Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Young British South Asian Muslim Women: identities and marriage

This thesis focuses on young and educated British South Asian Muslim women, and their negotiations of gendered identities and marriage in multicultural Britain. I conducted 30 in-depth interviews with Muslim women from northern England so as to explore how educational and employment experiences are altering women’s gender identities and consequently, their understandings of marriage. Firstly, I look at how Muslim women develop ‘alternative’ identities as they navigate ‘Islamic’ and ‘British’ ideals. I analyse whether higher education and paid employment influence women’s perspectives in constructing ‘new’ identities as they explore boundaries. My analysis is embedded within theoretical frameworks encompassing racialised, politicised and gendered discourses on Muslim identities in the UK. In essence, I concentrate on how women manage Muslimness as they evolve in their socio-political contexts. Secondly, I focus on how marriage is perceived by British South Asian Muslim women. The debates revolve around the gendered expectations women face from their communities; for instance, women navigate ‘choice’ and ‘agency’ in cultural practices such as arranged marriages. Furthermore, marriage, as an institution, remains a ‘religious duty’ in Islam. I raise questions about how Muslim women frame marriage as they generate new understandings of marriage through their negotiations of the ‘nikah’ and the civil registry (secular state law). Throughout these thematic discussions, the tensions engendered by the dichotomy ‘religion’ v/s ‘culture’ remain evident as Muslim women navigate contextual identities. Cultural gendered ‘traditions’ expected from their families are re-worked as they delay marriage so as to gain degrees and secure careers. Clearly, women are deconstructing stereotypical notions of ‘Muslimness’ as fixed categories so as to express individual definitions of meanings of British Muslimness. The prioritising of an Islamic identity over other identities (ethnic, citizenship and national) is evident. However, with education, women are contesting and interpreting Islam from new angles. They critique gendered practices such as ‘talaq’ and polygamy, concepts associated with Islamic marriage, in an attempt to embrace a discourse of equality within marriage, hence leading them to generate new gender identities.
Risk factors for race-associated sudden death in Thoroughbred racehorses in the UK (2000-2007).

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY Sudden death adversely affects racehorse welfare, jockey safety and the public perception of horseracing. OBJECTIVE To describe the risk of racing-associated sudden death in Thoroughbred racehorses in the UK from 2000 to 2007, to identify whether there were risk factors uniquely associated with sudden death and to improve the understanding of the pathogenesis of racing-associated sudden death by identification of risk factors for such cases. METHODS A sudden death was defined as an acute collapse and death, in an apparently healthy Thoroughbred racehorse, during or immediately after racing, in the absence of clinical data indicative of a catastrophic orthopaedic injury. The retrospective study included 201 case race starts and 705,712 control race starts. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression were used to identify risk factors for sudden death at any one start. RESULTS In the multivariable model, age, distance, race type, season and number of starts in the 60 days prior to the race were associated with sudden death. CONCLUSIONS The risk factors identified in this study are not uniquely associated with sudden death and have been also been identified in studies using all causes of fatality as the outcome. These data suggest that a generic approach to reduce fatal musculoskeletal injury and sudden death may be possible. POTENTIAL RELEVANCE The identification of risk factors allows speculation on the underlying mechanisms of sudden death in racing. This may stimulate hypothesis-led investigations into the pathogenesis of exercise-related arrhythmias, exercise-induced pulmonary haemorrhage and blood vessel rupture.
Handheld mechanical nociceptive threshold testing in dairy cows – intra-individual variation, inter-observer agreement and variation over time

Objective To examine the use of handheld methodology to assess mechanical nociceptive threshold (MNT) on cows kept loose-housed. Study design Prospective randomized partial cross-over experimental study. A one-factor (test day) design was used to evaluate MNT over time. Animals One hundred and fifteen healthy, loose-housed Danish Holstein cattle. Methods We evaluated intra-individual variation, inter-observer agreement and variation over time of MNT using two handheld devices and two stimulation sites. Mechanical, ramped stimulations were performed with an algometer (6.5 mm diameter steel probe, 0–10.0 kgf) or an electronic von Frey device (plastic tip with diameter 0.8 mm, 0–1000 gf). Each cow received 5–6 consecutive stimulations within a 2 × 5 cm skin area on the dorsal or lateral aspect of the left third metatarsus until an avoidance reaction occurred. We investigated the difference in precision [expressed as coefficient of variation (CV)] between the combinations of devices and stimulation sites. The inter-observer agreement and the difference in MNT between test day 1, 3, 7, 10 and 24 were investigated for selected combinations. Data were analysed in mixed models and Bland-Altman as relevant. Results The CVs did not differ [range 0.34–0.52 (p = 0.1)]. Difference between observers (95% limits) was 0.2 kgf (2.8) and 4 gf (369) for the algometer and von Frey device, respectively. Mechanical nociceptive threshold increased from 361 on test day one to 495 gf on test day 24 (p < 0.01). Conclusion and clinical relevance All methods showed a high degree of intra-individual variation, and no combination of device and stimulation site showed superior precision. Mean difference between observers was low, and MNT was not consistent over time. Further development of the methods is required before they can be used in research to investigate possible relations between claw lesions and hyperalgesia.
Learning Distance Functions using Equivalence Relations

