Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mobility and the spread of human immunodeficiency virus into rural areas of West Africa.

BACKGROUND In eastern and southern Africa, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic appeared first in urban centres and then spread to rural areas. Its overall prevalence is lower in West Africa, with the highest levels still found in cities. Rural areas are also threatened, however, because of the population's high mobility. We conducted a study in three different communities with contrasting infection levels to understand the epidemiology of HIV infection in rural West Africa. METHOD A comparative cross-sectional study using a standardized questionnaire and biological tests was conducted among samples in two rural communities of Senegal (Niakhar and Bandafassi, 866 and 952 adults, respectively) and a rural community of Guinea-Bissau (Caio, 1416 adults). We compared the distribution of population characteristics and analysed risk factors for HIV infection in Caio at the individual level. RESULTS The level of HIV infection was very low in Niakhar (0.3%) and Bandafassi (0.0%), but 10.5% of the adults in Caio were infected, mostly with HIV type 2 (HIV-2). Mobility was very prevalent in all sites. Short-term mobility was found to be a risk factor for HIV infection among men in Caio (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 2.06; 95% CI: 1.06-3.99). Women from Caio who reported casual sex in a city during the past 12 months were much more likely to be infected with HIV (aOR = 5.61 95% CI: 1.56-20.15). Short-term mobility was associated with risk behaviours at all sites. CONCLUSIONS Mobility appears to be a key factor for HIV spread in rural areas of West Africa, because population movement enables the virus to disseminate and also because of the particularly risky behaviours of those who are mobile. More prevention efforts should be directed at migrants from rural areas who travel to cities with substantial levels of HIV infection.
Investigating a batterer typology: the role of personality characteristics, attachment, and family of origin dynamics

Investigating a Batterer Typology: The Role of Personality Characteristics, Attachment, and Family of Origin Dynamics. (May 2005) Lori R. Robinson, B.A., The University of Texas at Austin; M.Ed., Southwest Texas State University Co-Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. David Lawson Dr. Victor Willson The purpose of this study was to further investigate the tripartite typology of batterers, proposed initially by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994). This study empirically examined the typologies of male batterers based on personality characteristics followed by an examination of the possible differences between batterer typologies based on attachment dimensions, severity of violence in current adult romantic relationships, witnessing or experiencing family of origin violence, and family of origin dynamics. Participants in this study include a sample of 93 court-mandated adult males who were on probation for some type of spousal abuse. Data was obtained by administering a demographic form, severity of abuse rating form, the Millon Clinical Multiaxial InventoryIII (Millon, Davis, Millon, 1997), Straus’ (1979) Conflict Tactics Scale, the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale (FACES-III)(Olson, Portner, & Labee, 1985), and the Adult Attachment Scale (Collins & Reid, 1990). Four clusters of men were identified as Borderline/Dysphoric (B/D), Antisocial (A), Non-Pathological (N-P), and Depressive (D). Three of the groups resembled the predicted subtypes (B/D, A, and N-P). The results of this study indicated that the N-P
Investigation of cerebral haemodynamics by near-infrared spectroscopy in young healthy volunteers reveals posture-dependent spontaneous oscillations

Autonomic reflexes enable the cardiovascular system to respond to gravitational displacement of blood during changes in posture. Spontaneous oscillations present in the cerebral and systemic circulation of healthy subjects have demonstrated a regulatory role. This study assessed the dynamic responses of the cerebral and systemic circulation upon standing up and the posture dependence of spontaneous oscillations. In ten young healthy volunteers, blood pressure and cerebral haemodynamics were continuously monitored non-invasively using the Portapres® and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), respectively. Oscillatory changes in the cerebral NIRS signals and the diastolic blood pressure (DBP) signal have been identified by the fast Fourier analysis. Blood pressure increased during standing and returned to basal level when volunteers sat on a chair. The mean value of cerebral tissue oxygen index (TOI) as measured by NIRS did not demonstrate any significant changes. Oscillatory changes in DBP, oxyhaemoglobin concentration [O2Hb] and TOI showed a significant increase when subjects were standing. Investigation of the low frequency component (∼0.1 Hz) of these fluctuations revealed posture dependence associated with activation of autonomic reflexes. Systemic and cerebral changes appeared to preserve adequate blood flow and cerebral perfusion during standing in healthy volunteers. Oscillatory changes in [O2Hb] and TOI, which may be related to the degree of cerebral sympathetic stimulation, are posture dependent in healthy subjects.
Socioeconomic Status, Parenting Knowledge and Behaviors, and Perceived Maltreatment of Young Low‐Birth‐Weight Children

