Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new lease of life: sexual and reproductive behaviour among PLWHA in the ART era in Nairobi slums

The availability of antiretroviral treatment (ART) is enabling people living with HIV or AIDS (PLWHA) to reconsider their sexual and reproductive lives. The sexual and reproductive health (SRH) decisions that PLWHA make have implications for HIV transmission and prevention. Yet very little is known about SRH of PLWHA in subSaharan Africa, as studies as well as prevention strategies have historically neglected them and SRH matters are often not part of HIV/AIDS treatment and care services. This study looks at how HIV-positive men and women negotiate their sexual and reproductive lives and the barriers to the realisation of SRH needs in Nairobi slums. This study employs a mixed methods study design involving both quantitative (survey n=513) and qualitative (in-depth interviews n=41 and key informant interviews n=14). Respondents were systematically recruited from the community in two slums in Nairobi for quantitative interviews, a subset of which was followed on for in-depth interviewing. Quantitative analyses include univariate, bivariate and multivariate logistic regression modelling. Qualitative data were transcribed, and coded and thematically analysed. SRH outcomes of the study include sexual activity/inactivity, condom use, multiple sexual partnerships, fertility intentions, contraceptive use and unmet need for family planning. Quantitative and qualitative components of the entire study are integrated throughout both analysis and interpretation. The findings show that the SRH outcomes of PLWHA are somewhat different from the general population, but similar with other PLWHA in similar settings. Condom use at last sex is high although consistent use is an issue. PLWHA exhibit fertility desires and contraceptive behaviour that is more geared towards limiting fertility, but face barriers, and hence the high unmet need for contraception. The SRH outcomes are shaped by demographic (e.g. age, parity), socio-cultural (gender, societal norms)relationship (disclosure, intimacy, pleasure) and health factors (ART use, duration of HIV and side-effects and health concerns). Their SRH outcomes are reflective of their efforts for social approval. However, there is a conflict between social validation and moral pressures for HIV prevention presenting a dilemma to many about “proper” SRH behaviour in the ART era. There is need to include SRH counselling and services as part of the standard HIV treatment and care services for PLWHA.
Solid-phase chromosome conformation capture for structural characterization of genome architectures

We developed Tethered Conformation Capture (TCC), a method for genome-wide mapping of chromatin interactions. By implementing solid-phase ligation, TCC substantially enhanced the signal-to-noise ratio and thus, enabled a detailed analysis of inter-chromosomal interactions. We identified a group of regions in each chromosome that predominantly mediate inter-chromosomal interactions. These regions are marked by high transcriptional activity, suggesting that their interactions are mediated by transcription factories. Each of these regions interacts with numerous other such regions throughout the genome in an indiscriminate fashion, partly driven by the accessibility of the partners. Therefore, it is likely that a different combination of interactions is present in different cells. Accommodating this variability, we developed a computational method to translate the TCC data into physical chromatin contacts in a population of three-dimensional genome structures. Statistical analysis of the resulting population demonstrates that the indiscriminate properties of inter-chromosomal interactions is consistent with the well-known architectural features of the human genome.
Galerkin implementation of the multipole expansion approach for accurate and fast solution of first and second kind Fredholm equations

In 1983 Rohklin [9] introduced the notion of multipole expansion for the rapid solution of first and second kind Fredholm equations arising from potential theory. Recently, these ideas have been extended to 3D by the work of White, Korsmeyer [7], and others interested in rapid parameter extraction for characterization of electrical circuits. At the same time, the Galerkin formulation of the boundary element method has recently received renewed attention. The Galerkin BEM approach can substantially increase accuracy near corner singularities, while at the same time introduce desirable convergence properties as demonstrated by Hsiao [6], and Wendland and Arnold [2]. To date the multipole expansion alternative has only been implemented and tested for collocation boundary elements. This work will discuss a Galerkin formulation of multipole expansion for two dimensional problems in electrostatics, and contrast the accuracy and computational costs of classical collocation, Galerkin BEM, collocation multipole expansion, and a Galerkin-multipole formulation. Introduction The solution of open field boundary value problems in electrostatics is of great interest to engineers in the field of power and high voltage engineering. Information regarding the electric field structure on and near conducting and dielectric boundaries is very useful in the design and evaluation of new devices. There are currently several methods of solving these problems, including: the finite element method, the charge simulation method, and the boundary element method. In our previous work, we have used the boundary element approach in which we model all conductor surfaces and dielectric interfaces by unknown charge distributions and enforce DirichTransactions on Modelling and Simulation vol 1, © 1993 WIT Press, www.witpress. com, ISSN 1743-355X
Evaluation of five commercial diets used for fish feeding in Basra governorate, southern Iraq

