Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects Of Exposure To Violence On Health In Iraq Between 2006-2007

Iraq has experienced protracted years of war in last two decades. These prolonged years of war in Iraq manifested conflict and violence, degeneration of economic conditions and a serious breakdown of public health services. Deaths, injury and acts of violence such as kidnapping, threat and witnessing heavy casualties are only a few examples of events that Iraqi people experienced during war times. Conflict can result in lasting and profound consequences for the health of the Iraq population. The burden of the communicable, non-communicable disease and mental illnesses in war zone areas is rising rapidly and becoming a major challenge to global development. Using data from the 2006-2007 Iraq Household SocioEconomic Survey, I examine the association between violence exposure and morbidity for a sample of Iraqis individuals. We find that exposure to violence is associated with both increased incidence of chronic and acute illnesses, particularly respiratory and mental illness. Interestingly, the health of adolescents and adults appears to be most at risk to violence exposure while that of children is largely protected.
Predicting sales in a food store department using machine learning

Prediction of sales is an important field in the food industry and due to new technologies it has recently gained alot of attention in order to improve business operations and profitability. However, historically the industry has relied on traditional statistical models but in recent years more advanced machine learning methods has gained traction. This study aims to compare three machine learning methods for sales prediction in the food industry: Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Radial Basis Function Network (RBFN). The methods were compared in terms of their prediction accuracy on daily sales in a food store department. The performance of the models was determined using the performance measures: Mean Average Percentage Error (MAPE) and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE). The results show that the SVM performed lower error measures than the other two methods. The repeated measure analysis of variance (rANOVA) was used in order to determine if there was a difference between the methods. The test indicated a statistical significant difference between the afformentioned methods.
4-12-2019 miR-181 a / b downregulation exerts a protective action on mitochondrial disease models

Mitochondrial diseases (MDs) are a heterogeneous group of devastating and often fatal disorders due to defective oxidative phosphorylation. Despite the recent advances in mitochondrial medicine, effective therapies are still not available for these conditions. Here, we demonstrate that the microRNAs miR-181a and miR-181b (miR-181a/b) regulate key genes involved in mitochondrial biogenesis and function and that downregulation of these miRNAs enhances mitochondrial turnover in the retina through the coordinated activation of mitochondrial biogenesis and mitophagy. We thus tested the effect of miR-181a/b inactivation in different animal models of MDs, such as microphthalmia with linear skin lesions and Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy. We found that miR-181a/b downregulation strongly protects retinal neurons from cell death and significantly ameliorates the disease phenotype in all tested models. Altogether, our results demonstrate that miR-181a/b regulate mitochondrial homeostasis and that these miRNAs may be effective gene-independent therapeutic targets for MDs characterized by neuronal degeneration.
On the universality of the frequency spectrum and band-gap optimization of quasicrystalline-generated structured rods

The dynamical properties of periodic two-component phononic rods, whose elementary cells are generated adopting the Fibonacci substitution rules, are studied through the recently introduced method of the toroidal manifold. The method allows all band gaps and pass bands featuring the frequency spectrum to be represented in a compact form with a frequency-dependent flow line on the surface describing their ordered sequence. The flow lines on the torus can be either closed or open: in the former case, (i) the frequency spectrum is periodic and the elementary cell corresponds to a canonical configuration, (ii) the band gap density depends on the lengths of the two phases; in the latter, the flow lines cover ergodically the torus and the band gap density is independent of those lengths. It is then shown how the proposed compact description of the spectrum can be exploited (i) to find the widest band gap for a given configuration and (ii) to optimize the layout of the elementary cell in order to maximize the low-frequency band gap. The scaling property of the frequency spectrum, that is a distinctive feature of quasicrystalline-generated phononic media, is also confirmed by inspecting band-gap/pass-band regions on the torus for the elementary cells of different Fibonacci orders. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Modelling of dynamic phenomena and localization in structured media (part 2)’.
Effects of adding melatonin on the quality of frozen-thawed boar semen

