Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Devolution and deconcentration in action: a comparative study of five Municipal Health Directorates in Ghana

Decentralisation policies have been adopted by most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in the expectation of improved service provision. The benefits expected are two-fold: a) decentralisation will lead to better coordination and collaboration between different parts of the state at the local level and b) decentralisation will lead to increased consultation and responsiveness of local governments to their citizens. In this thesis I seek to explain why these benefits are realised in some contexts and not others. In most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the predominant form of decentralisation is a combination of devolution and deconcentration. Often these two policies are ambiguous and sometimes contradictory. What are the processes through which such mixed systems work? This thesis attempts to understand how mixed systems of devolution and deconcentration work in practice through a comparative study of Five Municipal Health Directorates in Ghana. The study explores the three sets of relationships that are critical for decentralisation to work well in such mixed systems a) between the Health Directorate and the District Assembly administration, b) between the Health Directorate and the elected members of the District Assembly and c) between the Health Directorate and selected civil society organisations working on health. The work is based on detailed qualitative interviews in the five municipalities. The main finding is that informal ties between the Health Directorate and the three sets of actors mentioned above are helpful in explaining why coordination and consultation seem better in some municipalities than others. Four kinds of ties are found to be important: ethnic/tribal links, family/kinship/neighbourhood relations, political party affiliations, and old-school networks. These ties between Municipal Health Directorates and senior officers of the Municipal Assemblies were found to facilitate Municipal Health Directorates' access to District Assemblies' Common Fund, which was controlled by the Municipal Assemblies. The existence of these ties between Municipal Health Directorates and elected Assembly members of Municipal Assemblies were found to enhance the quality of Municipal Health Directorates' policies and helped to gain public support. Finally, such ties between Municipal Health Directorates and leaders of selected Civil Society Organisations that mobilised around HIV and AIDS programmes were found to facilitate implementation of Municipal Health Directorates' policies around HIV and AIDS. The thesis' contribution is that it shows that informal linkages between different local bodies and between local government and civil society organisations seem important for improved coordination and collaboration among various actors, and better consultation with elected representatives of citizens and leaders of CSOs for effective service delivery at the local level.
Incongruent reduction of dopamine transporter availability in different subgroups of alcohol dependence

Abstract The dopamine transporter (DAT) plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of alcohol dependence (AD) and major depression (MD), and males have more risk factors for the development of AD. However, imaging studies on brain DAT availability in males with AD comorbid with MD (AD/MD) are limited, and the association of DAT availability with cognitive function and depressive scores in patients with AD/MD has not been analyzed. Hence, this study examined the relationship between brain DAT availability, cognitive function, and depressive symptoms in different subgroups of males with AD. Single-photon emission computed tomography imaging with 99mTc-TRODAT-1 as a ligand was used to measure striatal DAT availability in 49 patients with AD (28 pure AD and 21 AD/MD) and 24 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers. The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale were used to assess neurocognitive function and depressive scores, respectively. Patients with AD showed a significant reduction of DAT availability in 3 brain regions (P < 0.001), and this reduction was more pronounced in the patients with pure AD compared to healthy controls. The patients with AD showed significantly poorer performance on the WCST, but only in the control group was DAT availability significantly negatively correlated with total errors and perseverative errors (P < 0.001). These preliminary findings suggest that DAT availability is associated with neurocognitive function, and incongruent reduction of DAT may play a pathophysiological role in different subgroups of AD. In addition, decreased DAT availability may be associated with the severity of depressive symptoms in patients with AD/MD.
Experiments in Bayesian Diagnostics with IUID-Enabled Data

The Department of Defense (DOD) has recognized the importance of improving asset management and has created Item Unique Identification numbers (lUIDs) to improve the situation. lUIDs will be used to track financial and contract records and obtain location and status information about parts in DoD inventory. lUIDs will also support data collection for weapon systems from build, test, operations, maintenance, repair, and overhaul histories. In addition to improving the overall logistics process, lUIDs offer an opportunity to utilize asset-specific data to improve system maintenance and support. An Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Pilot Project to implement IUID on a Navy weapon system presents an immediate opportunity to evaluate this use of IUID data. This paper reports on experiments conducted to see if a set of asset-specific diagnostic classifiers trained on subsets of data is more accurate than a general, composite classifier trained on all of the data. In general, it is determined that the set is more accurate than the single classifier given enough data. However, other factors play an important role such as system complexity and noise levels in the data. Additionally, the improvements found do not arise until larger amounts of data are available. This suggests that future work should concentrate on tying the process of data collection to the estimation of the associated probabilities.
‘Our words are very little’ : the untold story of the Tasmanian Karen

