Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Associations of Lifestyle Factors and Anthropometric Measures with Repeat PSA Levels During Active Surveillance/Monitoring

Background: Assessment of prostate-specific antigen increase with time (PSA growth) is a fundamental component of active surveillance among men with localized prostate cancer. Factors that influence PSA growth, however, are unclear. We evaluated associations of anthropometric and lifestyle factors with age-related PSA growth. Methods: Repeat PSA measures from 404 men, aged 50 to 69 years, with localized prostate cancer undergoing active monitoring were obtained. From log(PSA) measures, age-specific multilevel mixed effect linear models were developed to predict PSA at age 50 years and yearly increase in postdiagnosis PSA. Baseline anthropometric measures, alcohol consumption, occupational class, smoking status, and physical activity were added to the model as covariates. Results: The median number of repeat PSAs was 13 (range, 2–40), and the mean duration of follow-up was 4.8 years (SD, 2.3). The basic model of age-related PSA growth in men with localized prostate cancer estimated a mean PSA at age 50 of 3.95 ng/mL [95% confidence interval (CI): 3.55 to 4.39] and a yearly increase of 8.50% (95% CI: 7.90% to 9.10%). PSA at age 50 years was 2.1% lower per unit increase in weighted exercise score (95% CI: −3.3 to −0.8), 5.3% lower per 5 cm increase in height (95% CI: −9.4 to −1.1), and 24.5% higher (95% CI: 4.0 to 49.1) in current smokers than never smokers. Similar associations with PSA growth were seen. Conclusion: Smoking and exercise are modifiable lifestyle factors that may be associated with PSA levels in men with localized prostate cancer undergoing active monitoring/surveillance. Impact: These factors may be useful in understanding etiology of progression. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 21(10); 1877–85. ©2012 AACR.
Movements and habitat use of reef manta rays off eastern Australia: offshore excursions, deep diving and eddy affinity revealed by satellite telemetry

Manta rays (Manta spp.) are plankton-feeding elasmobranchs classified as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN Red List for Threatened Species. Despite increasing public and scientific interest in manta rays, major knowledge gaps concerning their movement ecology and dispersal capabilities remain. Here, we used pop-off satellite-linked archival transmitting tags to examine the horizontal movements and habitat use patterns of reef manta rays (M. alfredi) departing Lady Elliot Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Tagged individuals moved across a latitudinal range of 1035 km, travelling up to 2441 km in 118 d, diving down to 294.5 m and venturing up to 155 km off the continental shelf. Using random walk simulations, we showed that manta rays spent significantly more time in an offshore region characterised by the mesoscale cyclonic Capricorn Eddy than would be expected by chance. A behaviour-switching state-space model suggested this area to be an important foraging ground for M. alfredi off eastern Australia. We document the movements of 1 individual using offshore waters between 2 known aggregation regions off eastern Australia. Reef manta rays thus not only occupy inshore continental shelf and shelf-edge waters but also use offshore environments to exploit productive hotspots and travel long distances. Our findings highlight the need to better understand their movement ecology for effective management.
The Organization of Working Time: Developing an Understanding and Action Plan to Promote Workers’ Health in a Seasonal Work Context: L'organisation temporelle du travail: la comprendre pour développer des actions favorisant la santé des travailleuses en contexte de travail saisonnier

Despite the health problems associated with irregular schedules and long working hours, few studies have focused on the temporal dimension of work in seasonal working contexts. Through the monitoring of sixteen seasonal workers in the crab-processing industry over a two-year period, this study aimed to better understand their working reality and to provide a detailed picture of the temporal dimension of seasonal work as experienced by these workers. Observations of the work activity, interviews, and analysis of official documents were carried out. The findings reveal that the organization of working time and working conditions are very restrictive. These constraints are linked not only to the work environment and management but also to various public policies and ministerial directives. Methodological elements essential for the study of the organization of working time have been identified and could contribute to a better understanding of temporal constraints experienced by seasonal workers. Résumé Malgré les problèmes de santé associés aux horaires non standards et aux longues heures de travail, peu d'études se sont attardées à dégager un portrait de la dimension temporelle du travail en contexte de travail saisonnier. Par le suivi de 16 travailleuses saisonnières de l'industrie de la transformation du crabe pendant deux années, cette étude visait à mieux comprendre leur réalité de travail et à dresser un portrait détaillé de la dimension temporelle du travail saisonnier tel que vécu par ces travailleuses. Des observations du travail, des entretiens et l'analyse de documents ont été réalisés. Les résultats révèlent une organisation temporelle et des conditions de travail fort contraignantes pour ces travailleuses liées, entre autres, à l'environnement et à la gestion du travail, mais également à diverses politiques publiques et consignes ministérielles. Des éléments méthodologiques essentiels pour l'étude des temps de travail ont également été identifiés et contribueront à mieux cerner les contraintes temporelles des situations de travail vécues par les travailleuses saisonnières.
Congenital Versus Regressive Onset of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Recent studies have validated the phenomenon of autistic regression, but little is known about how regressive and congenital onsets of the disorder influence parents' thinking about autism and its etiology. Parents (N = 327) of children with autism spectrum disorders completed an online questionnaire about their children's development. Approximately half of the sample indicated that their children showed signs of autism from birth or shortly thereafter; the remaining half described their children as developing autism in the regressive fashion. Parents' beliefs about the causes of autism varied widely, but two of the most popularly cited explanations were “genetics” and “external mechanisms” (e.g., vaccinations, environmental toxins). When analyzed relative to type of autism onset, parents more often advocated genetics as the cause for autism when their children exhibited the congenital type and external mechanisms when their children presented with the regressive type.
Deformation transfer of 3D human shapes and poses on manifolds

