Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real earnings management trends in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of non-financial listed companies in Vietnam

Real earnings management comprises the intervention by managers intending to change business strategies or policies to achieve specific goals. The paper aims to examine trends and levels of real earnings management in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. The study uses time series data, and the sample includes 1,800 observations from 2016 to 2021. The methods of the study are regression analyses of the real earnings management model. The results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic positively and significantly affected real earnings management of companies listed on the Vietnamese stock exchange. The trends and levels of real earnings management in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic increase depending on the severity of the pandemic. In terms of applications, the study provides evidence that the quality of financial reporting is lower during the pandemic. Listed enterprises in Vietnam are using high financial leverage, leading to a higher vulnerability to shocks such as the pandemic. Therefore, the real earnings management technique mainly used by managers is operating cash flow adjustment by using income maximization strategies to increase the ability to borrow capital to maintain business operations. The study suggests that the choice of income maximization or income minimization strategy depends mainly on commitments with the capital provider (credit institutions), specific contexts, and economic factors.
ChemCLS: a framework for applying supervised and weakly supervised machine learning to better interpretable cultural relic classification

Machine learning algorithms advance the classification of cultural relics in recent studies. A part of the studies adopts image processing methods as a solution. We believe that the blurring of the image limits this approach. On the other hand, we notice the studies conducted from the perspective of chemical composition, which avoids the problem of blurring images and shows interpretability. In this paper, we follow the direction of classifying by chemical composition and aim to provide our method with better interpretability. Hence, we propose a strategy that combined both supervised and weakly supervised methods as the solution. It visualizes the decision tree of classifying the main classes of cultural relics at first and extracts the chemical composition of the subclasses with the pseudo-labeling according to limited subclass labels next. Besides interpretability, it also performs accurately in subclasses classification by using the radial basis function network and random forest. Our results indicate that our weakly supervised method achieves the closest reduction to a finer classification.
Anthraquinone-Polyaniline-Integrated Textile Platforms for In Situ Electrochemical Production of Hydrogen Peroxide for Microbial Deactivation

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a versatile and effective disinfectant against common pathogenic bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E. coli). Electrochemical H2O2 generation has been studied in the past, but a lack of studies exists on miniaturized electrochemical platforms for the on-demand synthesis of H2O2 for antibacterial applications. In this article, a chemically modified cotton textile platform capable of in situ H2O2 production is demonstrated for E. coli deactivation. The cotton textile was modified by layer-by-layer coating with conductive carbon nanotubes/cellulose nanocrystals (CNT/CNC) and a polymer of polyaniline (PANI) decorated with anthraquinone (AQ), designated as the AQ@PANI@CNT/CNC@textile antibacterial patch. The AQ@PANI@CNT/CNC@textile antibacterial textile patch H2O2 production capabilities were evaluated using both electrochemical and colorimetric methods. The AQ@PANI@CNT/CNC@textile antibacterial patch electrochemically produced H2O2 concentrations up to 209 ± 25 µM over a 40 min period and displayed a log reduction of 3.32 for E. coli over a period of 2 h. The AQ@PANI@CNT/CNC@textile antibacterial patch offers promise for use as a self-disinfecting pathogen control platform.
How Wildfire Experience Influences Intentions to Adopt Protective Measures over Time

Abstract In 2022, prolonged periods of extreme heat waves fueled huge wildfires across the globe. While research has shown that past experience with wildfire increases homeowners’ intentions to adopt fire mitigation activities, little is known about whether the impact of disaster can be long-lasting and represent a stable behavioral change. Thus, the current work explored whether Chinese homeowners’ intentions to perform fire wise actions would change over time. In Study 1, we compared responses of residents in a fire-stricken area with those of residents in a nondisaster area three days after a massive wildfire. It was found that participants who had just experienced a wildfire reported a stronger intent to take fire mitigation on both self-report and behavioral measures. Study 2 involved a follow-up survey that took place in the same areas one month after the fire had occurred. The results showed that participants in these two areas demonstrated no differences in intentions to implement fire mitigation measures, which suggests that the impact of disasters decayed over time. Combined, these findings suggest that past experience with wildfire will likely give rise to stronger intention to engage in mitigation behavior but this effect may diminish with time ticking away.
EFFECT OF pH ON THE ANTIBACTERIAL AND ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF WOOD VINEGAR (PYROLIGNEOUS EXTRACT) FROM EUCALYPTUS

