Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protective Factors Against Child Victimization in the School and Community: An Exploratory Systematic Review of Longitudinal Predictors and Interacting Variables

Protective factors against the victimization of children and young people within the school and community environments (extrafamilial victimization) have received less attention than risk factors. To date, there has been no systematic review on protective factors. This systematic review therefore aimed to synthesize the prospective longitudinal research findings on the protective factors against extrafamilial victimization. A systematic search of multiple sources led to the identification of 19,053 studies. Following application of a predefined inclusion and quality assessment criteria, 13 studies exploring protective factors against peer victimization and exposure to violence were included in this review. Across these studies, 19 protective factors were explored: 9 individual factors and 10 contextual factors. Four studies also explored the impact of mediating and moderating variables on the relationship between predictors and extrafamilial victimization. Findings highlight inconsistencies in the definition and measurement of victimization, along with bias in a number of areas. Nevertheless, a small number of variables (perceptions of social competence, physical strength, and aggression) were identified as potential protective factors against extrafamilial victimization. Additionally, mediating and moderating variables were identified, and the interaction between individual and contextual protective and risk factors were highlighted. These findings are explored under the theoretical framework of the ecological systems theory and their practical and research-based implications are discussed.
Mothers' Perception and Healthcare Seeking Behavior of Pneumonia Children in Rural Bangladesh

We describe mothers' perception about signs and symptoms, causes of the illness, and healthcare seeking behaviors related to pneumonia and express the major modifiable barriers to seeking timely treatment when their under-5 children had pneumonia in rural Bangladesh. Using focus group discussion, we understood mothers' perception and healthcare seeking behavior of childhood pneumonia. Although mothers described pneumonia as a serious life threatening disease in young children but most of the mothers (n = 24) could not diagnose whether their child had pneumonia or not. Environmental factors such as dust particles, spread from coughing mother, and drinking cold water or playing with water were perceived as the causes for pneumonia. Three common barriers noted were as follows: illness was not perceived as serious enough or distance from healthcare facility or lack of money at household for seeking treatment outside. Most of the rural mothers did not have knowledge about severity of childhood pneumonia.
Early Clinical and Programmatic Outcomes with Tenofovir-Based Antiretroviral Therapy in Zambia

Background:In July 2007, amid some controversy over cost, Zambia was the first African country to introduce tenofovir (TDF) as a component of first-line antiretroviral therapy (ART) on a wide scale. Methods:We compared drug substitutions, mortality, and “programmatic failure” among adults starting TDF-, zidovudine (ZDV)-, and stavudine (d4T)-containing ART. Programmatic failure was defined as death, withdrawal, or loss to follow-up. Results:Between July 2007 and January 2009, 10,485 adults initiated ART (66% on TDF, 23% on ZDV, 11% on d4T), with a median follow-up time of 239 (interquartile range 98, 385) days. Those starting TDF were more likely to be male and more likely to have indicators of severe disease at baseline. In adjusted Cox proportional hazards models, ZDV- (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR] = 2.74, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.30-3.28) and d4T-based regimens (AHR = 1.92, 95% CI = 1.55-2.38) were associated with higher risk for drug substitution when compared with TDF-based regimens. Similar hazards were noted for overall mortality (ZDV: AHR = 0 .81, 95% CI = 0.62-1.06; d4T: AHR = 1.03, 95% CI = 0.74-1.43) and programmatic failure (ZDV: AHR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.88-1.11; d4T: AHR = 1.11, 95% CI = 0.96-1.28) when compared with TDF. Conclusions:TDF is associated with similar clinical and programmatic outcomes as ZDV and d4T but appears to be better tolerated. Although further evaluation is needed, these results are encouraging and support Zambia's policy decision.
To Test or Not to Test?: The Role of Testing in Elementary Social Studies A Collaborative Study Conducted by NCPSSE and SCPSSE

There are growing concerns among social studies professionals that social studies instruction is disappearing from elementary schools. These concerns have become more pressing as educational policies emphasize core curricula of reading, writing, mathematics, and science. Questions arise as to how social studies can resume its traditional role as one of these core curricula. One possibility is to have social studies included in the accountability movement through testing. This article contemplates the role of testing in impacting social studies instruction in the elementary curriculum through a comparative analysis of data collected from a study of practicing elementary teachers in two states: one in which social studies instruction is tested and the other in which social studies instruction is not tested.
Taking off the gloves with reference counting Immix

