Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pesticides: Perceived Threat and Protective Behaviors Among Latino Farmworkers

ABSTRACT Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge and beliefs of 72 Latino farmworkers in North Carolina about the threat of health effects of pesticides, including cancer. It sought to explore relationships between threat perceptions and pesticide protective behaviors observed in the field. Methods/Results: Utilizing stepwise multiple regression, the authors found that years worked in agriculture in the United States was associated with decreased use of protective clothing. Conclusion: Pesticide protective behaviors in the field may be improved by utilizing moderately experienced farmworkers (<10 years) as lay advisors to reinforce training.
Why Total Quality Management Programs Do Not Persist: The Role of Management Quality and Implications for Leading a TQM Transformation

Top-down total quality management (TQM) programs often fail to create deep and sustained change in organizations. They become a fad soon replaced by another fad. Failure to institutionalize TQM can be attributed to a gap between top management's rhetoric about their intentions for TQM and the reality of implementation in various subunits of the organization. The gap varies from subunit to subunit due to the quality of management in each. By quality of management is meant the capacity of senior team to (1) develop commitment to the new TQM direction and behave and make decisions that are consistent with it, (2) develop the cross-functional mechanisms, leadership skills, and team culture needed for TQM implementation, and (3) create a climate of open dialogues about progress in the TQM transformation that will enable learning and further change. The TQM transformations will persist only if top management requires and ultimately institutionalizes an honest organizational-wide conversation that surfaces valid data about the quality of management in each subunit of the firm and leads to changes in management quality or replacement of managers.
The impact of life skills training on behavior problems in left-behind children in rural China: A pilot study

A randomized controlled experimental pilot study was conducted in order to investigate the effect of life skills training on behavior problems in left-behind children (LBC) in rural China. Sixty-eight LBC were recruited from a middle school in rural China. The intervention group took a ten-week-long life skills training course. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Teacher’s Report Form (TRF) were used to evaluate the behavioral problems of the children at three separate intervals: Prior to the intervention, the first week following the intervention, and three months after the intervention. Children in the intervention group showed significant improvement both in the CBCL and the TRF compared to children in the control group. Significant improvements were found in the CBCL total scores, internalizing behavior, externalizing behavior and seven subscales scores (p > 0.05). In TRF, similar significant improvements were found, except in internalizing behavior and the subscale of thought problems (p > 0.05). The effect of intervention remained the same three months after the intervention. As a pilot study, the life skill training was found to be effective in improving behavior problems in the LBC in rural China, with the exception of thought problems.
Transition to blended learning: experiences from the first year of our blended learning Bachelor of Nursing Studies programme

Background: The School of Nursing at Dublin City University offered a new blended learning Bachelor of Nursing Studies programme in the academic year 2011. Aim: To document the experiences of the academic team making the transition from a face-to-face classroom-delivered programme to the new blended learning format. Method: Academics who delivered the programme were asked to describe their experiences of developing the new programme via two focus groups. Results: Five dominant themes were identified: Staff Readiness; Student Readiness; Programme Delivery and Student Engagement; Assessment of Module Learning Outcomes and Feedback; and Reflecting on the First Year and Thinking of the Future. Face-to-face tutorials were identified as very important to both academics and students. Reservations about whether migrating the programme to an online format encouraged students to engage in additional practices of plagiarism were expressed by some. Student ability/readiness to engage with technology-enhanced learning was an important determinant of their own success academically. Discussion: In the field of nursing blended learning is a relatively new and emerging field which will require huge cultural shifts for staff and students alike.
Retrieval of Relational Information: A Role for the Left Inferior Prefrontal Cortex

Neuroimaging studies have implicated different areas of prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe structures (MTL) in episodic retrieval tasks. However, the role of specific regions in particular aspects of episodic memory is still unclear. In this experiment we studied changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) associated with relational and nonrelational retrieval of studied pairs of words. For relational retrieval, a list of either studied or rearranged pairs was presented and subjects (n = 8) were asked to indicate whether pairs had appeared on the study list. Under the nonrelational retrieval condition they indicated whether one or both words of the pair had appeared on the study list. As compared to the baseline condition (looking at a cross-mark), increased rCBF was observed in the left inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPFC) for both studied pairs and rearranged pairs under the relational retrieval condition. Under the nonrelational condition, an increase was observed in right inferior frontal gyrus. The MTL showed a trend for increased rCBF in the rearranged-pair condition. This increase was probably associated with the encoding that accompanies retrieval of novel stimuli. Results suggest that the lateralized activation of prefrontal cortex observed in episodic memory tasks may be related to the degree of relational processing involved. The LIPFC appears to be associated with relational retrieval and the right prefrontal cortex with nonrelational retrieval.
The Starvation Symptom Inventory: Development and Psychometric Properties

