Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Occult Hepatitis B Infection in Patients With Cryptogenic Liver Cirrhosis in Southwest of Iran

Background: Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection has a broad spectrum of manifestation, ranging from silent carrier state to advanced cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The persistence of HBV DNA in serum and hepatocytes of the cirrhotic patient could be detected by molecular techniques in spite of negative HBV serologic markers. Objectives: This case-control study was designed to evaluate the prevalence of occult HBV infection (OBI) in patients with cryptogenic liver cirrhosis in comparison with healthy subjects. Patients and Methods: Of 165 patients with liver cirrhosis, 50 consecutive patients with cryptogenic cirrhosis and 80 healthy individual without any risk factors as a control group were enrolled in this study. Their sera were tested for HBV DNA using nested PCR method. Results: Of 50 patients with cryptogenic cirrhotic, 36 (72%) were male. The mean age of patients was 53.34 ± 14.73 years; 80 healthy subjects were selected as control group with mean age of 32.65 ± 8.51 years; 7 (14%) of the patients with cryptogenic cirrhosis showed positive HBV DNA by PCR, while HBV DNA was negative for the control group (P = 0.0001); 4 (57%) cases with positive HBV shown by PCR were negative for anti-HBc and anti-HBs tests. The mean level of transaminases was significantly higher in patients with cirrhosis. There were no significant differences in demographic parameters, transaminases level and degree of hepatic failure among cirrhotic patients with and without OBI. Conclusions: The prevalence of OBI was relatively high in patients with cryptogenic cirrhosis. OBI was found among the patients above 40 years old. Prospective cohort studies are needed to evaluate the clinical significance of OBI.
Look on the Bright Side (of Media Effects): Pokémon Go as a Catalyst for Positive Life Experiences

ABSTRACT This study examined whether playing an augmented reality (AR) video game might benefit players’ psychological well-being. Specifically, it tested predictions afforded by integrating the broaden-and-build theory within the framework of the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects model. An online survey of 399 U.S. adults aged 18–75 indicated that playing the AR game Pokémon Go was associated with various positive responses (increased positive affect, nostalgic reverie, friendship formation, friendship intensification, and walking), most of which predicted enhanced well-being. Additionally, two indirect effects of gameplay were moderated by social anxiety. For highly anxious participants, gameplay showed weaker associations with positive affect (a predictor of enhanced well-being), but also weaker associations with nostalgic regret (a predictor of reduced well-being).
Refugees welcome? A dataset on anti-refugee violence in Germany

The recent rise of xenophobic attacks against refugees in Germany has sparked both political and scholarly debates on the drivers, dynamics, and consequences of right-wing violence. Thus far, a lack of systematic data collection and data processing has inhibited quantitative analysis to help explain this current social phenomenon. This paper presents a georeferenced event dataset on anti-refugee violence and social unrest in Germany in 2014 and 2015 that is based on information collected by two civil society organizations, the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and PRO ASYL, who publicize their data in an online chronicle. We webscraped this information to create a scientifically usable dataset that includes information on 1 645 events of four different types of right-wing violence and social unrest: xenophobic demonstrations, assault, arson attacks, and miscellaneous attacks against refugee housing (such as swastika graffiti). After discussing how the dataset was constructed, we offer a descriptive analysis of patterns of right-wing violence and unrest in Germany in 2014 and 2015. This article concludes by outlining preliminary ideas on how the dataset can be used in future research of various disciplines in the social sciences.
McMurray's Test and Joint Line Tenderness for Medial Meniscus Tear: Are They Accurate?

Background Meniscus tears are the most common injury of the knee. The McMurray's test and Joint line tenderness for diagnosing meniscus tear have been widely tested, but results reported by different authors vary. The wide variations reported have an impact on clinical decision concerning whether to go for other diagnostic tests before going for diagnostic arthroscopy, which is considered as the gold standard.The purpose of this study was to determine the diagnostic value of Joint line tenderness and McMurray's test, as clinical signs, to diagnose underlying medial meniscus tears. Methods This was a prospective observational study done in Tribhuwan University Teaching Hospital. Patients undergoing knee arthroscopy were included in the study period of one year (from February 2011 to January 2012). Each patient was clinically examined with McMurray's test and joint line tenderness. The findings were then matched by the arthroscopic findings. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy were then calculated. Results The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value , negative predictive value and accuracy for medial joint line tenderness in diagnosing medial meniscus tear were 50%, 61.7%, 51.8%, 60% and 56.45% respectively. The result was insignificant (p value=0.352). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy for McMurray's test for diagnosing medial meniscus tear were 54%, 79%, 68% , 67.50% and 67.74% respectively. The result was significant (p value=0.007). Conclusion Clinical tests like McMurray and joint line tenderness have low diagnostic value when applied individually. They may be useful when combined together with the background of clinical history. The decision to scope the knee should not be solely taken on the results of clinical tests.
Acculturation and Enculturation, Perception of Depressive Symptoms, and Help-Seeking Behaviors among Korean Americans

