Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Model of Fertility Decision-making Styles Among Young Mothers

The key study question is: why do some teenagers after having 1 pregnancy and having available effective contraceptive methods opt for an additional child while others manage to postpone further childbearing. Fertility decision making was examined from several perspectives. The study was based on the premise that young mothers have the knowledge that engaging in sexual intercourse leaves them at risk for pregnancy. It was assumed that even if young mothers cannot articulate their rationale they do make fertility decisions. The research was undertaken while working as a child development specialist for the Teenage Pregnancy Team a special health care program for pregnant adolescent young mothers and their infants that was funded by a federal demonstration grant. 36 young mothers and significant members of their social networks were interviewed including boyfriends husbands mothers grandmothers brothers sisters and friends. Also interviewed were health care providers educators and social service and welfare agents. The objective was to specify the combination of factors affecting the fertility decisions of young mothers who have access to and some knowledge of contraception. Segments from tape-recorded interviews were used with other data from participant observations to construct a schema. Schemas are analytic devices used to make sense of the way young mothers talk and act in their world. To construct key schemas that rountinely apply to a wide range of patterns the schemas are integrated together according to their central orientation or theme. The themes are decontextualized so that each theme becomes a focus for describing the decision making styles. Themes that were derived from repeated patterns in the respondents discourse and prominent concerns found in the community dealing with young mothers in their households and among themselves were labeled control competence and support. T he 4 key schemas -- gamblers straights opportunists and situationalists and how they were derived are described to explain the fluidity of social processes impinging on fertility decision making. Support control and competence were closely tied together in terms of their importance in the lives of these young mothers. These 3 themes varied according to the individuals situation but in general if taken together the overall magnitude of the positive effect of each was higher for straights in comparison to gamblers. These are dynamic processes which change as opportunities are grasped and situations change.
Mad, Bad, or Sad? Dutch Female Beggars and Vagabonds Sent From the State Labor Institution to the State Mental Asylum at the Turn of the 19th Century

We studied the files of 58 female beggars and vagabonds transferred from a penal labor institution to a state mental asylum (1886–1910). These women often suffered cognitive and neurological diseases; many were mentally retarded. Recovery rates were extremely low. It is unlikely that their mental illnesses were a direct causal factor in their offending. We argue that it is more likely that their mental illnesses were caused by their lives on the rough side or that their illnesses had made them less resilient to the hardships they suffered, making them turn to begging and vagabonding.
A low ripple CMOS charge Pump for low-voltage application

In power supply systems, switching supplies are typically cascaded with low dropout (LDO) regulator to suppress noise and provide low noise output. By providing lower output ripple voltage from charge pump circuit, input noise level (ripple) can be reduced first before it is fed into LDO and hence a more stable supply voltage can be generated from LDO. In this paper, a low voltage CMOS charge pump which offers lower output ripple voltage is proposed. Charge transfer switch (CTS) control scheme is employed inside cross-coupled charge pump in order to suppress backward current leakage path during clock transition. Therefore, proposed charge pump circuit provides lower output ripple voltage and higher voltage pumping efficiency. The proposed circuit has been simulated in 45nm CMOS process to validate the functionality of the circuit. The measured ripple voltage is less than 60mV at 10mA load current with 60 MHz pumping frequency. The proposed charge pump circuit does not suffer gateoxide reliability and is suitable implemented in low voltage CMOS processes.
The Salmonella Transcriptome in Lettuce and Cilantro Soft Rot Reveals a Niche Overlap with the Animal Host Intestine

ABSTRACT Fresh vegetables have been recurrently associated with salmonellosis outbreaks, and Salmonella contamination of retail produce has been correlated positively with the presence of soft rot disease. We observed that population sizes of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium SL1344 increased 56-fold when inoculated alone onto cilantro leaves, versus 2,884-fold when coinoculated with Dickeya dadantii, a prevalent pathogen that macerates plant tissue. A similar trend in S. enterica populations was observed for soft-rotted lettuce leaves. Transcriptome analysis of S. enterica cells that colonized D. dadantii-infected lettuce and cilantro leaves revealed a clear shift toward anaerobic metabolism and catabolism of substrates that are available due to the degradation of plant cells by the pectinolytic pathogen. Twenty-nine percent of the genes that were upregulated in cilantro macerates were also previously observed to have increased expression levels in the chicken intestine. Furthermore, multiple genes induced in soft rot lesions are also involved in the colonization of mouse, pig, and bovine models of host infection. Among those genes, the operons for ethanolamine and propanediol utilization as well as for the synthesis of cobalamin, a cofactor in these pathways, were the most highly upregulated genes in lettuce and cilantro lesions. In S. Typhimurium strain LT2, population sizes of mutants deficient in propanediol utilization or cobalamin synthesis were 10- and 3-fold lower, respectively, than those of the wild-type strain in macerated cilantro (P < 0.0002); in strain SL1344, such mutants behaved similarly to the parental strain. Anaerobic conditions and the utilization of nutrients in macerated plant tissue that are also present in the animal intestine indicate a niche overlap that may explain the high level of adaptation of S. enterica to soft rot lesions, a common postharvest plant disease.
Early Phthalates Exposure in Pregnant Women Is Associated with Alteration of Thyroid Hormones

