Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Challenge of Maintaining Interest in a Large-Scale Public Floor Display

Floor displays, because of the novelty of their location, can be more effective at grabbing the attention of passersby than public wall mounted screens. However, a concern is that as floor displays become more familiar, people will take less notice of them. We are exploring how to maintain interest in a large-scale interactive floor display in a semi-public university location. Our ongoing research involves exploring ways to enable participants to update the content of the display and seeing how effectively this keeps them interested. Firstly, we are making the floor display interactive so that participants can manipulate the content in real-time using whole body interaction. Secondly, we are encouraging the local community to generate content for the display.
Monitoring, Tracking and Diagnosing Dengue Fever using Smartphone, GPS and Machine Learning

Diagnosing infectious disease using smartphone and ML has emerged as popular research area. Many tropical nations including Pakistan are suffering from a viral disease i.e. Dengue. It can be recognized by its symptoms. Due to exhausted pressure of patients i.e. Covid-19 in hospitals and early monitoring, tracking and diagnosing of dengue epidemic is a real challenge to the authorities. Moreover, currently there does not exit any application to diagnose DF and SDF. Hence, we proposed a model, developed an android application, conducted pilot testing and apply ML. Whereas, WHO recommended symptoms of dengue are adopted. A pilot study is conducted on 80 participants. It revealed that the smartphone technology along with GPS on particular symptoms is helpful for early detection. Furthermore, the incorporation of GPS technology is useful for the surveillance during an epidemic or pandemic. Moreover, we also collected data of the last six-year dengue infection from hospitals for applying ML classification techniques using WEKA on clinical features of the patients. The results are compared in terms of Precision, Recall, F-measures and Accuracy to evaluate the performance of SMO, J48, Naïve Bayes, Random Forest and ZeroR classifiers. The performance of the Random Forest classifier has been achieved 98.8% using 10-folds cross-validation and 66% percentage split techniques.
Post‐mortem analysis of a commercial Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide (CIGS) photovoltaic module after potential induced degradation

An extensive post‐mortem analysis was conducted on a commercial copper‐(indium‐gallium)‐diselenide (CIGS) photovoltaic module that degraded after exposure to the high voltage stress of a standardized potential induced degradation (PID) test. We employed a custom‐developed coring technique to extract samples from the full‐size field module, which showed degraded and nondegraded areas (regarded as reference) in electroluminescence after the PID test. The resulting solar cell samples were compared based on their electrical properties and sodium profiles using a wide range of laboratory‐based analysis techniques including photoluminescence and lock‐in thermography imaging, current–voltage measurements, and glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy. The samples that were extracted from the degraded areas of the module showed lower photoluminescence intensity and had significantly lower open‐circuit voltage V(oc) and fill factor (FF) values in comparison with reference samples. An increased content of sodium within the absorber layer was also observed for these samples, linking sodium migration to PID. These observations at the module level are consistent with earlier reports on PID‐stressed CIGS cells and mini‐modules. This is to our knowledge the first reported study of a microscopic investigation on a real‐life full‐scale CIGS module after PID.
The Influence of Obesity and Weight Loss on the Bioregulation of Innate/Inflammatory Responses: Macrophages and Immunometabolism

Obesity is characterized by low-grade inflammation and more susceptibility to infection, particularly viral infections, as clearly demonstrated in COVID-19. In this context, immunometabolism and metabolic flexibility of macrophages play an important role. Since inflammation is an inherent part of the innate response, strategies for decreasing the inflammatory response must avoid immunocompromise the innate defenses against pathogen challenges. The concept “bioregulation of inflammatory/innate responses” was coined in the context of the effects of exercise on these responses, implying a reduction in excessive inflammatory response, together with the preservation or stimulation of the innate response, with good transitions between pro- and anti-inflammatory macrophages adapted to each individual’s inflammatory set-point in inflammatory diseases, particularly in obesity. The question now is whether these responses can be obtained in the context of weight loss by dietary interventions (low-fat diet or abandonment of the high-fat diet) in the absence of exercise, which can be especially relevant for obese individuals with difficulties exercising such as those suffering from persistent COVID-19. Results from recent studies are controversial and do not point to a clear anti-inflammatory effect of these dietary interventions, particularly in the adipose tissue. Further research focusing on the innate response is also necessary.
Error Characteristics of GNSS Derived TEC

