Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF COUNTY GOVERNMENTS' ROLE IN FINANCING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION PROGRAMMES: THE CASE OF NAROK COUNTY, KENYA

This paper intends to critically analyze the role of the county governments' role in financing pre-schools in the counties with a special reference to Narok County. The world bank ECDE project (1997-2003)strengthened the ECDE program through the construction of conference facilities of NACECE, the staffing, equipping and capacity building of DICECE, expansion of training opportunities for pre-school teachers and university students and strengthening community involvement and engagement. Through the Kenya Education Sector Support Program-KESSP(2005-2010), ECDE has benefited through the community support grant and the ECDE capitation grant that have played a strong pillar in strengthening ECDE. The role of financing education has always been a partnership between the governments, parents and communities. This has been the case even before the cost sharing policy (Kamunge,1988)came into force. The government continued to pay the salaries of teachers and education administrators and also fund some limited school facilities in line with the cost sharing policy. The parents' role was that of paying for private tuition, textbooks, materials and examinations. The community's role is to provide land for building the schools, put up physical facilities and ensure maintenance of the same. With the promulgation of the new constitution in Kenya in 2010,early childhood development and education was devolved from the central government to the county government as stipulated in the fourth schedule on the distribution of functions in the constitution. It is therefore necessary that a review of the role of county governments in financing ECDE centers be critically analyzed. This is with a view of examining the strategies put in place by the counties to support ECDE centers in Kenya. This paper reviews the Narok County government's plan to finance ECDE Centers.
Adapting Webster-Stratton's incredible years parent training for children with developmental delay: findings from a treatment group only study.

BACKGROUND Children with intellectual or developmental disabilities (ID/DD) are more likely than typically developing children to experience behaviour problems. Parent training, such as the Incredible Years Parent Training (IYPT) series, has been a widely used intervention to support families with children with or at-risk for behaviour problems; yet to date, this programme has not been used with parents with young children with developmental delay or disabilities. METHOD This preliminary treatment group only study assessed the feasibility of implementing a modified parent training programme (IYPT-DD) with 25 families with 2-5-year-old children with developmental delay. Intervention consisted of 12 weekly (2.5 h) sessions with topics covering developmentally appropriate play, praise, rewards, limit setting and handling challenging behaviour. RESULTS Results suggest preliminary evidence of efficacy in reducing negative parent and child behaviour and increasing parental perceptions of child positive impact. CONCLUSIONS This study provides evidence for the feasibility of the DD modifications applied to the IYPT. Although this approach is promising, additional evidence is needed to address the efficacy of IYPT-DD in children with developmental delay.
The 20‐year effort to reduce access to mammography screening: Historical facts dispute a commentary in Cancer

Mammography screening fulfills all requirements for an effective screening test. It detects many cancers earlier when they are at a smaller size and earlier stage, and it has been demonstrated that this reduces breast cancer deaths in randomized controlled trials. When screening is introduced into the population, the death rate from breast cancer declines. Nevertheless, scientifically unsupported arguments that appear in the medical literature are passed on to the public and continue to confuse women and physicians regarding the value of screening. Methodologically flawed challenges to mammography have been almost continuous since the 1990s. And, as each challenge has been invalidated, a new, specious challenge has been raised. The authors of this report address the long history of misinformation that has developed in the effort to reduce access to screening, and they address the issues raised by commentators concerning their recent publication in this journal. Cancer 2014;120:2792–2799. © 2014 American Cancer Society.
Animal Eggs for Stem Cell Research: A Path Not Worth Taking

In January 2008, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) (London, UK) issued two 1-year licenses for cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research. This article situates the HFEA's decision in its wider scientific and political context in which, until quite recently, the debate about human embryonic stem cell research has focused narrowly on the moral status of the developing human embryo. Next, ethical arguments against crossing species boundaries with humans are canvassed. Finally, a new argument about the risks of harm to women egg providers resulting from research involving the creation of humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryos is elaborated. Taken together these ethical concerns about the moral status of the human embryo, about the ethics of crossing species boundaries with humans, and about the potential harms to women (concerns that independently are more or less weighty for different constituencies), provide good reason to eschew humanesque cytoplasmic hybrid embryo research in favor of less ethically controversial means to the laudable end of successful regenerative medicine.
Average consensus of multi-agent systems with multiple time-delays and jointly-connected topologies