Background: Starvation symptoms are common in patients with anorexia nervosa, and according to the transdiagnostic cognitive behavioural theory for eating disorders, they contribute to maintaining the eating disorder psychopathology. The aim of this study was therefore to describe the design and validation of the Starvation Symptoms Inventory (SSI); a self-report questionnaire that examines the symptoms of starvation in underweight patients with eating disorders. Methods: 150 female patients with anorexia nervosa were recruited, as well as 341 healthy control subjects, 30 not-underweight patients with an eating disorder, and 15 patients with bipolar depressive episodes. The 150 patients completed the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire and the Brief Symptom Inventory. All participants rated their starvation symptoms on a continuous Likert-type scale (0–6), and reported the number of days in which they had experienced them in the previous 28 days. Results: Principal component analysis identified a single-factor, 15-item scale, which demonstrated good internal consistency (α = 0.91) and test–retest reliability (r = 0.90). The SSI global score was significantly correlated with eating disorder and general psychopathology, demonstrating good convergent validity. SSI scores were significantly higher in the anorexia nervosa sample than in the healthy control, not-underweight eating disorder and bipolar depressive episode samples. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the SSI is a valid self-report questionnaire that may provide important clinical information regarding symptoms of starvation in patients with anorexia nervosa.
C*-isomorphisms, Jordan isomorphisms, and numerical range preserving maps

Let V = B(H) or S(H), where B(H) is the algebra of a bounded linear operator acting on the Hilbert space H, and S(H) is the set of self-adjoint operators in B(H). Denote the numerical range of A ∈ B(H) by W(A) = {(Ax,x): x ∈ H, (x,x) = 1}. It is shown that a surjective map O: V → V satisfies W(AB + BA) = W(O(A)O(B) + O(B)O(A)) for all A, B ∈ V if and only if there is a unitary operator U ∈ B(H) such that O has the form X → ±U*XU or X → ±U*X t U, where X t is the transpose of X with respect to a fixed orthonormal basis. In other words, the map O or -O is a C*-isomorphism on B(H) and a Jordan isomorphism on S(H). Moreover, if H has finite dimension, then the surjective assumption on O can be removed.
No evidence for acid‐catalyzed secondary organic aerosol formation in power plant plumes over metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia

Aircraft‐based measurements of the water‐soluble fraction of fine PM organic carbon (WSOC) and inorganic salt composition in the Atlanta, GA region were conducted in the summer of 2004. Five notable plumes of SO2, apparently from coal‐fired power plants, were intercepted, and had NH4+/SO42− molar ratios ranging from approximately 0.8 to 1.4 compared to molar ratios near 2 outside of the plumes. Sulfate aerosol concentrations increased from a regional background of 5–8 μg m−3 to as high as 19.5 μg m−3 within these plumes. No increase in WSOC concentrations was observed in plumes compared to out‐of‐plumes within a WSOC measurement uncertainty of 8%. These measurements suggest that secondary organic aerosol formation via heterogeneous acid‐catalyzed reactions within power plant plumes are not likely a significant contributor to the ambient aerosol mass loading in Atlanta and the surrounding region. Because this region is rich in both biogenic and anthropogenic volatile organic carbon (VOC), the results may be widely applicable.
Stereotyping and self-stereotyping in a natural intergroup context : the case of heterosexual and homosexual men

A field study examined stereotyping and self-stereotyping in a natural intergroup context including a stigmatized minority (gay men) and a dominant majority (straight men). Sixty-two members of each group answered a questionnaire which was concerned mainly with differentiation within (heterogeneity) and differentiation between ingroup and outgroup on attributes varying in typicality (straight vs. gay) and valence (positive vs. negative). On the whole, the results confirmed our assumption that straight and gay men participate in the same network of stereotypes and consequently share the prevailing representations of straight and gay men. In line with social identity theory, it was also found that membership in the stigmatized minority was highly identifying but not satisfying, and that its members (gay men) attempted to secure a positive social identity through social competition and social creativity. Finally, the relationship between (self-) stereotyping and social reality is discussed briefly.
Distribution of Campylobacter jejuni multilocus sequence types isolated from chickens in Poland