We address the problem of learning distance metrics using side-information in the form of groups of "similar" points. We propose to use the RCA algorithm, which is a simple and efficient algorithm for learning a full ranked Mahalanobis metric (Shental et al., 2002). We first show that RCA obtains the solution to an interesting optimization problem, founded on an information theoretic basis. If the Mahalanobis matrix is allowed to be singular, we show that Fisher's linear discriminant followed by RCA is the optimal dimensionality reduction algorithm under the same criterion. We then show how this optimization problem is related to the criterion optimized by another recent algorithm for metric learning (Xing et al., 2002), which uses the same kind of side information. We empirically demonstrate that learning a distance metric using the RCA algorithm significantly improves clustering performance, similarly to the alternative algorithm. Since the RCA algorithm is much more efficient and cost effective than the alternative, as it only uses closed form expressions of the data, it seems like a preferable choice for the learning of full rank Mahalanobis distances.
The Prevalence of Anxiety and Depression in Chinese Asthma Patients

It is well documented that the psychiatric disorders are common in Asthma patients in China while the studies on the relationship between asthma control and psychological disorder are comparatively rare. We therefore performed a cross-sectional study on asthmatic outpatients in one Chinese tertiary center to investigate the correlation among asthma, anxiety and depression. Demographic data, anxiety and depression scores, the level of asthma control were collected in 261 patients. All patients were evaluated with Asthma Control Test (ACT), Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and Self-rating depression scale (SDS) questionnaires. A multivariate analysis was performed to investigate the relationship between asthma control and psychological disorder. The result showed that 31 asthma patients had anxiety symptom while thirty-five asthma patients had depression. One hundred and ninety-two asthma patients were well controlled and 69 patients were not. The study found a negative correlation between ACT and SAS(r = −0.231, p<0.001) as well as ACT and SDS(r = −0.23, p<0.001) and depression (OR: 12.295, 95%CI: [5.374–28.128], p<0.001) were both independently associated with poor asthma control. We concluded that Asthma control is greatly affected by psychological disorder in Chinese patients.
Tell and Predict: Kernel Classifier Prediction for Unseen Visual Classes from Unstructured Text Descriptions

In this paper we propose a framework for predicting kernelized classifiers in the visual domain for categories with no training images where the knowledge comes from textual description about these categories. Through our optimization framework, the proposed approach is capable of embedding the class-level knowledge from the text domain as kernel classifiers in the visual domain. We also proposed a distributional semantic kernel between text descriptions which is shown to be effective in our setting. The proposed framework is not restricted to textual descriptions, and can also be applied to other forms knowledge representations. Our approach was applied for the challenging task of zero-shot learning of fine-grained categories from text descriptions of these categories.
Spatial patterns of intrinsic brain activity in mild cognitive impairment and alzheimer's disease: A resting‐state functional MRI study

We used resting‐state functional MRI to investigate spatial patterns of spontaneous brain activity in 22 healthy elderly subjects, as well as 16 mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 16 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. The pattern of intrinsic brain activity was measured by examining the amplitude of low‐frequency fluctuations (ALFF) of blood oxygen level dependent signal during rest. There were widespread ALFF differences among the three groups throughout the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices. Both AD and MCI patients showed decreased activity mainly in the medial parietal lobe region and lentiform nucleus, while there was increased activity in the lateral temporal regions and superior frontal and parietal regions as compared with controls. Compared with MCI, the AD patients showed decreased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and increased activity in the superior frontal gyrus and inferior and superior temporal gyri. Specifically, the most significant ALFF differences among the groups appeared in the posterior cingulate cortex, with a reduced pattern of activity when comparing healthy controls, MCI, and AD patients. Additionally, we also showed that the regions with ALFF changes had significant correlations with the cognitive performance of patients as measured by mini‐mental state examination scores. Finally, while taking gray matter volume as covariates, the ALFF results were approximately consistent with those without gray matter correction, implying that the functional analysis could not be explained by regional atrophy. Together, our results demonstrate that there is a specific pattern of ALFF in AD and MCI, thus providing insights into biological mechanisms of the diseases. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Food and Nutrient Intake among People Following Major Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery

