Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microbicides, sexuality and sexual health in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

There is an urgent need for additional HIV prevention options for women. Evidence supporting the benefit of microbicides in reducing the risk of vaginally acquired HIV acquisition has provided a major breakthrough. Despite the wealth of evidence supporting microbicide acceptability in Africa, there are still gaps in our understanding about how women will incorporate microbicides into their everyday lives. In this thesis I examine whether vaginal microbicides are compatible with socio-cultural norms regarding sexuality and sexual health in a predominantly rural area of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected as part of the MDP 301 clinical trial at the Africa Centre, I adopt a mixed methods approach to evaluate microbicide acceptability from a cultural perspective. I explore the compatibility of microbicides with socio-cultural norms that relate to intravaginal cleansing, intravaginal insertion, love medicines and sexual communication. I found that the desired effects of using intravaginal insertions to enhance sexual pleasure are compatible with the experiences of using microbicides; that contemporary socio-cultural norms relating to sexual communication in the context of the HIV epidemic are compatible with the introduction of microbicides; that women distanced microbicides from ‘love medicines’ in terms of separating microbicides from the supernatural; and, finally, that postcoital intravaginal cleansing practices could undermine a microbicides roll out programme if we fail to address these practices. Overall I found that microbicides are compatible with socio-cultural norms relating to intravaginal insertion and sexual communication, but they may be less compatible with norms relating to intravaginal cleansing and love medicines. While incompatibility with socio-cultural norms raises challenges for intravaginal cleansing, the fact that love medicines are incompatible with microbicides could be advantageous for their introduction. Ultimately these findings have implications for future research and service delivery, as well as offering insights into microbicides, sexuality and gender equality.
A new Color image Encryption based on multi Chaotic Maps

This paper presents a new RGB image encryption scheme using multi chaotic maps. Encrypting an image is performed via chaotic maps to confirm the properties of secure cipher namely confusion and diffusion are satisfied. Also, the key sequence for encrypting an image is generated using a combination of 1D logistic and Sine chaotic maps. Experimental results and the compassion results indicate that the suggested scheme provides high security against several types of attack, large secret keyspace and highly sensitive.
High Frequency Of Thyroid Dysfunction In Indian Patients With Vitiligo

This Study was carried out look for any association of vitiligo with autoimmune thyroid disease and to find out clinical characteristics of vitiligo, which may predict such and association. Thirty-five consecutive cases of vitiligo were enrolled for this study. Besides recording the clinical features of vitiligo and thyroid disease, antithyroid autoantibody assays (anthi-thyroglobulin, anti-TPO) and thyroid hormone profiles were done in these cases and 30 appropriately age and sex matched controls. Radioactive iodine uptake (RAIU) thyroid scintiscan was done for all the cases and controls. Amongst the vitiligo cases, vitiligo vulgaris was the commonest type (45.70%), while mucosal vitiligo constituted 22.8% of cases. No Patient was found to have thyroid disease clinically; however, on assays, thyroid abnormality (endocrine, immunological or both) was found in 57.1% of the cases as against 10% of the controls (p<0.05). Autonatibody positivity was found in 31.4% of the cases as against 10% of the controls (p<0.05). Biochemical abnormality (predominantly hyperthyroidism) was found in 40% of the cases as against 6.7% of the controls (p<0.05). Four patients with hyperthyroidism showed diffuse increase in uptake on RAIU scan and auto antibody poisitivity, thus were diagnosed as Graveâ€™s disease. An early age at onset was found in patients with thyroid disease. Mucosal vitiligo was found in 35% of the cases with thyroid dysfunction as against 6.7% in those without (p<0.05) with was the most unique finding of the study. To conclude, we would like to stress that patients with vitiligo should be screened for thyroid dysfunction, especially those with mucosal vitiligo.
Ileal pouch anal-anastomosis without covering ileostomy

Résultats — Un malade est décédé d’une embolie pulmonaire. Des complications sont survenues précocement chez 25 malades (30 %) et tardivement chez 23 (27 %), nécessitant 14 réinterventions dont 3 iléostomies temporaires et une ablation du réservoir pour une maladie de Crohn. La fonction était analysée chez 81 malades avec un suivi moyen de 22 mois. Le nombre de selles/24h était de 3,8 ± 1. La continence diurne et la continence nocturne étaient normales chez respectivement 77 (95 %) et 73 malades (90 %) ; 76 (94 %) n’avaient aucune impériosité et 61 (75 %) ne prenaient aucun ralentisseur.
Characteristics of Voice in Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis

