Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patterns of reasoning and decision making about condom use by urban college students

Abstract HIV infection rates are rapidly increasing among young heterosexuals, making it increasingly important to understand how these individuals make decisions regarding risk in sexual encounters. Our objective in this study was to characterize young adults’ safer sex behaviour and associate this behaviour with patterns of reasoning, using cognitive, information processing methods to understand the process of sexual risk taking. Sixty urban college students from NYC maintained diaries for two weeks and then were interviewed regarding lifetime condom use and sexual history. Using cognitive analysis, we characterized four patterns of condom use behaviour: consistent condom use (35.0%), inconsistent condom use (16.7%), shifting from consistent to inconsistent condom use (35.0%), and shifting from inconsistent to consistent condom use (13.3%). Directionality of reasoning (i.e. data-driven and hypothesis-driven reasoning) was analysed in the explanations provided for condom use decisions. The consistent and inconsistent patterns of condom use were associated with data-driven heuristic reasoning, where behaviour becomes automated and is associated with a high level of confidence in one's judgment. In the other two patterns, the shift in behaviour was due to a significant event that caused a change in type of reasoning to explanation-based reasoning, reflecting feelings of uncertainty and willingness to evaluate their decisions. We discuss these results within the framework of identifying potentially high-risk groups (e.g. heterosexual young adults) as well as intervention strategies for risk reduction. Further, our findings not only identify different patterns of condom use behaviour, but our investigation of the cognitive process of decision-making characterizes the conditions under which such behaviour and reasoning change.
Activator Role of the Pneumococcal Mga-Like Virulence Transcriptional Regulator

ABSTRACT Global transcriptional regulators that respond to specific environmental signals are crucial in bacterial pathogenesis. In the case of the Gram-positive pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae (the pneumococcus), the sp1800 gene of the clinical isolate TIGR4 encodes a protein that exhibits homology to the Mga “stand-alone” response regulator of the group A Streptococcus. Such a pneumococcal protein was shown to play a significant role in both nasopharyngeal colonization and development of pneumonia in murine infection models. Moreover, it was shown to repress the expression of several genes located within the rlrA pathogenicity islet. The pneumococcal R6 strain, which derives from the D39 clinical isolate, lacks the rlrA islet but has a gene (here named mgaSpn) equivalent to the sp1800 gene. In this work, and using in vivo approaches, we have identified the promoter of the mgaSpn gene (Pmga) and demonstrated that four neighboring open reading frames of unknown function (spr1623 to spr1626) constitute an operon. Transcription of this operon is under the control of two promoters (P1623A and P1623B) that are divergent from the Pmga promoter. Furthermore, we have shown that the MgaSpn protein activates the P1623B promoter in vivo. This activation requires sequences located around 50 to 120 nucleotides upstream of the P1623B transcription start site. By DNase I footprinting assays, we have also demonstrated that such a region includes an MgaSpn binding site. This is the first report on the activator role of the pneumococcal Mga-like protein.
Switching time bifurcations in a thyristor controlled reactor

Thyristor controlled reactors are high power switching circuits used for static VAR control and the emerging technology of flexible AC transmission. The static VAR control circuit considered in the paper is a nonlinear periodically operated RLC circuit with a sinusoidal source and ideal thyristors with equidistant firing pulses. This paper describes new instabilities in the circuit in which thyristor turn off times jump or bifurcate as a system parameter varies slowly. The new instabilities are called switching time bifurcations and are fold bifurcations of zeros of thyristor current. The bifurcation instabilities are explained and verified by simulation and an experiment. Switching time bifurcations are special to switching systems and, surprisingly, are not conventional bifurcations. In particular, switching time bifurcations cannot be predicted by observing the eigenvalues of the system Jacobian. We justify these claims by deriving a simple formula for the Jacobian of the Poincare map of the circuit and presenting theoretical and numerical evidence that conventional bifurcations do not occur.
Internal Capital Markets and Investment Policy: Evidence from Corporate Spinoffs

