Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surveillance Cultures and Duration of Carriage of Multidrug-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii

ABSTRACT Isolating carriers of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii is the main measure to prevent its spread. Identification of carriers accompanied by contact precautions is essential. We aimed to determine the appropriate surveillance sampling sites and the duration of carriage of MDR A. baumannii. We studied prospectively two groups of patients from whom MDR A. baumannii was previously isolated: (i) those with recent clinical isolation (≤10 days) and (ii) those with remote clinical isolation (≥6 months). Screening for carriage was conducted from six sites: nostrils, pharynx, skin, rectum, wounds, and endotracheal aspirates. Strains recovered concurrently from different sites were genotyped using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Twelve of 22 with recent clinical isolation of MDR A. baumannii had ≥1 positive screening culture, resulting in a sensitivity of 55% when six body sites were sampled. Sensitivities of single sites ranged from 13.5% to 29%. Among 30 patients with remote clinical isolation, screening cultures were positive in 5 (17%), with a mean duration of 17.5 months from the last clinical culture. Remote carriers had positive screening cultures from the skin and pharynx but not from nose, rectum, wounds, or endotracheal aspirates. Eleven strains from five patients were genotyped. In all but one case, isolates from different sites in a given patient were clonal. Current methodology is suboptimal to detect MDR A. baumannii carriage. The sensitivity of surveillance cultures is low, even when six different body sites are sampled. The proportion of individuals with previous MDR A. baumannii isolation who remain carriers for prolonged periods is substantial. These data should be considered when designing measures to limit the spread of MDR A. baumannii.
Teaching Social Communication

There are a variety of effective treatments designed for increasing social communication in young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Two such treatments, naturalistic behavioral and developmental, social-pragmatic/relationshipbased interventions, differ in their underlying philosophy yet share many similarities in their implementation. They also exhibit critical differences that may affect their effectiveness with children with ASD. This article provides a discussion of the similarities and differences between these two approaches. Based on this comparison, it recommends new research directions that should lead to the development of more effective social-communication interventions for young children with ASD.
Does one's name attract visual attention?

Does one's name attract visual attention? To answer this question, we conducted four experiments. Experiment 1 adopted the method of a previous study (Bundesen, Kyllingsbæk, Houmann, & Jensen, 1997), but used Japanese names; the results of this experiment replicated the lack of evidence for attentional attraction by the observer's name. Experiments 2 and 3 tested two arguments put forward by Bundesen et al. (1997) to explain this null effect of observer's name on attentional attraction. The results showed that neither efficient target selection by colour nor the number of target characters could explain the null effect. Alternatively, we proposed that the observer's set plays a critical role in the attentional attraction of observer's name. Experiments 4 and 5 tested this idea by manipulating the observer's set; the results showed that when the observer's set matches the target defining feature, the observer's name does capture attention. These five experiments suggest that attentional attraction by an observer's name depends on the relationship between the observer's set and task.
Repetition priming of access to biographical information from faces

Two experiments examined repetition priming on tasks that require access to semantic (or biographical) information from faces. In the second stage of each experiment, participants made either a nationality or an occupation decision to faces of celebrities, and, in the first stage, they made either the same or a different decision to faces (in Experiment 1) or the same or a different decision to printed names (in Experiment 2). All combinations of priming and test tasks produced clear repetition effects, which occurred irrespective of whether the decisions made were positive or negative. Same-domain (face-to-face) repetition priming was larger than cross-domain (name-to-face) priming, and priming was larger when the two tasks were the same. It is discussed how these findings are more readily accommodated by the Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990) model of face recognition than by episode-based accounts of repetition priming.
Student performance in Introductory Microeconomics at an African open and distance learning institution

Abstract Introductory Microeconomics as offered by the University of South Africa (Unisa) is a compulsory module for a Bachelor of Commerce, a Bachelor of Accountancy or a Bachelor of Administration degree. Success or failure in Introductory Microeconomics directly impacts on the number of years students take to complete their degrees, and eventually also on the throughput subsidy to Unisa. A number of exceptional institutional rules and regulations impact on the teaching of Introductory Microeconomics at Unisa, as an open and distance learning (ODL) institution. Unlike many residential institutions, Unisa does not require Mathematics at school level for registration for Introductory Microeconomics. This article reports on research done at Unisa to determine how student success in Introductory Microeconomics is influenced by variables such as race, home language, whether the students passed mathematics at matriculation level, matriculation exemption1, gender and the passing of assignments. Although this research confirms previous research that home language and age do impact on student success, it finds that the successful passing of assignments has the greatest impact on student success. 1. Matriculation (“matric”): In South Africa, the final school exit certificate, which is awarded with or without university exemption (“endorsement”).
Good jobs and bad jobs: Differences in the clergy employment relationship