Introduction: Surgery to the upper gastrointestinal region of the gut results in symptoms greatly impacting on dietary intake, and a diet high in energy and protein is encouraged. The aim of this study was to examine the food and nutrient intakes of people having had major upper gastrointestinal surgery, and compare them to current food and nutrient recommendations. Materials and Methods: People having had major upper gastrointestinal rouxeny surgery greater than 6 months ago were recruited. Each person completed a three day food diary and food intakes were compared to the Healthy Food Guide for Australians. Macro and micro-nutrient intakes were compared to the Estimated Average Requirement reference values for Australia and New Zealand. Results: Thirty people were recruited and analysis of dietary intakes indicated inadequate serves of cereals, vegetables, fruit and dairy products compared to recommendations, resulting in below Estimated Average Requirements for many vitamins and minerals. Severely malnourished people, and those having had total gastrectomy surgery, were at greatest risk of not meeting macro and micro-nutrient recommendations. Conclusions: People having had major upper gastrointestinal surgery are encouraged to have a diet high in energy and protein. However this advice seems to be followed at the expense of other food groups, leading to low intakes of many micronutrients. Careful monitoring of dietary intakes and signs of nutrient deficiencies should be included as part of routine follow-up for this group of people. Further research is required to determine whether poor dietary intakes result in clinical deficiencies.
A Series of Inverse Continuous Modes for Designing Broadband Power Amplifiers

In this letter, a series of inverse continuous modes for implementing highly efficient broadband power amplifiers (PAs) are proposed. These series of inverse continuous modes are extended from continuous Class-F-1 mode. A broadband PA, which operates across 2.4-3.9 GHz, is designed based on the series of inverse continuous modes (SICMs). The experimental results show that this power amplifier achieve drain efficiency of 62.2%-74.7% in the whole interesting band. The average output power of this designed PA is 11.9 W with average drain efficiency of 68.1%.
Word forms - not just their lengths- are optimized for efficient communication

The inverse relationship between the length of a word and the frequency of its use, first identified by G.K. Zipf in 1935, is a classic empirical law that holds across a wide range of human languages. We demonstrate that length is one aspect of a much more general property of words: how distinctive they are with respect to other words in a language. Distinctiveness plays a critical role in recognizing words in fluent speech, in that it reflects the strength of potential competitors when selecting the best candidate for an ambiguous signal. Phonological information content, a measure of a word's string probability under a statistical model of a language's sound or character sequences, concisely captures distinctiveness. Examining large-scale corpora from 13 languages, we find that distinctiveness significantly outperforms word length as a predictor of frequency. This finding provides evidence that listeners' processing constraints shape fine-grained aspects of word forms across languages.
Sociodemographic, hygienic and nutritional correlates of Helicobacter pylori infection of young Bangladeshi children.

BACKGROUND By the age of 10 years most children in developing countries have been infected by Helicobacter pylori Identification of clues to modes of transmission of this organism to children, as well as evaluation of the sequelae of childhood infections, constitute important research priorities for developing countries. OBJECTIVES To evaluate demographic, socioeconomic and hygienic factors associated with acquisition of infection by H. pylori early in childhood among Bangladeshi children ages 2 to 5 years and to assess whether infection by H. pylori was associated with poor nutritional status in these children and in an older group ages 6 to 9 years. METHODS A random population-based survey of 257 rural Bangladeshi children ages 2 to 5 years and 312 children ages 6 to 9 years. Seropositivity for H. pylori, as manifested by the presence of serum IgG anti-H. pylori antibodies, was correlated with nutritional status of the sampled children and with sociodemographic features and access to clean water and latrine facilities among families of the children. RESULTS Among children ages 2 to 5 years, the 123 (48%) who were infected by H. pylori were similar to the 134 noninfected children with respect to socioeconomic level, family access to tube well water and family ownership of a latrine. However, families of infected children had more persons per sleeping room in the home (3.8 vs. 3.2, P < 0.05) and were more likely to be Hindu (20% vs. 10%, P < 0.05). Infected children did not differ significantly from noninfected children in Z scores for weight-for-age (-2.66 vs. -2.78), weight-for-height (-1.17 vs. -1.28) or height-for-age (-3.58 vs. -3.56). Analysis of survey children ages 6 to 9 years also revealed similar nutritional indexes among infected vs. noninfected children. CONCLUSIONS Household crowding and behaviors that differ between Hindus and Muslims, but not lack of access to clean water and latrines, may enhance the transmission of H. pylori to rural Bangladeshi children. Although confirming the high frequency of infections in young Bangladeshi children, our findings do not support the notion that H. pylori is responsible for the high prevalence of malnutrition in this setting.
Curcumin alleviates glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis through the regulation of the Wnt signaling pathway

