Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
At the Service of Community Development: The Professionalization of Volunteer Work in Kenya and Tanzania

Abstract: This article explores the changing nature of the “volunteer” as an official role within health and development interventions in East Africa. Contemporary development interventions require the engagement of volunteers to act as links between project and community. This role is increasingly professionalized within development architectures with implications for the kinds of people who can engage in volunteering opportunities. Volunteers in development interventions are likely to be drawn from public sector staff and from educated youth seeking access to positions of paid employment. Volunteering as a formal status within the organization of development programs is recognized as a kind of professional work by those seeking to engage with development organizations. Volunteers perform important work in linking development programs with beneficiaries. At the same time, volunteering provides opportunities for personal transformation. Résumé: Cet article explore la nature changeante du “bénévole” en tant que responsable officiel dans les interventions de santé et de développement en Afrique de l'Est. De nos jours les interventions de développement nécessitent l'engagement de bénévoles pour servir de liens entre le projet et la communauté. Ce rôle est de plus en plus professionnalisé au sein des architectures de développement avec des implications pour les personnes qui sont prêtes à s'engager dans le monde associatif. Les bénévoles dans les interventions de développement sont en général issus du secteur public et sont des jeunes éduqués cherchant à accéder à des postes de travail rémunérés. Le volontariat comme statut officiel au sein de l'organisation des programmes de développement est reconnu comme un type de travail professionnel par ceux qui cherchent à s'engager dans les organisations de développement. Les bénévoles accomplissent des tâches importantes en mettant en liaison les programmes de développement avec leurs bénéficiaires. Dans le même temps, le volontariat offre des opportunités pour se réaliser personnellement.
Analyzing the Multidirectional Relationships Between the President, News Media, and the Public: Who Affects Whom?

In order to study presidential leadership and responsiveness, this research focuses on the role of the news media and examines the multidirectional relationships between the president, the news media, and the public. One of the purposes of this study is to examine competing theoretical expectations about the causal direction between the three actors by focusing on their issue stances. The potentially reciprocal influences between the three actors are estimated by using vector autoregression and moving average representation simulations. According to the statistical results, the news media significantly interact with the public and the president. In contrast, the direct relationship between the president and the public is weak or insignificant.
Late group-based rehabilitation has no advantages compared with supervised home-exercises after total knee arthroplasty.

INTRODUCTION This study aimed to test whether group-based rehabilitation focusing on strength training, education and self-management is more effective than individual, supervised home-training after fast-track total knee arthroplasty (TKA). MATERIAL AND METHODS We allocated 80 participants undergoing primary TKA to either group-based rehabilitation or individual, supervised home-training (40 participants in each group). The group-based rehabilitation consisted of 12 outpatient visits during six weeks including strength and endurance exercises, education and self-management combined with home exercises. The primary outcome was Oxford Knee Score; secondary outcomes were EuroQoL-5 Dimensions QoL and Physical Function of the Medical Outcomes Short Form 36. Tertiary outcomes were pain, knee range of motion, tandem test, Leg Extensor Power, 10-m walking test, 30-sec. and five-times sit-to-stand. Outcomes were assessed four weeks, three months and six months after surgery. In addition, the questionnaires were completed before surgery. RESULTS We found no difference in gain of function or quality of life between the two groups at three and six months follow-up. CONCLUSION Individual, supervised home-training and group-based rehabilitation programmes improved patients' quality of life and physical function equally six months after TKA. FUNDING This study was funded by Holstebro Municipality, Region of Central Jutland, and Lundbeck Centre for Fast-Track Hip and Knee Surgery. TRIAL REGISTRATION The study was registered in the Danish Data Protection Agency (Registration no.: 1-16-02-41-10) and Clinical Trials (Registration no.: KL24621).
Explanations for Apparent Late Onset Criminality in a High-Risk Sample of Children Followed Up in Adult Life

We examined the psychiatric and forensic histories of 13 individuals whose first officially recorded criminal conviction took place after their 22nd birthday, and compared the levels of disturbance among that group with those from the same high-risk sample who had (a) no recorded convictions, (b) convictions only up to age 21, and (c) convictions before and after age 22. Among the 13 with recorded convictions only after age 22, there was evidence of at least minor juvenile delinquency in every case but one, and of major adult mental illness whose onset preceded first conviction in four cases. Levels of childhood antisocial behaviours were significantly higher among that group than among those who had never been convicted, and levels of major mental illness were significantly higher than among those who had never been convicted and those with convictions only up to age 21. Apparent late onset criminality in the present sample was therefore associated with known risk factors for adult criminality, in the form of juvenile antisocial behaviour and/or major mental illness.
Aspects of virulence in ferrets exhibited by influenza virus recombinants of known genetic constitution.

