Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cultural negotiations in health and illness : the experience of adult onset diabetes among Gujarati South Asians in England

Diabetes has become a global health problem, with both physical and psycho-social impacts on people's lives. The South Asian communities in the UK have been identified as 'high risk' groups with high rates of type 2 (non-insulin dependent) diabetes. This thesis explores the experiences of type 2 diabetes among a group of Hindu Gujaratis in several locations in England. Purposive and snowball sampling was used to recruit participants and a grounded theory framework was utilised to generate and analyse data. It is possible to suggest that health science discourse in a variety of forms has constructed a type of 'South Asian diabetic risk', alluding to a particular relationship between health and ethnicity. Through the use of qualitative methods participants in this research demonstrate active resistances to these constructions, through their accounts of diabetes management. By exploring the biographical, historical and socially embedded contexts that surround diabetes, participants constituted culture and ethnicity as dynamic entities, contingent on social, political and personal contexts. Within the context of qualitative methods, the role of the researcher and the various ways in which identities connect and need to be explicitly explored also forms a central idea within this work. This thesis highlights these active and dynamic constructions of cultural and ethnic identity. Health research needs to acknowledge the many varied ways in which people are able to manage their conditions as part of their overall social and cultural context. Situating health and illness experiences within a wider experiential field allows the possibility of fluid notions of identity to be implemented, and the relationship between health and ethnicity to be theoretically informed. These considerations may contribute to an understanding of how people manage their diabetes and where help and support might best be channelled.
Measuring Banking Efficiency in the Pre- and Post-Liberalization Environment: Evidence from the Turkish Banking System

The authors examine banking efficiency before and after liberalization, drawing on Turkey's experience. They also investigate the scale effect on efficiency by type of ownership. Their findings suggest that liberalization programs were followed by an observable decline in efficiency, not an improvement. During the study period Turkish banks did not operate at the optimum scale. Another unexpected result was that efficiency was no different between state-owned and privately owned banks. Banks that were privately owned or foreign owned had been expected to respond better to liberalization, because they were smaller and more dynamically structured, but they were no more efficient than state-owned banks. One reason for the systemwide decline in efficiency might have been the general increase in macroeconomic instability during the period studied.
Techniques for Integrating Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Datasets: Examples from Pre-Hispanic Northwestern Honduras

ABSTRACT What are useful quantitative approaches in situations with highly variable data quantities, contexts, and sampling strategies? How can paleoethnobotanical findings be interpreted without over-representing data or selling results short? Described here are several major issues and potential solutions. The four sites of the study are located northwestern Honduras, a region with fairly hostile environments for paleoethnobotanical preservation. For this reason, several types of botanical residues are combined to provide a more holistic picture of past ethnobotanical practices. In some cases, these data prove to be complementary, while in others, they are corroborative. This article includes tactics for integrating multiple sample protocols, multiple and overlapping diagnostic elements, multiple and overlapping clade categories, multiple and overlapping samples in a single locus, multiple and overlapping formation processes, and multiple and overlapping cultural practices. In each section, the issue, sampling strategies, quantitative approaches, and a few results are described.
Risk Factors for Gallstone Disease in a Thai Population

Background Gallstone disease (GSD) is a major public health problem that is associated with a number of risk factors. Methods We conducted a case–control study of 407 participants comprising 207 cases with GSD and 200 controls without GSD, as confirmed by ultrasonography. The participants completed a questionnaire and underwent physical and ultrasonographic examination. The risk factors examined were age, sex, BMI, use of oral contraceptives, diabetes mellitus, cirrhosis, thalassemia, dyspepsia, family history of gallstone disease, smoking status, alcohol consumption, and dietary history. Results BMI, fat content of dietary meat, and smoking were associated with GSD. When compared to participants with a BMI below 25, participants with a BMI of 25 or higher had a multivariate relative risk of 4.1 (95% CI, 2.5–6.7). Participants who consumed meat with moderate fat content or high fat content had respective relative risks of 2.5 and 2.9 (95% CI, 1.5–4.2 and 1.5–5.6), when compared to those who consumed meat with a low fat content. Also, the multivariate relative risk for former smokers, as compared to never smokers, was 2.4 (95% CI, 1.1–5.2). Conclusions High BMI, consumption of high-fat meat, and smoking were associated with gallstone disease.
Does English coronal place assimilation create lexical ambiguity

