Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Female genital mutilation: opinion of outpatients of a department of obstetrics and gynaecology in north central Nigeria

Background: Female genital mutilation is known to exist especially in developing countries like Nigeria. This study aimed to determine women's views on aspects of female genital mutilation, types of female genital mutilation, reason for and attitude towards female genital mutilation. Method: A Pretested questionnaire was administered to women attending the antenatal clinic in Jos University Teaching Hospital from October 2013 to February 2014. The data obtained were analysed using SPSS version 20 Result: The prevalence of FGM from this study was 21.9%. In total, 429 respondents (97.9%) reported the existence of FGM at the time of the interview. Majority of respondents [(283) 66.0%] said that the clitoris was the main part removed. The main reason given for genital cutting was to prevent sexual promiscuity in sexual practice, and was the response of one hundred and thirty two (30.8%) of the women, while thirty five (8.2%) women responded that it was done to preserve virginity. Three hundred and eighty four(89.5%) were aware of the campaign against female genital mutilation and two hundred and ninetyeight (69.5%) were in support of the legislation against FGM. Seventy nine(18.4%) were not in support of the legislation out of which nineteen (24.1%) feel that to stop is to interfere with the norm. Conclusion: Female genital cutting/mutilation is still practiced in our environment and some of the women knew the negative reproductive health consequences of FGM and had experienced them during sexual intercourse and childbirth. However, with regard to stopping FGM, majority had not taken any steps towards stopping the practice. There should be public enlightenment about the dangers of FGM and policies against this harmful practice should be enforced.
Handwritten Arabic character recognition based on SVM Classifier

This paper describes new methods for handwritten Arabic character recognition. We propose a novel algorithm for smoothing image and segmentation of the Arabic character using width writing estimated from skeleton character. The moments and Fourier descriptor of profile projection and centroid distance are used as features of each character these feature are invariant in translation , rotation and scale we apply Principal component Analysis (PCA) as data processing algorithm to features vector in order to reduce dimension. The classifier proposed in this work is based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) wich considerd an recent optimal classifier up to now. The results show that these methods are very powerful for isolated handwritten Arabic character.
Peer Victimization and Neurobiological Models: Building Toward Comprehensive Developmental Theories

Abstract:The articles in this special issue represent progress toward a more comprehensive developmental model of peer victimization and neurobiology. In this commentary, we highlight features of each article that reveal nuances in such a developmental model as related to sex, form of peer victimization, developmental course and period, and neurobiological response system and stimulus. We also encourage further research with an emphasis on longitudinal studies that cross developmental periods and elucidate directions of causality and mechanisms of change, expanded attention to individual and environmental variables that may explain or contextualize effects, assessments of multiple neurobiological systems, and tests of replication, as well as innovation. We acknowledge the challenges of such research and thank the authors for their important contributions to the literature on peer victimization and neurobiology.
Stress to Success: Public Speaking Anxiety and its Relationship to Perceived Leadership

Public speaking anxiety (PSA), a form of social phobia, is a common and debilitating issue for many professionals, affecting approximately 70% of the population to varying degrees. With communication skills like public speaking becoming more and more demanded in the workplace, those with high PSA may find that career choices and advancement become limited, creating barriers to career success. Leadership acumen is a highly-prized asset in organizations, and employers seek applicants whom they perceive to have strong leadership potential. This study brings together the phenomena of public speaking anxiety and perceived leadership potential, exploring relationships between them with a goal of contributing to leadership development in postsecondary business education. A group of 151 MBA students participated in the study. Their public speaking anxiety as both an enduring trait and a state-dependent condition across five business presentations was measured, along with sex, age, and perceived leadership. Results suggest that relationships between public speaking anxiety and perceived leadership do exist, and at significant levels. Sex showed some relationship to speaking anxiety but not perceived leadership, and age did not relate to either. Current issues in leadership development are discussed, as well as suggestions for future research and implications for business education.
The Causal Analysis of the Development of the Unemployment Effect on Life Satisfaction

The long-term negative effects of unemployment, especially on subjective well-being, have been indicated by many studies. Therefore, unemployment and its effects on the individual life course must remain an important challenge for social policy. Many studies have focused on the cognitive component of subjective well-being, i.e., life satisfaction, and have analysed in particular its development during the unemployment period. The trajectory is usually characterized by the effects of anticipation, reaction and adaption. Studies have shown different findings regarding the shape of the effect development. The present study discusses the effect development in greater detail and analyses whether the development of the effect is different depending on unemployment experience using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and applying fixed effects regressions. The findings of this study support a non-linear effect development, which begins with the anticipation of unemployment. The trend can be described by a linear function and polynomials up to the fifth degree. The introduction of a model according to modern causal analysis and the interpretation of the dynamic development of the counterfactual outcomes are the secondary focuses of the study. A detailed discussion of causal assumptions and necessary control variables is needed to reveal the effect of unemployment on life satisfaction. The SOEP provides information about employment status on a monthly basis. This study shows possibilities for using this information for the construction of control groups and treatment groups and analyses with ideal episode patterns.
The nature of the y 13 C of periplatform sediments : Implications for stratigraphy and the global carbon cycle