An nine week laboratory study was carried out to compare the quality of five commercial diets with the brand name Alsabah (SD), Marine Science Center (CD), Aljanaby (JD), Efico sigma 860 (ED) and Arasco (AD) diets in order to ascertain the extent to which they meet the nutritional requirements of common carp Cyprinus carpio fingerlings with mean initial weight 15.74+1.04 g. Fish fed AD diet exhibited significantly (P<0.05) highest specific growth rate (SGR), feed conversion efficiency (FCE) and protein efficiency ratio (PER). While the lowest values were obtained in fish fed CD and JD diets. Fish fed diets containing approximately 30% protein (AD and SD) had significantly (P<0.05) higher PER values indicating maximal protein utilization. Also, results mentioned that satiation level (SL) were affected by energy content, bulk density and water stability of the diets. The lowest SL was observed for fish fed AD and ED diets. Significantly (P<0.05) higher water stability was recorded in AD and ED than SD, CD and JD diets. However, the markedly high SGR, FCE, PER and water stability values along with lower SL obtained with AD diet suggested that diet promoted better characteristics for cultured fish comparing with the other diets.
Impact of Biofertilizers Application on Improving Barley ( Hordeum vulgare ) and the Presence of Dehydrin Genes

Two field experiments were conducted during two successive seasons, 2006-2007 and 2007-2008, to investigate the effectiveness of biofertilizer treatment i.e., plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria species (Azospirillum brasilense, Azotobacter chrococcum, and Klebsiella pneumoniae), chemical fertilizer and their combination on four barley (Hordeum vulgare) cultivars. These cultivars showed a characteristic response under different fertilizer treatments. In general, ‘Sahrawy’ and ‘KSU 101’ produced the highest grain yield. ‘KSU 101’ gave the highest harvest index (43.3%) in the second season. Also, ‘KSU 102’ and ‘KSU 101’ had more grains per spike. The application of nitrogen alone (at 200 kg N ha) and biofertilizer treatment (a mixture of three growth-promoting nitrogen-fixing rhizobacteria) significantly increased grain yield and grains per spike of all four barley cultivars. SSR markers for the amplification of dehydrin genes revealed the presence of two dehydrin genes (HVDHN7 and HVDHN9). ‘Sahrawy’ had homologous dehydrin genes and produced higher grain yield. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Initial Coin O ff erings : Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Token Sales PRELIMINARY

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are sales of blockchain-based digital tokens that are associated with specific platforms or assets. Since 2014 ICOs have emerged as a new financing instrument, with some parallels to equity IPOs, venture capital, and pre-sale crowdfunding. We analyze 453 completed ICOs whose tokens are subsequently traded for at least three months on secondary market exchanges. These ICOs collectively raise $5.7 billion. We examine the relationship between issuer characteristics and measures of success, in particular liquidity. For example, vesting schedules for founders, founder entrepreneurship experience, previous venture capital backing of the issuer, the number of social media followers, posting source code on Github, and creating a new blockchain protocol are strongly associated with liquidity. We also present a transaction-level case study of Filecoin, one of the most successful ICOs.
Apology Strategies in Syrian Arabic

This paper investigates apology strategies by native speakers of Syrian Arabic. Forty-five university students participated in the study, which was conducted using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The data were analyzed within the framework of Olshtain and Cohen (1983). The results show that the apology strategies used by the participants conform to the suggested universality of apologies. Moreover, the data include strategies that are language and culture-specific such as the use of God’s name and the use of proverbs and folk expressions either to magnify the apology or to blame the other participant. As far as the influence of social factors on the use of the strategies is concerned, Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs) are used most frequently in relation to the age factor: when the addressee is older than the apologizer. The status of the addressee has also proved to be important in the use of IFIDs. More IFIDs are used when the addressee is of higher status, but when the social distance is low and the status is equal, IFIDs appear with lower frequency. Repairs are used, as predicted, in situations containing physical and emotional damage. The design of the DCT seems to motivate the occurrence of non-apology strategies.
Modeling Non-Goal Oriented Dialog With Discrete Attributes

In this paper, we address the generic response generation issue commonly observed in non-goal oriented dialog systems. We demonstrate that conditioning response generation on interpretable discrete dialog attributes and composed attributes helps improve model perplexity and generate diverse and interesting responses. We annotate non-goal oriented dialogs with sentiment tags & dialog-acts using classifiers trained from other annotated datasets and demonstrate quantitative improvements (on several standard metrics) & qualitative improvements (human evaluation). Further, we propose to formulate the dialog attribute prediction as a reinforcement learning (RL) problem and use policy gradients methods to optimize utterance generation using long-term rewards. Unlike existing RL approaches which formulate the token prediction as a policy, our method reduces the complexity of the policy optimization by limiting the action space to dialog attributes, thereby making the policy optimization more practical and sample efficient. We demonstrate this with experimental and human evaluations.
Fungal Pathogens Associated with Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) Fruit and Efficacy Determination of Annona Senegalensis Leaf Extract Against The Fungal Isolates

