Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Perceptions, Knowledge, Benefits and Barriers of Hispanics Regarding the Dietary Guidelines for Americans

OF THESIS THE PERCEPTIONS, KNOWLEDGE, BENEFITS AND BARRIERS OF HISPANICS REGARDING THE DIETARY GUIDELINES FOR AMERICANS Background: Hispanics are the largest minority group in the U.S. and by the year 2060 the number of Hispanics is projected to double. They are disproportionately affected by obesity and chronic diseases which translate into decreased quality of life, loss of work opportunities and perceptions of injustice for the Hispanic population. The Dietary Guidelines (DG) provide information to help Americans make healthy food and physical activity choices and if followed can be a means of reducing the health disparity gap. However, culturally relevant recommendations specific to Hispanics’ health and nutritional habits are often lacking. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions, knowledge, benefits and barriers of Hispanics regarding the recommendations in the DG, Choose MyPlate, and the Department of Health and Human Services physical activity guidelines. Methods: A qualitative research design was used. Focus groups were conducted in Spanish and audiotapes were transcribed and then, translated into English. Thematic analysis was used to identify different key concepts subgrouping these topics according to common emergent themes. Results: A total of 24 participants took part in the study. Participants viewed healthy eating in terms of portion sizes. They viewed the DG as helpful but felt they needed more information to follow the guidelines. Several barriers were identified in following the MyPlate: lack of availability of healthy, fresh, inexpensive grocery options in Hispanic neighborhoods. Participants described the benefits of physical activity as related to improved mental health and quality of life such as looking and feeling better. Conclusion and Implications: Promoting nutrition education that is culturally and linguistically appropriate for Hispanics might help facilitate the adoption of the DG and MyPlate recommendations. Also, improving the design of existing low-income neighborhoods is still a challenge to improve participation in physical activity among Hispanics’.
Illumination robust dictionary-based face recognition

In this paper, we present a face recognition method based on simultaneous sparse approximations under varying illumination. Our method consists of two main stages. In the first stage, a dictionary is learned for each face class based on given training examples which minimizes the representation error with a sparseness constraint. In the second stage, a test image is projected onto the span of the atoms in each learned dictionary. The resulting residual vectors are then used for classification. Furthermore, to handle changes in lighting conditions, we use a relighting approach based on a non-stationary stochastic filter to generate multiple images of the same person with different lighting. As a result, our algorithm has the ability to recognize human faces with good accuracy even when only a single or a very few images are provided for training. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated on publicly available databases and it is shown that this method is efficient and can perform significantly better than many competitive face recognition algorithms.
Dental Health Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviour among Students at the Kuwait University Health Sciences Centre

Objective: The aim of the study was to determine the extent of dental health knowledge among students at the Kuwait University Health Sciences Centre (HSC), as well as their attitudes toward dental health and their oral hygiene habits. Methods: A structured questionnaire was distributed to 450 of the 800 students enrolled in 3 faculties of the HSC from March to April 2000. The questionnaire was completed anonymously by the students. Results: Four hundred and ten students (91.1%) completed the questionnaire. Of these, 64.6% believed that the main cause of tooth decay was ‘not brushing properly’. Only 19.3% of the students believed that sugar could cause dental decay. Half of the students did not know if sugar-free drinks are harmful to their teeth, and 29.5% did not know about any measures to prevent gums from bleeding. Self-assessment questions showed that 84.5% of the students were satisfied with their dental health. A large majority of the students (94.8%) brushed their teeth at least once a day. Female students brushed their teeth more frequently than male students, as did those students who had visited a dentist in the past 6–12 months and those who rated their dental health to be very good. The main reason given for a dental visit was toothache (70.0%). Coffee was consumed daily by 68.9% of students, 76.6% of whom added sugar to their coffee. Conclusions: The findings indicate that although most of the students at the HSC seem to be satisfied with their dental health, they did not have correct knowledge about the causes and prevention of dental diseases. In general, female students were more aware and concerned about dental health issues and more engaged in dental behaviour than male students.
Cohesion, Alliance, and Outcome in Group Psychotherapy: Comments on Joyce et al. (2007) and Johnson (2007)