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) allows for the cost-effective estimation of the ionospheric total electron content (TEC). However, research on error characteristics of the derived TEC is scarce, which provides insights into the quality of the GNSS ionospheric observation. We investigate characteristics of errors in the derived TEC with data from ~260 GNSS dual-frequency receivers of the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China (CMONOC). The slant TEC is calculated from carrier phase measurements and the vertical TEC over China is fitted with a spatial resolution of 1° by 1° in latitude and longitude in four seasons of 2014. It is found that the errors of both the slant TEC and the derived TEC follow Laplace distribution rather than Gaussian distribution in all seasons. The errors of the slant TEC have sharper peaks than those of the derived TEC. The Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the slant TEC are typically 0.04 TECU and 0.2 TECU, while the MAE and RMSE of the fitting residuals for the derived TEC are typically 1 TECU and under 2 TECU, respectively. Both MAEs and RMSEs of the derived TEC have the largest value in spring and the smallest value in summer, while the seasonal dependence is only observed in RMSE of the slant TEC.
A Multiobjective Multitask Optimization Algorithm Using Transfer Rank

Multiobjective multitask optimization (MMO) attempts to solve several problems simultaneously. This is commonly done by identifying useful knowledge to transfer between tasks, thereby producing optimal solutions more quickly. In this study, an MMO algorithm using transfer rank and a KNN model is proposed to achieve this goal. The definition of transfer rank is first introduced for quantifying the priority of transfer solutions, to improve the probability of a positive result. The solution with the higher rank was assumed to be the most suitable for transfer, as solutions were sorted in descending order based on transfer rank. Priority was given to previous and positive-transfer solutions and those with the same transfer rank were distinguished using a KNN model classifier. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm was verified by studying benchmark MMO problems. The experimental results showed the proposed algorithm was more effective than other conventional MMO techniques.
Thermal comfort during and following water immersion in humans

Water-based activities are often undertaken in cool water (15°C - 35°C), and can therefore result in thermal discomfort, which will affect the overall experience. In contrast with thermal comfort(TC) in air, very little research has been undertaken investigating TC in water. The studies presented in this thesis were designed to better understand the determinants of TC during and following immersion in cool water, at rest and during light physical activity.
Synchrophasor measurement-based correlation approach for dominant mode identification in bulk power systems

This study proposes a novel synchrophasor measurement-based correlation approach to identify the dominant oscillation modes in bulk power systems. In the proposed approach, the reference channel (RC) of cross-correlation (CC) is optimally selected based on residue analysis. With the selected RC, the CC of field-measurement data is formed to extract the free-decay system responses. Then, eigensystem realisation algorithm (ERA) is applied to the extracted responses to estimate the system state-space model. A practical model order selection strategy for ERA is proposed to determine the system model order. Further, cross-coherence spectrum is employed to distinguish the dominant modes from the eigenvalues of the estimated state-space model. The proposed method can achieve accurate and robust solutions in the presence of different levels of errors and noises in measurement data. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been verified in a 16-generator, 68-bus test system as well as the China Southern Power Grid system.
An Impact of Default Risk and Promoters’ Holding on the Dividend Policy in the Firms in India: Evidence using Panel Data

