Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
For Personal Use. Only Reproduce with Permission from the Lancet Publishing Group. Use and Misuse of Ugandan Evidence the Ugandan Success Story? Evidence and Claims of Hiv-1 Prevention

Uganda is widely regarded as an HIV/AIDS success story, but the reality of this claim has rarely been critically investigated. Although evidence-based medicine is increasingly important, analysis of the Ugandan epidemiological situation shows that the so-called proof accepted for policy recommendations can be subject to creative interpretation. I believe that, in view of all the available evidence, Uganda has been successful in preventing the spread of HIV-1 in many ways, and that there are meaningful lessons to be learned from the way that the government and other institutions have tackled the disease. However, the importance of the Ugandan experience will be compromised if conclusions are drawn out of context, and statements are made on the basis of oversimplified assessment of epidemiological data. There are several policy lessons that can be learned from the response to HIV/AIDS in Uganda, where declining prevalence rates of HIV-1 have been reported in a number of surveillance sites around the country since 1992. Indeed, the international community enthusiastically praises Uganda for its success in tackling the disease and urges other nations, especially other African nations, to learn from the Ugandan example. However, statements of success have often been based on misinterpretation of epidemiological data, and can sometimes not be supported when all the Ugandan evidence is assessed. Furthermore, inappropriate attribution has been made by some as to the causes of any epidemiological changes seen. Such misinterpretation has, in many ways, become an integral part of the story of Ugandan success. Taken as a whole, the Ugandan evidence indicates that the country is unique in Africa in the extent to which HIV-1 is subsiding. Additionally, as the first African nation to identify individuals with AIDS and to establish a national response programme, the Ugandan experience is an ideal example to other nations of how to react to the disease. 1 However, to truly learn from the Ugandan experience, investigation of the complex realities of the situation is necessary; premature conclusions should not be drawn from a few limited pieces of evidence. Many claims of the success of Uganda in dealing with HIV/AIDS have been predicated on selective pieces of information, which have been falsely presented as representative of the nation as a whole. Such data have been used, for instance, to claim that overall rates of HIV-1 in Uganda have been reduced from 30% to 10%. This statement has been reproduced in the National Strategic Framework …
Decade-long changes in spatial mismatch in Beijing, China: Are disadvantaged populations better or worse off?

Although recent studies have extended the U.S.-centered spatial mismatch hypothesis to Chinese cities, few have examined spatial mismatch conditions over time in Chinese Cities. This research responds to the knowledge gap by using longitudinal data to examine changes in the patterns and magnitudes of spatial mismatch between the 2000s and 2010s in Beijing, China. The longitudinal examination uniquely focuses on spatial mismatch between population and transit-accessible jobs, as opposed to spatial mismatch between population and any jobs. Results show that spatial mismatch conditions worsened among all population groups in the past decade in Beijing, China. When comparing across population groups, spatial mismatch worsened to a much higher degree among disadvantaged groups including the migrant population without local hukou and the low-educated population without college education. Further analyses show that changes in population distribution were primarily responsible for the worsened spatial mismatch conditions. Changes in job distribution and transit networks had limited impacts. Policy recommendations to mitigate spatial mismatch in Beijing include reconfiguration of transit networks and promotion of affordable housing development in transit- and/or job-rich areas.
The state of employment of young adults with and without chronic physical and mental conditions.

The purpose of this study was to describe the employment status of young adults age 20-29 years who lived with chronic conditions and compare their experiences to those young adults who do not have chronic conditions. A total of 4,744 young adults age 20-29 years were analyzed to explore the relationships between chronic health conditions and employment. Presence and amount of employment, the influence of education on employment, quality of work environment and income adequacy were examined. Data were obtained from the Canadian Community Health Survey, Cycle 1.2; a cross-sectional survey that collected information related to health standing, health care consumption and health determinants for the Canadian population. Respondents were organized into five groups according to their conditions: those who did not have any chronic health conditions, those with only chronic physical conditions, those with only chronic mental conditions, those with both chronic physical and mental conditions and those with “other” chronic conditions. General characteristics were described and separate analysis was conducted on those who were employed and those who were unemployed. Results indicated that the more chronic health conditions one lives with the greater the risk of unemployment. Young adults who live with physical and mental conditions, and those with multiple conditions perceive more job stress than their age mates. The number of conditions is negatively correlated to both education and income adequacy. Education is positively correlated to income adequacy. Income adequacy was difficult to interpret because of the way it is scored in the database. Other limitations of the study are noted in the discussion. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Comparison of Methylation Profiling in Cancerous and Their Corresponding Normal Tissues from Korean Patients with Breast Cancer

