Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Motivating Unrewarded Task Performance: The Dual Effects of Incentives and an Organizational Value Statement in a Discretionary Task Setting

Contemporary management accounting research increasingly recognizes the interactive nature of management controls when considered as a package such that informal controls may either sustain or circumvent formal controls. The complexity of these packages of controls is heightened in multiple task settings which are increasingly the norm. Firms develop formal controls, often in the form of incentive contracts, to motivate employees to exert effort on certain tasks that are objectively specifiable and measurable, and to align employees’ interests with those of the organization. Nonetheless, incentive contracts rarely govern all of the employees’ responsibilities as management often cannot foresee all important tasks and effort on some tasks may be difficult or very expensive to measure. Extant research suggests informal controls, implicit structures adopted by management to align employees’ actions with organizational goals, also play an important and complementary role in motivating employee effort. Informal controls that are congruent with formal controls can effectively integrate with financial incentives in a multitask setting to achieve performance objectives, however, informal controls that are not in alignment on a given task may impede the viability of formal controls (Kachelmeier et al., CAR, 2016; Akinyele et al., BRIA, 2020). Frequently, formal controls actually create disincentives for employees to complete discretionary tasks that contribute in aggregate to the efficient and effective functioning of an organization (Organ et al., Organizational Citizenship, 2005). The purpose of this study is to examine how the presence of a value statement (an informal control) alters the effect of differing financial incentives (a formal control) in an environment consisting of both rewarded and unrewarded tasks. Results show that under fixed pay, the presence of a value statement motivates performance on important but unrewarded discretionary tasks. Conversely, under piece-rate compensation, value statements negatively influence performance on unrewarded discretionary tasks. In contemporary work environments where such discretionary tasks are common and important to organizational effectiveness, these results suggest that informal controls can have an important role in performance outcomes.
A Sine Cosine Algorithm-Based Fractional MPPT for Thermoelectric Generation System

Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are equipment for transforming thermal power into electricity via the Seebeck effect. These modules have gained increasing interest in research fields related to sustainable energy. The harvested energy is mostly reliant on the differential temperature between the hot and cold areas of the TEGs. Hence, a reliable maximum power point tracker is necessary to operate TEGs too close to their maximum power point (MPP) under an operational and climate variation. In this paper, an optimized fractional incremental resistance tracker (OF-INRT) is suggested to enhance the output performance of a TEG. The introduced tracker is based on the fractional-order PIλDμ control concepts. The optimal parameters of the OF-INRT are determined using a population-based sine cosine algorithm (SCA). To confirm the optimality of the introduced SCA, experiments were conducted and the results compared with those of particle swarm optimization- (PSO) and whale optimization algorithm (WOA) -based techniques. The key goal of the suggested OF-INRT is to overcome the two main issues in conventional trackers, i.e., the slow dynamics of traditional incremental resistance trackers (INRT) and the high steady-state fluctuation around the MPP in the prevalent perturb and observe trackers (POTs). The main findings prove the superiority of the OF-INRT in comparison with the INRT and POT, for both dynamic and steady-state responses.
AdjustSense: Adaptive 3D Sensing System with Adjustable Spatio-Temporal Resolution and Measurement Range Using High-Speed Omnidirectional Camera and Direct Drive Motor

Many types of 3D sensing devices are commercially available and were utilized in various technical fields. In most conventional systems with a 3D sensing device, the spatio-temporal resolution and the measurement range are constant during operation. Consequently, it is necessary to select an appropriate sensing system according to the measurement task. Moreover, such conventional systems have difficulties dealing with several measurement targets simultaneously due to the aforementioned constants. This issue can hardly be solved by integrating several individual sensing systems into one. Here, we propose a single 3D sensing system that adaptively adjusts the spatio-temporal resolution and the measurement range to switch between multiple measurement tasks. We named the proposed adaptive 3D sensing system “AdjustSense. ” In AdjustSense, as a means for the adaptive adjustment of the spatio-temporal resolution and measurement range, we aimed to achieve low-latency visual feedback for the adjustment by integrating not only a high-speed camera, which is a high-speed sensor, but also a direct drive motor, which is a high-speed actuator. This low-latency visual feedback can enable a large range of 3D sensing tasks simultaneously. We demonstrated the behavior of AdjustSense when the positions of the measured targets in the surroundings were changed. Furthermore, we quantitatively evaluated the spatio-temporal resolution and measurement range from the 3D points obtained. Through two experiments, we showed that AdjustSense could realize multiple measurement tasks: 360∘ 3D sensing, 3D sensing at a high spatial resolution around multiple targets, and local 3D sensing at a high spatio-temporal resolution around a single object.
Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine

