Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring Scale Direction Effects and Response Behavior across PC and Smartphone Surveys

The effects of scale direction on response behavior are well known in the survey literature, where a variety of theoretical approaches are discussed, and mixed empirical findings are reported. In addition, different types of survey completion devices seem to vary in their susceptibility to scale direction effects. In this study, we therefore investigate the effect of scale direction and device type on response behavior in PC and smartphone surveys. To do so, we conducted a web survey experiment in a German non-probability access panel (N = 3,401) using a two-step split-ballot design with four groups that are defined by device type (PC and smartphone) and scale direction (decremental and incremental). The results reveal that both PCs and smartphones are robust against scale direction effects. The results also show that response behavior differs substantially between PCs and smartphones, indicating that the device type (PC or smartphone) matters. In particular, the findings show that the comparability of data obtained through multi-device surveys is limited.
Factors affecting survivability of Jamunapari kids under semi-intensive management system

Factors affecting survivability from birth to weaning were examined in 3099 Jamunapari kids born during 1985 to 2003 at CIRG, Makhdoom, Uttar Pradesh, India. Results revealed significant effect of age, birth weight, season and year of birth, sex of kids, type of kidding, type of disease, age x disease interaction, parity and dam's milk yield in first 90 days. First fortnight of birth was critical for survivability and accounted for 69.03% of the total pre-weaning mortality and after that, there was substantial decline in mortality with the advancement in age of kids. Lower birth weight of kids up to 2.5 kg accounted for 51% loss of their total birth, which decreased almost linearly with the increase in birth weight. Significantly lower survivability recorded among multiple births, dams with high body weight (>55 kg) at kidding and low «40 kg) and high (>150 kg) milk yield of dams in first 90 days. Kids born in first parity and kiddings those occurred during spring season were also associated with higher mortality. Major causes of mortality in preweaned kids were pneumonia, pneumo-enteritis, colibacillosis, acidosis, enteritis/gastro-enteritis and diarrhoea. The survivability was 89.29, 96.95 and 97.36% of kids' strength in 0 to 30, 31 to 60 and 61 to 90 days, respectively.
Dengue viral infection deteriorates vitamin D3, K, thrombopoietin, and angiotensinogen levels in humans

Dengue fever is the most significant arthropod-transmitted viral disease in terms of mortality and morbidity, affecting at least 50 million people around the world. It is commonly recognized as “breakbone” fever as it is mostly associated with severe muscle and joint pain. The objective of the study was to evaluate and assess the levels of selected vitamins and hormones in serum of dengue patients from Faisalabad, Pakistan. Estimation of serum levels of vitamins D3 and K was carried out through spectrophotometer, while concentration of serum hormones, angiotensinogen and thrombopoietin, was determined through enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit method. Hematological blood parameters were also investigated. Hematological parameters significantly (P < 0.05) differ in dengue fever patients and normal control subjects. Vitamin D3 level was found significantly (P < 0.05) decreased in test group (dengue patients) compared to control group (healthy individual). Vitamin K level was also reduced in test group compared to control group, but this reduction was nonsignificant (P > 0.05). Among the tested hormones, angiotensinogen level was found significantly (P < 0.05) lower in test group, while thrombopoietin was nonsignificantly (P > 0.05) higher compared to control group. In conclusion, the results of the current study demonstrated the significance of tested vitamins and hormones along with blood parameters in monitoring the dengue infected patients.
Morphological differences between the Patagonian squid Loligo gahi populations from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans

A total of 243 specimens of the loliginid squid Loligo gahi was examined. The samples comprised 82 specimens (34 males and 48 females) from Peruvian waters and 94 (78 males and 16 females) from Southern Chilean waters in the Pacific Ocean, and 58 (35 males and 23 females) from waters around the Falkland Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Size of the specimens ranged from 83 to 201 mm dorsal mantle length (ML). After defrosting at room temperature, sex, maturity stage, 23 morphometric and five meristic characters from each individual were recorded. Measurements and counts were obtained by the same sampler and under similar conditions. In order to test potential differences between these three populations a Discriminant Analysis was undertaken using morphometric characters. Meristic characters were analyzed using the U Mann-Whitney non-parametric test. Males and females from Falkland Islands population differed in all morphometric characters examined showing higher sexual dimorphism than those from Peruvian and Southern Chilean waters. Significant differences between sexes also occurred in Peruvian population attached to gladius width, gladius rachis length and lower hood length. However, no significant differences between sexes were found in the Chilean population. Significant differences between the three populations. comparing males and females separately, were found. All morphometric characters, except fin length and gladius width, and the number of teeth in the largest sucker of the third arm and the number of gill lamellae accounted for these differences. Hard structures (gladius, beaks and statoliths) proved to be more accurate than soft body parts to separate between populations. Systematics and evolutive implications of the differences found are discussed.
Encouraging the use of self-service business intelligence – an examination of employee-related influencing factors