Karen refugees from Burma via Thailand are model migrants, providing much-needed population and an extraordinary economic boost to Australian regional towns. But while Karens also boost numbers in (mostly) Baptist congregations across the nation, less is known about the spiritual dimensions of resettlement and the human contribution of religious resettlers. Migrant research and policy directives prioritise economic participation, inequality and inclusion as resettlement outcomes. These align with legitimate concerns but poorly account for settlement as a process. Economic optics can neglect the social, emotional and spiritual dimensions of settlement, and the agency of refugees, while migrant optics neglect the impact on, and role of receiving communities (Neumann 2016). Given the religiosity of Australia’s refugees a curious blank spot persists in migrant research around behaviours in socio-religious civic spaces. This study investigates a local church as a site of cross-cultural interaction, and the lived experiences of Christian Karen resettlers. This sustained participatory observation constitutes a friendship ethnography, akin to Fine’s (2003) peopled ethnography and Tillman-Healy’s (2003) friendship as method. Reciprocal relationships, language exchange (learning and teaching) and a traditional conversational style la pa ti dor deh (tea and talking) are adapted as methods to overcome language barriers, and as research beneficence. This study investigates firstly, how religious space sharing and rituals can foster civic participation, and how everyday gestures and objects communicate meaning. Secondly, it explicates how Karen ‘do’ resettlement, including the role of religious ritual in homebuilding and cultural maintenance. While cross-cultural interactions can be ‘hopeful’ encounters of care here, discomforts and misrecognition also feature. So, while dominant cultural norms persist inclusion and exclusion co-exist in this socio-religious space, Karens ‘found’ a place to worship and call home. This study finds church spaces not only ‘welcome’ refugees, but foster reciprocity and recognition, ‘cushion’ culture shock, and have integrative potential for receiving and resettler communities.
Irrational Economic Decision-Making after Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage: Evidence from the Ultimatum Game

Emotion regulation is often critical for adaptive decision making. Here, we investigate whether emotion regulation defects following focal prefrontal brain damage are associated with exceptionally irrational economic decision making in situations of unfair treatment. In the Ultimatum Game, two players are given one opportunity to split a sum of money. One player (the proposer) offers a portion of the money to the second player (the responder) and keeps the rest. The responder can either accept the offer (in which case both players split the money as proposed) or reject the offer (in which case both players get nothing). Relatively low Ultimatum offers are often rejected, and this “irrational” behavior has been attributed to an emotional reaction to unfair treatment. Using the lesion method, we tested the hypothesis that damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), an area critical for the modulation of emotional reactions, would result in exaggerated irrational economic decisions. Subjects acted as the responder to 22 different proposers who offered various splits of $10. Offers ranged from fair (give $5, keep $5) to extremely unfair (give $1, keep $9). The rejection rate of the VMPC group was higher than the rejection rates of the comparison groups for each of the most unfair offers ($7/$3, $8/$2, $9/$1). These results suggest that emotion regulation processes subserved by VMPC are a critical component of normal economic decision making.
The Defects of the Situation : a Typology of Staged Crime Scenes

A staged or simulated crime scene is the physical manifestation of deception. It involves the deliberate alteration of the physical evidence by the offender to simulate events or offenses that did not occur for the purpose of misleading authorities or redirecting the investigation (Geberth, 2006; Turvey, 2008). This thesis examined 141 staged homicide scenes from Australia, USA, Canada and the UK to determine elements common amongst these crimes, victim and perpetrator characteristics, and offender aims. The goal was to identify red flags indicating staging. The cases were analyzed using a descriptive analysis and multi-dimensional scaling to identify themes in the data. Common characteristics include: multiple victims and offenders; blunt force or strangulation being the cause of death; a previous relationship between offenders and victims; victims being discovered in their own home by the offender; items being disrupted in the scene but not necessarily removed; the body or weapon being arranged; evidence being cleaned up or destroyed; and no alibi being established. Staged scenes were separated by type, and staged suicides, burglaries, sexual homicides, accidents, car accidents and self-defense homicides were examined to assess the proposed typology. It was determined that while each type of scene displays differently with separate indicators, the main differences surround whether the offender was attempting to stage a legitimate or illegitimate death. The findings are relevant to forensic pathologists and medical examiners, police, and legal professionals as they allow for determinations to be made regarding what constitutes a staged scene and what indicators exist. These findings contradict the previous literature on staged scenes and beliefs about common characteristics. The results suggest a lack of sophistication, where simple staging behaviours were not utilised despite the credence they would have offered the facade. This is the first empirical study to examine a large international sample with advanced methodologies. Claire Ferguson THE DEFECTS OF THE SITUATION
Chemical and Thermal Unfolding of a Global Staphylococcal Virulence Regulator with a Flexible C-Terminal End