The parent viruses and clones 64c and 6 of the A/Puerto Rico/8/34-A/England/939/69 (H3N2) series were examined. Virulence was assessed from 50% infectious dose, replication in the upper respiratory tract, degree of lung infection, and production of fever. Viral infection of the upper respiratory tract declined with onset of the inflammatory response and pyrexia, and restriction of replication in nasal turbinate tissue at pyrexial temperatures correlated with onset and rapidity of decline of infection in the upper respiratory tract. Compared with the H3N2 strains, the HON1 strain of A/Puerto Rico/8/34 stimulated a lower and later inflammatory response, which correlated with a delayed and low fever and, in turn, a high nasal infection that was slow to decline. The differential ability to infect the lung in vivo (clones 64c and 6 more than A/England/ 939/69 and clone 7a more than A/Puerto Rico/8/34 and clone 64d) was not always explained by differences in ability to replicate in lung tissue at normal or pyrexial temperatures. Neither overall virulence nor any particular facet of it can yet be correlated with particular gene pieces. The results are discussed in relation to the virulence of the strains for humans.
The Modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status is More Predictive of Memory Abilities Than the Mini-Mental State Examination

Although not as popular as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (mTICS) has some distinct advantages when screening cognitive functioning in older adults. The current study compared these 2 cognitive screening measures in their ability to predict performance on a memory composite (ie, delayed recall of verbal and visual information) in a cohort of 121 community-dwelling older adults, both at baseline and after 1 year. Both the MMSE and the mTICS significantly correlated with the memory composite at baseline (r’s of .41 and .62, respectively) and at 1 year (r’s of .36 and .50, respectively). At baseline, stepwise linear regression indicated that the mTICS and gender best predicted the memory composite score (R 2 = .45, P < .001), and the MMSE and other demographic variables did not significantly improve the prediction. At 1 year, the results were very similar. Despite its lesser popularity, the mTICS may be a more attractive option when screening for cognitive abilities in this age range.
Robust image registration and tampering localization exploiting bag of features based forensic signature

The distribution of digital images with the classic and newest technologies available on Internet (e.g., emails, social networks, digital repositories) has induced a growing interest on systems able to protect the visual content against malicious manipulations that could be performed during their transmission. One of the main problems addressed in this context is the authentication of the image received in a communication. This task is usually performed by localizing the regions of the image which have been tampered. To this aim the received image should be first registered with the one at the sender by exploiting the information provided by a specific component of the forensic hash associated with the image. In this paper we propose a robust alignment method which makes use of an image signature based on the Bag of Features paradigm. The alignment is based on a voting procedure in the parameter space of the model used to recover the geometric transformation occurred into the manipulated image. Experiments show that the proposed approach obtains good margin in terms of performances with respect to state-of-the art methods.
Hindgut specification and cell‐adhesion functions of Sphox11/13b in the endoderm of the sea urchin embryo

Sphox11/13b is one of the two hox genes of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus expressed in the embryo. Its dynamic pattern of expression begins during gastrulation, when the transcripts are transiently located in a ring of cells at the edge of the blastopore. After gastrulation, expression is restricted to the anus–hindgut region at the boundary between the ectoderm and the endoderm. The phenotype that results when translation of Sphox11/13b mRNA is knocked down by treatment with morpholino antisense oligonucleotides (MASO) suggests that this gene may be indirectly involved in cell adhesion functions as well as in the proper differentiation of the midgut–hindgut and midgut–foregut sphincters. The MASO experiments also reveal that Sphox11/13b negatively regulates several downstream endomesoderm genes. For some of these genes, Sphox11/13b function is required to restrict expression to the midgut by preventing ectopic expression in the hindgut. The evolutionary conservation of these functions indicates the general roles of posterior Hox genes in regulating cell‐adhesion, as well as in spatial control of gene regulatory network subcircuits in the regionalizing gut.
Causal Discovery via Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space Embeddings