ABSTRACT This study examines which factors influence the use of self-service business intelligence (SSBI) applications. To analyse the interdependencies, we develop a structural equation model (SEM) and test it by surveying potential users of SSBI across different sectors. The SEM shows that the intention to use is significantly influenced by the expected contribution of SSBI to information needs, which is significantly influenced by business intelligence (BI) experience, SSBI flexibility, SSBI expected time savings and the importance of data quality. The perceived attention of a company to data quality has a significant negative influence on the intention to use. These results imply that the mere introduction of SSBI is not sufficient for successful use. Training on how to use SSBI and how SSBI can change individual ways of working are important components. A well-designed concept for ensuring data quality also promotes the intention to use. In addition, we found that the utilitarian value is independent of the decision environment.
Character, objects and properties

The thesis sets out to accomplish three related tasks at different levels of generality. The first is articulating and defending two problems: The Problem of Resemblance and The Problem of Character, pushing for a shift of focus to the latter. The second level is to consider a general approach to dealing with these problems, the constituent ontology, with a focus on The Problem of Character. I argue that the constituent ontology is a valuable and coherent general approach to giving an answer to these problems. Finally, at the last level of the greatest degree of specificity, I consider particular versions of the constituent approach: one that takes properties to be non-mereological constituents of objects and the other that takes properties to be ontological parts of objects operating under a property mereology. I argue for the latter, which is known as the mereological bundle theory. I argue that this version of the constituent ontology offers a powerful theory of exactly how properties and objects are related by proper ontological parthood. I take the mereological bundle theory to offer the best systematic metaphysics of properties and objects, one that is not only metaphysically coherent but also one that accords well with empirical considerations on the nature of spacetime in physical science. If I am correct, then the world is nothing but a world of properties and fusions of those properties.
Related Factors Associated with Exclusive Breastfeeding in Isfahan Province

Aims Exclusive breastfeeding plays an important role in the growth and promotion of children’s health in the first six months of their life. The exclusive breastfeeding has been decreasing in Iran in recent years. The objective of this study was to investigate the factors associated with the exclusive breastfeeding in Isfahan province, Iran. Materials & This cross-sectional study was conducted on women with infants less than 6 months of age who referred to the urban and rural health centers of Golpayegan, Isfahan and Falavarjan counties (561 people) of Isfahan province between 2007 and 2008. The data were collected using a questionnaire and interview. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 15 software and logistic regression model. Findings Most of the infants (85.6%) fed colostrum. The exclusive breastfeeding levels in the urban and rural regions were found as 25.9% and 32.4%, respectively. Delayed onset of lactation (p<0.05) and cesarean section (p<0.05) were associated with reduction in exclusive breastfeeding, while having a female gender (p<0.01) and receiving postpartum lactation training (p<0.001) showed a positive association with exclusive breastfeeding. Conclusion Delayed onset of lactation and cesarean section reduce the level of exclusive breastfeeding in infants less than 6 months of age in urban and rural communities of Isfahan. However, having a female gender and receiving postpartum lactation training increase the level of exclusive breastfeeding.
Understanding the deterrent effect of police patrol

The fact that crime clusters spatially has been known since at least the early 19th century. However, understanding of the extent and nature of this clustering at different areal units, and the fact that crime also clusters at different temporal scales is relatively new. Where previously the most at-risk areas (or `hot-spots') of crime were defined over areas the size of city districts and for periods of months if not years, the last decade has seen the focus shift to micro-places - areas of only a few hundred metres across - which are only `hot' for days or even hours. The notion that visible police presence in crime hot-spots can deter crime is not new and has been the basis of police patrols for two centuries. This deterrent effect has been well evidenced in many previous studies, both by academics and police practitioners. However, evaluations of these more recent micro-level hot-spot patrol strategies face significant analytic challenges and data quality concerns. They also often assume levels of police activity at the micro-area level (an `intention-to-treat' design) rather than measuring it directly. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the accuracy and precision of data that can be used to evaluate micro-level hot-spot patrol strategies and the implications this has for any analysis conducted using such data at these micro-level geographies. This thesis begins by outlining the relevant literature regarding place-based policing strategies and the current understanding of how crime clusters in both space and time. It continues by highlighting the data challenges associated with evaluating micro-level police interventions through the use of an illustrative analytic strategy before using a self-exciting point process model to evaluate the effects of police foot patrol in micro-level hot-spot under the assumption that the crime and patrol data being used are accurate. This is followed by two chapters which investigate the quality of the two datasets. Finally, the point-process evaluation is re-conducted using simulated data that takes account of the uncertainty of the datasets to demonstrate how data quality issues effect the result of such an evaluation and ultimately, the perceived efficacy of these highly-focussed policing strategies.
Tomato-Potato Aphid Interactions: Insights into Plant Defense and the Aphid Pest

