Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The sero‐epidemiology of Kaposi's sarcoma‐associated herpesvirus (KSHV/HHV‐8) in adults with cancer in Uganda

The association between the prevalence of antibodies against Kaposi's sarcoma‐associated herpesvirus (KSHV or human herpesvirus 8 [HHV‐8]) and sociodemographic, sexual, reproductive and lifestyle factors was investigated in a study of adults presenting with cancer at hospitals in Kampala, Uganda. Patients were interviewed and tested for antibodies against KSHV (using an indirect immunofluorescent assay). Data are presented for 607 patients who were not infected with the human immunodeficiency virus‐1 (HIV) and who did not have Kaposi's sarcoma (these included people with cancers of the uterine cervix [140], breast [58], liver [41], oesophagus [36], lymphoma [47], other cancers [285] and benign tumours [63]). The prevalence of anti‐KSHV antibodies was 50% overall (302/607) and did not differ significantly by cancer site (p = 0.4) or sex (p = 0.2), but increased linearly with age from 35% in those under 25 years to 55% in those 45 years and over (χ2 trend [1 df] = 9.1; p < 0.001). After adjusting for age and sex, anti‐KSHV antibodies were more common in tribal groups other than the Baganda tribe (54% vs. 45% among Baganda; p = 0.02), but there was no significant (p > 0.05) variation in seroprevalence by district of birth, region of residence prior to becoming ill or various measures of wealth. The prevalence of anti‐KSHV antibodies decreased with increasing number of older siblings, although this may be due to chance (p = 0.05) and was higher among people who had ever been married (p = 0.03). There was no significant association (p > 0.05) between the presence of antibodies against KSHV and other sexual and reproductive factors. Among the 302 patients with anti‐KSHV antibodies, the proportion with high titres increased linearly with increasing age (p = 0.03) and was higher among those reporting having had a blood transfusion (p = 0.03). In conclusion, in this population in Uganda, where KSHV is relatively common, the prevalence of anti‐KSHV antibodies increased with age but showed little association with nearly 50 other factors studied. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Attitude toward learning of community medicine: A cross-sectional study among medical school students

Background: Community medicine strives to protect and promote the health and well-being of the community through primary health care approach. However the preference of community medicine as career among medical school students and curriculum of community medicine is pivotal. Aim: The study intended to find the attitude towards learning of community medicine and also to assess the preference of post graduation specialty among medical school students. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study conducted at a teaching hospital located in Tamil Nadu, South India. The study questionnaire was administered to a total of 500 study participants and the data collected were analyzed using SPSS IBM version 21.0. Results: Almost 97% were of the opinion that community medicine subject is mandatory. Eighty three percent were interested in learning the principles. Only 21.8% students wanted to pursue post graduation in community medicine. Lack of attraction in terms of scientific technical interest, workplace conditions, and research potential has been reported for being not interested. Conclusion: Majority enjoyed to learn principles of community medicine at undergraduate curriculum but only few preferred to opt community medicine as post graduate specialty. Therefore there is a room to influence the medical students positively towards learning community medicine in curriculum.
Perceiving the other: hostile and danger attributions among Jewish and Arab social work students in Israel

The aim of the present paper is to examine the possible relations of hostile and danger attributions and cultural competence socialization. We conducted an empirical study based on a factorial survey, focusing on the significance of formal cultural competence classes and the ongoing interpersonal contact among members of majority and minority groups: Jewish and Arab social work students in an Israeli University. The experimental design manipulated variables of ethnicity, potential dangerousness, and potential intended harm, using vignettes. The results indicated that Arab students attribute more hostility to both Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking figures than their Jewish counterparts. Jews attributed more danger to Arabs, and Arabs attributed more dangerousness to Jews. The most striking finding is the significant and positive association between multicultural competence socialization and attribution of danger and hostility. The findings are discussed within the framework of ethnic and political conflicts in turbulent areas, anti-oppressive social work, and their implications to social work education.
Questionable Research Practices Revisited

The current discussion of questionable research practices (QRPs) is meant to improve the quality of science. It is, however, important to conduct QRP studies with the same scrutiny as all research. We note problems with overestimates of QRP prevalence and the survey methods used in the frequently cited study by John, Loewenstein, and Prelec. In a survey of German psychologists, we decomposed QRP prevalence into its two multiplicative components, proportion of scientists who ever committed a behavior and, if so, how frequently they repeated this behavior across all their research. The resulting prevalence estimates are lower by order of magnitudes. We conclude that inflated prevalence estimates, due to problematic interpretation of survey data, can create a descriptive norm (QRP is normal) that can counteract the injunctive norm to minimize QRPs and unwantedly damage the image of behavioral sciences, which are essential to dealing with many societal problems.
Marriage and the Mental Health of Low-Income Urban Women With Children

