Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Operational assessment areas of verbal, physical and relational peer victimisation in relation to the prevention of school violence in public schools in Tshwane South

It is common cause that the school is the embodiment of the community's educational responsibility and serves increasingly as an agent of socialisation. Therefore, it is essential that scholastic activities should take place in an environment that is conducive to the education and development of learners. Violence at schools is counterproductive and frustrates the scholastic institution's educational and social goals. The research problem underlying this study relates to learners as victims of school violence committed by fellow learners in certain primary and secondary public schools in Tshwane South. A comprehensive literature study was undertaken to identify the operational assessment areas in relation to verbal, physical and relational peer victimisation. The survey method was used to collect and analyse information of a purposive sample of 1 873 learners in grades 6 to 11 from nine primary, eight secondary and two special schools in the Tshwane South district through the application of a structured self-report questionnaire in accordance with their proportional age, sex, academic grade and willingness to participate in the research. The survey results emanating from the above-mentioned research objectives are reported on.
Children's Beliefs About Self-disclosure to Friends Regarding Academic Achievement

Self-disclosure to friends is a potentially useful way for children to pursue a range of desired goals. Here we examined reasoning about the appropriateness of disclosing one's own academic outcomes in a sample of 7-, 9-, 11-, 13-, and 15-year-old Chinese participants (N = 150). The valence of (1) the outcomes to be disclosed and (2) the corresponding outcomes for the potential audience for the disclosure was manipulated factorially, and participants judged whether disclosure was advisable and explained their responses. Disclosure was seen as more appropriate under valence-matching conditions than valence-mismatching conditions. How participants judged each type of disclosure under valence-mismatching conditions varied as a function of participant age: As compared with younger participants, older participants considered disclosure of weak performance to a stronger performer more acceptable and disclosure of strong performance to a weaker performer less acceptable. These findings suggest that older children are more likely than younger children to appreciate that self-disclosing positive performance outcomes can bring social costs, and that self-disclosing negative performance outcomes can bring social benefits.
Discussion Paper 9: Links between themes emerging from the nine WPA case studies and key issues in the literature

An emulator which is able to operate on a standard single phase 120 VAC line, generates simulated three-phase alternating current in order to demonstrate the operation of a polyphase electricity meter. The emulator is also capable of demonstrating the operation of the polyphase electricity meter which has been incorrectly wired into the polyphase circuit, i.e., with incorrect or missing connections to the current transformers; or in which there are problems with the phasing of the polyphase circuit, i.e., incorrect phase differences between circuits or between the currents and voltages within any of the phases.
Predicting Student Progress from Peer-Assessment Data

Predicting overall student performance and monitoring progress have attracted more attention in the past five years than before. Demographic data, high school grades and test result constitute much of the data used for building prediction models. This study demonstrates how data from a peer-assessment environment can be used to build student progress prediction models. The possibility for automating tasks, coupled with minimal teacher intervention, make peer-assessment an efficient platform for gathering student activity data in a continuous manner. The performances of the prediction models are comparable with those trained using other educational data. Considering the fact that the student performance data do not include any teacher assessments, the results are more than encouraging and shall convince the reader that peer-assessment has yet another advantage to offer in the realm of automated student progress monitoring and supervision.
Anemia, Micronutrient Deficiencies, and Malaria in Children and Women in Sierra Leone Prior to the Ebola Outbreak - Findings of a Cross-Sectional Study

To identify the factors associated with anemia and to document the severity of micronutrient deficiencies, malaria and inflammation, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey was conducted. A three-stage sampling procedure was used to randomly select children <5 years of age and adult women from households in two strata (urban and rural). Household and individual data were collected, and blood samples from children and women were used to measure the prevalence of malaria, inflammation, and deficiencies of iron, vitamin A, folate, and vitamin B12. 839 children and 945 non-pregnant women were included in the survey. In children, the prevalence rates of anemia (76.3%; 95% CI: 71.8, 80.4), malaria (52.6%; 95% CI: 46.0, 59.0), and acute and chronic inflammation (72.6%; 95% CI: 67.5, 77.1) were high. However, the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency (17.4%; 95% CI: 13.9, 21.6) was moderate, and the prevalence of iron deficiency (5.2%; 95% CI: 3.3, 8.1) and iron-deficiency anemia (3.8%; 95% CI: 2.5, 5.8) were low. Malaria and inflammation were associated with anemia, yet they explained only 25% of the population-attributable risk. In women, 44.8% (95% CI: 40.1, 49.5), 35.1% (95% CI: 30.1, 40.4), and 23.6% (95% CI: 20.4, 27.3) were affected by anemia, malaria, or inflammation, respectively. The prevalence rates of iron deficiency (8.3%; 95% CI: 6.2, 11.1), iron-deficiency anemia (6.1%; 95% CI: 4.4, 8.6), vitamin A deficiency (2.1%; 95% CI: 1.1, 3.1) and vitamin B12 deficiency (0.5%; 95% CI: 0.2, 1.4) were low, while folate deficiency was high (79.2%; 95% CI: 74.1, 83.5). Iron deficiency, malaria, and inflammation were significantly associated with anemia, but explained only 25% of cases of anemia. Anemia in children and women is a severe public health problem in Sierra Leone. Since malaria and inflammation only contributed to 25% of anemia, other causes of anemia, such as hemoglobinopathies, should also be explored.
A low phase noise 26-GHz push-push VCO with a wide tuning range in 0.18-μm CMOS technology

