Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Saltelli Global Sensitivity Analysis and Simulation Modelling to Identify Intervention Strategies to Reduce the Prevalence of Escherichia coli O157 Contaminated Beef Carcasses

Introduction Strains of Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli O157 (STEC O157) are important foodborne pathogens in humans, and outbreaks of illness have been associated with consumption of undercooked beef. Here, we determine the most effective intervention strategies to reduce the prevalence of STEC O157 contaminated beef carcasses using a modelling approach. Method A computational model simulated events and processes in the beef harvest chain. Information from empirical studies was used to parameterise the model. Variance-based global sensitivity analysis (GSA) using the Saltelli method identified variables with the greatest influence on the prevalence of STEC O157 contaminated carcasses. Following a baseline scenario (no interventions), a series of simulations systematically introduced and tested interventions based on influential variables identified by repeated Saltelli GSA, to determine the most effective intervention strategy. Results Transfer of STEC O157 from hide or gastro-intestinal tract to carcass (improved abattoir hygiene) had the greatest influence on the prevalence of contaminated carcases. Due to interactions between inputs (identified by Saltelli GSA), combinations of interventions based on improved abattoir hygiene achieved a greater reduction in maximum prevalence than would be expected from an additive effect of single interventions. The most effective combination was improved abattoir hygiene with vaccination, which achieved a greater than ten-fold decrease in maximum prevalence compared to the baseline scenario. Conclusion Study results suggest that effective interventions to reduce the prevalence of STEC O157 contaminated carcasses should initially be based on improved abattoir hygiene. However, the effect of improved abattoir hygiene on the distribution of STEC O157 concentration on carcasses is an important information gap—further empirical research is required to determine whether reduced prevalence of contaminated carcasses is likely to result in reduced incidence of STEC O157 associated illness in humans. This is the first use of variance-based GSA to assess the drivers of STEC O157 contamination of beef carcasses.
A path model with mediating factors of parents' education on students' reading achievement in seven countries

The cultural capital in families, more specifically, the educational level of parents, has during the last decades been shown to be the most important dimension of socioeconomic influence on school performance in many countries. Less is known about the factors that actually mediate this influence. The aim, therefore, is to investigate the relative importance of various mediating factors, as well as the total effects of parents' educational levels, on the reading achievement levels of children in Grade 4. Data in this comparative analysis come from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2001 and include representative samples from 7 countries: Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, and Italy. Variables indicating possession of cultural capital in the families are collected from the home questionnaire. A total achievement score is used as outcome variable. The effects of parents' education on reading achievement are estimated with structural equation modelling. Substantial effects of parental education were found, but the pathways for indirect effects that were mediated through other variables varied between countries.
Helicobacter pylori vacA Genotypes in Chronic Gastritis and Gastric Carcinoma Patients from Macau, China

Helicobacter pylori is the major triggering factor for gastric carcinoma, but only a small proportion of infected patients develop this disease. Differences in virulence observed among H. pylori strains, namely in the vacuolating cytotoxin vacA gene, may contribute to this discrepancy. Infection with vacA s1, i1 and m1 strains increases the risk for progression of gastric premalignant lesions and for gastric carcinoma. However, in East Asian countries most of the H. pylori strains are vacA s1, regardless of the patients’ clinical status, and the significance of the vacA i1 and m1 genotypes for gastric carcinoma in this geographic area remains to be fully elucidated. The aim of the present study was to investigate this relationship in 290 patients from Macau, China. Using very sensitive and accurate genotyping methods, we detected infection with vacA i1 and with vacA m1 strains in, respectively, 85.2% and 52.6% of the patients that were infected with single genotypes. The prevalence of cagA-positive strains was 87.5%. No significant associations were observed between vacA genotypes or cagA and gastric carcinoma. It is worth noting that 37.5% of the infected patients had coexistence of H. pylori strains with different vacA genotypes. Additional studies directed to other H. pylori virulence factors should be performed to identify high risk patients in East Asia.
Genetic parameters for yield and reproductive traits of Holstein and Jersey cattle in Florida.