Although numerous studies of the general population show that married people tend to exhibit better mental health than their unmarried counterparts, there is little evidence to suggest that the psychological benefits of marriage extend to low-income urban women with children. Building on previous research, this study uses longitudinal survey data from the Welfare, Children, and Families project (1999, 2001) to examine the effects of marriage and related transitions on changes in psychological distress among low-income urban women with children. It also tests the mediating influence of financial hardship, social support, self-esteem, and frequency of intoxication. Although entering and exiting marriage are unrelated to changes in psychological distress, continuous marriage is associated with lower levels of psychological distress from baseline to follow-up. The mediation analysis also suggests that the apparent mental health benefits of continuous marriage are partially mediated or explained by lower levels of financial hardship.
Nuclear Factor I Isoforms Regulate Gene Expression During the Differentiation of Human Neural Progenitors to Astrocytes

Even though astrocytes are critical for both normal brain functions and the development and progression of neuropathological states, including neuroinflammation associated with neurodegenerative diseases, the mechanisms controlling gene expression during astrocyte differentiation are poorly understood. Thus far, several signaling pathways were shown to regulate astrocyte differentiation, including JAK‐STAT, bone morphogenic protein‐2/Smads, and Notch. More recently, a family of nuclear factor‐1 (NFI‐A, ‐B, ‐C, and ‐X) was implicated in the regulation of vertebral neocortex development, with NFI‐A and ‐B controlling the onset of gliogenesis. Here, we developed an in vitro model of differentiation of stem cells towards neural progenitors (NP) and subsequently astrocytes. The transition from stem cells to progenitors was accompanied by an expected change in the expression profile of markers, including Sox‐2, Musashi‐1, and Oct4. Subsequently, generated astrocytes were characterized by proper morphology, increased glutamate uptake, and marker gene expression. We used this in vitro differentiation model to study the expression and functions of NFIs. Interestingly, stem cells expressed only background levels of NFIs, while differentiation to NP activated the expression of NFI‐A. More importantly, NFI‐X expression was induced during the later stages of differentiation towards astrocytes. In addition, NFI‐X and ‐C were required for the expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein and secreted protein acidic and rich in cystein‐like protein 1, which are the markers of astrocytes at the later stages of differentiation. We conclude that an expression program of NFIs is executed during the differentiation of astrocytes, with NFI‐X and ‐C controlling the expression of astrocytic markers at late stages of differentiation. Stem Cells 2009;27:1173–1181
A New Quality Metric based on FFT Transform

study of the human visual system (HVS) is very interesting to quantify the quality of an image or to predict perceived information. The contrast sensitivity function (CSF) is one of the main ways to incorporate the HVS properties in an imaging system. It characterizes its sensitivity to spatial and temporal frequencies. In this paper we are interested in establishing a metric with full reference to the image and video. We realize in our algorithm, the FFT transformation to apply the CSF function. Our method is applicable to any size of image and video sequence by increasing its size at powers of two. This increase is achieved by adding "mirror image". The experimental results show that our method keeps better the different frequency components. She is more efficient than the method of "zero padding" and returns results very close to those of the DFT transformation.
Colonoscopy: Go Small for Success?

Colonoscopy using standard adult colonoscopes can be difficult in patients with fixed, angulated sigmoid colons. An earlier study from the same center suggested that in women who have had hysterectomy, successful colonoscopy occurred with greater frequency when initiated with a pediatric colonoscope versus an adult colonoscope. This follow-up study was a nonblinded clinical trial comparing the use of a pediatric colonoscope with an adult colonoscope for routine colonoscopy in women with previous hysterectomy. A total of 100 female patients presenting for an outpatient colonoscopy were randomized to use the pediatric (Olympus PCF-100) or adult (Olympus CF-100L or CF-Q140L) colonoscope.The primary outcome was the comparative rate of cecal intubation. Secondary outcomes included total procedure time, cecal insertion time, sedative administration, procedural difficulty, and patients’ experience. Endoscopists encountering difficult insertion had the opportunity to use the alternate scope. The cecum was reached in 49 of 51 (96.1%) women when using the pediatric colonoscope versus 35 of 49 (71.4%) women when using the adult colonoscope. Of the 14 incomplete examinations initiated with an adult colonoscope, the pediatric colonoscope was used 12 times, and the cecum was reached in nine, adjusting the rate of successful colonoscopy to 44 of 49 (89.8%). There was no statistical difference in total procedure time, cecal insertion time, sedative drug dosages, procedural difficulty, or patient comfort using either scope.When performing routine colonoscopy in women with previous hysterectomy, the authors recommend either starting with a pediatric colonoscope or having one available in the advent of a fixed, angulated sigmoid colon.
Real-time large scale near-duplicate web video retrieval

