Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Socio-demographic Determinants of Eye Health Literacy among Nigerian Medical Enrollees

To determine socio-demographic factors affecting eye health literacy among Nigerian medical enrollees. The population of the study consisted of 315 enrollees. A sample size of 115 was drawn. To achieve specific objectives of the study, five research questions were raised and five hypotheses formulated and tested at 0.05 Alpha level. An ex post facto survey design was used for the study. The mean age of the participants was 52 years + 1.5 years, 51% were men and 53% were either students in tertiary institutions or graduates. There were no age or gender disparities in eye health literacy. However, there were significant associations between eye health literacy and place of residence, education and level of income. Education, income and place of residence are associated with eye health literacy among Nigerian medical enrollees.
A systematic review of wheelchair skills tests for manual wheelchair users with a spinal cord injury: towards a standardized outcome measure

Objective: To review, analyse, evaluate and critically appraise available wheelchair skill tests in the international literature and to determine the need for a standardized measurement tool of manual wheeled mobility in those with spinal cord injury. Data sources: A systematic review of literature (databases PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane Library (1970-December 2009). Subjects: Hand rim wheelchair users, mainly those with spinal cord injury. Review methods: Studies’ content and methodology were analysed qualitatively. Study quality was assessed using the scale of Gardner and Altman. Results: Thirteen studies fell within the inclusion criteria and were critically reviewed. The 13 studies covered 11 tests, which involved 14 different skills. These 14 skills were categorized into: wheelchair manoeuvring and basic daily living skills; obstacle-negotiating skills; wheelie tasks; and transfers. The Wheelchair Skills Test version 2.4 (WST-2.4) and Wheelchair Circuit tests scored best on the Gardner and Altman scale, the Obstacle Course Assessment of Wheelchair User Performances (OCAWUP) test was found to be the most relevant for daily needs in a wheelchair. The different tests used different measurement scales, varying from binary to ordinal and continuous. Comparison of outcomes between tests was not possible because of differences in skills assessed, measurement scales, environment and equipment selected for each test. A lack of information regarding protocols as well as differences in terminology was also detected. Conclusion: This systematic review revealed large inconsistencies among the current available wheelchair skill tests. This makes it difficult to compare study results and to create norms and standards for wheelchair skill performance.
Forms and Modes of Apprehending Interdisciplinarity

This article considers the interdisciplinary character of sports sciences, which holds a double challenge. On one hand, demonstrating how the analysis of a corpus of scientific texts contributes – without exhausting the magnitude of the scientific work – to a better knowledge of a field of interdisciplinary research: sports sciences. On the other hand, on a methodological level, tools and computer strategies have been developed in order to analyze textual data. This article reveals how interdisciplinarity explicitly appears in scientific papers, not only as a discussion topic, but also as an organizational watchword in sports sciences. Besides, the analysis of this corpus helps to finely characterize active forms of interdisciplinary work organized around hybrid disciplines or specific research subjects.
Adjustment as process and outcome: Measuring adjustment to HIV in Uganda

‘Adjustment’ in health refers to both processes and outcomes. Its measurement and conceptualisation in African cultures is limited. In total, 263 people living with HIV and receiving anti-retroviral therapy in clinics in Uganda completed a translated Mental Adjustment to HIV Scale, depression items from the Hopkins checklist and demographic questions. Factor analysis revealed four Mental Adjustment to HIV factors of active coping, cognitive–social adjustment, hopelessness and denial/avoidance. Correlations with depression supported the Mental Adjustment to HIV’s validity and the importance of active adjustment, while the role of cognitive adjustment was unclear. Factors were process or outcome focussed, suggesting a need for theory-based measures in general.
Motion adaptive indexing for moving continual queries over moving objects

