Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PROFILE OF PATIENTS WHO SEEK THE BARIATRIC SURGERY

Background : Nowadays obesity is a chronic disease considered one of the greatest problems in public healthy. Showing to be effective in a short and long term, the bariatric surgery has emerged as an optional treatment for morbid obesity. Aim: Identify the profile of patients seeking bariatric surgery. Methods: Were interviewed 100 patients in preoperative nutritional monitoring of bariatric surgery. The study was conducted by applying a questionnaire prepared according to the research objectives. Results: From the individuals that were seeking bariatric surgery, 78% were female, 62% were married and 69% reported physical activity. The average age of those surveyed was 37±10.83 years and mean body mass index (BMI) was 43.51± 6.25 kg/m². The comorbidity more prevalent in this group was high blood pressure (51%). In previous treatments for weight reduction, 92% have already done hypocaloric diet followed by anorectic drug (83%). The success of these treatments was reported by 92% of patients; however, the weight lost was recovered in less than one year of 75%. Patients with diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia had higher BMI values. The patients with comorbidities showed lower levels of BMI. Conclusion: The profile of patients who sought surgical treatment for their obesity were predominantly women with a family background of obesity and obesity-related comorbidities, especially hypertension and diabetes mellitus.
World-sheet duality for D-branes with travelling waves

We study D-branes with plane waves of arbitrary profiles as examples of time- dependent backgrounds in string theory. We show how to reproduce the quantum mechan- ical (one-to-one) open-string S-matrix starting from the closed-string boundary state for the D-branes, thereby establishing the channel duality of this calculation. The required Wick rotation to a Lorentzian worldsheet singles out as 'prefered' time coordinate the open-string light-cone time.
No-arbitrage conditions and absolutely continuous changes of measure

We study the stability of several no-arbitrage conditions with respect to absolutely continuous, but not necessarily equivalent, changes of measure. We first consider models based on continuous semimartingales and show that no-arbitrage conditions weaker than NA and NFLVR are always stable. Then, in the context of general semimartingale models, we show that an absolutely continuous change of measure does never introduce arbitrages of the first kind as long as the change of measure density process can reach zero only continuously.
Discrete Cosine Transform

The discrete cosine transform (DCT) is a Fourier-related transform similar to the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), but using only real numbers. It is equivalent to a DFT of roughly twice the length, operating on real data with even symmetry (since the Fourier transform of a real and even function is real and even), where in some variants the input and/or output data are shifted by half a sample. (There are eight standard variants, of which four are common.)
Emotion recognition ability across different modalities: The role of language status (L1/LX), proficiency and cultural background

Abstract This paper considers individual differences in the Emotion Recognition Ability (ERA) of 1368 participants in different modalities. The sample consisted of 557 first language (L1) and 881 foreign language (LX) users of English from all over the world. This study investigates four independent variables, namely modality of communication, language status (L1 versus LX), proficiency, and cultural background. The dependent variable is a score reflecting ERA. Participants were asked to identify an emotion (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust) portrayed by a native English-speaking actress in six short recordings – either audiovisual or audio-only – embedded in an online questionnaire. English proficiency was measured through a lexical recognition test. Statistical analyses revealed that participants were better able to recognise emotions when visual cues are available. Overall, there was no difference between L1 and LX users’ ERA. However, L1 users outperformed LX users when visual cues were not available, which suggest that LX users are able to reach L1-like ERA when they can rely on a sufficient amount of cues. Participants with higher proficiency scores had significantly higher ERA scores, particularly in the audio-only condition. Asian LX users were found to score significantly lower than other LX users.
Socio-Economic Status Of Parents And Its Effects On The Academic Performance Of Students Of Yamfo Anglican Senior High School In The Brong Ahafo Region Of Ghana

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of parents’ socio-economic status on the academic performance of Yamfo Anglican Senior High School Students in the Tano North District of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. In order to have an adequate representation of the population of the study, eighty (80) students were selected from the second year class using a simple random sampling technique. The total population of second year class was 213 students. The study was a survey type and therefore a self-designed questionnaire was adopted to collect data. The data was therefore analysed via simple frequencies, tables and percentages. The socio-economic status of parents for this study was denoted by parents’ educational level, parents’ occupational level, parents’ income level and parental care. The findings of the study were that, parents’ educational level, parents’ occupational level, parents’ income level and parental care have an effect on the academic performance of students of Yamfo Senior High School. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that unemployment should be controlled. Also, needy but brilliant students should be provided with scholarships, free textbooks and stationery. In addition, government should take steps to raise the socio-economic status of its citizenry.
The Role of Social Infrastructure in Achieving Inclusive Liveable Communities: Voices from Regional Australia