The carbon-isotopic composition (yC) of bulk carbonates, obtained from a transect of sites drilled through platform and periplatform sediments of Holocene to Early Miocene age, has been compared to ascertain whether changes in the yC can be correlated between sediments of equivalent ages and whether such changes can be related to global changes in the yC of the dissolved inorganic carbon in the oceans over this time period. Five of the sites were drilled during Leg 166 of the Ocean Drilling Project (1003–1007) in a transect ranging from five km to 25 km away from the platform margin and penetrating sediments of Holocene to Oligocene age that are contained in 17 depositional sequences (A–Q). Two shallow-water sites, Clino and Unda were situated on a extension of the same transect on Great Bahama Bank in a water depth of 10–15 m. With the exception of Unda and Clino, the yC of the carbonates ranges from +5x in the younger sequences to +1x in the Early Miocene. In each of the sites, the yC is strongly positively correlated with the percentage of aragonite. As a consequence, the yC of sequences A through F is strongly correlated, reflecting the decreasing amount of aragonite with increasing depth. In the two platform sites, the yC is significantly lower in the younger portions of the cores as a result of the influences of meteoric diagenesis during repeated exposure during the Pleistocene. Although the yC of the individual sequences can be correlated in most instances between the ODP holes, the changes are not related to global changes in the yC of the oceans which in contrast to the yC of the platform sediments become isotopically lower towards the present day. Instead variations in the yC appear to be related to varying mixtures of yC-rich banktop sediments and pelagic material. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Multiple Cerebral Arterial Stenosis Associated with Hepatitis B Virus Infection

Background There are conflicting findings regarding the association between hepatitis B (HB) virus (HBV) infection and atherosclerosis. Case Report A 34-year-old man was admitted for transient dysarthria and facial palsy. Ten years previously he had been diagnosed with HBV infection and treated with lamivudine (100 mg/day). Reactivation of HBV was detected 6 months before this recent admission. Serologic tests revealed that he was positive for HB early antigen, HB surface antigen, and anti-HB core. Brain magnetic resonance images were normal, but magnetic resonance angiograms revealed severe stenosis of the right middle cerebral artery, both external carotid arteries, and the basilar artery. Conclusions This case report reveals that a young patient with reactivated HBV developed multiple arterial stenoses even though he had no risk factors for this disease.
Use of Prosodic Cues in Speech Segmentation: The Effect of Recent Linguistic Exposure

This research examines the relative influences of native language and recent linguistic exposure on listeners’ use of prosodic cues in artificial-language speech segmentation. We tested listeners’ use of fundamental-frequency (F0) rise as cue to word-final boundaries. Participants included French listeners who had spent various amounts of time in the US since their last stay in France, high-proficiency English learners of French who had spent various amounts of time in the US since their last French immersion, and English listeners without functional knowledge of French. The results suggest that recent exposure more accurately predicts listeners’ segmentation accuracy than native language does. Index Terms: speech segmentation, prosodic cues, artificiallanguage learning
Information, Incentive Alignment and Company-Loan Financing of Insider Trades

Insider acquisitions of shares are supposed to align the interests of managers and shareholders. Thus, they are typically viewed as positive signals. However, if the transactions do not put insiders' wealth at risk, perhaps this conclusion is a bit premature. We focus on loan financing of insider share acquisitions to test this idea. Our results indicate that loan financed insider purchases and option exercises earn smaller profits than non loan-financed counterparts. Our results also suggest that loan-financed insider purchases are an additional method to move an executive quickly to a target level of incentives. Based on these results, we conclude that (a) not all insider trades are alike, (b) insiders recognize when they are "playing with other people's money," and (c) loan-financed purchases play an important role in incentive alignment.
C. elegans Demonstrates Distinct Behaviors within a Fixed and Uniform Electric Field

