Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Living in the end times

The underlying premise of the book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its four riders of the apocalypse are the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, the imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property, the forthcoming struggle for raw materials, food and water), and the explosions of social divisions and exclusions. Society's first reaction is ideological denial, then explosions of anger at the injustices of the new world order, attempts at bargaining, and when this fails, depression and withdrawal set in. Finally, after passing through this zero-point we no longer perceive it as a threat, but as the chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong might have put it, There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.A" A iA ek traces out in detail these five stances, makes a plea for a return to the Marxian critique of political economy, and sniffs out the first signs of a budding communist culture in all its diverse forms-in utopias that range from Kafka's community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.
Cervical Myelocystoceles and Meningoceles: Long-Term Follow-Up

Little is known about the long-term prognosis of patients with cervical myelocystoceles and meningoceles. In this study, we report the long-term follow-up (average 10 years and 8 months) of 8 patients with cervical myelocystoceles and meningoceles. Neurologic, orthopedic, urologic and psychosocial status was assessed on long-term follow-up. The results indicate that in patients with cervical myelocystoceles, neurologic deficits become noticeable in the first year of life as the infant matures. Motor deficit was common in these patients, whereas sensory and urologic deficits did not occur. We believe that this is related to underlying myelodysplasia. In addition, patients with cervical myelocystoceles tend to have significant orthopedic problems. In contrast, patients with cervical meningoceles do not have neurologic deficits, but do develop mild orthopedic problems.
A comparison of the interviewing skills of first‐and final‐year medical students

Summary. This study compared the communication skills of randomly chosen first‐and final year medical students. The intention was to follow up previous research, conducted over 10 years ago, into the effects of the medical curriculum on communication skills. It was hypothesized that there would be little improvement in such skills over the period of training, with the possibility that the final‐year students might be less caring, empathic and supportive, more directive, and less concerned with psychosocial information. All students interviewed a simulated patient in the role of a mother of a child with cerebral palsy, where the main problems were psychological and social. The interviews were recorded on videotape and analysed by an independent observer for the presence or absence of a set of communication behaviours considered important in facilitating an effective relationship and in the exploration and understanding of the problem. The results failed to support the hypotheses. The final‐year students were superior to their juniors on several measures, indicating improvements in relating to the patient in a caring, empathic, facilitative and listening manner. They also elicited more information relevant to the problem. The indications were that these final‐year students were more skilled than in earlier studies, suggesting that the general change in attitudes to communications skills and the limited, but increased input into the curriculum may be having effect, even though there remains a need for considerably more training.
An Exploratory Study on Initial Stem Classes and African American Freshman males who are STEM Majors at a Large Mid-Atlantic State University: Factors Affecting Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Persistence in the STEM Pipeline

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON INITIAL STEM CLASSES AND AFRICAN AMERICAN FRESHMAN MALES WHO ARE STEM MAJORS AT A LARGE MIDATLANTIC STATE UNIVERSITY: FACTORS AFFECTING SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS AND PERSISTENCE IN THE STEM PIPELINE William Jason Calhoun, Ph.D. George Mason University, 2013 Dissertation Director: Dr. Gary Galluzzo The purpose of this study was to test how well social cognitive career theory (SCCT) explains the effects of an introductory freshman year science course on the career perspectives of African American males at a large, public mid-Atlantic state university. Embracing SCCT as the foundation of this project, the dissertation intended to gather data from these young men to develop insight into how and in what ways their selfefficacy throughout the semester was influenced by their first science course, and changing their outlook on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers while in school and after graduation. To a small number of freshman African American male students who have declared themselves STEM majors, I utilized a qualitative study investigating this phenomenon. The major findings detailed themes that affected these young men including concerns about mathmatics preparation, isolation, balance, microagression, and help-seeking. Results indicate that there was an impact on the confidence, achievement, and goal setting for these young men due to these factors and that social cognitive career theory was an appropriate framework from which to test these questions.
Primary non-Hodgkin lymphoma of the stomach: endoscopic pattern and prognosis in low versus high grade malignancy in relation to the MALT concept.