SarA, a Staphylococcus aureus-specific dimeric protein, modulates the expression of numerous proteins including various virulence factors. Interestingly, S. aureus synthesizes multiple SarA paralogs seemingly for optimizing the expression of its virulence factors. To understand the domain structure/flexibility and the folding/unfolding mechanism of the SarA protein family, we have studied a recombinant SarA (designated rSarA) using various in vitro probes. Limited proteolysis of rSarA and the subsequent analysis of the resulting protein fragments suggested it to be a single-domain protein with a long, flexible C-terminal end. rSarA was unfolded by different mechanisms in the presence of different chemical and physical denaturants. While urea-induced unfolding of rSarA occurred successively via the formation of a dimeric and a monomeric intermediate, GdnCl-induced unfolding of this protein proceeded through the production of two dimeric intermediates. The surface hydrophobicity and the structures of the intermediates were not identical and also differed significantly from those of native rSarA. Of the intermediates, the GdnCl-generated intermediates not only possessed a molten globule-like structure but also exhibited resistance to dissociation during their unfolding. Compared to the native rSarA, the intermediate that was originated at lower GdnCl concentration carried a compact shape, whereas, other intermediates owned a swelled shape. The chemical-induced unfolding, unlike thermal unfolding of rSarA, was completely reversible in nature.
Donor Power and the News

How does donor funding affect the independence, role perceptions, and ideology of the journalism it supports? We begin to answer this increasingly important but underresearched question with a year-long case study of the humanitarian news organistion IRIN as it transitioned from being funded by the United Nations to a private foundation, run by a Malaysian billionaire. Using content analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic research, we document the changes that occurred in IRIN’s outputs, target audience, and public service values, and the complex interplay of influences that produced these changes. We find that, in this case, donor power operated entirely indirectly and always in concert with the dominant professional values within IRIN. In doing so, this case study highlights the importance of journalistic agency and contextual variables in the journalist–donor relationship, as well as the potential significance of contradictory dynamics. We also use this case to test whether Benson, Hessérus and Sedel’s model of media owner power can help to explain the workings of donor power.
A highly polarized radio jet during the 1998 outburst of the black hole transient XTE J1748-288

XTE J1748-288 is a black hole X-ray transient which went into outburst in 1998 June. The X-ray light curves showed canonical morphologies, with minor variations on the `fast rise exponential decay' profile. The radio source, however, reached an unusually high flux density of over 600 mJy. This high radio flux was accompanied by an exceptional (>20 per cent) fractional linear polarization, the variability of which was anticorrelated with the flux density. We use this variability to discuss possible depolarization mechanisms and to predict the underlying behaviour of the (unresolved) core/jet components.
APLICAÇÃO DO MODELO LOGIT BINOMINAL NA ANÁLISE DO RISCO DE CRÉDITO EM INSTITUIÇÕES BANCÁRIAS

Tem se intensificado o uso de tecnicas parametricas na mensuracao de risco, em razao, principalmente dos avancos dos modelos estatisticos de operacionalizacao computacional. Instituicoes financeiras usam essas tecnicas para, a partir do perfil e comportamento dos clientes, mensurar o risco de credito e otimizar sua carteira de clientes. Entretanto, tornam-se oportuno evidenciar as reais contribuicoes dessas tecnicas para a gestao do risco de credito nas instituicoes financeiras. Nesse sentido, este estudo propos investigar a aplicacao do modelo Logit na mensuracao do risco credito em uma agencia bancaria, a partir das informacoes de clientes do Banco Mercantil, em 2007. Os resultados indicam elevada capacidade preditiva do modelo (91,9%). Dentre as principais variaveis condicionantes estao a renda, o tempo de relacionamento com o banco e o limite de cheque especial, que afetam, positivamente, o risco de credito. Dentre as variaveis negativamente associadas, destacam-se a idade e o grau de instrucao. Considerando que todos os fatores sao controlaveis, o modelo confirma a contribuicao das tecnicas estatisticas para a mensuracao e, consequente, gerenciamento do risco de credito em instituicoes financeiras.
Cover Crop Effect on Subsequent Wheat Yield in the Central Great Plains