Background Aberrant DNA hypermethylation plays a pivotal role in carcinogenesis and disease progression; therefore, accurate measurement of differential gene methylation patterns among many genes is likely to reveal biomarkers for improved risk assessment. We evaluated the gene hypermethylation profiles of primary breast tumors and their corresponding normal tissues and investigated the association between major clinicopathological features and gene hypermethylation. Methods A single reaction using methylation-specific multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification was used to analyze the DNA methylation status of 24 tumor suppressor genes in 60 cancerous tissues and their corresponding normal tissues from patients with primary breast cancer. Results In cancerous breast tissues, 21 of 24 genes displayed promoter methylation in one or more samples. The most frequently methylated genes included RASSF1 (43.3%), APC (31.7%), CDKN2B (25.0%), CDH13 (23.3%), GSTP1 (16.7%), and BRCA1 (10%). APC was associated with lymph node metastasis, and BRCA1 was associated with negative estrogen receptor and negative progesterone receptor expression. In normal breast tissues, 8 of 24 tumor suppressor genes displayed promoter hypermethylation; CDKN2B (28.3%) and RASSF1 (8.3%) hypermethylation were most frequently observed. Conclusions RASSF1 and CDKN2B hypermethylation in Korean breast cancer patients were the most frequent in cancerous tissue and corresponding normal tissue, respectively. Our data indicates that methylation of specific genes is a frequent event in morphologically normal breast tissues adjacent to breast tumors as well as the corresponding breast cancers. This study also suggests that gene methylation is linked to various pathological features of breast cancer; however, this requires confirmation in a larger study.
Intracellular pH of sea urchin eggs measured by the dimethyloxazolidinedione (DMO) method

Intracellular pH (pH1) of sea urchin eggs and embryos was determined using DMO (5,5-dimethyl-2,4-oxazolidinedione). By this method, the pH1 of Lytechinus pictus eggs increased after fertilization from 6.86 to 7.27, and this higher pHi was maintained thereafter, as has been previously observed with pH microelectrodes. The same general result was obtained with the eggs of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, in contrast to previous estimates of the pH of egg homogenates from this species, which had indicated a rise and then fall of pHi after fertilization. pHi did not significantly change during early cell divisions. Studies of treatments that alter pHi confirmed that ammonia alkalizes and acetate acidifies the cells. The regulation of pHi by embryos in the acidic seawater is impaired if sodium is absent, whereas unfertilized eggs can regulate pHi in acidic, sodium-free seawater.
Evolutionary Biology Research, Entrepreneurship, and the Morality of Security-seeking Behavior in an Imperfect Economy

This article investigates whether there is an underlying morality in the ways that human beings seek to obtain economic security within our imperfect economy, which can be illuminated through evolutionary biology research. Two research questions are the focus of the analysis: (1) What is the transaction cognitive machinery that is specialized for the entrepreneurial task of exchange-based security -seeking? and, (2) What are the moral implications of the acquisition and use of such transaction cognitions? Evolutionary biology research suggests within concepts that are more Darwin-v. Huxley-based, an underlying morality supportive of algorithm-governed economizing arising from the behaviors that are most worthy of long-term reproduction. Evolutionarily stable algorithm enhanced security-seeking is argued to be a new view of entrepreneurship, but one that, somewhat ironically, is grounded in a primordially-based entrepreneurial morality that is at the core of economic security.
Inflation Targets and Inflation Expectations : Some Evidence from the Recent Oil Shocks