BACKGROUND: Various histological classifications developed for nodal lymphomas failed to be of value in extranodal lymphomas. More recently, gastric lymphoma is considered to represent a distinctive group derived from mucosa associated lymphoid tissue (MALT). AIM: To study the prognostic value of malignancy grading based on the concept that most gastric lymphomas are of MALT origin, the endoscopic as well as clinical characteristics in 114 patients with primary gastric non-Hodgkin's lymphoma were evaluated. RESULTS: In univariate analysis, patients with low grade lymphoma (n = 51) were younger, had less advanced stage, and less frequently bulky disease than those with high grade lymphoma (n = 63). In multivariate analysis weight loss and increased erythrocyte sedimentation rate were significantly less frequent in low grade (45% and 22%) compared with high grade lymphoma (75% and 53%). In low grade lymphoma endoscopic findings were often interpreted as a benign condition (27 of 51), in contrast with high grade lymphoma, where carcinoma was most frequently (37 of 63) suspected. In low grade lymphoma complete remission rate was 92%, and five year survival 75%, In high grade lymphoma results were significantly less favourable (p = 0.0001): complete remission in 68%, and a five year survival of 46%. CONCLUSION: Malignancy grading was strongly correlated with treatment outcome; endoscopically low grade lymphoma was often hard to distinguish from benign conditions, whereas high grade lymphoma often revealed carcinoma-like features.
The conceptualization and assessment of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism: An investigation of common and unique features

Researchers agree that there are two narcissism expressions, specifically grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. However, their assessment remains contentious. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Terry, 1988) assesses all aspects of grandiose narcissism for some whereas critics claim it assesses only ‘normal narcissism’. The alternative measure, the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI; Pincus et al., 2009), is proposed to measure all aspects of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, including that which is clinically-significant, despite inconsistent evidence of the nature of its second-order factors and little empirical validation in clinical populations. The aim of the research reported in this thesis was to adapt the NPI and the PNI to provide more appropriate measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. This was investigated using four separate samples of university undergraduates. A total of 745 students completed a number of measures, including the NPI and PNI, along with selfesteem and Five-Factor personality measures. Additionally, one sample completed a lexical decision task designed to measure self-esteem indirectly (i.e., implicit selfesteem). As the focus of studies previously investigating how best to assess narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability has been on content that distinguishes each, there has been little exploration of which narcissism features are common to these expressions beyond the investigation of entitlement and exploitative tendencies. It is argued in this thesis that comprehensive assessment of the narcissism expressions involves the identification and measurement of both common and unique features of narcissism. The current research examined the items loading on the subscales of the NPI and PNI before using these adapted subscales to construct new measures of the narcissism
Altruists in the PicoRadio sensor network

Self-configuring wireless sensor networks are a fascinating emerging technology: the vision is to spread out hundreds or thousands of small, cheap, battery-driven, and self-configuring nodes bearing a wireless modem to accomplish a given task jointly. An important concern is network lifetime: as nodes run out of power the connectivity decreases and the network can finally be partitioned and become dysfunctional. In this paper we present the BWRC PicoRadio approach to wireless sensor networking. Furthermore, we introduce the general concept of altruistic nodes and apply this to the routing protocol of PicoRadio (the energy aware routing protocol, EAR). The concept of altruists is a lightweight approach for exploiting differences in node capabilities. We show that the altruist approach can achieve significant gains in terms of network lifetime over the already lifetime-optimized EAR protocol of PicoRadio.
Aortic Dissection: New Frontiers in Diagnosis and Management: Part II: Therapeutic Management and Follow-Up

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in most Western societies and is increasing steadily in many developing countries. Aortic diseases constitute an emerging share of the burden. New diagnostic imaging modalities, longer life expectancy in general, longer exposure to elevated blood pressure, and the proliferation of modern noninvasive imaging modalities have all contributed to the growing awareness of acute and chronic aortic syndromes. Despite recent progress in recognition of both the epidemiological problem and diagnostic and therapeutic advances, the cardiology community and the medical community in general are far from comfortable in understanding the spectrum of aortic syndromes and defining an optimal pathway to manage aortic diseases.1–13 This comprehensive review is organized in two parts, with focus on etiology, natural history, and classification (with vascular staging) of aortic wall disease in Part I and emphasis on therapeutic management and follow-up in Part II. Both parts may help to better integrate the complexities of acute aortic syndromes.
En Bloc Pancreaticoduodenectomy for Locally Advanced Right Colon Cancers

Locally advanced right colon cancer may invade adjacent tissue and organs. Direct invasion of the duodenum and pancreas necessitates an en bloc resection. Previously, this challenging procedure was associated with high morbidity and mortality; however, today, this procedure can be done more safely in experienced centers. The aim of this study is to report our experience on en bloc right colectomy with pancreaticoduodenectomy for locally advanced right colon cancers. Between 2000 and 2012, 5 patients underwent en bloc multivisceral resection. No major morbidities or perioperative mortalities were observed. Median disease-free survival time was 24.5 months and median overall survival time was 42.1 (range: 4.5–70.4) months in our series. One patient lived 70 months after multivisceral resection and underwent cytoreductive surgery and total pelvic exenteration during the follow-up period. In locally advanced right colon tumors, all adhesions should be considered as malign invasion and separation should not be done. The reasonable option for this patient is to perform en bloc pancreaticoduodenectomy and right colectomy. This procedure may result in long-term survival with acceptable morbidity and mortality rates. Multidisciplinary teamwork and multimodality treatment alternatives may improve the results.
Correlation between adequate nursing staff and the hospital performance: Case Study in Tehran University of Medical Sciences Hospitals