Employment relationships between clergy and church congregations vary from church to church. Although large (budget and size) churches are usually the best churches in terms of clergy pay and benefits, clergy folklore and compensating differentials arguments from economists suggest that the large churches may not be the best employment situations when nonmaterial features of work are considered. In fact, it is argued that smaller churches must provide more nonmaterial benefits in order to initially attract clergy and then keep them from leaving. National sample data on 1875 local churches from two Protestant denominations are used to assess whether this compensation actually exists. Counter to this differential compensation argument, strong support is found for a clear distinction between good and bad job situations, with the larger/higher budget, good churches consistently having both material and nonmaterial employment benefits that are better than those found in the smaller churches. These results are interpreted in the context of how clergy labor markets operate.
Relations Between Measures of Irritability and Contingency Detection at 6 Months

The hypothesis that irritability and contingency detection are negatively correlated was examined in thirty-one 6-month-old infants. Observation and maternal report-based assessments of irritability were correlated with both a criterion score and a continuous score of contingency detection. Results indicated that greater irritability in infants was associated with lower contingency detection scores. Discussion focuses on identifying processes by which the 2 constructs may be associated.
The anorexic patient as a survivor: The denial of death and death themes in the literature on anorexia nervosa

This paper examines by a selective review of the literature on secondary anorexia nervosa the under-recognized role of death fears and anxieties in the etiology of this paradoxical condition. By drawing on the psychology of the survivor, the anorexic patient is conceptualised as a “survivor by proxy” of the parent. In developing and confronting these themes, areas of knowledge otherwise thought unrelated to anorexia are discussed. Of particular importance are the Rheingold theories on maternal destructiveness, the catastrophic death complex in women, Lifton's psychology of the survivor (particularly the survivor child), research on maternal depression, morbid obsessions, necrophilia, and murderous obsessions in mothers towards their children. The main thrust of this reconceptualization is that death fears and anxieties, and a close associative linking between eating, death, and other basic life functions, plays a central and not peripheral role in the dynamic etiology of secondary anorexia nervosa.
The Relative Dominance of Different Facial Expressions of Emotion under Conditions of Perceptual Ambiguity.

Facial expressions of happiness, excitement, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and calm were presented stereoscopically to create pair wise perceptual conflict. Dominance of one expression over another as the most common result, but basic emotions (happiness, fear, etc.) failed to dominate non-basic emotions (excitement, calm), Instead, extremely pleasant or extremely unpleasant emotions dominated less valenced emotions (e.g. surprise). Blends of the presented pairs also occurred, mainly when the emotions were adjacent according to a circumplex structure of emotion. Blends were most common among negatively valenced emotions, such as fear, anger, and disgust.
Silencing the everyday experiences of youth? Deconstructing issues of subjectivity and popular/corporate culture in the English classroom

This paper investigates the influence of popular/corporate culture texts and discourses on the subjectivities and everyday social experiences of young people, and the extent to which such influences are critically analysed in the English classroom. I present two levels of synthesised information using data analysis born of a mixed-methods postgraduate research project with a group of 15- and 16-year-old high school students in Perth, Australia. First, I argue that popular culture texts position young people to assume subjectivities that are heavily informed by the ideologies and discourses of popular/corporate culture. Moreover, I argue that young people's social currency is often defined by the extent to which individuals demonstrate an alliance to such ideologies and discourses, and that individuals who deviate from popular norms experience subjugation and exclusion within peer and social settings. Second, I deal pedagogically with subject English and areas of it that hold relevance in terms of the integration and analysis of ‘the popular’. I argue that many students feel their teachers are ‘out of touch’ with the everyday realities of young people and their popular culture influences, and that there is a lack of commitment by teachers to critically analyse popular culture texts in the classroom. The paper concludes by arguing that such failures risk producing students whose everyday experiences are silenced and who are denied the critical learning spaces necessary to deconstruct the ways they are positioned to adopt certain subjectivities. Moreover, critical and progressive pedagogical praxis need to be further deployed by educators in order to effectively analyse the relationship between youth subjectivities and popular/corporate culture discourses.
Modeling the Interaction between Quasigeostrophic Vertical Motion and Convection in a Single Column

