Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attitudes to abortion in Australia: 1972 to 2003

Since the October 2004 Federal election Australia has embarked on a new abortion debate. Some commentators suggest that public opinion has turned away from a pro-choice position. However the new 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes shows this is not so: 81 per cent of Australians are pro-choice and only nine per cent are definitely anti-choice. This and other surveys show that the only strong constituencies for change are among some evangelical Christians and some Coalition candidates in Federal elections. Women of child-bearing age are overwhelmingly pro-choice.
Demand for Prescription Drugs: The Effects of Managed Care Pharmacy Benefits

This paper examines how demand for prescription drugs is influenced by different types of insurance. In order to understand demand characteristics and the competitiveness of pharmaceutical markets, both intermolecular (therapeutic) and intramolecular (generic) substitutions are studied in the antidepressant and beta blocker (anti- hypertensive) markets. Mixed logit and other discrete choice models are applied to national survey and product sales data. The results indicate that demand in managed care sectors is more price elastic than in other sectors. Demand in the self-paid sector is found to be the least price elastic, despite the fact that patients must pay for the entire cost of drugs. The results confirm the effectiveness of managed care incentives in shifting prescription patterns toward less expensive products, and suggest the existence of an agency problem between physicians and patients.
Making mentoring meaningful: hospitality and tourism students’ perceptions of mentoring

ABSTRACT Mentoring has received considerable attention in higher education and industry, but little is known about perceptions of mentoring within disciplines, including that of hospitality and tourism. This study investigated undergraduate students’ perceptions of mentoring to learn more about the factors that might need to be considered when implementing a formal discipline-related mentoring program. Differences in perceptions of mentoring were found between male and female students and first-generation and non-first-generation college students. Overall, students appeared to lack knowledge of mentoring. Implications for hospitality and tourism educators with regard to mentoring are provided.
Phonetic Correlates of Diglossic and Style Shifting in Arabic

Abstract:In analyzing Arabic diglossia, researchers have often viewed phonetic/phonological variation between dialectal Arabic (DA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as a change in style linked to formality or care in speech. This study investigates whether gradient phonetic properties distinguish DA and MSA independently of the phonetic correlates of change across the Labovian stylistic continuum. Two speakers of Egyptian Arabic and two of Syrian Arabic recorded interviews consisting of free speech, a reading passage, and a word list, replicated once each in DA and MSA. Tokens of /aː/were measured for quantity, quality, and dispersion. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) identified consistent main effects for Labovian style across all speakers. Regarding diglossic register, however, the Syrian speakers showed significant effects not evidenced by the Egyptian speakers. This finding of dialect-specific, differential operation of style versus diglossic shifting argues strongly for the identification of the latter as a separate phenomenon involving switching between two distinct sets of phonetic norms.
Human pose estimation in surveillance videos using temporal continuity on static pose

Human pose estimation from monocular image sequences is attracting increasing attention, and 2D (image-based) as well as 3D (joint-motion based) approaches have been proposed. The former is computationally fast, and works also for less frequent poses, but reliability is low. The latter is computationally expensive owing to the high-dimensionality of the problem, despite attempts at dimensionality-reduction. We propose to impose temporal continuity constraints on the 2D approaches in order to improve reliability and obtain spatio-temporal descriptions of the action in the image plane. In the first stage, at each frame-level spatial localisation will be done by applying background subtraction, after that static image pose estimation is performed using CRF-based probabilistic assembly of parts, based on the approach by Ramanan [1]. Next, pose continuity is imposed via first-order Markovian constraints on the CRF search. This results in improved spatial accuracy as well as significantly reduced search. We present results from the Weizmann video dataset to demonstrate how such an approach can serve as an image-plane based alternative to full 3D modeling or manifold search.
Implementation of approximation algorithms for weighted and unweighted edge-disjoint paths in bidirected trees

Given a set of weighted directed paths in a bidirected tree, the maximum weight edge-disjoint paths problem (MWEDP) is to select a subset of the given paths such that the selected paths are edge-disjoint and the total weight of the selected paths is maximized. MWEDP is <i>NP</i>- hard for bidirected trees of unbounded degree, even if all weights are the same (the unweighted case). Three different approximation algorithms are implemented: a known combinatorial (5/3 + ε)-approximation algorithm <i>A</i><inf>1</inf> for the unweighted case, a new combinatorial 2-approximation algorithm <i>A</i><inf>2</inf> for the weighted case, and a known (5/3 + ε)-approximation algorithm <i>A</i><inf>3</inf> for the weighted case that is based on linear programming. For algorithm <i>A</i><inf>1</inf>, it is shown how efficient data structures can be used to obtain a worst-case running-time of <i>O(m + n + 4<sup>1/ε</sup> √n ċ m)</i> for instances consisting of <i>m</i> paths in a tree with <i>n</i> nodes. Experimental results regarding the running-times and the quality of the solutions obtained by the three approximation algorithms are reported. Where possible, the approximate solutions are compared to the optimal solutions, which were computed by running CPLEX on an integer linear programming formulation of MWEDP.
Whipple's Disease and “Tropheryma whippelii”