Background and Objective: Researchers use wearable sensing data and machine learning (ML) models to predict various health and behavioral outcomes. However, sensor data from commercial wearables are prone to noise, missing, or artifacts. Even with the recent interest in deploying commercial wearables for long-term studies, there does not exist a standardized way to process the raw sensor data and researchers often use highly speciﬁc functions to preprocess, clean, normalize, and compute features. This leads to a lack of uniformity and reproducibility across different studies, making it diﬃcult to compare results. To overcome these issues, we present FLIRT: A Feature Generation Toolkit for Wearable Data ; it is an open-source Python package that focuses on processing physiological data speciﬁcally from commercial wearables with all its challenges from data cleaning to feature extraction. Methods: FLIRT leverages a variety of state-of-the-art algorithms (e.g., particle ﬁlters, ML-based artifact detection) to ensure a robust preprocessing of physiological data from wearables. In a subsequent step, FLIRT utilizes a sliding-window
Impact of Clostridioides difficile Therapy on Nosocomial Acquisition of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci

Vancomycin is frequently used for the treatment of C. difficile infections (CDI). There are concerns that this might increase the risk of selecting vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE). Here, we evaluated whether there is an increased risk of VRE acquisition following vancomycin for CDI specific treatment. Patients with CDI, metronidazole, or oral vancomycin treatment and without preexisting VRE were monitored for VRE acquisition. VRE isolates from patients with acquired and preexisting colonization were collected and subjected to whole genome sequencing. In total, 281 patients (median age 56 years, 54% of the male sex) presented with toxin positive C. difficile. Of them, 170 patients met the inclusion criteria, comprising 37 patients treated with metronidazole and 133 treated with oral vancomycin. In total, 14 patients meeting the inclusion criteria acquired VRE (vancomycin: n = 11; metronidazole: n = 3). Statistical analysis revealed no significant differences between both VRE acquisition rates. Genetic comparison of detected VRE isolates resulted in eight clusters of closely related genotypes comprising acquired and preexisting strains. Our results suggest that vancomycin and metronidazole likewise increase the risk of VRE acquisition. Genetic comparison indicates that VRE acquisition is a result of both antibiotic selection and pathogen transmission.
TV Interaction as a Non-Invasive Sensor for Monitoring Elderly Well-Being at Home

The number of technical solutions to remotely monitoring elderly citizens and detecting hazard situations has been increasing in the last few years. These solutions have dual purposes: to provide a feeling of safety to the elderly and to inform their relatives about potential risky situations, such as falls, forgotten medication, and other unexpected deviations from daily routine. Most of these solutions are based on IoT (Internet of Things) and dedicated sensors that need to be installed at the elderly’s houses, hampering mass adoption. This justifies the search for non-invasive technical alternatives with smooth integration that relying only on existent devices, without the need for any additional installations. Therefore, this paper presents the SecurHome TV ecosystem, a technical solution based on the elderly’s interactions with their TV sets—one of the most used devices in their daily lives—acting as a non-invasive sensor enabling one to detect potential hazardous situations through an elaborated warning algorithm. Thus, this paper describes in detail the SecurHome TV ecosystem, with special emphasis on the warning algorithm, and reports on its validation process. We conclude that notwithstanding some constraints while setting the user’s pattern, either upon the cold start of the application or after an innocuous change in the user’s TV routine, the algorithm detects most hazardous situations contributing to monitor elderly well-being at home.
Numerical Analysis of an Electroless Plating Problem in Gas–Liquid Two-Phase Flow

Electroless plating in micro-channels is a rising technology in industry. In many electroless plating systems, hydrogen gas is generated during the process. A numerical simulation method is proposed and analyzed. At a micrometer scale, the motion of the gaseous phase must be addressed so that the plating works smoothly. Since the bubbles are generated randomly and everywhere, a volume-averaged, two-phase, two-velocity, one pressure-flow model is applied. This fluid system is coupled with a set of convection–diffusion equations for the chemicals subject to flux boundary conditions for electron balance. The moving boundary due to plating is considered. The Galerkin-characteristic finite element method is used for temporal and spatial discretizations; the well-posedness of the numerical scheme is proved. Numerical studies in two dimensions are performed to validate the model against earlier one-dimensional models and a dedicated experiment that has been set up to visualize the distribution of bubbles.
Do “Stay-at-Home Exercise” Videos Induce Behavioral Changes in College Students? A Randomized Controlled Trial

