Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Psychological Well-Being Among Tanzanian University Students

This study explored the prevalence of levels of psychological well-being in a group of Tanzanian university students. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was implemented for data-gathering. A convenience sample of 279 undergraduate students (19 to 40 years, mean age 29 years) from three church-related universities completed the Mental Health Continuum—Short Form (MHC-SF) as measure of levels of well-being. Descriptive statistics and reliability indices were determined for the MHC-SF and the frequency of various levels of well-being established with implementation of Keyes's criteria for categorization. Findings indicated high levels of positive mental health in this group with a large number of students in the flourishing category. Smaller size of institution was associated with higher well-being. Future research should explore well-being in other Tanzanian groups as well as the possible role of spirituality and religion in subjective reports of psychosocial well-being.
Learning under ferris wheels and big tops: comparing the education of Australian show and circus people

[Abstract]: Australian travelling show and circus people constitute two distinct groups of occupational travellers. Commonalities between the groups include their deviation from the 'norm' of fixed residence, with consequent challenges for conventional, site-based schooling, and their pride in distinctive cultural traditions. Differences include divergent patterns of itinerancy, social categorisation and institutional organisation and lobbying power, with resultant disparities in educational provision. Educational decision makers need to understand these kinds of commonalities and differences if groups such as Australian show and circus people are to have access to equitable and meaningful opprtunities and experiences.
Ecological significance of core, buffer and transition boundaries in biosphere reserve: A remote sensing study in Similipal, Odisha, India

Protected areas and national parks need periodic assessment and monitoring for evaluating natural resources, effectiveness of management and studying the effects of global climate change. The present work has been undertaken to prepare the multi-date vegetation density maps in terms of Normalised vegetation index (NDVI) and to monitor the changes in and around the areas close to transition, buffer and core boundaries of Similipal Biosphere Reserve (SBR) using digital remote sensing and GIS techniques.Time series Landsat images covering a period of 30 years are used for change detection studies.
Consciousness and Its Function

It is plain that an individual's being conscious and an individual's being conscious of various things are both crucial for successful functioning. But it is far less clear how, if at all, it is also useful for a person's psychological states to occur consciously, as against those states occurring but without being conscious. Restricting attention to cognitive and desiderative states, a number of suggestions are current about how the consciousness of those states may be useful. It has been held that such consciousness enhances processes of rational thought and planning, intentional action, executive function, and the correction of complex reasoning. I examine these and related proposals in the light of various empirical findings and theoretical considerations and conclude that the consciousness of cognitive and desiderative states is unlikely to be useful in these or related ways. This undermines a reliance on evolutionary selection pressures in explaining why such states so often occur consciously in humans. I propose an alternative explanation, on which cognitive and desiderative states come to be conscious as a result of other highly useful psychological developments, some involving language. But on this explanation the consciousness of these states itself adds no significant function to that of those other developments. 1. The Issue about Function It is widely held that we understand something only when we can explain it, and explaining a natural phenomenon typically if not always means locating it in its distinctive causal nexus. When those phenomena are biological, moreover, locating a phenomenon often means specifying what function it has for the relevant organism. And that is usually a matter of isolating something about the phenomenon that tends to benefit organisms of that type or confer on them some adaptive or reproductive advantage. This is especially so with mental phenomena and their associated brain processes. We expect that a satisfactory explanation of perceiving, thinking, and other mental occurrences will involve coming to know how those processes and the brain events that subserve them function to benefit the organism. These functions are often obvious. Perceiving enables organisms to interact successfully with its environment, and thinking enables it to figure out what to do and what to avoid in * novel or complex circumstances. And the various emotions help organisms react appropriately to characteristic beneficial and dangerous situations. More specific functions for perceiving, thinking, and the emotions are easy to come by, often simply by reflecting on our …
Validation of an In-House Assay for Cytomegalovirus Immunoglobulin G (CMV IgG) Avidity and Relationship of Avidity to CMV IgM Levels

ABSTRACT Measurement of cytomegalovirus (CMV)-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) avidity has proven to be a powerful tool for distinguishing primary from nonprimary CMV infection. An in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for measuring CMV IgG avidity was validated using 84 sera from pregnant women who had recently seroconverted following primary CMV infection and 74 sera from individuals with past CMV infection (IgG-positive and IgM-negative profile). Of the 84 sera from pregnant women, 73 sera were collected within 120 days of the last IgG-negative sample, and 72 of these 73 sera (99%) exhibited an avidity index (AI) of <50%. In contrast, 71 of 74 (96%) sera from individuals with past CMV infection exhibited CMV AI values of >60%. Thus, low avidity in the in-house ELISA was defined as an AI of ⩽50%, whereas high avidity was defined as an AI of ⩾60%. In additional studies, the relationship between CMV IgG avidity and CMV IgM levels was examined using 64 CMV IgG-positive sera (time since seroconversion unknown) exhibiting equivocal or positive results in a CMV IgM capture ELISA (Diamedix). Of these 64 sera, 29 exhibited IgM index values of ⩾3.0, and 27 of these 29 (93%) exhibited low IgG avidity. A similar trend was observed when a subset of these 64 sera (n = 48) was tested in another CMV IgM capture ELISA (Trinity); of 18 sera with IgM index values of ⩾3.0, 17 (94%) exhibited low IgG avidity. These findings demonstrate the validity of an in-house ELISA for CMV IgG avidity and further show that strong reactivity of CMV IgG-positive sera in either of two CMV IgM capture assays is a reliable indicator of low CMV IgG avidity, and thus, recent CMV infection.
The Use of Protein Anabolizers