ABSTRACT What makes liveable communities inclusive is an important question for planning research, policy and practice, yet one that has not received significant attention. This article explores this question through the lived experiences of two spatially marginalised groups – people with disabilities and seniors. Using the photovoice technique, the findings visually and textually demonstrate the importance of universally accessible social infrastructure in enabling inclusion and active participation in a community in regional Australia. The findings suggest that inclusion should be a central focus of liveability, along with co-design processes with people experiencing spatial marginalisation to achieve inclusive liveable communities.
Shifting Sands in Second Language Pronunciation Teaching and Assessment Research and Practice

ABSTRACT This article brings to the fore trends in second language (L2) pronunciation research, teaching, and assessment by highlighting the ways in which pronunciation instructional priorities and assessment targets have shifted over time, social dimensions that, although presented in a different guise, appear to have remained static, and principles in need of clearer conceptualization. The reorientation of the pedagogical goal in pronunciation teaching from the traditional focus on accent reduction to the more suitable goal of intelligibility will feed into a discussion of major constructs subsumed under the umbrella term of “pronunciation. ” We discuss theoretical gaps, definitional quagmires, and challenges in operationalizing major constructs in assessment instruments, with an emphasis on research findings on which pronunciation features are most consequential for intelligibility and implications for instructional priorities and assessment targets. Considerations related to social judgments of pronunciation, accent familiarity effects, the growth of lingua franca communication, and technological advances, including machine scoring of pronunciation, pervade the discussion, bridging past and present. Recommendations for advancing an ambitious research agenda are proposed to disassociate pronunciation assessment from the neglect of the past, secure its presence as an integral part of the L2 speaking construct, and propel it to the forefront of developments in assessment.
Laterality Effect for Faces in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Face perception in humans is governed more by right-hemispheric than left-hemispheric neural correlate. Some but not all neurophysiological studies depict a right-side dominance for face responsive neurons in the brains of macaques. Hence, it is an open question whether and to what extent a right-hemisphere preference of processing faces exists across primate brains. We investigated chimpanzees discriminating chimeric faces of chimpanzees and humans, i.e., the combination of either left or right sides of a face vertically flipped and merged into a whole face. We found an effect of choosing the left-chimeric face more often than the right-chimeric face as being the one of the two that is closer to the original face, reflecting an advantage for the right side of the brain to process faces, as reported in humans. Moreover, we found a modulation by age of the participants, suggesting that the exposure history with a particular category shapes the right-hemispheric neural correlate to a configural/holistic processing strategy. In other words, the findings in chimpanzee participants parallel those in human participants and are suggestive for similar neural machineries in the occipital-temporal cortices in both species.
Perceived Stigma and Self-Stigma in College Students: A Literature Review and Implications for Practice and Research

Abstract Perceived and self-adopted forms of stigma are omnipresent. Although stigma is often discussed alongside mental illness, constructs such as race, ethnicity, and sexuality can also cause individuals to adopt feelings of stigma within themselves. The literature has called for further inquiry examining the effects of perceived and self-stigmas among different populations. In response, this literature review examines the influence of perceived and self-stigmas on college student populations. Overall, perceived and self-stigmas have the potential to negatively affect students’ psychological well-being, willingness to seek treatment, cocurricular experiences, and academic performance. Implications for future research are presented based on the review’s findings.
Health-Related Quality of Life of Young Addict Women in Mashhad, IR Iran

Background Quality of life (QoL) stands for to the general well-being of the populations in the societies. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of living, which is based primarily on income. Instead, standard indicators of the QOL include not only wealth and employment, but also built environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time and social belonging. Objectives This study attempted to evaluate the QoL of the young addicted women compared to non-addict controls. Materials and Methods This case-control study was conducted on young addict women aged between 16-25 years old using with BREF-WHOQOL questionnaire. The subgroups included vulnerable addicts, non-vulnerable addicts and healthy controls. Results The findings of the current study demonstrated that drug abuse led to reduce health-related QoL in all aspects of health compared with control group. Conclusions Health-related QoL was lower in all aspects of health compared with control group.
Separation of Polyphenolics and Sugar by Ultrafiltration: Effects of Operating Conditions on Fouling and Diafiltration

Abstract — Polyphenolics and sugar are the components of many fruit juices. In this work, the performance of ultra-filtration (UF) for separating phenolic compounds from apple juice was studied by performing batch experiments in a membrane module with an area of 0.1 m 2 and fitted with a regenerated cellulose membrane of 1 kDa MWCO. The effects of various operating conditions: transmembrane pressure (3, 4, 5 bar), temperature (30, 35, 40 oC), pH (2, 3, 4, 5), feed concentration (3, 5, 7, 10, 15 0 Brix for apple juice) and feed flow rate (1, 1.5, 1.8 L/min) on the performance were determined. The optimum operating conditions were: transmembrane pressure 4 bar, temperature 30 oC, feed flow rate 1 – 1.8 L/min, pH 3 and 10 Brix (apple juice). After performing ultrafiltration under these conditions, the concentration of polyphenolics in retentate was increased by a factor of up to 2.7 with up to 70% recovered in the permeate and with approx. 20% of the sugar in that stream. Application of diafiltration (addition of water to the concentrate) can regain the flux by a factor of 1.5, which has been decreased due to fouling. The material balance performed on the process has shown the amount of deposits on the membrane and the extent of fouling in the system. In conclusion, ultrafiltration has been demonstrated as a potential technology to separate the polyphenolics and sugars from their mixtures and can be applied to remove sugars from fruit juice.
Volatile Multi-Armed Bandits for Guaranteed Targeted Social Crawling

