Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sustainable Sanitation for All: Experiences, challenges and innovations

Sustainability is currently one of the key challenges in Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and wider water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practice, subsuming issues such as behaviour change, equity and inclusion, physical sustainability and sanitation marketing, monitoring and verification, engagement of governments, NGOs and donors, particularly after open defecation free (ODF) status is reached. Achievement of ODF status is now recognized as only the first stage in a long process of change and sanitation improvement, with new challenges emerging every step of the way, such as how to stimulate progress up the sanitation ladder, how to ensure the poorest and marginalized are reached, or how to maintain and embed behaviour change. This chapter outlines the rationale and central themes of the book, highlighting key issues raised, the dimensions of sustainability that are addressed, and proposes ways forward if we are to achieve the ambitious aim of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of universal access to improved sanitation by 2030.
The diffusion of management accounting systems in manufacturing companies: an empirical analysis of Italian firms

Purpose – To analyze the diffusion of management accounting tools in Italian manufacturing firms and the impact of contingency factors with a particular focus on internationalization. Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a qualitative statistical analysis and two quantitative data analyses focusing on the effects of contingency factors. In particular, 274 questionnaires were analyzed. A questionnaire-based e-mail survey was used to collect data. Findings – The results confirm positive relationships between management accounting systems and traditional contingency factors such as company size, organizational structure, and operational complexity. In addition, a positive correlation was found between the internationalization and implementation of activity-based costing and target costing. Research limitations/implications – In the context of internationalization, this exploratory study considers only the impact of foreign customers. Further research could include other factors such as foreign suppliers, joint ventures, and technological exchanges. Originality/value of paper – This paper contributes to the analysis of the impact of internationalization, a contingency variable not yet fully investigated in management accounting system research.
▪ Update on Chemonucleolysis

&NA; A review of the world medical literature on chemonucleolysis with an emphasis on recent studies, metaanalyses, and the history of the procedure in North America from a regulatory, social, and medicolegal perspective was performed to determine the current status of chemonucleolysis in the management of disc displacement. The world literature supports the use of chymopapain for chemonucleolysis as a safe and effective alternative to surgical disc excision. The efficacy of chymopapain has been shown by prospective, randomized, placebo‐controlled, double‐blind trials with a minimum 10‐year follow‐up period. The safety of chymopapain injection compared with surgery has been demonstrated in meta‐analyses and in extensive postmarketing surveillance in the United States and Europe. Clinical studies with collagenase and laboratory studies with chondroitinase ABC have shown that chemonucleolysis can be performed with enzymes other than chymopapain. Clinical trials have been performed with collagenase for chemonucleolysis, but all of the results have not been published. Preclinical research with chondroitinase ABC has demonstrated its usefulness for chemonucleolysis in the animal model, but human trials have not begun.
VLSI hardware evaluation of the stream ciphers Salsa20 and ChaCha, and the compression function Rumba

Salsa20 is a stream cipher candidate in the software-oriented profile of the eSTREAM project. ChaCha is a successor stream cipher with improved per round diffusion and, conjecturally, increased resistance to cryptanalysis. Based on the combination of four Salsa20 instances, Rumba is a compression function for hashing schemes. This paper presents the evaluation of five VLSI circuits for Salsa20. Synthesis results for a 0.18 mum CMOS technology point out that the fastest implementation achieves a throughput of 6.4Gbps, while the smallest design requires only an area of 10 k gate equivalents (GE) at 16 Mbps. This work also presents the first hardware implementations of ChaCha and Rumba. The fastest ChaCha design achieves 6.8 Gbps and the smallest design requires an area of 9.1 kGE at 16 Mbps. Furthermore, two Rumba implementations are able to achieve 17.9 Gbps or a compact area of 16.8 kGE at 12 Mbps.
Magnetic resonance imaging—its application to cervical carcinoma

Summary. Twenty‐five women with primary carcinoma of the cervix were examined with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A number of different pulse sequences with T1 and T2 weighting were employed to determine optimum tissue contrast, and the potential for staging cervical cancer was assessed and compared with the clinical findings. MRI is seen to give a unique view of cervical cancer in particular in stage I and II disease where other imaging techniques have known limitations. In addition, stages III and IV were well seen with demonstration of tumour comparable with that of computerized axial tomography (CT).
Improved Empirical Parametrization of Fragmentation Cross Sections

A new version is proposed for the universal empirical formula, EPAX, which describes fragmentation cross sections in high-energy heavy-ion reactions. The new version, EPAX 3, can be shown to yield cross sections that are in better agreement with experimental data for the most neutron-rich fragments than the previous version. At the same time, the very good agreement of EPAX 2 with data on the neutron-deficient side has been largely maintained. Comparison with measured cross sections show that the bulk of the data is reproduced within a factor of about 2, for cross sections down to the pico-barn range.
LMI-based online estimation of a time-varying time-delay in continuous glucose measurement devices