The coronavirus disease pandemic has led to college students spending more time at home. “Stay-at-home exercise” videos to mitigate inactivity are currently available on various digital platforms; however, it is unclear whether these videos lead to behavioral changes among college students. This study aimed to investigate the improvement in physical activity (PA) resulting from “stay-at-home exercise” among college students. Overall, 150 college students were recruited, and 125 students (control group: 65; intervention group: 60) who completed baseline surveys were analyzed. The preliminary outcomes were PA, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), subjective well-being (SWB), and psychological stress (K6). Mixed model repeated-measure analysis of variance compared the outcomes before and after the intervention. After 8 weeks of “stay-at-home exercise”, there was no significant interaction in PA (F = 0.02, P = 0.89); however, a significant interaction for the general health subscale of HRQoL (F = 9.52), SWB (F = 6.70), and K6 (F = 7.83) was detected (P < 0.05). On comparing the pre- and post-intervention results, we found that only distributing an 8-week streaming video of “stay-at-home exercise” did not increase the amount of physical activity among participants, but it did have a positive effect on their mental health during the pandemic.
Retrieval of Total Precipitable Water from Thermal Infrared Observations of Insat-3D Imager over the Ocean

The present study aims to develop a retrieval algorithm for total precipitable water (TPW) over the ocean using Indian geostationary satellite INSAT-3D observations. The algorithm computes TPW as the sum of two broad layers using thermal infrared observations of the Imager for clear sky and upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) products. First, the differential absorption of the atmospheric water vapour in split-window channels is exploited to estimate atmospheric water vapour concentration from surface to mid-troposphere. Secondly, the contribution from UTH products available from the INSAT-3D Imager is added to estimate TPW. The algorithm performance has been assessed by comparing the INSAT-3Dretrieved TPW with collocated TPW products from radiosonde, INSAT-3D Sounder and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard Aqua satellite for the year 2018. The standard deviation of the error was found to be around 0.5 cm for each of the months.
New Rotor Blade Profiles Performance Decay in Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines Operating in Aggressive Environment

At the present time many wind power plants have been developed in mountainous areas, in off-shore sites also at high latitudes and however operating in harsch climate or aggressive environment conditions. In these conditions HAWT’s rotor blades may experiment erosion, corrosion, exfoliation and icing and these operative conditions may cause a remarkable aerodynamical performance decay resulting in a reduction in energy production due to a lower machines availability too. Traditional aerodynamic profiles, as NACA ones, can show high sensitivity to the surface damage or augmented roughness, while new airfoils as FFA-W1 series may be very useful in maintaining higher aerodynamical performance. In the present paper the aerodynamic performances of new and old airfoils have been analysed and compared on a water table test bench and wind tunnel one, at “La Sapienza” University of Rome in DIMA’s laboratory, in several operative conditions, and, particularly, effects due to icing, erosion and other ones as corrosion and fouling. The results have been compared with literature data to obtain useful indications in design of new rotor blades.
Lament

The outcome of such diminished gene-diversity could be beneficial in the short-term, troublesome in the mid-term, and potentially catastrophic in its longterm effects. Decreased genetic diversity might lead to decreased complexity of ecosystems in changing environments. If complex ecosystems are responsible for biospheric stability, such processes on a global scale might have the gravest possible consequences for the future of our biosphere—even conceivably leading to its ultimate destruction.
Vitamin C supplementation for the treatment of osteoarthritis: perspectives on the past, present, and future

