Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attitudes toward English in Malaysia

ABSTRACT: Language attitudes form the basis for the acceptance and growth of language varieties within a society. In situations in which the standard norm of a language and its non-native variety are used almost in tandem with one another, the users of these languages can provide insights into language trends. Perceptions and attitudes are indicators of the growth or decline of a variety of English. Teachers’ language attitudes are important because of their effects on their students’ attitudes toward language variation and on literacy. The researchers used a 16-item Likert Scale questionnaire to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of 60 teachers and 439 students at the university level toward the use and acceptance of Malaysian English. The findings show that our respondents, Malaysian speakers of English, accept the functionality of Malaysian English but are, nevertheless, determined to learn Standard English because they regard Malaysian English as ‘wrong’ English. The results imply the need for further research into varieties of English: for example, the roles of both varieties of English must be investigated and defined. Societies which have adopted either the standard or non-standard variety of English as its norm must be studied to determine the effects and consequences of the decision.
3D CNN-based classification using sMRI and MD-DTI images for Alzheimer disease studies

Computer-aided early diagnosis of Alzheimers Disease (AD) and its prodromal form, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), has been the subject of extensive research in recent years. Some recent studies have shown promising results in the AD and MCI determination using structural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (sMRI, fMRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) modalities. Furthermore, fusion of imaging modalities in a supervised machine learning framework has shown promising direction of research. In this paper we first review major trends in automatic classification methods such as feature extraction based methods as well as deep learning approaches in medical image analysis applied to the field of Alzheimer's Disease diagnostics. Then we propose our own algorithm for Alzheimer's Disease diagnostics based on a convolutional neural network and sMRI and DTI modalities fusion on hippocampal ROI using data from the Alzheimers Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database (this http URL). Comparison with a single modality approach shows promising results. We also propose our own method of data augmentation for balancing classes of different size and analyze the impact of the ROI size on the classification results as well.
Seeking the green basilisk lizard: Acquiring digital literacy practices in the home

Research confirms that young children engage in digital literacy practices in the home. While there is an emerging body of work that documents the diversity of these practices, there is little research that examines their acquisition in situ. This article uses conversation analysis to describe and explicate the social accomplishment of a number of activities that led to and constituted a young child’s Google search to find information about a lizard. Discussion of the child’s activities considers the local and situated use of technology, including how the child and adult jointly obtained the information needed by the child to read and write texts related to the search. The article establishes ways that social interaction contributes to young children’s acquisition and use of digital literacy practices, including when learning about print and about techology itself.
Abortion Affiliation, Urban Size, and Geographic Bias of Responses to Lost Letters

A study using 1800 “lost letters” was designed to test the hypothesis that returned responses would be greater in smaller rural communities (population M = 964) than in a city (population = 60,591) or the suburbs (population = 195,847) unless the addressee was affiliated with a pro-abortion group. Returns to control, Committee For Free Abortion, and Committee Against Free Abortion affiliates were 37.2%, 24.0%, 29.3%, respectively. From the city, the number of returned letters was much larger than the number from the suburbs except for those letters with an affiliation to the pro-abortion condition. Returned letters from the city were fewer than those from smaller rural communities except those letters affiliated with the pro-abortion group. More letters affiliated with the pro-abortion condition were returned from the suburbs than from the smaller rural communities. The geographic condition influenced over-all rates of return. Rates were higher when letters were addressed to a city P.O. Box than to a rural one. Second, rates were also greater in smaller rural communities for letters bearing “in-town” (Molino) and “out-of-town” (Pensacola) addresses than those from the city bearing an “out-of-town” (Molino) address. These findings seem to indicate the possibility that there may be some geographic bias in the willingness of people to help a stranger in need by returning a lost letter.
Paediatric Refractive Errors in an Eye Clinic in Osogbo, Nigeria