In this paper, we introduce a novel method to transfer the deformation of a human body to another directly on a manifold. There exists a rich literature on transferring deformations based on Euclidean representations. However, a 3D human shape and pose live on a manifold and have a Riemannian structure. The proposed method uses the Lie Bodies manifold representation of 3D triangulated bodies. Its benefits are preserved, namely, minimum required degrees of freedom for any triangle deformation and no heuristics to constrain excessive ones. We give a closed form solution for deformation transfer directly on the Lie Bodies. The deformations have strictly positive determinants ensuring that non-physical deformations are removed. We show examples on three datasets, and highlight differences with the Euclidean deformation transfer.
Neuroprotective effect of olive oil in the hippocampus CA1 neurons following ischemia: Reperfusion in mice

Introduction: Transient global ischemia induces selective, delayed neuronal death of pyramidal neurons in the hippocampal CA1. Oxidative Stress is considered to be involved in a number of human diseases including ischemia. Preliminary studies confirmed reduction of cell death in brain following treatment with antioxidants. Aim: According to this finding, we study the relationship between consumption of olive oil on cell death and memory disorder in brain ischemia. We studied the protective effect of olive oil against ischemia-reperfusion. Material and Methods: Experimental design includes three groups: Intact (n = 8), ischemic control (n = 8) and treatment groups with olive oil (n = 8). The mice treated with olive oil as pre-treatment for a week. Then, ischemia induced by common carotid artery ligation and following the reduction of inflammation [a week after ischemia], the mice post-treated with olive oil. Nissl staining applied for counting necrotic cells in hippocampus CA1. Tunnel kit was used to quantify apoptotic cell death while to short term memory scale, we apply y-maze and shuttle box tests and for detection the rate of apoptotic and treated cell, we used western blotting test for bax and bcl2 proteins. Results: High rate of apoptosis was seen in ischemic group that significantly associated with short-term memory loss. Cell death was significantly lower when mice treated with olive oil. The memory test results were adjusted with cell death results and bax and bcl2 expression in all groups’ comparison. Ischemia for 15 min induced cell death in hippocampus with more potent effect on CA1. Conclusion: Olive oil intake significantly reduced cell death and decreased memory loss.
“Can You Help With That Instead of Putting Me in Jail?”: Participant Insights on Baltimore City's Specialized Prostitution Diversion Program

This article reports data from a primarily qualitative study of Baltimore City's Specialized Diversion Program (SPD), an alternative criminal justice response to prostitution grounded in problem-solving models of justice. Data were drawn from observations of interactions between participants and SPD staff and semistructured interviews with twenty-one SPD clients. These were supplemented with data on prostitution arrestees’ demographics (N = 616) over a thirteen-month period and SPD eligibility, program uptake, and completion (N = 431) over a nine-month period. All respondents exhibited a dire need for assistance with concerns such as severe mental health problems, health conditions, addiction, poverty, and limited educational and employment opportunities. They expressed the importance of compassionate and dignified service delivery and a sense of meaningful accomplishment upon completion, all of which support a problem-solving model. Despite the assistance they received and their strong support for the program, many still remained in situations that could undermine the achievements they attained in the SPD.
Mainstreaming gender in European Union development cooperation with sub-Saharan Africa: promising numbers, narrow contents, telling silences