AbstractA single-column modeling approach is proposed to study the interaction between convection and large-scale dynamics using the quasigeostrophic (QG) framework. This approach extends the notion of “parameterization of large-scale dynamics,” previously applied in the tropics via the weak temperature gradient approximation and other comparable methods, to the extratropics, where balanced adiabatic dynamics plays a larger role in inducing large-scale vertical motion. The diabatic heating in an air column is resolved numerically by a single-column model or a cloud-resolving model. The large-scale vertical velocity, which controls vertical advection of temperature and moisture, is computed through the QG omega equation including the dry adiabatic terms and the diabatic heating term. The component due to diabatic heating can be thought of as geostrophic adjustment to that heating and couples the convection to the large-scale vertical motion. The approach is demonstrated using two representations of convect.
Chlorhexidine Gluconate Dressings Reduce Bacterial Colonization Rates in Epidural and Peripheral Regional Catheters

Introduction. Bacterial colonization of catheter tips is common in regional anesthesia and is a suspected risk factor for infectious complications. This is the first study evaluating the effect of CHG-impregnated dressings on bacterial colonization of regional anesthesia catheters in a routine clinical setting. Methods. In this prospective study, regional anesthesia catheter infection rates were examined in two groups of patients with epidural and peripheral regional catheters. In the first group, regional anesthesia was dressed with a conventional draping. The second group of patients underwent catheter dressing using a CHG-impregnated draping. Removed catheters and the insertion sites were both screened for bacterial colonization. Results. A total of 337 catheters from 308 patients were analysed. There was no significant reduction of local infections in either epidural or peripheral regional anesthesia catheters in both CHG and conventional groups. In the conventional group, 21% of the catheter tips and 41% of the insertion sites showed positive culture results. In the CHG-group, however, only 3% of the catheter tips and 8% of the insertion sites were colonised. Conclusion. CHG dressings significantly reduce bacterial colonization of the tip and the insertion site of epidural and peripheral regional catheters. However, no reductions in rates of local infections were seen.
Couples with dementia: Positioning the ‘we'

The aim of this article is to investigate how spouses in couples with dementia position themselves in relation to each other by analysing their use of pronouns, especially the we. The study uses joint interviews with 11 couples. Based on a quantitative analysis of pronoun use, it is argued that the pronoun we is used by all the spouses; however, it is used less frequently by the spouses with dementia in comparison with healthy spouses. A qualitative analysis of the use of the pronoun we shows that the spouses position, experience and consider themselves as a couple and that they position and experience themselves as individuals in relation to the couple. One of the challenges for couples with dementia is to be able to retain a we in face of the progression of the dementia disease. By positioning themselves in various ways, the spouses establish and negotiate quite a complex and emotionally charged web of relationships.
Tertiary Educators' Perceptions of and Attitudes Toward Emerging Educational Technologies.

ABSTRACT A small initial study aimed to find out what values, perceptions and attitudes educators from a sample tertiary faculty (the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia) have towards a group of new and emerging educational technologies. A questionnaire was formulated which was administered as a written survey or telephone interview. The study found that the respondents are most familiar with and have useful knowledge about CD‐ROM technology, and most are also familiar with video‐conferencing. These technologies are seen as the most potentially useful. Lack of knowledge, display/delivery equipment, and the time‐consuming nature of making such educational material are the major barriers which hinder their use of them. The study recommends further inquiry into the barriers that prevent the integration of such technologies into tertiary learning.
Human rights discourse and international relations: Le Monde's editorials on Russia

Editorials on Russia published by the French newspaper, Le Monde, during the first months of the second Chechen war (August 1999—March 2000) are analysed within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. A new linguistic model of analysis is proposed for the study of the various texts taken as an entity. Its application results in a three-dimensional synthesis of the editorials that brings to the fore their premises. It appears that Le Monde's discourse on human rights belongs to a discourse of French national identity whose roots can be found in the 18th century. Journalists from three Russian dailies (Izvestija, Segodnja, Nezavisimaja Gazeta) seem to have perceived this discourse as a media war against their own national identity. The analysis explains how Le Monde's comments on the humanitarian situation in Chechnya could have resulted in such an intercultural impasse. The question of the role of human rights discourse in a `globalizing' world is raised.
Evolutionary lessons from California plant phylogeography