It was demonstrated in 1934 that androgens セオウ・N@ nitrogen retention (Kochakion and セイャャャャL@ 1935). In addition to their virilizing セ」エエッョL@ testosterone and its many preparations aVe been used for the last 20 years for their ・セ」・ャャ・ョエ@ protein anabolic effect. Unfortuna· te y this application was limited, as in females of all ages and in prepuberal males unwdelcome virilization was produced if the ose' t' . ' Ime ratio was too high. These two 。 」セッョウ@ of testosterolle protein anabolic and 。 セ@ rogenic or virilizing _ led the steroid cheIlUsts to I . A f' s b attempt t lelr separation. t Irst U stances with lesser androgenicity were セ。 、・L@ Such as methylandrostenediol. but this /as also a weak anabolic agent. Androstano「Zセ・@ . had a moderately higher anabolic effect, d It was more androgenic than methylanthtostenediol. It is only in the last 20 years at a . I b consll erable advance has been made y the availability of the nortestosterones and other steroids.
Anti-dsDNA Antibody Isotypes in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: IgA in Addition to IgG Anti-dsDNA Help to Identify Glomerulonephritis and Active Disease

Objectives To evaluate the role of serum IgG, IgM and IgA anti-dsDNA antibody isotypes in the diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and their association with clinical features and disease activity, in a large cohort of SLE patients. Methods Sera of 200 SLE patients (mean age 34±10.3 years; 26 male and 174 female; median duration of disease 115 months, range 7–378), and of 206 controls, including 19 Sjögren's syndrome, 27 rheumatoid arthritis, 26 psoriatic arthritis, 15 idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM), 13 systemic sclerosis, 49 infectious diseases and 57 healthy subjects, were tested for anti-dsDNA IgG, IgM and IgA isotypes. Results Selecting a cutoff corresponding to 95% specificity, the sensitivity of IgG, IgM and IgA anti-dsDNA antibodies in SLE was 55%, 30% and 49%, respectively; 12.5%, 1% and 7.5% of SLE patients had positive IgG, IgM or IgA isotype alone, respectively. SLE patients with glomerulonephritis showed higher levels of IgA anti-dsDNA (p = 0.0002), anti-dsDNA IgG/IgM (p = 0.001) and IgA/IgM (p<0.0001) ratios than patients without renal disease. No significant associations have been found between anti-dsDNA isotypes and other clinical features. IgA anti-dsDNA (p = 0.01) (but not IgG or IgM) and IgG/IgM ratio (p = 0.005) were significantly higher in patients with more active disease (ECLAM score >4). Conclusions The detection of IgA anti-dsDNA autoantibodies seems to improve our ability to diagnose SLE and to define lupus nephritis phenotype and active disease. By contrast, IgM anti-dsDNA antibodies might be protective for renal involvement. These data support the hypothesis that anti-dsDNA antibody class clustering may help to refine SLE diagnosis and prognosis.
Another Look at Extensive Reading : A Study of Japanese University EFL Students

Internet access has brought us closer to foreign cultures and makes English reading skills crucial for people who want immediate access to worldwide information. From my teaching experience in various Japanese high schools, however, English lessons seem to mainly focus on intensive reading skills with an emphasis on learning new grammar and vocabulary, and students are trained to consult a dictionary when they meet unknown words, which results in their having a negative attitude toward reading in English. They seem to think reading in English is very difficult and time-consuming. Many researchers report that successful readers are able to utilise top-down processing more often than bottom-up processing because their bottom-up processing occurs automatically. Exposure to a large amount of written text is essential for acquisition of automatic bottom-up processing. This is why I believe the introduction of extensive reading, where a reader reads a large number of texts rapidly, concentrating on the content of the text rather than the language, would help improve students' Ianguage skills and overcome their negative attitude toward reading in English. Common complaints about previous extensive reading research include the difficulties of controlling outside interference and maintaining equal learning conditions between the experimental group and the control group. In this study, I attempted to verify the effects of extensive reading on students' Ianguage skills and attitudes toward reading, by intentionally avoiding using a control group in order to diminish the effects of the different
A role of right middle frontal gyrus in reorienting of attention: a case study

