Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tablets in High School Education an Exploration of Student Perspectives in the Context of Personality Traits and Professional Preferences

The relevance of the topic is due to the active implementation of tablets in educational activities, which prompts the need to consider the students’ views in Polish secondary schools, where tablets serve as effective tools at all lessons. The article presents a possible connection between personal traits and the use of electronic devices for educational purposes. The present study comprised a participant group of 55 students (29 females, 22 males, with 4 participants choosing not to declare their gender) from the High School in Bielsko Biała, Poland. Notably, this institution has adopted iPads as integral tools for all modes of instruction since 2021, encompassing individual, collaborative, and collective approaches to organize learning. The participants included young individuals aged between 16 and 19. The research was carried out by using the diagnostic survey method, as well as two psychological tests: NEO Five-Factor Inventory NEO-FFI by P.T. Costa and R.R. McCrae - Polish adaptation (Zawadzki et al., 1998) and Multidimensional Preference Questionnaire WKP (Matczak et al., 2006). As the main results showed, respondents admitted that using a tablet helps to acquire new information faster, and in this way, learning becomes more interesting and engaging. Students with a higher level of conscientiousness appreciate those aspects of using a tablet that is related to fulfilling school duties and learning. A correlation between students' academic performance and the degree of extroversion can be observed in areas where tablet the usage is intertwined with social interactions. The results also indicate a possible relationship between the perception of tablet use and the level of need for stimulation in the work/study environment.
Garbage in, Garbage Out: A Case Study on Defective Product Prediction in Manufacturing

Despite their potential business value and invest-ments, data science projects often fail owing to a lack of preparedness, implementation challenges, and poor data quality. This study aimed to develop a machine learning model for predicting defective products in the dyeing process within the manufacturing domain. However, inadequate importance given to data by the involved factory, insufficient data quality, and the lack of the necessary technical infrastructure for data science projects have hindered attaining desired results. This study emphasizes to academic researchers and industry experts the significance of data quality and technical infrastructure, highlights how these deficiencies can impact the success of a data science project, and provides several recommendations.
Association between Loneliness and Memory Function through White Matter Hyperintensities in Older Adults: The Moderating Role of Gender

Loneliness has an important impact on memory function in late life. However, the neural mechanism by which loneliness detrimentally influences memory function remains elusive. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether the association between loneliness and memory function varies by gender. The current study aimed to investigate the neural mechanism underlying the association between loneliness and episodic memory function and explore whether it varies with gender among cognitively normal older adults. A total of 173 community-dwelling adults aged 60 years or older from the Korean Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (KSHAP) study (mean age = 71.87) underwent an assessment of loneliness, neuropsychological testing, and structural magnetic resonance imaging. The association between loneliness and episodic memory function was mediated by the volume of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs), but not by hippocampal or gray matter volumes. In addition, the association between loneliness and memory function through WMHs was significantly moderated by gender; specifically, the indirect effect was significant among men but not among women. The study suggests that WMHs may be a potential neurological mechanism that causes late-life memory dysfunction associated with loneliness in older men. The findings underscore the need for gender-specific interventions to mitigate memory impairment associated with late-life loneliness, with significant public health implications.
Effect of In Ovo Administration of a Multi-Strain Probiotic and Zinc Glycine Chelate on Antioxidant Capacity and Selected Immune Parameters in Newly Hatched Chicks

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of in ovo co-supplementation of chicken embryos with a multi-strain probiotic containing effective microorganisms and zinc glycine chelate on total antioxidant capacity; concentrations of sulfhydryl groups, bityrosine bridges, formylkynurenines, hydroperoxides, proteins, corticosterone, pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines and heat shock proteins; and the activity of catalase and superoxide dismutase in the serum, yolk sac and tissues of broiler chickens at 12 h and at 7 days after hatching. The results indicate high SOD activity in the small and large intestines of chicks at 12 h post-hatch in the groups receiving the multi-strain probiotic and in the small intestine and yolk sac of birds receiving the multi-strain probiotic and Zn-Gly chelate. High concentrations of TNF-α and IFN-γ in the yolk sac and serum after in ovo administration of Zn-Gly chelate were observed 12 h after hatching. The use of a probiotic and a probiotic with Zn-Gly chelate increased the total antioxidant capacity in the tissues of chickens. It can be concluded that in ovo administration of a multi-strain probiotic and Zn-Gly chelate can maintain the oxidant/antioxidant balance in chickens and increase the defense capacity against oxidative stress.
m5U-GEPred: prediction of RNA 5-methyluridine sites based on sequence-derived and graph embedding features