Background: As the biggest collection among various collections of hospital employees, nurses perform a vital role in the progress of the hospital actions and the improvement of community health. Objectives: This research intended to find the relationship between the shortage of nursing workforce and hospitals performance of Tehran’s Medical Sciences University. Materials and Methods: The current analysis was a cross-sectional definitive research, which was conducted in selected educational hospices associated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences during the year 2010. While using three researcher-made questionnaires, information was obtained from all clinical, paraclinical, commercial, managerial and support units of hospitals. Information was investigated according to the patterns of Iran's Healthcare Ministry and Medical Education by employing Excel software. Pabon Lasso model was used for performance measurement during the year 2010. The mixture of 3 indicators was applied to determine the period of stay, bed occupancy time and bed turnover. Results: The outcomes revealed that the personnel of nursing, in the 18 hospital wards (66.67%) were at levels below the standards, just one ward (3.7%) reached the standards requirements, and the remainder of the hospital wards (29.62%) were at greater levels than the standard requirements. Both hospitals were near the value 4 in the Pabon Lasso model. The correlation analysis among the nursing shortage and performance showed a meaningful relationship (P<0.05). Conclusion: Frequently, the examined hospices were challenged with a shortage of nursing workforce and the dissemination of workforce was not suitable. A decent supervision of workforce in conformity with the shortage of staff compensated and achieved the rules needed for the hospital’s nursing workforce and this would guide to an improvement in the performance of the hospitals’ actions and could present gratification for the personnel.
Sub-Phonetic Modeling For Capturing Pronunciation Variations For Conversational Speech Synthesis

In this paper we address the issue of pronunciation modeling for conversational speech synthesis. We experiment with two different HMM topologies (fully connected state model and forward connected state model) for sub-phonetic modeling to capture the deletion and insertion of sub-phonetic states during speech production process. We show that the experimented HMM topologies have higher log likelihood than the traditional 5-state sequential model. We also study the first and second mentions of content words and their influence on the pronunciation variation. Finally we report phone recognition experiments using the modified HMM topologies
A review of seawater intrusion in the Nile Delta groundwater system – the basis for assessing impacts due to climate changes and water resources development

Serious environmental problems are emerging in the River Nile basin and its groundwater resources. Recent years have brought scientific evidence of climate change and development-induced environmental impacts globally as well as over Egypt. Some impacts are subtle, like decline of the Nile River water levels, others are dramatic like the salinization of all coastal land in the Nile Delta – the agricultural engine of Egypt. These consequences have become a striking reality causing a set of interconnected groundwater management problems. Massive population increase that overwhelmed the Nile Delta region has amplified the problem. Many researchers have studied these problems from different perspectives using different methodologies, following different objectives and, consequently, arrived at different findings. However, they all confirmed that significant groundwater salinization has affected the Nile Delta and this is likely to become worse rapidly in the future. This article presents, categorizes and critically analyses and synthesizes the most relevant research regarding climate change and development challenges in relation to groundwater resources in the Nile Delta. It is shown that there is a gap in studies that focus on sustainable groundwater resources development and environmentally sound protection as an integrated regional process in Nile Delta. Moreover, there is also a knowledge gap related to the deterioration of groundwater quality. The article recommends further research that covers the groundwater resources and salinization in the whole Nile Delta based on integrated three-dimensional groundwater modelling of the Nile delta aquifer.
Can the Adaptive Metropolis Algorithm Collapse Without the Covariance Lower Bound

The Adaptive Metropolis (AM) algorithm is based on the symmetric random-walk Metropolis algorithm. The proposal distribution has the following time-dependent covariance matrix, at step $n+1$ , $S_n=\mathrm{Cov}(X_1,\ldots,X_n)+\varepsilon I$, that is, the sample covariance matrix of the history of the chain plus a (small) constant $\varepsilon>0$ multiple of the identity matrix $I$ . The lower bound on the eigenvalues of $S_n$ induced by the factor $\varepsilon I$ is theoretically convenient, but practically cumbersome, as a good value for the parameter $\varepsilon$ may not always be easy to choose. This article considers variants of the AM algorithm that do not explicitly bound the eigenvalues of $S_n$ away from zero. The behaviour of $S_n$ is studied in detail, indicating that the eigenvalues of $S_n$ do not tend to collapse to zero in general. In dimension one, it is shown that $S_n$ is bounded away from zero if the logarithmic target density is uniformly continuous. For a modification of the AM algorithm including an additional fixed component in the proposal distribution, the eigenvalues of $S_n$ are shown to stay away from zero with a practically non-restrictive condition. This result implies a strong law of large numbers for super-exponentially decaying target distributions with regular contours.
Potential to reduce the climate impact of aviation by flight level changes