A 26-GHz low-phase-noise and wide- tuning-range fully integrated push-push VCO has been presented in this paper. This circuit is fabricated using 0.18-mum bulk CMOS technology. Only pMOS devices-based cross-coupled pair is used to reduce the phase noise, and the measured fundamental and push-push (second harmonic) phase noise at 1-MHz offset are about -108.1 dBc/Hz and -102.9 dBc/Hz, respectively. Moreover, the VCO achieves a wide tuning range of 14%. Maximum push-push output power is about -14 dBm, and the dc power consumption is 18.6 mW at 1.2-V power supply voltage.
Antipsychotic drugs in mania: factors predicting use of antipsychotic medication following inpatient treatment of mania

Inpatients treated for mania are frequently discharged on antipsychotics. There has been disagreement in clinical guidelines concerning their use, and there is little knowledge of the factors predicting this. The aim of the present study was to identify those factors predicting discharge on typical antipsychotic medication after hospital admission for mania. Data were collected retrospectively from the hospital notes of 74 patients who had 100 consecutive psychiatric hospital admissions for mania during the 1990s. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to estimate odds ratios. The rate of discharge on typical antipsychotics was 71.6% (53 out of the 74 episodes included in the analyses) (95% confidence interval 61.3–81.9). Three factors were found to predict this with odds ratios significant at the P<0.05 level: (i) use of typical antipsychotics during the first week of admission [odds ratio (OR)=13.3]; (ii) voluntary admission (OR=4.2); and (iii) male gender (OR=8.4). There was no evidence that psychotic symptoms or aggressive behaviour were associated. In conclusion, the use of antipsychotics early in the episode strongly predicted discharge on antipsychotics. It appears that clinicians use antipsychotics for their anti-manic effects and patients are often thought to still need the drugs at the time of discharge.
The Scope of Usage-Based Theory

Usage-based approaches typically draw on a relatively small set of cognitive processes, such as categorization, analogy, and chunking to explain language structure and function. The goal of this paper is to first review the extent to which the “cognitive commitment” of usage-based theory has had success in explaining empirical findings across domains, including language acquisition, processing, and typology. We then look at the overall strengths and weaknesses of usage-based theory and highlight where there are significant debates. Finally, we draw special attention to a set of culturally generated structural patterns that seem to lie beyond the explanation of core usage-based cognitive processes. In this context we draw a distinction between cognition permitting language structure vs. cognition entailing language structure. As well as addressing the need for greater clarity on the mechanisms of generalizations and the fundamental units of grammar, we suggest that integrating culturally generated structures within existing cognitive models of use will generate tighter predictions about how language works.
Tumour development, histology and grade of breast cancers: Prognosis and progression

Using 1,973 breast tumours from women aged 40–69 participating in the Swedish two‐county trial of mammographic screening for breast cancer, we examined the effect of histological type on prognosis and sojourn time (the duration of the preclinical screen‐detectable phase) by age. The hypothesis of dedifferentiation, according to which a cancer of mixed malignancy grade drifts towards grade 3 as the more poorly differentiated part of the tumour grows faster than the well‐differentiated part, was also assessed. Ductal carcinoma in situ, invasive ductal carcinoma of grade 1, mucinous carcinoma and tubular carcinoma were all associated with good survival. Ductal carcinoma of grade 3 was associated with poor survival. Ductal carcinoma of grade 2, lobular and medullary carcinoma were associated with intermediate survival. These patterns were much the same in women aged 40–49 as in women aged 50–69. In women aged 40–49, sojourn time was estimated at about 2 years regardless of histological type. For women aged 50–69, there was a marked association of sojourn time with histological type, the shortest sojourn time being observed for lobular (2 years) and medullary (1.2 years) carcinoma, and the longest for ductal carcinoma grade 1 (7.7 years) and tubular carcinoma (7.1 years). There was strong evidence of a potential to dedifferentiation. A mover‐stayer mixture of Markov chain models estimated that, in women aged 40–54, 91% of ductal tumours have the potential to dedifferentiate and, in women aged 55–69, 38% of ductal tumours have such a potential. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
In vitro susceptibility of Coxiella burnetii to antibiotics, including several quinolones