Background: Individuals who suffer from multiple sclerosis, aside from other symptoms, usually have voice changes such as poor control of pitch, variations in voice intensity, altered voice quality and resonance disorders. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine voice acoustic characteristics in individuals with multiple sclerosis and to compare those results with control group. Methods: This study was conducted on 17 subjects, both males and females, of chronological age between 27 and 55 years. All subjects were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis by professional neurologist. Control group consisted of 17 subjects who matched with experimental group of the same age and sex. The study was conducted at the Clinic for Neurology, University Clinical Centre Tuzla. Sustained phonation of vowel /A/ was analyzed by computer programme for voice analysis MDVP (Multi Dimensional Voice Program). Results: Results of our study exhibited statistically significant differences between subjects with multiple sclerosis and control subjects in variables standard deviation of fundamental frequency and phonatory F0 range. We also found statistically significant differences between variable related to pitch perturbation (jitter) and peak-to-peak amplitude variation. Statistically significant differences were also determined between subjects with multiple sclerosis and control subjects in variables related to degree of irregular vocalization, noise to harmonic ratio and variable related to amplitude tremor intensity index. Conclusion: Results of this study showed that subjects with multiple sclerosis exhibited significant variation in voice acoustic characteristics compared to control group. MDVP can be a useful tool for further monitoring of voice characteristics alterations in patients with multiple sclerosis during diagnostic and treatment processes.
What matters most? An examination of breastfeeding support for African American mothers

Breastfeeding offers numerous health benefits to the mother, infant, and society. In the United States breastfeeding initiation rates have increased, but continue to fall short of objectives set forth by the CDC in the Healthy People 2020 initiative, regarding duration and exclusivity. African Americans have lower rates of breastfeeding initiation, duration, and exclusivity than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States (USDHHS, 2012). The purpose of this study was to examine the breastfeeding experiences of a diverse group of African American women, in order to better understand what social networks encouraged or discouraged breastfeeding initiation, continuation, and exclusivity. Close attention was given to the type of support provided by support systems to positively influence breastfeeding in this group of women. Additionally, this study sought to uncover the meaning of adequate breastfeeding support as perceived by the women in the study. This study employed a qualitative research design using semi-structured in-depth interviewing. The sample included 15 African American women recruited from 2 sites serving breastfeeding women in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The purpose of the interviews was to ascertain the women's perspectives on breastfeeding experiences and support systems. Results of this study indicate that participants engaged in a number of supportive social relationships which positively affected their breastfeeding experiences. Women in the study perceived romantic partners, breastfeeding peer counselors, and hospital-based lactation consultants to me most supportive during breastfeeding. Additionally, women received support from female relatives and friends, and online breastfeeding support groups. Participants found emotional, informational, and instrumental support to be most essential to breastfeeding success.
'Outlier Blindness': Efficient Coding Generates an Inability to Represent Extreme Values

How do people record information about the economic outcomes they observe in their environment? Building on a well-established neuroscientific framework, we propose a model in which people are not attuned to making distinctions between realized outcomes that they seldom expect to encounter. We provide evidence for such `outlier blindness' in a series of controlled laboratory experiments and discuss important implications of our model for economic decision-making. In particular, we show how outlier blindness provides a microfoundation for well-established empirical features of risk perception such as tail risk neglect and context-dependent risk aversion.
We do what we know : local health knowledge and home - based medicinal plant use in Ethiopia

We do what we know": Local health knowledge and home-based medicinal plant use in Ethiopia Hareya Fassil, DPHIL, Development Studies International Development Centre, Queen Elizabeth House Today, the majority of Ethiopians continue to depend on traditional plant medicines for their basic health care needs. The central propo sition of this thesis is that a significant part of the knowledge underpinning the use of such traditional medicinal plants resides among ordinary local women and men, who depend on them as sources of home-based remedies. Understanding and strengthening such homebased health knowledge and skills can provide a firm underpinning for more effective health care dehvery and community health developme nt. The thesis is based on fieldwork among communities in the rural Babir-Dar district (N. Western Ethiopia). A multidisciplinary approach using quantitative and qualitative methods for data-gathering and analysis was adopted. The thesis comprises six chapters: Chapter 1 sets out the study's conceptual framework, and the main strands of development thought underlying the thesis. Chapter 2 provides an ecological, socioeconomic and cultural background to the study area. Chapter . 3 discusses the main types and sources of the locally-valued medicinal plants, while Chapter 4 charactens es the distribution and transmission of the knowledge underpinning their use. Chapter 5 elucidates the overall contribution of local health knowledge and home-based medicinal plant use among the study communities. Chapter 6 summarise s the study's main findings and conclusions. The importance of local health knowledge and home-based plant remedies among the study communities is substantiated by: (a) the documentation of over 80 medicinal plants used as home remedies; (b) the finding that such treatments are used as the first resort in most cases of illness and often may constitute the only therapeutic action taken; and (c) demonstrating that knowledge and home based use of such medicinal plants is intrinsic to the local cultural and environmental context. The study concludes that focused community-based studies, combining ethnographic and ethnobotamcal methods, could provide an effective and practicable means for achieving in-depth understanding of local health knowledge practices surrounding particular illnesses. Such an integrated approach can enable prioritisation of major health problems, facilitate the documentation of illnessspecific local knowledge, whilst also allowing for the identification of specific needs and areas for intervention. A call is also made for a health policy framework which gives full recognition and support to local knowledge and health care efforts at the household-level.
PRACTICE IN A DISPERSED PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY: A CASE STUDY OF ASSOCIATE LECTURERS AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