This paper investigates average consensus problem in networks of continuous-time agents with delayed information and jointly-connected topologies. A lemma is derived by extending the Barbalat's Lemma to piecewise continuous functions, which provides a new analysis approach for switched systems. Then based on this lemma, a sufficient condition in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) is given for average consensus of the system by employing a Lyapunov approach, where the communication structures vary over time and the corresponding graphs may not be connected. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results.
Impact of hot-carrier degradation on the low-frequency noise in MOSFETs under steady-state and periodic large-signal excitation

This letter reports the diagnostic power of the low-frequency noise analysis (steady-state and periodic large-signal excitation) in MOSFETs subjected to hot-carrier degradation. The LF noise under periodic large-signal excitation is shown to increase more rapidly than the LF noise in steady-state. Moreover the improvement in the LF noise performance due to periodic large-signal excitation, observed for fresh devices, gradually diminishes as the devices are subjected to hot-carrier stress.
Beneficial Role of Reduced Graphene Oxide for Electron Extraction in Highly Efficient Perovskite Solar Cells.

In this work we systematically investigated the role of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) in hybrid perovskite solar cells (PSCs). By mixing rGO within the mesoporous TiO2 (m-TiO2 ) matrix, highly efficient solar cells with power conversion efficiency values up to 19.54 % were realized. In addition, the boosted beneficial role of rGO with and without Li-treated m-TiO2 is highlighted, improving transport and injection of photoexcited electrons. This combined system may pave the way for further development and optimization of electron transport and collection in high efficiency PSCs.
Real-time control systems: feedback, scheduling and robustness

ABSTRACT The efficient control of real-time distributed systems, where continuous components are governed through digital devices and communication networks, needs a careful examination of the constraints arising from the different involved domains inside co-design approaches. Thanks to the robustness of feedback control, both new control methodologies and slackened real-time scheduling schemes are proposed beyond the frontiers between these traditionally separated fields. A methodology to design robust aperiodic controllers is provided, where the sampling interval is considered as a control variable of the system. Promising experimental results are provided to show the feasibility and robustness of the approach.
Deregulation of Snai2 is associated with metastasis and poor prognosis in tongue squamous cell carcinoma

The members of the Snail superfamily of zinc‐finger transcription factors, including Snai1 and Snai2, are involved in essential biological processes, such as epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT). Although Snai1 has been investigated in a number of cancers, our knowledge on Snai2 and its role(s) in squamous cell carcinoma of oral tongue (SCCOT) is limited. In this study, we confirmed the previous observation that over‐expression of Snai2 is a frequent event in SCCOT. We further demonstrated that Snai2 over‐expression is associated with lymph node metastasis in two independent SCCOT patient cohorts (total n = 129). Statistical analysis revealed that Snai2 over‐expression was correlated with reduced overall survival. Furthermore, over‐expression of Snai2 was correlated with reduced E‐cadherin expression and enhanced Vimentin expression, suggesting a functional role of Snai2 in EMT. These observations were confirmed in vitro, in which knockdown of Snai2 induced a switch from a mesenchymal‐like morphology to an epithelial‐like morphology in SCCOT cell lines, and suppressed the cell invasion and migration. In contrast, ectopic transfection of Snai2 led to enhanced cell invasion and migration. Furthermore, Snai2 knockdown attenuated TGFβ1‐induced EMT in SCCOT cell lines. Taken together, these data suggest that Snai2 plays major roles in EMT and the progression of SCCOT and may serve as a therapeutic target for patients at risk of metastasis.
The Gini Concentration Index: A Review of the Inference Literature