ACCULTURATION AND ENCULTURATION, PERCEPTION OF DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS, AND HELP-SEEKING BEHAVIORS AMONG KOREAN AMERICANS Kristoffer Yong Park Old Dominion University, 2016 Co-Directors: Dr. Barbara Winstead Dr. Desideria Hacker The literature suggests that acculturation, enculturation, and the perception of mental health symptoms are some of the factors that explain help-seeking behaviors in Asian Americans. While there has been previous research addressing these concerns for Asian Americans as a unified ethnic group, few studies have examined these factors to explain helpseeking behaviors specifically in Korean Americans. 107 Korean Americans were recruited from Korean American churches in a large metropolitan city in the southeast region. Participants completed an online questionnaire, which included instruments assessing acculturation (AVS-R) and enculturation (EAVS-AA-R) levels as well as their perception of how problematic depressive symptoms were and willingness to seek help. The findings indicated that acculturation was significantly related to greater willingness to seek help from a psychologist for depressive symptoms and enculturation was significantly related to lower willingness to seek a psychologist for help with depressive symptoms. The results also showed that acculturation was significantly related to a greater likelihood of perceiving affective depressive symptoms as problematic. Lastly, the findings revealed that perceiving affective symptoms as problematic mediated the relationship between acculturation and willingness to seek help from a psychologist. These findings both compliment and contradict previous studies of acculturation, enculturation, perception of depressive symptoms, and help-seeking behaviors among Korean Americans.
Malleable Lies: Communication and Cooperation in a High Stakes TV Game Show

We investigate the credibility of nonbinding preplay statements about cooperative behavior, using data from a high-stakes TV game show in which contestants play a variant on the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. We depart from the conventional binary approach of classifying statements as promises or not, and propose a more fine-grained two-by-two typology inspired by the idea that lying aversion leads defectors to prefer statements that are malleable to ex-post interpretation as truths. Our empirical analysis shows that statements that carry an element of conditionality or implicitness are associated with a lower likelihood of cooperation, and confirms that malleability is a good criterion for judging the credibility of cheap talk.
Error Bounds for Approximate Value Iteration

Approximate Value Iteration (AVI) is an method for solving a Markov Decision Problem by making successive calls to a supervised learning (SL) algorithm. Sequence of value representations Vn are processed iteratively by Vn+1 = ATVn where T is the Bellman operator and A an approximation operator. Bounds on the error between the performance of the policies induced by the algorithm and the optimal policy are given as a function of weighted Lp-norms (p ≥ 1) of the approximation errors. The results extend usual analysis in L∞-norm, and allow to relate the performance of AVI to the approximation power (usually expressed in Lp-norm, for p = 1 or 2) of the SL algorithm. We illustrate the tightness of these bounds on an optimal replacement problem.
A High Efficiency 780 MHz GaN Envelope Tracking Power Amplifier

A high efficiency GaN envelope tracking power amplifier (ETPA) operated at 780 MHz, corresponding to LTE band class 14, is presented. The ETPA was tested with both a 6.6 dB PAPR WCDMA signal and a 7.5 dB PAPR 10 MHz 16 QAM LTE signal. Under the WCDMA signal, a drain efficiency of ~70% with 13.5 dB of gain and 28.6 W of output power was measured. The corresponding NRMSE, ACPR1, and ACPR2 were 1.51%, -45 dBc, and -51 dBc, respectively. For the 10 MHz LTE signal, a drain efficiency of 60% with 13.6 dB of gain and 23W of output power was measured. The corresponding EVM, ACPR1, and ACPR2 were 3%, -45 dBc, and -46 dBc, respectively. Using DPD that corrects for memory effects, results that meet the standard's specifications were obtained. To the best of the author's knowledge, the efficiency values presented here set a new record for power amplifier performance under high PAPR signals for both 5 MHz and 10 MHz modulation bandwidth signals.
The Russian-Ukrainian Earnings Divide

Ethnic differences are often considered to be powerful sources of diverse economic behavior. In this paper, we investigate whether and how ethnicity affects Ukrainian labor market outcomes. Using micro data from the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS) and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of earnings, we find a persistent and rising labor market divide between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians throughout Ukraine's transition era. We establish that language rather than nationality is the key factor behind this ethnic premium favoring Russians. Our findings further document that this premium is larger among males than among females.
Transformative change in higher education through participatory action research: a capabilities analysis