We introduce a new variant of the multi-armed bandit problem, called Volatile Multi-Arm Bandit (VMAB). A general policy for VMAB is given with proven regret bounds. The problem of collecting intelligence on profiles in social networks is then modeled as a VMAB and experimental results show the superiority of our proposed policy.
Supporting First-Generation Students’ Adjustment to College With High-Impact Practices

This qualitative case study describes some of the issues faced by incoming first-generation college students at a private, 4-year institution in the northwest. Using constructs drawn from social cognitive theory and social cognitive career theory, it explores how high-impact practices such as learning communities, writing-intensive courses, and ePortfolios might impact first-generation students’ adjustment during their first year of college. The findings of the research on students’ writing in their first-year composition course suggest that the cumulative impact of engaging in multiple high-impact practices improves students’ literacy and study skills. In addition, these educational practices appear to increase students’ self-appraisal of their academic abilities in general and their institutional commitment. As a consequence of their increased self-efficacy and engagement, this study suggests that students are more likely to experience better academic outcomes, leading them to persist in their studies and be retained after their first year at college.
The association of prolonged breastfeeding and allergic disease in poor urban children

The fact that breastfeeding may protect against allergic disease remains controversial, with hardly any reports from developing countries. This study investigated the association between allergic disease in children and prolonged breastfeeding. Data were collected from a 15% random sample of households from two poor suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa. Parents completed a validated International Study on Asthma and Allergies in Childhood questionnaire on allergic diseases for children aged 6–14 yrs. Other questions included breastfeeding duration, maternal smoking and parental allergy. Results were adjusted for possible confounders and for possible clustering within the household. Out of the 861 children included in the study, allergic disease in general, and hay fever in particular, were significantly less frequent in those with prolonged (≥6 months) breastfeeding. There was a significant linear inverse association between breastfeeding duration and allergic disease in children without allergic parents, but not in children with an allergic predisposition. In conclusion, these results from a developing country suggest a protective effect of prolonged breastfeeding on the development of allergic disease, particularly hay fever, in children born to nonallergic parents. This protective effect was not found in children with an allergic predisposition.
Topographic organization of the reciprocal connections between the monkey entorhinal cortex and the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices

The perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices constitute the major sources of cortical input to the monkey entorhinal cortex. Neuropsychological studies have shown that these three cortical regions contribute in an important way to normal memory function. We have investigated the topographic and laminar organization of the reciprocal projections between the entorhinal cortex and these two adjacent cortical areas by placing anterograde and retrograde tracers in all three regions. There were three major findings. First, the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices have distinct but partially overlapping interconnections with the entorhinal cortex. The perirhinal cortex tends to be interconnected with the rostral two-thirds of the entorhinal cortex while the parahippocampal cortex tends to be interconnected with approximately the caudal two-thirds of the entorhinal cortex. Second, the degree of reciprocity of the interconnections of the entorhinal cortex with the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices differs. The parahippocampal/entorhinal connections have a high degree of reciprocity. In contrast, the degree of reciprocity of the perirhinal/entorhinal interconnections varies depending on the mediolateral position within the perirhinal cortex; medial portions of the perirhinal cortex exhibit a higher degree of reciprocity with the entorhinal cortex than lateral portions. Third, the projections from the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices to the entorhinal cortex resemble a feedforward projection, while the projections from the entorhinal cortex to the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices resemble a feedback projection pattern.
Galileo Observations of Europa's Opposition Effect