The purpose of this study was to determine how potential lexical ambiguity produced by place assimilation is resolved. Four cross-modal form priming experiments using primes in sentential contexts were performed. In the first 2, prime items had underlyingly coronal offsets (e.g., right) with assimilated noncoronal place. The primes were judged to be perceptually ambiguous (between right and ripe) in Experiment 1 and noncoronal (ripe) in Experiment 2 in off-line testing. In Experiment 3, primes were replaced with corresponding underlyingly noncoronal items (ripe). In all 3 experiments, participants showed selective priming for the underlying form of the prime. A 4th form priming experiment using the gated tokens of priming stimuli used in Experiment 2 examined the role of postlexical context on this process. In this experiment, participants showed priming for both underlying and surface forms of the prime.
A Re-Evaluation of the Impact of Regional Agreements on Trade Patterns

Estimating the influence of regional agreements on trade patterns leads to a wide range of difficulties. We sort out some of the latter by relying on detailed trade data at the sector level, using a panel of 135 countries trading within 26 ISIC industries over the period 1976-2000. A first strategy consists in relying on a "traditional gravity" setting , augmented with internal trade flows. A second strategy relies on a theoretically founded border effect framework. Lastly dyadic fixed effects make it possible to control for unobserved characteristics of country pairs, hence for the endogeneity of arrangements among the various trade partners.
Evolutionary Stability of a Refactored Phage Genome

Engineered genetic systems are commonly unstable; if propagated, they evolve to reverse or modify engineered elements because the elements impair fitness. A goal of synthetic biology is thus to anticipate and avoid detrimental engineering, but little is yet known about which types of elements cause problems in different contexts. In prior work, 30% of the genome of bacteriophage T7 was “refactored” by the insertion or modification of 65 short sequences that included a useful restriction enzyme site in order to, among other goals, separate genes and their translational initiation regions from each other and from other genetic elements. Although gene sequences and known important regions of regulatory elements were kept intact, the translational efficiency of some genes or element regulatory function might have been compromised. We adapted the refactored phage for rapid growth in two conditions, observing fitness and sequence evolution. As anticipated from the original work, refactoring had major fitness effects in both environments, but most of the fitness costs were recovered upon adaptation. The evolved phages retained 60–70% of the design elements, suggesting they had only minor fitness effects. Approximately half the elements that were lost lie within large deletions commonly observed during adaptation of the wild-type genome. Some elements were lost or modified in parallel between the adaptations without affecting T7 gene sequences, but no obvious correlates can be made. Nevertheless, experimental adaptations are useful for identifying specific synthetic design problems, and we suggest that experimental evolution in conjunction with alternative engineering may also be useful in overcoming those problems.
Mouse models of telomere dysfunction phenocopy skeletal changes found in human age-related osteoporosis

A major medical challenge in the elderly is osteoporosis and the high risk of fracture. Telomere dysfunction is a cause of cellular senescence and telomere shortening, which occurs with age in cells from most human tissues, including bone. Telomere defects contribute to the pathogenesis of two progeroid disorders characterized by premature osteoporosis, Werner syndrome and dyskeratosis congenital. It is hypothesized that telomere shortening contributes to bone aging. We evaluated the skeletal phenotypes of mice with disrupted telomere maintenance mechanisms as models for human bone aging, including mutants in Werner helicase (Wrn−/−), telomerase (Terc−/−) and Wrn−/−Terc−/− double mutants. Compared with young wild-type (WT) mice, micro-computerized tomography analysis revealed that young Terc−/− and Wrn−/−Terc−/− mice have decreased trabecular bone volume, trabecular number and trabecular thickness, as well as increased trabecular spacing. In cortical bone, young Terc−/− and Wrn−/−Terc−/− mice have increased cortical thinning, and increased porosity relative to age-matched WT mice. These trabecular and cortical changes were accelerated with age in Terc−/− and Wrn−/−Terc−/− mice compared with older WT mice. Histological quantification of osteoblasts in aged mice showed a similar number of osteoblasts in all genotypes; however, significant decreases in osteoid, mineralization surface, mineral apposition rate and bone formation rate in older Terc−/− and Wrn−/−Terc−/− bone suggest that osteoblast dysfunction is a prominent feature of precocious aging in these mice. Except in the Wrn−/− single mutant, osteoclast number did not increase in any genotype. Significant alterations in mechanical parameters (structure model index, degree of anistrophy and moment of inertia) of the Terc−/− and Wrn−/−Terc−/− femurs compared with WT mice were also observed. Young Wrn−/−Terc−/− mice had a statistically significant increase in bone-marrow fat content compared with young WT mice, which remained elevated in aged double mutants. Taken together, our results suggest that Terc−/− and Wrn−/−Terc−/− mutants recapitulate the human bone aging phenotype and are useful models for studying age-related osteoporosis.
iCM-Hydraulic: semantics-empowered condition monitoring of hydraulic machines