A great deal of recent research has pointed out the benefits of adopting inflation targets, emphasizing, in particular, their role in helping to stabilize inflation expectations.As we discuss below, these arguments suggest that inflation expectations in countries that target inflation should react differently to the recent oil price shocks than expectations in countries that do not target inflation.We examine whether this is indeed the case by comparing the recent behavior of inflation expectations in the U.S.—which does not have an explicit inflation target—with the behavior of inflation expectations in Canada and the U.K., which do.
Decontaminating pilots in massive MIMO systems

Pilot contamination is known to severely limit the performance of large-scale antenna (“massive MIMO”) systems due to degraded channel estimation. This paper proposes a twofold approach to this problem. First we show analytically that pilot contamination can be made to vanish asymptotically in the number of antennas for a certain class of channel fading statistics. The key lies in setting a suitable condition on the second order statistics for desired and interference signals. Second we show how a coordinated user-to-pilot assignment method can be devised to help fulfill this condition in practical networks. Large gains are illustrated in our simulations for even small antenna array sizes.
Rekreatif Etkinliklere Katılan Üniversite Öğrencilerinin Serbest Zamanda Sıkılma Algısı İle Yaşam Doyum Düzeyleri Arasındaki İlişkinin İncelenmesi

Bu arastirmanin amaci; Rekreatif etkinliklere katilan universite ogrencilerinin serbest zamanlarindaki sikilma algisi ile yasam doyum duzeylerinin cesitli degiskenlere gore incelenmesidir. Arastirmaya, Bartin Universitesinde ogrenim goren 639 (426 erkek ve 213 kadin) kisi katilmistir. Arastirmada, arastirmacilar tarafindan hazirlanan “Kisisel Bilgi Formu”, Diener, Emmons, Larsen ve Griffin (1985) tarafindan gelistirilen ve Turkce uyarlamasi Koker (1991) ve Yetim (1991) tarafindan yapilan “Yasam Doyum Olcegi: YDO (The Satisfaction with Life Scale: SWLS)” ve Iso-Ahola ve Weissinger (1990) tarafindan gelistirilen ve Turkce uyarlamasi Kara, Gurbuz ve Oncu (2014) tarafindan yapilan “Serbest Zamanda Sikilma Algisi Olcegi: SZSAO (Leisure Boredom Scale: LBS)” kullanilmistir. Verilerin analizinde; katilimcilarin demografik ozelliklerine gore, serbest zamanda sikilma algisi ve yasam doyum duzeyleri arasindaki farkliliklari incelemek amaciyla t-Testi ve ANOVA; degiskenler arasindaki iliskilerin incelenmesi icin ise Pearson Korelasyon testi uygulanmistir. Arastirmanin bulgularinda; t-Testi sonuclarinda “cinsiyet” degiskenine gore YDO puan ortalamalari arasinda anlamli farklilik bulunurken, SZSAO puan ortalamalari arasinda anlamli farklilik bulunmamistir. ANOVA testi sonuclarinda “bolum” degiskenine gore SZSAO alt boyutlari toplam puan ortalamalari arasinda anlamli farkliliga rastlanmazken, YDO puan ortalamalari arasinda anlamli farklilik bulunmustur. Ayrica “Aile geliri” degiskenine gore sadece SZSAO’nin doyum alt boyunda anlamli farklilik bulunmustur. Korelasyon testine gore “Serbest zaman suresi” degiskenine gore SZSAO toplam puani ve sikilma alt boyutunda pozitif yonde ve dusuk duzeyde anlamli bir iliski bulunurken, diger alt boyutlar arasinda anlamli bir iliski tespit edilmemistir. Ayrica YDO ile SZSAO ve “sikilma” alt boyutu arasinda negatif yonde ve dusuk duzeyde anlamli bir iliski, “doyum” alt boyutu arasinda ise pozitif yonde ve orta duzeyde anlamli bir iliski tespit edilmistir. Sonuc olarak; Serbest zamanda Rekreatif etkinliklere katilan universite ogrencilerinin cesitli faktorlere bagli olarak “sikilma” duzeyleri azaldikca, yasam doyum duzeyleri artmaktadir. Ayrica rekreatif etkinliklerde yer alan universite ogrencilerinin serbest zamanda algiladigi “doyum” duzeyi arttikca da, es zamanli olarak yasam doyumu da artis gostermekte ve bu tur faaliyetler icerisinde daha verimli zaman gecirdikleri soylenebilir.
Linearity of Cortical Receptive Fields Measured with Natural Sounds