The aim of this study was to study the effects of adding melatonin at different concentrations on the quality of cryopreserved boar semen. Semen samples (n = 6) were collected by hand-glove technique. Semen samples were diluted with Modena? and divided into 6 groups. According to the concentrations of melatonin at 0 (control, group A), 0.1 (group B), 0.5 (group C), 1.0 (group D), 1.5 (group E) and 2.0 mM (group F) to the lactose-egg yolk extenders used to freeze boar semen with traditional method. Progressive motility, viability and acrosome integrity were evaluated both before and after cryopreservation. The results showed that here was no significant difference in percentage of progressive motility among groups. However, a higher percentage of progressive motility was found in group D (39.17%). A higher percentage of sperm viability and acrosome integrity were found in group F (28.33%) and group F (34.50%), respectively. In conclusion, the present results suggest that adding melatonin between 0.1 and 1 mM during freezing yield a superior post-thawed semen qualities than freezing without melatonin.
Re-evaluating whether bilateral eye movements influence memory retrieval

Several recent studies have reported enhanced memory when retrieval is preceded by repetitive horizontal eye movements, relative to vertical or no eye movements. The reported memory boost has been referred to as the Saccade-Induced Retrieval Enhancement (SIRE) effect. Across two experiments, memory performance was compared following repetitive horizontal or vertical eye movements, as well as following a control condition of no eye movements. In Experiment 1, we conceptually replicated Christman and colleagues’ seminal study, finding a statistically significant SIRE effect, albeit with weak Bayesian evidence. We therefore sought to conduct another close extension. In Experiment 2, horizontal and vertical eye movement conditions were manipulated separately, and sample size was increased. No evidence of a SIRE effect was found: Bayesian statistical analyses demonstrated significant evidence for a null effect. Taken together, these experiments suggest that the SIRE effect is inconsistent. The current experiments call into question the generalizability of the SIRE effect and suggest that its presence is very sensitive to experimental design. Future work should further assess the robustness of the effect before exploring related theories or underlying mechanisms.
Higher-Order Systematic Co-Moments in Asset Pricing: Evidence from Thailand after The 1997 Economic Crisis

This study examines the role of higher-order systematic co-moments in an asset pricing model, when stock returns are non-normally distributed. We test the effect of higherorder systematic co-moments using direct observations and the Fama-MacBeth twopass regression on a data set comprising of weekly returns of Thai common stocks during the post-crisis period . By sorting stocks into portfolios based on Fama-French method we find that, in general, the portfolios of small-sized stocks and of value stocks tend to have higher returns . Furthermore, we find that the portfolios with relatively higher returns tend to have less, or negative, systematic co-skewness. Results from two-pass regression show that FamaFrench three-factor model has a better explanatory power than the traditional CAPM and adding systematic co-moments into both models yields a slight improvement. The slope coefficient of systematic coskewness is generally negative, implying there is a trade-off between mean returns and systematic co-skewness.
Pay, recognition, trust and employee outcomes in the Australian Public Service: direct and indirect effects