The right middle fontal gyrus (MFG) has been proposed to be a site of convergence of the dorsal and ventral attention networks, by serving as a circuit-breaker to interrupt ongoing endogenous attentional processes in the dorsal network and reorient attention to an exogenous stimulus. Here, we probed the contribution of the right MFG to both endogenous and exogenous attention by comparing performance on an orientation discrimination task of a patient with a right MFG resection and a group of healthy controls. On endogenously cued trials, participants were shown a central cue that predicted with 90% accuracy the location of a subsequent peri-threshold Gabor patch stimulus. On exogenously cued trials, a cue appeared briefly at one of two peripheral locations, followed by a variable inter-stimulus interval (ISI; range 0–700 ms) and a Gabor patch in the same or opposite location as the cue. Behavioral data showed that for endogenous, and short ISI exogenous trials, valid cues facilitated responses compared to invalid cues, for both the patient and controls. However, at long ISIs, the patient exhibited difficulty in reverting to top-down attentional control, once the facilitatory effect of the exogenous cue had dissipated. When explicitly cued during long ISIs to attend to both stimulus locations, the patient was able to engage successfully in top-down control. This result indicates that the right MFG may play an important role in reorienting attention from exogenous to endogenous attentional control. Resting state fMRI data revealed that the right superior parietal lobule and right orbitofrontal cortex, showed significantly higher correlations with a left MFG seed region (a region tightly coupled with the right MFG in controls) in the patient relative to controls. We hypothesize that this paradoxical increase in cortical coupling represents a compensatory mechanism in the patient to offset the loss of function of the resected tissue in right prefrontal cortex.
Local restoration for bandwidth guaranteed connections in mobile optical backbone networks

We consider a mobile backbone network with free space optical point-to-point links. Each backbone node moves randomly but with low mobility, and future movement is not predictable. Requests for aggregate bandwidth between pairs of backbone nodes arrive one-by-one, and a bandwidth guaranteed connection is established if there are sufficient network resources (link bandwidth and node transceivers); otherwise, the request is rejected. Each request has a finite duration after which the bandwidth guaranteed connection is released. The connection may break due to the movement of the backbone nodes, thus necessitating a mechanism for connection restoration. We introduce a new type of mobile node, referred to as a controllable restoration agent, that may be used to restore broken connections. An online algorithm is developed to determine where to position the agents to provide maximum protection, given the locations of the nodes and the set of existing connections. It is shown that by using the algorithm to place a limited number of agents strategically, a significant improvement in network performance can be achieved.
On Using the Viterbi Path Along With HMM Likelihood Information for Online Signature Verification

This paper describes a system using two complementary sorts of information issuing from a hidden Markov model (HMM) for online signature verification. At each point of the signature, 25 features are extracted. These features are normalized before training and testing in order to improve the performance of the system. This normalization is writer-dependent; it exploits only five genuine signatures used to train the writer HMM. A claimed identity is confirmed when the arithmetic mean of two similarity scores, obtained on an input signature, is higher than a threshold. The first score is related to the likelihood given by the HMM of the claimed identity; the second score is related to the segmentation given by such an HMM on the input signature. A personalized score normalization is also proposed before fusion. Our approach is evaluated on several online signature databases, such as BIOMET, PHILIPS, MCYT, and SVC2004, which were captured under different acquisition conditions. For the first time in signature verification, we show that the fusion of segmentation-based information generated by the HMM with likelihood-based information considerably improves the quality of the verification system. Finally, owing to our two-stage normalization (at the feature and score levels), we show that our system results in more stable client-score distributions across databases and in a better separation between the distributions of client and impostor scores.
Expression of sex hormone-binding globulin, oxytocin receptor, caveolin-1 and p21 in leiomyoma

Background. Interaction of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) and oxytocin (OT) is among the factors that control smooth muscle proliferation and tumor growth through the oxytocin receptor (OTR). Also, a close functional interaction of OTR and caveolin-1 has been shown to modulate cell growth and proliferation. Methods. We studied surgical samples from 23 leiomyoma patients (aged 33–66 years) with immunocytochemistry. Specimens from five patients (34–76 years), who had hysterectomy for other reasons, served as controls. Tissue samples were cut into serial 1-μm thick sections for co-localization of SHBG, OTR, proliferation marker p21 and caveolin-1. Results. SHBG was found in smooth muscle cells in all samples. OTR staining occurred in most of these cells in myomas, while controls contained only scattered cells positive for OTR. There were no apparent differences in immunostaining for p21, while immunoreactivity for caveolin-1 was observed in most cells in myomas and in only few cells in controls. Caveolin-1 was mostly co-localized with SHBG and OTR in myoma samples whereas controls showed this co-localization only occasionally. Conclusions. Our observations indicate an interaction of SHBG and OTR, associated with caveolin-1, which may account in part for known non-genomic actions of ovarian steroids. Growth of leiomyomas may be linked to these mechanisms.
Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men's Violence, and Women's Lives

