Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Soil yeast abundance and diversity assessment in a hot climatic region, semi-arid ecosystem

Background and Objectives: Yeasts are an important portion of microbial communities of soil due to their bioactivity for ecosystem safety. Soil yeast abundance and diversity are likely to be affected under harsh environmental and climatic conditions. In Iraq, human activity and climatic changes especially high temperature which may alter microbial communities in soil. Very little is known about yeast abundance and diversity in a hot climatic region. Materials and Methods: By PCR technique, soil yeast abundance and diversity were investigated under extreme environmental and climatic conditions, as well as the effects of soil properties and vegetation cover in semi-arid lands. Results: In all, 126 yeast strains were isolated and identified as belonging to 13 genera and 26 known species. The maximum quantity of yeast was 0.8 × 102 CFU g−1 of soil, with significantly varied in abundance and diversity depending on soil properties and presence of vegetation. Conclusion: The results show that soil yeast abundance in these regions was significantly decreased. However, semi-arid lands are still rich in yeast diversity, and many species have adapted to survive in such conditions.
Social network characteristics and HIV testing among older adults in South Africa

Abstract Drawing from theory and research on the role of social networks in promoting or undermining preventative public health measures, this article considers how structural, compositional and functional aspects of older adults’ close social networks are associated with HIV testing in the context of rural South Africa. Analyses use data from the population-based Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI) – a sample of rural adults age 40+ (N = 4,660). Results from multiple logistic regression show older South African adults with larger, more heavily non-kin and more literate networks were most likely to report testing for HIV. People whose network members provided frequent information were also most likely to be tested, though interaction effects indicate that this pattern is primarily found among those with highly literate networks. Taken together, the findings reinforce a key insight from social capital perspectives: network resourcefulness – literacy in particular – is crucial for promoting preventative health practice. The synergy between network literacy and informational support reveals the complex interplay between network characteristics in shaping health-seeking behaviour. Continued research is needed on the connection between networks and HIV testing among sub-Saharan older adults, as this population is not currently well served by many public health efforts in the region.
Application of fuzzy TOPSIS framework for selecting complex project in a case company

Purpose This study aims to propose a method known as the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (fuzzy TOPSIS) for complex project selection in organizations. To fulfill study objectives, the factors responsible for making a project complex are collected through literature review, which is then analyzed by fuzzy TOPSIS, based on three decision-makers’ opinions. Design/methodology/approach The selection of complex projects is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process for global organizations. Traditional procedures for selecting complex projects are not adequate due to the limitations of linguistic assessment. To crossover such limitation, this study proposes the fuzzy MCDM method to select complex projects in organizations. Findings A large-scale engine manufacturing company, engaged in the energy business, is studied to validate the suitability of the fuzzy TOPSIS method and rank eight projects of the case company based on project complexity. Out of these eight projects, the closeness coefficient of the most complex project is found to be 0.817 and that of the least complex project is found to be 0.274. Finally, study outcomes are concluded in the conclusion section, along with study limitations and future works. Research limitations/implications The outcomes from this research may not be generalized sufficiently due to the subjectivity of the interviewers. The study outcomes support project managers to optimize their project selection processes, especially to select complex projects. The presented methodology can be used extensively used by the project planners/managers to find the driving factors related to project complexity. Originality/value The presented study deliberately explained how complex projects in an organization could be select efficiently. This selection methodology supports top management to maintain their proposed projects with optimum resource allocations and maximum productivity.
ResQbot 2.0: An Improved Design of a Mobile Rescue Robot with an Inflatable Neck Securing Device for Safe Casualty Extraction

Despite the fact that a large number of research studies have been conducted in the field of search and rescue robotics, significantly little attention has been given to the development of rescue robots capable of performing physical rescue interventions, including loading and transporting victims to a safe zone—i.e., casualty extraction tasks. The aim of this study is to develop a mobile rescue robot that could assist first responders when saving casualties from a dangerous area by performing a casualty extraction procedure whilst ensuring that no additional injury is caused by the operation and no additional lives are put at risk. In this paper, we present a novel design of ResQbot 2.0—a mobile rescue robot designed for performing the casualty extraction task. This robot is a stretcher-type casualty extraction robot, which is a significantly improved version of the initial proof-of-concept prototype, ResQbot (retrospectively referred to as ResQbot 1.0), that has been developed in our previous work. The proposed designs and development of the mechanical system of ResQbot 2.0, as well as the method for safely loading a full-body casualty onto the robot’s ‘stretcher bed’, are described in detail based on the conducted literature review, evaluation of our previous work, and feedback provided by medical professionals. We perform simulation experiments in the Gazebo physics engine simulator to verify the proposed design and the casualty extraction procedure. The simulation results demonstrate the capability of ResQbot 2.0 to carry out safe casualty extractions successfully.
Anti-malaria and hypoglycaemic activities of Diosgenin on alloxan-induced, diabetic Wistar rats