We propose an online method to estimate the time-dependent time-delay of continuous glucose measurement devices. The problem is characterized by one delayed signal which is sampled continuously, and a reference signal which is only available for measurement at (few) irregular time samples. The method makes use of a forgetting function to be able to quickly adapt to changes in the time-delay. A simulation example and the application to blood glucose concentration data obtained from type 1 diabetic subjects, where it is of interest to estimate the time-delay of the continuous glucose measurement device, show the usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed method.
An Empirical Study on Capital Structure and Corporate Performance of Chinese Listed Companies

The relationship between level of debt and the company's performance remains an important unsolved issue in the field of financing. It is very important to know how China's listed companies manage their capital towards business growth. This paper investigates the impact of the capital structure on corporate performance of a sample of 711 listed companies on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China in 2014. The results indicates that there is a positive relation between financial leverage and corporate performance as well as there is a positive impact that the mixture of long-term debt and short-term debt (using total debt). This would help decision maker in the companies to finance firms operation in the both periods. On the other hand, the short term debt has a negative relation and impact on corporate performance compared to the changing in firm size which cannot change in the profitability of firms.
Comparison Neglect in Upgrade Decisions

To properly evaluate a potential product upgrade, consumers should compare the upgraded option with the product they already own to assess the upgrade's added utility. However, although consumers explicitly and spontaneously acknowledge the importance of comparing the upgrade with the status quo, the authors find that they often fail to do so. Consequently, consumers frequently buy product upgrades that they would not have bought had they followed their own advice. Five experiments, involving both real and hypothetical upgrade decisions, show that even when the status quo option is represented in the decision context, if consumers are not explicitly prompted to reflect on it or compare it with the upgraded option, they often do not compare it with the upgrade and thus show an elevated likelihood of upgrading. The experiments suggest that this “comparison neglect” increases upgrade likelihood by making people overlook the similarities between the upgraded and status quo options and that it persists even when deliberation effort is high. The findings have important implications for theory, marketing practice, and consumer welfare.
Mononuclear phagocytes migrate into the murine cochlea after acoustic trauma

Acoustic injury results in destruction of hair cells and numerous nonsensory cells of the cochlea. How these injured structures undergo repair is not well understood. This study was designed to examine the cochlea for the presence of mononuclear phagocytes after tissue injury caused by noise damage. We used octave band noise (8–16 kHz) at three levels (106, 112, and 120 dB) for 2 hours and studied the mice at 1, 3, 7, and 14 days after noise exposure to determine how noise affected hearing thresholds, hair cell number, and tissue injury in the cochlea. Furthermore, we assessed the cochlea for presence of inflammation by performing immunohistochemistry for CD45, common leukocyte antigen. We counted the number of CD45+ cells that were present in the cochlea at the above‐mentioned time points after noise. CD45 is present on all bone marrow‐derived white blood cells and is not otherwise expressed in the inner ear. We found that, after noise exposure, there is a large increase in CD45+ cells. These marrow‐derived cells are concentrated in the spiral ligament and spiral limbus, areas that are known to be susceptible to acoustic injury. It is possible that this inflammatory response plays a role in propagating cellular damage in these areas. Immunohistochemistry demonstrates that these cochlear cells are derived from the monocyte/macrophage lineage and serve a phagocytic function in the inner ear. J. Comp. Neurol. 489:180–194, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An intervention program for university students who have parents with alcohol problems: a randomized controlled trial.

AIM To study the effects of alcohol and coping intervention among University students who have parents with alcohol problems. METHODS A total of 82 university students (56 women and 22 men, average age 25) with at least one parent with alcohol problems were included. The students were randomly assigned to one of three programs: (i) alcohol intervention program, (ii) coping intervention program, and (iii) combination program. All programs were manual based and individually implemented during two 2-h sessions, 4 weeks apart. This assessment contained both a face-to-face interview and six self-completion questionnaires; AUDIT, SIP, EBAC, coping with parents' abuse questionnaire, SCL-90 and ISSI. Follow-up interviews were conducted after 1 year. RESULTS All participants finished the baseline assessment, accepted and completed the intervention, while 95% of the students completed the 12-month follow-up assessment. The two groups that received alcohol intervention improved their drinking pattern significantly more than the group that did not receive alcohol intervention [change of standardized scores -0.27 (CI -0.53 to -0.03)]. The groups receiving coping intervention did not differ from the group not receiving coping intervention concerning their ability to cope with their parents' alcohol problems. Nor did they differ regarding changes in their own mental health or in their social interaction capacity. CONCLUSION The intervention improved drinking patterns in adult children of alcoholics.
Predicting Psychological Distress Among Former Soviet Immigrants