More than a century ago, Corrado Gini proposed his well-known concentration index for measuring the degree of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. His index is still extremely relevant and widely used in several fields of research and application. In this paper, we focus on the inferential properties of the Gini index, and discuss the main directions of analysis proposed in the literature. The aim of the paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the main developments on the inferential aspects of the Gini concentration ratio. We feel that this work can provide a valuable contribution to those scholars who are approaching the large amount of literature on the inferential properties of the Gini index.
Native-Migrant Differences in Trading Off Wages and Workplace Safety

Applying propensity score reweighting to Italian administrative data covering the period 1994-2012, we study the conditional distributions of injuries by wage of native and foreign workers and distinguish between the component that is explained by observable characteristics and the component that is instead attributable to the immigrant status. Our analyses highlight some stylized facts. Besides a substantial gap in wage and injury risk that cannot be attributed to differences in the characteristics, foreign workers face higher levels of risk by the same level of wages. The gap is significantly above the level predicted by their observable characteristics by remunerations that are close to the minimum wage level set by collective bargaining. After this threshold, injury rates decline, but less steeply for foreign workers than their observable characteristics would predict. We show that the hedonic wage model could explain the first result as a corner solution whereby workers with low wage potential are forced to accept higher levels of risk due to the lower bounds on minimum wage. The second results could simply be explained by assuming different utility functions for natives and foreigners. We also show that the hedonic wage model is compatible with the marked reduction in injury rates and in the gap that we observe in the recession years.
Use of Population Pharmacokinetic Modeling and Monte Carlo Simulation To Describe the Pharmacodynamic Profile of Cefditoren in Plasma and Epithelial Lining Fluid

ABSTRACT Cefditoren is a broad-spectrum, oral cephalosporin that is highly active against clinically relevant respiratory tract pathogens, including multidrug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae. This study described its pharmacodynamic profile in plasma and epithelial lining fluid (ELF). Plasma and ELF pharmacokinetic data were obtained from 24 patients under fasting conditions. Cefditoren and urea concentrations were determined in plasma and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Concentration-time profiles in plasma and ELF were modeled using a model with three disposition compartments and first-order absorption, elimination, and transfer. Pharmacokinetic parameters were identified in a population pharmacokinetic analysis (big nonparametric adaptive grid with adaptive γ). Monte Carlo simulation (9,999 subjects) was performed with the ADAPT II program to estimate the probability of target attainment at which the free-cefditoren plasma concentrations (88%) protein binding and total ELF concentrations exceeded the MIC for 33% of the dosing interval for 400 mg cefditoren given orally every 12 h. After the Bayesian step, the overall fits of the model to the data were good, and plots of predicted versus observed concentrations for plasma and ELF showed slopes and intercepts very close to the ideal values of 1.0 and 0.0, respectively. In the plasma probability of target attainment analysis, the probability of achieving a time for which free, or unbound, plasma concentration exceeds the MIC of the organism for 33% of the dosing interval was <80% for a MIC of >0.06 mg/liter. Similar to plasma, the probability of achieving a time above the MIC of 33% was <80% for MIC of >0.06 mg/liter in ELF. Cefditoren was found to have a low probability of achieving a bacteriostatic effect against MICs of >0.06 mg/liter, which includes most S. pneumoniae isolates with intermediate susceptibility to penicillin, when given in the fasting state in both plasma and ELF.
Diagnostic Value of 18F-FDG PET/CT Versus MRI in the Setting of Antibody-Specific Autoimmune Encephalitis