Antibiotic susceptibility testing of the rickettsial Q fever agent Coxiella burnetii was performed by using persistently infected L929 fibroblast cells. The efficacies of a variety of antibiotics with different metabolic targets were tested and compared. The most effective antibiotics in bringing about the elimination of the parasite from infected cells included several quinolone compounds and rifampin. Of the quinolone compounds tested, difloxacin (A-56619) was the most effective, followed by ciprofloxacin and oxolinic acid. These three quinolones were apparently rickettsiacidal. After 48 h of exposure to microgram amounts of the compounds (ranging from 2 micrograms of difloxacin per ml to 5 micrograms of the other two antibiotics per ml), the number of intracellular parasites markedly declined; after 10 days of treatment, very few intracellular rickettsiae were detected. Rifampin (1 microgram/ml) was also very effective in eliminating the parasites. Some of the 13 other antibiotics tested that were somewhat effective included chloramphenicol, doxycycline, and trimethoprim. The persistently infected L929 cells were found to provide a convenient system for the relatively rapid determination of the susceptibility of C. burnetii to antibiotics.
Term Weighting Schemes for Latent Dirichlet Allocation

Many implementations of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), including those described in Blei et al. (2003), rely at some point on the removal of stopwords, words which are assumed to contribute little to the meaning of the text. This step is considered necessary because otherwise high-frequency words tend to end up scattered across many of the latent topics without much rhyme or reason. We show, however, that the 'problem' of high-frequency words can be dealt with more elegantly, and in a way that to our knowledge has not been considered in LDA, through the use of appropriate weighting schemes comparable to those sometimes used in Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). Our proposed weighting methods not only make theoretical sense, but can also be shown to improve precision significantly on a non-trivial cross-language retrieval task.
Deformation and Related Slip Due to the 2011 Van Earthquake (Turkey) Sequence Imaged by SAR Data and Numerical Modeling

A Mw 7.1 earthquake struck the Eastern Anatolia, near the city of Van (Turkey), on 23 October 2011. We investigated the coseismic surface displacements using the InSAR technique, exploiting adjacent ENVISAT tracks and COSMO-SkyMed images. Multi aperture interferometry was also applied, measuring ground displacements in the azimuth direction. We solved for the fault geometry and mechanism, and we inverted the slip distribution employing a numerical forward model that includes the available regional structural data. Results show a horizontally elongated high slip area (7–9 m) at 12–17 km depth, while the upper part of the fault results unruptured, enhancing its seismogenic potential. We also investigated the post-seismic phase acquiring most of the available COSMO-SkyMed, ENVISAT and TERRASAR-X SAR images. The computed afterslip distributions show that the shallow section of the fault underwent considerable aseismic slip during the early days after the mainshock, of tens of centimeters. Our results support the hypothesis of a seismogenic potential reduction within the first 8–10 km of the fault through the energy release during the post-seismic phase. Despite non-optimal data coverage and coherence issues, we demonstrate that useful information about the Van earthquake could still be retrieved from SAR data through detailed analysis.
Section Ii-exercise Physiology & Sports Medicine Within-session Stability of Short-term Heart Rate Variability Measurement

The primary aim of this study was to assess the retest stability of the short-term heart rate variability (HRV) measurement performed within one session and without the use of any intervention. Additionally, a precise investigation of the possible impact of intrinsic biological variation on HRV reliability was also performed. First, a single test-retest HRV measurement was conducted with 20-30 min apart from one another. Second, the HRV measurement was repeated in ten non-interrupted consecutive intervals. The lowest typical error (CV = 21.1%) was found for the square root of the mean squared differences of successive RR intervals (rMSSD) and the highest for the low frequency power (PLF) (CV = 93.9%). The standardized changes in the mean were trivial to small. The correlation analysis revealed the highest level for ln rMSSD (ICC = 0.87), while ln PLF represented the worst case (ICC = 0.59). The reliability indices for ln rMSSD in 10 consecutive intervals improved (CV = 9.9%; trivial standardized changes in the mean; ICC = 0.96). In conclusion, major differences were found in the reliability level between the HRV indices. The rMSSD demonstrated the highest reliability level. No substantial influence of intrinsic biological variation on the HRV reliability was observed.
Associations among Mammographic Density, Circulating Sex Hormones, and Polymorphisms in Sex Hormone Metabolism Genes in Postmenopausal Women