Dividends, as a policy is still a matter of debate. This situation is due to both, lack of consensus in the literature and self-evolution of corporate finance worldwide. Therefore, this study is an attempt to provide insights of the contemporary dividend policy and its driving forces. We collect the panel data from 78 non-financial Indian firms from BSE-100 (BSE-100 is a leading index of Indian companies by Bombay Stock Exchange) from 2015-2019. We decide to test how dividends are driven by default risk, ownership concentration (OC) and profitability of the firms. Profitability is used as moderator to the association of default risk with the dividends. We get startling evidence that OC and profitability do not influence the dividends policy in the firms in India. Default risk negatively impacts the dividends. However, the absolute value of the coefficient is too small and hence can be ignored. Furthermore, we find evidence that dividends are consistent despite the situation of profitability and OC. This finding is one of the main contributions of the study. We recommend to have differential voting rights (DVR) shares to cater to varying aspirations of different investors. Empirical evidence of findings of the study would be an eye-opener to the managers, which is one of the major implications of the current study. Additionally, change of the policies on the DVR shares is another major implication of the study.
Characteristics of Complete Mitochondrial Genomes Reveals a Potential Division of Genus Modiolus into Three Genera

Backgrounds Mussels have been one of the most abundant and highly evolved marine biological groups with high level of genetic differentiation between and within species. The yellow-banded horse mussel, Modiolus modulaides (Röding, 1798), is an important economic species in Philippines and an endangered species in Japan, with no whole mitogenome characterized. Methods and Results In this study, we sequenced the whole mitochondrial genome of Modiolus modulaides (Röding, 1798), a medium-sized mussel collected from Guangxi, China. Result shows a 15,422 bp closed-circular DNA molecule, including 12 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes and two ribosomal RNA genes. The genome composition is obviously A+T biased (62.5%), with 23.1% A, 39.4% T, 25.4% G and 12.0% C, making AT-skew and GC-skew being -0.26 and 0.36, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis of Modiolus modulaides and other 36 mussel species based on 12 protein-coding genes and two ribosomal RNAs of mitogenomes shows that Modiolus modulaides is most closely related with Modiolus phillippinum (Hanley, 1843). Conclusions A hypothesis that the current genus Modiolus should be separated three distinctive genera was raised based on morphological and phylogenetic characteristics, as well as gene patterns of mitogenomes. These results put forward new insight of phylogenetic relationship of Modiolus species and will help to further study the taxonomy and phylogeny of Mytilidae.
Link Layer Priority Management Techniques for Supporting Real Time Traffic in CDMA Based Wireless Mesh Networks

With the recent advances in the development of wireless communication networks, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have been receiving considerable research interests in recent years. Many challenges need to be addressed for successful WMN deployment. One of the fundamental challenges is the need to support integrated services and provision different Quality of Service (QoS) for various applications. In order to allow differentiated services, Medium Access Control (MAC) has to provide priority management techniques at the link layer. In Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) based WMNs, the interference phenomenon and the simultaneous transmissions must be considered. We propose two priority schemes for a distributed CDMA-based MAC WMNs. We take into account interference, multiple services, QoS requirements for each type of traffic, and the simultaneous transmission in CDMA. The first priority scheme is within a node. Each node has independent queues for each traffic class. According to QoS requirements, the queue that should be served first is determined. The second priority scheme is among neighbour nodes. It is proposed for possible multiple simultaneous transmissions with CDMA. This scheme gives a higher chance of correct transmission to high priority traffic than low priority traffic. In addition, we propose to use an adaptive spreading gain and a frame structure to achieve high resource utilization. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed schemes can achieve effective QoS guarantee.
Hubungan berat badan dengan tekanan darah pada siswa SMP di Kecamatan Pineleng