SUMMARY Whipple's disease is a rare bacterial infection that may involve any organ system in the body. It occurs primarily in Caucasian males older than 40 years. The gastrointestinal tract is the most frequently involved organ, with manifestations such as abdominal pain, malabsorption syndrome with diarrhea, and weight loss. Other signs include low-grade fever, lymphadenopathy, skin hyperpigmentation, endocarditis, pleuritis, seronegative arthritis, uveitis, spondylodiscitis, and neurological manifestations, and these signs may occur in the absence of gastrointestinal manifestations. Due to the wide variability of manifestations, clinical diagnosis is very difficult and is often made only years or even decades after the initial symptoms have appeared. Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole for at least 1 year is usually considered adequate to eradicate the infection. The microbiological diagnosis of this insidious disease is rendered difficult by the virtual lack of culture and serodiagnostic methods. It is usually based on the demonstration of periodic acid-Schiff-positive particles in infected tissues and/or the presence of bacteria with an unusual trilaminar cell wall ultrastructure by electron microscopy. Recently, the Whipple bacteria have been characterized at the molecular level by amplification of their 16S rRNA gene(s). Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences revealed a new bacterial species related to the actinomycete branch which was named “Tropheryma whippelli. ” Based on its unique 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequence, species-specific primers were selected for the detection of the organism in clinical specimens by PCR. This technique is currently used as one of the standard methods for establishing the diagnosis of Whipple's disease. Specific and broad-spectrum PCR amplifications mainly but not exclusively from extraintestinal specimens have significantly improved diagnosis, being more sensitive than histopathologic analysis. However, “T. whippelii” DNA has also been found in persons without clinical and histological evidence of Whipple's disease. It is unclear whether these patients are true asymptomatic carriers or whether differences in virulence exist among strains of “T. whippelii” that might account for the variable clinical manifestations. So far, six different “T. whippelii” subtypes have been found by analysis of their 16S-23S rDNA spacer region. Further studies of the pathogen “T. whippelii” as well as the host immune response are needed to fully understand this fascinating disease. The recent cultivation of the organisms is a promising major step in this direction.
Ethical Challenges in Infant Feeding Research

Infants have a complex set of nutrient requirements to meet the demands of their high metabolic rate, growth, and immunological and cognitive development. Infant nutrition lays the foundation for health throughout life. While infant feeding research is essential, it must be conducted to the highest ethical standards. The objective of this paper is to discuss the implications of developments in infant nutrition for the ethics of infant feeding research and the implications for obtaining informed consent. A search was undertaken of the papers in the medical literature using the PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Knowledge, Proquest, and CINAHL databases. From a total of 9303 papers identified, the full text of 87 articles that contained discussion of issues in consent in infant feeding trials were obtained and read and after further screening 42 papers were included in the results and discussion. Recent developments in infant nutrition of significance to ethics assessment include the improved survival of low birth weight infants, increasing evidence of the value of breastfeeding and evidence of the lifelong importance of infant feeding and development in the first 1000 days of life in chronic disease epidemiology. Informed consent is a difficult issue, but should always include information on the value of preserving breastfeeding options. Project monitoring should be cognisant of the long term implications of growth rates and early life nutrition.
Motion segmentation in videos from time of flight cameras

This paper investigates motion estimation and segmentation of independently moving objects in video sequences from a range camera. Specifically, we present a motion estimation algorithm which is based on fusion of range flow and optical flow constraint equations. The flow fields are used to derive long-term point trajectories. A segmentation technique groups the trajectories according to their motion and depth similarity into spatio-temporal objects. We show results on a real world scene captured with a time of flight camera.
Supporting Service Versioning - MDE to the Rescue

In the field of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), evolution is a key issue given the non-trivial nature of updating widely distributed and heterogeneous systems. In particular, the evolution of a service is expressed through the creation and decommissioning of different service versions during its lifetime. These versions must be aligned with each other in such a way as to allow a service developer to track the various modifications introduced over time and whether the resulting service version is compatible with existing consumers. Having all this in mind, this work aims at define a plan to provide a complete framework to support service evolution by means of Model-Driven Engineering techniques.
Where's the music? comparing the QoE impact of temporal impairments between music and video streaming