It is known that prolonged glucocorticoid (GC) treatment results in osteoporosis. This study aimed to evaluate the protective effects of curcumin on the bones of rats with dexamethasone (DXM)-induced osteoporosis. In the present study, rats were administered DXM for 60 days to induce osteoporosis, and they were then treated with curcumin (100 mg/kg/day) for a further 60 days. H&E staining was used to observe the pathological changes in the femurs. Serum osteocalcin levels and collagen-type I fragments (CTX) were examined as bone metabolism markers. The results revealed that treatment with curcumin attenuated DXM-induced bone injury in femurs, increased the serum levels of osteocalcin and decreased the levels of CTX. In addition, in in vitro experiments, primary rat osteoblasts treated with curcumin at 0.5, 1 and 2 µM were exposed to 100 nM DXM. An MTT assay was used to determine the proliferative ability of the cells. Alkaline phosphatase activity, and the mRNA expression levels of runt-related transcription factor 2 (Runx2), osterix, osteocalcin, collagen, type 1, alpha 1 (Col1A1) and osteonectin were detected to assess transcription factor-associated osteogenic differentiation. The mRNA and protein expression levels of osteoprotegerin (OPG) and receptor activator for nuclear factor-kappa B ligand (RANKL) were detected to assess cytokine-associated osteoclastogenesis. The results demonstrated that curcumin prevented the DXM-induced inhibition of the proliferative ability of the osteoblasts in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, curcumin upregulated the mRNA expression levels of transcription factors that favor osteoblast differentiation and increased the ratio of OPG to RANKL. Moreover, the effects of curcumin on the Wnt signaling pathway were also investigated. RT-qPCR and western blot analysis demonstrated that the Wnt signaling pathway, which was inhibited by DXM, was re-activated upon treatment with curcumin. Immunofluorescence staining revealed that curcumin restored the intranuclear staining of β-catenin in the DXM-stimulated osteoblasts. Collectively, our data demonstrate that curcumin may be a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of GC-induced osteoporosis.
Neural network based spectral mask estimation for acoustic beamforming

We present a neural network based approach to acoustic beamforming. The network is used to estimate spectral masks from which the Cross-Power Spectral Density matrices of speech and noise are estimated, which in turn are used to compute the beamformer coefficients. The network training is independent of the number and the geometric configuration of the microphones. We further show that it is possible to train the network on clean speech only, avoiding the need for stereo data with separated speech and noise. Two types of networks are evaluated. One small feed-forward network with only one hidden layer and one more elaborated bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory network. We compare our system with different parametric approaches to mask estimation and using different beamforming algorithms. We show that our system yields superior results, both in terms of perceptual speech quality and with respect to speech recognition error rate. The results for the simple feed-forward network are especially encouraging considering its low computational requirements.
Immediate Tissue Expander/Implant Breast Reconstruction after Salvage Mastectomy for Cancer Recurrence following Lumpectomy/Irradiation

Background: The objective of this study was to analyze early complications and long-term outcomes in patients undergoing salvage mastectomy and immediate tissue expander/implant reconstruction for cancer recurrence following breast conservation therapy (lumpectomy/irradiation). Methods: A review of all tissue expander/implant reconstructions performed by a single surgeon over an 11-year period from 1997 to 2008 was performed. Two patient cohorts were identified: (1) patients who underwent salvage mastectomy for a cancer recurrence following prior breast conservation therapy, and (2) patients who underwent primary mastectomy without a history of prior irradiation. The incidence of early complications and long-term outcomes were determined for each cohort. Results: Immediate, tissue expander/implant reconstruction was initiated in 1699 patients. One hundred twenty-one patients had a history of breast conservation therapy (lumpectomy/irradiation), and 1578 did not have a history of prior irradiation. The incidence of early complications was significantly higher in the irradiated cohort compared with that in the nonirradiated cohort (29.7 percent versus 15.5 percent; p ⩽ 0.001). The most common complication in both groups was mastectomy flap necrosis (18.0 percent in the irradiated group and 7.7 percent in the nonirradiated group; p < 0.001). Six hundred ninety-seven patients had long-term follow-up data available. Most previously irradiated patients had good or very good results, whereas most nonirradiated patients had excellent results (p = 0.04; Mann-Whitney U test). Conclusions: Carefully selected patients who have had prior breast conservation therapy who require salvage mastectomy can successfully complete postmastectomy tissue expander/implant reconstruction. The rate of early complications in this patient group is higher than in the nonirradiated cohort but remains acceptable. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Risk, II.
The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment

PrefaceIntroduction1. Judgment as a Paradigm2. Making Sense of the Exemplary3. The Exemplary and the Public Realm: Reconstructing the Normativity of the Reasonable4. Exemplifying the Worst: Facing up to Radical Evil5. Political Republicanism and the Force of the Example6. Exemplarity and Human Rights7. Enforcing Human Rights Between Westphalia and Cosmopolis8. Europe as a Special Area for Human Hope9. Religion Within the Limits of ReasonablenessNotesIndex