveys were collected from three ridesourcing “hot spots” in San Francisco. Survey results are compared with matched-pair taxi trip data and results of a previous taxi user survey. The authors also compared travel times for ridesourcing and taxis with those for public transit. The findings indicate ridesourcing serves a previously unmet demand for convenient, point-to-point urban travel. Although taxis and ridesourcing share similarities, the findings show differences in users and the user experience. Ridesourcing wait times are markedly shorter and more consistent than those of taxis, while ridesourcing users tend to be younger, own fewer vehicles and more frequently travel with companions. Ridesourcing, like taxis, appears to both substitute for and complement public transit; the majority of ridesourcing trips would have taken substantially longer if made by public transit. Impacts on overall vehicle travel are unclear. Future research should build on this exploratory study to further understand impacts of ridesourcing on labor, social equity, the environment, and public policy.
Practical thinking in programming education: students learning hands-on

von Hausswolff, K. 2022. Practical thinking in programming education. Novices learning hands-on. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 2104. 64 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-1372-6. Understanding how novices learn to program is of national and global concern. A substantial number of studies have been conducted within computing education research (CER), and, although some understanding has been gained, research still finds that programming is hard to learn. This thesis presents a detailed investigation of novice students’ learning of computer programming. The research project used a mixed-methods approach that ties together a controlled study with upper secondary school students with naturalistic classroom studies at the university level. Underpinning the research is a pragmatic philosophical view on knowledge and learning. Pragmatism places “doing” at the forefront of knowledge acquisition, and doing is also central to this thesis. Learning that takes place in the computer lab is the primary object of investigation. Throughout the research, hands-on learning (direct control of keyboard and thus interaction with the computer environment) is compared with hands-off learning (other participation in programming activities). Results from the controlled study demonstrated that hands-on learning decreased stress and was beneficial for learning over time. However, the usefulness of hands-on learning could not be confirmed in terms of improved learning outcomes immediately after students’ first encounter with programming. The beneficial effect of hands-on learning over time could be explained by emotional factors as mediators. Findings from the naturalistic settings confirmed that emotions and the social setting in which the learning takes place were important. Novices experienced frustration when getting stuck but also joy when succeeding — an “emotional roller coaster”. All students report that hands-on code writing is necessary when learning to program. Students in this research appreciated time for individual interaction with the computer environment, and time for working together in pairs to handle the emotional roller coasters. Experiencing negative emotions, or not getting personalized help when stuck, seemed to negatively affect student beliefs about themselves as programmers, and may result in decisions not to continue with computing. Two new concepts, ‘practical thinking’ and ‘come to agreement’, were developed, which tie pragmatic knowledge theory to learning to program. These concepts help to understand and re-describe the purpose of an introductory programming course that in a way emphasizes the “doing”. This novel use of pragmatism in CER is one important contribution to the research field. The research presented in this thesis has implications for how programming education can be understood beyond the dichotomy of theory and practice.
Pharmacokinetics, Mass Balance, and Metabolism of the Novel Urate Transporter 1 Inhibitor [ 14 C]HR011303 in Humans: Metabolism Is Mediated Predominantly by UDP-Glucuronosyltransferase

HR011303, a promising selective urate transporter 1 inhibitor, is currently being studied in a phase III clinical trial in China for the treatment of hyperuricemia and gout. In the current study, the pharmacokinetics, mass balance, and metabolism of HR011303 were examined in six healthy Chinese male subjects who received a single oral dose of 10 mg of [ 14 C]HR011303 (80 m Ci). The results showed that HR011303 was rapidly absorbed with a median time to reach C max of 1.50 hours postdose, and the arithmetic mean half-life of total radioactivity was approximately 24.2 hours in plasma. The mean blood-to-plasma radioactivity concentration ratio was
CLASSIFICATION OF DIFFERENT DEEP-LEARNING TECHNIQUES FOR HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE IMAGERY OF DAMAGED BUILDING EXTRACTION

- With the improved availability of high-resolution satellite imagery, it is possible to detect detailed structures on our planet's surface. Expert knowledge, supervision, and fieldwork are required for traditional mapping approaches. This study examines the potential of machine learning methods such as artificial neural networks (ANN), support vector machines (SVM), and random forest (RF), as well as different deep-learning convolution neural networks (CNNs) for high-resolution satellite imagery using optical data from the satellite and topographic factors. To do multi-label categorization of Amazon satellite images, this uses a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model. It starts with a CNN model that obtains an F-score of 0.84. Then, using three deep CNN architectures that have recently performed well in the ImageNet Challenge, demonstrate that a ResNet-50 model can get a 0.91 F-score. The results reveal that without any additional post-processing steps, state-of-the-art methods outperform by 9.8% on the Intersection over Union metric. The DeepGlobe Building Extraction Challenge asks participants to extract all building polygons from satellite images. They use the segmentation algorithm Mask R-CNN and a method that combines Mask R-CNN with building boundary regularisation to
Rowan Digital Works Rowan Digital

Adult zebra ﬁnch song is irreversibly altered when birds are deprived of correct feedback by deafening or denervation of the syrinx. To clarify the role of feedback in song maintenance, we developed a reversible technique to distort vocal output without damaging the auditory or vocal systems. We implanted ﬂexible beads adjacent to the syrinx to alter its biomechanics. Immediate song aberrations included low volume, frequency shifts, missing harmonics, and production of click-like syllables. After a few weeks, seven of nine birds stopped producing some syllables. In six of these birds, the gaps left by the silenced syllables gradually shortened, and the lost syllables did not return when beads were removed 16 weeks after treatment began. The nondeleted syllables of all birds regained their preimplant morphology, insofar as could be detected, within 9 d after bead removal. In four other birds, we removed the beads as soon as syllables were deleted, when the silent intervals were still full length. In these birds, all deleted syllables returned within 1 week. Our results indicate that both silenced syllables and syllable morphology can recover as long as the song’s temporal structure is maintained, but once altered, changes in the song sequence can be permanent. A hierarchical organization of the song production system has recently been described (Margoliash, 1997). Reversible disruption of song production by our method appears to permanently alter the higher levels of the system that encode song sequence, but not the lower levels that encode individual syllable structure.