Despite some clear advantages and recent advances, reference counting remains a poor cousin to high-performance tracing garbage collectors. The advantages of reference counting include a) immediacy of reclamation, b) incrementality, and c) local scope of its operations. After decades of languishing with hopelessly bad performance, recent work narrowed the gap between reference counting and the fastest tracing collectors to within 10%. Though a major advance, this gap remains a substantial barrier to adoption in performance-conscious application domains. Our work identifies heap organization as the principal source of the remaining performance gap. We present the design, implementation, and analysis of a new collector, RC Immix, that replaces reference counting's traditional free-list heap organization with the line and block heap structure introduced by the Immix collector. The key innovations of RC Immix are 1) to combine traditional reference counts with per-line live object counts to identify reusable memory and 2) to eliminate fragmentation by integrating copying with reference counting of new objects and with backup tracing cycle collection. In RC Immix, reference counting offers efficient collection and the line and block heap organization delivers excellent mutator locality and efficient allocation. With these advances, RC Immix closes the 10% performance gap, matching the performance of a highly tuned production generational collector. By removing the performance barrier, this work transforms reference counting into a serious alternative for meeting high performance objectives for garbage collected languages.
A research study examining forgiveness, empathy, commitment, trust, and relational satisfaction among adult friends after relational transgressions

This research project examined how forgiveness was managed by adult friends after relational transgressions. It studied how the emotion of empathy promoted the act of forgiving and why the construct of commitment related to trust and relational satisfaction among friendship dyads. Isolating the specific emotion empathy in regards to forgiveness heightened the understanding of what emotional behaviors were used to maintain friendships once a relational transgression was experienced. Measuring and analyzing the interaction between commitment, trust, and relational satisfaction helped to determine how these constructs promoted forgiveness among adult friends.
Monitoring cigarette smoking prevalence in Britain in a timely fashion.

BACKGROUND Available estimates of cigarette smoking prevalence from the General Household Survey (GHS), the source of official smoking data in Britain, can be over a year out of date. With a number of policy initiatives being undertaken at national level, it would be useful to be able to track changes in a more timely manner. AIMS AND DESIGN We compared prevalence estimates from the Omnibus Survey, a monthly survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics, with those from the General Household Survey in order to examine whether they may provide a complementary and more timely source of cigarette smoking prevalence data. FINDINGS The age and socio-economic structure of the samples from the Omnibus and GHS surveys was very similar. When data from monthly Omnibus Surveys for the year 2000 were combined, prevalence estimates were within 1% point of those from the GHS for 2000, and overall sample sizes were also similar. The Omnibus data show a significant linear decline in prevalence between 1999 and 2002 of about 0.4% per year. This coincides with the introduction of a national strategy for reducing smoking prevalence. CONCLUSIONS The Omnibus Survey can be a useful additional tool for assessing changes in smoking prevalence.
Internet Poker Gambling Among University Students: A Risky Endeavour or a Harmless Pastime?

Two recent phenomena have marked gambling on university campuses: an increase of Internet gambling and a surge of interest in poker (McComb & Hanson, 2009). Accompanying them, greater participation and problem gambling rates among university students have been observed (Griffiths & Barnes, 2008; Wood et al., 2007). This thesis aims to describe online poker gambling patterns and the associated risks among university students, and to determine if the Internet as a context is linked to a greater risk of problematic and excessive gambling engagement and related problems. It compares online to offline poker players. The sample (N=1,256) was drawn from the University Student Gambling Habit Survey 2008 (ENHJEU) conducted among undergraduate students in three universities and three affiliated schools in Montreal, Canada. The analyses revealed that compared to offline poker players online poker players were more likely to be male and born outside of Canada. Their gambling patterns also suggested greater gambling engagement. Online poker players were much more likely than offline poker players to be identified as problem gamblers and to report problems in various major life areas. Virtually no differences were found in co-occurring risky behaviours, such as smoking, alcohol and substance use between the two groups. The findings point to an increased risk for gambling and other problems associated with the Internet and poker gambling for university students. Discussed are potential reasons including the enabling nature of the Internet setting with respect to gambling, as well as the prevailing perception of poker as a skill-based gambling format.
Muscle pathology in 57 patients with myotonic dystrophy type 2

We evaluated muscle biopsies from 57 patients with genetically confirmed myotonic dystrophy type 2/proximal myotonic myopathy (DM2/PROMM). Light microscopy showed myopathic together with “denervation‐like” changes in almost all biopsies obtained from four different muscles: increased fiber size variation, internal nuclei, small angulated fibers, pyknotic nuclear clumps, and predominant type 2 fiber atrophy. Quantitative morphometry in 18 biopsies that were immunostained for myosin heavy chain confirmed a predominance of nonselective type 2 fiber atrophy. These histological changes were similar in all patients regardless of the site of biopsy, the predominant clinical symptoms and signs, and the clinical course. It is likely that, in a number of undiagnosed patients, DM2 is the underlying disorder. With a better understanding of the histopathological pattern in DM2, biopsies from patients with undiagnosed neuromuscular disorders can now be reevaluated. Muscle Nerve 29: 275–281, 2004
The Overlapping Risk Profile Between Dialysis Patients Listed and Not Listed for Renal Transplantation