We present the first system, called iCM-Hydraulic, for intelligent condition monitoring (CM) of hydraulic machines that combines statistical, probabilistic and semantic data analysis for fault detection and diagnosis with semantic explanations. The modelling of the domain ontology in OWL2 and the probabilistic domain belief network is based on CM standards and domain expert interviews. Fast fault detection and diagnosis online is performed by the system over a multi-variate sensor data feature stream with statistical fault state classification, semantic symptom detection and diagnosis query answering with C-SPARQL, semantic and probabilistic reasoning in the continously updated belief network. Condition diagnosis queries are also answered offline over the central SwiftOWLIM store with history data. The system prototype was developed for our customer HYDAC Filter Systems GmbH and successfully tested for typical hydraulic aggregates and sensors.
Seasonality of rotavirus disease in the tropics: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND To date little conclusive evidence exists on the seasonality of rotavirus incidence in the tropics. We present a systematic review and meta-analysis on the seasonal epidemiology of rotavirus in the tropics, including 26 studies reporting continuous monthly rotavirus incidence for which corresponding climatological data was available. METHODS Using linear regression models that account for serial correlation between months, monthly rotavirus incidence was significantly negatively correlated with temperature, rainfall and relative humidity in 65%, 55% and 60% of studies, respectively. We carried out pooled analyses using a generalized estimating equation (GEE) that accounts for correlation from between-study variation and serial correlation between months within a given study. RESULTS For every 1 degrees C (1.8 degrees F) increase in mean temperature, 1 cm (0.39 in.) increase in mean monthly rainfall, and 1% increase in relative humidity (22%) this analysis showed reductions in rotavirus incidence of 10% (95% CI: 6-13%), 1% (95% CI: 0-1%), and 3% (95% CI:0-5%), respectively. CONCLUSIONS On the basis of the evidence, we conclude that rotavirus responds to changes in climate in the tropics, with the highest number of infections found at the colder and drier times of the year.
Determining the Components of Cohesion Using the Repertory Grid Technique

Cohesion enhances positive workplace outcomes, including job satisfaction, team performance, and productivity. Despite the importance of cohesion, definitions, factors, and measures of cohesion are used inconsistently. For example, the contribution of both task and social cohesion has been highlighted in previous research but ignored by other researchers in cohesion. This exploratory study examined the components of cohesion using a repertory grid technique and weighted multidimensional scaling. Twenty-six participants were interviewed. Findings supported cohesion being a multidimensional construct with 6 cohesion dimensions, comprising 1 task and 5 social elements, thereby revealing some areas of overlap with previous research. There was no support for group verses individual components of cohesion. Further research is required to develop instruments to measure the 6 cohesion components. Factor analytic studies could then confirm the factor structure of cohesion.
Penerapan Desain Pembelajaran Tematik Integratif Alternatif Berbasis Kearifan Lokal untuk Meningkatkan Hasil dan Kebermaknaan Belajar

This research aims to improve outcomes and meaningfulness of learning by applying alternative integrative thematic design based on local wisdom. It's a class action research of Stringer model which carried out two cycles. Data collection instruments used question instruments, observation sheets, questionnaires, and documentation. Data analysis is done by comparative description. The result of research showed an increase of outcomes and significance of learning. It's supported by the thoroughness of thematic learning outcomes on Indonesian language, IPS, and PPKn respectively in 1st cycle 72,5%, 52,5%, and 65%. The result in 2nd cycle are 90%, 75%, and 77,5%. Furthermore, the significant increase of meaningfulness of learning in categories is shown in 1st cycle of 87.5% and increased to 95% in 2nd cycle. In conclusion, the outcomes and meaningfulness of learners 4th grade SDN Gendongan 02 are improved by alternative integrative thematic learning based on local wisdom.
Deposit Insurance and Its Design : A Literature Review

This paper reviews the main results of the economic literature explaining the existence of deposit insurance in its modern form. It is shown that deposit insurance is not the only means to cope with the problem of bank runs. Yet it is a prevailing solution for the banks dominate the credit channels in most economies the world over, and the modern payment systems are based on the convertibility of the bank deposits into cash. Being a part of the general public policy of financial sector stability, deposit insurance is structured in accordance with a core objective adopted for the entire policy, and this explains why many world schemes, besides the intrinsic DIS objective of bank run prevention, also choose to follow the objective of small (unsophisticated) depositor protection. In practice, a trade-off between the ability of a DIS to prevent bank runs and the soundness of incentives it induces forces policymakers to choose between the two objectives. The review of the related literature helps to distinguish four basic approaches regarding the balance of the run-prevention capacity and sound incentives in deposit insurance design. Further analysis also shows that three of the basic structuring options (the limited, partial, and selective guarantees) are likely to be employed in the ordinary (non-crisis) circumstances and the choice among them needs to be based on the country-specific factors. * Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Economics & Faculty of Business and Commerce, Keio University The 21 Century Center of Excellence Program Faculty of Economics and Faculty of Business and Commerce, Keio University 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan Deposit Insurance and Its Design: A Literature Review
Are users more diverse than designs?: testing and extending a 25 years old claim