This paper describes a <i>motion adaptive</i> indexing scheme for efficient evaluation of moving continual queries (MCQs) over moving objects. It uses the concept of <i>motion-sensitive bounding boxes</i> (<i>MSB</i>s) to model moving objects and moving queries. These bounding boxes automatically adapt their sizes to the dynamic motion behaviors of individual objects. Instead of indexing frequently changing object positions, we index less frequently changing object and query <i>MSB</i>s, where updates to the bounding boxes are needed only when objects and queries move across the boundaries of their boxes. This helps decrease the number of updates to the indexes. More importantly, we use <i>predictive query results</i> to optimistically precalculate query results, decreasing the number of searches on the indexes. Motion-sensitive bounding boxes are used to incrementally update the predictive query results. Our experiments show that the proposed motion adaptive indexing scheme is efficient for the evaluation of moving continual range queries.
Functional epialleles at an endogenous human centromere

Human centromeres are defined by megabases of homogenous alpha-satellite DNA arrays that are packaged into specialized chromatin marked by the centromeric histone variant, centromeric protein A (CENP-A). Although most human chromosomes have a single higher-order repeat (HOR) array of alpha satellites, several chromosomes have more than one HOR array. Homo sapiens chromosome 17 (HSA17) has two juxtaposed HOR arrays, D17Z1 and D17Z1-B. Only D17Z1 has been linked to CENP-A chromatin assembly. Here, we use human artificial chromosome assembly assays to show that both D17Z1 and D17Z1-B can support de novo centromere assembly independently. We extend these in vitro studies and demonstrate, using immunostaining and chromatin analyses, that in human cells the centromere can be assembled at D17Z1 or D17Z1-B. Intriguingly, some humans are functional heterozygotes, meaning that CENP-A is located at a different HOR array on the two HSA17 homologs. The site of CENP-A assembly on HSA17 is stable and is transmitted through meiosis, as evidenced by inheritance of CENP-A location through multigenerational families. Differences in histone modifications are not linked clearly with active and inactive D17Z1 and D17Z1-B arrays; however, we detect a correlation between the presence of variant repeat units of D17Z1 and CENP-A assembly at the opposite array, D17Z1-B. Our studies reveal the presence of centromeric epialleles on an endogenous human chromosome and suggest genomic complexities underlying the mechanisms that determine centromere identity in humans.
Adversarial Evaluation of Dialogue Models

The recent application of RNN encoder-decoder models has resulted in substantial progress in fully data-driven dialogue systems, but evaluation remains a challenge. An adversarial loss could be a way to directly evaluate the extent to which generated dialogue responses sound like they came from a human. This could reduce the need for human evaluation, while more directly evaluating on a generative task. In this work, we investigate this idea by training an RNN to discriminate a dialogue model's samples from human-generated samples. Although we find some evidence this setup could be viable, we also note that many issues remain in its practical application. We discuss both aspects and conclude that future work is warranted.
19 Side Effects of Neoadjuvant Treatment in Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer

Neoadjuvant treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer patients provides undisputable advantages regarding local control (1; 2), and it seems to afford the benefit of survival in patients with preoperative complete regression (3; 4). Furthermore, local control is an important feature in life quality of rectal cancer patients. However, due to the perspicuous interests in oncological effects, the acute and moreover late side effects tend to be neglected. The consequence is that especially late side effects have probably been underestimated until now. Many patients would perceive a permanent stoma and loss of the anal sphincter as a stigma that lowers their self-esteem (5). Hence, sphincter preservation is a major request of the patients and developed to an important surgical concern. In fact, patients are willing to trade a considerable amount of survival to avoid a colostomy (6). And more than this, they are also disposed to trade survival in order to avoid chemotherapy (6). Though, with regard to oncological and surgical outcome control late results are important. For all patients quality of life matters are fundamental. This particularly counts for those patients who show an incomplete regression or none and therefore do have only limited benefit from the treatment.
A Screen for Suppressors of Gross Chromosomal Rearrangements Identifies a Conserved Role for PLP in Preventing DNA Lesions