I have read with great interest Joyce, Piper, & Ogrodniczuk’s (2007) article about therapeutic alliance, cohesion, and outcome in group psychotherapy, where alliance emerged as a more consistent predictor of outcome than cohesion. The data were taken from a comparative trial of two forms of time–limited group psychotherapy for complicated grief (12 sessions of interpretive or supportive group psychotherapy), and patients and the therapists rated a four–item measure of the therapeutic alliance after every session. The patient and therapist scores (means of the session scores) served as two summary measures of the therapeutic alliance over the entire course of therapy. The cohesion was rated from each individual participant’s perspective and consisted of every patient’s commitment to the group (rated after every session by each patient), the compatibility between the patient and the other members of the group (both the average of the patient’s ratings of the other members, and the average of the other members’ ratings of the patient), and finally the patient–therapist compatibility (as perceived both by the patient and the therapist). The compatibility measures were administered after Sessions 4, 8, and 12. The
Sex differentials in survival in the Canadian population, 1921-1997

This paper demonstrates how intensity regression and methods for visualizing demographic data can be applied to the study of sex differentials in survival in the Canadian population over the period 1921-1997. In general the results indicate that death rates declined differently for males and females and that the rate of mortality decline was not constant over age or over time. The global pattern of the Canadian sex differentials has a very distinct form and is consistent with findings for other countries.
The New Environmental Paradigm and Personal Norms

Using data from nationwide representative samples from Sweden and from Sweden's largest environmental organization, proenvironmental behavior is interpreted in the light of Schwartz's norm activation theory. The New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale is used as an indicator of awareness of consequences, while inclination to guilt feelings, if harming the environment, is used as an indicator of a personal norm. Regression analysis of proenvironmental behavior and willingness to pay higher prices for environmentally friendly food showed that the indicator of a personal norm was far more strongly correlated to proenvironmental behavior and willingness to pay, respectively, than the NEP scale. Education and income showed hardly any influence on proenvironmental behavior and willingness to pay, whereas gender and age fell somewhere in between. An attempt is made to explain the generally weak correlations between NEP and environmentally relevant variables by pointing out the generally high level of agreement with the NEP items among Swedes.
National identity building through patterns of an international third-person perception in news coverage

This article argues that news coverage plays an important role for national identity building in the way that it evaluates the own nation better than foreign nations (in-group/out-group bias). This notion is being transferred to the media as an element of national cultural identity. This article identifies analogies between national identity building through the mass media and the third-person perception, which states that people assume others to be more vulnerable to negative media influences. It is hypothesized that patterns of an international third-person perception occur in news coverage, i.e. the news media should present media influences in the own country to be weaker than in other countries. A first standardized content analysis (N = 2204) of newspaper coverage from the US and Germany on elections in own and other countries supports this hypothesis. Consequences are discussed and directions for future research are pointed out.
How Native Do They Sound?: An Acoustic Analysis of the Spanish Vowels of Elementary Spanish Immersion Students

Language immersion students’ lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic competencies are well documented, yet their phonological skill has remained relatively unexplored. This study investigates the Spanish vowel productions of a cross-sectional sample of 35 one-way Spanish immersion students. Learner productions were analyzed acoustically and compared to those of Spanish-English bilingual peers. Findings reveal that learners’ productions differ from those of their native Spanish-speaking peers on nearly all measures; observed differences may be the result of transfer of first language phonetic and phonological tendencies and the nature of the input received.
The Effect of Partnership Care Model on Mental Health of Patients with Thalassemia Major

Background Thalassemia major has become a public health problem worldwide, particularly in developing and poor countries, while the role of educating the family and community has not been considered enough in patients' care. Objectives This study examines the impact of partnership care model on mental health of patients with beta-thalassemia major. Materials and Methods This experimental study, with pretest and posttest design, was performed on patients with beta-thalassemia major in Jiroft city. 82 patients with beta-thalassemia major were allocated randomly into two groups of intervention (41 patients) and control (n = 41) groups. Mental health of the participants was measured using the standard questionnaire GHQ-28 before and after intervention in both groups. The intervention was applied to the intervention group for 6 months, based on the partnership care model. Results There were significant differences between the scores of mental health and its subscales between two groups after the intervention (P < 0.05). Conclusions The findings of the study revealed the efficacy and usefulness of partnership care model on mental health of patients with beta-thalassemia major; thus, implementation of this model is suggested for the improvement of mental health of patients with beta-thalassemia major.
Five Trends in Presidential Rhetoric: An Analysis of Rhetoric from George Washington to Bill Clinton