Background Paediatric ophthalmology is an emerging subspecialty in Nigeria and as such there is paucity of data on refractive errors in the country. This study set out to determine the pattern of refractive errors in children attending an eye clinic in South West Nigeria. Methods A descriptive study of 180 consecutive subjects seen over a 2-year period. Presenting complaints, presenting visual acuity (PVA), age and sex were recorded. Clinical examination of the anterior and posterior segments of the eyes, extraocular muscle assessment and refraction were done. The types of refractive errors and their grades were determined. Corrected VA was obtained. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics in proportions, chi square with p value <0.05. Results The age range of subjects was between 3 and 16 years with mean age = 11.7 and SD = 0.51; with males making up 33.9%. The commonest presenting complaint was blurring of distant vision (40%), presenting visual acuity 6/9 (33.9%), normal vision constituted >75.0%, visual impairment20% and low vision 23.3%. Low grade spherical and cylindrical errors occurred most frequently (35.6% and 59.9% respectively). Regular astigmatism was significantly more common, P <0.001. The commonest diagnosis was simple myopic astigmatism (41.1%). Four cases of strabismus were seen. Conclusion Simple spherical and cylindrical errors were the commonest types of refractive errors seen. Visual impairment and low vision occurred and could be a cause of absenteeism from school. Low-cost spectacle production or dispensing unit and health education are advocated for the prevention of visual impairment in a hospital set-up.
Reconceptualising vulnerable children by acknowledging their assets

We report on a study that sought to find alternative pathways to conceptualising vulnerable children. We have extracted a section from a longitudinal study that focuses on the ways in which vulnerable children in a rural community in South Africa cope with the impact of HIV and AIDS. We relied on the concepts of assets, resources and capacities to guide our understanding of 'vulnerable children', in an attempt to open up conceptualisations of the term, which have previously almost exclusively focused on deficits and needs. The study used a case study design with a small group of children who were engaged in making memory boxes. The study shows that numerous resources and capacities for coping and well-being are evident within and around the children. Most prominent among the capacities of the participants in this study are a positive identity and essential social competencies.
Premenstrual Syndrome, Associated Symptoms and Evidence – Based Nursing Management: A Comparative Study Between Rural Menoufia Governorate (Egypt) and Hodidha Governorate (Yemen)

Background: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a com¬mon cause of substantial psychological and physical distress for women during their reproductive years. Forty percent of women have symptoms that are severe enough to disrupt some aspect of their daily lives, 5% are inca¬pacitated by their symptoms. Despite the magnitude of this problem, a lot of confusion exists in medical and lay communities alike about what is and is not effective for treatment of PMS. The study aimed assessing premenstrual symptoms, self care practices among women at reproductive age attending Maternal and Child Health (MCH) centers in Menoufia governorate, Egypt and Hodidha governorate, Yemen and evaluate the effect of evidence-based nursing management on severity of premenstrual syndrome among them. Subjects and methods: A quasi experimental study was used. Subjects consisted of 2000 clients (1000 Hodidha clients and 1000 Menoufia clients). Structured Interviewing questionnaire, tool about assessment of premenstrual symptoms severity and pre – post knowledge test were used. Results: there was statistically significant differences in the severity of premenstrual symptoms before and after administration of evidence based nursing management for 3 months (3menstrual cycles). Conclusion: clients experience decrease severity of premenstrual syndrome after administration of evidence based nursing management for 3 months (3 menstrual cycle). Recommendation: Effective evidence based program about premenstrual syndrome, care of gynecological problems should be included into educational program of maternal and child health (MCH) centers in rural Menoufia governorate, Egypt and Hodidha governorate, Yemen. More research is needed to expand the evidence base on effective interventions for premenstrual syndrome and to translate knowledge into practices. Future studies are needed to be performed about prevalence, consequences, and management methods of premenstrual syndrome in different settings in Egypt and Yemen and other Arabic countries.
Acutely dissociated sensory neurons: normal or neuropathic? Focus on: "Dissociation of dorsal root ganglion neurons induces hyperexcitability that is maintained by increased responsiveness to cAMP and cGMP".