We are witnessing a dramatic rise of cloud-based media services nowadays, not only in terms of importance to end users but also in terms of traffic volume - a challenge for network and service providers alike. However, while the Quality of Experience of cloud-based video streaming services like YouTube has already become a well studied subject, this is less the case for music streaming services like Spotify and Deezer. In this paper we investigate the impact of temporal impairments on the QoE of music streaming. We present results from a subjective lab experiment which exposed participants to initial delay and interruptions (stallings) of playback when accessing streamed music via a Spotify service mock-up. Furthermore, we compare the results with other experiments conducted in the same lab that used equivalent study designs and setups but addressed video streaming instead. Our comparison reveals many similarities between music and video streaming (users preferring initial delay over stalling, generic relationships between impairments and QoE) but also substantial differences (e.g. user tolerance to stalling) between both service types.
Interrelationship of hepatitis C virus genotypes with patient characteristics in Bahrain

Aim Hepatitis C virus (HCV) shows genotype-based variation in prevalence across geographical regions. This study was conducted to understand the clinical interrelationship of HCV genotypes with patient characteristics. Methods Medical records of 122 patients positive for HCV RNA test collected during 2013 and 2014 were included for analysis. Only adults were included in the study. HCV RNA extraction and genotyping was done as part of the routine diagnostic requirements. The association of continuous and categorical variables with genotypes was analyzed through analysis of variance and chi-square tests, respectively. Results Of the 122 patients selected, 103 were Bahrainis, 18 non-Bahrainis, and 1 was unregistered. Genotype 1 was the predominant (53%) one, followed by types 3 (23%) and 4 (20%). Classical symptoms, clinical signs, liver function test, and ultrasonographic results were recorded. Cirrhosis and ascites showed significant variation across genotypes. Although alanine transaminase, total bilirubin, and albumin levels were increased, gamma-glutamyltransferase and alkaline phosphatase levels were normal. About 12% of the subjects were alcohol users, 4% were positive for HIV infection and 2.4% were positive for hepatitis B virus infection. The circulating HCV RNA load was at medium-level in the study cohort and showed significant association with the HCV genotypes and subtypes. Patients with genotype 1a had 6 times more load than patients with type 4 (P<0.05). Conclusion This study reconfirmed the incidence and distribution of different genotypes in Bahrain population, and delineated the relationship of HCV RNA viral load with the severity of liver disease in our cohort.
An exploratory intervention study suggests clinical benefits of training in chronic stroke to be paralleled by changes in brain activity using repeated fMRI

Purpose Previous studies demonstrated changes in sensorimotor network activation over time after stroke that have been interpreted as partly compensatory. Locomotor and balance trainings may improve both mobility and cognition even in chronic stroke and thereby impact on cerebral activation patterns. We here aimed at testing these assumptions in an exploratory study to inform subsequent larger intervention studies. Patients and methods Eight patients (73.3±4.4 years) with a chronic lacunar stroke (mean interval 3.7 years after the acute event with a range from 2 to 4 years) and residual leg paresis leading to gait disturbance received a guided 5-week training focusing on mobility, endurance, and coordination. Before and afterward, they underwent clinical, neuropsychological, and gait assessments and brain MRI at 3 T including a functional ankle movement paradigm. Sixteen healthy controls (HCs; 68.8±5.4 years) followed the same protocol without intervention. Results After training, patients had improved in mobility, memory, and delayed recall of memory. While cerebral activations in HC remained completely unaltered, patients showed increased activations in the right precentral gyrus, the right and left superior frontal gyri, and the right frontal lobe, with bipedal ankle movements after training. Conclusion In this exploratory study of chronic stroke, we found not only significant effects of physical training on mobility but also distinct aspects of cognition already with a small number of highly selected patients. These improvements were paralleled by alterations in cerebral activity possibly reflecting neuronal plasticity. Larger studies including randomization are needed.
Three Essays on International Finance and International Capital Markets.