Near-duplicate video retrieval is becoming more and more important with the exponential growth of the Web. Though various approaches have been proposed to address this problem, they are mainly focusing on the retrieval accuracy while infeasible to query on Web scale video database in real time. This paper proposes a novel method to address the efficiency and scalability issues for near-duplicate We video retrieval. We introduce a compact spatiotemporal feature to represent videos and construct an efficient data structure to index the feature to achieve real-time retrieving performance. This novel feature leverages relative gray-level intensity distribution within a frame and temporal structure of videos along frame sequence. The new index structure is proposed based on inverted file to allow for fast histogram intersection computation between videos. To demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed methods we evaluate its performance on an open Web video data set containing about 10K videos and compare it with four existing methods in terms of precision and time complexity. We also test our method on a data set containing about 50K videos and 11M key-frames. It takes on average 17ms to execute a query against the whole 50K Web video data set.
College Aspirations and Limitations

Using a qualitative multiple-case-study design, this study explored how funds of knowledge in Mexican American families contributed to the development of educational ideologies. Findings illustrated the following ways in which families are involved in their children’s education: the formation of both helpful and limiting educational ideologies, which highlighted beliefs regarding college-going processes; college information drawn from social networks and academic symbols found in families’ everyday lives; and the development of college-going realities. Unique to this study is the extension of funds of knowledge beyond traditional K–12 discussions and the incorporation of outreach literature into this framework when studying issues of college access.
COMPETITIVE DYNAMICS RESEARCH: CRITIQUE AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

The decade of the nineties witnessed a significant increase in business-level strategy research relating to the competitive actions and reactions carried out among competing firms. Rooted in the Schumpter theory of creative destruction, this work has examined causes and consequences of firm-level action and reaction, such as new product introductions, promotions, pricing, and market signaling. In this chapter, we critically review the competitive dynamics literature in terms of underlying theory, methods and results. Our review reveals that the strongest and most consistent empirical relationships include: the negative relationship between action/reaction timing and firm performance and the positive relationship between action/reaction aggressiveness and performance. This research also reveals that competitive reaction can be predicted based on characteristics of the action. These relationships hold up in a great variety of samples, as competitive dynamics research has been conducted on a great variety of firms and industries. However, we note a bias toward large, single business, public, domestic firms. The methods are also biased towards archival research, leaving opportunities to study management intentions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of alternative theoretical perspectives, which offer opportunities for expanding the domain of competitive dynamics research.
Theoretical Perspectives, Research Findings, and Classroom Implications of the Learning Styles of American Indian and Alaska Native Students

Author(s): Hilberg, R. Soleste; G. Tharp, Roland | Abstract: Although research on learning styles has found variation between cultural groups in styles of learning (e.g., Park, 2001; Zhang a Sternberg, 2001), great variation has also been found within groups (e.g., Nuby a Oxford, 1998). These findings suggest that even in classrooms consisting exclusively of a single cultural group, as is the case in many reservation schools, teachers must use a variety of instructional strategies. Effective teaching requires teaching individuals.This Digest begins with a brief discussion of two prominent definitions of learning styles and then describes studies that have found differences between the learning styles of American Indian students and students of other cultural groups. The Digest then presents instructional interventions stemming from learning styles research.
The measurement of risk perceptions: the case of smoking

Smoking is among the most debated areas of risk perception, with varying conclusions about people’s understanding of the risks. Part of the debate has focused on the measures being employed to support such claims. However, studies have not been conducted to compare the best methods to measure the perceived risk. This research first discusses the use of such measures, including survey data from tobacco industry archives that have not previously appeared in publication. Then, using nationally representative survey data of youth and adults in the USA, verbal probability scales and numeric scales are compared. The relationships between these measures are first examined for logical consistency with one another. Additionally, the strength of the relationships with and modeling power of the behavior of interest, smoking, are analyzed The results of difference of means tests, correlations and logistic regressions show that the numeric measures are inconsistent with logical semantic understanding, and more importantly, that vague quantifier scales show greater relationships and predictive power than numeric scales. Implications for survey design and further research are discussed.
Examining the Symptoms of Groupthink and Retrospective Sensemaking

The symptoms of groupthink traditionally have been treated as part of a single process associated with poor decision making in groups. The present study explores the symptoms of groupthink as reflecting two distinct processes that vary depending on the confidence individuals have in the decision favored by the group. It is further argued that past research using qualitative approaches may produce an illusory correlation among the groupthink symptoms because of retrospective sensemaking occurring when individuals have evidence they have made a poor decision. An experiment, providing support for each of these contentions, is performed.
2-manifold reconstruction from sparse visual features

