Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of polyethylene glycol grafted nanodiamond on antifouling properties of cellulose acetate membrane for Removal of BSA from Contaminated Water

In this study, membranes were prepared by pristine and polyethylene glycol (PEG)-grafted ‎nanodiamond (ND) embedded in cellulose acetate (CA) as matrix polymer via non-solvent ‎induced phase separation method. The antifouling properties of the membranes were studied ‎during filtration of bovine serum albumin (BSA) solutions and the governing fouling mechanisms ‎of the membranes were also investigated using the Hermia model. Fourier Transform Infrared ‎Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) confirmed that ND was ‎successfully functionalized by PEG. CA/ND-PEG nanocomposite membranes have higher ‎hydrophilicity, porosity, water uptake, mechanical strength and a lower amount of adsorbed ‎protein than pure CA and CA/ND membranes. Besides, the antifouling performance of the ‎CA/ND-PEG (0.5 wt.%) nanocomposite membrane also witnessed considerable improvement, in ‎comparison with that of pure CA and CA/ND (0.5 wt.%) membranes. The obtained results ‎showed that the best fit to experimental data for all membranes (pure and nanocomposite ‎membranes) corresponds to the cake layer formation model. ‎
Proposal to the ISOLDE and Neutron Time-of-Flight Committee Study of the oddA , high-spin isomers in neutron-deficient trans-lead nuclei with ISOLTRAP January 5 , 2011

We propose to measure the excitation energy of the 13 2 + isomers in the neutron-deficient isotopes Po with the ISOLTRAP mass spectrometer. The assignment of the lowand high-spin isomers will be made by measuring the energy of the α particles emitted in the decay of purified beams implanted in a windmill system. Using α-decay information, it is then also possible to determine the excitation energy of the similar isomers in the α-daughter nuclei Pb, α-parent nuclei Rn, and α-grand-parent nuclei Ra. The polonium beams are produced with a UCX target and using the RILIS. Requested shifts: 21 shifts, (split into 2 runs over 2 years)
Indoor Air Quality and Health in Newly Constructed Apartments in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Surabaya, Indonesia

In times of rapid urbanization, increasing usage of chemicals in buildings, and energy saving measures, the topic of indoor air quality (IAQ) demands reinforced attention. Nevertheless, especially in developing countries with urgent building construction needs, IAQ has hardly been examined. This study investigates the condition of IAQ and health of occupants in newly constructed high-rise apartments in contrast to traditional detached houses (Kampongs) in Surabaya, Indonesia. Information on building attributes, cleaning and ventilation behavior, interior sources, personal characteristics and health, especially multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), was collected through 471 questionnaires. In addition, 76 measurements of TVOCs, formaldehyde and 30 measurements of mold risk were carried out. The results showed that the share of people in apartments with a very suggestive risk of MCS was twice as high as that in Kampongs (17.6% vs. 6.7%). Correlation analysis suggested that for both residential types, health problems, negative smell or perception of IAQ, and higher levels of stress determined higher degrees of MCS. For IAQ, high concentrations of formaldehyde and TVOCs were measured in apartments and corresponded to higher MCS risk, whereas severe mold issues were predicted in Kampongs. This study suggests major shortcomings in the indoor environment in newly constructed apartments for the physical and the mental health of occupants.
Federation and Orchestration: A Scalable Solution for EU Multimodal Travel Information Services

Multimodal travel planning services allow travelers to plan their journey by combining different transport modes: air, rail, waterborne, coach, public transport, demand responsive transport, walking, cycling, etc. The European Union is fostering the development of cross-border multimodal planning services by establishing a regulation framework for their coordinated and coherent deployment across Member States (under the Directive 2010/40/EU). This EU regulation gives precise requirements on travel data formats (DATEX II, SIRI, NeTEx, etc.) and on fundamental and recommended system-level services, such as discovery and linking services. However, it does not (yet) pose constraints on how to implement them. In this paper, we devise and test a system architecture, named Bonvoyage, which proposes an innovative solution implementing such services. For discovery purposes, it federates nation-wide NoSQL databases that contain travel information by exploiting a novel telecommunication paradigm, Information Centric Networking. As regards linking purposes, it orchestrates the use of autonomous monomodal or multimodal routing services provided by small/big stakeholders to compose the best door-to-door journey.
Personalized Recommender by Exploiting Domain based Expert for Enhancing Collaborative Filtering Algorithm :PReC