The survival advantage of kidney transplantation extends to many high‐risk ESRD patients; however, numerous factors ultimately determine which patients are evaluated and listed for the procedure. Broad goals of patient evaluation comprise identifying patients who will benefit from transplantation and excluding patients who might be placed at risk. There is limited data detailing whether current access limitations and screening strategies have achieved the goal of listing the most appropriate patients. The study estimated the life expectancy of adult patients in the United States prior to transplantation with ESRD onset from 1995 to 2003. Factors associated with transplant listing were examined based on patient prognosis after ESRD. Approximately one‐third of patients listed for transplantation within 1 year of ESRD had ≤5‐year life expectancy on dialysis. In contrast, one‐third of patients not listed had >5‐year life expectancy. The number of patients not listed with ‘good’ prognosis was significantly higher than those listed with ‘poor’ prognosis (134 382 vs. 16 807, respectively). Age, race, gender, insurance coverage and body mass index (BMI) were associated with likelihood for listing with ‘poor’ prognosis and not listing with ‘good’ prognosis. Over the past decade, many ESRD patients viable for transplantation have not listed for transplantation while higher‐risk patients have listed rapidly.
Adding Value to Key Issues Research Through Q-Sorts and Interpretive Structured Modeling

A questionnaire requiring respondents to rate the importance of key issues is the traditional data collection tool for investigating the key issues of Information Technology (IT) managers. Such an instrument does not force managers to confront the relationships between issues. Q-sort and interpretive structured modeling (ISM) force managers to consider the linkages among key issues. This article discusses the use of these methodologies for investigating key issues and demonstrates their application with data collected from Brazilian banking IT managers. This study illustrates how these approaches provide additional insights into the key concerns facing IT managers.
Complementary and Incremental Mortality Risk Prediction by Cortisol and Aldosterone in Chronic Heart Failure

Background— In patients with systolic heart failure, high levels of circulating aldosterone are associated with an adverse prognosis, and mineralocorticoid receptor blockade improves survival. The prognostic significance of cortisol that may also bind and activate the mineralocorticoid receptor in chronic heart failure is unknown. Methods and Results— Serum levels of cortisol and aldosterone were quantified in a prospective cohort study of 294 consecutive patients with chronic heart failure [48% were in New York Heart Association functional class III or IV; 58% had systolic heart failure]. During a median follow-up of 803 days (interquartile range, 314 to 1098), 79 patients died (27.3% mortality rate). Cortisol and aldosterone were independent predictors of increased mortality risk in Cox regression analyses adjusted for age, sex, New York Heart Association functional class, C-reactive protein, N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide, sodium, and hypercholesterolemia. The hazard ratio for highest versus lowest tertile of cortisol was 2.72 [95% confidence interval [CI], 1.38 to 5.36; P=0.004], and the hazard ratio for aldosterone was 2.19 (95% CI, 1.23 to 3.93; P=0.008). Patients with both cortisol and aldosterone levels above the respective medians had a 3.4-fold higher mortality risk compared with subjects with both corticosteroids below the median (95% CI, 1.54 to 7.46; P=0.0001). Addition of cortisol and aldosterone levels to the fully adjusted model significantly improved the discriminatory power [increase in Harrell’s C-statistic from 0.80 (95% CI, 0.70 to 0.90) to 0.86 (95% CI, 0.79 to 0.94; P<0.001 for change]. Conclusions— In patients with chronic heart failure, higher serum levels of both cortisol and aldosterone were independent predictors of increased mortality risk that conferred complementary and incremental prognostic value.
Mental Rotation and the Automatic Updating of Body-Centered Spatial Relationships