The cell body of the primary nociceptive neuron, located in a ganglion, has an axon that bifurcates, one branch extending to the periphery, the other to the CNS. The cell body (soma) is big relative to the tiny size of its terminal axonal endings. Unlike its terminal ending, it is easily recorded
Three Semantics for the Core of the Distributed Ontology Language

The Distributed Ontology Language DOL, which is currently being standardised as ISO WD 17347 within the OntoIOp (Ontology Integration and Interoperability) activity of ISO/TC 37/SC 3, aims at providing a unified framework for (1) ontologies formalised in heterogeneous logics, (2) modular ontologies, (3) links between ontologies, and (4) annotation of ontologies. A DOL ontology consists of modules formalised in basic ontology languages, such as OWL or Common Logic, which are serialised in the existing syntaxes of these languages. On top of this, DOL provides a meta-level which allows for expressing heterogeneous ontologies and links between ontologies. Such links include (heterogeneous) imports and alignments, conservative extensions, and theory interpretations. This paper focuses on the abstract syntax and semantics of these meta-level constructs. It introduces three alternative semantics for the meta-level, namely direct, translational, and collapsed semantics (the latter is only briefly sketched), and studies their respective pros and cons.
Acute Versus Delayed Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Associated Abnormalities in Traumatic Anterior Shoulder Dislocations

Background: The delayed management of patients with shoulder instability may increase the prevalence and severity of concomitant intra-articular shoulder injuries resulting from persistent subluxations and dislocations. Hypothesis: Patients with a longer delay from the initial dislocation event to undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or magnetic resonance arthrography will demonstrate more subluxations or dislocations and a greater amount of intra-articular shoulder damage. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: We performed a retrospective review of 89 patients from a single institution with clinically and radiographically confirmed primary traumatic anterior shoulder dislocations. Patients were divided into 2 groups: those undergoing MRI less than 6 months (n = 44; LT6) or greater than 6 months (n = 45; GT6) from the initial dislocation event. The MRI assessment included evaluation of soft tissue injuries, including the labrum, capsule, rotator cuff, and cartilage damage severity along with bone loss. Results: The delayed MRI group (GT6) demonstrated a greater degree of intra-articular abnormalities compared to the early MRI group (LT6). A greater percentage of superior labral anterior-posterior (SLAP) tears (58% vs 34%, respectively) and cartilage damage (73% vs 27%, respectively) was present in the GT6 group compared to the LT6 group. Cartilage damage was 18% mild, 7% moderate, and 2% severe for the LT6 group as compared to 38% mild, 31% moderate, and 4% severe for the GT6 group. Additionally, more recurrent shoulder dislocations were seen in the GT6 group (n = 6) compared to the LT6 group (n = 2). In the LT6 group, there were more rotator cuff tears (50% vs 24%, respectively) and capsular tears (25% vs 9%, respectively) than the GT6 group. There was no difference in anterior glenoid bone loss, glenoid version, or humeral head subluxation between the 2 groups. Conclusion: Patients who undergo MRI greater than 6 months from the time of primary or initial shoulder dislocation had significantly more recurrent shoulder instability events and demonstrated a greater incidence and severity of intra-articular abnormalities, including SLAP tears, posterior labral tears, and anterior glenoid cartilage damage.
Ultimately periodic qualitative constraint networks for spatial and temporal reasoning

We consider qualitative temporal or spatial constraint networks whose constraints evolve over time in an ultimately periodic fashion: after an initial stretch of time, a fixed pattern of constraints (over an interval) is reproduced indefinitely. We propose a local propagation algorithm which is polynomial, and we show that it decides the consistency problem in some particular cases. We also show that the general problem of consistency for such networks is in PSPACE
ArmAssist Robotic System versus Matched Conventional Therapy for Poststroke Upper Limb Rehabilitation: A Randomized Clinical Trial