Introduction Previous studies revealed that phthalate exposure could alter thyroid hormones during the last trimester of pregnancy. However, thyroid hormones are crucial for fetal development during the first trimester. We aimed to clarify the effect of phthalate exposure on thyroid hormones during early pregnancy. Method We recruited 97 pregnant women who were offered an amniocentesis during the early trimester from an obstetrics clinic in southern Taiwan from 2013 to 2014. After signing an informed consent form, we collected amniotic fluid and urine samples from pregnant women to analyze 11 metabolites, including mono-ethyl phthalate (MEP), mono-(2-ethyl-5-carboxypentyl) phthalate (MECPP), mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP), mono-butyl phthalate (MnBP), of 9 phthalates using liquid chromatography/ tandem mass spectrometry. We collected blood samples from each subject to analyze serum thyroid hormones including thyroxine (T4), free T4, and thyroid-binding globulin (TBG). Results Three phthalate metabolites were discovered to be >80% in the urine samples of the pregnant women: MEP (88%), MnBP (81%) and MECPP (86%). Median MnBP and MECPP levels in pregnant Taiwanese women were 21.5 and 17.6 μg/g-creatinine, respectively, that decreased after the 2011 Taiwan DEHP scandal. Results of principal component analysis suggested two major sources (DEHP and other phthalates) of phthalates exposure in pregnant women. After adjusting for age, gestational age, TBG, urinary creatinine, and other phthalate metabolites, we found a significantly negative association between urinary MnBP levels and serum T4 (β = –5.41; p-value = 0.012; n = 97) in pregnant women using Bonferroni correction. Conclusion We observed a potential change in the thyroid hormones of pregnant women during early pregnancy after DnBP exposure. Additional study is necessitated to clarify these associations.
Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in Motor Neurons of the Spinal Cord in Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

The accumulation of misfolded or unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) lumen causes a cellular stress response termed the unfolded protein response. Although ER stress has been implicated in various neurodegenerative diseases, the morphological features of aggregated proteins in ER lumina that may cause neurodegeneration have not been well characterized. We examined anterior horn neurons using immunohistochemistry and electron microscopy in12 sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and 12 controls. Approximately 2.6% of both normal-appearing and degenerated motor neurons in ALS cases were immunostained for the ER chaperone protein glucose-regulated protein 78, and approximately 0.1% of these neurons was glucose-regulated protein 78 positive incontrols (p = 0.0004). Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cases also tended to have glucose-regulated protein 78-positive motor neurons more frequently than control cases (p = 0.08). By electron microscopy,neurons in ALS patients showed accumulations of amorphous and granularmaterial suggestive of misfolded or unfolded proteins indilated predominantly normal-appearing ER. There were also wavymembranous structures extending from the ER membranes that lacked membrane-bound ribosomes, electron-dense material resembling Bunina bodies, Hirano bodies, honeycomb-like structures, and membrane-particle complexes associated with the ER in these neurons. Control sample neurons demonstrated none of these features. These ERalterations suggest that the unfolded protein response is activated inmotor neurons in ALS patients and provide the first morphologicalevidence that ER stress may be involved in the neurodegeneration of motor neurons in early stages of sporadic ALS.
Simple metrics for slew rate of RC circuits based on two circuit moments

In this paper we introduce simple metrics for the slew rate of an RC circuit based on the first two circuit moments. We develop two new slew metrics, S2M (slew with 2 moments) and scaled S2M, that provide high accuracy with the advantage of simple closed form expressions. S2M is very accurate for middle and far end nodes but it does not perform as well for near end nodes. Scaled S2M is developed to improve upon S2M for near end nodes and is shown to be highly accurate for near as well as far end nodes. For a large set of nets from an industrial 0.18 μm microprocessor, S2M matches SPICE within 2% on average with 78% of the sinks having less than 1% error. For the same test cases, the average error for scaled S2M is less than 3% with 99.4% of the nodes showing less than 5% error.
Susceptibility of defoliated Scots pine to spontaneous and induced attack by Tomicus piniperda and Tomicus minor.