Diagnosis of autoimmune encephalitis presents some challenges in the clinical setting because of varied clinical presentations and delay in obtaining antibody panel results. We examined the role of neuroimaging in the setting of autoimmune encephalitides, comparing the utility of 18F-FDG PET/CT versus conventional brain imaging with MRI. Methods: A retrospective study was performed assessing the positivity rate of MRI versus 18F-FDG PET/CT during the initial workup of 23 patients proven to have antibody-positive autoimmune encephalitis. 18F-FDG PET/CT studies were analyzed both qualitatively and semiquantitatively. Areas of cortical lobar hypo (hyper)-metabolism in the cerebrum that were 2 SDx from the mean were recorded as abnormal. Results: On visual inspection, all patients were identified as having an abnormal pattern of 18F-FDG uptake. In semiquantitative analysis, at least 1 region of interest with metabolic change was identified in 22 of 23 (95.6%) patients using a discriminating z score of 2. Overall, 18F-FDG PET/CT was more often abnormal during the diagnostic period than MRI (10/23, 43% of patients). The predominant finding on brain 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging was lobar hypometabolism, being observed in 21 of 23 (91.3%) patients. Hypometabolism was most commonly observed in the parietal lobe followed by the occipital lobe. An entire subset of antibody-positive patients, anti–N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (5 patients), had normal MRI results and abnormal 18F-FDG PET/CT findings whereas the other subsets demonstrated a greater heterogeneity. Conclusion: Brain 18F-FDG PET/CT may play a significant role in the initial evaluation of patients with clinically suspected antibody-mediated autoimmune encephalitis. Given that it is more often abnormal when compared with MRI in the acute setting, this molecular imaging technique may be better positioned as an early biomarker of disease so that treatment may be initiated earlier, resulting in improved patient outcomes.
Polysomnographic and Symptomatological Analyses of Major Depressive Disorder Patients Treated with Mirtazapine

Objective: This study aimed to characterize the effects of mirtazapine on polysomnographic sleep, especially slow wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, as well as its effects on clinical symptoms in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Method: Sixteen MDD patients were treated with mirtazapine 30 mg taken 30 minutes before bedtime. Polysomnographic and subjective sleep, as well as other clinical data, were collected at baseline and on Days or Nights 2, 9, 16, 30, and 58 during treatment. We used repeated measures analysis of variance, including pairwise comparison, to analyze data statistically. Results: Mirtazapine administration increased total SWS and the SWS in the first sleep cycle, but not SWS in the second sleep cycle. The medication increased REM latency and the duration of the first REM episode; it also decreased the number of REM episodes. Simultaneously, mirtazapine significantly reduced wake-after-sleep onset and scores on the Athens Insomnia Scale. After patients took the medication, scores on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-17 (HDRS-17) decreased rapidly and continuously. The changes on the Beck Depression Inventory-II were consistent with those on the HDRS-17. The medication has a tendency to increase weight. Conclusions: Mirtazapine significantly improved sleep quality, reversed sleep markers of depression, and reduced depressive symptoms in this group of MDD patients.
Performance of an NIDDM Screening Questionnaire Based on Symptoms and Risk Factors

OBJECTIVE To investigate to what extent a short questionnaire on symptoms and risk factors can be used to identify people at increased risk for undiagnosed NIDDM. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A general population sample of 2,364 Caucasian subjects, age 50–74 years, not known to have diabetes, completed a questionnaire on diabetes-related symptoms and risk factors. Subsequently, they underwent an oral glucose tolerance test. A backward stepwise multiple logistic regression was carried out with the absence or presence of newly detected diabetes as the dependent variable and the items from the questionnaire as the independent variables. The selected items were included in a new symptom risk questionnaire, which was evaluated in a different population sample of 786 subjects, age 45–74 years, not known to have diabetes and compared with existing questionnaires. RESULTS The newly developed symptom-risk questionnaire contains questions concerning the following items, which were independently and significantly (P < 0.05) associated with the presence of previously undiagnosed diabetes: pain during walking with need to slow down, shortness of breath when walking with people of the same age, frequent thirst, age, sex, obesity, parent or sibling with diabetes, use of antihypertensive drugs, and reluctance to use a bicycle for transportation. The 1993 American Diabetes Association questionnaire, the 1995 Herman et aL (17) questionnaire, and the newly developed symptom-risk questionnaire had sensitivities of 59, 72, and 72%; specificities of 57, 55, and 56%; positive predictive values of 5.6, 6.4, and 6.5%; and negative predictive values of 97, 98, and 98%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The newly developed symptom-risk questionnaire has good performance characteristics, and the advantage of a variable cutoff makes it a useful screening tool for NIDDM in general practice.
Molecular epidemiology and clinical severity of Human Bocavirus (HBoV) 1–4 in children with acute gastroenteritis from Pune, Western India