Mammographic density and serum sex hormone levels are important risk factors for breast cancer, but their associations with one another are unclear. We studied these phenotypes, together with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in genes related to sex hormone metabolism, in a cross-sectional study of 1,413 postmenopausal women from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Norfolk. All women were >1 year postmenopausal and had not taken hormone replacement therapy for >3 months before sampling. Serum levels of 7 sex hormones [estradiol, testosterone, sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), androstenedione, 17-OH-progesterone, estrone, and estrone sulfate] and 15 SNPs in the CYP17, CYP19, EDH17B2, SHBG, COMT, and CYP1B1 genes were studied. Mammograms nearest in time to the blood sampling were identified through the national breast screening program and visually assessed by three radiologists using the Boyd six-category and Wolfe four-category scales. We found a weak positive association between mammographic density and SHBG levels (P = 0.09) but no association with any other hormones. None of the SNPs, including those shown previously to be associated with estradiol or SHBG, showed significant associations with density. We conclude that mammographic density is largely independent of postmenopausal steroid hormone levels, indicating that these risk factors have, to a large extent, an independent etiology and suggesting that they may be independent predictors of breast cancer risk. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(8):1502-08)
Uncovering the onshore life of king penguins via energy expenditures : understanding their physiological stress response and the biomechanics of their pedestrian locomotion

_________________________________________________________________________ Measuring energy expenditure using respirometery, heart rate and accelerometry can enable hitherto unknown aspects of a species’ energetic ecology to be uncovered. Due to the increased use of these methods, rigour is required to improve the accuracy of the results. As they can only feed in the sea, King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) need to manage their onshore energetic budget well. During fasting periods, which can last up to one month, heavy individuals need to walk several kilometres to reach their zone of attachment, where they incubate and take care of the egg 24 hours a day. They then need to have sufficient energy reserves to return to sea, swim to the polar front and efficiently fish for prey. Consequently, knowing the energy expenditure of king penguins while onshore is key for understanding their future survival. By investigating the onshore energy expenditure of king penguins, this thesis generates new insights not only into their physiological stress response and the biomechanics of pedestrian locomotion, but also into proxy-based methods of measuring energy expenditure. The cardio-respiratory stress response was defined for this species, with some surprising findings, and the energetic cost of the stress response was demonstrated. Implications for the confounding effect of stressed states on energy proxy calibrations were considered and a standard protocol to alleviate this issue in future studies of king penguin energetics is proposed. The biomechanics and energetics of the pedestrian locomotion were investigated to enhance the understanding of the mechanisms developed to optimise king penguin gait in relation to their body mass. Following investigation of differences in walking between heavy and light penguins, no conclusive explanations were established, though future investigations are suggested to enhance this learning. Finally, using the data collected throughout the thesis, the energy expenditure of early and late breeders was investigated, enabling a better understanding of their energy budgets which can be fed into conservation projects for king penguins. __________________________________________________________________________ Astrid S.T. WILLENER 3 __________________________________________________________________________
Impact of adherence to biological agents on health care resource utilization for patients over the age of 65 years with rheumatoid arthritis

Objective Poor adherence to therapy increases the patient and societal burden and complexity of chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In the past 15 years, biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) have revolutionized the treatment of RA. However, little data are available on the impact of adherence to biologics on health care resources. The objective of the study was to determine the long-term health care resource utilization patterns of RA patients who were adherent to biologic DMARD therapy compared to RA patients who were non-adherent to biologic DMARD therapy in an Ontario population and to determine factors influencing adherence. Methods Patients were identified from the Ontario RA Database that contains all RA patients in Ontario, Canada, identified since 1991. The study population included RA patients, aged 65+ years, with a prescription for a biologic DMARD between 2003 and 2013. Exclusion criteria included diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease, psoriatic arthritis or psoriasis in the 5 years prior to the index date and discontinuation of biologic DMARD, defined as no subsequent prescription during the 12 months after the index date. Adherence was defined as a medication possession ratio of ≥0.8 measured as the proportion of days for which a patient had biologic treatment(s) over a defined follow-up period. Adherent patients were matched to non-adherent patients by propensity score matching. Results A total of 4,666 RA patients were identified, of whom 2,749 were deemed adherent and 1,917 non-adherent. The age (standard deviation) was 69.9 (5.46) years and 75% were female. Relative rates for resource use (physician visits, emergency visits, hospitalization, home care and rehabilitation) for the matched cohort were significantly lower (P⩽0.0001) in adherent patients. Non-adherent patients’ use of oral prednisone (67%) was significantly higher (P⩽0.001) than that of the adherent cohort (56%). Conclusion RA patients adherent to biologic therapy have lower health care resource use and lower steroid use compared to non-adherent patients.