243 In recent years the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service has widely promoted the use of cover crops in cropping systems to improve soil health throughout the United States (USDA-NRCS, 2015; SARE, 2015). There are indisputable reasons for implementing cover crops such as providing protection from wind and water erosion and building soil organic matter levels (Bilbro, 1991; Langdale et al., 1991; Unger and Vigil, 1998; Blanco-Canqui et al., 2013). But in semiarid regions (250–500 mm annual precipitation) which are chronically short of water for stable dryland crop production, there may be significant costs associated with cover crop water use and reductions in subsequent cash crop yields that will make successful implementation of cover crops difficult to achieve. Unger and Vigil (1998) presented a literature review of studies documenting the effects of cover crops on subsequent crop yields, primarily focused on soil water relationships. More recent studies have been done to characterize and quantify the effect of cover crops on subsequent crop yields. Some studies have shown positive effects on yield and some have shown negative effects. In Table 1 we present only a small fraction of these additional reports on cover crop effects on subsequent crop yields. In the studies that have been done in the semiarid environments of the central and southern Great Plains (Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas) most studies have shown that growing cover crops reduced subsequent crop yields. Unger et al. (2006) cautioned that cover crop use in semiarid dryland regions could be detrimental to yields of subsequent crops because of the water that the cover crop used that was not Crop Economics, Production & Management
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Using Catalogues to Elicit Non-Functional Requirements

Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) are subjective, interactive and relative, thus realizing the need for particular NFR is by itself a challenge. Furthermore understanding what the software must implement in order to cope with these needs may prove to be an even more challenging task. One way of addressing the need for help on NFR elicitation is the use of catalogues. However, it is not clear how effective it is to use them. This work investigates it through an empirical study where different teams will model the same problem. Two teams will use catalogues with a systematic method, another two teams will use catalogs in an ad hoc manner and yet another two teams will not use catalogues. We show at the end of this work that teams using catalogues performed significantly better.
Greater effects of high- compared with moderate-intensity interval training on cardio-metabolic variables, blood leptin concentration and ratings of perceived exertion in obese adolescent females

This study examined the effects of high- vs. moderate-intensity interval training on cardiovascular fitness, leptin levels and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) in obese female adolescents. Forty-seven participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups receiving either a 1:1 ratio of 15 s of effort comprising moderate-intensity interval training (MIIT at 80% maximal aerobic speed: MAS) or high-intensity interval training (HIIT at 100% MAS), with matched 15 s recovery at 50% MAS, thrice weekly, or a no-training control group. The HIIT and MIIT groups showed improved (p < 0.05) body mass (BM), BMI Z-score, and percentage of body fat (%BF). Only the HIIT group showed decreased waist circumference (WC) (p = 0.017). The effect of exercise on maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) was significant (p = 0.019, ES = 0.48 and p = 0.010, ES = 0.57, HIIT and MIIT, respectively). The decrease of rate-pressure product (RPP) (p < 0.05, ES = 0.53 and ES = 0.46, HIIT and MIIT, respectively) followed the positive changes in resting heart rate and blood pressures. Blood glucose, insulin level and the homeostasis model assessment index for insulin decreased (p < 0.05) in both training groups. Significant decreases occurred in blood leptin (p = 0.021, ES = 0.67 and p = 0.011, ES = 0.73) and in RPE (p = 0.001, ES = 0.76 and p = 0.017, ES = 0.57) in HIIT and MIIT, respectively. In the post-intervention period, blood leptin was strongly associated with %BF (p < 0.001) and VO2max (p < 0.01) in the HIIT and MIIT groups, respectively, while RPE was strongly associated with BM (p < 0.01) in the HIIT group. The results suggest that high-intensity interval training may produce more positive effects on health determinants in comparison with the same training mode at a moderate intensity.
A Review of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Multimodal Neuroimaging to Characterize Post-Stroke Neuroplasticity

Following stroke, the brain undergoes various stages of recovery where the central nervous system can reorganize neural circuitry (neuroplasticity) both spontaneously and with the aid of behavioral rehabilitation and non-invasive brain stimulation. Multiple neuroimaging techniques can characterize common structural and functional stroke-related deficits, and importantly, help predict recovery of function. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) typically reveals increased overall diffusivity throughout the brain following stroke, and is capable of indexing the extent of white matter damage. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) provides an index of metabolic changes in surviving neural tissue after stroke, serving as a marker of brain function. The neural correlates of altered brain activity after stroke have been demonstrated by abnormal activation of sensorimotor cortices during task performance, and at rest, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Electroencephalography (EEG) has been used to characterize motor dysfunction in terms of increased cortical amplitude in the sensorimotor regions when performing upper limb movement, indicating abnormally increased cognitive effort and planning in individuals with stroke. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) work reveals changes in ipsilesional and contralesional cortical excitability in the sensorimotor cortices. The severity of motor deficits indexed using TMS has been linked to the magnitude of activity imbalance between the sensorimotor cortices. In this paper, we will provide a narrative review of data from studies utilizing DTI, MRS, fMRI, EEG, and brain stimulation techniques focusing on TMS and its combination with uni- and multimodal neuroimaging methods to assess recovery after stroke. Approaches that delineate the best measures with which to predict or positively alter outcomes will be highlighted.