5-Methyluridine (m5U) is one of the most common post-transcriptional RNA modifications, which is involved in a variety of important biological processes and disease development. The precise identification of the m5U sites allows for a better understanding of the biological processes of RNA and contributes to the discovery of new RNA functional and therapeutic targets. Here, we present m5U-GEPred, a prediction framework, to combine sequence characteristics and graph embedding-based information for m5U identification. The graph embedding approach was introduced to extract the global information of training data that complemented the local information represented by conventional sequence features, thereby enhancing the prediction performance of m5U identification. m5U-GEPred outperformed the state-of-the-art m5U predictors built on two independent species, with an average AUROC of 0.984 and 0.985 tested on human and yeast transcriptomes, respectively. To further validate the performance of our newly proposed framework, the experimentally validated m5U sites identified from Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT) were collected as independent testing data, and in this project, m5U-GEPred achieved reasonable prediction performance with ACC of 91.84%. We hope that m5U-GEPred should make a useful computational alternative for m5U identification.
Machine Learning Models for Storm Damage Prediction in Nova Scotia, Canada

Power loss due to storms is a recurring problem in Nova Scotia (NS) that affects hundreds of thousands of households every year. Accurate prediction of the location and magnitude of power outages caused by storms is crucial for developing effective response plans. This study proposes and tests two machine learning models, a deep neural network and a random forest, for storm damage prediction in NS. Historical weather and damage data are used to train the models, which incorporate multiple input features such as wind speed, gust and direction. Both models are found capable of predicting outages with a mean absolute error of around 0.05 (i.e., an accuracy of 95%), outperforming the currently-used regression based tool. Furthermore, comparison against other machine learning algorithms demonstrates the advantages of the proposed models in terms of accuracy, interpretability, scalability and robustness.
Flatness-Based Mixed-Integer Obstacle Avoidance MPC for Collision-Safe Automated Urban Driving

Safe and efficient obstacle avoidance is a challenging feature in the urban automated driving context. This paper proposes an optimal flatness-based modular obstacle-avoidance model-predictive control strategy. Exploiting differential flatness, a unified obstacle-avoidance MPC formulation in the linearized flat coordinates is devised, based on the well-known mixed-integer Big-M formulation to resolve the non-convex avoidance constraints. Various choices of flat outputs (Cartesian vs. Frenet path coordinates) can be utilized with appropriate transformations, allowing a unified, efficient, and globally optimal solution of the obstacle-avoidance MPC problem. The resulting control law is tested in a multi-agent traffic simulation and shows excellent performance in a typical complex urban intersection scenario.
VALUING ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNALITIES

This paper describes how, transport benefits society, but also imposes costs, notably through air pollution, noise and accidents. Besides the effects on the environment and human health, current scientific attention is directed to the social impacts of transportation in urban areas. The valuation of the external costs of transport, in particular environmental externalities is a complex and challenging area. Recent and current research around the world is progressing the state-of-the-art, which will enable environmental and social externality costs to be incorporated within an expanded project evaluation approach. A set of unit values for a broad range of externality costs (including noise, air pollution, climate change, nature and landscape, and additional costs from upstream and downstream processes) for road transport are provided in this paper. The average total air pollution unit cost for cars is estimated in this paper somewhere in the area of 2 cents per vehicle km, while the average total environmental externality unit costs for cars are approaching 9 cents per vehicle km. Similarly, those average total unit costs for heavy vehicles are of the order of 5 cents per ton km, as opposed to light duty commercial vehicles for which average total unit costs are almost 40 cents per ton km. The ranges of unit values (and the qualifying assumptions) presented in this paper are a useful starting point for information and debate on this topic. However, additional local research including sensitivity analyses is recommended (based on the ExternE and Infras/IWW methodologies) to obtain values applicable to local areas and conditions for the unit cost categories of interest.
PERSISTENCE OF BROMACIL IN SOILS WITH DIFFERENT MANAGEMENT HISTORIES

Two trials on a soil with no previous bromacil use showed that bromacil was degraded within 4 to 6 months when single applications were used, but persisted in the top 75 mm of soil for nearly a year when two applications were used in the same season. A third trial on a similar soil with a 10 year history of asparagus management and associated bromacil use showed increased chemical residue levels in lower depths of soil and slower degradation rates. Microbial biomass and activity in the first of these trials indicated that two bromacil applications caused considerable stress on the soil microflora, possibly contributing to the retarded bromacil degradation with repeated bromacil usage.
A GESTÃO SOCIOAMBIENTAL EM PAUTA: A ANÁLISE DO CASO DE UMA REDE DE SUPERMERCADOS DA REGIÃO CENTRAL DO RS ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AGENDA: A CASE ANALYSIS OF A NETWORK OF SUPERMARKETS IN THE REGION OF CENTRAL RS