Three Essays on International Finance and International Capital Markets by Qiaoqiao Zhu Chair: Linda L Tesar This dissertation consists of three essays examining informational and behavioral frictions in international financial and capital markets. Chapter II investigates whether characteristics of the home country capital market environment, such as information disclosure and investor rights protection, continue to affect American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) cross-listed in the U.S. I find that characteristics of the home markets continue to be relevant, especially for emerging market firms. Less transparent disclosure, poorer protection of investor rights and weaker legal institutions are associated with higher levels of information asymmetry. My finding suggests that crosslisting in the U.S. should not be viewed as a substitute for improvement in the quality of local institutions. Chapter III addresses the question of whether it is possible to profit from timing the exchange rate markets by examining foreign firms’ decision to issue ADRs. Specifically, we test whether foreign firms consider currency market conditions in their ADR issuance decisions. We find that foreign firms tend to issue ADRs after their local currency has been abnormally strong against the U.S. dollar and before their local currency becomes abnormally weak. Currency market timing is especially significant for companies who are more likely to be affected by higher
Neuroimaging in disorders of consciousness: contributions to diagnosis and prognosis

Conventional assessment of the level of awareness that is retained by a patient with a disorder of consciousness following a brain injury is made on the basis of exhibited behaviors. This is particularly challenging for clinicians who must decide whether a certain behavior, which might be inconsistent or incomplete, reflects a conscious or an unconscious process. These assessments are not only highly subjective, but also dependent upon the ability of the patient to produce an appropriate motor response. Recent developments in neuroimaging techniques can provide a measure of the levels of awareness that these patients may retain, and importantly, they overcome the necessity for these patients to produce detectable movements by instead relying on their adopting appropriate ‘mind-sets’ as instructed by the task. In this article, we review recent advances in this field and discuss how they may accompany behavioral assessments in future in order to provide diagnostic and prognostic information.
Ortaokul Öğrencilerinin Dinleme Kaygılarının İncelenmesi

Dinleme becerisi bireyin cevresiyle iletisimi ve okul basarisiyla dogrudan ilgilidir. Iyi dinleyici olamayan bireylerin sosyal hayatta ve okul hayatinda basarili olmalari beklenemez. Bu durum dinleme egitiminin onemini de ortaya koyar. Arastirmanin amacini ortaokul ogrencilerinin dinleme kaygisinin cesitli degiskenler acisindan incelenmesi olusturmaktadir. Calismada ortaokul ogrencilerinin dinleme kaygi duzeyleri belirlenmis ve ogrencilerin dinleme kaygi durumlarinin, cinsiyet, sinif duzeyi, aile vb. degiskenlerle iliskisi arastirilmistir. Arastirmada betimsel tarama modelinde yurutulmustur. Arastirma sonucunda; ogrencilerin dinleme kaygisinin cinsiyete ve baba egitim durumuna gore farklilasmadigi; dinleme kaygisinin sinif duzeyi, Turkce dersi basarisi, ogrencilerin anne egitim durumlari, okul disi etkinliklere katilim ve evde bilgisayar kullanimi ile iliskili oldugu gorulmustur. Anahtar sozcukler: Turkce ogretimi, dinleme becerisi, kaygi Listening skills are directly related to the communication of the individual’s surroundings and the success of the school. It is unexpected that individuals who are not good listeners are successful in social life and school life. This also reveals the importance of listening training. The purpose of the study is to examine the anxiety of listening to the various variables of secondary school students. The level of listening anxiety of secondary school students was determined in the study. The relation of listening anxiety between gender, class level, family etc. variables were investigated. Research was conducted in descriptive survey model. As a result of the research; it was seen that the anxiety of listening of the students did not differ according to the gender and educational level of the student’s father. Also, It has been observed that the level of listening anxiety is related to the success of the Turkish lesson, the educational level of student’s mother, participation in out-of-school activities and computer use at home. Keywords: Turkish teaching, listening skills, anxiety
Printed in Nigeria ANALYSIS OF ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES OF PRINCIPALS IN PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ABA EDUCATION ZONE OF ABIA STATE

The study investigated the administrative roles of private secondary school Principals in Aba education zone of Abia State. It is a survey research and it adopted seven research questions that guided the study. Sample of six hundred and sixteen (616) respondents’ was chosen from group of teachers of schools. The six hundred and sixteen respondents were selected by stratified, random proportionate techniques across Aba education zone of Abia State. A 35 – item questionnaire on principal administrative tasks performance evaluation question (PATPEQ) which was based on Likert’s 4 – point scale Highly Effective, Effective, Moderately Effective and Not Effective was used to collect data. The result was analyzed using mean and standard deviation. The result revealed that principals were moderately effective in financial and school business administration, students’ personnel administration, staff personnel administration, instruction and curriculum development and in general tasks. The principals were effective in school-community relation and they were not effective in school plants. Based on the discussions and conclusions, the researcher made some of the following recommendations on the way forward. The selection of principal should be done based on certain criteria which are logical laid down by the state education board and made available to prospective principals. There is need for regular seminars and workshops for private secondary school principals on principals administrative roles, the principals should also be sensitized on how to show concern to staff and build cohesive work groups for the delivery achievement of educational goals.