Genome instability is a hallmark of cancer cells. One class of genome aberrations prevalent in tumor cells is termed gross chromosomal rearrangements (GCRs). GCRs comprise chromosome translocations, amplifications, inversions, deletion of whole chromosome arms, and interstitial deletions. Here, we report the results of a genome-wide screen in Saccharomyces cerevisiae aimed at identifying novel suppressors of GCR formation. The most potent novel GCR suppressor identified is BUD16, the gene coding for yeast pyridoxal kinase (Pdxk), a key enzyme in the metabolism of pyridoxal 5′ phosphate (PLP), the biologically active form of vitamin B6. We show that Pdxk potently suppresses GCR events by curtailing the appearance of DNA lesions during the cell cycle. We also show that pharmacological inhibition of Pdxk in human cells leads to the production of DSBs and activation of the DNA damage checkpoint. Finally, our evidence suggests that PLP deficiency threatens genome integrity, most likely via its role in dTMP biosynthesis, as Pdxk-deficient cells accumulate uracil in their nuclear DNA and are sensitive to inhibition of ribonucleotide reductase. Since Pdxk links diet to genome stability, our work supports the hypothesis that dietary micronutrients reduce cancer risk by curtailing the accumulation of DNA damage and suggests that micronutrient depletion could be part of a defense mechanism against hyperproliferation.
TOWARD A NEW POLITICAL METHODOLOGY: Microfoundations and ART

■ Abstract The past two decades have brought revolutionary change to the field of political methodology. Steady gains in theoretical sophistication have combined with explosive increases in computing power to produce a profusion of new estimators for applied political researchers. Attendance at the annual Summer Meeting of the Methodology Section has multiplied many times, and section membership is among the largest in APSA. All these are signs of success. Yet there are warning signs, too. This paper attempts to critically summarize current developments in the young field of political methodology. It focuses on recent generalizations of dichotomous-dependentvariable estimators such as logit and probit, arguing that even our best new work needs a firmer connection to credible models of human behavior and deeper foundations in reliable empirical generalizations.
How teaching practices are connected to student intention to enrol in upper secondary school physics courses

Abstract Background: In developed countries, it is challenging for teachers to select pedagogical practices that encourage students to enrol in science and technology courses in upper secondary school. Purpose: Aiming to understand the enrolment dynamics, this study analyses sample-based data from Finland’s National Assessment in Science to determine whether pedagogical approaches influence student intention to enrol in upper secondary school physics courses. Sample: This study examined a clustered sample of 2949 Finnish students in the final year of comprehensive school (15–16 years old). Methods: Through explorative factor analysis, we extracted several variables that were expected to influence student intention to enrol in physics courses. We applied partial correlation to determine the underlying interdependencies of the variables. Results: The analysis revealed that the main predictor of enrolment in upper secondary school physics courses is whether students feel that physics is important. Although statistically significant, partial correlations between variables were rather small. However, the analysis of partial correlations revealed that pedagogical practices influence inquiry and attitudinal factors. Pedagogical practices that emphasise science experimentation and the social construction of knowledge had the strongest influence. Conclusions: The research implies that to increase student enrolment in physics courses, the way students interpret the subject’s importance needs to be addressed, which can be done by the pedagogical practices of discussion, teacher demonstrations, and practical work.
Factors influencing access to education, decision making, and receipt of preferred dialysis modality in unplanned dialysis start patients