The ArmAssist is a simple low-cost robotic system for upper limb motor training that combines known benefits of repetitive task-oriented training, greater intensity of practice, and less dependence on therapist assistance. The aim of this preliminary study was to compare the efficacy of ArmAssist (AA) robotic training against matched conventional arm training in subacute stroke subjects with moderate-to-severe upper limb impairment. Twenty-six subjects were enrolled within 3 months of stroke and randomly assigned to the AA group or Control group (n = 13 each). Both groups were trained 5 days per week for 3 weeks. The primary outcome measure was Fugl-Meyer Assessment-Upper Extremity (FMA-UE) motor score, and the secondary outcomes were Wolf Motor Function Test-Functional Ability Scale (WMFT-FAS) and Barthel index (BI). The AA group, in comparison to the Control group, showed significantly greater increases in FMA-UE score (18.0 ± 9.4 versus 7.5 ± 5.5, p = 0.002) and WMFT-FAS score (14.1 ± 7.9 versus 6.7 ± 7.8, p = 0.025) after 3 weeks of treatment, whereas the increase in BI was not significant (21.2 ± 24.8 versus 13.1 ± 10.7, p = 0.292). There were no adverse events. We conclude that arm training using the AA robotic device is safe and able to reduce motor deficits more effectively than matched conventional arm training in subacute phase of stroke. The study has been registered at the ClinicalTrials.gov, ID: NCT02729649.
The Influence of Orthokeratology on Intraocular Pressure Measurements

ABSTRACT Purpose: Underestimation of IOP in a myopic patient may lead to misjudgment of the risk of glaucoma. This study investigated the influence of orthokeratology-induced change in CCT on IOP measured by the non-contact pneumotonometer (NCT), Goldmann applanation tonometer (GAT), and Pascal dynamic contour tonometer (PDCT). Methods: This study was conducted to examine the eyes of 34 patients who received orthokeratology for myopia. CCT and IOP were measured, and IOP was obtained with the NCT, GAT, and PDCT. The associations between changes in measured IOP and change in CCT at different orthokeratology follow-up time points were evaluated by linear regression analysis. Results: Change in IOP measured by the three tonometries correlated significantly with change in CCT after one-week application of orthokeratology. The correlation was strongest for NCT followed by GAT and PDCT. The changes in measured IOP corresponding to a 10 μm decrease in CCT were 0.7–0.9, 0.4–0.6, and 0.2–0.3 mm Hg for NCT, GAT, and PDCT, respectively. Conclusions: The IOP measured by the three methods — NCT, GAT, and PDCT — decreased as a result of the change in CCT induced by orthokeratology. The influence on NCT and GAT was greater than that on PDCT.
Patient-Specific Neutralizing Antibody Responses to Herpes Simplex Virus Are Attributed to Epitopes on gD, gB, or Both and Can Be Type Specific

ABSTRACT Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and HSV-2 infect many humans and establish a latent infection in sensory ganglia. Although some infected people suffer periodic recurrences, others do not. Infected people mount both cell-mediated and humoral responses, including the production of virus-neutralizing antibodies (Abs) directed at viral entry glycoproteins. Previously, we examined IgGs from 10 HSV-seropositive individuals; all neutralized virus and were directed primarily against gD or gD+gB. Here, we expand our studies and examine 32 additional sera from HSV-infected individuals, 23 of whom had no recurrent disease. Using an Octet RED96 system, we screened all 32 serum samples directly for both glycoprotein binding and competition with known neutralizing anti-gD and -gB monoclonal Abs (MAbs). On average, the recurrent cohort exhibited higher binding to gD and gB and had higher neutralization titers. There were similar trends in the blocking of MAbs to critical gD and gB epitopes. When we depleted six sera of Abs to specific glycoproteins, we found different types of responses, but always directed primarily at gD and/or gB. Interestingly, in one dual-infected person, the neutralizing response to HSV-2 was due to gD2 and gB2, whereas HSV-1 neutralization was due to gD1 and gB1. In another case, virus neutralization was HSV-1 specific, with the Ab response directed entirely at gB1, despite this serum blocking type-common anti-gD and -gB neutralizing MAbs. These data are pertinent in the design of future HSV vaccines since they demonstrate the importance of both serotypes of gD and gB as immunogens. IMPORTANCE We previously showed that people infected with HSV produce neutralizing Abs directed against gD or a combination of gD+gB (and in one case, gD+gB+gC, which was HSV-1 specific). In this more extensive study, we again found that gD or gD+gB can account for the virus neutralizing response and critical epitopes of one or both of these proteins are represented in sera of naturally infected humans. However, we also found that some individuals produced a strong response against gB alone. In addition, we identified type-specific contributions to HSV neutralization from both gD and gB. Contributions from the other entry glycoproteins, gC and gH/gL, were minimal and limited to HSV-1 neutralization. Knowing the variations in how humans see and mount a response to HSV will be important to vaccine development.
Cognitive control of eye movements in reading and visual search: Evidence from frequency-based effects