This article examines gender mainstreaming in European Union development cooperation with sub-Saharan African countries through quantitative and qualitative analyses of policy programming documents to evaluate whether a shift has been made from a conservative Women in Development paradigm to a transformative Gender and Development paradigm. First, a quantitative analysis assesses language, format and budgets. Next, a qualitative analysis embarks on a deeper reading of how gender (in)equality is framed and who has been given voice. We conclude that gender mainstreaming is only partly applied in a transformative way. The limited space for African civil society voices as well as the European Union's concerns about its global role and its internal legitimacy are suggested as explanations.
Interaction between dialog structure and coreference resolution

Determining the coreference of entity mentions in a discourse is a key part of the interpretation process for advanced spoken dialog applications. In this paper, we present the most comprehensive system for statistical coreference resolution in dialog to date. We also compare the impact of two contrasting theories of dialog structure (the stack model and the cache model) on the performance of statistical coreference resolution, and show that the stack model outperforms the cache model.
A Reusable Software Architecture for Small Satellite AOCS Systems

This paper concerns the software architecture called Sophy, which is an abbreviation for Simulation, Observation, and Planning in HYbrid systems. We present a framework that allows execution of hybrid dynamical systems in an on-line distributed computing environment, which includes interaction with both hardware and on-board software. Some of the key issues addressed by the framework are automatic translation of mathematical specifications of hybrid systems into executable software entities, management of execution of coupled models in a parallel distributed environment, as well as interaction with external components, hardware and/or software, through generic interfaces. Sophy is primarily intended as a tool for development of model based reusable software for the control and autonomous functions of satellites and/or satellite clusters.
The Varying Vulnerability of African Orphans

This article is based on a qualitative study carried out in Lira District, northern Uganda, to assess the situation of orphans cared for in extended families. The objective of the article is to bring attention to the varying vulnerability of different categories of orphans. The methods employed in data collection included ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative interviews and focus group discussions. The study found that the decision-making process that leads particular orphans to particular homes, the kin category an orphan resides with, the age and sex of the orphan and the economic situation of the household have particular influence on the orphans’ vulnerability. The authors conclude that categories of orphans who face the greatest risk of suffering, exploitation and abuse can be identified and targeted for support by drawing upon these factors as indicators
Construction and Validation of the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment's Lifestyles Scale

This study sought to construct and validate a lifestyle scale that would capture for leisure professionals a more holistic picture of people's interests. A broader profile of their customers would allow recreation professionals to tailor information of their services. Public sector recreation managers could provide better services by learning about how customers spend their leisure time. With general lifestyle information, public sector recreation managers may better identify what services they should be providing or expanding. In this study, 36 items were identified that capture people's major activities. Replicated exploratory factor analyses across these items showed them grouping under nine factors. These factors could help recreation managers gain a deeper understanding of how people's lifestyles relate to their choice of recreation and leisure activities.
A Personal Construct Approach to Understanding Stress in Mothers of Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study explored the contribution of personal construct psychology (PCP) and the repertory grid technique to understanding stress when raising a child diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Associations between child level of functional impairment, parenting stress, psychological distress, and maternal construing were examined in mothers of 25 children diagnosed with ASD. Results suggest that a personal construct perspective may help delineate factors involved in parent adjustment to ASD.
Cloud computing adoption by SMEs in the north east of England: A multi-perspective framework

– The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a growing body of research on cloud computing, by studying the small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) adoption process. If SMEs have access to scalable technologies they could potentially deliver products and services that in the past only large enterprises could deliver, flattening the competitive arena. , – By adopting the Technological, Organisational and Environmental (TOE) framework as a theoretical base, this qualitative exploratory study used semi‐structured interviews to collect data in 15 different SMEs and service providers in the north east of England. The north east of England was selected as it is a region that aspires to become home to innovative digital firms and most of the companies in the region are SMEs. , – The main factors that were identified as playing a significant role in SME adoption of cloud services were: relative advantage, uncertainty, geo‐restriction, compatibility, trialability, size, top management support, prior experience, innovativeness, industry, market scope, supplier efforts and external computing support. In contrast, this study did not find enough evidence that competitive pressure was a significant determinant of cloud computing adoption. , – These findings have important implications and great value to the research community, managers and information and communication technologies (ICT) providers, in terms of formulating better strategies for cloud computing adoption. For service providers, using the research model in this study can assist in increasing their understanding of why some SMEs choose to adopt cloud computing services, while seemingly similar ones facing similar market conditions do not. Also, cloud computing providers may need to improve their interaction with SMEs which are involved in the cloud computing experience, in an effort to create a healthy environment for cloud computing adoption, and to remove any vagueness surrounding this type of technology. , – This study is an attempt to explore and develop an SME cloud computing adoption model that was theoretically grounded in the TOE framework. By adopting the TOE framework this study has shown that the three contexts of this framework (technological, organisational, and environmental) are connected to each other.
Education: The Overcoming of Experience