Abstract As a methodological approach, participatory action research (PAR), and its variant of critical action research in education, aims to further social justice and generate transformative change. Although this understanding of PAR is well rehearsed, there is still a gap in detailed explorations of the transformative impact of PAR projects in higher education settings beyond the classroom: how do we then know whether transformative change through PAR has taken place, in which ways, through which processes, and for whom. This article aims to address these questions through proposing the use of a participatory action research cube (PARC) as a human capabilities evaluative framework for personal and structural transformative change enabled by PAR projects. Evaluating transformative change from this perspective rests on both the normative nature of the capabilities approach in its justice concerns, as well as consideration for individual well-being, understood as the expansion of freedoms people have to live the lives they value. Evaluating change both includes personal well-being as well as broader social or structural impact in the direction of more social justice. To demonstrate this empirically, we report on an eight-month PAR project on one rural South African university campus, where 13 undergraduate students were involved in researching gender inequalities on their campus. The PARC analysis highlights the development of capabilities and agency through axes of participation, knowledge development, and public deliberation, as well as identifying the developmental impact of these axes on transformative change for the participants, as well as the university.
Meaning in Life in College Students: Implications for College Counselors.

The authors examined the relationship between meaning in life and college adjustment in a sample of 96 college students. In line with previous research on meaning in life and positive psychosocial functioning measures, presence of meaning was positively correlated with adjustment, whereas searching for meaning was negatively correlated with adjustment. However, the degree to which students were actively searching for meaning moderated the relationship between presence of meaning and adjustment. Recommendations for college counseling services are discussed.
Educational reforms in Central and Eastern Europe : processes and outcomes

Les pays d'Europe de l'Est et d'Europe Centrale vivent un processus d'ouverture et de democratisation au niveau politique et economique. Des reformes scolaires doivent suivre ce processus et l'appuyer: des reformes dans les programmes, dans la gestion et l'administration des ecoles, etc. L'A. nous fait un compte rendu de ces reformes qui ne sont pas toutes efficaces et propose des mesures capables de generer une vraie dynamique de changement
Landslide Susceptibility Assessment with Machine Learning Algorithms

Case study addresses NW slopes of Fruška GoraMountain, Serbia. Landslide activity is quite notorious in this region, especially along the Danube’s right river bank, and recently intensified seismicity coupled with atmospheric precipitation might be critical for triggering new landslide occurrences. Hence, it is not a moment too soon for serious landslide susceptibility assessment in this region. State-of-the-art approaches had been taken into consideration, cutting down to the Support Vector Machine (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) algorithms, trained upon expert based model of landslide susceptibility (a multi-criteria analysis). The latter involved Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for weighting influences of different input parameters. These included elevation, slope angle, aspect, distance from flows, vegetation cover, lithology, and rainfall, to represent the natural factors of the slope stability. Processed in a GIS environment (as discrete or float raster layers) trough AHP, those parameters yielded susceptibility pattern, classified by the entropy model into four classes. Subsequently the susceptibility pattern has been featured as training set in SVM and k-NN algorithms. Detailed fitting involved several cases, among which SVM with Gaussian kernel over geo-dataset (coordinates and input parameters) reached the highest accuracy (88%)outperforming other considered cases by far.
Moving Forward, Moving Backward: Politics of Curriculum Development in the Philippine Secondary Schools

The major players in the curriculum development process such as teachers, supervisors and other curriculum developers are the key to its success and its ability to improve the students’ performance. However, there are obstacles which may be inferred from the positive factors and conditions that are considered necessary to, or aid in, the curriculum development process. Guided by the central question, “What makes the curriculum development in the Philippine secondary school political? ,” the researchers employed a phenomenographical design using open-ended and semi-structured interviews (Patton, 1990) with 24 school supervisors and classroom teachers of selected secondary schools in the Philippines. Field texts were subjected to data reduction using repertory grid and dendrogram analysis. Interestingly, the cool and warm analysis revealed three contexts of the curriculum development process, namely, strategic, democratic and bureaucratic contexts.
Emotion Processing in Adult Survivors of Childhood Maltreatment