Abstract During Galileo's G7 orbit, the Solid State Imaging (SSI) camera acquired pictures of the spacecraft shadow point on Europa's surface as well as a comparison set of images showing the same geographic region at phase angle α = 5°. Coverage, obtained at three spectral bandpasses (VLT, 0.41 μm, GRN, 0.56 μm; and 1MC, 0.99 μm) at a spatial resolution of 404 m/pixel, shows a 162 × 220-km region of Europa's surface located at 30°N, 162°W. We have used these images to measure the near-opposition spectrophotometric behavior of four primary europan terrain materials: IR-bright icy material, IR-dark icy material, dark lineament material, and dark spot material. The high spatial resolution of the G7 images reveal low-albedo materials in dark spots that are among the darkest features (17% albedo at 0.56 μm and 5° phase) yet found on icy Galilean satellites. While material of comparable albedo is found on Ganymede and Callisto, low-albedo europan materials are much redder. All europan surface materials exhibit an opposition effect; however, the strength of the effect, as measured by the total increase in reflectance as phase angle decreases from α = 5° to α = 0°, varies among terrains. The opposition effects of IR-bright icy and IR-dark icy materials which dominate Europa's surface are about 1.5 times larger than predicted from pre-Galileo studies. Low-albedo materials in dark spots exhibit unusually intense opposition effects (up to four times larger than bright icy europan terrains), consistent with the presence of a strong shadow-hiding opposition surge. The strengths of the opposition surges among average europan terrains systematically vary with terrain albedo and can be explained in terms of the simultaneous contributions of shadow-hiding and coherent-backscatter to the total opposition effect. Coherent backscatter introduces a narrow angular contribution (
Actions of cholinergic pharmacological agents on the cell body membrane of the fast coxal depressor motoneurone of the cockroach (Periplaneta americana)

The pharmacological properties of cholinergic receptors on the cell body membrane of the fast coxal depressor motoneurone (D f ) of the cockroach ( Periplaneta americana ) have been investigated. Parallel dose-response curves were obtained for the depolarizing actions of four bath-applied agonists, with the following order of effectiveness: nicotine>acetylcholine (ACh), in the presence of 1.0×10 −7 M neostigmine>carbamylcholine>tetramethylammonium. By contrast, dimethyl-4-phenyl piperazinium, suberyldicholine, D,L-muscarine, oxotremorine, acetyl-β-methylcholine and sebacinylcholine were practically ineffective. Of the three putative receptor-specific ligands used to date in binding studies on insect CNS tissues, α-bungarotoxin (α-BGTX) was much more effective (I 50 = 6.4×10 −8 M) in blocking the depolarization resulting from ionophoretic application of ACh, than either quinuclidinyl benzilate (QNB) (I 50 = 1.6×10 −4 M) or decamethonium (I 50 × 2.8×10 −3 M). The order of effectiveness of ligands that were particularly effective in blocking ACh depolarization was α-BGTX>α-cobratoxin (α-COTX)>mecamylamine>dihydro-)β-erythroidine>benzoquinonium. Less potent and almost equally effective were atropine, d -tubocurarine, pancuronium and quinuclidinyl benzilate. Even less effective were hexamethonium, gallamine, decamethonium and succinylcholine, all requiring concentrations of 1.0×10 −3 M and higher to produce a significant block of the ACh response. Not all reversibly acting antagonists were equally effective in preventing irreversible block of the ACh-induced depolarization by α-BGTX. Whereas α-COTX protected the receptors, mecamylamine did not. With the cell body of D f voltage-clamped, the degree of antagonism of the ACh-induced current was assessed at potentials in the range −120 mV to −60 mV. α-BGTX, dihydro-β-erythroidine, benzoquinonium, QNB and decamethonium appeared to be voltage-independent over this potential range, whereas d -tubocurarine and atropine were strongly voltage-dependent in their blocking actions. Sites of action of cholinergic antagonists at the insect ACh receptor/ion channel complex are discussed.
The Envelope Cytoplasmic Tail of HIV-1 Subtype C Contributes to Poor Replication Capacity through Low Viral Infectivity and Cell-to-Cell Transmission

The cytoplasmic tail (gp41CT) of the HIV-1 envelope (Env) mediates Env incorporation into virions and regulates Env intracellular trafficking. Little is known about the functional impact of variability in this domain. To address this issue, we compared the replication of recombinant virus pairs carrying the full Env (Env viruses) or the Env ectodomain fused to the gp41CT of NL4.3 (EnvEC viruses) (12 subtype C and 10 subtype B pairs) in primary CD4+ T-cells and monocyte-derived-macrophages (MDMs). In CD4+ T-cells, replication was as follows: B-EnvEC = B-Env>C-EnvEC>C-Env, indicating that the gp41CT of subtype C contributes to the low replicative capacity of this subtype. In MDMs, in contrast, replication capacity was comparable for all viruses regardless of subtype and of gp41CT. In CD4+ T-cells, viral entry, viral release and viral gene expression were similar. However, infectivity of free virions and cell-to-cell transmission of C-Env viruses released by CD4+ T-cells was lower, suggestive of lower Env incorporation into virions. Subtype C matrix only minimally rescued viral replication and failed to restore infectivity of free viruses and cell-to-cell transmission. Taken together, these results show that polymorphisms in the gp41CT contribute to viral replication capacity and suggest that the number of Env spikes per virion may vary across subtypes. These findings should be taken into consideration in the design of vaccines.