Blindfolded adult participants (7 male and 9 female) were asked to point to previously seen targets after a body rotation. In 1 condition, participants had to update their positions relative to the targets during rotation; in another condition, they had to ignore the rotation and to imagine that they were still in their initial orientation. In the updating condition, replicating research of J. J. Rieser (1989), response latencies were only slightly affected by the magnitude of the body rotation. In the ignoring condition, however, response latencies increased with the angular difference between the participants' new position and their original orientation, suggesting that the participants updated their positions and then retrospectively "undid" this updating to mentally reestablish their original orientation. The results are supportive of the idea that heading is updated automatically as a person moves so that she or he is always primarily oriented with respect to her or his actual position.
Metabolic syndrome in patients with schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND Our aim was to study the frequency of metabolic syndrome and associated factors in patients with schizophrenia. METHOD The study group consisted of 35 outpatients with long-term schizophrenia defined by DSM-IV criteria. Patients were assessed for the presence of metabolic syndrome, which was defined by the criteria of the National Cholesterol Education Program. All patients were on antipsychotic medication. Data were collected from Jan. 1, 2001, to Aug. 30, 2001. RESULTS Metabolic syndrome was found in 37% (N = 13) of the patients, and it was associated inversely with the total daily dose of, but not with any specific type of, antipsychotic drug. CONCLUSION The results suggest that metabolic syndrome is common among patients with schizophrenia, and it may be far more common than in general populations.
Structuring Opportunity after Entry: Who Has Access to High Quality Instruction during College?

Background/Context When inequality of opportunity is discussed in higher education, it typically pertains to access to college. Ample research has examined sociodemographic inequalities in transition to higher education and enrollment in particular types of institutions. Although providing valuable insights, social stratification research does not dedicate the same attention to students’ experiences during college and, more specifically, to inequalities in instructional quality. Research Questions Conceptualizing opportunity in terms of instructional quality, I address two specific questions: First, do students from all sociodemographic groups report similar levels of instructional quality ? And second, do students report changes in instructional quality during their time in college ? Research Design This study relies on data from three cohorts of students who entered college in the fall of 2006, 2007, and 2008 and were followed through the end of their senior year in the Wabash National Study (WNS) of Liberal Arts Education. In addition to students’ background characteristics, WNS includes detailed information regarding students’ college experiences, including instruction. Results The results reveal a substantial amount of variability in students’ reports of instructional quality. Notably, this variation is not systematically related to students’ sociodemographic characteristics, net of controls. However, the results also reveal a considerable amount of path dependency, with approximately half of the students reporting the same level of instructional quality at the beginning and end of college. Academic achievement is related to students’ reports of instructional quality in the first year, after which academic inertia carries students toward the end. Academic motivation, on the other hand, facilitates mobility to higher levels of instructional quality over time and is particularly beneficial for students who begin college reporting a low level of instructional quality. Conclusion Reported patterns offer insights into social stratification and path dependence of students’ experiences during college. Moreover, patterns of stability and change in students’ reports of instructional quality have implications for studies of college impact. The article concludes with reflections on different conceptualizations of instructional quality and recommendations for future research.
A New Functional Delay Fau

Embedded cores cannot be tested by traditional ATPG for path delay faults. Therefore, a new ATPG for path delay faults is required in order to test embedded cores whose IPs are protected in SOC environments. We propose a new and efficient functional delay ATPG for path delay faults for embedded cores whose IP is protected. The proposed algorithm uses output Boolean functions of circuits and a pair of justified constraints for a set of paths, one constraint per time frame. Experimental results show that the new ATPG is more efficient than previous approaches for embedded cores.
PixelCNN++: Improving the PixelCNN with Discretized Logistic Mixture Likelihood and Other Modifications

PixelCNNs are a recently proposed class of powerful generative models with tractable likelihood. Here we discuss our implementation of PixelCNNs which we make available at this https URL Our implementation contains a number of modifications to the original model that both simplify its structure and improve its performance. 1) We use a discretized logistic mixture likelihood on the pixels, rather than a 256-way softmax, which we find to speed up training. 2) We condition on whole pixels, rather than R/G/B sub-pixels, simplifying the model structure. 3) We use downsampling to efficiently capture structure at multiple resolutions. 4) We introduce additional short-cut connections to further speed up optimization. 5) We regularize the model using dropout. Finally, we present state-of-the-art log likelihood results on CIFAR-10 to demonstrate the usefulness of these modifications.
Reducing the Computational Complexity of Multimicrophone Acoustic Models with Integrated Feature Extraction

Recently, we presented a multichannel neural network model trained to perform speech enhancement jointly with acoustic modeling [1], directly from raw waveform input signals. While this model achieved over a 10% relative improvement compared to a single channel model, it came at a large cost in computational complexity, particularly in the convolutions used to implement a time-domain filterbank. In this paper we present several different approaches to reduce the complexity of this model by reducing the stride of the convolution operation and by implementing filters in the frequency domain. These optimizations reduce the computational complexity of the model by a factor of 3 with no loss in accuracy on a 2,000 hour Voice Search task.