Several political scientists have argued that the presidential recourse to public rhetoric as a mode of political influence in the twentieth century represents a significant departure from a pre-twentieth-century institutional norm where “going public” was both rare and frowned upon. This article looks specifically at the changes in the substance of rhetoric that have accompanied this alleged institutional transformation. Applying computer-assisted content analysis to all the inaugural addresses and annual messages delivered between 1789 and 2000, the author identifies and explores five significant changes in twentieth-century presidential rhetoric that would qualifiedly support the thesis of institutional transformation in its rhetorical dimension: presidential rhetoric has become more anti-intellectual, more abstract, more assertive, more democratic, and more conversational. The author argues that these characteristics define the verbal armory of the modern rhetorical president and suggest areas for further research.
Does confirmation always matter? Extending confirmation-based theories

Related theories have highlighted how important confirmation is to satisfaction. However, in their examinations of the effect of confirmation, all past studies viewed consumption experience from an overall perspective only. Given that the utilisation of online services may generate more than one type of benefits to customers, there is a need to decompose the overall concept into different dimensions and re-examine the importance of confirmation from different perspectives. In this study, based on goal-directed and experiential concepts, we separated the benefits provided by online social network services into two types: utilitarian and hedonic. Then, through confirmations, we tested their direct and indirect impacts on satisfaction. Data collected from 653 student-based Facebook users showed that perceived hedonic benefit is more strongly correlated with satisfaction than is perceived utilitarian benefit. In addition, the insignificant path coefficient hints that confirmation of hedonic benefits is not as important as indicated by related theories. We believe that our results generate interesting implications towards both academia and practitioners.
A Wideband Spectrum Data Segment Compression Algorithm in Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive radio networks, cooperative spectrum sensing(SS) between cognitive users can improve the detection performance, reduce the testing time. However, a large amount of data interaction restrict its application and increase the consumption of resources. For the demand of cooperative SS, this paper improved the compression algorithm based energy detection which in the early stage of the work, the spectrum data is divided into segments of different characteristic and respectively compressed. The presented algorithm further improved the compression ratio compared to the original algorithm. Verified by the experiment of satellite signals, the experimental results show that the compression performance of this algorithm will be increased several times compared to JPEG, JPEG2000 and detection-based compression algorithm.
The Embeddedness of Teachers’ Social Networks

Teachers’ social networks can play an important role in teacher learning and organizational change. But what influences teachers’ networks? Why do some teachers have networks that are likely to support individual and organizational change, while others do not? This study is a first step in answering this question. We focus on how district policy influences the quality and configuration of teachers’ social networks. We draw on a longitudinal, qualitative study of implementation of a mathematics curriculum in four schools. We show that district policy (1) shaped the tie formation process, influencing the structure of networks; (2) mobilized resources that teachers subsequently accessed via their networks, influencing the benefits accrued through network exchanges; and (3) introduced interaction routines that interrupted conventional ways that teachers talked together. We thus uncover heretofore unexplored facets of network formation and change. We also provide insight into dimensions of social networks that are amenable to outside intervention.
Match Performance Profiles of Goalkeepers of Elite Football Teams

The aim of the current study was to examine match performance of elite goalkeepers considering three situational variables (opposition, outcome and location). Match performance statistics of 46 goalkeepers who played 744 full matches during season 2012–13 in the Spanish First Division Professional Football League were analyzed. Results indicated that there were only three performance indicators (Fouls Drawn, Fouls Committed and Tackles) that showed no differences among goalkeepers of high, intermediate and low levels of team. The sole indicator was Saves which differed for goalkeepers of all three team levels and also the sole varied indicator for goalkeepers of intermediate and low level teams when facing different opponent levels. High level team goalkeepers showed differences in none of their match performance indicators during matches won, drawn and lost. However, Saves (F2,244=6.459, p<0.01, &b.eta;p2=0.05) was the sole indicator which differed for low level team goalkeepers when the final outcome is different. Different variations in performance indicators were found depending on the match location for different team levels. The most interesting performance differential was that a goalkeeper of a high-level team had a higher number of Saves when playing against a low-level team than a high-level team or an intermediate-level team. Information provided by the profiles can be used by coaches to modify training programs depending on the game context of upcoming matches. Results can also enable a more thorough understanding of goalkeeper's performance profiles from different team levels, thus can be used for talent identification and player selection in the transfer market.
Survey in Classification of Natural Scene Images Based on Emotion