Social Responsibility is about the company’s commitment to the society in which it is embedded. For that develops organizational strategies seeking the responsible use of its resources, the welfare of employees and society and the preservation of the environment. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the perception of managers in a Supermarket Chain forward the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management. The case study of this network located in the central region of Rio Grande do Sul, being interviewed five managers, was used as a strategy. As a result it was found that they demonstrate ignore the environmental concept, which seeks the commitment the organization has with society and the environment through the attitudes towards them and their members. Therefore, it is concluded that the network and their managers need to review how to manage so that in future, be recognized as an environmentally friendly and socially responsible company, since it showed ignorance about the strategies that can provide such recognition network study.
Robust SDN Synchronization in Mobile Networks Using Deep Reinforcement and Transfer Learning

A logically centralized controller architecture for SDN deployments is a well understood and implemented method, however because of issues such as scalability, privacy and more, there is a need to develop and implement a robust physically distributed SDN controller architecture. In a distributed SDN environment, a centralized logical network view needs to be maintained, which means the distributed controllers need a robust method of remaining informed about other controller's network through synchronization. This is specially true in mobile, wireless networks with changing controller and network environment, so to this end we develop a deep reinforcement and transfer learning based method that provides the controllers with an efficient policy for synchronizing with other controllers and maintaining a logically centralized view in such networks. We show that our application-centric method performs well for different kinds of applications including shortest path routing and load balancing, outperforming a reinforcement learning based method as well as a round robin method.
On the Design and Optimization of SLIPT Systems for Aerial Base Stations

In this paper, the application of simultaneous lightwave information and power transfer (SLIPT) for the fronthaul link of an aerial base station (ABS) is studied. SLIPT is a particularly attractive solution for such links, since the directive free-space optical link can provide ultra-high throughput as a fronthaul, while simultaneously transferring considerable amounts of energy to extend the flight duration of the ABS. In general, large receiver areas can be utilized by a SLIPT system to enhance both its data rate and the harvested power, as they balance out the geometric spreading of the beam. However, a larger solar cell area naturally leads to a heavier load for the ABS increasing its power consumption and, in turn, lowering its expected lifetime. Therefore, it is crucial to study the ensuing trade-off between the size of the solar cell and the performance of the ABS. Moreover, SLIPT performance is heavily influenced by the transmission parameters such as direct current (DC) bias. To that end, a joint optimization problem is designed to maximize the energy efficiency on an ABS based on the transmission parameters and the size of the solar cell. Simulation results validate the proposed analysis as they illustrate a great performance gain over benchmark schemes.
DOSE-RESPONSE STUDY OF PLANTS (GYCINE MAX L., VIGNA SUBTERANEA L. AND ZEA MAYS L.) TO DIESEL OIL POLLUTION

Field trial was carried out in 2010 Cropping Season to determine the growth and development of Bambaragroundnut, maize and soybean as influenced by diesel oil pollution in loamy sand soil at Teaching and Research Farm of Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Imo State University, Owerri. The experiment was a split-plot design based on Randomized Complete Block design and least significant difference was used in separating the means. The crop plants (Bambaragroundnut, maize and soybean) constituted the main plots and the diesel oil pollution levels (0, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 litres) constituted subplots and each treatment was replicated five times. Results showed that diesel oil pollution at different levels (0, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 litres) significantly affected the performance of Bambaragroundnut, maize and soybean. The result obtained from the current investigation indicates that the test crops exhibited dose-dependent response to the diesel oil polluted soils. Reduction in percentage germination, plant height, leaf area, leaf area index, leaf area ratio, due to effect of high dose (2.0 litres) diesel oil pollution were significantly different (P<0.05) compared to their control. However, Bambaragroundnut performed significantly better in terms of percentage germination in control treatments than maize and soybean, whereas higher diesel oil pollution affected germination severely in bambaragroundnut than in maize and soybean. It was observed that 2.0 litres reduced the plant height significantly compared to the control and other treatment levels. However, soybean performed well in plant height and leaf area in all treatments levels at early growth stages compared to maize and bambaragroundnut whereas at early maturity stage, maize plant performed significantly well. The study also indicated that soybean in all treatments levels recorded significantly higher leaf area index than bambaragroundnut and maize. However, maize recorded significantly higher yield at all the treatment levels than observed in soybean and bambaragroundnut. Hence, diesel oil pollution has potential for reducing growth and development of crops
Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) as a tool for in situ mapping and textural interpretation of lithium in pegmatite minerals