This thesis examines in depth the work of four associate lecturers at the Open University. Given that they see colleagues infrequently, it explores how they resource their practice, in what has been termed a dispersed community that lacks the social interaction associated with more traditional lecturing. This research identifies what knowledge resources and professional practices are used, and what the relationships are between these and the process of occupational identity-building. It also identifies other important facets of the working environment, such as the institution, faculty and department. The context of working as a part-time lecturer with the Open University is examined, and comparisons are made with other lecturing posts. Based on four in-depth case studies, the research considers the major components of a community of practice, such as participation and the negotiation of meaning. Given the dispersed nature of this community, the thesis further explores how routines and reifications of practice take on a more individualistic nature, not established within a social vacuum but in a social world where the organisation and students play a more important role than co-workers. Using activity system theory, network theory and power relationships, the research comes to a deeper and more integrated picture of associate lecturers. It concludes with postulations on how individual agency is an important aspect of practice in such a dispersed community.
Process progress estimation and activity recognition

OF THE DISSERTATION Process Progress Estimation and Activity Recognition by Xinyu Li Dissertation Director: Ivan Marsic Activity recognition is fundamentally necessary in many real-world applications, making it a valuable research topic. For example, activity tracking and decision support is crucial in medical settings, and activity recognition and prediction are critical in smart home applications. In this paper, we focus on activity recognition strategies and their applications to real-world problems. Depending on the application scenario, activities can be hierarchically categorized into high-level and low-level activities. The high-level activities may contain one or more low-level activities. For example, if cooking is a highlevel activity, it may contain several low-level activities such as preparing, chopping, stiring, etc. . Although studied for decades, there are several challenges remaining for high-level activity recognition, also known as process phase detection. A high-level activity usually has a long duration and consists of several low-level activities. Treating high-level activity recognition as a per-time-instance classification problem overlooks the associations between activities over time. We thus proposed considering high-level activity recognition as a regression problem. Based on this assumption, we implemented a deep learning framework that extracts features from input data and designed a rectified tanh activation function to generate a continuous regression curve between 0 and 1. We used
Small worlds in a distant land: International newcomer students' local information behaviors in unfamiliar environments

International students face various challenges in their new countries, but research is less clear about their challenges in information behaviors. This article fills this gap by examining information behaviors of international newcomer students during adjustment to local environments, that is, local information behavior (LIB). Drawing on prior work, we focus on the local co‐national context—the degree to which there are co‐nationals available in one's local environments—to analyze the LIBs of 149 first‐year graduate students and 57 follow‐up interviewees, who were classified into: International‐common group (students from China, India, and Korea—with many local co‐nationals), International‐less‐common group (students from other countries—with fewer local co‐nationals), and Domestic‐out‐of‐state group (students from other U.S. states; control group). We identify differences in international newcomer students' use of information sources during adjustment and the role that local co‐national contexts play in these differences. These results suggest ways that information scholars and practitioners might account for the influences of local co‐national contexts when examining information behaviors of internationally mobile students and designing systems and services for newcomers from around the world.
Restless bandits: activity allocation in a changing world

We consider a population of n projects which in general continue to evolve whether in operation or not (although by different rules). It is desired to choose the projects in operation at each instant of time so as to maximise the expected rate of reward, under a constraint upon the expected number of projects in operation. The Lagrange multiplier associated with this constraint defines an index which reduces to the Gittins index when projects not being operated are static. If one is constrained to operate m projects exactly then arguments are advanced to support the conjecture that, for m and n large in constant ratio, the policy of operating the m projects of largest current index is nearly optimal. The index is evaluated for some particular projects.
SOME PROBLEMS CONCERNING THE MORPHOLOGY OF AURORAS AND MAGNETIC DISTURBANCES AT HIGH LATITUDES

Photographic observation data of auroras in a winter period of the IGY were used in an analysis of the orientation of elongated auroral forms in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. A comparison of the orientation of elongated auroral forms and the disturbance vector of the geomagnetic field is made. Auroral zones for all hours of the day that characterize the distribution of nighttime auroras are discussed. (auth)
The endocrinology of stress.