This article estimates the relative effects of socioeconomic status and parenting knowledge and behaviors on whether nurse practitioners perceive a family as being suspected of or confirmed for child maltreatment during the first 3 years of a child’s life. Results suggest that both socioeconomic status and parenting characteristics contribute substantially to perceived maltreatment. While parenting knowledge and behaviors appear to have a larger impact, only a small portion of the effects of socioeconomic status can be explained by these factors. This implies that families at risk of maltreatment may require more comprehensive interventions than are frequently offered by child welfare service systems.
The use of mobile phones in the context of a guanxi system

Despite the rapid expansion of mobile phone technologies in agricultural development contexts, little work has explored how this adoption intersects with contextualized social systems. Rural China, in particular, represents a large population of agricultural workers who are adopting mobile phone technology but have so far remained overlooked as a focus of these studies. This study addresses these gaps by conducting an indepth qualitative study of the complex relationships between rural horticulture farmers, their buyers and government officials in China and how each has integrated mobile phone technology into their social system. The results find that while all groups have benefited from the incorporation of mobile phones, some groups enjoy more advantages than others. At the same time, the larger amount of land and the more integrated the communication technology, the more advantage the farmer enjoys in the market. Expanding these social linkages, buyers are eager for more communication through mobile phones than most of the farmers currently provide and government officials are trying to use mobile phones to promote the local agriculture development. Additionally, these farmers work within a unique social system called guanxi where reciprocal favors define the sociological structure. For most of the farmers, the introduction of mobile phones has not reduced their reliance on guanxi, although the farmers that control the largest land area are using mobile phones in ways that lessen its
100-kD proteins of Golgi- and trans-Golgi network-associated coated vesicles have related but distinct membrane binding properties

The 100-110-kD proteins (alpha-, beta-, beta'-, and gamma-adaptins) of clathrin-coated vesicles and the 110-kD protein (beta-COP) of the nonclathrin-coated vesicles that mediate constitutive transport through the Golgi have homologous protein sequences. To determine whether homologous processes are involved in assembly of the two types of coated vesicles, the membrane binding properties of their coat proteins were compared. After treatment of MDBK cells with the fungal metabolite Brefeldin A (BFA), beta-COP was redistributed to the cytoplasm within 15 s, gamma-adaptin and clathrin in the trans-Golgi network (TGN) dispersed within 30 s, but the alpha-adaptin and clathrin present on coated pits and vesicles derived from the plasma membrane remained membrane associated even after a 15-min exposure to BFA. In PtK1 cells and MDCK cells, BFA did not affect beta-COP binding or Golgi morphology but still induced redistribution of gamma-adaptin and clathrin from TGN membranes to the cytoplasm. Thus BFA affects the binding of coat proteins to membranes in the Golgi region (Golgi apparatus and TGN) but not plasma membranes. However, the Golgi binding interactions of beta- COP and gamma-adaptin are distinct and differentially sensitive to BFA. BFA treatment did not release gamma-adaptin or clathrin from purified clathrin-coated vesicles, suggesting that their distribution to the cytoplasm after BFA treatment of cells was due to interference with their rebinding to TGN membranes after a normal cycle of disassembly. This was confirmed using an in vitro assay in which gamma-adaptin binding to TGN membranes was blocked by BFA and enhanced by GTP gamma S, similar to the binding of beta-COP to Golgi membranes. These results suggest the involvement of GTP-dependent proteins in the association of the 100-kD coat proteins with membranes in the Golgi region of the cell.
Expanding the notion of campus climate: The effect of religion and spirituality on the perception of campus climate

Religion/spirituality is a salient facet of identity for many college students, yet addressing issues related to spirituality/religion is contentious in many higher education institutions. Prior research has shown that various other facets of identity, including race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, affect a student’s perception of campus climate, but religious/spiritual identity has not been examined in the same manner. Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, this study empirically tests the addition of religion/spirituality to the campus climate theory developed by Hurtado et al. (1999). Data came from the 2010 College Senior Survey administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. Results indicate that religious and spiritual identity have significant direct effects on the perception and other aspects of campus climate. Future research is needed to extend the understanding between religious and spiritual identity and the perception of campus climate.
The social, the material, and the ontology of non-material technological objects