We analyze changes in investment policy following 106 spinoffs completed by diversified firms between 1981 and 1996. Prior to the spinoff, the sample firms are valued at a discount relative to a portfolio of comparable single-segment firms, and allocate funds inefficiently, investing too little in high-q segments. Following the spinoff, there is a significant improvement in investment efficiency and the diversification discount is eliminated. Furthermore, changes in excess value around the spinoff are positively related to changes in measures of investment efficiency. These findings support the view that (i) diversified firms allocate investment funds inefficiently, and (ii) by breaking up the conglomerate, spinoffs create value by improving investment efficiency.
THE EFFICACY OF EVENT-STUDY METHODOLOGIES: MEASURING EREIT ABNORMAL PERFORMANCE UNDER CONDITIONS OF INDUCED VARIANCE

Several papers have identified the hazards associated with event-induced variance, yet event studies continue to ignore the problem. This study demonstrates that the most commonly used abnormal return detection methods reject the null hypothesis of zero abnormal returns too often. This causes researchers to conclude the detection of abnormal performance when none is present. Two easy to employ alternative methods are proposed that are relatively unaffected by event-induced variance.
Effects of Forest Management on Haematological Parameters, Blood Parasites, and Reproductive Success of the Siberian Tit (Poecile cinctus) in Northern Finland

This study aims to investigate whether forest management has an effect on reproduction, haematological parameters and blood parasites of breeding Siberian tits Poecile cinctus. Birds breeding in heavily managed forests had significantly higher heterophil and lower lymphocyte concentrations and a higher heterophil/lymphocyte (H/L) ratio than those breeding in moderately managed forests. Although this suggests the increased level of physiological stress in Siberian tits breeding in heavily managed forests, reproductive parameters of the birds did not differ between the two habitats. Nestlings in moderately managed forests had higher total leukocyte and lymphocyte counts than nestlings in heavily managed habitat. The total count of parasites and Leucocytozoon majoris was significantly higher near streams, while the count of Plasmodium circumflexum was higher both near streams and lakes. Although blood parasites were detected in the blood of 80% adult birds, this study did not reveal any parasite-related effects on haematological parameters.
Anger under Control: Neural Correlates of Frustration as a Function of Trait Aggression

Antisocial behavior and aggression are prominent symptoms in several psychiatric disorders including antisocial personality disorder. An established precursor to aggression is a frustrating event, which can elicit anger or exasperation, thereby prompting aggressive responses. While some studies have investigated the neural correlates of frustration and aggression, examination of their relation to trait aggression in healthy populations are rare. Based on a screening of 550 males, we formed two extreme groups, one including individuals reporting high (n=21) and one reporting low (n=18) trait aggression. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3T, all participants were put through a frustration task comprising unsolvable anagrams of German nouns. Despite similar behavioral performance, males with high trait aggression reported higher ratings of negative affect and anger after the frustration task. Moreover, they showed relatively decreased activation in the frontal brain regions and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) as well as relatively less amygdala activation in response to frustration. Our findings indicate distinct frontal and limbic processing mechanisms following frustration modulated by trait aggression. In response to a frustrating event, HA individuals show some of the personality characteristics and neural processing patterns observed in abnormally aggressive populations. Highlighting the impact of aggressive traits on the behavioral and neural responses to frustration in non-psychiatric extreme groups can facilitate further characterization of neural dysfunctions underlying psychiatric disorders that involve abnormal frustration processing and aggression.
Endothelial progenitor cells in patients with non-small cell lung cancer