Abstract: Obesity is a condition that exceeds the relative weight of a person as a result of the accumulation of nutrients, especially carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Hypertension is defined as systolic and diastolic blood pressures above than 95th percentile according to sex, age, and height. This study aimed to determine the relationship between body weight and blood pressure among junior high school students in Kecamatan Pineleng. This was an analytical study using a cross sectional approach. Population was junior high school students grades 7 and 8 aged 12-14 years of 3 Junior High Schools located in Kecamatan Pineleng. There were 75 samples obtained by using simple random sampling technique. The Chi-Square test showed a p value of 0.001 (<0.005). Conclusion: There was a significant relationship between weight and blood pressure among junior high school students in Kecamatan Pineleng. Keywords: weight, blood pressure. Abstrak: Obesitas adalah suatu keadaan yang melebihi dari berat badan relatif seseorang, sebagai akibat penumpukan zat gizi terutama karbohidrat, lemak dan protein. Hipertensi adalah tekanan darah sistolik dan diastolik yang melebihi persentil 95 menurut jenis kelamin, usia, dan tinggi badan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui hubungan antara berat badan dengan tekanan darah pada siswa SMP di Kecamatan Pineleng. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode analitik dengan desain potong lintang. Populasi yang diambil ialah siswa SMP kelas 7 dan 8 yang berusia 12 – 14 tahun di 3 SMP yang berada di Kecamatan Pineleng. Jumlah sampel 75 siswa diperoleh dengan teknik simple random sampling. Hasil analisis dengan uji Chi-Square menyatakan nilai signifikansi 0,001 (< 0,005). Simpulan: Terdapat hubungan bermakna antara berat badan dengan tekanan darah pada siswa SMP di Kecamatan Pineleng. Kata kunci: berat badan, tekanan darah.
Análise do Desempenho de Empresas do Setor de Confecções Brasileiro sob a Ótica da Teoria da Contingência Estrutural: Um Estudo Empírico Performance Analysis of Brazilian Clothing Companies by Structural Contingency Theory: an Empirical Study

The clothing manufacturers Brazilian industry has b een subject of several studies that seek to analyze the consequences of opening the market faced by their c ompanies from 2005. This study presents an analysis based on empirical data of 510 clothing manufacturers companies in the database of the Annual Industrial Sur vey of the IBGE, in 2006, which are the most recent data a vailable to the public. Based on structural conting ency theory, this study will examine the relationship be tween performance and contingencies of a sample of Brazilian clothing companies. It was possible to infer that t he sector had poor performance, which indicates a p hase mismatch of these companies to the new environment they face. As the theory indicates, it is necessary a differentiated action by firms, they should conside r their capabilities and contingency factors in sea rch of specific strategies that lead to increased performa nce.
In-Person or Virtual Training?: Comparing the Effectiveness of Community-Based Training

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine differences in knowledge gain by curriculum delivery platform for participants receiving a community-based healthy relationships curriculum for a vulnerable population with limited income and education. Using data gathered from 613 participants gathered in 2019–2020, those who received in-person training (n = 440) were compared to those who received synchronous virtual training (n = 173) on curriculum knowledge. Results indicate that in-person participants had statistically significantly higher gains in knowledge at posttest compared to the participants who received synchronous virtual training. The differences in knowledge gain were not accounted for by the demographics of the two groups. Implications include consideration of adaptations in virtual delivery that may close the gap between in-person and synchronous virtual training such as instruction techniques, presentation style, content and materials, and participant preparation.
Effect of Jatropha Curcas as Feed Additive on Growth Performance and Carcass Characteristic of Weaned Rabbit

A 60-day feeding trial was conducted to determine the effect of Jatropha Curcas leaf meal on growth performance and carcass characteristics of weaned rabbit. Four diets were formulated to contain different level of jatropha leaf meal. Treatment one was the control (0g of jatropha leaf meal), treatment two (0.50g jatropha leaf meal), Treatment three (0.70g jatropha leaf meal) and treatment four (0.90g jatropha leaf meal). Twenty four (24) six weeks old rabbits were divided into four group dietary treatment. Each group was replicated three times with two rabbits per replicate and housed in a cage system in a Complete Randomized Design (CRD). The results show that rabbit feed with 0.50g jatropha leaf meal and 0.90g jatropha leaf meal performed significantly (p<0.05) better than the rest in terms of body weight. There was a significant (p<0.05) difference in feed conversion efficiency among the treatment. The carcass showed significant (p<0.05) difference among treatment for live weight, dressed weight and dressing percentage. There was also significant (p<0.05) difference in organ weight (lungs and spleen) except for heart, liver and kidney among the treatments. The results suggest that jatropha leaf meal used at 0.50g and 0.90g will improve feed utilization and performance of growing rabbit.
In vitro Antioxidant and Free Radical Scavenging Activity of the Bark of Dillenia indica L.

