Source Items Research Articles

Microplastics contamination in commercial fish from Alexandria City, the Mediterranean Coast of Egypt

Plastic waste is a major threat to various marine ecosystems. Due to being semi-enclosed basin with dense population, the Mediterranean Sea has been considered as a hot spot for plastic pollution. Alexandria was listed as one of the major cities contributing to plastic waste in the eastern Mediterranean basin. Accordingly, microplastics (MPs) abundance and composition were investigated in the digestive tracts of commercial fish species from two major fishing areas in Alexandria; Abu-Qir Bay and Eastern Harbor, which are affected by plastic pollution. The incidence and average densities of MPs were 91.8 ± 8.4% and 11.7 ± 9.5 items fish−1, similar to highly polluted regions in the southeastern Mediterranean Sea. The average MPs concentration was significantly higher in Sparus aurata (38.3 ± 28.4 items fish−1) than all species, except for Siganus rivulatus and Boops boops. Polyethylene and poly ethylene-vinyl acetate were the dominant polymers in the fish digestive tracts. Four types of plastic polymers were recorded in Siganus rivulatus and five in Parupeneus macronemus. The dominance of glossy fragments (sizes <500 μm) in Abu-Qir Bay indicated land-based source of pollution from domestic, agricultural, and industrial wastes. The dominance of larger plastic filaments and colored fragments in the Eastern Harbor suggested secondary MPs, originating from the fragmentation of larger plastic items of sea-based sources, such as fishing and recreational activities.

Aktywność fizyczna jako metoda terapeutyczna postępowania niefarmakologicznego w leczeniu schizofrenii: systematyczny przegląd literatury

The purpose of this systematic review was to classify, compare and characterize selected types of physical activity having a positive impact on the course of the treatment of schizophrenia (including its long-term effects). The literature review for this work was carried out in the scientific databases: PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science and EBSCO. The analysis and further description were developed based on the PRISMA protocol. During the database analysis, 330 items of potential sources of knowledge were searched for to prepare a literature review on physical activity used in the treatment of schizophrenia. After the verification and qualification process, 17 items were included in the study. The inclusion of physical activity in the treatment of patients with schizophrenia had a positive effect on the perceived symptoms and ailments related to the course of the disease and supported the return of patients to society.

Remedying the Metamemory Expectancy Illusion in Source Monitoring: Are there Effects on Restudy Choices and Source Memory?

Metamemory monitoring, study behavior, and memory are presumably causally connected. When people misjudge their memory, their study behavior should be biased accordingly. Remedying metamemory illusions should debias study behavior and improve memory. One metamemory illusion concerns source memory, a critical aspect of episodic memory. People predict better source memory for items that originated from an expected source (e.g., toothbrush in a bathroom) rather than an unexpected source (e.g., shampoo in a kitchen), whereas actual source memory shows the opposite: an inconsistency effect. This expectancy illusion biases restudy choices: Participants restudy more unexpected than expected source–item pairs. The authors tested the causal relationships between metamemory and source memory with a delay and a source-retrieval attempt between study and metamemory judgment to remedy the expectancy illusion and debias restudy choices. Debiased restudy choices should enhance source memory for expected items, thereby reducing the inconsistency effect. Two groups studied expected and unexpected source–item pairs. They made metamemory judgments and restudy choices immediately at study or after delay, restudied the selected pairs, and completed a source-monitoring test. After immediate judgments, participants predicted better source memory for expected pairs and selected more unexpected pairs for restudy. After delayed judgments, participants predicted a null effect of expectancy on source memory and selected equal numbers of expected and unexpected pairs. Thus, the expectancy illusion was partially remedied and restudy choices were debiased. Nevertheless, source memory was only weakly affected. The results challenge the presumed causal relationships between metamemory monitoring, study behavior, and source memory.