DOI: 10.15580/GJAS.2019. 3.072719146 This study focused on the Isolation of fruit-rot fungal pathogens of watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) and the efficacy determination of Annona senegalensis leaf extract against the fungal isolates. A total of ten (10), each of the spoilt and healthy watermelon fruit from among the samples collected from the four different markets within Mubi were randomly selected for the isolation of fruit-rot fungal pathogens. The collected A. senegalensis fresh leaves were air-dried, pulverized and extracted using maceration method of extraction. The extract was then screened for the presence of phytochemicals and antifungal activity test. The study indicated the presence of only two fungal species such as Aspergillus fumigatus and Aspergillus niger associated with the fruit-rot of watermelon. Terpenoids, flavonoids and tannins were the phytochemicals discovered present in the ethanolic leaf extract of A. senegalensis. The antifungal activity test of the extract showed an inhibitory effect against all the fungal isolates with statistically highest diameter zone of inhibition of 17.50 mm and 20.85 mm and lowest zone of 7.80 mm and 3.15 mm on A. fumigatus and A. niger respectively. Fungal species such as A. niger and A. fumigatus were responsible for the fruit-rot of watermelon fruit obtained from Mubi region. The ethanolic leaf extract of A. senegalensis was effective against A. fumigatus and A. niger. Submitted: 27/07/2019 Accepted: 30/07/2019 Published: 26/08/2019
Tribological Behavior of Sponge Gourd Based Hybrid Reinforced Polymer Composite

In recent times natural fibers are more explicitly exploited for design and development of polymer composites. In the present work mat/woven structure of Luffa cylindrica (loofah), coconut coir (medially coarse and fine) particulates and short bagasse fibers from the rind of sugarcane were utilized to form hybrid reinforced polymer composites in epoxy matrix arranged in different stacking sequences. The fabrication was done with the chemically modified (surface modification) natural fibers in epoxy matrix by hand-layup technique. The erosive wear properties of the fabricated composites have been investigated experimentally. The experiments were carried out in an air-jet erosive wear tester at room temperature. The fabricated composites were exposed to a steam of silica sand erodent particles of particle size of (200±50) μm at different impact velocities and pressures for an exposure period of 10 minutes. The erodent was fed at a rate of . 5 grams/minute. The impingement angle was set at 30, 45, 60 and 90. The erosion rate in each case was calculated by determining the mass loss of test sample and the mass of eroding particles (product of testing time and particle feed rate). The results of the tests were utilized to study the hybrid effect of the natural fibers in natural fiber reinforced polymer composites. Keywordsloofah, coir, bagasse, epoxy, hand lay-up, erosion
Response of finishing swine maintained in different thermal environments

O objetivo, neste estudo, foi avaliar o comportamento, as respostas fisiológicas e o desempenho de suínos mantidos em diferentes ambientes térmicos. Foram utilizados 30 suínos machos castrados, distribuídos em delineamento inteiramente ao acaso, composto por dois tratamentos (ambiente de conforto térmico, 21°C e de estresse por calor, 32°C). Suínos mantidos sob estresse por calor permaneceram menos tempo na posição em pé, mais tempo na posição deitado, menos tempo em alimentação, fuçando e mais tempo dormindo. O tempo em que os animais permaneceram em ócio e bebendo não foi influenciado pelos ambientes. O ambiente de estresse por calor provocou redução do consumo de ração, do ganho de peso e piorou a conversão alimentar dos animais. Por outro lado, a eficiência de utilização da energia e da proteína para ganho de peso não foi influenciada pelos ambientes. Suínos submetidos ao ambiente de estresse por calor apresentaram carcaças mais leves, com maior rendimento e menor percentual de carne, o que resultou em menor índice de bonificação. Ambientes térmicos que provocam estresse por calor afetam negativamente o comportamento, as respostas fisiológicas, o desempenho e as características quantitativas da carcaça de suínos em terminação.
When do politicians appeal broadly? Evidence from Brazil on the economic consequences of electoral rules

Electoral rules determine how voters’ preferences are aggregated and translated into political representation, and their design can lead to the election of representatives who represent broader or narrower constituencies. This project examines how singleand two-round elections in Brazil affect municipal mayoral races using a regression discontinuity design. Two-round elections use two rounds of voting to elect a winner, ensuring the winner obtains at least 50% of the vote. Theoretically, this provides incentives for candidates to secure a broader base of support. I show that, in tworound systems, candidates represent a more geographically diverse group of voters, more resources are allocated to public schools, and there is less variance in resources allocated to public schools across the municipality. I find evidence suggesting that these effects are driven more by strategic behavioral responses of candidates, rather than differential entry of candidates into races. These findings suggest that two-round systems lead candidates to secure broader voter bases and subsequently exhibit less political favoritism when implementing policy.
Histopathological and cytological correlation of tumors of breast