Although acute gastroenteritis is a major public health problem worldwide, ∼40% of the cases remain undiagnosed for any etiological agent. Human Bocavirus (HBoV) has been detected frequently in feces of diarrhoeic children suggesting its possible etiological involvement in the disease. HBoV has not been reported in association with acute gastroenteritis from India. Fecal samples (n = 418) collected from children (age ≤5 years) hospitalized with acute gastroenteritis, between January 2009 and December 2011, from three local hospitals were examined for presence of HBoV using PCR targeting the partial VP1/VP2 capsid region (∼575 bp) followed by phylogenetic analysis. HBoV was detected in 24/418 (5.7%) cases. Co‐infection was observed in 5/24 (21%) cases. HBoV infections occurred in children ≤12 months of age. Peak HBoV activity was observed in monsoon and post monsoon season. All four HBoV genotypes were detected in the study region. Major clinical symptoms of HBoV mono infections included diarrhoea (100%), fever (90%), dehydration (74%), and vomiting (58%). Dehydration was observed in all of the HBoV2–4 cases and in 50% of the HBoV1 cases. Clinical severity varied with genotype (HBoV2 > HBoV1 > HBoV3 > HBoV4). HBoV2 cases recorded severe and very severe infections. The study illustrates prevalence and vast genetic diversity of HBoVs in acute gastroenteritis. It highlights the clinical features of HBoV1–4 infections and sheds light on clinical impact of HBoV genotypes in gastroenteritis. J. Med. Virol. 89:17–23, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Debt Sustainability, Fiscal Space, and Growth

This paper investigates two overarching questions: how high can public debt rise before it becomes unsustainable; and, how do sustainable changes in public debt impact growth? We review fiscal performance using annual data from a panel of 23 advanced economies, over the period 1970-2007. Firstly, as in Ghosh et al. (2013), we estimate both a static and dynamic fiscal reaction function by regressing primary balance on debt, debt squared, and debt cubed (among others). This shows that the primary balance exhibits ‘fiscal fatigue’. Fiscal fatigue is where it gradually becomes harder and harder for a country to pay down rising debt, leading to an effective ‘debt limit’, beyond which a country cannot borrow because debt dynamics become unsustainable. Using the fiscal reaction function results, we empirically determine debt limits for our 23 advanced economies, defined as the maximum sustainable debt level a country attain. Next, using these debt limits, we create a fiscal space data series for each country. Fiscal space is simply the difference between a country’s historical debt limit and its actual debt in any period. Finally, we investigate the relationship between fiscal space and growth. Using modern empirical methods, we find evidence of an inverse quadratic relationship between fiscal space and growth. This implies fiscal space fits into conventional debt-growth theory, whereby an economy with high fiscal space (low debt) can increase growth by sustainably going into debt and increasing government spending. Alternatively, a country with limited fiscal space (high debt), would be better off reducing debt and increasing their fiscal space. Fiscal space provides an alternative angle to assess debt and growth dynamics, by introducing the concept of sustainability. Our results hold policy implications for government decision-makers.
Motor-Sensory Feedback and the Geometry of Visual Space

Normal surroundings appear curved when viewed through wedge prism eyeglasses. But prolonged viewing of uniformly curved lines makes them appear less curved. An environment specially patterned to prevent the appearance of curvature when viewed through a prism made possible the demonstration of change in apparent curvature wholly dependent upon the visual feedback accompanying self-produced movement of the prism-wearer.