C. elegans will orient and travel in a straight uninterrupted path directly towards the negative pole of a DC electric field. We have sought to understand the strategy worms use to navigate to the negative pole in a uniform electric field that is fixed in both direction and magnitude. We examined this behavior by quantifying three aspects of electrotaxis behavior in response to different applied field strengths: the mean approach trajectory angles of the animals’ tracks, turning behavior (pirouettes) and average population speeds. We determined that C. elegans align directly to the negative pole of an electric field at sub-preferred field strength and alter approach trajectories at higher field strengths to maintain taxis within a preferred range we have calculated to be ~ 5V/cm. We sought to identify the sensory neurons responsible for the animals’ tracking to a preferred field strength. eat-4 mutant animals defective in glutamatergic signaling of the amphid sensory neurons are severely electrotaxis defective and ceh-36 mutant animals, which are defective in the terminal differentiation of two types of sensory neurons, AWC and ASE, are partially defective in electrotaxis. To further elucidate the role of the AWC neurons, we examined the role of each of the pair of AWC neurons (AWCOFF and AWCON), which are functionally asymmetric and express different genes. nsy-5/inx-19 mutant animals, which express both neurons as AWCOFF, are severely impaired in electrotaxis behavior while nsy-1 mutants, which express both neurons as AWCON, are able to differentiate field strengths required for navigation to a specific field strength within an electric field. We also tested a strain with targeted genetic ablation of AWC neurons and found that these animals showed only slight disruption of directionality and turning behavior. These results suggest a role for AWC neurons in which complete loss of function is less disruptive than loss of functional asymmetry in electrotaxis behavior within a uniform fixed field.
Comparative I/O workload characterization of two leadership class storage clusters

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) is a leader in large-scale parallel file system development, design, deployment and continuous operation. For the last decade, the OLCF has designed and deployed two large center-wide parallel file systems. The first instantiation, Spider 1, served the Jaguar supercomputer and its predecessor, Spider 2, now serves the Titan supercomputer, among many other OLCF computational resources. The OLCF has been rigorously collecting file and storage system statistics from these Spider systems since their transition to production state. In this paper we present the collected I/O workload statistics from the Spider 2 system and compare it to the Spider 1 data. Our analysis show that the Spider 2 workload is more more write-heavy I/O compared to Spider 1 (75% vs. 60%, respectively). The data also show the OLCF storage policies such as periodic purges are effectively managing the capacity resource of Spider 2. Furthermore, due to improvements in tdm_multipath and ib_srp software, we are utilizing the Spider 2 system bandwidth and latency resources more effectively. The Spider 2 bandwidth usage statistics shows that our system is working within the design specifications. However, it is also evident that our scientific applications can be more effectively served by a burst buffer storage layer. All the data has been collected by monitoring tools developed for the Spider ecosystem. We believe the observed data set and insights will help us better design the next-generation Spider file and storage system. It will also be helpful to the larger community for building more effective large-scale file and storage systems.
Stress focusing in elastic sheets

We review recent progress in understanding phenomena like crumpling, in which elastic membranes or sheets subject to structureless forces develop sharply curved structure over a small fraction of their surface. In the limit of zero thickness these structures become singular. After reviewing several related phenomena we note the physical elements that give rise to the singular behavior: elasticity and the nearly inextensible behavior of thin sheets. This singular behavior has counterparts in higher dimensions. Then we discuss the most basic of these singularities, the vertex. We describe mathematical progress in describing the d-cone, a simple realization of a vertex. We concentrate on the size of the core that governs the departure from singularity and conclude that fundamental understanding is lacking. We point out further mysterious behavior at the region where a d-cone is supported. We then discuss an emergent singularity that appears when two or more vertices are present: the stretching ridge. We offer several accounts of the scale of this singularity from qualitative scaling arguments to a formal asymptotic analysis. We discuss recent experiments and theories about the interaction of ridges and vertices and review the evidence that these ridges dominate the mechanics of crumpled sheets.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Older Adults: Effects on Executive Function, Frontal Alpha Asymmetry and Immune Function

Background/Aims: Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) has enhanced cognition, positive emotion, and immunity in younger and middle-aged samples; its benefits are less well known for older persons. Here we report on a randomized controlled trial of MBSR for older adults and its effects on executive function, left frontal asymmetry of the EEG alpha band, and antibody response. Methods: Older adults (n = 201) were randomized to MBSR or waiting list control. The outcome measures were: the Trail Making Test part B/A (Trails B/A) ratio, a measure of executive function; changes in left frontal alpha asymmetry, an indicator of positive emotions or approach motivation; depression, mindfulness, and perceived stress scores, and the immunoglobulin G response to a protein antigen, a measure of adaptive immunity. Results: MBSR participants had a lower Trails B/A ratio immediately after intervention (p < 0.05); reduced shift to rightward frontal alpha activation after intervention (p = 0.03); higher baseline antibody levels after intervention (p < 0.01), but lower antibody responses 24 weeks after antigen challenge (p < 0.04), and improved mindfulness after intervention (p = 0.023) and at 21 weeks of follow-up (p = 0.006). Conclusions: MBSR produced small but significant changes in executive function, mindfulness, and sustained left frontal alpha asymmetry. The antibody findings at follow-up were unexpected. Further study of the effects of MBSR on immune function should assess changes in antibody responses in comparison to T-cell-mediated effector functions, which decline as a function of age.
Identifying comparable entities on the web