With the advance in hormone assay techniques it has been demonstrated that stress may be characterised by a number of endocrinological changes which are not limited solely to the secretion of catecholamines and adrenal steroids. This article reviews the effects of various stressors on these and other hormones. Aviation is a source of a wide range of stressors including radial acceleration (+Gz) Since its magnitude and duration may be controlled experimentally by using the human centrifuge, it is possible to quantify such a stressor when investigating endocrinological markers of stress. Sustained +Gz acceleration results in a "dose-dependent" secretion of cortisol, i.e. the higher the acceleration, the greater the cortisol secretion. In addition, increases in the concentrations of arginine vasopressin and catecholamines occur but these are not accompanied by changes in prolactin or growth hormone.
Implementation of prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and maternal syphilis screening and treatment programmes in Mwanza region, Tanzania : uptake and challenges

ABSTRACT Literature and other background information on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) and maternal syphilis screening programmes in Tanzania reveal that little has been documented on accessibility and utilization of these services. This thesis presents the results from a research conducted in Mwanza city, Tanzania to assess the operational performance of PMTCT and maternal syphilis screening and treatment during pregnancy, at delivery and in the postnatal period. From different sub-studies conducted at the antenatal clinics (ANC) and in the maternity ward for this research, a number of missed implementation opportunities were identified. A review of records found that 24% of pregnant women who delivered in hospital left the maternity ward with unknown HIV status and 50% of HIV-positive women tested at ANC did not receive Antiretroviral therapy (ART) for PMTCT. A cross-sectional study at the maternity ward found that 12% of pregnant women who were not screened for syphilis, 27% of RPR-positive women who were not treated at ANC, and all infants of RPR-positive women did not receive any intervention to prevent congenital syphilis. Forty-one percent of HIV-positive women recruited in the cohort study successfully completed all PMTCT interventions. Only 18% of HIV-positive women identified through PMTCT were successfully referred to, and attended an adult care and treatment clinic (CTC). Of 403 HIV- positive women in the cohort study, 50% did not intend to get pregnant and by four months postpartum, 20% of them reported to have not received any counselling on family planning. HIV-positive women who did not receive counselling on FP use were at a higher risk of not using contraception compared to those who were counselled (adj. OR=6, 95% Cl; 2.8-12.9). About 27% of HIV-positive mothers were not counselled regarding infant feeding and 40.2% of women who were not counselled on infant feeding were undecided on how to feed their infants before they left the hospital compared to only 2.5% of women who were counselled (P<O.OOl) It was found that pregnant women attending ANC for the first time during pregnancy spent between three and 5.5 hours at the clinic, on average, 78% of this time was spent waiting for services. 6 Fewer ANC visits, attending private or rural ANC facilities, failure to attend a CTC prenatally, and lack of knowledge among users and provider of health services were factors found to hamper the performance of the programmes. Integration of these programmes at all levels and training of health workers in basic components of the programmes are fundamental to the successful implementation of the programmes
Modeling tuberculosis incidence in Nepal

Abstract Background: Tuberculosis (TB) constitutes a large burden of infectious disease in Nepal. Objective: Model incidence of TB between 2003 and 2008 in Nepal. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted in Nepal of tuberculosis incidence by gender and location over the six years period. Data were obtained for 198,719 tuberculosis cases from the Nepal Tuberculosis Center (NTC). A negative binomial model with two multiplicative components as predictors was used and provided a good fit. Results: The model extracted a decreasing trend during the first five years followed by a drop in 2008.The overall incidence of TB was 1.31 cases per 1,000 population with a male to female incidence rate ratio of 1.86. There were pronounced spatial variations with higher rates occurring in the Terai region, followed by the Hill, and Mountain regions. Conclusion: Tuberculosis incidence showed a steady decreasing trend, but the number of cases was still very high. Gender differences existed in TB incidence in Nepal. Higher rates were observed in the Terai Region and urban areas. These findings highlight the need for the tuberculosis control measures to remain on a sustained and long-term basis for the high TB burden rate of Nepal.