&NA; Poultry is recognized as the most important source of food‐related transmission of Campylobacter jejuni to humans and campylobacteriosis is the most commonly reported zoonotic bacterial disease in the European Union. It has been documented that C. jejuni is genetically diverse and analyses of bacterial isolates usually show a large strain variety. Therefore, molecular typing of strains represents an important tool to study the genetic diversity of isolates and to trace individual strains that cause human infections. The aim of the study was characterization of genetic population structure and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of C. jejuni isolated from Polish chickens. C. jejuni from chicken ceca and the corresponding carcasses (72 and 61 strains, respectively), originating from 128 flocks in Poland during February 2011 and May 2013, were used in the study. The isolates were tested for their population structure and genetic diversity using a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme with connection to their antimicrobial resistance. The molecular analysis of 133 C. jejuni generated 39 different sequence types (ST); 3 of them were defined for the first time. Additionally, 16 STs were represented by single isolates. The most common STs observed were 6411 (16.5% isolates) and 257 (15.0% strains). The first mentioned ST was resistant to 3 different classes of antibiotics, i.e., quinolones, tetracyclines, and aminoglycosides. Overall, 125 (94.4%) of C. jejuni isolates demonstrated antimicrobial resistance and the most frequent AMR profile observed was ciprofloxacin, nalidixic acid, tetracycline (47.4% strains). Likewise, the clonal complexes CC 257 and CC 353 were defined as the predominant molecular groups covering altogether 37 C. jejuni strains. No associations between CCs and the origin of the samples as well as the place of isolation were found. This study highlights that the C. jejuni population from chickens in Poland was diverse and showed a weak clonal structure.
Part of Speech Tagging for English Text Data

A variety of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, such as named entity recognition, stemming and question answering, benefit from knowledge of the words syntactic categories or Partof-Speech (POS) [4][6]. POS taggers have been successfully applied to assign a single best POS to every word in a corpus [2][5][12]. This paper reports on the implementation and empiric comparison of three supervised, stochastic tagging approaches (Unigram Model, Hidden Markov Model, Viterbi algorithm). The presented comparison not only quantifies the tagging accuracy achieved by the Viterbi algorithm (93.9% on average), but also determines the partial accuracy gain that different components represented in Viterbi account for.
Thinking about Evidence1

LEONARD VOLE is charged with murdering a rich elderly lady, Miss French. He had befriended her, and visited her regularly at her home, including the night of her death. Miss French had recently changed her will, leaving Vole all her money. She died from a blow to the back of the head. There were various pieces of incriminating evidence: Vole was poor and looking for work; he had visited a travel agent to enquire about luxury cruises soon after Miss French had changed her will; the maid claimed that Vole was with Miss French shortly before she was killed; the murderer did not force entry into the house; Vole had blood stains on his cuffs that matched Miss French’s blood type. As befi ts a good crime story, there were also several pieces of exonerating evidence: the maid admitted that she disliked Vole; the maid was previously the sole benefactor in Miss French’s will; Vole’s blood type was the same as Miss French’s, and thus also matched the blood found on his cuffs; Vole claimed that he had cut his wrist slicing ham; Vole had a scar on his wrist to back this claim. There was one other critical piece of defence evidence: Vole’s wife, Romaine, was to testify that Vole had returned home at 9.30 p.m. This would place him far away from the crime scene at the time of Miss French’s death. However, during the trial Romaine was called as a witness for the prosecution. Dramatically, she changed her story and testifi ed that Vole had returned home at 10.10 p.m. , with blood on his cuffs, and had proclaimed: ‘I’ve killed her. ’ Just as the case looked hopeless for Vole, a mystery woman supplied the defence lawyer with a bundle of letters. Allegedly these were
Recreational Angler Perspectives of Nonnative Fishes

ABSTRACT Although fish invasions have implications for conservation and resource management, research on public attitudes toward nonnative fishes is lacking. We surveyed boat and canal bank recreational anglers in the Everglades to assess their awareness, preferences, and perspectives of native versus nonnative fishes. Our findings showed that 79% of anglers were aware of the presence of nonnative fishes, and overall awareness was positively affected by the frequency of fishing, and years of angler experience at study sites. Frequency of fishing had a stronger effect on canal bank anglers. Boat anglers had higher awareness of nonnatives, higher familiarity with “nonnative” terminology, and expressed greater preferences for native fish. Most anglers favored native species (72% preference), and targeted native fishes, particularly Florida Largemouth Bass (66%). Overall, findings show that despite the prevalence of nonnative species, anglers favored native fishes and supported native fish conservation.
A randomized trial comparing the cost-effectiveness of 2 approaches for treating unilateral nasolacrimal duct obstruction.