: Recent calls for more attention to the impact of the material in organizing processes tend to neglect the non-material nature of many of the technological objects that populate our world. We address this shortcoming by setting out a theory of non-material technological objects, a central feature of which is the distinction between such objects and what we call their bearers. We then use this theory to elaborate various key features of computer files, to generalise Faulkner and Runde’s recent theory of the identity of technological objects, and in a critical evaluation of the emerging Sociomateriality perspective.
Governing chronic illness through integrated care

As rates of chronic illness have increased in recent decades there have been significant changes in national and international health systems. Emerging approaches have shifted the focus from hospital-based, acute and curative interventions to the management of chronic illness through primary health care programs in local communities. Integrated care has emerged as an increasingly prominent approach within primary health care programs that target chronically ill populations. This empirical doctoral study of an integrated care program explores how global discourses, which position the problem of chronic illness as an issue of cost to health care systems and a burden to the community, are translated from national policies to everyday lives in domestic households. Through close analysis of six chronically ill clients of a state-run primary health care program, named HealthOne Camara, this study brings to the fore the alignments, relays and connections of integrated care in ways that contrast with the dominant linear views typically generated through policy analysis and program evaluation studies. Using a governmentality perspective based on the later work of Michel Foucault and other writers on governmentality, the study identifies patterns and consistencies across policy texts and everyday practices of integrated care in HealthOne Camara. Innovatively, Foucault’s work on space and heterotopia is used in the study to identify the spaces of integrated care as heterotopias. In doing so, the focus shifts from what integrated care is to an analysis of how this care weaves through the lives of the HealthOne Camara clients. By drawing on empirical and documentary data, this study offers a unique way of rethinking chronic illness and integrated care within primary health care programs. It highlights the tensions and complexities of integrated care for chronically ill clients in a local site. The analysis of these tensions opens up new ways of thinking about HealthOne’s integrated care as an attempt to direct the self-governing abilities of people in certain ways. Examining the localised practices of care through the analytics of space and heterotopia brings to the fore the tension and resistance that emerges as practices of ‘care’ attempt to align complex lives with the often linear logic of policy. As rates of chronic illness increase, levels of health inequalities continue to rise and governments remain focused on reducing costs of care, the knowledge generated through this study argues for careful consideration of what the localised and unintended effects of programs of integrated care may be.
Loss Development Using Credibility

Actnaries use development techniques to estimate fnture losses. Unfortunately, real data is subject to both random fluctuations and systematic distortions; only in textbooks can we expect smooth, stable development patterns. To correct for thii, developed losses are often weighted with a prior estimate to stabilize the results. This paper describes a method that applies credibiity directly to the loss development process. The approach appeals to our intuition, but it also has a sound theoretical base. While it requires little more data than the familiar Iirk ratio method and is almost as easy to use, it responds more gracefully to situations in which the data is thin and random fluctuations are severe.
Lattice Codes for the Binary Deletion Channel

The construction of deletion codes for the Levenshtein metric is reduced to the construction of codes over the integers for the Manhattan metric by run length coding. The latter codes are constructed by expurgation of translates of lattices. These lattices, in turn, are obtained from Construction~A applied to binary codes and $\Z_4-$codes. A lower bound on the size of our codes for the Manhattan distance are obtained through generalized theta series of the corresponding lattices.
Gender norms and family planning decision-making in Tanzania: a qualitative study

Experience suggests that the incorporation of gender approaches into family planning (FP) and reproductive health (RH) programs may increase their impact and sustainability, but further work is needed to examine the interactions between gender norms and family planning and to incorporate this understanding into behavior change communication (BCC) in specific social contexts. We conducted open-ended, in-depth interviews with 30 young currently married men, 30 young married women and 12 older people who influenced FP decisions. Six focus group interviews were also conducted. The interviews focused on the role of gender norms in reproductive decision-making and contraceptive use among young married men and women in Tanzania. The findings suggest that gender factors, such as men's dominance in decision-making do function as barriers to the use of modern contraceptives, but that fear of side effects, by both men and women, may be even more important deterrents. Results from this research will inform the development of BCC interventions to be tested in a subsequent intervention study in which gender factors and poor information about contraceptive methods will be addressed.
Detecting Large-Scale Collusion in Procurement Auctions

We document evidence of widespread collusion among construction firms in Japan using a novel data set covering most of the construction projects procured by the Japanese national government. Our data set contains information on about 42,000 auctions whose award amount sums to about $40 billion. We identify collusion by focusing on rebids that occur for auctions in which all (initial) bids fail to meet the secret reserve price. We identify more than 1,000 firms whose conduct is inconsistent with competitive behavior. These bidders were awarded about 15,000 projects, or about 37% of the total number of projects in our sample.
How long can inflation tax compensate for the loss of government revenue in war economies? Evidence From Burundi