The large amount of information available on the internet initiated various Recommender algorithms to act as an intermediate between number of choices and internet users. Collaborative filtering is one of the most traditional and intensively used recommendation approaches for many commercial services. Despite providing satisfying outcomes, it does have some issues that include source diversity, reliability, sparsity of data, scalability and cold start. Thus, there is a need for further improvement in the current generation of recommender system to achieve a more effective human decision support in a wide variety of applications and scenarios. Personalized Expert based collaborative filtering (PReC) approach is proposed to identify domain specific experts and the use of experts preference enhanced the performance of collaborative filtering recommender systems. A unified framework is proposed that integrates similar users rating data, experts rating and demographic data to reduce the number of pairwise computations from the search space to ensure scalability and enabled fine grained recommendations. The proposed method is evaluated using accuracy metrics MAE, RMSE on the data set collected from MovieLens datasets.
The Crisis of Race in Higher Education : A Day of Discovery and Dialogue Retaining Students of Color in Higher Education : Expanding Our Focus to Psychosocial Adjustment and Mental Health

Over the past several decades, scholars and universities have made efforts to increase the retention of students in higher education, but graduation rates remain low. Whereas two-thirds of high school graduates attend college, fewer than half graduate. The likelihood of graduation decreases even more for Black, Latino, American Indian, and low-income students, who have a 12 15% lower chance of earning their degree. The importance of psychosocial adjustment to student persistence has received relatively less attention than academic and social integration. Racial/ethnic minority students face unique challenges to psychosocial adjustment in college, including prejudice and discrimination, unwelcoming campus environments, underrepresentation, and a lack of culturally appropriate counseling resources. The current chapter will discuss the impact of these challenges on the persistence, academic success, and health of racial/ ethnic minority students, and strategies that universities can employ to create inclusive policies, resources and campus environments that empower students of color and maximize their success.
PrivGait: An Energy-Harvesting-Based Privacy-Preserving User-Identification System by Gait Analysis

Smart space has emerged as a new paradigm that combines sensing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies to offer various customized services. A fundamental requirement of these services is person identification. Although a variety of person-identification approaches has been proposed, they suffer from several limitations in practical applications, such as low energy efficiency, accuracy degradation, and privacy issue. This article proposes an energy-harvesting-based privacy-preserving gait recognition scheme for smart space, which is named PrivGait. In PrivGait, we extract discriminative features from 1-D gait signal and design an attention-based long short-term memory (LSTM) network to classify different people. Moreover, we leverage a novel Bloom filter-based privacy-preserving technique to address the privacy leakage problem. To demonstrate the feasibility of PrivGait, we design a proof-of-concept prototype using off-the-shelf energy-harvesting hardware. Extensive evaluation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms state of the art by 6%–10% and incurs low system cost while preserving user’s privacy.
Personal Authentication through Finger Knuckle Geometric and Texture Feature Measurements: Finger Knuckle Biometrics

Finger Knuckle biometric is an emerging automated human identification approach that has received extensive significance in the area of research and real time applications in the recent past. Generally, a typical finger knuckle biometric system investigates the finger knuckle patterns present in the outer bend surface of the finger back region i.e., proximal phalanx region. In contrast, this paper focuses on the entire finger back region which includes proximal and distal phalanx of the finger knuckle surface for recognition. Further, this paper investigates a novel approach to achieve improved performance by simultaneous extraction and integration of finger knuckle geometric and texture features from a captured finger knuckle region. The geometric measures are derived by means of angular geometric analysis method which extracts angular-based feature information for unique identification. Similarly, texture measures are derived through statistical-based texture analysis methods. Usha Kazhagamani Pondicherry Engineering College, India M. Ezhilarasan Pondicherry Engineering College, India Personal Authentication
Methodological Gaps in Predicting Mental Health States from Social Media: Triangulating Diagnostic Signals

A growing body of research is combining social media data with machine learning to predict mental health states of individuals. An implication of this research lies in informing evidence-based diagnosis and treatment. However, obtaining clinically valid diagnostic information from sensitive patient populations is challenging. Consequently, researchers have operationalized characteristic online behaviors as "proxy diagnostic signals" for building these models. This paper posits a challenge in using these diagnostic signals, purported to support clinical decision-making. Focusing on three commonly used proxy diagnostic signals derived from social media, we find that predictive models built on these data, although offer strong internal validity, suffer from poor external validity when tested on mental health patients. A deeper dive reveals issues of population and sampling bias, as well as of uncertainty in construct validity inherent in these proxies. We discuss the methodological and clinical implications of these gaps and provide remedial guidelines for future research.
EFFECT OF PAPAYA PEEL FLOUR MICROPARTICLES IN THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF GELATIN FILMS