Introduction: Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) are known as putative cells in neovasculogenesis during pathological conditions, which are derived from bone marrow. This study was performed to systematically review the EPCs frequency in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) by evaluating the expression of CD133 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) markers.Methods: We search the PubMed and Scopus databases for the following keywords; CD133 AND lung AND VEGF. Inclusion criteria were all the articles studied the expression of both CD133 and VEGF markers in patients with NSCLC. No language and date restrictions were imposed to the search strategy. All the articles that studied only one biomarker or those that investigated the markers expression and EPCs count in patients with other types of tumors except NSCLC were excluded from the study.Result: Totally 51 articles obtained following the primary search of both databases. Only 7 of them had the eligibility to be included in this systematic review. Six articles were case- control and one was a cohort type of investigation. Flowcytometry and immunohistochemistry were the most applied methods for estimating the EPCs count and evaluating the expression of markers in circulating peripheral blood and tumors tissue. The expression of EPCs markers was increased in patients with NSCLC compared to healthy control individuals; however, the frequency of EPCs was low in peripheral blood of patients.Conclusion: Although it is not clear that circulating EPC numbers are associated with lung cancer patients angiogenesis, EPCs and VEGF levels are elevated in patients with operable NSCLC. The ideal method for evaluating circulating endothelia cells (CECs) or EPCs levels in vivo is still a matter of debate and because of the low number of EPCs in peripheral blood, their detection is technically challenging.
ASCA observations of deep ROSAT fields – V. The X‐ray spectrum of hard X‐ray selected QSOs

We present an analysis of the ROSAT and ASCA spectra of 21 broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGN) quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) with detected in the band with the ASCA GIS. The summed spectrum in the ASCA band is well described by a power law with , flatter than the average spectral index of bright QSOs and consistent with the spectrum of the X-ray background in this band. The flat spectrum in the ASCA band could be explained by only a moderate absorption (∼ assuming the typical AGN spectrum, i.e. a power law with . This could in principle suggest that some of the highly obscured AGN, required by most X-ray background synthesis models, may be associated with normal blue QSOs rather than narrow-line AGN. However, the combined ASCA–ROSAT spectrum is well fit by a power-law of with a spectral upturn at soft energies. It has been pointed out that such an upturn may be an artefact of uncertainties in the calibration of the ROSAT or ASCA detectors. Nevertheless, if real, it could imply that the above absorption model suggested by the ASCA data alone is ruled out. Then a large fraction of QSOs could have ‘concave’ spectra i.e. they gradually steepen towards softer energies. This result is in agreement with the BeppoSAX hardness ratio analysis of ∼100 hard X-ray selected sources.
Declarative Cleaning of Inconsistencies in Information Extraction

The population of a predefined relational schema from textual content, commonly known as Information Extraction (IE), is a pervasive task in contemporary computational challenges associated with Big Data. Since the textual content varies widely in nature and structure (from machine logs to informal natural language), it is notoriously difficult to write IE programs that unambiguously extract the sought information. For example, during extraction, an IE program could annotate a substring as both an address and a person name. When this happens, the extracted information is said to be inconsistent, and some way of removing inconsistencies is crucial to compute the final output. Industrial-strength IE systems like GATE and IBM SystemT therefore provide a built-in collection of cleaning operations to remove inconsistencies from extracted relations. These operations, however, are collected in an ad hoc fashion through use cases. Ideally, we would like to allow IE developers to declare their own policies. But existing cleaning operations are defined in an algorithmic way, and hence it is not clear how to extend the built-in operations without requiring low-level coding of internal or external functions. We embark on the establishment of a framework for declarative cleaning of inconsistencies in IE through principles of database theory. Specifically, building upon the formalism of document spanners for IE, we adopt the concept of prioritized repairs, which has been recently proposed as an extension of the traditional database repairs to incorporate priorities among conflicting facts. We show that our framework captures the popular cleaning policies, as well as the POSIX semantics for extraction through regular expressions. We explore the problem of determining whether a cleaning declaration is unambiguous (i.e., always results in a single repair) and whether it increases the expressive power of the extraction language. We give both positive and negative results, some of which are general and some of which apply to policies used in practice.
Proximate Composition and Antinutrient Contents of Some Common Spices in Nigeria~!2008-03-27~!2008-04-28~!2008-06-12~!