Web search engines are often presented with user queries that involve comparisons of real-world entities. Thus far, this interaction has typically been captured by users submitting appropriately designed keyword queries for which they are presented a list of relevant documents. Richer interactions that explicitly allow for a comparative analysis of entities represent a new potential direction to improve the search experience. With this in mind, we present an initial step of mining comparable entities from sources of information available to a large-scale Web search engine, namely, search query logs and documents from a Web crawl. Our mining methods generate a diverse set of comparables consisting of entities from a broad class of categories, such as medicines, appliances, electronics, and vacation destinations.
A multiagent architecture for the instrumentation of an underground hydrographic system

This paper deals with an application of multiagent systems to sensor network management. This wireless communication network will be applied to monitor an underground hydrographic network. We first present the ENVSYS project. its origin and its issue. We then recall the concepts of agent and multiagent systems. We sketch a multiagent system's architecture according to the AE10 method. This multiagent system consists of hybrid agents. We also introduce the ASTRO agent model.
Isn’t it ironic? Neural Correlates of Irony Comprehension in Schizophrenia

Ironic remarks are frequent in everyday language and represent an important form of social cognition. Increasing evidence indicates a deficit in comprehension in schizophrenia. Several models for defective comprehension have been proposed, including possible roles of the medial prefrontal lobe, default mode network, inferior frontal gyri, mirror neurons, right cerebral hemisphere and a possible mediating role of schizotypal personality traits. We investigated the neural correlates of irony comprehension in schizophrenia by using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a prosody-free reading paradigm, 15 female patients with schizophrenia and 15 healthy female controls silently read ironic and literal text vignettes during fMRI. Each text vignette ended in either an ironic (n = 22) or literal (n = 22) statement. Ironic and literal text vignettes were matched for word frequency, length, grammatical complexity, and syntax. After fMRI, the subjects performed an off-line test to detect error rate. In this test, the subjects indicated by button press whether the target sentence has ironic, literal, or meaningless content. Schizotypal personality traits were assessed using the German version of the schizotypal personality questionnaire (SPQ). Patients with schizophrenia made significantly more errors than did the controls (correct answers, 85.3% vs. 96.3%) on a behavioural level. Patients showed attenuated blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response during irony comprehension mainly in right hemisphere temporal regions (ironic>literal contrast) and in posterior medial prefrontal and left anterior insula regions (for ironic>visual baseline, but not for literal>visual baseline). In patients with schizophrenia, the parahippocampal gyrus showed increased activation. Across all subjects, BOLD response in the medial prefrontal area was negatively correlated with the SPQ score. These results highlight the role of the posterior medial prefrontal and right temporal regions in defective irony comprehension in schizophrenia and the mediating role of schizotypal personality traits.
Heterozygous indels as useful tools in the reconstruction of DNA sequences and in the assessment of ploidy level and genomic constitution of hybrid organisms

In this paper we describe a simple approach using double peaks in chromatograms generated as artefacts in the vicinity of heterozygous indels, to identify the specific sequences present in individual strands of a given DNA fragment. This method is useful to assign bases in individuals that are heterozygous at multiple sites. In addition, the relative sizes of the double peaks help to determine the ploidy level and the relative contribution of the parental genomes in hybrids. Our interpretation was confirmed with the analysis of artificial mixtures of DNA of two different species. Results were robust with varying PCR and sequencing conditions. The applicability of this method was demonstrated in hybrids of the Squalius alburnoides complex and in heterozygotes of Chondrostoma oligolepis. Far from being limited to these fish models and the gene where it was tested (beta-actin), this sequence reconstruction methodology is expected to have a broader application.
Greening Without Conflict? Environmentalism, NGOs and Civil Society in China

This article argues that the specific features and dynamics of China’s environmentalism can be attributed to two factors: the ‘greening’ of the Chinese state at the time when environmentalism emerged, and the alternating politics of toleration and strict control of social organizations. As a result, environmentalism has developed in a gradual way, encompassing the various forms of ‘green’ NGOs that we see in the West and the ex-socialist states of Eastern and Central Europe. Yet, on the other hand, environmentalism was also robbed of the opportunity, as well as the immediate urgency, to openly confront the government. This is where it deviates from environmentalism in the West and the former Eastern-bloc countries.