Biodegradable films added antioxidants are a great option to replace common plastic packaging. The objective of this study was to determine the mechanical properties of gelatin films added papaya peel flour or papaya peel flour microparticles. Three films formulations were prepared: one with 5% papaya peel flour, other with 5% papaya peel flour microparticles and a control formulation (only gelatin). The films were prepared according to the casting method. The flour microparticles strengthening the structure of the film and decreasing its elasticity of films. This increase was possible because the protein-protein interaction of film with microparticles resulting in the biopolymer matrix reinforcement. The addition of papaya peel flour microparticles in the films resulted in an increase in the voltage values and Young's modulus, since the addition of native flour resulted in a decrease of these values, both of which differ from the control formulation.
Laboratory Measurements of Contact Freezing by Dust and Bacteria at Temperatures of Mixed-Phase Clouds

AbstractLaboratory measurements of freezing by aerosol particles in contact mode are presented. The fraction of particles catalyzing freezing is quantified for three mineral dusts and three strains of bacteria. This is the most comprehensive such dataset to date for temperatures greater than −20°C, relevant for warm, mixed-phase clouds. For Arizona Test Dust, feldspar, or rhyolitic ash, more than 103 particles are required to initiate a freezing event at −20°C in the contact mode. At −15°C, more than 105 particles are required. An ice-negative strain of Pseudomonas fluorescens is an order of magnitude more effective than the mineral dusts at every temperature tested. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first measurement of contact-mode freezing by an ice-negative bacterium. An ice-positive strain of Pseudomonas syringae reaches its maximum nucleating efficiency, E = 0.1, 12°C higher than does Pseudomonas fluorescens. This is consistent with the behavior of ice-negative and ice-positive bact.
Lecture 6-4 – momentum transfer and the kinematics of two body scattering

Last time we figured out the physical meaning of the square of the total 4– momentum in two particles about to collide. Where the 4–momentum is written pT = (p1 + p2), the dot product of pT with itself, pT · pT is equal to −M T c. Here MT is the mass of the heaviest particle that could be produced in the collision. In the centre of mass (CM) frame, where total momentum is zero, you produce the heaviest particle you possibly can if it is at rest, therefore −E/c is just −M T c. Were anything moving, the kinetic energy would be wasted, and could have instead been used to create a heavier particle. Were there more than one particle in the final state, the rest energy available would have to be split between them, again meaning that any single particle has less rest mass than it could have. So a single particle at rest in the centre of mass frame really does define the heaviest thing you can make. In other frames, it is not possible for a single particle to be at rest on its own, since in these frames the total momentum is not zero. So, the calculation of the heaviest possible particle always uses the centre of mass frame. It’s the simplest thing to do.
The Identification and Classification of Impediments in Software Flow Completed Research

Software impediments are anything that obstructs the smooth flow of work through a system or interferes with the system achieving its goals. However, it is unclear how impediments in software practices are identified, measured and managed across multiple practices and projects in teams that are often globally distributed, yet continues to consume vast amounts of organisational resources. Managers face growing pressure to introduce techniques to improve software productivity and reduce impediments with little guidance from best practice. As a first step to address this challenge, this article carries out a structured review on how impediments to software flow are identified and classified across the literature. The article describes the problem associated with managing software productivity and impediments. The article also presents the development of software flow impediments taxonomy and its contribution to the Information Systems literature. We adopt Design Science to guide our research efforts on the development of a taxonomy for impediments in software flow. From both a theoretical and practitioner perspective, this research provides a necessary foundation to support understanding regarding the nature and components of software impediments that are necessary for effective decision-making and management of modern software practices.
Oral health status and reported oral health problems in people with intellectual disability: A literature review

ABSTRACT Background: People with intellectual disability (ID) experience poor oral health and are at greater risk of dental decay and periodontal diseases. This impacts on their general health and wellbeing. This review summarises the research literature about oral health status and contributing factors to poor oral health Method: We conducted a literature review using “intellectual disability” and “oral health” as our two core areas of focus. Results: People with ID had poorer oral health, greater numbers of tooth extractions, more caries, fewer fillings, greater gingival inflammation, greater rates of endentulism, and had less preventative dentistry and poorer access to services when compared to the general population. Anxiety during dental procedures was a key issue for females with ID. Conclusions: Further research is needed to identify, pilot and test appropriate and effective interventions that can reduce this preventable health disparity. The design of an ID-specific dental anxiety scale is another priority.
The prognostic role of the pretreatment peripheral neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in patients with cervical cancer