Emotion modeling evoked by natural scenes is demanding issue. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme for investigating the emotion reflected by a natural scene, considering the human emotional state. Emotion in natural scene images performances a significant role in the way humans see an images. founded on the emotion (happiness, unhappiness, fear, anger etc.) of any human being the images that are examined by that individual can have a important influence in a sense that if the person is for demonstration in happy mood and views an image that is satisfying then would have a better sense of addition in the direction of that image and would not accept an image that depicts unhappiness as an emotion. Whereas distinct persons may interpret the same images in different ways, we still can build a universal classification for different emotions. An important interaction was found between facial signs and the emotional content of the scenes, displaying a response benefit for facial signs accompanied by congruent scenes. This benefit was robust against increasing task load. Taken together, the result show that the surrounding scene is a significant factor in identifying facial expressions, Although, However, we rarely encounter an isolated facial expression; generally, we perceive a person's facial reaction as part of the surrounding context Recognition of facial expressions has traditionally been investigated by giving facial expressions without any information. In three trials, participants were required to categorize facial expressions (disgust, fear, happiness) that were shown against backgrounds of natural scenes with either a congruent or an incongruent emotional significance.
Effect of Composition and Impurities on the Phosphorescence of Green-Emitting Alkaline Earth Aluminate Phosphor

Recent improvements to SrAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+ phosphors have enabled the use of luminescent hosts with a stable crystal structure and high physical and chemical stability, thus overcoming the bottleneck in the applicability of ZnS:Cu phosphors. However, enhancement of afterglow lifetime and brightness in SrAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+ phosphors remains a challenging task. Here, we have improved the afterglow characteristics in terms of persistence time and brightness by a systematic investigation of the composition of Eu-doped alkaline earth aluminate SrAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+ crystals. We found that a Dy3+/Eu2+ ratio of ~2.4 and ~0.935 mol Eu2+ (per mol of SrAl2O4) gave the brightest and longest emissions (11% and 9% increase for each). Doping with Si4+ also resulted in a slight increase in brightness up to ~15%. Doping with alkali metal or alkaline earth metal significantly enhanced the phosphorescence intensity. In particular, doping with 0.005 mol Li+ (per mol of SrAl2O4) alone boosted the phosphorescence intensity to 239% of the initial value, as compared to that observed for the non-doped crystal, while doping with 0.01 mol Mg2+ and 0.005 mol Li+ (per 1 mol SrAl2O4) boosted the phosphorescence intensity up to 313% of the initial value. The results of this investigation are expected to act as a guideline for the synthesis of bright and long persistent phosphors, and facilitate the development of persistent phosphors with afterglow characteristics superior to those of conventional phosphors.
Genetic Programming as an Explorative Tool in Early Software Development Phases

Early in a software development project the developers lack knowledge about the problem to be solved by the software. Any knowledge that can be gained at an early stage can reduce the risk of making erroneous decisions and injecting defects that can be expensive to eliminate in later phases. This paper presents the idea of using genetic programming to explore the difficulty of different input data in the input space, determine the effects of different requirements and identify design trade-offs inherent in the problem. Data from a pilot experiment is analysed and the knowledge gained is used to question and prioritize the requirements on the target system. Coping with high-dimensional input spaces and establishing the relationship between GPand human-developed programs are identified as the major outstanding problems. An extended experimental environment is proposed based on techniques for visual database exploration.
Formation of multimeric antibodies for self-delivery of active monomers

Abstract Proteins and peptides have been used as drugs for almost a century. Technological advances in the past 30 years have enabled the production of pure, stable proteins in vast amounts. In contrast, administration of proteins based on their native active conformation (and thus necessitating the use of subcutaneous injections) has remained solely unchanged. The therapeutic anti-HER2 humanized monoclonal immunoglobulin (IgG) Trastuzumab (Herceptin) is a first line of the treatment for breast cancer. Chicken IgY is a commercially important polyclonal antibody (Ab). These Abs were examined for their ability to self-assemble and form ordered aggregates, by several biophysical methods. Atomic force microscopy analyses revealed the formation of multimeric nanostructures. The biological activity of multimeric IgG or IgY particles was retained and restored, in a dilution/time-dependent manner. IgG activity was confirmed by a binding assay using HER2 + human breast cancer cell line, SKBR3, while IgY activity was confirmed by ELISA assay using the VP2 antigen. Competition assay with native Herceptin antibodies demonstrated that the binding availability of the multimer formulation remained unaffected. Under long incubation periods, IgG multimers retained five times more activity than native IgG. In conclusion, the multimeric antibody formulations can serve as a storage depositories and sustained-release particles. These two important characteristics make this formulation promising for future novel administration protocols and altogether bring to light a different conceptual approach for the future use of therapeutic proteins as self-delivery entities rather than conjugated/encapsulated to other bio-compounds.