Background : 0 With the advent of fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC), the approach to diagnosis and management of breast lesions has been revolutionized. Its accuracy in many situations can approach that of histopathology in providing an unequivocal diagnosis. Aim : 0 The aim of this study is to examine the cytological details in aspirated smears from lumps in the breast and to evaluate the role of FNAC in improving the quality of diagnosis by comparing with histopathological features. Materials and Methods: Over a period of 2 years, 334 aspirations, including 16 bilateral were performed. Suppurative and inflammatory lesions and gynecomastia were excluded from the total aspirates. A total of 56 cases were followed-up by histopathologic examination. Results: Cytohistologic correlation was 73.68%, 42.85%, 94.44% for fibroadenoma, fibrocystic disease and duct cell carcinoma respectively. False positives were observed in proliferative lesions. No false negative cases observed. The sensitivity of the fine needle aspiration (FNA) procedure was 100%, specificity, 88.5% and the predictive value of a positive result was 84%. Conclusion: Proliferative lesions may be misinterpreted as malignancy in FNA without complete clinical and mammographic details.
Semi-Automatic Repair of Over-Constrained Models for Combinatorial Robustness Testing

Combinatorial robustness testing is an approach to generate separate test inputs for positive and negative test scenarios. The test model is enriched with semantic information to distinguish valid from invalid values and value combinations. Unfortunately, it is easy to create over-constrained models and invalid values or invalid value combinations do not appear in the final test suite. In this paper, we extend previous work on manual repair and develop a technique to semi-automatically repair over-constrained models. The technique is evaluated with benchmark models and the results indicate a small computational overhead.
Coastal Dynamics 2017 Paper No . 007 586 FIELD OBSERVATIONS OF SUSPENDED SEDIMENT CONCENTRATION , TURBULENCE , AND BEDFORMS

Three different examples of intra-wave variations i suspended sediment concentration (SSC) were examin ed in relation to turbulence level and bed morphology. Me asurements were collected on the seaward slope of a n intertidal bar during both breaking and non-breaking wave conditio ns. During non-breaking conditions with presence of v rtex ripples the sediment suspension was dominated by vo rtex shedding. When suborbital ripples were present , a simple proportionality existed between SSC and the wave or bital velocity. Thus, the largest suspended sedimen t concentrations existed at the time of maximum veloc ities and for velocity skewed waves this resulted i n a net onshore wave-induced sediment transport. During breaking wa ve conditions coherent breaker eddies appeared on t he onshore wave phase causing high SSCs and a net onshore waveinduced sediment transport.
Prevalence and socio-demographic factors associated with overweight and obesity among adolescents in Kaski district, Nepal

Background: The occurrence of overweight and obesity is at increasing level in low income and developing countries and is not limited to high income countries only. Adolescent is at high risk for its development. Rationale: To find out the prevalence and associated socio-demographic factors responsible for overweight and obesity which are unrecognized health problems and are risk factors for non-communicable disease. To date no study has been done focusing overweight and obesity in Kaski district, Nepal and very few in context of Nepal. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity and their association with socio demographic factors among higher secondary school level adolescents in Kaski district, Nepal. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in Kaski district among 838 adolescents randomly selected from 12 schools using multistage cluster sampling from 24th October to 4th December, 2013 using self-administered questionnaire and anthropometric assessment. BMI for age was calculated using WHO Anthroplus software v.1. 0.4 using cut off value of 85th percentile and 95th percentile for overweight and obesity respectively. Statistical analysis was done using SPSSv. 16. Results: The study revealed 8.1% prevalence of overweight and obesity of among higher secondary level school adolescents with 5.8% overweight and 2.3% obese. Urban respondents were found significantly more overweight/obese than village respondents (p=0.001, OR=2.360). Adolescents of ethnic/indigenous group (p<0.001, OR=2.56), fathers’ with government job (p=0.011, OR=2.08), mothers’ with teaching job (p=0.038, OR=2.57) and average monthly family income more than or equal to NRs.25, 000 (p=0.007, OR=1.97) were found significantly more overweight and obese. But, other socio demographic factors like gender (p=0.26), birth order (p=0.404) and parents’ education (p=0.121 for fathers’ and p=0.282 for mothers’ education) weren’t significantly associated. Conclusion: Overweight and obesity among adolescents was found high with significant association with permanent residence, ethnicity, parents’ occupation and average monthly family income.