Have you wondered: Why women are more sympathetic than men toward O. J. Simpson? Why women were no more supportive of the Equal Rights Amendment than men? Why women are no more likely than men to support a female political candidate? Why women are no more likely than men to embrace feminism--a movement by, about, and for women? Why some women stay with men who abuse them? Loving to Survive addresses just these issues and poses a surprising answer. Likening women's situation to that of hostages, Dee L. R. Graham and her co- authors argue that women bond with men and adopt men's perspective in an effort to escape the threat of men's violence against them. Dee Graham's announcement, in 1991, of her research on male-female bonding was immediately followed by a national firestorm of media interest. Her startling and provocative conclusion was covered in dozens of national newspapers and heatedly debated. In Loving to Survive, Graham provides us with a complete account of her remarkable insights into relationships between men and women. In 1973, three women and one man were held hostage in one of the largest banks in Stockholm by two ex-convicts. These two men threatened their lives, but also showed them kindness. Over the course of the long ordeal, the hostages came to identify with their captors, developing an emotional bond with them. They began to perceive the police, their prospective liberators, as their enemies, and their captors as their friends, as a source of security. This seemingly bizarre reaction to captivity, in which the hostages and captors mutually bond to one another, has been documented in other cases as well, and has become widely known as Stockholm Syndrome. The authors of this book take this syndrome as their starting point to develop a new way of looking at male-female relationships. Loving to Survive considers men's violence against women as crucial to understanding women's current psychology. Men's violence creates ever-present, and therefore often unrecognized, terror in women. This terror is often experienced as a fear for any woman of rape by any man or as a fear of making any man angry. They propose that women's current psychology is actually a psychology of women under conditions of captivitythat is, under conditions of terror caused by male violence against women. Therefore, women's responses to men, and to male violence, resemble hostages' responses to captors. Loving to Survive explores women's bonding to men as it relates to men's violence against women. It proposes that, like hostages who work to placate their captors lest they kill them, women work to please men, and from this springs women's femininity. Femininity describes a set of behaviors that please men because they communicate a woman's acceptance of her subordinate status. Thus, feminine behaviors are, in essence, survival strategies. Like hostages who bond to their captors, women bond to men in an effort to survive. This is a book that will forever change the way we look at male-female relationships and women's lives.
Assessing the Ability of the DDES Turbulence Modeling Approach to Simulate the Wake of a Bluff Body

A detailed numerical investigation of the flow behind a square cylinder at a Reynolds number of 21,400 is conducted to assess the ability of the delayed detached-eddy simulation (DDES) modeling approach to accurately predict the velocity recovery in the wake of a bluff body. Three-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) and DDES simulations making use of the Spalart–Allmaras turbulence model are carried out using the open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) toolbox OpenFOAM-2.1. x, and are compared with available experimental velocity measurements. It is found that the DDES simulation tends to overestimate the averaged streamwise velocity component, especially in the near wake, but a better agreement with the experimental data is observed further downstream of the body. The velocity fluctuations also match reasonably well with the experimental data. Moreover, it is found that the spanwise domain length has a significant impact on the flow, especially regarding the fluctuations of the drag coefficient. Nonetheless, for both the averaged and fluctuating velocity components, the DDES approach is shown to be superior to the URANS approach. Therefore, for engineering purposes, it is found that the DDES approach is a suitable choice to simulate and characterize the velocity recovery in a wake.
Cellular Automata Machines

Cellular automata are the computer scientist's counterpart to the physicist's concept of 'field'. They provide natural models for many investigations in physics, combinatorial mathematics, and computer science that deal with systems extended in space and evolving in time according to local laws. A cellular automata machine is a computer optimized for the simulation of cellular automata. Its dedicated architecture allows it to run thousands of times faster than a general-purpose computer of comparable cost programmed to do the same task. In practical terms this permits intensive interactive experimentation and opens up new fields of research in distributed dynamics, including practical applications involving parallel computation and image processing. Contents: Introduction. Cellular Automata. The CAM Environment. A Live Demo. The Rules of the Game. Our First rules. Second-order Dynamics. The Laboratory. Neighbors and Neighborhood. Running. Particle Motion. The Margolus Neighborhood. Noisy neighbors. Display and Analysis. Physical Modeling. Reversibility. Computing Machinery. Hydrodynamics. Statistical Mechanics. Other Applications. Imaging Processing. Rotations. Pattern Recognition. Multiple CAMS.