The paper shows that civil war in Burundi in the 1990s has provoked an unprecedented decline in government revenue. Both foreign aid transfers and revenue from domestic sources dried up, inducing the government to rely more on inflation tax. Using quarterly data covering the period from 1980-1 to 2002-4 to measure the sensitivity of money demand to inflation we find that the long-run semi-elasticity of inflation to real money in circulation trebled between the pre-war to the war period. The remarkable increase of the semi-elasticity translates what is known in the literature as economic agents. flight from domestic currency. , a strategy that limits the governments capacity to use inflation tax to compensate for the loss in more traditional revenue sources. Shedding light on the behaviour of the demand for real money amidst persistent political and economic instability, illustrates the limits of using inflation and money creation as a dependable source of government revenue.
An algorithm for matching contextualized schemas via SAT

The development of more and more complex distributed applications over large networks of computers has raised the problem of semantic inter-operability across autonomous applications. In this paper we propose an algorithm, called CTX-MATCH, for discovering semantic relations be-tween concepts belonging to heterogeneous and autonomously developed semantic schemas. The most significant innovations of the algorithm, which is theoretically founded on a well–known theory of contextual reasoning in AI, are that (i) the problem of finding relationships between concepts in different schemas is encoded as a problem of logical satisfiability (and so mappings have a well–defined semantic); and (ii) the way linguistic and domain knowledge is used to build the SAT problem. In this paper, we are mainly focused on the first aspect. The algorithm has been implemented as part of a peer-to-peer system for Distributed Knowledge Management, and tested on significant cases.
The Power of Emotional Appeals in Advertising

ABSTRACT In this article, the authors explore the role of affective appeals in advertising on time-dependent decisions—that is, decisions for the short term versus the long term. They introduce the distinction between abstract and concrete affect and, in two experiments, show that concrete affective appeals drive behavioral intentions more strongly in the short-term perspective, whereas abstract affective appeals appear to drive behavioral intentions more strongly in the longer-term perspective. Their findings help extend our thinking on the role of emotional appeals in advertising as they also introduce a new distinction in such appeals: “concrete versus abstract affect. ” The authors provide examples and illustrations for concrete and abstract affect and discuss the implications of their finding.
Carrier Phase Ambiguity Resolution for the Global Positioning System Applied to Geodetic Baselines up to 2000 km

The Global Positioning System (GPS) carrier phase data are biased by an integer number of cycles. A successful strategy has been developed and demonstrated for resolving these integer ambiguities for geodetic baselines of up to 2000 km in length, resulting in a factor of 3 improvement in baseline accuracy, and giving centimeter-level agreement with coordinates inferred by very long baseline interferometry in the western United States. For this experiment, a method using pseudorange data is shown to be more reliable than one using ionospheric constraints for baselines longer than 200 km. An automated algorithm exploits the correlations between the many phase biases of a GPS receiver network to enable the resolution of ambiguities for very long baselines. A method called bias optimizing has been developed, which, unlike traditional bias fixing, does not require an arbitrary confidence test. Bias optimizing is expected to be preferable to bias fixing for poorly configured networks. In order to enable ambiguity resolution for long baselines, it is recommended that future GPS networks have a wide spectrum of baseline lengths ranging from 1000 km and that GPS receivers be used which can acquire dual-frequency P code data.
Selective Beliefs over Preferences

People tend to believe what they want to believe. In this paper, I examine how people interpret others’ behavior to form beliefs about others’ preferences. I develop a “selective beliefs” model of social preferences in which people have intrinsic preferences over outcomes and also hold prior beliefs about the preferences of others. I propose that people attempt to selectively perceive and interpret others’ behavior such that their posterior beliefs about others’ preferences minimally interfere with their own self-interest. From a general model, I derive two specific models designed for the regression analysis of a semi-transparent simplified ultimatum game experiment, where I assume that the second-mover forms posterior beliefs about first-mover’s preferences over the second-mover’s two possible outcome choices. The inequality aversion model is designed to measure the second-mover’s behavioral response to an available signal indicating that the first-mover has some degree of aversion to inequality. The income concern model measures the second-mover’s behavioral response to an available signal indicating that the first-mover is either concerned or unconcerned about income. ∗I am ever grateful to my thesis adviser, Professor Botond Kőszegi, for his invaluable input and for coolly fielding an extraordinary number of questions on everything from psychology and economics to word-processing. I also thank Professor Roger Craine for his generous advice on the research process.