Objectives Unplanned dialysis start (UPS) leads to worse clinical outcomes than planned start, and only a minority of patients ever receive education on this topic and are able to make a modality choice, particularly for home dialysis. This study aimed to determine the predictive factors for patients receiving education, making a decision, and receiving their preferred modality choice in UPS patients following a UPS educational program (UPS-EP). Methods The Offering Patients Therapy Options in Unplanned Start (OPTiONS) study examined the impact of the implementation of a specific UPS-EP, including decision support tools and pathway improvement on dialysis modality choice. Linear regression models were used to examine the factors predicting three key steps: referral and receipt of UPS-EP, modality decision making, and actual delivery of preferred modality choice. A simple economic assessment was performed to examine the potential benefit of implementing UPS-EP in terms of dialysis costs. Results The majority of UPS patients could receive UPS-EP (214/270 patients) and were able to make a decision (177/214), although not all patients received their preferred choice (159/177). Regression analysis demonstrated that the initial dialysis modality was a predictive factor for referral and receipt of UPS-EP and modality decision making. In contrast, age was a predictor for referral and receipt of UPS-EP only, and comorbidity was not a predictor for any step, except for myocardial infarction, which was a weak predictor for lower likelihood of receiving preferred modality. Country practices predicted UPS-EP receipt and decision making. Economic analysis demonstrated the potential benefit of UPS-EP implementation because dialysis modality costs were associated with modality distribution driven by patient preference. Conclusion Education and decision support can allow UPS patients to understand their options and choose dialysis modality, and attention needs to be focused on ensuring equity of access to educational programs, especially for the elderly. Physician practice and culture across units/countries is an important predictor of UPS patient management and modality choice independent of patient-related factors. Additional work is required to understand and improve patient pathways to ensure that modality preference is enacted. There appears to be a cost benefit of delivering education, supporting choice, and ensuring that the choice is enacted in UPS patients.
Adjusting the Consensus Measure to Target Ordinal Scale Arguments

Much research data is collected and analyzed as ordinal scale data. The Likert scale is an example of such a data collection tool. Comparing different Likert scale data sets can be difficult, for no specific tool has been identified that is conceptually sound, though researchers typically apply ratio scale mathematics to the data. In this paper a modification of the consensus measure is examined and shown to be a valuable tool in the comparison and ranking of ordinal data. By identifying a specific target category, i.e., the "strongly agree" category of a Likert scale, the target consensus measure calculates a value between 0 and 1, the 0 identifying a Likert scale frequency distribution as being the furthest distance possible from the targeted value, and the 1 representing all values being assigned to the targeted category
Hymenal Characteristics in Girls with and without a History of Sexual Abuse

This article reviews the recent literature on physical findings related to the hymen in pubertal and prepubertal girls with and without a history of sexual abuse. Characteristics of normal hymenal anatomy, acute traumatic findings, and characteristics of healed trauma are discussed, particularly with regard to changes in the interpretation of these findings that have occurred over time.
Anticancer and antimetastatic activities of Renieramycin M, a marine tetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloid, in human non-small cell lung cancer cells.

BACKGROUND Renieramycin M, has been shown to exhibit promising anticancer activity against some cancer cell lines; however, the underlying mechanism remains unknown. MATERIALS AND METHODS Renieramycin M was isolated from the blue sponge Xestospongia sp. Anticancer and antimetastatic activities of renieramycin M were investigated in human non-small cell lung cancer cells. RESULTS Renieramycin M treatment caused p53 activation, which subsequently down-regulated anti-apoptotic MCL-1 and BCL-2 proteins, while the level of pro-apoptotic BAX protein was not altered. The subtoxic concentrations of renieramycin M significantly decreased invasion and migration abilities of cancer cells. In addition, this compound showed a strong inhibitory effect on anchorage-independent growth of the cells. CONCLUSION These results reveal that renieramycin M induced lung cancer cells apoptosis through p53-dependent pathway and the compound may inhibit progression and metastasis of lung cancer cells.
Resurgent Evangelicalism in the United States: Mapping Cultural Change Since 1970