Abstract Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) offers an efficient method for qualitative and semiquantitative analysis of light elements (Z < 10), including lithium. This relatively inexpensive analytical tool provides very rapid analysis with little sample damage, requiring minimal sample preparation. In principle, LIBS is a form of atomic emission spectroscopy, relying on characteristic spectra emitted from plasma generated by a high-energy laser pulse striking a sample (solid, liquid, or gas). In this study, LIBS mapping was applied to petrographically characterized samples of hydrothermally altered spodumene from the Neoarchaean Mt. Cattlin lithium pegmatite deposit. Spodumene (LiAlSi2O6) is the ore mineral in this deposit, but lithium is distributed in variety of minerals including primary micas and tourmaline, as well as in the alteration mineralogy of spodumene. Mapping was carried out using a grid of analysis spots of 125 μm diameter, spaced at 200 μm intervals, on a sample surface cut by a diamond saw blade without further preparation. Results from mapping of lithium in these samples effectively discriminated between spodumene, its alteration mineralogy, and matrix silicate minerals of the matrix. However, quantification of LIBS results using lithium-doped borosilicate glasses as standards was limited due to issues with the sensitivity of matrix matching of standards and self-absorption effects at Li2O values greater than ~2 wt%, especially at values greater than ~6 wt%. The results of this study testify to the effectiveness of LIBS as a mapping tool for light elements, which may be used as a complement to other mapping techniques. Mapping of lithium in pegmatite minerals has important applications in exploration, evaluation, and beneficiation of lithium pegmatite ore bodies.
The association between parity and hypertension: a cross-sectional, community-based study

Background The available data on the association between parity and hypertension are inconclusive. This study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of hypertension and its association with parity among adult Sudanese women. Methods A multi-stage sampling survey was conducted in four villages in the River Nile State in Sudan between July and September 2022. The World Health Organization's three-level stepwise questionnaire was used to gather the participants' sociodemographic characteristics (age, sex, marital status, parity, educational level, occupation, obstetric history, family history of hypertension, weight and height). Regression analyses were performed. Results A total of 408 women were recruited. The median [measured in terms of interquartile range (IQR)] age was 45.0 years (33.0–55.7 years). A linear regression analysis revealed a significant association between parity and diastolic blood pressure (coefficient, 0.60; P = 0.011). The prevalence of hypertension (55.9%) increased with parity and ranged from 43.7% to 74.9%. In the multivariate analyses, increasing age (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.03; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02–1.05), increasing parity (AOR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.01–1.19), family history of hypertension (AOR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.15–2.77), and increasing body mass index (AOR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.05–1.13) were associated with hypertension. In women of ages ≥ 50 years, increasing parity was significantly associated with hypertension (AOR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.2–1.29). Para > 5 (AOR, 2.73; 95% CI, 1.11–6.73) was associated with hypertension. Conclusion A high prevalence of hypertension was found among Sudanese women, and that parity at 5 or more is linked to hypertension.
Effects of Modified Late Reverberation on Audio-Visual Plausibility and Externalization in AR

Binaural synthesis systems can create virtual sound sources that are indistinguishable from reality. In Augmented Reality (AR) applications, virtual sound sources need to blend in with the real environment to create plausible illusions. However, in some scenarios, it may be desirable to enhance the natural acoustic properties of the virtual content to improve speech intelligibility, alleviate listener fatigue, or achieve a specific artistic effect. Previous research has shown that deviating from the original room acoustics can degrade the quality of the auditory illusion, often referred to as the room divergence effect. This study investigates whether it is possible to modify the auditory aesthetics of a room environment without compromising the plausibility of a sound event in AR. To accomplish this, the length of the reverberation tails of measured binaural room impulse responses are modified after the mixing time to change reverberance.A listening test was conducted to evaluate the externalization and audio-visual plausibility of an exemplary AR scene for different degrees of reverberation modification. The results indicate that externalization is unaffected even with extreme modifications (such as a stretch ratio of 1.8). However, audio-visual plausibility is only maintained for moderate modifications (such as stretch ratios of 0.8 and 1.2).