Causal discovery via the asymmetry between the cause and the effect has proved to be a promising way to infer the causal direction from observations. The basic idea is to assume that the mechanism generating the cause distribution p(x) and that generating the conditional distribution p(y|x) correspond to two independent natural processes and thus p(x) and p(y|x) fulfill some sort of independence condition. However, in many situations, the independence condition does not hold for the anticausal direction; if we consider p(x, y) as generated via p(y)p(x|y), then there are usually some contrived mutual adjustments between p(y) and p(x|y). This kind of asymmetry can be exploited to identify the causal direction. Based on this postulate, in this letter, we define an uncorrelatedness criterion between p(x) and p(y|x) and, based on this uncorrelatedness, show asymmetry between the cause and the effect in terms that a certain complexity metric on p(x) and p(y|x) is less than the complexity metric on p(y) and p(x|y). We propose a Hilbert space embedding-based method EMD (an abbreviation for EMbeDding) to calculate the complexity metric and show that this method preserves the relative magnitude of the complexity metric. Based on the complexity metric, we propose an efficient kernel-based algorithm for causal discovery. The contribution of this letter is threefold. It allows a general transformation from the cause to the effect involving the noise effect and is applicable to both one-dimensional and high-dimensional data. Furthermore it can be used to infer the causal ordering for multiple variables. Extensive experiments on simulated and real-world data are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Imagined Intergroup Contact: Theory, Paradigm and Practice

In this article, we outline a new implementation of intergroup contact theory: imagined intergroup contact. The approach combines 50 years of research into the effects of contact with recent advances in social cognition. It represents both a versatile experimental paradigm for investigating the extended and indirect impacts of social contact, as well as a flexible and effective tool for practitioners and policy makers in their efforts to promote tolerance for multicultural diversity. We describe the theoretical basis for imagined contact effects, document emerging empirical support, and provide a practical guide for researchers wishing to adopt the paradigm. Finally, we discuss the potential application of imagined contact in educational contexts, and how it could be integrated with existing approaches to provide maximally effective strategies for improving intergroup relations.
The Use of Online Communities for Mental Health Disorders: A Qualitative Case Study

The Internet has become an important platform for individuals to gain information and support regarding health-related issues. This qualitative case study examines the interactions among members within the specific online community healthyplace.com to determine how exactly people make use of health-related online forums and the types of interactions that take place within them. The study was performed and interpreted using Erving Goffman’s theory and perspective on human interaction among stigmatized individuals within the modern setting of Internet forums. The analysis of 52 forum posts and 234 forum replies throughout a two-year period are examined to determine common perceptions of depression and self that are present in the discussion forum. By applying Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective to the interpretation of the forum, an understanding of how individuals engaged in these online support communities as well as the motivation for these members was developed. This study contributes to the research of CMC for the purpose of health communication.
The Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale: Psychometric Properties and Form Equivalence

This study examined the psychometric equivalence of Forms A and B of the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale in a sample of college students (N = 370; M = 19.5 yr.; 318 Caucasians; 281 women). Given the dearth of studies that address the issue of form equivalence directly, this study sought to ascertain whether these forms could be used interchangeably by researchers. Subscales on the two forms had fairly high correlations (range of r = .77–.81), and similar alpha and omega reliability coefficients. Additionally, confirmatory factor analysis revealed both forms fit a three-factor model well. However, paired-sample t tests yielded significant mean differences for all three subscales. Furthermore, the two forms yielded inconsistent associations with relevant measures. Although the observed pattern of associations with social desirability and safe swimming behaviors were similar for Forms A and B, the pattern of differences was not identical for smoking groups and bicycle helmet use groups between forms. Overall, these results suggested that Forms A and B do not meet the strict criteria for parallel forms, but instead should be considered alternative forms.
Influence of a change in stimulation rate on action potentials, currents and contractions in rat ventricular cells.

The effects of a change in stimulation rate on electrical activity and accompanying contraction were investigated in ventricular cells isolated from rat heart; the cells were stimulated to contract either by brief depolarization pulses which evoked action potentials, or, under voltage‐clamp conditions, by step depolarizations. An increase in stimulation rate from 0.3 to 3 Hz resulted in a gradual reduction in the amplitude of contraction and attenuation of the late phase of the action potential. These changes were less marked at more depolarized potentials. The ventricular cells were voltage clamped at ‐40 mV and initially stimulated at 0.3 Hz by step depolarizations to 0 mV for 10 or 100 ms, which activated the second inward current (Isi) and an accompanying contraction. The amplitude and time course of contraction were similar with the two pulse durations. When the duration of the depolarization was 100 ms, an increase in stimulation rate to 3 Hz caused a gradual decline in the amplitude of Isi and of the evoked contraction; at the same time extra contractions and small, transient inward currents appeared in addition to the evoked contractions and Isis. There was a reduction in the early component of decay of Isi at 3 Hz. With a depolarizing pulse duration of 10 ms, an increase in stimulation rate to 3 or to 4.2 Hz did not change the amplitude of the evoked Isi or contraction and no extra contractions or currents appeared. Intracellular EGTA abolished all contractions in the cells and an increase in the rate of stimulation with 100 ms pulses did not then induce transient inward currents. There was some decrease in the Isi amplitude but this was not as marked as in the absence of EGTA and the time course of current decay was similar at the two rates. Ryanodine prevented the appearance of extra contractions and currents when the stimulation rate was increased to 3 Hz and, as in the presence of intracellular EGTA, there was a small decrease in Isi amplitude while the time course of decay was similar at the two stimulation rates. The time course of recovery of Isi from inactivation, as shown by a double‐pulse procedure, was altered when the duration of the first pulse was reduced from 100 to 10 ms, an extra inactivation of Isi being seen at pulse intervals of 20‐100 ms. This extra component of inactivation was not seen with intracellular EGTA or in the presence of ryanodine. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Profiling sport role models to enhance initiatives for adolescent girls in physical education and sport