Records of yield and reproduction from 4293 Holstein and 2143 Jersey first lactation cows from eight Holstein and six Jersey herds were utilized to evaluate genetic parameters for Florida, a subtropical environment. Statistical analyses were by derivative-free REML with the animal model. Genetic variances were based on variation in estimated breeding values of individual cows. Heritabilities were . 27 to . 43 for yields (6 estimates), . 38 to . 51 for constituent percentages (4 estimates), and . 025 to . 056 for reproduction (6 estimates), which were similar to estimates for temperature areas from similar procedures. Also, correlations of breeding values between yields were high and between yields and reproduction were low and generally antagonistic. Correlated responses in calving interval from selection for yield, with selection intensities of 1.0 to 1.5, would be expected to lead to increases of 1.0 to 5.2 d per generation (12 estimates). Thus, estimates of genetic parameters and correlated responses in this subtropical environment did not differ appreciably from those that occur in temperate dairy areas.
Counseling Biracial Students: A Review of Issues and Interventions

Racial identity and self-concept development in biracial students are examined. Because of biracial students' high incidence of academic and behavioral problems, this article includes a compilation of strategies for school counselors as well as schoolwide programs designed to reduce prejudice toward and increase acceptance of these students. A case study is used to illustrate strategies. Se examinaron la identidad racial y el desarrollo del autoconcepto en estudiantes birraciales. Debido a la alta incidencia de problemas academicos y de comportamiento por parte de estudiantes birraciales, este articulo incluye una recopilacion de estrategias para consejeros escolares, ademas de programas escolares integrales designados para reducir los prejuicios contra estos alumnos e incrementar su aceptacion. Se emplea un estudio de caso para ilustrar las estrategias.
Job Characteristics and Pressures and the Organizational Integration of Professionals.

Job characteristics and three job pressures were examined in 22 research and development laboratories as possible correlates of organizational effectiveness and the need satisfactions and job involvement of researchers in the laboratories. Job challenge and responsibility for dealing with customers were related to quality pressure and to financial responsibility pressure. Job challenge was also related to need satisfaction. Quality pressure, a professional concern, and financial responsibility pressure, an organizational concern, were both related to organizational performance. Quality pressure was also related to job involvement, so that this pressure was functional for both the individual and the organization. Financial responsibility pressure was seen as the professional's adaptation to organizational values.
Natural Language Object Retrieval

In this paper, we address the task of natural language object retrieval, to localize a target object within a given image based on a natural language query of the object. Natural language object retrieval differs from text-based image retrieval task as it involves spatial information about objects within the scene and global scene context. To address this issue, we propose a novel Spatial Context Recurrent ConvNet (SCRC) model as scoring function on candidate boxes for object retrieval, integrating spatial configurations and global scene-level contextual information into the network. Our model processes query text, local image descriptors, spatial configurations and global context features through a recurrent network, outputs the probability of the query text conditioned on each candidate box as a score for the box, and can transfer visual-linguistic knowledge from image captioning domain to our task. Experimental results demonstrate that our method effectively utilizes both local and global information, outperforming previous baseline methods significantly on different datasets and scenarios, and can exploit large scale vision and language datasets for knowledge transfer.
Dyslexia: Theory and Research

Dyslexia is a term commonly used to refer to severe and pervasive reading impairment in otherwise normal children. Because dyslexia technically refers to reading disability in brain injured patients, organic disorder has been one of the most frequently cited reasons for why Johnny can't read. It is also one of the most misunderstood and expensive problems known to psychologists and educators. Millions of dollars are spent annually on research, assessment, and treatment programs for dyslexia from which concerned parents and teachers have sought help. Most of the research on the subject however has been characterized by poorly designed experiments, informal observations, and equivocal results.This book makes available the first systematic and comprehensive treatment of dyslexia. It carefully examines the problem, points out the flaws in many of the educational techniques currently being used for training dyslexics, and presents new theories as to what constitutes specific reading disability.The book is divided into three sections. Part I considers the various definitions of dyslexia that have been offered, discusses the problems inherent in choosing a meaningful research population, and surveys the major theories of this disorder from the turn of the century to the present.Part II examines in detail the four major conceptions of dyslexia outlined in the first section -- visual perception, intersensory integration, serial processing, and verbal processing. Here, Vellutino provides evidence suggesting that, contrary to popular belief, dyslexic children do not see letters backward. Instead, he suggests that specific reading disability is associated with deficiency or disorder in one or more aspects of linguistic functioning, or in visual-verbal association learning, and discusses research that supports these possibilities.The first two sections of the book are summarized in Part III, which also suggests areas of future research and discusses the implications of research findings for the development of assessment and treatment programs for dyslexia.The analyses, conclusions, and suggestions in this study will be of particular interest to specialists and students in developmental psychology, learning disability, education, linguistics, speech and hearing, pediatrics, neurology, and reading theory.
The “Ideal Professor” and Gender Effects in Christian Higher Education