OBJECTIVE To compare the cost-effectiveness of 2 approaches for treating unilateral nasolacrimal duct obstruction (NLDO). METHODS One hundred sixty-three infants aged 6 to less than 10 months with unilateral NLDO were randomly assigned to receive immediate office-based nasolacrimal duct probing (n = 82) or 6 months of observation/nonsurgical management (n = 81) followed by probing in a facility for persistent symptoms. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Treatment success was defined as the absence of clinical signs of NLDO (epiphora, increased tear lake, mucous discharge) on masked examination at age 18 months. Cost of treatment between randomization and age 18 months included costs for all surgical procedures and medications. RESULTS In the observation/deferred facility-probing group, NLDO resolved within 6 months without surgery in 44 of the 67 patients (66%; 95% CI, 54% to 76%) who completed the 6-month visit. Twenty-two (27%) of the 81 patients in the observation/deferred facility-probing group underwent surgery, 4 of whom were operated on within the initial 6 months. At age 18 months, 69 of 75 patients (92%) in the immediate office-probing group were treatment successes, compared with 58 of 71 observation/deferred facility-probing group patients (82%) (10% difference in success; 95% CI, -1% to 21%). The mean cost of treatment was $562 in the immediate office-probing group compared with $701 in the observation/deferred facility-probing group (difference, -$139; 95% CI, -$377 to $94). The immediate office-probing group experienced 3.0 fewer months of symptoms (95% CI, -1.8 to -4.0). CONCLUSIONS The immediate office-probing approach is likely more cost-effective than observation followed by deferred facility probing if needed. Adoption of the immediate office-probing approach would result in probing in approximately two-thirds of infants whose obstruction would have resolved within 6 months of nonsurgical management, but would largely avoid the need for probing under general anesthesia. APPLICATION TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Although unilateral NLDO often resolves without surgery, immediate office probing is an effective and potentially cost-saving treatment option. TRIAL REGISTRATION clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00780741.
High-Performance Uniaxial Tensile Strained n-Channel JL SOI FETs and Triangular JL Bulk FinFETs for Nanoscaled Applications

In this paper, one proposed an effective method to enhance current drivability of junctionless FETs (JL-FETs) by utilizing uniaxial tensile strain effects. The strained layers were deposited on JL-FETs on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and bulk Si wafers, respectively. Strained JL SOI FETs show an extremely low subthreshold swing (S.S.) of 65 mV/decade with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$I_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}}/I_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}} >10^{9}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>; strained JL bulk FinFETs show an S.S. of 75 mV/decade with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$I_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}}/I_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}}>10^{7}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. For strained JL bulk FinFETs, a triangular fin shape could suppress leakage current effectively. Regardless of substrates, JL FETs showed excellent performance owing to uniaxial tensile strain technology. Analysis of leakage current in strained JL FETs included effects on Gate-induced drain leakage trap-assisted tunneling effects were discussed by <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I}_{D}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{G}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> curves under various temperatures and activation energy. Compared with JL SOI gate-all-around structures, JL bulk FinFET possesses higher <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I}_{D}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and offer the promise of higher integration flexibility for Si CMOS compatible process for the future applications.
Bursting dynamics due to a symmetry-breaking period-adding cascade

By J. ABSHAGEN, J. M. LOPEZ, F. MARQUES and G. PF ISTER Leibniz-Institute of Marine Science, University of Kiel, 24105 Kiel, Germany Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA Departament de F́ısica Aplicada, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 08034, Barcelona, Spain Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, University of Kiel, 24105 Kiel, Germany
miR-200a Prevents Renal Fibrogenesis Through Repression of TGF-β2 Expression

OBJECTIVE Progressive fibrosis in the diabetic kidney is driven and sustained by a diverse range of profibrotic factors. This study examines the critical role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the regulation of the key fibrotic mediators, TGF-β1 and TGF-β2. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Rat proximal-tubular epithelial cells (NRK52E) were treated with TGF-β1 and TGF-β2 for 3 days, and expression of markers of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and fibrogenesis were assessed by RT-PCR and Western blotting. The expression of miR-141 and miR-200a was also assessed, as was their role as translational repressors of TGF-β signaling. Finally, these pathways were explored in two different mouse models, representing early and advanced diabetic nephropathy. RESULTS Both TGF-β1 and TGF-β2 induced EMT and fibrogenesis in NRK52E cells. TGF-β1 and TGF-β2 also downregulated expression of miR-200a. The importance of these changes was demonstrated by the finding that ectopic expression miR-200a downregulated smad-3 activity and the expression of matrix proteins and prevented TGF-β–dependent EMT. miR-200a also downregulated the expression of TGF-β2, via direct interaction with the 3′ untranslated region of TGF-β2. The renal expression of miR-141 and miR-200a was also reduced in mouse models representing early and advanced kidney disease. CONCLUSIONS miR-200a and miR-141 significantly impact on the development and progression of TGF-β–dependent EMT and fibrosis in vitro and in vivo. These miRNAs appear to be intricately involved in fibrogenesis, both as downstream mediators of TGF-β signaling and as components of feedback regulation, and as such represent important new targets for the prevention of progressive kidney disease in the context of diabetes.