How do cortical neurons represent the acoustic environment? This question is often addressed by probing with simple stimuli such as clicks or tone pips. Such stimuli have the advantage of yielding easily interpreted answers, but have the disadvantage that they may fail to uncover complex or higher-order neuronal response properties. Here, we adopt an alternative approach, probing neuronal responses with complex acoustic stimuli, including animal vocalizations. We used in vivo whole-cell methods in the rat auditory cortex to record subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations elicited by these stimuli. Most neurons responded robustly and reliably to the complex stimuli in our ensemble. Using regularization techniques, we estimated the linear component, the spectrotemporal receptive field (STRF), of the transformation from the sound (as represented by its time-varying spectrogram) to the membrane potential of the neuron. We find that the STRF has a rich dynamical structure, including excitatory regions positioned in general accord with the prediction of the classical tuning curve. However, whereas the STRF successfully predicts the responses to some of the natural stimuli, it surprisingly fails completely to predict the responses to others; on average, only 11% of the response power could be predicted by the STRF. Therefore, most of the response of the neuron cannot be predicted by the linear component, although the response is deterministically related to the stimulus. Analysis of the systematic errors of the STRF model shows that this failure cannot be attributed to simple nonlinearities such as adaptation to mean intensity, rectification, or saturation. Rather, the highly nonlinear response properties of auditory cortical neurons must be attributable to nonlinear interactions between sound frequencies and time-varying properties of the neural encoder.
Comparer pour mieux comprendre : perception d’étudiants et d'enseignants d'une approche interlangagière en langue seconde

RÉSUMÉ Une approche pédagogique en langue seconde (L2) incluant des références aux langues connues des étudiants pourrait comporter des avantages cognitifs, pédagogiques et socioaffectifs. Toutefois, en classe de L2 multilingue, l'utilisation du répertoire langagier (RL) des étudiants a peu été explorée. Cette recherche étudie la faisabilité de l'approche interlangagière Comparons nos langues auprès d'immigrants adultes étudiant le français L2 au Québec, et cela à travers les attitudes des étudiants et des enseignantes lors des activités, leur perception de la valeur du RL, et les réactions selon le niveau des étudiants. Deux enseignantes de français L2 ont développé quatre activités interlangagières, qui ont été filmées et analysées. Des rétroactions écrites et entrevues (de groupe et individuelles) ont permis de recueillir les réactions des participants. Celles-ci étaient généralement positives : leur niveau d'engagement et leurs commentaires sur l'approche en témoignant. Une analyse Chi2 démontre qu'il n'y a pas de différence significative entre les appréciations dans les rétroactions écrites par niveau. Toutefois, les entrevues de groupe révèlent que l'approche était mieux reçue lorsqu'elle ciblait l'enseignement de nouveaux points de langue. L’étude démontre l'intérêt des participants pour une approche interlangagière et son potentiel pour améliorer l'expérience d'apprentissage d'une L2 chez des adultes immigrants.
The Time Course of Pulmonary Function Tests in COPD Patients with Different Levels of Blood Eosinophils

Only very few studies have investigated the influence of eosinophils on the functional progression of COPD. We aimed at retrospectively analyzing the trend of pulmonary function tests over time in patients with COPD according to two baseline blood eosinophil cell count strata (<2% [EOS−] and ≥2% [EOS+]). We used the last 9-year data present in the database of our outpatient clinic and selected only those who had two blood counts that would guarantee the stability of the value of eosinophils and serial spirometry for 4 consecutive years. The analysis of the time course of the spirometric variables analysed showed differences in FEV1 and FVC decline between the subjects of the EOS− group and those of the EOS+ group. The integrated evaluation of our results suggests that the different level of blood eosinophils in the two groups may have influenced independently the time course of the pulmonary function tests and identify two subgroups of subjects with specific disease characteristics: the hyperinflator and the rapid decliner, respectively.
Exposure of a 23F Serotype Strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae to Cigarette Smoke Condensate Is Associated with Selective Upregulation of Genes Encoding the Two-Component Regulatory System 11 (TCS11)