A survey was administered to 451 undergraduate students at a private liberal arts Christian university to identify students’ perceptions of the ideal professor. The survey revealed that the ideal professor places great emphasis on the integration of faith and learning, is flexible (and even easy), maintains high academic standards, encourages students, and has an adaptive teaching style. Findings also highlighted gender differences in student perception of the ideal professor. Women perceived an adaptable teaching style, encouragement, and integration of faith and learning as slightly more important than men did in defining the characteristics of an ideal professor. Implications are framed in terms of student expectations for content and relationship dimensions of learning associated with Christian colleges and universities.
Psychosocial Adjustment of Adolescents and Young Adults With Intellectual Disabilities

Issues with adolescents with intellectual disabilities have received little attention in the research literature. This study compared adolescents with and without intellectual disabilities on several indices of psychosocial adjustment. The participants were selected from a large longitudinal database and comparisons were made at three points in time. Analyses indicated that adolescents with intellectual disabilities report mild to moderate depression over time when compared with their typically developing peers, they express more family connectedness, but differ little on measures of self-concept. In later adolescence, typically developing adolescents appear to have a significant increase in optimism that is not experienced by the adolescents with intellectual disabilities. Implications of the findings are discussed as well directions for further investigation.
Connecting ‘Home’ With ‘Here’: Personal Homepages in Everyday Transnational Lives

The study of migrant transnationalism focuses on the ways in which (certain) individuals are able to act socially, economically or politically in more than one locale. One crucial element to such action is the use of communication technologies—and in particular the internet—as a means to bridge the gaps between different places. In this paper I focus on the use of personal homepages amongst South Korean international students in Auckland, New Zealand, to investigate the ways in which this communication technology (CT) serves to connect idealised notions of ‘home’ (South Korea) with the physical realities of ‘here’ (Auckland). This connection with ‘home’, however, is shown to be Janus-like in its effects on students’ everyday transnational lives—both facilitating and constraining their actions. I argue that a reading of transnational communication practices that conceives access as necessarily positive is naïve in that it fails to recognise the ways that engagement with spaces of belonging—personal, familial or national—are also characterised by inclusion and exclusion and by the processes of surveillance and disciplining that seek to police the borders between bodies and subjectivities, both on and offline.
Lack of Reelin causes malpositioning of nigral dopaminergic neurons: Evidence from comparison of normal and Relnrl mutant mice

The reeler gene (Relnrl, formerly rl) product Reelin controls neuronal migration and positioning and thereby plays a key role in brain development. Mutation of Reln leads to widespread disruption of laminar cortical regions and ectopia in some brainstem nuclei. In the embryonic striatum of normal mice, a substantial expression of reelin mRNA has been documented; however, the anomalous positioning of neurons in the basal ganglia of reeler mice remains to be studied. We provide first evidence for a potential role of Reelin in the developmental formation of the substantia nigra. In reeler mutant mice lacking Reelin, dopaminergic neurons destined for the substantia nigra fail to migrate laterally and become anomalously clustered just lateral to the ventral tegmental area. Their axons appear to project to striatal patches forming “dopamine islands. ” Results from the normal mice show that, at the midembryonic stage, Reelin identified with CR‐50 is highly concentrated in the ventral mesencephalon, where nigral dopaminergic neurons are in progress to migrate laterally to their eventual position of the adult brain. A combination of CR‐50 labeling and anterograde axonal tracing provided evidence that embryonic striatal neurons may supply the ventral portion of the mesencephalon with Reelin through their axonal projections. We hypothesize that Reelin plays a role in the positioning of nigral dopaminergic neurons and that it can act as an environmental cue at a remote site far from its birthplace via a transaxonal delivery system. J. Comp. Neurol. 461:166–173, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Nitric Oxide Synthase-Mediated Phytoalexin Accumulation in Soybean Cotyledons in Response to the Diaporthe phaseolorumf. sp. meridionalis Elicitor1