In 1990–1991, Diprion pini extensively defoliated Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris L.) trees in Lauhanvuori National Park in southwestern Finland. Many trees lost all their foliage, while others had ca. 10 % foliage left after the second year of defoliation. Outside the national park, many nearby stands were also heavily defoliated in 1990, but were sprayed with diflubenzuron (Dimilin ®) in 1991. This protected the current year needles, corresponding to ca 30 % of full foliage. In spring 1992, pine trees with 0, 10, 30 and 100 % foliage remaining (10 small and 10 large trees in each category) were baited with pine bolts to induce stem attacks by pine shoot beetles. All baited trees were attacked by Tomicus piniperda and some by T. minor. The attacks failed in all these trees except those that were totally defoliated and some of the small trees with 10 % foliage left. Many unbaited trees escaped attack entirely, but only totally defoliated trees were successfully colonized (i. e. produced brood). Attack densities and brood production figures peaked in baited, large and totally defoliated trees. None of the measures (cambial electrical resistance, resin flow, i duced lesion length by fungal inoculation, amount of hydrocarbons or phenolic compounds) used to describe tree vigour at the time of attack gave better information than the estimated remaining foliage. We conclude that the risk for beetle-induced mortality following defoliation is a function of remaining needle biomass and beetle pressure. Even at high beetle densities (as was simulated by baiting of trees), trees with 10 % of the foliage remaining were able to defend themselves against attacking pine shoot beetles.
Congenital Central Hypothyroidism due to a Homozygous Mutation in the TSHβ Subunit Gene

Congenital central hypothyroidism (CCH) is a rare condition occurring in 1 : 20000 to 1 : 50000 newborns. As TSH plasma levels are low, CCH is usually not detected by TSH-based neonatal screening for hypothyroidism, and, as a result, diagnosis is often delayed putting affected children at risk for developmental delay and growth failure. We report on a girl with isolated central hypothyroidism due to a homozygous one-base pair deletion (T313del) in exon 3 of the TSHβ subunit gene. The molecular genetic and typical radiologic findings are discussed, and a systematic diagnostic workup for congenital central hypothyroidism is proposed. Physicians need to be aware of this rare condition to avoid diagnostic delay and to install prompt replacement therapy.
Co-Registration of Optically Sensed Images and Correlation (COSI-Corr): an operational methodology for ground deformation measurements

Recent methodological progress, co-registration of optically sensed images and correlation, outlined here, makes it possible to measure horizontal ground deformation from optical images on an operational basis, using the COSI-Corr software package. In particular, its sub-pixel capabilities allow for accurate mapping of surface ruptures and measurement of co-seismic offsets. We retrieved the fault rupture of the 2005 Mw 7.6 Kashmir earthquake from ASTER images, and we also present a dense mapping of the 1992 Mw 7.3 Landers earthquake of California, from the mosaicking of 30 pairs of aerial images.
Mental Health Literacy of Depression and Postnatal Depression: A Community Sample

Purpose: The present experimental study examined mental health literacy of postnatal depression (PND) in an Australian community sample. Method: Five hundred and twenty Australians (427 females) participated in an experimental study. Participants were randomly presented with one of three vignettes describing a “depressive” episode and then completed an online questionnaire examining mental health literacy and the capacity to recognise PND and its risk factors as well as the ability to source appropriate information. Results: Generally, the ability to recognise PND and the overall mental health literacy of the sample were high. Causation, however, was often misattributed to biological or environmental/social factors. PND recognition was found to be significantly affected by perception of the attachment relationship presented in two of the vignettes. Conclusions: Perception of attachment impacts PND recognition and this may negatively impact help-seeking behaviours.
Quasi-periodic solutions with Sobolev regularity of NLS on T^d with a multiplicative potential

We prove the existence of quasi-periodic solutions for Schroedinger equations with a multiplicative potential on T^d, d \geq 1, merely differentiable nonlinearities, and tangential frequencies constrained along a pre-assigned direction. The solutions have only Sobolev regularity both in time and space. If the nonlinearity and the potential are infinitely many times differentiable so are the solutions. The proofs are based on an improved Nash-Moser iterative scheme, which assumes the weakest tame estimates for the inverse linearized operators ("Green functions") along scales of Sobolev spaces. The key off-diagonal decay estimates of the Green functions are proved via a new multiscale inductive analysis. The main novelty concerns the measure and "complexity" estimates.
Resolving the Dispute: Teaching is Academe's Core Value

Analysis of data from the 1993 National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty shows that faculty value teaching over research. At the same time, the explicit reward structure of academe favors research and publication, rewarding "productivity" in these arenas with money and status. Implications of this disconnect between values and rewards for faculty careers, for policy, and for practice are examined.
Risk factors affecting the survival rate in patients with symptomatic pericardial effusion undergoing surgical intervention.