Numerical simulation of cryogenic cavitating flow in LRE oxygen turbopump inducer

Turbopump is a critical component of modern liquid rocket engine (LRE), which employs cryogen as propellant. Its working performance is closely relevant to the reliability of LRE. The performance improvement of turbopump is limited by cryogenic cavitation condition. While the cryogenic cavitating flow characteristic is not well understood till now. A novel numerical method for cryogenic cavitation simulation was developed based on a transport-based cavitation model in the present investigation. The real thermodynamic properties of fluids and an additional energy source item which takes the heat transfer during phase change into account were imbedded into the code, and the empirical constants of the cavitation model are unnecessary to alter. It is found that a moderate reduction of released heat by vapor condensation in the energy source item provides better prediction accuracy for temperature distributions, and an optimal reduction proportion has been suggested. The cavitating flow features inside a three-bladed inducer using liquid oxygen as working fluid have been investigated in detail based on the proposed method, thermal effect reduces both the cavitation regions and the vapor volume fraction inside cavities remarkably, producing less blocking effect on the blade flow channels, which delays the head breakdown. Higher temperature shows stronger thermal effect and better cavitation performance. A classical semiempirical theoretical model is introduced to quantitatively predict the influence of thermal effect on cavitation performance. The predicted results are in consistent with the calculated results. The developed numerical model shows favorable universality to act as a reliable tool for cryogenic turbopump design.

In-situ γ-ray analysis of ground surface radioactivity using portable HPGe γ spectrometer.

As essential high-end equipment for nuclear emergency monitoring, the portable HPGe γ spectrometer currently lacks supporting in-situ measurement methods, limiting its role and value in emergency missions. For this practical problem, this paper studies the measurement of ground surface radioactivity by portable HPGe γ spectrometer in nuclear emergency monitoring in view of the particularity of nuclear emergency source items. Firstly, the detection efficiency of point sources at different horizontal distances when the spectrometer is installed at the height of 1 m from the center of the detector to the ground is calculated. Secondly, the concept of effective contribution distance is defined and analyzed. Thirdly, the point source detection efficiency is obtained using the numerical integration method of calculation. Integrate to calculate the detection efficiency of the surface source, and then calculate the radioactive surface activity of the surface. Finally, the effectiveness of the method is verified through experiments.

Using active learning selection approach for cross-project software defect prediction

Cross-project defect prediction (CPDP) technology can effectively ensure software quality, which plays an important role in software engineering. When encountering a newly developed project with insufficient training data, CPDP can be used to build defect predictors using other projects. However, CPDP does not take into account the prior knowledge of the target items and the class imbalance in the source item data. In this paper, we design an active learning selection algorithm for cross-project defect prediction to alleviate the above problems. First, we use clustering and active learning algorithms to filter and label some representative data from the target items and use these data as prior knowledge to guide the selection of source items. Then, the active learning algorithm is used to filter representative data from the source items. Finally, the balanced cross-item dataset is constructed using the active learning algorithm, and the defect prediction model is built. In this article, we selected 10 open-source projects by using common defect prediction models, active learning algorithms, and common evaluation metrics. The results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively filter the data, solve the class imbalance problem in cross-project data, and improve the defect prediction performance.

Lexicographic Treatment of Loanwords from Arabic, Persian, and Turkish in the Bosnian-German Dictionary

This paper aims to describe lexicographic strategies for treating loanwords from Arabic, Persian, and Turkish in a productive bilingual Bosnian-German dictionary. In terms of number, stylistic and cultural features, those words significantly characterize the Bosnian language. In lexicography, they have the status of cultural-bound words with a high degree of anisomorphism. We will look into their description in existing monolingual and bilingual dictionaries as well as into their equivalents in literary translations to propose more suitable equivalents. In this paper, we focus in particular on lexicographic treatment strategies of partial and zero equivalence, taking into account the deep cultural embeddedness of Arabic, Turkish and Persian loanwords in the Bosnian language. It will be shown that specific concepts such as “tekija”, for which the German language has no word, and the existing bilingual dictionary provides an equivalent „Muslim monastery“ (Jakić &amp; Hurm 1992: 1053), can be treated by combined strategies to obtain more suitable equivalents, such as the incorporation of the source item into the target language with an additional explanation as well as an explanatory equivalent.