ABSTRACT The study aimed to assess the effect of progressive neutralization on the antimicrobial properties against bacteria and yeasts of wood vinegar obtained from the pyrolysis of Eucalyptus urograndis (clone I144) wood. Wood samples were carbonized at a heating rate of 0.9 °C min-1 until a final temperature of 450 °C, totalizing 8 hours of carbonization. The raw pyrolysis liquids were left to settle, and the aqueous fraction was separated. Then, the aqueous fraction (raw wood vinegar - WV) was purified to yield the WV. WV samples were collected and neutralized from pH 2.5 until 7.5 (2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, and 7.5, by adding NaOH solution. Through the broth microdilution method, the antimicrobial effect of the neutralized samples at each pH was assessed on Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853), Salmonella enteritidis (ATCC 13076), Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923), Streptococcus agalactiae (CEPA CLINICA), and Candida albicans (ATCC 10231). The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal (and fungicidal) concentrations were determined through in vitro technics. Results were subjected to logarithmic regression analysis, and statistical models were fitted for each microorganism in the assessed pH range; as pH increased, a progressive decrease in the CIM increased, demanding higher concentrations of WV to inhibit microbial growth. The more resistant strains were S. aureus and S. agalactiae, which required an increase in WV concentration from a minimum of 6.25% at pH 2.5 to reaching 50% at pH 6.0. When at pH 7.0, both strains were not inhibited even at 50% (the highest concentration evaluated in the study). In contrast, C. albicans proved to be the most sensitive strain, starting from 3.12% EP at pH 2.5 and requiring only 25% for inhibition at pH 7.0. The behavior of P. aeruginosa and S. enteritidis followed the pattern of C. albicans, differing only at pH 7.0, where they required 50% of EP. As observed, even at neutral and slightly alkaline pH, the inhibitory activity of EP on microbial growth was maintained to some extent. Nevertheless, even when neutral and slightly alkaline pH values are reached, the inhibitory activity remains at a certain level. Higher pH values of the WV were associated with lower antimicrobial activity. However, its activity remained even at neutral and slightly alkaline pH values.
Single-Center, Multisurgeon Experience with a Sutureless Rapid Deployment Aortic Valve Prosthesis: A Clinical Analysis in the United States

Background. The Perceval S is a sutureless, bovine pericardial aortic prosthesis on a nitinol stent, which has limited data on outcomes, as well as cost, from the United States. Methods. We performed a retrospective review of Perceval S implantation at a single center between 2015 and 2018. After exclusion criteria, we compared 234 patients who underwent sutureless aortic valve (SLV) implantation with 370 patients who underwent standard sutured aortic valves (SAVR). Hospital cost data were reviewed, and risk adjustment, done by propensity score and inverse probability weighting, was used to compare outcomes. Results. Compared to those undergoing SAVR, the SLV group was older and had a higher proportion of multicomponent operations, higher preoperative white blood cell count, higher rate of previous percutaneous coronary interventions, more comorbid conditions (diabetes, renal insufficiency, and dialysis), and more three-vessel coronary disease. For isolated AVR, partial upper hemisternotomy was more frequent in SLV. The mean cardiopulmonary bypass and cross-clamp times for isolated SLV were significantly lower than SAVR. After adjustment, the cohort was balanced. Operative differences for SLV were lower cross-clamp and pump time, larger valve size, more minimally invasive approaches, and shorter operating room times. There were no differences in other postoperative complications (postoperative atrial fibrillation, stroke, renal failure, prolonged ventilation, and in-hospital mortality; p > 0.05 for all). Mean and median hospital costs were higher in the SLV group, largely due to the cost of the implant. Conclusion. Sutureless tissue aortic valves can be used safely with lower cardiopulmonary bypass and clamp times than sutured prostheses and facilitate use of minimally invasive approaches. This valve may be advantageous in older, higher risk patients requiring more complex operations.
On the Correspondence between the Latent Growth Curve and Latent Change Score Models

There has been a great deal of work in the literature on the equivalence between the mixed-effects modeling and structural equation modeling (SEM) frameworks in specifying growth models (Willett & Sayer, 1994). However, there has been little work on the correspondence between the latent growth curve model (LGM) and the latent change score model (see Grimm, Zhang, Hamagami, & Mazzocco, 2013). We demonstrate that four popular variants of the latent change score model – the no change, constant change, proportional change, and dual change models – have LGM equivalents. We provide equations that allow the translation of parameters from one approach to the other and vice versa. We then illustrate this equivalence using mathematics achievement data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
Cross-Modal Transformers for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion

Image fusion techniques aim to generate more informative images by merging multiple images of different modalities with complementary information. Despite significant fusion performance improvements of recent learning-based approaches, most fusion algorithms have been developed based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which stack deep layers to obtain a large receptive field for feature extraction. However, important details and contexts of the source images may be lost through a series of convolution layers. In this work, we propose a cross-modal transformer-based fusion (CMTFusion) algorithm for infrared and visible image fusion that captures global interactions by faithfully extracting complementary information from source images. Specifically, we first extract the multiscale feature maps of infrared and visible images. Then, we develop cross-modal transformers (CMTs) to retain complementary information in the source images by removing redundancies in both the spatial and channel domains. To this end, we design a gated bottleneck that integrates cross-domain interaction to consider the characteristics of the source images. Finally, a fusion result is obtained by exploiting spatial-channel information in refined feature maps using a fusion block. Experimental results on multiple datasets demonstrate that the proposed algorithm provides better fusion performance than state-of-the-art infrared and visible image fusion algorithms, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Furthermore, we show that the proposed algorithm can be used to improve the performance of computer vision tasks, e.g., object detection and monocular depth estimation.
Enhanced Energy Storage Performance and Efficiency in Bi0.5(Na0.8K0.2)0.5TiO3-Bi0.2Sr0.7TiO3 Relaxor Ferroelectric Ceramics via Domain Engineering

Dielectric materials are highly desired for pulsed power capacitors due to their ultra-fast charge-discharge rate and excellent fatigue behavior. Nevertheless, the low energy storage density caused by the low breakdown strength has been the main challenge for practical applications. Herein, we report the electric energy storage properties of (1 − x) Bi0.5(Na0.8K0.2)0.5TiO3-xBi0.2Sr0. 7TiO3 (BNKT-BST; x = 0.15–0.50) relaxor ferroelectric ceramics that are enhanced via a domain engineering method. A rhombohedral-tetragonal phase, the formation of highly dynamic PNRs, and a dense microstructure are confirmed from XRD, Raman vibrational spectra, and microscopic investigations. The relative dielectric permittivity (2664 at 1 kHz) and loss factor (0.058) were gradually improved with BST (x = 0.45). The incorporation of BST into BNKT can disturb the long-range ferroelectric order, lowering the dielectric maximum temperature Tm and inducing the formation of highly dynamic polar nano-regions. In addition, the Tm shifts toward a high temperature with frequency and a diffuse phase transition, indicating relaxor ferroelectric characteristics of BNKT-BST ceramics, which is confirmed by the modified Curie-Weiss law. The rhombohedral-tetragonal phase, fine grain size, and lowered Tm with relaxor properties synergistically contribute to a high Pmax and low Pr, improving the breakdown strength with BST and resulting in a high recoverable energy density Wrec of 0.81 J/cm3 and a high energy efficiency η of 86.95% at 90 kV/cm for x = 0.45.
Simulation of Comparative Analysis Of Maximum Power Point Tracking Techniques for Photo Voltaic System

This article simulates the three maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques for photovoltaic (PV) systems: PO, cumulative conductance, and fuzzy logic. The simulation is done in a number of weather scenarios, including clear, partly hazy, and overcast skies, using MATLAB/Simulink. Performance metrics for each technique are efficiency, reaction time, tracking accuracy, and steadystate performance. The data is quantita- tively evaluated using ANOVA to find significant changes in the performance of the strategies. The computer results show that incremental conductance outperforms the other methods when the sky is clear, whereas fuzzy logic outperforms them when the sky is partly foggy and overcast.
A Comparative Analysis of In-Cylinder Flow, Heat Transfer and Turbulence Characteristics in Different Type Combustion Chamber

Recently some studies have been carried out on combustion chamber design for diesel and gasoline engines; however, they routinely used piston bowl model approach, which may neglect interactions with cylinder head design. Fluid motion within the cylinder of internal combustion engines has a significantly influence on the combustion process and engine efficiency. The aim of this study two different geometries of the combustion chamber of internal combustion engine were compared in terms of in cylinder flow and heat transfer during the intake process. For this, complete calculations of the intake stroke were performed under realistic operating conditions and heat transfer, velocity and turbulence flow fields obtained in each combustion chamber investigation detail. They were solved with finite volume method and ANSYS-Fluent 12.0 commercial code. The findings include using k-e turbulence model and dynamic mesh generation model for different crank angle. The result of studies show that flow structure and turbulence intensity are affected on combustion chamber geometries. Also, the pent-roof type combustion chamber configuration was found to generate turbulence intensity more efficiently than the conventional type combustion chamber.
Assessment of health-related quality of life of COVID-19 patients during follow-up

