Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alternate reality games as learning environments for student induction

Alternate reality games (ARGs) are a relatively new form of collaborative game that make use of both the virtual and real worlds to engage players in a series of challenges within a compelling narrative. The Alternate Reality Games for Orientation, Socialisation and Induction (ARGOSI) project aimed to use this game format to provide an alternative way to support the student induction process at Manchester Metropolitan University. The ViolaQuest game provided a mechanism for new university students to meet with others, navigate a new city and undertake information literacy induction activities within a purposeful context. The project ran from April 2008 to March 2009, and while the game itself had limited success in terms of student participation and impact, there were many lessons learned in terms of appropriate design and implementation of alternative reality games to support learning. This article describes the evaluation, results, lessons learned and raises a number of questions as to the suitability of ARGs in higher education.
Total vascular risk as a strong correlate of severity of diabetic peripheral neuropathy in Nigerian Africans.

OBJECTIVES HbA1c, commonly utilised in Caucasian studies, is an inconsistent risk marker for the severity of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) severity. Other vascular risk factors have been shown to affect DPN. However, no study has examined the relative impact of HbA1c and total cardiovascular risk load (TCRL) on DPN severity. Using the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study cardiovascular risk engine as a measure of TCRL, we sought to determine if TCRL is a better correlate of DPN severity than HbA1c alone. METHODS We studied 277 consecutive consenting black type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) patients in Nigeria. We defined DPN using Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument thresholds defined by prior validation studies. Severity of DPN was measured using the modified Dyck's grading, which had been previously validated in Nigeria. Patients with non-diabetic causes of neuropathy were excluded. RESULTS 197 (71.1%) patients had DPN. The mean HbA1c value was 6.9%. The HbA1c correlated significantly to the fasting plasma glucose (r = .36), but did not correlate significantly to the DPN severity (P = .304, rho = .075). The TCRL had the strongest significant correlation to DPN severity (P = < .001, rho = .285). Age and dyslipidemia, which are also components of the TCRL, emerged as independent statistical predictors of DPN severity in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS In Nigerian Africans, TCRL was a stronger statistical correlate of DPN severity than HbA1c. In the setting of multiracial studies, the development of a special risk engine for monitoring the risk of DPN is recommended as a substitute for HbA1c alone.
The Medical Condition Regard Scale: Measuring Reactions to Diagnoses

Purpose To develop a non—condition-specific scale to capture biases, emotions, and expectations generated by medical condition descriptors. Method An 18-item pilot scale was developed from the literature on physicians' responses to patients they like and dislike, stigma definitions, and discussions with primary care faculty. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted after 440 medical students rated one of 12 diverse conditions. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed after 163 medical students rated two psychiatric conditions. Validity was evaluated by the scale's ability to meaningfully stratify the 12 conditions and identify changes in attitudes toward psychiatric conditions after a psychiatry clerkship. Results Exploratory factor analysis supported an 11-item unidimensional solution (all factor loadings >.40, coefficient alpha =.87). The final scale, the Medical Condition Regard Scale (MCRS), taps the degree to which medical students find patients with a given medical condition to be enjoyable, treatable, and worthy of medical resources. The unidimensional model also was supported by the confirmatory factor analyses for the two psychiatric conditions (both comparative fit indices =.98). The scale stratified the 12 conditions as expected: straightforward medical conditions rated highest, somatoform conditions rated lowest. Students showed greater regard for patients with major depression after the psychiatry clerkship, and students who rotated through an addiction treatment program showed a greater increase in regard for patients with alcoholism than did students not exposed to addiction treatment. Conclusion MCRS scores are reliable, and the scale appears to be a valid instrument for assessing regard for any medical condition.
Obstetric Trainees’ Experience in Vaginal Breech Delivery: Implications for Future Practice

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether trainee obstetricians intend to offer vaginal breech delivery once they become certified as specialists and to quantify their experience in vaginal breech delivery. METHODS: This was an anonymous postal survey of all Australian trainee obstetricians. The survey inquired about experience with, confidence in, and intentions regarding planned vaginal breech delivery after trainees’ certification as specialists. RESULTS: Surveys were sent to all 303 Australian registered trainee obstetricians. The response rate was 65%. Experience in vaginal breech delivery increased with year of training, from a median of one delivery for first-year trainees to a median of 12 deliveries for final-year trainees. Although 53% of final-year trainees reported feeling confident with vaginal breech delivery, only 11% reported an intention to offer planned vaginal breech delivery at term as a specialist. CONCLUSION: Few of the next generation of specialist obstetricians plan to offer vaginal breech delivery to their patients. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
The impact of the collapse of Kenya Co-operative Creameries on smallholder dairy farmers' income: a study of Chepkorio Division - Keiyo