Advance Translation—The Remedy to Improve Translatability of Source Questionnaires? Results of a Think-Aloud Study

Advance translation is a method of source questionnaire development for multilingual survey projects to enhance translatability and (inter)cultural portability. The aim is to minimize translation issues in the final translation stage. I empirically tested the results of a previously conducted advance translation in a think-aloud study and analyzed the utterances made in a mixed-method approach, calculating chi-square statistics and cross-checking these by observational notes of the think-aloud sessions. My study confirms the usefulness of advance translation in making source items better to translate, thus improving final translation quality. It appears to be particularly useful for comprehensibility issues of the source text, irrespective of the target language. I recommend that advance translations be carried out into all languages and cultures into which the final source questionnaire is to be translated. This will improve source questionnaire translatability and, thus, final translation and overall cross-cultural data quality.

Bibliometric Analysis of References Selection that Influence Citations among Articles of Thai Multidisciplinary Journals

The purpose of this study is to examine association between reference list factors and citation count among articles published in Thai multidisciplinary journals based on the Scopus database. Spearman’s rank correlation and Negative binomial regression models were used for univariate and multivariate analysis, respectively. The results from 900 articles revealed that many reference list factors such as number of references, proportion of past 10 years references, source items references and impact of references had significantly positive correlation with citation counts both in univariate and multivariate analysis. The number of references is still a good quantitative basic indicator, which is easy to access information. For impact of references list, this study measured by average citation and h-Index of references list. Despite being a factor that reflects the quality of the research as well but for the evaluation of the unpublished research articles in the submission process, the indicators still have a long memory retention period. Such indicators require a long time to collect data and are not flexible.

Cross-Project Software Defect Prediction Based on Class Code Similarity

Software defect prediction techniques can help software developers find software defects as soon as possible. It can also reduce the cost of software development. This technique usually predicts the target project through the entire source project. However, the data distribution difference between the entire source project and the target project is generally large, so the software defect prediction accuracy is not high. we propose a cross-project software defect prediction technique based on class code similarity CCS-CPDP. Firstly, this technique converts the code set extracted by AST(Abstract Syntax Tree) into a vector set through the DTI (Doc2Bow and TF-IDF) strategy; Secondly, the similarity will be calculated between the vector set of target items and training items; Finally, according to the principle of the majority decision subordinate category in KNN, the number of most similar class instances of the training item is determined, and the source item is refined by selecting the class instance, thereby we can realize software defect prediction. This method compares with four traditional classification models (KNN, Random Forest, Naive Bayes, and Logistic Regression) for defect prediction. Experimental results show that CCS-CPDP compared with the baseline, recall and f1 increased by 18.03% and 14.1% respectively. In addition, the refined source projects selected by CCS-CPDP compared with the current source project selection technology, recall and f1 had improved by 37.6% and 12.7%.

Learning Domain-Independent Representations via Shared Weight Auto-Encoder for Transfer Learning in Recommender Systems

Despite many recent advances, state-of-the-art recommender systems still struggle to achieve good performance with sparse datasets. To address the sparsity issue, transfer learning techniques have been investigated for recommender systems, but they tend to impose strict constraints on the content and structure of the data in the source and target domains. For transfer learning methods to work well, there should normally be homogeneity between source and target domains, or a high degree of overlap between the source and target items. In this paper we propose a novel transfer learning framework for mitigating the effects of sparsity and insufficient data. Our method requires neither homogeneity nor overlap between the source and target domains. We describe and evaluate a shared parameter auto-encoder to jointly learn representations of user/item aspects in two domains, applying Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) loss during training to ensure that the source and target representations are similar in the distribution space. The approach is evaluated using a number of benchmark datasets to demonstrate improved recommendation performance when learned representations are used in collaborative filtering. The code used for this work is available on github.com.