Aphids cause extensive economic losses to cultivated crops worldwide. Their success as pests is in part due to their complex life cycle, wide host range, and the ability of a female aphid to contain not only the developing embryos of her daughters, but also those of her grand-daughters which develop within her daughters. The latter results in build up of immense populations very quickly. Resistant plants represent an environmental friendly approach to combat aphid pests. Better understanding of plant-aphid interaction will contribute to engineering durable plant resistance. In tomato ( Solanum lycopersicum ), the Mi-1 gene confers resistance to potato aphid ( Macrosiphum euphorbiae ), root-knot nematode (RKN) ( Meloidogyne sp.), whitefly ( Bemisia tabaci ), and tomato psyllid ( Bactericera cockerelli ). This incompatible tomato interaction with RKN is characterized by hypersensitive response and vast transcriptional reprogramming, including differential regulation of transcription factors (TFs). Using gene knock-down approach in Chapter one, a role for SlWRKY70 TF was identified in Mi-1-mediated tomato resistance against potato aphid and RKN. Gene expression analysis showed that the regulation of this TF by Salicylic acid and Jasmonic acid hormones is conserved between tomato and Arabidopsis thaliana . The study of SlWRKY70 revealed that there is no consistent nomenclature for plant WRKY TF family. For this reason a phylogenetic analysis was conducted using sequences from 15 plant species. Chapter two presents the analysis and the established orthologous relationship of WRKY TFs among these plant species. Consequently, this analysis allowed the design of a systemic nomenclature for the WRKY TF family to include the inferred orthology relationships. Chapters three and four pursued another approach to understand plant-aphid interactions. These chapters focused on identifying the aphid effectors and putative lineage-specific set of genes through sequencing the aphid and its salivary gland transcriptomes. In Chapter three sequencing and annotation of the potato aphid transcriptome enabled us to conduct comparative sequence analysis with three other aphid species, as well as seven additional species of insects from different clades and a planktonic crustacean. This analysis identified a set of aphid-specific genes, which may contribute to aphid's unconventional biology. The transcripts of a subset of these aphid-specific genes were expressed in the salivary glands suggesting that they are involved in aphid-host interactions. To study this interaction in more detail, the potato aphid salivary gland transcriptome was sequenced in Chapter four. This enabled identification of secreted proteins based on prediction of secretion signal peptides. In planta functional characterization of eight of these putative aphid secreted proteins identified roles for two, Me10 and Me23, in altering tomato responses to the aphid's advantage.
Learning with imperfect supervision for language understanding

Humans learn to solve complex problems and uncover underlying concepts and relations given limited, noisy or inconsistent observations and draw successful generalizations based on them. This rests largely on the poverty of the stimulus argument, or what is sometimes called Plato’s problem: “How do we know so much when the evidence available to us is so meagre? ” In contrast, the success of today’s data-driven machine learning models is often strongly correlated with the amount of available high-quality labeled data and teaching machines using imperfect supervision remains a key challenge. In practice, however, for many applications, large-scaled high-quality training data is not available, which highlights the increasing need for building models with the ability to learn complex tasks with imperfect supervision, i.e., where the learning process is based on imperfect training samples. When designing learning algorithms, pure data-driven learning, which relies only on previous experience, does not seem to be able to learn generalizable solutions. Similar to human’s innately primed learning, having part of the knowledge encoded in the learning algorithms in the form of strong or weak biases, can help learning solutions that better generalize to unseen samples. In this thesis, we focus on the problem of the poverty of stimulus for learning algorithms. We argue that even noisy and limited signals can contain a great deal of valid information that can be incorporated along with prior knowledge and biases that are encoded into learning algorithms in order to solve complex problems. We improve the process of learning with imperfect supervision by (i) employing prior knowledge in learning algorithms, (ii) augmenting data and learning to learn how to better use the data, and (iii) introducing inductive biases to learning algorithm. These general ideas are, in fact, the key ingredients for building any learning algorithms that can generalize beyond (imperfections in) the observed data. We concentrate on language understanding and reasoning, as one of the extraordinary cognitive abilities of humans, as well as a pivotal problem in artificial intelligence. We try to improve the learning process, in more principled ways than ad-hoc and domain or task-specific tricks to improve the output. We investigate our ideas on a wide range of sequence modeling and language understanding tasks.
Evaluation of the role of whey with dodder oxymel on mild to moderate psoriasis: A double-blind, randomized controlled trial