The rising threat of Plasmodium falciparum resistance to Monotherapies has prompted the world health organization (WHO) 2006 guidelines to recommend the use of different anti-malarias. In this study, the anti-malaria and hypoglycaemic activities of Diosgenin, a potent, yet poorly reported saponin was investigated on P. falciparum inoculated and Alloxan-Induced, Diabetic Wistar Rats. Fort two (42) adult male wistar rats of between 100g and 150g were procured, acclimatized (for two weeks), and grouped into seven of six (6) rats per group. While Group 1 (Normal control) received normal rat chow and water ad libitum, groups 2 – 4 received no treatment (untreated), 10 mg/kg body weight of anti-diabetic Metformin and 25 mg/kg body weight of diosgenin respectively after inducing diabetes mellitus (DM) with alloxan monohydrate; whereas, groups 5-7 (all malaria infected) were untreated (negative malaria control), 25 mg/kg body weight of diosgenin and 56 mg/kg body weight of anti-malaria coartem respectively. Following treatment period, blood samples were obtained and assayed for fasting blood sugar, packed cell volume (PCV) and total white blood cell count (TWBCC). From the result, P. falciparum exposed rats showed lowered PCV values than control with observed improvements in coartem (significant at p < 0.05) and diosgenin (insignificant) treatment groups. Also, diabetic, diosgenin treated rats showed an insignificant reduction in blood sugar levels compared to control, even though this change was apparently improved compared to diabetic, untreated group. Again, TWBCC caused notable decrease in diosgenin treated, though this decrease signified a huge recovery compared to untreated rats. Corroborative studies on diosgenin with other systems is recommended.
Bearing Fault Identification Based on Deep Convolution Residual Network

Tong ZHOU*, Yuan LI**, Yijia JING***, Yifei TONG**** *School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210000, People’s Republic of China **Jiangyin Campus, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 214434, People’s Republic of China ***School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210000, People’s Republic of China ****School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210000, People’s Republic of China, E-mail: tyf51129@aliyun.com
Abiotic Determinants To Spatial Learning During Navigation In VR Systems

Use of Immersive Virtual Reality(VR) stack is expanding, as the organizations explore alternative methods to reduce the cost of training. The effectiveness of VR simulators has demonstrated significant gains in the transfer of training for domains such as surgical training, flight training, military reconnaissance, search and rescue operations, etc. However, despite significant advancements, there exists a substantial gap to study human cognition and behavior and to also train them for demanding tasks like military combat and reconnaissance. Many of the military systems in use today are robotic with a limited degree of decision-making ability and interaction with the environment where making mistakes isn’t an option and therefore requires human intervention to operate and command remotely. Thus, teleoperators need to be instructed and trained prior to perform such operations efficiently and effectively. For a better understanding, and increasing VR’s usability, we aim to identify the relevant constituent components of immersive technologies, and differentiate their roles. In this thesis, we aim to determine the role of two determinants (goal-specific instructions and display fidelity) of spatial knowledge that one acquires during spatial navigation in VR. We conducted two experiments to disentangle the contribution of the two factors individually. Literature has demonstrated the relative importance of instructions on task performance and having goals can help in focusing attention on relevant information in the environment. However, it is also dependent on the nature of goal or activity that one is asked to accomplish. From a navigation perspective, the simplest of the goal is to return to the starting point to end the activity. In the first study, we included this goal in the instructions for one group while the other group were only instructed to explore the virtual environment and build understanding. Acquired topological spatial knowledge was assessed from the drawn sketch-maps. Our results showed that participants with goal-specific instructions found it difficult to recall one out of three spatial relationships (Object Positioning). These results indicate that the presence of additional goals in the instruction can impact the spatial memory of the operators and can be detrimental to task performance. HMD VR compared to DT, provides a 3-D experience during the virtual exploration, it offers a sense of complete immersion in the virtual world but literature has shown mixed findings depending on the applications. To study the role of the second factor, we conducted a pilot study followed by a
Hopper: Modeling and Detecting Lateral Movement (Extended Report)