This study involved the investigation of sport role models for adolescent girls in Australia. Initially, a theoretical perspective is presented based on social learning and gender theory. Then, using quantitative and qualitative data obtained through two focus group interviews and a survey (n = 357) conducted at two Sydney high schools, the authors establish a profile of a sport role model for adolescent girls. Results showed that a relatively small percentage of girls (8.4 percent) perceived a sports person to be their role model, with a large percentage of girls nominating a role model from the family (mother), peer or entertainment domains. The majority of girls with a sport role model described the model as female, under 40 years of age with a similar sporting background to themselves who display essential masculine and feminine qualities. Using the profile of a sport role model, several suggestions are made which could enhance initiatives and programs for adolescent girls in physical education and sport.
Hydrothermal synthesis of CuO Nanostructure and Their Characterizations

The CuO nano particles were synthesized from copper sulfate pentahydrate aqueous solution under the low hydrothermal condition at 80°C.The average crystallite size was calculated from De-Bye Scherrer’s equation. SEM/EDS,XRD were used to characterize the structure features of the product. FTIR spectra confirmed the adsorption of ammonia on the surface of the CuO nanoparticles. In addition, UV-visible absorption spectra were employed to estimate the band gap energy of the CuO nanoparticles. This method may be suitable for large scale production of nano CuO particles for practical applications.
International Handbook on Diversity Management at Work: Country Perspectives on Diversity and Equal Treatment

Contents:Introduction: Equality and Diversity in 14 Countries: Analysis and SummaryAlain Klarsfeld, Lize Booysen, Eddy Ng, Ian Roper and Ahu Tatli1. Equal Access to the Opportunities Available? Equity and Diversity Laws and Policies in AustraliaGlenda Strachan, Erica French and John Burgess2. Equal Treatment in Austria: Current Practices and ChallengesRoswitha Hofmann and Regine Bendl3. A Review of Two Decades of Employment Equity in Canada: Progress and PropositionsEddy Ng, Rana Haq and Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay4. Equality and Diversity in Finland. From Separate to Intertwined ConceptsJonna Louvrier and Annamari Tuori5. Equality and Diversity in Years of Crisis in FranceAnne-Francoise Bender, Alain Klarsfeld and Jacqueline Laufer6. Equality and Diversity in India: Public versus Private Sector Approaches to Managing Diversity in Indian OrganizationsRana Haq7. Moving Societies and Immobile Organizational Practices. The Winding Road of Diversity Management in ItalyAnnalisa Murgia and Barbara Poggio8. Japan: Progress Towards Diversity and Equality in EmploymentVera Mackie, Kaori Okano and Kirsti Rawstron9. Laws, Policies and Practices of Diversity Management in The Netherlands RevisitedInge Bleijenbergh, Marloes van Engen, Ashley Terlouw and Rene Schalk10. Equality and Diversity in Aotearoa (New Zealand)Irene Ryan, Katherine Ravenswood and Judith Pringle11. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Nigeria: Historical Context and Emerging IssuesIfedapo Adeleye, Doyin Atewologun and Olusegun Matanmi13. Employment Equality and Diversity Management in a Russian ContextFiona Colgan, Aidan McKearney, Elena Bokovikova, Sofya Kosheleva and Elena Zavyalova14. New Developments in Employment Equity and Diversity Management in South AfricaLize A.E Booysen and Stella M. Nkomo15. Recent Developments in the Equality and Diversity Agenda in the UK: The 'Big Society' under AusterityIan Roper and Ahu TatliIndex
Retroviral Integration Site Selection

The stable insertion of a copy of their genome into the host cell genome is an essential step of the life cycle of retroviruses. The site of viral DNA integration, mediated by the viral-encoded integrase enzyme, has important consequences for both the virus and the host cell. The analysis of retroviral integration site distribution was facilitated by the availability of the human genome sequence, revealing the non-random feature of integration site selection and identifying different favored and disfavored genomic locations for individual retroviruses. This review will summarize the current knowledge about retroviral differences in their integration site preferences as well as the mechanisms involved in this process.