For government managers, having a committed and loyal workforce to deliver public service is a highly attractive idea. To achieve this goal, many government agencies offer rewards, both financial and nonfinancial. The former includes pay and the latter includes social recognition. The widespread application of these rewards in the public sector raises two pressing questions. First, which reward – pay or social recognition – is more effective in improving employee outcomes? Second, how do they shape employee outcomes? This research on Australian Public Service (APS) employees aims to address the above questions. Using a random sample of the Australian Public Service Commission’s annual State of the Service Employee Survey (N = 2,760), this study examines the relationships between positive perceptions of two rewards (pay and social recognition) and two employee outcomes (organizational commitment and turnover intention). The research identifies two pathways for the reward-outcome relationship: direct and indirect. Perceptions of fair pay and satisfaction with recognition received are found to raise organizational commitment directly and reduce turnover intention. The reward-outcome relationships are also partially mediated by employees’ perceptions of trust in the performance management system. Positive attitudes towards pay and recognition received are found to increase trust in the system, and in turn raise organizational commitment and reduce turnover intention. This suggests that the successful introduction of rewards to improve employee outcomes partly lies with the capacity of the performance management system in winning the trust of employees. Introduction This study examines the direct and indirect ways in which Australian Public Service (APS) employees’ perceptions of rewards affect their commitment to their organization and their decision to leave or stay in their organization. Both financial rewards, such as pay, and nonfinancial rewards, such as social recognition, are now offered in government agencies as a means to manage employee performance. Their appeal is largely based on the assumption that they can foster desirable employee outcomes. Given their popularity, an empirical test of this assumption is urgent, particularly in light of two issues. The first issue involves turnover in the APS. Resignations have remained the most common separation type in the APS for more than a decade from 1997/98 to 2011/12 (APSC 2012). According to the Australian Public Service Employment Database, more than 5,400 employees resigned from the APS during the period of 2011/12. This represents more than 3 percent of the APS workforce. Employee turnover is costly for the government. In addition to the financial costs incurred in recruitment and training, there are human capital issues to consider, such as the loss of knowledge and talent possessed by departing employees, the loss of morale among the remaining employees, and disruption to service quality (Gomez-Meija, Balkin and Cardy 2001; Griffth and Hom 1994; Lee, Hsu and
WP / 18 / 005 Female Economic Participation with Information and Communication Technology ( ICT ) Advancement : Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

This study complements existing literature by investigating how the advancement in information and communication technology affects the formal economic participation of women. The focus is on 48 African countries for the period 1990-2014. The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares, Fixed Effects and the Generalized Method of Moments regressions. The results show that improving communication technology increases female economic participation with the following consistent order of increasing magnitude: mobile phone penetration; internet penetration, and fixed broadband subscriptions. The findings are robust to the control for heterogeneities across countries. Policy implications are discussed. JEL Classification: G20; I10; I32; O40; O55
Visions of nature and landscape type preferences : an exploration in The Netherlands

A survey was carried out among inhabitants of Gennep, a small-town municipality in the east of The Netherlands, questioning about (1) the types of nature that people distinguish and the levels of naturalness ascribed to these types of nature; (2) the images that people hold of the appropriate relationship between people and nature and the level of adherence to these images, and (3) people’s preference of broadly defined landscape types. Types of nature inferred by means of factor analysis were labeled arcadian, wild and penetrative nature, the last category comprising elements such as mosquitoes and rats in the barn. Factor analysis was used as well to infer images of appropriate relationship, which appeared to hinge around the concepts of mastery over nature, responsibility for nature and participation in nature, respectively. Levels of adherence to the responsibility and participation images were very high, indicative of a ‘new biophilia’ mainstream in Dutch culture. Landscape types were defined, roughly, as (1) landscape made by and for people; (2) park-like, arcadian landscape; (3) wild, interactive landscape and (4) landscape “in which one may experience the greatness and forces of nature”. Strikingly, more than half of the respondents expressed preference for this last (‘deep ecology’) landscape type, with another third preferring the wild, interactive landscape. The highest preference of the ‘greatness and forces’ landscape was found among the respondents with high ascription of naturalness to the penetrative type of nature and respondents adhering to the participation-in-nature image of relationship. Preferences for landscape types as defined here should be distinguished from visual or behavioral landscape preferences. Even if people may not select landscapes of the ‘greatness and forces of nature’ in daily behaviors, these landscapes of wilderness and greatness do connect with human visions and desires. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Simulation of deformable objects transported in fluid flow