Phytoalexin biosynthesis is part of the defense mechanism of soybean (Glycine max) plants against attack by the fungus Diaporthe phaseolorum f. sp.meridionalis (Dpm), the causal agent of stem canker disease. The treatment of soybean cotyledons with Dpm elicitor or with sodium nitroprusside (SNP), a nitric oxide (NO) donor, resulted in a high accumulation of phytoalexins. This response did not occur when SNP was replaced by ferricyanide, a structural analog of SNP devoid of the NO moiety. Phytoalexin accumulation induced by the fungal elicitor, but not by SNP, was prevented when cotyledons were pretreated with NO synthase (NOS) inhibitors. The Dpm elicitor also induced NOS activity in soybean tissues proximal to the site of inoculation. The induced NOS activity was Ca2+- and NADPH-dependent and was sensitive to the NOS inhibitors N G -nitro-l-arginine methyl ester, aminoguanidine, and l-N6-(iminoethyl) lysine. NOS activity was not observed in SNP-elicited tissues. An antibody to brain NOS labeled a 166-kD protein in elicited and nonelicited cotyledons. Isoflavones (daidzein and genistein), pterocarpans (glyceollins), and flavones (apigenin and luteolin) were identified after exposure to the elicitor or SNP, although the accumulation of glyceollins and apigenin was limited in SNP-elicited compared with fungal-elicited cotyledons. NOS activity preceded the accumulation of these flavonoids in tissues treated with the Dpm elicitor. The accumulation of these metabolites was faster in SNP-elicited than in fungal-elicited cotyledons. We conclude that the response of soybean cotyledons to Dpm elicitor involves NO formation via a constitutive NOS-like enzyme that triggers the biosynthesis of antimicrobial flavonoids.
The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law, and the Environment

Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. At the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima or why political questions are not all economic 3. The allocation and distribution of resources 4. Frigile prices and shadow values 5. Values and preferences 6. Nature and the national idea 7. Can environmentalists be liberals? 8. Property and the value of land 9. Where Ickes went right or, Reason and rationality in environmental law Notes Index.
Talaromyces columbinus sp. nov., and Genealogical Concordance Analysis in Talaromyces Clade 2a

During the course of mold surveys, a set of Talaromyces isolates were obtained that did not fit any described species. Phenotypic examination of these isolates showed that they were similar to T. piceus but differed in some growth characteristics. Multilocus DNA sequence data were obtained for the new isolates and some related species in the broader, more inclusive clade, and the data were analyzed using genealogical concordance. The new isolates are described as Talaromyces columbinus. From analysis of the related species, Penicillium rugulosum var. atricolum is given species status in Talaromyces as T. atricola. Penicillium tardum and P. chrysitis were showed to be synonyms of T. rugulosus. Penicillium scorteum and T. phialosporus were showed to be conspecific and under the rule of priority T. scorteus is the proper name for isolates previously known as T. phialosporus. Talaromyces wortmanii was showed to be distinct from Penicillium concavorugulosum and T. variabilis but the relationship of the latter two species remains unresolved. Examination of ITS sequences from GenBank showed that T. columbinus has previously been reported from human lung infections under the name Penicillium piceum.
Improving Initial Session Attendance of Substance Abusing and Conduct Disordered Adolescents: A Controlled Study

ABSTRACT The present controlled study was the first to demonstrate a method of improving first session attendance in a population of conduct disordered and substance abusing adolescents. The results indicated that an intensive intervention involving the youth and parent was more effective in improving session attendance than a less intensive intervention that excluded the youth's involvement. The intensive intervention resulted in greater attendance to the first appointment (60% vs. 89%), greater attendance to appointments throughout the study (57% vs. 83%), and greater promptness to sessions that were attended (5.8 mins. vs. 0.8 mins.). Implications of this study are discussed in light of these results.
The World Health Organization Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition: methodology and applications.

BACKGROUND For decades nutritional surveys have been conducted using various definitions, indicators and reference populations to classify child malnutrition. The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition was initiated in 1986 with the objective to collect, standardize, and disseminate child anthropometric data using a standard format. METHODS The database includes population-based surveys that fulfil a set of criteria. Data are checked for validity and consistency and raw data sets are analysed following a standard procedure to obtain comparable results. Prevalences of wasting, stunting, under- and overweight in preschool children are presented using z-scores based on the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)/WHO international reference population. New surveys are included on a continuous basis and updates are published bimonthly on the database's web site. RESULTS To date, the database contains child anthropometric information derived from 846 surveys. With 412 national surveys from 138 countries and 434 sub-national surveys from 155 countries, the database covers 99% and 64% of the under 5 year olds in developing and developed countries, respectively. This wealth of information enables international comparison of nutritional data, helps identifying populations in need, evaluating nutritional and other public health interventions, monitoring trends in child growth, and raising political awareness of nutritional problems. CONCLUSIONS The 15 years experience of the database can be regarded as a success story of international collaboration in standardizing child growth data. We recommend this model for monitoring other nutritional health conditions that as yet lack comparable data.