The focus of die research is on die smallholder dairy fanners It studied the consequences of the (xrllapse of Kenya Co-operative Creameries on the farmers’ income and how this has impacted on their welfare, their diversification of farm activities and die dairy farming improvement. The stidy was undertaken in Chepkorio Division, which has a total of 13,393 households. There axe 8 dairy co-operative societies in die Division. The sample units were obtained by use of probability sampling techniques. More specifically the study used die multistage cluster sampling procedure. 80 dairy farmers and 2 key informants were sampled as a representadve of the population. Structured interviews were used in collecting data both from the sampled dairy-farming households and key informants. Ihe impacts of the collapse of KCC on farm households are die units of analysis. The units of observation were the dairy farmers of Chepkorio Division. The collected data has been analyzed by use of sociri statistical techniques, bodi inferential and descriptive and then presented by use of percentiges, frequencies, charts, graphs and tables. The study is important on the basis that it is the beginning to the process of poverty alleviaton in the rural areas where farming is the major economic activity. It will highlight other fanning opportunities diat exist as sources of income apart from dairying. Hopefully it will also . pave way for diversifying the sourcing of raw milk by the new milk processors.
Why so slow? A gradual return for interest rates

Short-term interest rates in the United States have been very low since the financial crisis. Projections of the natural rate of interest indicate that a gradual return of short-term interest rates to normal over the next five years is consistent with promoting maximum employment and stable inflation. Uncertainty about the natural rate that is most consistent with an economy at its full potential suggests that the pace of normalization may be even more gradual than implied by these projections.
Predictive value of obstructive sleep apnoea assessed by the Berlin Questionnaire for outcomes after the catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation.

AIMS Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a risk factor for atrial fibrillation (AF) recurrence after catheter ablation. The purpose of this study is to determine whether OSA assessed by the simple tool, the Berlin Questionnaire (BQ), is useful in predicting the efficacy of catheter ablation of AF. METHODS AND RESULTS The patient population consisted of 210 consecutive patients [mean age 58 +/- 10 years, 167 (80%) male, 119 (57%) paroxysmal] who underwent catheter ablation of AF and completed the BQ. Clinical success was defined as at least 90% reduction in AF burden after 3-month blanking period. Mean duration of follow-up was 25 +/- 12 months. One hundred and one of the 118 (85%) patients at low risk for OSA had clinical success as opposed to 64 of the 92 (70%) patients at high risk for OSA on BQ (P = 0.005). On multivariate analysis, only high-risk for OSA on BQ emerged as an independent predictor of procedural failure (OR 4.53, CI: 1.21-16.87, P = 0.02). CONCLUSION High risk of OSA on BQ predicts procedural failure after catheter ablation of AF. We recommend the use of BQ for risk-stratifying patients for OSA prior to AF ablation procedures and to identify patients for formal sleep study assessment.
Signaling Axis in Osteoclast Biology and Therapeutic Targeting in the RANKL/RANK/OPG System

Bone integrity is maintained through a balance between bone formation and bone resorption, and osteoclasts are primary cells involved in bone resorption. Recent studies have revealed an essential role of macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) and receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand (RANKL) in the development of osteoclasts, and detailed molecular cascades that induce osteoclast differentiation, activation and apoptosis have been clarified. Osteoclasts are involved in various pathologic conditions, such as osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis and tumor-induced bone disease, which are characterized by abnormal bone resorption, and the finding of RANKL has provided us a good therapeutic target for such pathologic conditions.
Curriculum development for sustainable civic engagement

of models and potential progression pathways through stages of embeddedness. The potential relationship between embeddedness and sustainability is critically examined. Boland’s article ‘Curriculum Development for Sustainable Civic Engagement ’ provides a valuable analysis of the processes through which curricula can be designed or adapted to incorporate critical pedagogies and reflection. She gives a comprehensive introduction to the range of service/community engaged learning programmes that exist in Ireland and elsewhere, the terminology used to describe them and their importance in the development of students’ values. While publications concerning engaged and community based learning are frequent within the US, material from other parts of the world is patchy and this article has relevance outside of the context in which it was written. Boland contributes to the wider debate by taking the reader systematically through the curriculum design process and using models to illustrate ‘how best to fit engaged learning into an already overloaded curriculum’. As such it is of interest both nationally to Irish institutions who are actively working to share their own experiences of engagement, and institutions internationally who may be just beginning to consider how to approach this. Of is Boland’s legitimately traditional engagement legitimacy Boland’s useful illustrations of how engaged curricula might be introduced within already overloaded university programmes, tied to discipline specific and measurable learning outcomes,
Examining the Bonding Effects of Party: A Comparative Analysis of Roll-Call Voting in the U.S. and Confederate Houses