The aim of the study was to explore the antioxidant and free radical scavenging activity of bark of Dillenia indica L. The methanolic extract (CME) of coarse powder of the dried bark was fractionated with pet-ether (PETF), chloroform (CHF), and water (AQF) and each fraction was investigated for antioxidant and free radical potentials. The phenolic contents of CME, CHF, PETF and AQF were found to be 90.2, 171.1, 52.1 and 158.1 and flavonoid contents 182.6, 340.2, 285.9, and 362.6 mg of GAE/g of dried extract, respectively. The total antioxidant activity of CME, PETF, CHF, AQF and standard catechin in terms of absorbance were 0.373, 0.707, 0.88, 1.051 and 0.804, respectively at 160 μg/ml concentration indicating AQF possessing the highest total antioxidant activity. In DPPH radical scavenging activity, the AQF and CHF showed potential radical scavenging activity followed by CME and PETF with IC50 values of 1.5, 2.5, 23 and 61 μg/ml, respectively, whereas standard ascorbic acid showed IC50 at 8 μg/ml. Among the extractives, AQF and CHF exhibited potent hydroxyl radical scavenging activity with IC50 values of 49.0 and 42 μg/ml followed by CME and PETF with IC50 of 86 and 168 μg/ml, respectively. In ferric-reducing antioxidant assay, AQF, CHF and CME (absorbance 2.262, 2.418 and 2.157, respectively) showed higher activity than that of standard (1.793) followed by PETF (absorbance 0.593). Since polyphenols like flavonoids play a vital role in controlling antioxidants, polyphenol rich extracts are potent source of antioxidants. Our data showed that the chloroform fraction of the bark of D. indica provided highest polyphenols and antioxidant activities, hence, can be used further as a source of natural antioxidants. Bangladesh Pharmaceutical Journal 25(1): 38-43, 2022 (January)
Rent-Seeking and the Volume of Tax Laws: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017

Taxes have a significant impact on individuals and firms. Unfortunately, complexity in the tax law has led to economic inefficiency due to inefficient use of tax breaks and increased audits and related penalties. Part of such complexity is driven by the sheer volume of tax law. To explain this phenomenon, we model tax law volume as a function of wealth transfers from the rent seeking/theory of regulation literature. Our models predict that both overall volume and the number of specific terms (defined by words in our specific “dictionary”) is higher for groups receiving tax breaks, and lower for more heavily taxed groups. The specific terms attempt to control for free riding across groups, and to limit tax breaks within groups. Using textual analysis, these predictions are supported in tests using the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Also, consistent with theory, we find that tax breaks are given to relatively smaller groups, and tax increases are spread across relatively larger groups.
Un estudio empírico del impacto de las iniciativas actuales de gestión de la calidad sobre la innovación y fl exibilidad organizativa An empirical study of current quality management initiatives on the organizational innovation and fl exibility

In recent years, managers have opted for implementing Quality Management in their fi rms. The market offers different alternatives for QM implementation (EFQM, ISO, Six Sigma, etc.). Benefi ts of each initiative, varies from case to case. This article designs a criterion for choosing among four alternatives (Quality Control, EFQM, Six Sigma and ISO 9000), according to the different effects that QM elements included in each initiative, have on innovation and fl exibility capabilities. To do so, using a stepwise regression with dummy variables, it analyses 234 European organizations. The research concludes that QM elements included on Quality Control and ISO Standards have the same effect on administrative and technical innovation, and operational and strategic fl exibility. QM ele- ments included in EFQM model have a deeper impact on administrative and technical innovation, and strategic fl exibility. And fi nally, QM elements included in Six Sigma methodology have a deeper impact on operational fl exibility.