Deformable particles suspended in a viscous fluid can be found in many industrial and biological applications. In this thesis, two di↵erent numerical tools have been developed to simulate suspensions of capsules, thin membranes enclosing a second fluid and a rigid nucleus so to work as model for ”Eukaryotic” cells, and flexible slender bodies known as filaments/fibres. Both tools use a semiimplicit fluid flow solver with di↵erent approaches for the deformable structure. The capsule membrane is modelled as a thin hyperelastic material and the elasticity equations are solved with an accurate spectral representation of the capsule shape as a truncated number of spherical harmonics. The filaments are considered as one dimensional inextensible slender bodies obeying EulerBernoulli beam equations which is solved by a two-step method using finite di↵erence discretisation. The immersed boundary method is exploited to couple the fluid and solid motion using di↵erent versions for the two di↵erent objects considered. The nucleus inside the capsules is modelled either as a second sti↵er capsule or as a rigid particle. In order to avoid membrane-membrane, membrane-wall and membrane-nucleus overlapping, a short range repulsive force is implemented in terms of a potential function of the distance between the approaching objects. For the short range interactions between the filaments, both lubrication correction and collision forces are considered and it is found that the inclusion of the lubrication correction has significant e↵ect on the rheology in shear flow. Both codes are validated against the numerical and experimental data in the literature. We study the capsule behaviour in a simple shear flow created by with two walls moving in opposite directions. The membrane obeys the Neo-Hookean constitutive equations and, in the simulations with a rigid nucleus, its radius is fixed to half the capsule initial radius. The filaments, on the other hand, are studied in 4 di↵erent flow configurations: shear flow, channel flow, settling in quiescent fluid and homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The results indicate that for single capsule, the nucleus reduces the membrane deformation significantly and changes the deformed shaped when there is negligible bending resistance of the membrane. The rheological properties of nucleated capsule suspensions result from the competition between the capsule deformation and their orientation angle and similarly to the case of single capsules, the nucleus reduces the mean deformation. By increasing the capsule volume fraction, the relative viscosity increases and capsules become more oriented in the mean flow direction. Filament suspensions in shear flow exhibit shear thinning behaviour with respect to deformability; inertia has a significant e↵ect on the rheological properties of the suspensions as documented here. For
Artırılmış Gerçeklik Uygulamalarının Öğrenci Başarı Ve Tutumlarına Etkisi

Özet: Günümüzde eğitim ortamlarında güncel teknolojilerin kullanılmasına yönelik gereklilikler her geçen gün önemli bir hâl almaktadır. Teknolojideki gelişmeler sayesinde her geçen gün birçok yeni uygulama ortaya çıkmaktadır. Ortaya çıkan bu teknolojilerden biride artırılmış gerçeklik (Augmented Reality) alanında geliştirilen uygulamalardır. Artırılmış gerçeklik sanal nesnelerin gerçek dünya ile harmanlandığı, aynı zamanda gerçek ve sanal nesnelerin birbirleri ile etkileşim içinde bulunduğu teknoloji olarak tanımlanmaktadır (Azuma, 1997). Artırılmış gerçeklik uygulamalarının eğitim ortamlarında kullanılması etkileşimi arttırmaktadır ayrıca sanal ortama entegre edilmiş uygulamalar öğrenciye sanal ortamda gerçekçi bir öğretim ortamı sunmaktadır. Bu bağlamda artırılmış gerçeklik uygulamaları ile bilişim 5. Ve 6. sınıf bilişim teknolojileri dersinde öğrencilerin başarı ve tutumları incelenmiştir. Çalışmada artırılmış gerçeklik teknolojilerinin eğitim ortamlarında etkinliğinin araştırılması ve bu araştırma ile artırılmış gerçeklik teknolojilerinin okullarda yaygınlaşması amaçlanmaktadır. Bu nedenle ortaokul öğrencilerinin artırılmış gerçeklik teknolojilerine yönelik görüşleri önemli bir yer tutmaktadır. Çalışma grubu, 2015-2016 Öğretim yılı Konya ili Çumra ilçesinde bulunan Merkez Atatürk Ortaokulu bünyesinde öğrenim görmekte olan 120 öğrenciden oluşmaktadır. Çalışmada öncelikle artırılmış gerçeklik uygulamalarının çalışma mantığı açıklanmış sonraki aşamada öğrencilere uygulamalar gösterilip, öğrencilerin bu uygulamaları kullanması sağlanmıştır. Veri toplama aracı olarak; Küçük, Yılmaz, Baydaş ve Göktaş (2014) tarafından geliştirilen 5’li likert (1:Kesinlikle Katılmıyorum, 2:Katılmıyorum, 3:Kararsızım, 4:Katılıyorum, 5:Kesinlikle Katılıyorum) türünde oluşturulan 15 maddeden oluşan “Artırılmış Gerçeklik Tutum Ölçeği” kullanılarak artırılmış gerçeklik uygulamalarının öğrencilerin başarı ve tutumlarına olan etkisinin sonuçlarına ulaşılmaya çalışılmıştır.
Personality Influences Socially Responsible Investment ( SRI ) : the Role of Religiosity