Indigenous Nigerian spices consist of parts of trees, shrubs and grass which abound in the tropical rain forest and savannah grassland zones. They are used principally to spice foods and drinks and as medication for various ailments. Although they are important components of the diets of rural Nigerians, knowledge of their contributions to human nutri- tion and contents of toxicants that influence the availability of nutrients in foods is lacking and has limited their use in food. The proximate composition and contents of naturally occurring toxicants (antinutrients) of five commonly con- sumed Nigerian spices: 'bafilo' (Uapaca guineense), 'atarko' (Zanthoxyllus zanthoxyloides). 'amilo' (Parinari excelsa), 'uburo' (Afromomum danielli) and 'clove' (Syzygium aromaticum) were evaluated and studied. The protein, carbohydrate and lipid contents of U. guineense, Z. zanthoxyloides, P. excelsa, A. danielli and S. aromaticum ranged from 7.8 - 8.6%, 67.6 - 68.6% and 9.3 - 10.8%, respectively while their ash contents ranged from 1.1 - 1.7%. U. guineense, Z. zanthoxy- loides, S. aromaticum had highest protein, lipid and carbohydrate contents respectively while U. guineense had a signifi- cantly (P � 0.05) higher total ash than other spices analysed. The cyanogenic glycoside, oxalates, tannins, saponins and phytate contents of raw U. guineense, Z. zanthoxyloides, P. excelsa, A. danielli and S. aromaticum ranged from 3.4 - 10.2mg /100g, 0.6 - 3.1mg/100g, 0.6 - 5.0mg/100g, 2.6 - 6.4mg/100g and 2.8 - 4.8mg/100g respectively. Generally, the antinutrient contents of the market samples were low and below stated levels of toxicity. Boiling and dehulling of seeds prior to pulverising and packing of spices caused significant (P � 0.05) reductions in the antinutrient contents of the proc- essed spices. Mean reductions of 71.5%, 87.5%, 73.1%, 71.9% and 73.9% cyanogenic glycosides, oxalates, polyphenols, saponins and phytates in U. guineense, Z. zanthoxyloides, P. excelsa, A. danielli and S. aromaticum respectively were ob- tained in the processed spices. The implications of these treatments on the contents of toxicants in foods are also dis- cussed.
Fast distributed graph partition and application

This paper presents efficient deterministic and randomized distributed algorithms for decomposing a graph with n nodes into a disjoint set of connected clusters with small radius and few intercluster edges. Our algorithms can be easily implemented in the distributed CONGEST model of computation i.e., limited message size, improving the time complexity of previous algorithms (Moran and Snir, 2000; Awerbuch, 1985; Peleg, 2000) from linear to sublinear. One important application of our algorithms is efficient construction of sparse graph spanners. In fact, given a parameter k, we show that there exists a sublinear deterministic distributed algorithm that constructs a graph spanner of stretch 2k - 1 with at most O(n1+1k/) edges in the CONGEST model
Strictly co-isogenic C57BL/6J-Prnp
−/− mice: A rigorous resource for prion science

: Although its involvement in prion replication and neurotoxicity during transmissible spongiform encephalopathies is undisputed, the physiological role of the cellular prion protein (PrPC) remains enigmatic. A plethora of functions have been ascribed to PrPC based on phenotypes of Prnp−/− mice. However, all currently available Prnp−/− lines were generated in embryonic stem cells from the 129 strain of the laboratory mouse and mostly crossed to non-129 strains. Therefore, Prnp-linked loci polymorphic between 129 and the backcrossing strain resulted in systematic genetic confounders and led to erroneous conclusions. We used TALEN-mediated genome editing in fertilized mouse oocytes to create the Zurich-3 (ZH3) Prnp-ablated allele on a pure C57BL/6J genetic background. Genomic, transcriptional, and phenotypic characterization of PrnpZH3/ZH3 mice failed to identify phenotypes previously described in non–co-isogenic Prnp−/− mice. However, aged PrnpZH3/ZH3 mice developed a chronic demyelinating peripheral neuropathy, confirming the crucial involvement of PrPC in peripheral myelin maintenance. This new line represents a rigorous genetic resource for studying the role of PrPC in physiology and disease.
Adipose-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells in the Regeneration of Vocal Folds: A Study on a Chronic Vocal Fold Scar