Childhood maltreatment increases risk for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Maladaptive patterns of attention to threat-related stimuli warrant examination as possible contributing risk factors. It remains unclear whether persistent threat-processing biases are differentially apparent in adults who were maltreated as children and either did, or did not, develop later PTSD. The present study examined associations among attention bias, childhood maltreatment, and PTSD in adults. We hypothesized that attentional bias toward threat significantly mediates associations between childhood maltreatment and adult PTSD symptoms. 183 adults with and without childhood maltreatment histories participated in this study, which involved completion of a range of clinical measures; attention bias was measured by the Dot Probe task. We found that attention bias toward happy faces partially mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and PTSD avoidance and numbing symptoms. Childhood maltreatment, happy face attention bias, and perceived racially discriminative experiences all accounted for significant variance in PTSD symptoms. INDEX WORDS: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Emotion processing, Childhood maltreatment, Dot Probe, Attention bias EMOTION PROCESSING IN ADULT SURVIVORS OF CHILDHOOD MALTREATMENT
Chapter 2 The eff ects of parental components in a trauma-focused cognitive behavioral based therapy for children exposed to interparental violence : study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Interparental violence is both common and harmful and impacts children’s lives directly and indirectly. Direct effects refer to affective, behavioral, and cognitive responses to interparental violence and psychosocial adjustment. Indirect effects refer to deteriorated parental availability and parent–child interaction. Standard Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy may be insufficient for children traumatized by exposure to interparental violence, given the pervasive impact of interparental violence on the family system. HORIZON is a trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy based group program with the added component of a preparatory parenting program aimed at improving parental availability; and the added component of parent–child sessions to improve parent–child interaction. Methods/design: This is a multicenter, multi-informant and multi-method randomized clinical trial study with a 2 by 2 factorial experimental design. Participants (N = 100) are children (4-12 years), and their parents, who have been exposed to interparental violence. The main aim of the study is to test the effects of two parental components as an addition to a trauma focused cognitive behavioral based group therapy for reducing children’s symptoms. Primary outcome measures are posttraumatic stress symptoms, and internalizing and externalizing problems in children. The secondary aim of the study is to test the effect of the two added components on adjustment problems in children and to test whether enhanced effects can be explained by changes in children’s responses towards experienced violence, in parental availability, and in quality of parent–child interaction. To address this secondary aim, the main parameters are observational and questionnaire measures of parental availability, parent–child relationship variables, children’s adjustment problems and children’s responses to interparental violence. Data are collected three times: before and after the program and six months later. Both intention-to-treat and completer analyses will be done. Discussion: The current study will enhance our understanding of the efficacy interparental violence-related parental components added to trauma focused cognitive behavioral group program for children who have been exposed to IPV. It will illuminate mechanisms underlying change by considering multiple dimensions of child responses, parenting variables and identify selection criteria for participation in treatment. Netherlands Trial Register NTR4015. Registered 4th of June, 2013
The limits of understanding in biological systematics

Ernst Mayr’s (1961, Science 131: 1501–1506) distinction between proximate and ultimate causation in biology is examined with regard to the acquisition of understanding in biological systematics. Rather than a two-part distinction, understanding in systematics is characterized by relations between three explanatory components: descriptive (observation statements)—proximate (ontogenetic hypotheses)—ultimate (e.g. specific and phylogenetic hypotheses). Initial inferential actions in each component involve reasoning to explanatory hypotheses via abductive inference, providing preliminary understanding. Testing hypotheses, to critically assess understanding, is varied. Descriptive- and proximate-level hypotheses are routinely tested, but ultimate hypotheses present inherent difficulties that impose severe limits, contrary to what is usually claimed in the systematics literature. The problem is compounded by imprecise considerations of ‘evidence’ and ‘support. ’ For instance, in most cases, the ‘evidence’ offering ‘support’ for phylogenetic hypotheses, as cladograms, is nothing more than the abductive evidence (premises) used to infer those hypotheses, i.e. character data and associated phylogenetic-based theories. By definition, such evidence only offers initial, trivial understanding, whereas the pertinent evidence sought in the sciences is test evidence, which cannot be supplanted by character data. The pursuit of ultimate understanding by way of spurious procedures such as contrived testing, Bremer support, and resampling methods are discussed with regard to phylogenetic hypotheses.
The distribution of plasma phenytoin levels in epileptic patients

Plasma phenytoin levels were estimated in 111 adult epileptic patients. A wide scatter of values was found, with over half outside the therapeutic limits of 10 to 20 μg/ml. Phenytoin tolerance tests carried out in five patients revealed a possible failure to metabolize the drug adequately in three of them. Factors affecting the plasma phenytoin level are discussed. The importance of this assay is seen in view of the number of patients potentially at risk from toxic blood levels in the absence of accepted clinical manifestations of acute or subacute intoxication.