In successful enterprise attacks, adversaries often need to gain access to additional machines beyond their initial point of compromise, a set of internal movements known as lateral movement. We present Hopper, a system for detecting lateral movement based on commonly available enterprise logs. Hopper constructs a graph of login activity among internal machines and then identifies suspicious sequences of loginsthat correspond to lateral movement. To understand the larger context of each login, Hopper employs an inference algorithm to identify the broader path(s) of movement that each login belongs to and the causal user responsible for performing a path's logins. Hopper then leverages this path inference algorithm, in conjunction with a set of detection rules and a new anomaly scoring algorithm, to surface the login paths most likely to reflect lateral movement. On a 15-month enterprise dataset consisting of over 780 million internal logins, Hop-per achieves a 94.5% detection rate across over 300 realistic attack scenarios, including one red team attack, while generating an average of<9 alerts per day. In contrast, to detect the same number of attacks, prior state-of-the-art systems would need to generate nearly 8x as many false positives.
Influence of Orthodontic Movement by Bracketless Orthodontic Treatment on Stress Distribution: 3D Finite Element Analysis

Corresponding Author: João Paulo Mendes Tribst Department of Dentistry, University of Taubaté (UNITAU), Taubaté, Brazil Email: joao.tribst@gmail.com Abstract: The Bracketless Orthodontic Treatment (BOT) is an alternative technique with the concept of installing an orthodontic appliance composed only of wires and composite resin with the aid of 3D technology. However, the biomechanical behavior of this therapeutic modality has yet to be elucidated in the scientific literature. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the stress distribution in tooth movement through 3D Finite Element Analysis (3D FEA) using different displacements (0.15, 0.25 and 0.35 mm) and wire thicknesses (0.012”, 0.014” and 0.016”) of nickel-titanium wire (NiTi) with BOT. Thus, 3D modeling of a complex structure composed by enamel, dentin, cortical bone, medullary bone, periodontal ligament, composite resin and different orthodontic wire diameters was performed. After modeling, the set was exported to computer-aided engineering software, subdivided into a finite number of elements and a mechanical structural static analysis was subsequently performed. The results were plotted on colorimetric charts for qualitative comparison and the stress peaks on tables for quantitative comparison between the different models. The results showed that orthodontic movement with BOT does not induce damage to the periodontal ligament, dental root or bone tissue, regardless of the simulated orthodontic wire diameter and applied load. The occlusal composite resin and orthodontic wire also presented acceptable stress values during orthodontic activation. Thus, the Bracketless Orthodontic Treatment technique presents a promising biomechanical response during tooth movement with a low risk of damage.
A Directivity Based Reference for the Multichannel Wiener Filter

The multichannel Wiener filter (MWF) is a wellestablished noise reduction technique. Recently, it was shown that the broadband output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be improved with the generalized MWF (GMWF) which uses a linear combination of the microphone channels as a speech reference. In this work, directivity based references for the G-MWF are introduced which are suitable for closely spaced microphone arrangements, e.g. for hearing aids. The proposed references are based on differential microphone processing approaches using dipole, cardioid, and hypercardioid beam patterns. Simulation results are presented for a monaural hearing aid in a cylindrical isotropic noise field and a cafeteria environment. These results show an improved noise suppression performance compared with the standard MWF.
Modelling Back Problems from Lifting and Lowering Tasks in Australian Construction Industry

1,2Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia ---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract Most of the work related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in the construction industry are associated with manual handling (MH) tasks such as lifting and lowering. Among all serious work related MSD claims from the year 2000 to 2013 in Australia, around 40% of the injuries/ disorders are lower/ upper back problems, which are mainly associated with body stressing in daily tasks. This paper presents a model to predict the likelihood of acute and chronic back problems from lifting and lowering tasks in construction works. Using a structured questionnaire survey, data collected from workers engaged in manual handling works in Australia based construction industry organisations. Multinomial logistic regression based predictive modelling considered: (a) personal attributes such as body mass index (BMI) and physical abilities; and (b) job requirements such as postures and frequencies of lifting/ lowering different weights in daily routines. Chi-Square test results and R-square values indicate good feasibility of the predictive models. Kruskal-Wallis tests indicate the distribution of work related upper and lower back MSDs are: (i) the same across gender and occupation categories; and (ii) different across age categories. The predictive models will be useful for mitigating risks and ergonomic MH job designs in the construction industry.
Understanding eye movements on mobile devices for better presentation designs of search results