In this look at evangelicalism in the United States, the author contests the widely ascribed "southernization of American religion" thesis, or the idea that the recent resurgence of born-again Christianity represents the spread of southern-style religion from the historically conservative, Protestant South to America's mainstream. He argues that even as evangelicalism changes the face of American culture, it is transformed by its encounter with secularism. The price of success for born-again Christianity, according to the author, is cultural accommodation. He contends that evangelicalism forfeits some of its "southernness" - including its moral strictness - in order to thrive outside the South, and adds that congregations that embrace secular elements of the surrounding culture grow more rapidly than those that hold tightly to traditional evangelical beliefs. Disagreeing with some recent obituaries of the New Christian Right, he suggests that evangelicalism will continue to have a significant effect on American culture in the foreseeable future, but not in the domineering way once feared by the liberal cultural establishment.
An Exploration of Effects of Bullying Victimization From a Complete Mental Health Perspective

This study explored the effects of being bullied from a dual-factor lens, specifically examining the relation between victimization and constructs that contribute to social-emotional well-being. Prior to carrying out the main analyses, the factor structure of self-report items related to experiencing bullying and harassment from the California Healthy Kids Survey, which was administered to more than 14,000 high school students, was examined to establish that these items represent an overall factor: students’ experience of victimization. This factor was then used as an independent variable in a series of planned comparisons with a dependent variable represented by constructs addressed by the Social Emotional Health Survey–Secondary: belief-in-self, emotional competence, belief-in-others, and engaged living. With increased frequency of victimization, suicidality increased and belief-in-others decreased. For other constructs, belief-in-self, engaged living, and depression, there were significant differences found between individuals who had experienced frequencies of bullying as low as less than once a month and those who did not experience bullying at all but no further detrimental impacts were seen with even higher frequencies of victimization, indicating that being victimized at all is significantly worse than not being victimized for these variables. Implications and future directions for research are explored.
A consensus approach to the assignment problem: Application to mobile sensor dispatch

We propose a consensus protocol to solve the assignment problem in a completely distributed manner without any central management or global knowledge. Our protocol is based on the auction algorithm and ensures convergence to an assignment that is within n∈ of being optimal where n is the number of agents and ∈ is a design parameter. We then apply the proposed protocol to the mobile sensor dispatch problem to let each mobile sensor determines, in a completely distributed manner, the failed static sensor it should recover so that the total distance traveled by all the mobile sensors is minimized.
Text lines and PAWs segmentation of handwritten Arabic document by two hybrid methods

We present in this paper two hybrid segmentation methods of handwritten Arabic script. Both methods allow the segmentation of Arabic document in text lines and the segmentation of the text line into Pieces of Arabic Words (PAWs) respectively. The particularity of these two methods is that both use a combination with Mathematical Morphology (MM). The first method uses the (MM) in the first hand and the algorithm of construction of the Outer Isothetic Cover of a digital object (OIC) named MM-OIC in the second hand. The second method combines Hough Transform (HT) and MM called HT-MM. The two proposed methods are evaluated to the three databases : IFN/ENIT-database, BSB and KSU online databases. The impact of the MM on the two proposed methods is then discussed.
A randomized controlled trial of filgrastim as an adjunct to antibiotics for treatment of hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia. CAP Study Group.

Because of the critical role of neutrophils in host defenses, it was hypothesized that stimulation of neutrophil production and function with Filgrastim would improve the outcome of hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia. To test this hypothesis, a randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial of Filgrastim (300 micrograms/day up to 10 days) as an adjunct to antibiotics was conducted for these patients. Outcome measures included time to resolution of morbidity (TRM, a composite measure of temperature, respiratory rate, blood oxygenation, and chest radiograph), 28-day mortality, length of stay, and adverse events. Filgrastim increased blood neutrophils 3-fold, but TRM, mortality, and length of hospitalization were not affected. Treatment, however, accelerated radiologic improvement and appeared to reduce serious complications (e.g., empyema, adult respiratory distress syndrome, and disseminated intravascular coagulation). Filgrastim administration was safe and well tolerated in these patients. Additional trials are needed to establish the value of this approach to treatment of infectious diseases.