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 14% of adults in the United States have either been diagnosed with osteoarthritis (OA) or have symptoms suggestive of the disease. The CDC also points out that the incidence of OA has been gradually increasing over the past 30 years. What is more worrisome is that this trend is going to accelerate due to the aging demographics of the United States and the increasing prevalence of obesity seen in the country. The need for better preventive treatments and efficacious therapeutics are direly needed to combat this public health crisis. Among the possible treatments being hypothesized, antioxidant supplementation has become one of the most widely studied over the past decade due to its ability to attenuate reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation within chondrocytes, a critical step in the pathogenesis of this disease. Vitamin C has emerged as among the most promising of the antioxidant group, with many animal and human studies having been conducted in recent years. Although many of the studies have shown encouraging results in terms of preventing OA, others have reached opposite conclusions, thus making the data controversial. However, after reviewing several of these studies, we hypothesize that certain parameters may not have been properly considered during data collection. In the end, more randomized placebo-controlled trials in humans are desperately needed in order to fully understand whether vitamin C therapy is efficacious in treating and/or preventing OA.
Assessment of Knowledge, Awareness and Attitude of COVID-19 among Pakistani Dental Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Objective: To assess the knowledge, awareness and attitude of covid-19 among Pakistani dental students. Design of the Study: It’s a cross-sectional study. Study Settings: This study was carried out at HBS Dental College, Islamabad & Rawal Institute of Health Sciences (RIHS), Islamabad from August 2020 to January 2021. Material and Methods: For collection of data, a validated close-ended questionnaire was used. Response of dental students was taken using an electronic based questionnaire distributed through E-mails, Whatsap and Google forms. A total of 305 dental students completed the questionnaire. The questionnaire contained of three demographic features, 21 questions about knowledge, seven items about attitudes, and seven items about preventive measures, adapted from an earlier published questionnaire about corona virus. Convenience sampling technique was applied for collection of data and a response of respondents was presented as %. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS V-23 taking value of p<0.05 as significant. Results of the Study: Present study included a total of 305 participants out of which 120 dental students (39.34%) were males and 185 (60.65%) were females. The majority of the participants i.e., 160 of them belonged to the age group of 17-24 years (52.40%). Almost 60.65% respondents correctly answered about statement of incubation period “2-14 days”, and 83.60% replied that COVID-19 might be present without symptoms. Out of 305 students 97.70% have replied that frequent washing of hands with soap or alcohol mixed hand sanitizer are satisfactory methods to avoid transmission of Corona virus. Conclusion: In this study dental students are satisfactorily aware from the pandemic and its promising consequences. However in this study fear of transferring the COVID-19 infection to their families and friends was a significant concern. Majority of the dental students looked to have adequate awareness about corona virus and precautionary steps taken to avoid from COVID-19 transmission for both patients and dental students. Keywords: COVID-19, corona virus, awareness, knowledge, dental students, questionnaire.
The past in dust: current trends and future directions in Pleistocene geoarcheology of European loess

Loess is a main archive of Pleistocene landscapes and environments and therefore has an important connection to the preservation and interpretation of Paleolithic sites. In Europe, anthropogenic sites have been found in loess because of past local occupation. At one extreme, sites are well preserved with minimal disturbance often accompanied by embedded proxies to estimate ecological parameters. On the other hand, loess deposits have undergone post‐depositional alterations such as weathering, pedogenesis or bioturbation due to changing environmental conditions or other disturbances that obscure anthropogenic sites. We outline the current state of research and connections between Paleolithic archeology and loess research while introducing a series of subsequent regional case studies as part of a special issue. We also make recommendations for future work to incorporate a wider variety of methods to create more robust inferences on hominin and environmental evolution and their connections.
Evaluation of Neuroprotection and Antioxidant Activities viaDrosophila Model System in the Active Principle Derived from Sida glutinosa Comm. Ex Cav.-An Aboriginal Ethno-Medicinal Plant Drug Practiced in the Folklore Medicinal System

Sida glutinosa Comm. ex Cav. - an aboriginal ethno-medicinal plant drug belongs to family Malvaceae, commonly called as ‘Sticky Fanpetals’. It is a sub-shrub which is available in the forest at shady areas along Ravines. The plant was collected at Biligirirangana Hills (B.R. Hills) of Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka, India and taxonomically identified. The therapeutic information was recorded from traditional medicine men during interaction with tribal healers at B.R. Hills. In the study, methanol extract of Sida glutinosa (G) was preliminarily screened for Physico-chemical and Phytochemical properties. Further, the antioxidant activity both in vitro and in vivo was carried-out. The neuroprotective study was explicitly carried out using a model system, Drosophila melanogaster ( Oeragon K ) strain adult male flies. The result reveals that, the extract G exhibited concentration dependent DPPH scavenging activity. The oxidative stress markers employed to access in vivo antioxidant property of G included lipid peroxidation products malondialdehyde (MDA) and hydroperoxide (HP), reduced glutathione (GSH). The modulatory effect of G on superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) was also determined. The oxidative stress was induced by using paraquat at 15 mm. The concentration of extract for studies was fixed based on LC 50 values. There was a significant annihilation in the levels of MDA and HP in case co exposure of G with Par treated flies’ homogenate. Finally, the level of SOD and CAT was brought to near basal level in the homogenate of flies co exposed with G and Par. In negative geotaxis assay; it was found that, G was able to rescue the flies significantly from deteriorating locomotors dysfunctions. The extract G also exhibited significant antibacterial property against the tested strains. Catalase; ROS : Reactive Oxygen Species; RNS: Reactive Nitrogen Species; PD: Parkinson’s Disease; SCZ: Schizophrenia; AD: Alzheimer’s Disease; NADPH: Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide Phosphate; DPPH: 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl; TBA: thiobarbituric acid; SDS: Sodium lauryl sulphate; OPT: o-phthalaldehyde; TEMED : N,N,N,N Tetramethyl ethylenediamine; EDTA: Ethylenediamine tetra acetic acid; ANOVA: One-Way Analysis Of Variance; MIC: Minimum