Twenty-five years ago, Dennis Egan published a review on the impact of individual differences in human-computer interaction, where he claimed that users are more diverse than designs are [5]. While being cited frequently, this claim has not been tested since then. An efficient research design for separating and comparing variance components is presented, together with a statistical model to test Egan's claim. The results of a pilot study indicate that Egan's claim does not universally hold. An extension to the claim is suggested, capturing the trade-offs when prioritizing user tasks. An alternative strategy towards universal design is proposed.
Can machine learning be secure?

Machine learning systems offer unparalled flexibility in dealing with evolving input in a variety of applications, such as intrusion detection systems and spam e-mail filtering. However, machine learning algorithms themselves can be a target of attack by a malicious adversary. This paper provides a framework for answering the question, "Can machine learning be secure? " Novel contributions of this paper include a taxonomy of different types of attacks on machine learning techniques and systems, a variety of defenses against those attacks, a discussion of ideas that are important to security for machine learning, an analytical model giving a lower bound on attacker's work function, and a list of open problems.
A hierarchical, topology-aware approach to dynamic data centre management

Increasingly, applications are moving into the cloud, which is actually supported by large-scale data centres on the ground. These data centres are complex systems to manage and centralized solutions might not be able to meet the required scale nor make an efficient use of their networks. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical approach to dynamic resource management in data centres, where we leverage the topology of the data centre network to design the management hierarchy. We define a set of aggregate metrics at various levels in the hierarchy to convey system state information to higher management levels, and define managers' responsibilities and interactions. We evaluate our proposed approach through simulation. Experiments show that this management approach greatly reduces the flow of management data across the data centre network, thus reducing network overhead.
WS-TAXI: A WSDL-based Testing Tool for Web Services

Web Services (WSs) are the W3C-endorsed realization of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Since they are supposed to be implementation-neutral, WSs are typically tested black-box at their interface. Such an interface is generally specified in an XML-based notation called the WS Description Language (WSDL). Conceptually, these WSDL documents are eligible for fully automated WS test generation using syntax-based testing approaches. Towards such goal, we introduce the WS-TAXI framework, in which we combine the coverage of WS operations with data-driven test generation. In this paper we present an early-stage implementation of WS-TAXI, obtained by the integration of two existing softwares: soapUI, a popular tool for WS testing, and TAXI, an application we have previously developed for the automated derivation of XML instances from a XML schema. WS-TAXI delivers a complete suite of test messages ready for execution. Test generation is driven by basic coverage criteria and by the application of some heuristics. The application of WS-TAXI to a real case study gave encouraging results.
The Development of Argumentive Discourse Skill

The skills involved in argument as a social discourse activity presumably develop during the childhood and adolescent years, but little is known about the course of that development. As an initial step in examining this development, a coding system was developed for the purpose of analyzing multiple dialogues between peers on the topic of capital punishment. A comparison of the dialogues of young adolescents and those of young adults showed the teens to be more preoccupied with producing the dialogue and less able to behave strategically with respect to the goals of argumentive discourse. Teens also did not exhibit the strategic skill that adults did of adapting discourse to the requirements of particular argumentive contexts (agreeing vs. disagreeing dialogues).
A survey of some results after 1970

The literature on meromorphic functions is very large. There is a comprehensive survey [62] that contains everything that was reviewed on the topic in the Soviet “Referativnyi Zhurnal” in 1953–1970, and a later large survey [67]. More recent surveys [30], [80] and [48] are shorter and have narrower scope. Some books on specific topics in the theory of meromorphic functions published after 1970 are [18], [20], [79], [100], [137], [134], [138], [162]. A survey of the fast developing subject of iteration of meromorphic functions is [7]. Here we give a short survey of some results which are closely related to the problems considered in this book. Thus we do not include many important topics, like geometric theory of meromorphic functions, iteration, composition, differential and functional equations, normal families, Borel and Julia directions, uniqueness theorems, and most regrettably, holomorphic curves and quasiregular mappings.