Experiments in this dissertation investigate the role of cognition in eye-movement behavior during scanning and reading. Shorter and fewer fixations on the more frequent and predictable words have been observed during reading, but not when scanning text for a target word, e.g., zebra (e.g., Rayner & Raney, 1996). Past research has employed these effects of word frequency and predictability to argue that cognition drives eye movements during reading, but not during scanning. Similarly, the present studies use effects of stimulus frequency and predictability to index cognitive control of eye-movement behavior. Experiments 1 and 2 focus on the frequency effects for non-word and word stimuli, respectively. Experiment 1 employed clusters of Landolt Cs to examine how the gap size of and frequency of exposure to clusters affected eye movements during a scanning task. The findings demonstrated that, in parallel to word frequency effects observed in reading, more frequent clusters elicited fewer and shorter fixations. Experiment 2 compared eye-movement behavior on fully-crossed high- and low-frequency adjective-noun pairs embedded in paragraphs when participants were reading vs. scanning for a target word with an asterisk (e.g., “h*rse”), a word containing the letter "q" (e.g., “quilt”), or a word rhyming with "blue" (e.g., “shoe”). The results demonstrated that eye-movement measures are affected by frequency in the tasks requiring in-depth processing, such as reading and rhyme-judgment, but not in shallow-processing tasks like asterisk-detection. Experiments 3 and 4 focus on the frequency-based predictability effects for non-word and word stimuli, respectively. Experiment 3 employed similar materials to Experiment 1 and, in addition, manipulated frequency for pairs of clusters. The more predictable clusters in the repeating pairs elicited fewer fixations, providing tentative evidence of transitional predictability effects during scanning. Experiment 4 examined the effect of transitional probability in reading by increasing the frequency of co-occurrence for pairs of words (e.g., tulip’s blossoms) in paragraphs of text. The more predictable words elicited shorter first fixation durations, suggesting that co-occurrence frequency may result in forming short-term predictions during reading. Cumulatively, the findings demonstrate that cognitive effects are not unique to reading, and afford a more sophisticated characterization of the cognitive-oculomotor coordination.
Event recognition in broadcast soccer videos

Automatic recognition of important events in soccer broadcast videos plays a vital role in many applications including video summarization, indexing, content-based search, and in performance analysis of players and teams. This paper proposes an approach for soccer event recognition using deep convolutional features combined with domain-specific cues. For deep representation, we use the recently proposed trajectory based deep convolutional descriptor (TDD) [1] which samples and pools the discriminatively trained convolutional features around the improved trajectories. We further improve the performance by incorporating domain-specific knowledge based on camera view type and its position. The camera position and view type captures the statistics of occurrence of events in different play-field regions and zoom-level respectively. We conduct extensive experiments on 6 hour long soccer matches and show the effectiveness of deep video representation for soccer and the improvements obtained using domain-specific cues.