"Experience is the best teacher. " In U. S. education, there is a common belief in the educative value of firsthand experience. Teachers, for example, claim to have learned from classroom experience most of what they know about teaching. Children, too, are seen as learning best when firsthand experience is the basis for what they are taught. This essay questions the presuppositions that favor firsthand experience. First, we look at what is entailed when education and firsthand experience are described as if equivalent. Beliefs in such an equivalence presuppose a commonsense theory of knowledge and mind that philosophers of science have found to be inadequate. Second, we use research on the social psychology of judgment to identify faulty inferences that frequently result from learning by firsthand experience. These pitfalls are illustrated in a discussion of learning to teach. Third, we consider how firsthand experience can close avenues to conceptual and social change. For example, to learn from firsthand experience is often to confound whatever happens with necessity. Thus, in the history of vocational education, learning by doing was advocated as a means of fitting students to the real world, thereby curbing their aspirations. Finally, we argue that ideas based on secondhand information are more likely than firsthand experience to manifest both the real and the possible. Education gives access to thoughts and theories that are beyond the scope of firsthand experience.
Building giant-planet cores at a planet trap

Context. A well-known bottleneck for the core-accretion model of giant-planet formation is the loss of the cores into the star by type I migration, due to the tidal interactions with the gas disk. It has been shown that a steep surface-density gradient in the disk, such as the one expected at the boundary between an active and a dead zone, acts as a planet trap and prevents isolated cores from migrating down to the central star. Aims. We study the relevance of the planet trap concept for the accretion and evolution of systems of multiple planetary embryos/cores. Methods. We performed hydrodynamical simulations of the evolution of systems of multiple massive objects in the vicinity of a planet trap. The planetary embryos evolve in 3 dimensions, whereas the disk is modeled with a 2D grid. Synthetic forces are applied onto the embryos to mimic the damping effect that the disk has on their inclinations. Results. Systems with two embryos tend to acquire stable, separated and non-migrating orbits, with the more massive embryo placed at the planet trap and the lighter one farther out in the disk. Systems of multiple embryos are intrinsically unstable. Consequently, a long phase of mutual scattering can lead to accreting collisions among embryos; some embryos are injected into the inner part of the disk, where they can be evacuated into the star by type I migration. The system can resume a stable, non-migrating configuration only when the number of surviving embryos decreases to a small value (∼2-4). This can explain the limited number of giant planets in our solar system. These results should apply in general to any case in which the type I migration of the inner embryo is prevented by some mechanism, and not solely to the planet trap scenario.
Existence and construction of edge disjoint paths on expander graphs

Given an expander graph G = (V,E) and a set of q disjoint pairs of vertices in V , we are interested in finding for each pair (ai, bi), a path connecting ai to bi, such that the set of q paths so found is edge-disjoint. (For general graphs the related decision problem is NPcomplete.) We prove sufficient conditions for the existence of edge-disjoint paths connecting any set of q ≤ n/(logn)κ disjoint pairs of vertices on any n vertex bounded degree expander, where κ depends only on the expansion properties of the input graph, and not on n. Furthermore, we present a randomized o(n3) time algorithm, and a random NC algorithm for constructing these paths. (Previous existence proofs and construction algorithms allowed only up to nǫ pairs, for some ǫ ≪ 1/3, and strong expanders [19].) In passing, we develop an algorithm for splitting a sufficiently strong expander into two edge-disjoint spanning expanders.
AGE-RELATED HEMATOLOGIC CHANGES IN CAPTIVE-REARED HOUBARA, WHITE-BELLIED, AND RUFOUS-CRESTED BUSTARDS

Blood samples were obtained at monthly intervals between April 1994 and March 1996 from captive-bred houbara (Chlamydotis undulata macqueenii), rufous-crested (Eupodotis ruficrista gindiana), and white-bellied (Eupodotis senegalensis) bustards from 4–24 wk of age. Hematology investigations were conducted to determine age-related changes and to establish reference values for growing chicks of these species. There were significant age-related changes in hematocrit, hemoglobin, and red cell count in young birds compared with those of adults. White cell counts (lymphocytes and monocytes) were higher in juvenile birds, compared with adult values.