This paper examines whether political parties influence Congressional roll-call voting. Rather than focusing on contemporary evidence, my approach is historical: analyzing voting behavior in the U.S. and Confederate Houses during the Civil War. The U.S. and Confederate cases provide a unique opportunity for a comparative analysis because the two legislative systems were nearly identical in all facets, except that a strong two-party system was in place in the U.S. while a party system did not exist in the Confederacy. Thus, using vote-scaling techniques developed by Poole and Rosenthal (1985, 1991, 1997), I examine how roll-call voting in a party system (the U.S. House) differs from roll-call voting in a similar nonparty system (the Confederate House). My results indicate that voting in the U.S. House was considerably more predictable than voting in the Confederate House. Moreover, from additional tests, I conclude that these voting differences were due not to differences in the structure of preferences, but rather to the existence (or nonexistence) of political parties. In the U.S. House, party had a significant, independent effect on vote choice, after controlling for members' personal preferences. No such effect existed in the party-less Confederate House.
Camera tracking based on circular point factorization

Concentric circles (C2Tag's) are planar markers which offer great advantages for detection and tracking. As the circular point-pair (CPP) is the geometric information encoded by a C2Tag, this work is focused on factorization techniques for Structure-and-Motion from multiple CPP images. Gathering all of them in a measurement matrix, two issues are addressed: how to scale the existing entries and how to fill the missing ones. We describe a complete algorithm and prove it. We validate our contributions on simulated and real images.
Lost in Translation: Detecting Tax Shelter Activity in Financial Statements

Whether financial statements of public U.S. corporations provide sufficient information to the public to determine a corporation's tax payment to the U.S. Treasury and its involvement in "tax shelter" transactions has been much debated since the well publicized collapses of Enron Corporation and WorldCom, Inc. In this paper, we use specific examples to demonstrate how "income tax note" data can be analyzed to answer these two questions and, in so doing, point out the limitations of using financial accounting information to address tax-related issues. We conclude with suggestions to increase the transparency of a corporation's tax activities through enhanced disclosure.
What Determines Balance of Payments: A Case of Pakistan

Distortion in balance of payments is one of the dominant causes for the sluggish economic condition of Pakistan. The present article has focused to scrutinize the relationship of the balance of payments to its certain determinants that are actually blamable or not for its distortion. The robust ARDL structure has been utilized to develop the bound testing approach to co-integration and error correction models on data set for 1972-2013.The bound test declares that there exists stable long run relationship of balance of payments to its determinants. The upshots indicate that real exchange rate inversely influences the balance of payments not only in the long run but also in the short run. Interest rate inversely affects the balance of payment in the long run but positively affects in the short run . Fiscal balance affects the BOP negatively in the long and short run simultaneously. As regards the real GDP, it moves the BOP in the positive direction in both long and short run. The money supply cast positive influence on the BOP in the short run but negative effect in the long run. So the need of the hour is that the real GDP of Pakistan should be increased by the deliberate policy of the government. Because it is the GDP that can increase our savings consumption and government expenditures and exports and can improve balance of balance of payment.
Incremental Validity of a Measure of Emotional Intelligence

After the Schutte Self-Report Inventory of Emotional Intelligence (SSRI; Schutte et al., 1998) was found to predict college grade point average, subsequent emotional intelligence (EI)-college adjustment research has used inconsistent measures and widely varying criteria, resulting in confusion about the construct's predictive validity. In this study, we assessed the SSRI's incremental validity for a wide range of adjustment criteria, pitting it against a competing trait measure, the NEO Five–Factor Inventory (NEO–FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992), and tests of fluid and crystallized intelligence. At a broad bandwidth, the SSRI total score significantly and uniquely predicted variance beyond NEO–FFI domain scores in the UCLA Loneliness Scale, Revised (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrono, 1980) scores. Higher fidelity analyses using previously identified SSRI factors and NEO–FFI item clusters revealed that the SSRI's Optimism/Mood Regulation and Emotion Appraisal factors contributed unique variance to self-reported study habits and social stress, respectively. The potential moderation of incremental validity by gender did not reach significance due to loss of power from splitting the sample, and mediational analyses revealed the SSRI Optimism/Mood Regulation factor was both directly and indirectly related to various criteria. We discuss the small magnitude of incremental validity coefficients and the differential incremental validity of SSRI factor and total scores.
Restricting Antimicrobial Use in Food Animals: Lessons from Europe: Banning nonessential antibiotic uses in food animals is intended to reduce pools of resistance genes

A group of experts, convened last year by the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA), reviewed the impact of the European Union (EU) decision to stop using antimicrobials to promote growth in food animals. The group, which was cochaired by Herman Goossens of the University of Antwerp in Belgium and Christina Greko of the National Veterinary Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, consisted of 16 delegates from 10 EU countries, who met in May 2010.
Development of Spin-Torque Oscillators and High  ${K}\!_{{u}}$  CoPt Media With Small Grain Size for Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording

We report the selection of materials and design of spin-torque oscillators (STOs) which are able to operate in an alternative magnetic field (variable frequency) of magnitude ~8000 Oe, generate large enough in-plane ac magnetic field in the recording media, and have tunable high frequency at low driving current for microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) based on micromagnetic simulations. The mechanism and integration approaches of STOs with the current recording system to have the least driving current are also presented. This paper also covers the material choice, layer-stack optimization, and process development on Cox Pt1-x alloy films with extremely high coercivity of more than 1.5 T (Ku of about 1.5 × 107 erg/cc), well-isolated small grains of size 6-7 nm, for the extension of perpendicular magnetic recording and MAMR.
Circadian Modulation of Melanopsin-Driven Light Response in Rat Ganglion-Cell Photoreceptors

Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) project to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and are essential for normal photic entrainment of global circadian rhythms in physiology and behavior. The effect of light on the central clock is dependent on circadian phase, and the retina itself contains intrinsic circadian oscillators that can alter its sensitivity to light. This raises the possibility that the ipRGCs, and hence the photoentraining signals in the retinohypothalamic tract, are subject to circadian modulation. Although the ipRGC photopigment melanopsin reportedly exhibits circadian variations in expression, there has been no direct test of the hypothesis that ipRGC sensitivity is under circadian control. Here, the authors provide such a test by measuring the sensitivity of intrinsic photoresponses of rat ipRGCs at 4 circadian times (CTs) using multielectrode array recording. There was little if any circadian modulation in the threshold of intrinsic ipRGC photoresponses. However, very bright light evoked significantly more spiking early in the subjective night (CT12-13) than at other circadian phases. Thus, the gain of the melanopsin-driven response is slightly increased in the early night, at roughly the circadian phase when melanopsin synthesis is thought to be elevated. However, this gain change is probably too modest to contribute much to shape the phase response curve (PRC) for behavioral photoentrainment.
Genetic Dissection of Interferon-Antagonistic Functions of Rabies Virus Phosphoprotein: Inhibition of Interferon Regulatory Factor 3 Activation Is Important for Pathogenicity

ABSTRACT The rabies virus (RV) phosphoprotein (P) is a type I interferon (IFN) antagonist preventing both transcriptional induction of IFN and IFN-mediated JAK/STAT signaling. In addition, P is an essential cofactor of the viral polymerase and is required for encapsidation of viral RNA into nucleoprotein during replication. By site-directed mutagenesis, we have identified a domain of P required for efficient inhibition of IFN induction. Phosphoproteins lacking amino acids (aa) 176 to 181, 182 to 186, or 176 to 186 were severely compromised in counteracting phosphorylation of IRF3 and IRF7 by TBK1 or IKKi while retaining the full capacity of preventing nuclear import of activated STATs and of supporting virus transcription and replication. Recombinant RV carrying the mutated phosphoproteins (the SAD ΔInd1, SAD ΔInd2, and SAD ΔInd1/2 viruses) activated IRF3 and beta IFN (IFN-β) transcription in infected cells but still blocked STAT-mediated expression of IFN-stimulated genes. Due to a somewhat higher transcription rate, the SAD ΔInd1 virus activated IRF3 more efficiently than the SAD ΔInd2 virus. After intracerebral injection into mouse brains at high doses, the SAD ΔInd1 virus was completely apathogenic for wild-type (wt) mice, while the SAD ΔInd2 virus was partially attenuated and caused a slower progression of lethal rabies than wt RV. Neurovirulence of IFN-resistant RV thus correlates with the capacity of the virus to prevent activation of IRF3 and IRF7.
Impact of Microbial Products on the Biometric Parameters and Productivity of Rice in Madhya Pradesh, India

Despite the increase in chemical and technological inputs, rice production in India has stagnated due to excessive use of chemical inputs and overexploitation of land. This has given rise to the need for adopting sustainable agricultural inputs and practices. This study explores the effect of two organic microbial consortium based products, Magicgro DripSOL and Magicgro Super when used in combination for improving the productivity of commercially grown varieties of Basmati; PB1 and PS4 as well as local scented variety MTU-1010. The trials were conducted on commercial plots spanning across Mandala and Kotma regions of Madhya Pradesh, which were cultivated organically with no external irrigation. The impact of microbial intervention was assessed through biometric and quantitative yield analysis and the data was compared by unpaired T test analysis. In case of PB1, PS4 and MTU 1010, the mean yield increased by 72, 55 and 36%, respectively as compared to the untreated plots. The results signify that a single point intervention using microbial products is capable of bringing about significant improvement in yield. In addition to this, the microbial product application helped in imparting protection against abiotic stress. Therefore, the usage of such products could be considered as part of the solution towards achieving the Nation's mission of promoting sustainable agriculture.