Compared to the early versions of smart phones, recent mobile devices have bigger screens that can present more web search results. Several previous studies have reported diﬀerences in user interaction between conventional desktop computer and mobile device-based web searches, so it is imperative to consider the diﬀerences of user behaviour for web search engine interface design on mobile devices. However, it is still unknown how the diversiﬁcation of screen sizes on hand-held devices aﬀects how users search. In this paper, we investigate search performance and behaviour on three diﬀerent small screen sizes: early smart phones, recent smart phones, and phablets. We found no signiﬁcant diﬀerence with respect to the eﬃciency of carrying out tasks, however participants exhibited diﬀerent search behaviours: less eye-movement within top links on the larger screen, fast reading with some hesitation before choosing a link on the medium, and frequent use of scrolling on the small screen. This result suggests that the presentation of web search results for each screen needs to be designed considering the diﬀerence in search behaviour. At the end of this paper, we suggest several ideas for presentation design for each screen size.
Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in Oncologic Care: a review

Sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) have for centuries been recognized as reliable and effective filters of foreign material, including tumor cells. Since the mid-20th century, this principle has been applied to oncologic care through sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB), which detects and quantifies the extent of regional metastasis. First pioneered in parotid tumors, the technique has since expanded to many branches of oncology including breast, melanoma, head and neck, gastrointestinal, and gynecologic tumors. Across these varied pathologies, SLNB has repeatedly demonstrated non-inferiority to traditionally more extensive lymphatic dissections, which are associated with higher rates of infectious, lymphatic, and neuropathic complications. In an era of everincreasing management options, this technique also provides prognostic and predictive information key to therapeutic selection. This paper reviews the history of the practice of SLNB and its evolution over the decades in a number of oncologic disciplines.
Structure prediction of perovskite surfaces and nanoclusters

Perovskite materials possess a broad range of novel and useful properties. This has lead to perovskites being used in a broad range of applications, with considerable ongoing research being invested into them. While the bulk structure of these materials have been thoroughly investigated and documented, the polar surface and nanocluster structures of these compounds are relatively unknown. This is largely due to conventional structural determination techniques, such as X-ray and neutron scattering, proving ine ective on these non-bulk phases. In this thesis computational methods have been used to model the ABZ3 type perovskite materials KTaO3, KMgF3, and KZnF3. Global optimisation techniques have been employed to predict the structure of the compounds in non-bulk phases. The global optimisations were performed using interatomic potentials, with the lowest energy candidates being re ned through density functional theory. Reconstructions of the (001) polar KTaO3 surface were investigated. It was found that the lowest energy reconstructions involved the migration of the Ta ions from the surface, towards the bulk, where they were able to achieve a fuller coordination. The K ions moved in the opposite direction, migrating towards the surface. Defects in the form of neutral K and O vacancies were introduced to the surface. It was found that both types of vacancy resulted in an upward band bending towards the surface. This indicated an accumulation of holes at the surface for K vacancies, and an accumulation of electrons in the bulk for O vacancies. The structures of small nanoclusters, containing 5 - 100 atoms, were predicted for the compounds KMgF3 and KZnF3. The low energy structures revealed that it was energetically favourable for the B cations, Mg or Zn, to adopt positions close to the cluster centre, while the K cations resided at the edges of the clusters. The optical gap of the clusters was found to vary with the size of the cluster. This indicates the properties may be tuned by controlling cluster size.
Privacy Amplification With Tamperable Memory via Non-Malleable Two-Source Extractors

We extend the classical problem of privacy amplification to a setting where the active adversary, Eve, is also allowed to fully corrupt the internal memory (which includes the shared randomness, and local randomness tape) of one of the honest parties, Alice and Bob, before the execution of the protocol. We require that either one of Alice or Bob detects tampering, or they agree on a shared key that is indistinguishable from the uniform distribution to Eve. We obtain the following results: 1) we give a privacy amplification protocol via low-error non-malleable two-source extractors with one source having low min-entropy. In particular, this implies the existence of such (non-efficient) protocols; 2) we show that even slight improvements to the state-of-the-art explicit non-malleable two-source extractors would lead to explicit low-error, low min-entropy two-source extractors, thereby resolving a long-standing open question. This suggests that obtaining (information-theoretically secure) explicit non-malleable two-source extractors for (1) might be hard; 3) we present explicit constructions of low-error, low min-entropy non-malleable two-source extractors in the CRS model of (Garg, Kalai, Khurana, Eurocrypt 2020), assuming either the quasi-polynomial hardness of DDH or the existence of nearly-optimal collision-resistant hash functions; 4) we instantiate our privacy amplification protocol with the above mentioned non-malleable two-source extractors in the CRS model, leading to explicit, computationally-secure protocols. This is not immediate from (1) because in the computational setting we need to make sure that, in particular, all randomness sources remain samplable throughout the proof. This requires upgrading the assumption of quasi-polynomial hardness of DDH to sub-exponential hardness of DDH.We emphasize that each of the first three results can be read independently.