Modelling and analysis of initial icing roughness with fixed-grid enthalpy method based on DPM-VOF algorithm

Ice particles could form under the continuous impingement of incoming supercooled droplets in icing conditions, which will change the surface roughness to enhance the further heat and mass transfer during icing process. A fixed-grid porous enthalpy method based on the improved Discrete Phase Model (DPM) and Volume of Fluid (VOF) integrated algorithm is developed to solve the multiphase heat transfer problem to give more detailed demonstration of the formation of initial ice roughness. The algorithms to determine the criterion of transformation from DPM to VOF and the allocation of source items during transformation are improved to the general DPM-VOF algorithm. Two verification cases, namely two glycerine-solution droplets impact and single droplet freeze, are conducted to verify the accuracy and reliability of the enthalpy-DPM-VOF method, where the simulation results match well with experiment phenomena. Ice roughness on a NACA0012 airfoil is precisely captured and the effects on convective heat transfer characteristics are preliminarily revealed. The results illustrate that the enthalpy-DPM-VOF method could successfully capture the characteristics of motion and the phase change process of droplet, as well as balance the calculation accuracy and efficiency.

Expressiveness of an International Semantic Standard for Wound Care: Mapping a Standardized Item Set for Leg Ulcers to the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms.

BackgroundChronic health conditions are on the rise and are putting high economic pressure on health systems, as they require well-coordinated prevention and treatment. Among chronic conditions, chronic wounds such as cardiovascular leg ulcers have a high prevalence. Their treatment is highly interdisciplinary and regularly spans multiple care settings and organizations; this places particularly high demands on interoperable information exchange that can be achieved using international semantic standards, such as Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine–Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT).ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate the expressiveness of SNOMED CT in the domain of wound care, and thereby its clinical usefulness and the potential need for extensions.MethodsA clinically consented and profession-independent wound care item set, the German National Consensus for the Documentation of Leg Wounds (NKDUC), was mapped onto the precoordinated concepts of the international reference terminology SNOMED CT. Before the mapping took place, the NKDUC was transformed into an information model that served to systematically identify relevant items. The mapping process was carried out in accordance with the ISO/TR 12300 formalism. As a result, the reliability, equivalence, and coverage rate were determined for all NKDUC items and sections.ResultsThe developed information model revealed 268 items to be mapped. Conducted by 3 health care professionals, the mapping resulted in moderate reliability (κ=0.512). Regarding the two best equivalence categories (symmetrical equivalence of meaning), the coverage rate of SNOMED CT was 67.2% (180/268) overall and 64.3% (108/168) specifically for wounds. The sections general medical condition (55/66, 83%), wound assessment (18/24, 75%), and wound status (37/57, 65%), showed higher coverage rates compared with the sections therapy (45/73, 62%), wound diagnostics (8/14, 57%), and patient demographics (17/34, 50%).ConclusionsThe results yielded acceptable reliability values for the mapping procedure. The overall coverage rate shows that two-thirds of the items could be mapped symmetrically, which is a substantial portion of the source item set. Some wound care sections, such as general medical conditions and wound assessment, were covered better than other sections (wound status, diagnostics, and therapy). These deficiencies can be mitigated either by postcoordination or by the inclusion of new concepts in SNOMED CT. This study contributes to pushing interoperability in the domain of wound care, thereby responding to the high demand for information exchange in this field. Overall, this study adds another puzzle piece to the general knowledge about SNOMED CT in terms of its clinical usefulness and its need for further extensions.

Real magnetic stripping method in unexploded ordnance detection and remediation – a case study from Rohožník military training range in SW Slovakia

In this contribution we present results from a case-study, which was performed in collaboration between geophysicists and explosive ordnance disposal technicians at the Rohožník military training range in SW Slovakia. The aim of this study was to locate a deep-penetrated unexploded Mk-82 aerial bomb using high-definition digital magnetometry. The location where this bomb had entered the ground was known but its final position needed to be determined so that a safe excavation and disposal could be conducted. However, the detection of this unexploded ordnance object was complicated by the presence of intense magnetic interference from a number of near surface ferrous items including non-explosive test bombs, fragmentation and other iron junk. These items contributed a localised, high amplitude of magnetic clutter masking any deeper source. Our strategy was to approach the problem in three stages. First, we used magnetic data to locate the near surface items. After the detection and before the excavation of the searched objects, two quantitative interpretation methods were used. These involved an optimised modelling of source bodies and the application of a 3D Euler deconvolution. Both methods yielded acceptable results, but the former was found to be more accurate. After the interpretation phase, many of the items were then safely excavated and removed individually. A second magnetic mapping was then performed and from this data which was now significantly less cluttered, we were able to identify but not quantify, two deep source items and to confirm that all remaining near surface items were significantly smaller in size than a Mk-82 bomb. As the remaining near surface sources were interpreted as being contained within the surface one metre of soil and being small they could be assured to be non-explosive, it was considered most practical to mechanically excavate and remove this soil and the remaining objects contained.