Alterations in whole genome expression profiles following exposure of the pneumococcus (strain 172, serotype 23F) to cigarette smoke condensate (160 μg/mL) for 15 and 60 min have been determined using the TIGR4 DNA microarray chip. Exposure to CSC resulted in the significant (P < 0.014–0.0006) upregulation of the genes encoding the two-component regulatory system 11 (TCS11), consisting of the sensor kinase, hk11, and its cognate response regulator, rr11, in the setting of increased biofilm formation. These effects of cigarette smoke on the pneumococcus may contribute to colonization of the airways by this microbial pathogen.
MULTIVECTOR FIELDS AND JET FIELDS . SETTING EVOLUTION EQUATIONS IN FIELD THEORIES

The integrability of multivector fields in a differentiable manifold is studied. Then, given a jet bundle JE → E → M , it is shown that integrable multivector fields in E are equivalent to integrable jet fields in JE (connections in E). This result is applied to the particular case of multivector fields in the manifold JE and jet fields in the repeated jet bundle JJE, in order to characterize integrable multivector fields and jet fields whose integral manifolds are canonical liftings of sections. These results allow us to set the lagrangian evolution equations for first-order classical field theories in three equivalent geometrical ways (in a form similar to that in which the lagrangian dynamical equations of non-autonomous mechanical systems are usually given).
Sharp H i Edges in the Outskirts of Disk Galaxies

Observations indicate that some extended outer disks have a sharp cutoff in the surface density of neutral hydrogen when this approaches the value of ∼2×10 19 cm −2 . In this paper we model these H I edges as places where the ratio of neutral to ionized hydrogen drops rapidly due to ionizing radiation. We use two different models for the vertical distribution of gas above the outer Galactic plane: in the first model we derive the density from the ideal gas law, while in the second model we insert a macroscopic pressure term and derive the density as for an isothermal slab
Eigen‐analysis of nonlinear PCA with polynomial kernels

There has been growing interest in kernel methods for classification, clustering and dimension reduction. For example, kernel Fisher discriminant analysis, spectral clustering and kernel principal component analysis are widely used in statistical learning and data mining applications. The empirical success of the kernel method is generally attributed to nonlinear feature mapping induced by the kernel, which in turn determines a low dimensional data embedding. It is important to understand the effect of a kernel and its associated kernel parameter(s) on the embedding in relation to data distributions. In this paper, we examine the geometry of the nonlinear embedding for kernel principal component analysis (PCA) when polynomial kernels are used. We carry out eigen‐analysis of the polynomial kernel operator associated with data distributions and investigate the effect of the degree of polynomial. The results provide both insights into the geometry of nonlinear data embedding and practical guidelines for choosing an appropriate degree for dimension reduction with polynomial kernels. We further comment on the effect of centering kernels on the spectral property of the polynomial kernel operator. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining, 2013
Composition-Modified Matrices Improve Identification of Homologs of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Low-Complexity Glycoproteins

ABSTRACT Yeast glycoproteins are representative of low-complexity sequences, those sequences rich in a few types of amino acids. Low-complexity protein sequences comprise more than 10% of the proteome but are poorly aligned by existing methods. Under default conditions, BLAST and FASTA use the scoring matrix BLOSUM62, which is optimized for sequences with diverse amino acid compositions. Because low-complexity sequences are rich in a few amino acids, these tools tend to align the most common residues in nonhomologous positions, thereby generating anomalously high scores, deviations from the expected extreme value distribution, and small e values. This anomalous scoring prevents BLOSUM62-based BLAST and FASTA from identifying correct homologs for proteins with low-complexity sequences, including Saccharomyces cerevisiae wall proteins. We have devised and empirically tested scoring matrices that compensate for the overrepresentation of some amino acids in any query sequence in different ways. These matrices were tested for sensitivity in finding true homologs, discrimination against nonhomologous and random sequences, conformance to the extreme value distribution, and accuracy of e values. Of the tested matrices, the two best matrices (called E and gtQ) gave reliable alignments in BLAST and FASTA searches, identified a consistent set of paralogs of the yeast cell wall test set proteins, and improved the consistency of secondary structure predictions for cell wall proteins.