Background. The aim of the study was to assess the histological effects of autologous infusion of adipose-derived stem cells (ADSC) on a chronic vocal fold scar in a rabbit model as compared to an untreated scar as well as in injection of hyaluronic acid. Study Design. Animal experiment. Method. We used 74 New Zealand rabbits. Sixteen of them were used as control/normal group. We created a bilateral vocal fold wound in the remaining 58 rabbits. After 18 months we separated our population into three groups. The first group served as control/scarred group. The second one was injected with hyaluronic acid in the vocal folds, and the third received an autologous adipose-derived stem cell infusion in the scarred vocal folds (ADSC group). We measured the variation of thickness of the lamina propria of the vocal folds and analyzed histopathologic changes in each group after three months. Results. The thickness of the lamina propria was significantly reduced in the group that received the ADSC injection, as compared to the normal/scarred group. The collagen deposition, the hyaluronic acid, the elastin levels, and the organization of elastic fibers tend to return to normal after the injection of ADSC. Conclusions. Autologous injection of adipose-derived stem cells on a vocal fold chronic scar enhanced the healing of the vocal folds and the reduction of the scar tissue, even when compared to other treatments.
What Drove the Crop Price Hikes in the Food Crisis

In the late 2000s, the world grain markets experienced severe turbulence with rapid crop price rises caused by bad crops, oil price hikes, export restrictions, and the emergence of biofuels as well as financial speculation. We review the impacts of the first four real-side factors using a world trade computable general equilibrium model. Our simulation results show that oil and biofuels-related shocks were the major factors among these four in crop price hikes but that these real-side factors in total can explain only about 10% of the actual crop price rises.
A simple landscape-scale test of a spatially explicit population model: patch occupancy in fragmented south-eastern Australian forests

The results of a landscape-scale test of ALEX, a widely used metapopulation model for Population Viability Analysis (PVA), are described. ALEX was used to predict patch occupancy by the laughing kookaburra and the sacred kingfisher in patches of eucalypt forest in south-eastern Australia. These predictions were compared to field surveys to determine the accuracy of the model. Predictions also were compared to a "naive" null model assuming no fragmentation effects. The naive null model significantly over-predicted the number of eucalypt patches occupied by the sacred kingfisher, but the observed patch occupancy was not significantly different from that predicted using ALEX. ALEX produced a better fit to the field data than the naive null model for the number of patches occupied by the laughing kookaburra. Nevertheless, ALEX still significantly over-predicted the number of occupied patches, particularly remnants dominated by certain forest types – ribbon gum and narrow-leaved peppermint. The predictions remained significantly different from observations, even when the habitat quality of these patches was reduced to zero. Changing the rate of dispersal improved overall predicted patch occupancy, but occupancy rates for the different forest types remained significantly different from the field observations. The lack of congruence between field data and model predictions could have arisen because the laughing kookaburra may move between an array of patches to access spatially separated food and nesting resources in response to fragmentation. Alternatively, inter-specific competition may be heightened in a fragmented habitat. These types of responses to fragmentation are not incorporated as part of traditionally applied metapopulation models. Assessments of predictions from PVA models are rare but important because they can reveal the types of species for which forecasts are accurate and those for which they are not. This can assist the collection of additional empirical data to identify important factors affecting population dynamics.
Factors Related to Changes in Foot Status and Foot Care in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus Participating in an Exercise Health Education Program

Purpose: To identify factors related to changes in foot status and foot care in patients with diabetes mellitus participating in an exercise program. Methods: The subjects were 21 patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (8 males, 13 females). The mean age of the patients was 62.3 ± 12.5 years old. Foot status, physical measurements and daily activities were monitored and several surveys were performed. Results: Changes in foot status were significantly positively correlated with walking at normal speed (r = 0.54, p p p p p