Distribution laws for radioisotopes in receiving freshwater of Inland Nuclear Power Plant

The framework for transportation of radioisotopes in receiving freshwater from Inland Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) is proposed. This work studies the radioactive concentration under normal operation of INPP, and analyzes the relationship between consequences of accidents (IC, CFE, BP) and meteorological factors. Results show that the direct liquid release item is the main source item under INPP normal operation, 137Cs has a good representative for the variation of total radioisotopes concentration against downstream distance. As for the non-precipitation situation, the position where the maximum 137Cs concentration appears downstream is positively correlated with atmospheric stability, while negatively correlated with wind direction offset θ (referred to ENE direction). 137Cs concentrations of maximum, at the point of downstream 1 km and at the dam from dry deposition are all negatively correlated with wind direction offset θ, but they show complex correlations with atmospheric stability which depend on wind directions. As for the precipitation situation, there are two opposite relationships between the recover time for Lim1, Lim2, Lim3 and precipitation rate. Both dry deposition and wet deposition are dominant factors in the short-term, but the contribution from run-off, which gradually increases after a longer period, turns to be the dominant factor in the long term. Results of annual statistical are analyzed through field monitoring data.

Monte Carlo determination of dose coefficients at different developmental stages of zebrafish (Danio rerio) in experimental condition

The release of liquid effluent of nuclear power into aquatic system increases with the rapid development of nuclear facilities in coastal and inland regions. Aquatic model animals are very important for the study of the radiation hazards to non-human biota in water environment and its extrapolation of dose-effect relationship to human models. However, the study of the radiation dose rate calculation model of the aquatic animal zebrafish is still on the homogeneous isotropic model used for the protection of the environment. A series of zebrafish models (including adults, larvae and embryos, named zebrafish-family: ZF-family) with multiple internal organs are established in this study to investigate the mechanism of radiation damage effect in order to protect non-human species. The internal and external dose coefficients (DCs) of the whole body, heart and gonads of zebrafishes are calculated in water environment with the combination of the real experimental culture condition, using Monte Carlo application package GATE (Geant4 Application for Emission Tomography) and eight nuclides, i.e., 3H, 14C, 90Sr, 60Co, 110mAg, 134Cs, 137Cs, 131I, which are commonly found in the liquid effluent of nuclear power plants, as the source items, The results show that the level of nuclide γ energy determines the external DCs (DCext), and 90Sr plays the most important role in internal DCs (DCint). The comparison between the external DCs of the heart and gonad and that of the whole body shows that DCs (DCext) of heart and gonad for females are 80% and 43% lower than that of whole body, respectively, while for males, the DCs (DCext) of heart is 44% lower than that of the whole body, and DCs (DCext) of gonad is slightly higher than that of the whole body for most nuclides (up to 25%).The dose of internal radiation makes greater contribution than that of external radiation to pure beta emitter (3H, 14C, 90Sr). This internal DCs of ZF-family model with complex internal structure turns out to demonstrate more sensitive DCs change trend and higher calculation values compared with the internal DCs of the simple ellipsoid model. In this model, the photon emitter with strong penetrating power has higher internal DCs, while the low-energy pure beta nuclide does not alter much. In conclusion, it is vital to carry out refined systematic modeling for model organisms, and the determination of DCs of model organs can promote the evaluation of the radiation effects on non-human species.