Abstract Aim: To investigate whether pretreatment peripheral neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR) can be used as a prognostic indicator for predicting treatment response and survival outcomes in patients with cervical cancer. Materials and Methods: Records of 141 patients with histologic confirmation of squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix who were treated with radical radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy in our clinic from 2010 to 2016 were retrospectively reviewed in this study. The relationship between pretreatment NLR/PLR with clinicopathological characteristics and therapeutic response and survival was analyzed. The cut-off values of NLR and PLR that predicted treatment response were determined using a receiver operating characteristic analysis. Results: In the clinicopathological analysis, while pretreatment elevated NLR was associated with the tumor size and grade, elevated PLR was related to an advanced stage, tumor size and grade. Low NLR (<2.64) and PLR (<164) predicted treatment response significantly. However, there was no relationship between NLR/PLR and survival outcomes. The five-year overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) rates for the whole study group were 67% and 74%, respectively. In multivariate analysis, the presence of the lymph node involvement and incomplete response to treatment was independent prognostic factors affecting both OS (p = 0.013, p <0.001) and PFS (p = 0.004, p <0.001). Conclusion: Pretreatment NLR/PLR has predicted the treatment response significantly. The optimal cut-off values confirmed by further large-scale studies may be used in the future as a predictive marker for therapeutic response in cervical cancer
Investigation of potential oxygen defect mechanism of persistent photoconductivity and photoinduced superconductivity in YBa2Cu3Ox

INVESTIGATION OF POTENTIAL OXYGEN DEFECT MECHANISM OF PERSISTENT PHOTOCONDUCTIVITY AND PHOTOINDUCED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY IN YBa2 Cu3Ox by Denise Catherine Chew In this thesis work, we conclude that oxygen vacancy defects play a fundamental role in the PPC/PISC mechanism and identify the oxygen defects as F centers (an oxygen vacancy which traps two electrons) or F+ centers. Also, the correlation between the peaks observed in the luminescence spectra and those observed in the wavelength dependence of PPC suggest that the photogeneration of charges and their annihilation via luminescent recombination occur in the same level (Cu-O chains) of the YBa2Cu3Ox crystal. Previous models had assigned the peaks in the PPC excitation spectrum to charge transfer in the CuO2 planes. In addition, photoluminescence and infrared spectroscopy are used to characterize the energy levels of the defects. INVESTIGATION OF POTENTIAL OXYGEN DEFECT MECHANISM OF PERSISTENT PHOTOCONDUCTIVITY AND PHOTOINDUCED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY IN YBa2Cu3Ox by Denise Catherine Chew A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Applied Physics Department of Physics
Diverse young stellar populations in the intermediate-redshift radio galaxies 3C 213.1 and 3C 459: implications for the evolution of the host galaxies

We present European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope (ESO VLT) and William Herschel Telescope (WHT) spectroscopic observations of two powerful radio galaxies at intermediate redshifts (3C 213.1 and 3C 459), obtained with the aim of establishing the nature and evolutionary status of the host galaxies. Spectral synthesis modelling has been used to demonstrate that young stellar populations (YSP) make a major contribution to the integrated optical light in both sources, contributing at least 37 and 80 per cent of the integrated B-band light in 3C 213.1 and 3C 459, respectively. While in the case of 3C 213.1 the YSP has an intermediate age (0.4–0.8 Gyr) and comprises 3–30 per cent of the total stellar mass, adequate fits to the spectra of 3C 459 require a combination of younger (<0.1 Gyr) and intermediate (0.2–1.2 Gyr) age YSP components that together comprise 5–100 per cent of the total stellar mass. Both the optical and far-IR properties of 3C 459 are consistent with its status as an ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG), and a scenario in which the observed radio source has been triggered close to the peak of star formation activity in a major gas-rich merger. On the other hand, in 3C 213.1 it is likely that the radio source has been triggered (or re-triggered) a significant period after the starburst peak, and the far-IR luminosity of the source is substantially lower. Following correction for the contributions of the YSP, the absolute magnitudes of the host galaxies of both sources are relatively modest (≤2L*), thus demonstrating that powerful radio activity is not always associated with the most massive and luminous elliptical galaxies. These results serve to emphasize that the radio source population is diverse, in terms of both the host galaxy properties and the triggering mechanism(s) for the radio source activity.
1 CONSUMING BEYOND SURVIVAL : AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION Authors –

This paper aims to further extend sustainable consumption research beyond value-based models for identifying behavioural intentions as these have met with mixed results. Considering the range of internal and external factors affecting choice, it looks to examine the role of an individual’s status in consumption decisions as what we consume has been identified as an important element in how we manage our social position. Within evolutionary psychology, the individual is identified as a decision maker, motivated to manage their status by navigating social hierarchies in a strategic way and where the tactics that are available and most attractive are shaped through social norms and structures. What remains unclear is a full understanding of the relationship between strategies for navigating these hierarchies, the associated tactics and how and when they are used. The following work briefly explores current practice in promoting sustainable consumption and presents a conceptual framework for examining sustainable consumption as a means of increasing status. This paper concludes that status strategies embody a pivotal role on consumption, thus a better understanding of them is essential to promoting sustainable consumption. Examining the widespread culture of consumption from this perspective enhances the understanding of the increasing desire to consume as a means to signal status among peers and identifies possible behavioural interventions.