OBJECTIVES The optimal management and treatment of pericardial effusion are still controversial. There is limited data related to the risk factors affecting survival in these patients. The aim of this study was to determine the risk factors affecting the survival rate of patients with symptomatic pericardial effusion who underwent surgical interventions. METHODS From 2004 to 2011, we retrospectively analysed 153 patients who underwent subxiphoid pericardial window as their surgical intervention to drain pericardial effusions at the National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung diseases (NRITLD). To determine the effects of risk factors on survival rate, demographic data, clinical records, echocardiographic data, computed tomographic and cytopathological findings and also operative information of patients were recorded. Patients were followed annually until the last clinical follow-up (August 2011). To determine the prognostic factors affecting survival, both univariate analysis and multivariate Cox proportional hazards model were utilized. RESULTS There were 89 men and 64 women with a mean age of 50.3 ± 15.5 years. The most prevalent symptom was dyspnoea. Concurrent malignancies were present in 66 patients. Lungs were the most prevalent primary site for malignancy. The median duration of follow-up was 15 (range 1-85 months). Six-month, 1-year and 18-month survival rates were 85.6, 61.4 and 36.6%, respectively. In a multivariate analysis, positive history of lung cancer (hazard ratio [HR] 2.894, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.362-6.147, P = 0.006) or other organ cancers (HR 2.315, 95% CI 1.009-50311, P = 0.048), presence of a mass in the computed tomography (HR 1.985, 95% CI 1.100-3.581, P = 0.023), and echocardiographic findings compatible with tamponade (HR 1.745, 95% CI 1.048-2.90 P = 0.032) were the three independent predictors of postoperative death. CONCLUSIONS In the surgical management of pericardial effusion, patients with underlying malignant disease, especially with lung cancer, patients with a detectable invasion of thorax in computed tomography and those with positive echocardiographic findings compatible with tamponade have a poor survival. Therefore, minimally invasive therapies could be considered as a more acceptable alternative for these high-risk patients.
Diurnal changes of blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature during sleep in the rat

We have studied diurnal changes in mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR) and body temperature (Tb) during wake (W), non‐rapid eye movement sleep (NREMS) and REM sleep (REMS) in the rat. Although HR and Tb show a similar sinusoidal diurnal variation during all vigilance states, the diurnal profile for the MAP is vigilance‐state dependent. During W, MAP values are higher during the dark phase, during NREMS, no significant diurnal change is seen, and during REMS, the MAP exhibits a reversed diurnal change, being higher during the light phase. The low frequency component (0.25–0.725 Hz) in the power spectral density of the blood pressure, an index of sympathetic activity, is also higher during the light phase than the dark phase in REMS. The present findings suggest that diurnal changes in MAP in the rat result from the wake rhythm, and that the mechanism for the diurnal control of MAP may be different from that for HR or Tb.
Effect of an Educational Intervention on Knowledge of Human Papillomavirus Vaccination among Pre-University Students in Malaysia.

BACKGROUND Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide. Studies evaluating the effect of health education on knowledge and perception of cervical cancer have generated conflicting results. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of educational intervention towards knowledge of HPV vacccination for cervical cancer prevention among pre-university students in Malaysia. MATERIALS AND METHODS This was an experimental before and after study performed between October 2014 and March 2015. Five hundred and eighty students were randomly assigned into intervention and control groups. All were required to complete both pre-intervention and post-intervention questionnaires. Those in the intervention group were given an information leaflet to read before answering the post-intervention questionnaire. RESULTS Almost half (48.3%) of the students had poor knowledge, with a score less than 5, and only 51 (8.8%) exhibited good knowledge, with a score of 11 and above. After educational intervention, the number of students with poor knowledge was reduced to 177 (29.3%) and the number of students who exhibited good knowledge increased to 148 (25.5%). Students from the intervention group demonstrated significant higher total scores in knowledge regarding 'HPV infection and cervical cancer' (p=0.000) and 'HPV vaccination and cervical cancer prevention' (p=0.000) during post-intervention as compared to the control group. CONCLUSIONS Knowledge on HPV infection and vaccination is low among pre-university students. Educational intervention in the form of information leaflets appears effective in creating awareness and improving knowledge.
Effects of task repetition on learners’ attention orientation in L2 oral production

Task repetition facilitates learners’ performance, at least temporarily: Since learners are already familiar with the content of the task at the initial enactment, they are capable of focusing their attention on linguistic form during the following enactment. However, the analysis in previous studies treated various aspects of ‘form’ as one package. This study examined learners’ attention shifts during repeated task engagement by methodological triangulation. The experiment required 28 Japanese learners of English to perform narrative tasks twice. Learners’ performance was analysed, and the protocol data elicited by stimulated recall were coded along their attention orientations. The result partially supported the form-focused effects of task repetition: learners focused more on the syntactic encoding process and less on the conceptualizing process at the second task enactment when they engaged in the same task twice. Possible theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.