This study investigated whether age, gender, marital status, education, employ ment, length of time in the U.S. and immigration demands (novelty, occupation, language, discrimination, loss, and not feeling at home) were predictors of psychological distress in a sample of 1,647 former Soviet immigrants. Multiple regression analysis indicated that the combined model of demographic and demand of immigration variables was significant. Results indicated that women, older immigrants, those with less than a college education, and those with greater immigration demands related to novelty, language, discrimination, loss, and not feeling at home were most distressed.
Social Interaction and Price Transmission in Multi-Tier Food Supply Chains

This research focuses on social interaction associated with price transmission in a multi-tier rice supply chain. A case study and qualitative methods are employed to examine a well-established supply network in Karawang District in Indonesia. Farmers and traders used their existing network in selling rice crops to traders and adopted a payment scheme for cash-and-carry transactions. Information on the market situation was obtained through personal interviews and observations including text messaging with farmer and trader informants. Evidence reveals that social relationships are vital in transmitting price information among networked actors to maintain the flow of rice, mitigate risk, and avoid losses due to poor quality of the rice product. Findings show that social interaction enables actors in an end-to-end rice supply chain to deal with the assurance of supply rationing.
Rapid D-Dimer Assays to Exclude Deep Venous Thrombosis and Pulmonary Embolism: Current Status and New Developments

Studies measuring the fibrin degradation product D-Dimer (DD) using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) in patients suspected of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) or pulmonary embolism (PE) suggest that it is possible to exclude DVT/PE when the DD level is below a certain cut-off value. However, ELISA methods are time-consuming, bare high costs, and are only available in experienced laboratories. For this reason several rapid and less costly DD assays have been recently developed. This article reviews the current literature about rapid latex and ELISA DD assays in the diagnostic approach of DVT and PE. Two new latex assays seem suitable in clinical practice. The most extensively studied assay is the so-called SimpliRed DD, an autologous red cell agglutination test that can be performed on fresh whole blood. For DVT a sensitivity (Sens) and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 89-100% and 95-100%, respectively, have been reported, for PE 94-100% and 98-100%, respectively. The second test, Tinaquant, is a quantitative latex assay. Sens and NPV for DVT of 99% and 93% have been reported in one study. Two rapid ELISA assays have been investigated. The most extensively studied is the VIDAS DD assay, a fully automated quantitative ELISA method. Sens and NPV of 94-100% and 92-100% for DVT and both 100% for PE have been reported. For the other rapid ELISA, Instant IA DD, Sens and NPV of 92-93% and 76-77% have been reported for DVT. The last one is a qualitative assay giving only positive or negative results. These results show that low concentrations of plasma DD measured by especially SimpliRed or VIDAS DD, might be used to reliably rule out DVT or PE in clinically suspected patients. Tinaquant seems promising and has to be evaluated further. As for standard ELISA, increased DD concentrations are of no use because of the low specificity of the assays. Future studies should assess the clinical usefulness of both assays in management trials under routine conditions, in the frame of clinical decision-making diagnostic processes to prove that withholding further noninvasive testing and/or anticoagulants in patients with a low or negative DD is safe. Strategies to identify patients with false-negative results should be developed.
Adoption of Food Safety Measures among Nepalese Milk Producers: Do Smallholders Benefit?

Food safety is the most vital component of food security. One option to ensure food safety is through enhancing compliance at the farm level. This study investigates the status, estimates the cost, identifies the determinants, and assesses the impact of compliance with food safety measures in milk production in Nepal. The study is based on cross-section primary data collected at the farm level from six districts of Nepal. These districts are known for milk production and capture the geographical and institutional diversity of milk production in the country. The study shows that the status of compliance with food safety measures at the dairy farm level is not very encouraging. The intensity with which food safety practices are adopted shows wide inter- and intra-district variations. This intensity depicts a positive relationship to herd size. The additional cost of compliance with food milk safety measures reveals an inverse relationship with herd size. The factors associated with the adoption of food safety measures are caste, number of children and elderly people in a family, household labor size, herd size, access to information, inspection for conformity with the safety and quality standards in dairy farming, perception of households about food safety assistance provided by milk buyers, and market outlet types. We also provide evidence of the impact of food safety measures on farm-gate prices and farmers’ profitability.
Use of alcohol and illicit drugs among pregnant Danish women, 1998