Phylogeography documents the spatial distribution of genetic lineages that result from demographic processes, such as population expansion, population contraction, and gene movement, shaped by climate fluctuations and the physical landscape. Because most phylogeographic studies have used neutral markers, the role of selection may have been undervalued. In this paper, we contend that plants provide a useful evolutionary lesson about the impact of selection on spatial patterns of neutral genetic variation, when the environment affects which individuals can colonize new sites, and on adaptive genetic variation, when environmental heterogeneity creates divergence at specific loci underlying local adaptation. Specifically, we discuss five characteristics found in plants that intensify the impact of selection: sessile growth form, high reproductive output, leptokurtic dispersal, isolation by environment, and the potential to evolve longevity. Collectively, these traits exacerbate the impact of environment on movement between populations and local selection pressures—both of which influence phylogeographic structure. We illustrate how these unique traits shape these processes with case studies of the California endemic oak, Quercus lobata, and the western North American lichen, Ramalina menziesii. Obviously, the lessons we learn from plant traits are not unique to plants, but they highlight the need for future animal, plant, and microbe studies to incorporate its impact. Modern tools that generate genome-wide sequence data are now allowing us to decipher how evolutionary processes affect the spatial distribution of different kinds of genes and also to better model future spatial distribution of species in response to climate change.
Assessing the Need for Gender-Specific Explanations of Prisoner Victimization

The literature on differences in the carceral experiences of women and men underscores the relevance of both background (pre-prison) and confinement factors for shaping inmates’ experiences during incarceration, but with a heavier emphasis on linkages between background factors and problems women face during confinement. Here, we apply these ideas to an understanding of sex differences in factors influencing victimization risk during incarceration. Sex-specific models of physical assaults and property thefts were estimated for random samples of inmates from 46 prisons in Ohio and Kentucky. Background factors were more important than confinement factors for influencing assaults on women whereas both sets of factors were relevant for men. Both background and confinement factors were important for predicting theft victimizations for both groups although the magnitude of several effects varied by an inmate’s sex. Findings suggest that effective crime prevention strategies in prison may vary across facilities for women and for men.
Clinical Ophthalmology Dovepress Dovepress Causes of Uveitis in Children without Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Background: The purpose of this study was to report the demographics, disease characteristics, treatments, and visual outcomes of pediatric uveitis patients without juvenile idiopathic arthritis managed in a tertiary medical center. Methods: A retrospective, observational study was performed in pediatric uveitis patients without juvenile idiopathic arthritis and aged 0–18 years, who were seen at the University of Virginia from 1984 to 2014.
Learning to learn: an examination of organisational learning in selected Irish multinationals

The realities of global competition and increased customer sophistication have focused organisational attention on the need to develop a “learning culture”. However, while much has been written on the importance of evolving a “learning culture”, less attention has been given to understanding in a practical way the characteristics of learning organisations and the ways in which companies can improve their learning systems. This study of selected multinationals in Ireland seeks to examine current best practice in organisational learning, explore how businesses can become learning organisations, assess the role of executive management in the creation of learning organisations and determine key success factors for learning organisations. The findings suggest that learning organisation concepts are perceived as strategically important activities. The learning organisation concept is viewed as a philosophy driven by customer and competitive needs that requires executive management commitment and visible support to be successfully implemented.
Perinatal Features of Pregnancies Complicated by Nuchal Cord

The perinatal data of 550 fetuses with a nuchal cord at delivery were compared with those of a control group matched for gestational age, maternal age, and parity. The study group was subsequently subdivided into those fetuses with either single or multiple coils of nuchal cord. No significant differences were found in the comparison of routine ultrasound data between the two groups. The perinatal mortality rate and the prevalence of arterial pH less than 7.16, venous pH less than 7.20, and Apgar scores less than 7 at 5 and 10 minutes were similar in both groups. There was a significantly higher incidence of Apgar score less than 7 at 1 minute, meconium-stained amniotic fluid, emergency cesarean section, need for neonatal resuscitation, and of admission to the neonatal intensive care unit in the nuchal cord group compared with the controls. Multiple looping of the umbilical cord around the fetal neck was the main factor accounting for the higher incidence of these complications and the only explanation put forward for the three perinatal deaths that occurred in this group, all of whom presented in the preceding week with decreased fetal movements. The results of the present study suggest that sonographic identification of nuchal cord may be an important observation during third trimester sonography, particularly when evaluating cases of decreased fetal movements.