Introduction: Psoriasis is a common chronic inflammatory disease that affects the physical, mental and sexual well-being of patients. Numerous side effects of different treatments and inadequate response to medications have resulted in pursuit of ideal treatment with low toxicity in low burden psoriasis hence complementary medicine. This study aims to evaluate the effects of whey with dodder oxymel on mild to moderate psoriatic skin lesions. Methods: A 12-week double-blind, randomized, controlled, clinical trial was designed. Ninety psoriatic patients participated in the intervention. Drug and placebo were randomly assigned to two groups identically (whey with dodder oxymel and lactose). Patients were visited twice by a dermatologist. Their clinical responses were evaluated using the Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI), the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI), the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and the Body Surface Area (BSA). Results: After 12 weeks, in the intragroup analysis, the mean PASI score (P-value < 0.001) and BSA (P-value = 0.004) decreased in the intervention group. The mean VAS score (P-value < 0.001) and DLQI (Pvalue < 0.001) in both groups decreased. However, this decrease was much higher in the intervention group. In the intergroup analysis, 70% of patients reported improvement in PASI score (P-value < 0.001), the 88% improvement in quality of life (P-value < 0.001) and pruritus intensity (VAS) (P-value < 0.001), and the 54% reduction was detected in the area of lesions (BSA) (P-value = 0.001) as compared to the placebo group. Conclusion: It appears that whey with dodder oxymel would improve psoriasis conditions and it can increase patients’ quality of life.
Prevalence and Antibiogram of Methicilin-Susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) Isolated from Raw Milk of Asymptomatic Cows In Abeokuta, Nigeria -

Most Staphylococcus. aureus show resistance to methicillin and are non-beta-lactam sensitive (MSSA) but are also resistant to other antibiotics and have been associated with mastitis, nosocomial infections, food poisoning, septicemia and other diseases in animals and man. No known study has identified S. aureus in milk of apparently healthy cows in Abeokuta and its environ. In this study, 7 of 9 isolates S. aureus (77.8%) were MSSA and they all showed good susceptibility to all the routinely used antibiotics in Abeokuta viz: Augmentin, Cefuroxime, Gentamycin, Cotrimoxazole, Ofloxacin Tetracycline and Perfloxcin. The S. aureus isolates also show a low MIC values of 2-4 ug/ml to all the antibiotics used, except cotrimoxazole where a value of 8ug/ml was recorded indicating an emergence of resistance to the cotrimazole antimicrobial agents. Rapidly emerging multi-drug resistant strains of MSSA pose a threat to public health and make treatment failure quite imminent, therefore African countries, including Nigeria should consider having efficient control over misuse of antibiotics. Research into molecular epidemiology of S.aureus to compare isolates from animals and man should be encouraged as identification on the basis of antimicrobial resistance is becoming inadequate to study the rapidly emerging genotypes of S. aureus.
Efficacy and safety of thalidomide in treatment of prurigo nodularis

Objective To determine the efficacy and safety of thalidomide in treatment of idiopathic prurigo nodularis. Methods A total of 12 patients were enrolled in the study. Patients of child bearing potential and those with active systemic disease were excluded. All the patients had the histopathological confirmation of diagnosis. Patients were given 100mg/day of thalidomide for a period of three months. Follow up visit was every one month and therapy was stopped at three months. Patients were again evaluated for relapse two months after stopping the treatment. Results 7 (58.3%) patients had successful response to the treatment. 3 (25%) patients had a partial response and 2 (16.7%) had unsuccessful treatment. Conclusion Thalidomide is safe and effective treatment option for idiopathic recalcitrant prurigo nodularis.