Aircraft contribute to global and regional climate changes by contrail formation and by emissions of carbon dioxide and others species. Among these, contrails are considered to have the largest warming contribution on short time scales (up to order of decades) while carbon dioxide may cause the largest warming effect globally at long time scales (order of a century). Contrails warm generally during night. During day contrails may cause a cooling. This paper discusses various strategies to reduce the global warming from aircraft by contrail formation and carbon dioxide emissions. In particular, we discuss the impact of changes of the flight level, typically 2000 ft (610 m) up or down. Previous studies suggested reducing contrail formation by flying lower generally or by flying higher or lower at the actual level with minimum relative humidity. This paper introduces a more efficient strategy which selects optimized routes based on the climate impact of contrails and fuel consumption along these routes. By preferred flights in atmospheric regions where contrails cool, an aircraft routing can be designed with minimum or even negative climate impact. For the fleet as a whole the climate impact is measured in terms of its radiative forcing RF. For individual flights, the climate impact is measured by the amount of energy induced into the Earth-atmosphere system per unit flight distance, which we call the energy forcing EF. Both RF and EF for contrails and CO2 can be combined into a global mean surface temperature increase for a given time horizon. This paper describes the basic principles and quantifies the potential impacts using the recently developed Contrail Cirrus Simulation Prediction tool (CoCiP).
Personnel Selection

Preface to First Edition. Preface to Fifth Edition. Chapter 1: Old and New Selection Methods. Chapter 2: Validity of Selection Methods. Chapter 3: Job Description and Job Analysis. Chapter 4: The Interview. Chapter 5: References of Ratings. Chapter 6: Tests of Mental Ability. Chapter 7: Assessing Personality by Questionnaire. Chapter 8: Alternative Ways of Assessing Personality. Chapter 9: Biodata & Weighted Application Blanks. Chapter 10: Assessment Centres. Chapter 11: Emotional Intelligence & other methods. Chapter 12: Criteria of Work Performance. Chapter 13: Minorities, Fairness and the Law. Chapter 14: The Value of Good Employees. Chapter 15: Conclusions. References.
Extension of a Negative Binomial GARCH Model : Analyzing the Effects of Gasoline Price and VMT on DUI Fatal Crashes in Texas

Traditional crash count models, such as the Poisson and Negative Binomial models, do not account for the temporal correlation of crash data. In reality, crashes that occur in close proximity in time are likely to share unobserved effects which may have been excluded from the model. If the temporal correlation of crash data is ignored, the estimated parameters could be less precise and biased. Therefore, there is a need to extend the standard crash count data models by incorporating temporal dependence. Whereas the literature for modeling time series count data is well developed, its applications for traffic crash data are limited. A particularly flexible model for time series of counts is the Negative Binomial Integer-valued Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (NBINGARCH) model which properly accounts for the overdispersion, non-negativity, and integer-valued features of count data. In this paper, the NBINGARCH model is extended to incorporate covariates, so that the relationship between a time series of counts and correlated external factors may be properly modeled. Improved performance of the NBINGARCH model is demonstrated through a simulation study and an application to monthly DUI (driving under the influence) fatal crashes in Texas between 2003 and 2009. In addition, the relationship between monthly vehicle miles travelled (VMT) and gasoline prices in Texas was also examined. Ultimately, it is concluded that gasoline prices had no significant effect on DUI fatal crashes in Texas, while VMT had a positive effect. Ye, Garcia, Pourahmadi, and Lord
A New GLLD Operator for Mass Detection in Digital Mammograms

During the last decade, several works have dealt with computer automatic diagnosis (CAD) of masses in digital mammograms. Generally, the main difficulty remains the detection of masses. This work proposes an efficient methodology for mass detection based on a new local feature extraction. Local binary pattern (LBP) operator and its variants proposed by Ojala are a powerful tool for textures classification. However, it has been proved that such operators are not able to model at their own texture masses. We propose in this paper a new local pattern model named gray level and local difference (GLLD) where we take into consideration absolute gray level values as well as local difference as local binary features. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), support vector machine (SVM), and k-nearest neighbors (kNNs) are, then, used for classifying masses from nonmasses, illustrating better performance of ANN classifier. We have used 1000 regions of interest (ROIs) obtained from the Digital Database for Screening Mammography (DDSM). The area under the curve of the corresponding approach has been found to be A z = 0.95 for the mass detection step. A comparative study with previous approaches proves that our approach offers the best performances.