Aims: In 1999 the Danish National Board of Health adjusted its recommendation concerning alcohol in pregnancy: ``Avoid alcohol in pregnancy if possible; If you drink, drink no more than 1 drink per day; do not drink every day''. In this paper frequency and pattern of alcohol consumption and the use of illicit drugs during early pregnancy among pregnant Danish women are described. Methods: From October to December 1998, 432 Danish-speaking pregnant women referred to the Midwife Centre in Aarhus, Denmark, for routine antenatal care were interviewed at their first visit at 15—16 weeks of gestation. The women were interviewed about average alcohol intake before pregnancy, binge drinking (intake of ≥5 drinks on a single occasion), and the use of illicit drugs in pregnancy. They subsequently filled in a two week diary on current alcohol intake. Results: Nearly 90% of the women reduced their alcohol intake when they became pregnant. A total of 92% of women reported a maximum intake of three drinks/week, and only 1% exceeded the recommendations of average alcohol intake of six drinks/week. Nevertheless, 25% exceeded the recommended maximum daily intake of one drink in the second trimester, and 40% of the women reported at least one binge episode since conception. Binge drinkers tended to be smokers and primiparous women. Conclusions: Consumption peaks were a major problem in the first and second trimester. Midwives and doctors should pay special attention to binge drinking when inquiring about alcohol consumption and providing information on alcohol to pregnant women.
Assessment of Critical Success Factors Transformation in ERP Projects

The high value of ERP projects for business, as well as the high risks associated with these projects implementation, requires studying the success drivers of ERP projects and developing a methodology to assess potential transformation of success factors into risk factors in a phased project diagnosis on different life cycle stages. The paper defines and systematizes the key factors, which influence the results of ERP system implementation. The main approaches used are as follows: logical modeling, statistical techniques, heuristic techniques, such as questionnaires, interviews of representative groups of IT project managers, human resource managers, heads of technical and business units, that allowed to authors prove the most important critical success factors relating to human resources management. Research of the 22 autonomous critical factors grouped by key players and activities; the authors defined two independent criteria that determine the nature of critical factors effects on project results and present a methodology to assess the potential human-related (“soft”) critical success factors of ERP projects and their transformation into factors of risk. The results could be of use to business executives, business consultants, managers and professionals, providing them with an effective tool to identify and eliminate causes that threaten the project success.
Tagged Deterministic Finite Automata with Lookahead

This paper extends the work of Laurikari and Kuklewicz on tagged deterministic finite automata (TDFA) in the context of submatch extraction in regular expressions. The main goal of this work is application of TDFA to lexer generators that optimize for speed of the generated code. I suggest a number of practical improvements to Laurikari algorithm; notably, the use of one-symbol lookahead, which results in significant reduction of tag variables and operations on them. Experimental results confirm that lookahead-aware TDFA are considerably faster and usually smaller than baseline TDFA; and they are reasonably close in speed and size to ordinary DFA used for recognition of regular languages. The proposed algorithm can handle repeated submatch and therefore is applicable to full parsing. Furthermore, I examine the problem of disambiguation in the case of leftmost greedy and POSIX policies. I formalize POSIX disambiguation algorithm suggested by Kuklewicz and show that the resulting TDFA are as efficient as Laurikari TDFA or TDFA that use leftmost greedy disambiguation. All discussed algorithms are implemented in the open source lexer generator RE2C.
Bothersome urinary symptoms and disease-specific quality of life in patients with benign prostatic obstruction

Objectives. Firstly, to describe self-reported urinary symptoms and bothersomeness, including disease-specific quality of life (QOL), in patients with symptomatic benign prostatic obstruction (BPO) before and 6 months after intervention. Secondly, to identify factors which predict disease-specific QOL. Thirdly, to develop and test the reliability of an instrument to evaluate incontinence, the Linköping Incontinence Questionnaire (LIQ). Finally, to translate and test the reliability of Swedish versions of the International Prostate Symptom Score, including the bother question, the American Urological Association Symptom Problem Index (SPI) and the Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia Impact Index. Material and methods. Disease-specific QOL was studied in 572/720 consecutively treated patients using structured questionnaires. The reliability of the instruments was tested in 122 patients with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) or BPO. Results. The frequency and weak stream items of the SPI were among those that best explained the patients’ disease-specific QOL both before and after intervention. Before and after intervention the prevalence of urinary incontinence, assessed using the LIQ instrument, was 46% and 16%, respectively. Symptoms and disease-specific QOL improved most in the surgery group, intermediately in the transurethral incision of the prostate/transurethral microwave thermotherapy group and least in the drug therapy group. Conclusions. The frequency and weak stream items of the SPI were the factors that best explained disease-specific QOL. The prevalence of incontinence before and after intervention was higher than that previously reported.