An accurate and efficient scheme involving unsteady friction for transient pipe flow

Abstract A robust prediction system should monitor all possible hydraulic transients, which is significant for the appropriate and safe operation of pipe systems. A second-order finite volume method (FVM) Godunov-type scheme (GTS) considering unsteady friction factors is introduced to simulate hydraulic transients, which was rarely involved in previous work. One explicit-solution source item approach developed in this work is crucial for the proposed GTS to easily incorporate various forms of the existing unsteady friction models, including original convolution-based models (Zielke model and Vardy–Brown model), simplified convolution-based model (Trikha–Vardy–Brown (TVB) model), and Brunone instantaneous acceleration-based model. Results achieved by the proposed models are compared with experimental data as well as predictions by the classic Method of Characteristics (MOC). Results show that the MOC scheme may produce severe numerical attenuation in the case of a low Courant number. The proposed second-order GTS unsteady friction models are accurate, efficient, and stable even for Courant numbers less than one and sparse grid, and only need much less grid number and computation time to reach the same numerical accuracy. The TVB convolution-based model and Brunone model in the second-order GTS are suggested for further applications in hydraulic transients due to their high accuracy and efficiency.

Knowledge on the Calculation of Payable Income ZakahAmong Civil Servants in Malaysia

Zakah of income is a form of zakah which is legislated as mandatory for working individuals.The money received from the employers and fulfilled the conditions of zakahwhich are the rate (nisab) and period (haul) qualify individuals to perform zakah of income. Employees who work for the government receive several forms of income which make up the monthly gross salary. Among them are the monthly basic salary, monthly fixed allowances, overdue salary and bonuses. Therefore this study aims to identify the level of knowledge among government servants in calculating the payable zakah of income based on the sources of income that formulate the monthly salary. This study applies the quantitative study with descriptive analysis on the dataobtained using the instrument of questionnaire. As many as 772 respondents involved in this study by focusing on two sections namely the knowledge pertaining to the concept of income zakahand items of income sources. There are four items of sources studied which are the salary, monthly fixed allowances, overdue salary and bonus. Finding of analysis indicates that the level of knowledge among respondents related to the concept of zakah is significantly high. Itemized analysis reveals that respondents’ knowledge in the calculation of payable income zakah for the item of overdue salary is moderate, while for the bonus is low. Implication of the analysis shows that the calculation of payable income zakah needs a continous effort from the authority. This is to ensure indviduals to carry out their responsiblity of the Islamic pillar more obediently in the future.

Progresses and challenges of high-order-moment turbulence closure

High-order-moment model is one of the focuses and frontier topics in the research of turbulence closure theory. Since Mr. Chou first established the Reynolds-stress transport equation in general turbulence, scholars have never stopped to study the high-order-moment model in order to predict the complex flow more accurately. Especially in the new century, thanks to the rapid development of computer hardware and the breakthrough of high-order numerical methods, turbulence simulation is in the course of turning from RANS into LES. In either RANS framework, LES framework, or the hybrid one, high-order-moment models are representative of advanced closure models. According to this, the paper gives a general review of the high-order-moment models. The focus includes the modeling approach of each source item, the evolution process of scale providing equations, and the research demand of numerical solution technology. Through several typical turbulence problems, their advantages over the traditional eddy-viscosity models are shown. Moreover, the integration of high-order-moment models in some CFD software is given. Finally, the future challenges and development direction of the high-order-moment turbulence model are prospected.

Translate Wisely! An Evaluation of Close and Adaptive Translation Procedures in an Experiment Involving Questionnaire Translation

To challenge the commonly made assumption in cross-national survey projects that close translation yields more comparable data than adaptation, we implemented a translation experiment in the CROss-National Online Survey Panel. The English source questionnaire was split into three batches of 20 items each and was translated by three translation teams into Estonian and three teams into Slovene. The teams received specific instructions on how to translate each batch (either closely or adaptively) so that, by design, the teams translated two batches following one approach and one following the other approach. Respondents in the two countries (Estonia and Slovenia) were randomly assigned to three distinct questionnaire versions based on the same source questionnaire, each consisting of translations by all three teams and including close and adaptive translations. We developed an analytical framework to assess the translation potential of the source items (i.e., all theoretically possible translations of a specific item) and the actual translation scores (i.e., the degree of closeness vs. adaptiveness of a specific translation). We show that some items are more sensitive to the wording (small linguistic changes result in a different response behavior) while others are more robust (the meaning of the concept is retained despite linguistic changes).