The current research study tries to examine the socially responsible investment system in Pakistan among the individuals of population. Quantitative research technique has been adopted. A sample of 300 questionnaire distributed and regression analysis is done to investigate the relationship between socially responsible investment and personality traits. Findings suggest that personality traits specifically agreeableness, neuroticism and openness contain a noteworthy control on financial decision taking in regards to socially responsible investment. Further moderation test applied to find religiosity factor role, the religiosity as a moderator between Agreeableness and Socially Responsible Investment enhances the intention of Socially Responsible Investment. Socially responsible investment also helps in discovering a new investing standard not only enhancing living status but also raises the social welfare in society.
The Influence of Firm-Specific Factors on Capital Structure of Insurance Industry in Kenya

Capital structure has been one of the most controversial issues in the field of finance during past years. There are a number of existing theories and empirical studies observing patterns involved in choosing a capital structure, however until now, there is no universal one. The purpose of the study was to carry out empirical test, to determine the influence of firm specific factors as suggested by various theories on the optimal capital structure of Kenyan insurance firms. The study population involved all the registered insurance firms, the research targeted firms that had a continua’s operation between 2003 and 2012 and the analysis was based on the year-end observations for ten consecutive years. The study used panel data methodology and two independent variables profitability and growth were analyzed as the firm specific determinants of optimal capital structure which was used as the dependent variable, the relationship between independent variable and the dependent variable was moderated by the management control. Regression analysis was done using the statistical package (EVIEWS version 8) to establish the relationship between independent and dependent variables. However with moderation of the management control profitability was found to be significant. The moderator and the interaction between the moderator and profitability were found to be significant. These results were found to agree with the proponents of Agency theory in as far as the influence of the management is concerned.
University of Groningen FDG-PET / CT ( A ) imaging in large vessel vasculitis and polymyalgia rheumatica

Large vessel vasculitis (LVV) is defined as a disease mainly affecting the large arteries, with two major variants, Takayasu arteritis (TA) and giant cell arteritis (GCA). GCA often coexists with polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) in the same patient, since both belong to the same disease spectrum. FDG-PET/CT is a functional imaging technique which is an established tool in oncology, and has also demonstrated a role in the field of inflammatory diseases. Functional FDG-PET combined with anatomical CT angiography, FDGPET/CT(A), may be of synergistic value for optimal diagnosis, monitoring of disease activity, and evaluating damage progression in LVV. There are currently no guidelines regarding PET imaging acquisition for LVVand PMR, even though standardization is of the utmost importance in order to facilitate clinical studies and for daily clinical practice. This work constitutes a joint procedural recommendation on FDG-PET/CT(A) imaging in large vessel vasculitis (LVV) and PMR from the Cardiovascular and Inflammation & Infection Committees of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM), the Cardiovascular Council of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), and the PET Interest Group (PIG), and endorsed by the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC). The aim of this joint paper is to provide recommendations and statements, based on the available evidence in the literature and consensus of experts in the field, for patient preparation, and FDG-PET/CT(A) acquisition and interpretation for the diagnosis and follow-up of patients with suspected or diagnosed LVV and/or PMR. This position paper aims to set an internationally accepted standard for FDG-PET/CT(A) imaging and reporting of LVVand PMR.