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the quality of life of individuals worldwide. The aim of this study was to assess the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and its associated factors among COVID-19 patients discharged from hospital. Methods: This facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted among laboratory confirmed COVID-19 patients who were discharged from medicine department of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and did their first-month follow-up from April to September 2021. A validated Bengali version of International Quality of Life Assessment, Short form – 36 (SF-36) questionnaire was used to assess the HRQOL status. Univariate and multivariate analyses were done for identifying factors associated with low HRQOL. Result: Out of 225 patients, the mean (standard deviation) age was 36.9 (14.2) years and four in every ten patients were women. Out of eight subgroups, almost all scored averagely 79 out of 100. Older age, rural residence and severe to critical disease was reported as factors for low physical and mental component summary of SF-36. Conclusion: COVID-19 patients with older age, rural residence and having severe to critical disease condition need to be addressed critically as they have a higher chance of having low HRQOL status after COVID-19 infection. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Journal 2023;16(2): 91-95
The Impact of Gamification on Student Motivation and Engagement: An Empirical Study

Objectives: This study aims to investigate the impact of an online gamified learning environment on university students' motivation and engagement in learning a computer essentials course. Methods: A quasi-experimental design was used on the participants of Saudi university students. Results: The results showed statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the students in the experimental and control groups regarding their motivation and engagement towards learning, with the experimental group exhibiting higher scores. Conclusions: The study concluded the effectiveness of using gamification in developing motivation and engagement towards learning in the field of computer sciences. The study recommends encouraging teachers to take advantage of e-platforms and applications that support gamification in teaching computer courses. It is also recommended that, when implementing a gamification strategy in education, the program should be designed in accordance with theories and principles of gamification design in education, as these have an impact on developing motivation and engagement towards learning.
Dirty paper coding schemes for MIMO broadcast channels

In this paper we propose several dirty paper coding schemes for the broadcast channel when both the transmitter and receivers are equipped with multiple antennas. These coding schemes are based on channel state information at the transmitter and inspired from information-theoretic concepts. The proposed end-to-end algorithms allows us to evaluate the performance of the broadcast channel in terms of bit error rates and not in terms of coding rates as it is usually the case in the corresponding literature. Different inner coding schemes such as the ZF-DPC and MMSE-DPC and different outer coding schemes such as the THS, SCS and TCQ are compared and discussed. We also consider the DPC idea as a way of implementing a multiple access scheme. In this respect it is compared with the well-know TDMA scheme. Sometimes our conclusions show quite surprising results in comparison to what is expected by pure information-theoretic considerations.
Nonsmooth modal analysis of piecewise-linear impact systems

Periodic solutions of autonomous and conservative second-order dynamical systems of finite dimension n undergoing a single unilateral contact condition are investigated in continuous time. The unilateral constraint is complemented with a purely elastic impact law conserving total energy. The dynamics is linear away from impacts. It is proven that the phase-space is primarily populated by one-dimensional continua of periodic solutions, generating an invariant manifold which can be understood as a nonsmooth mode of vibration in the context of vibration analysis. Additionally, it is shown that nonsmooth modes of vibration can be calculated by solving only $k-1$ equations where $k$ is the number of impacts per period. Results are illustrated on a mass-spring chain whose last mass undergoes a contact condition with an obstacle.
Silicon-coated gold nanoparticles nanoscopy

Abstract. This paper presents a method for modifying the point spread function (PSF) into a doughnut-like shape, through the utilization of the plasma dispersion effect (PDE) of silicon-coated gold nanoparticles. This modified PSF has spatial components smaller than the diffraction limit, and by scanning the sample with it, super-resolution can be achieved. The sample is illuminated using two laser beams. The first is the pump, with a wavelength in the visible region that creates a change in the refractive index of the silicon coating due to the PDE. This creates a change in the localized surface plasmon resonance wavelength. Since the pump beam has a Gaussian profile, the high intensity areas of the beam experience the highest refractive index change. When the second beam (i.e., the probe) illuminates the sample with a near-infrared wavelength, this change in the refractive index is transformed into a change in the PSF profile. The ordinary Gaussian shape is transformed into a doughnut shape, with higher spatial frequencies, which enables one to achieve super-resolution by scanning the specimen using this PSF. This is a step toward the creation of a nonfluorescent nanoscope.