The majority of methods for the automatic surface reconstruction of a scene from an image sequence have two steps: Structure-from-Motion and dense stereo. From the complexity viewpoint, it would be interesting to avoid dense stereo and to generate a surface directly from the sparse features reconstructed by SfM. This paper adds two contributions to our previous work on 2-manifold surface reconstruction from a sparse SfM point cloud: we quantitatively evaluate our results on standard multiview dataset and we integrate the reconstruction of image curves in the process.
Language and Love

Social networking sites (SNS) provide adolescents with opportunities for content generation on a wide range of social issues, providing unique insight into the psychosocial development of adolescence. We explored SNS webpages viewed by a random sample of adolescents during the initial uptake of SNS use (2005) to describe their general language use. Adolescents aged 14 to 17 with home Internet access were recruited using list-assisted random digit dialing methods. All SNS (MySpace) webpages viewed by participants were captured, and a large, structured set of texts (text corpus) was created from the profiles and message boards therein. Using concordance software, word frequency and keyword associations were analyzed. The 346 participants viewed approximately 28,000 MySpace pages, yielding a 1,147,432-word text corpus. Profile sections presented information about the content creator, while message boards focused more on short conversations with recipients. The most common content word was the term love. Profile owners would profess their love for activities, such as dancing, partying, or shopping, followed by their love for family, friends, and significant others. SNS offer teens an opportunity to describe and share feelings about people, places, and things connected to a range of activities and social contacts within their online and offline environments. Better understanding of SNS can offer strategies to adolescents and health care providers for insight into what connects young people in a community.
Self‐Similar Morphodynamics of Gilbert and Hyperpycnal Deltas Over Segmented Two‐Slope Bedrock Channels

Delta progradation over segmented two‐slope bedrocks is prevalent in nature, where the bedrock slope upstream or downstream of the slope‐break knickpoint is steepened by continued tectonic uplift or subsidence. Understanding the morphodynamics of the most common types of delta in different slope settings is important for interpreting the observed delta progradation into reservoir and predicting delta evolutions under future tectonic/climate scenarios or anthropogenic interventions. Here, we present an experimental and analytical study demonstrating the morphological responses of Gilbert‐type and hyperpycnal deltas to variations of bedrock slopes. Steepening the upstream slope accelerates shoreline migration; steepening the downstream slope decelerates shoreline migration. In either case, the subaqueous volume is enhanced yet the subaerial volume is reduced. Both types of delta exhibit self‐similar morphologies when evolving over segmented bedrocks. Hyperpycnal deltas, through enhanced sediment fluxes driven by dense underflows, develop larger subaqueous volumes. We further demonstrate the underlying self‐similarities in sediment flux and bed growth rate that come into play for attaining the self‐similar morphologies. The combined effect of flowrate (Q) and sediment supply rate (I) may be characterized by a dimensionless Q/I ratio. Increasing Q/I advances the entire delta. For Gilbert deltas, shoreline migration accelerates with Q/I. For hyperpycnal deltas, shoreline migration exhibits a “first‐accelerate‐then‐decelerate” trend with Q/I in a limited range of slope combinations close to the single‐slope setting, indicating that the effect of Q/I emerges only when the two‐slope effect is weak or absent. Away from this near‐single‐slope range, the two‐slope effect becomes dominant, thus suppressing the effect of Q/I.
Sparse Coding for Efficient Bioacoustic Data Mining: Preliminary Application to Analysis of Whale Songs

Bioacoustic monitoring, such as surveys of animal populations and migration, needs efficient data mining methods to extract information from large datasets covering multi-year and multi-location recordings. This paper introduces a method for sparse coding of bioacoustic recordings in order to efficiently compress and automatically extract patterns in data. We demonstrate the proposed method on the analysis of humpback whale songs. Previous work suggests that the structure of these songs can be characterized by successive vocalizations called sound units. Most of these analyses are currently done with expert intervention, but the volume of recordings drive the need for automated methods for sound unit classification. This paper proposes that sparse coding of the song at different time scales supports the distinction of stable song components versus those which evolve year to year. The approach is summarized as: first, an unsupervised method is used to encode the entire bioacoustic dataset into a dictionary, second, sparse coding is used to limit the number of elements in the dictionary, third, salient features are identified using the Lasso algorithm, and finally, an interpretation of the evolving and stable components of the songs is derived, supporting an analysis of year to year variation. It is shown that shorter codes are more stable, occurring with similar frequency across two consecutive years, while the occurrence of longer units varies across years as expected based on the prior manual analysis. 250 ms segments appear to be an appropriate length for encoding stable features of whale songs, possibly corresponding to subunits. We conclude by exploring further possibilities of the application of this method for biopopulation analysis.