Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Survey of British Women's Views on the Menopause and HRT

Objective To examine British women's views on the menopause and HRT. Study design Face-to-face interviews with 393 women aged 40–65 (randomly selected to be representative of the UK in terms of geographical region, social class and age) and with a different group of 244 women from across the UK selected according to their HRT use by means of a “snowballing” technique. Main outcome measures Descriptive statistics of women's responses to structured interview. Results Of the 393 women, 17% were currently using HRT (31% of those experiencing menopausal symptoms) and 11% were past users; 51% had discussed HRT with their doctor. Most claimed to know a little (57%) or a lot (25%) about HRT. Reasons for stopping HRT were: side-effects (35%), poor efficacy (24%) and concern about long-term risks (18%). Most current users expected to take HRT long-term: 29% for life, 18% for >5 years and 25% for 2–5 years. 67% of past users and 49% of non-users thought they would take HRT in the future. When considering statements about the menopause, 65% of women felt more would be done if men experienced it, 52% preferred to consult a woman doctor, 60% wanted to learn more about the menopause and 56% were glad that their periods had stopped. Conclusions Compared with past surveys, this suggests that British women's knowledge and use of HRT is increasing. Women may stop HRT if side-effects are troublesome or because of concern about long-term risks. However, many are prepared to use HRT for long periods.
The role of endobronchial ultrasonography elastography for predicting malignancy.

Background This study aims to investigate the role of endobronchial ultrasonography elastography in predicting malignancy. Methods Between January 2016 and December 2016, a total of 221 lymph nodes were biopsied using the endobronchial ultrasonography-guided transbronchial needle aspiration from 119 consecutive patients (69 males, 50 females; mean age 63.2±12.4 years; range, 16 to 86 years) were included. Lymph nodes were scored by elastography according to their colors in four categories before the procedure. The strain ratio was calculated based on the region of interest after three measurements. Results Of the patients, 93 were diagnosed with a malignancy through endobronchial ultrasonography-guided transbronchial needle aspiration biopsy. The mean lymph node score of benign versus malignant lesions was 2.2±1.0 and 3.2±1, respectively (p<0.001). There was a positive correlation between the lymph node scores and lymph node diameter, strain ratio, ≥3 of lymph node scoring, the sensitivity for malignancy was 79% and specificity was 60%. The mean strain ratio for malignant and benign lymph nodes was 22.2±30.1 and 5.2±1.7, respectively (p<0.001). With a cut-off value of ≥2.47 of strain ratio, the sensitivity for malignancy was 75% and specificity was 65%. The combined use of positron emission tomography and lymph node score or strain ratio yielded 80.4% and 61.2% sensitivity and 80% and 70.3% specificity for malignancy, respectively. Conclusion Endobronchial ultrasonography elastography is useful in predicting malignancy of the lymph nodes. When combined with positron emission tomography, specificity and positive predictive value for malignancy increase.
Using some plant extracts (Thymus vulgaris, Musa sp. and Citrus sinensis) to prolong the shelf life of local soft cheese

Powder, aqueous and phenolic extract, of thyme leaves (Thymus vulgaris) (TVL), orange peels (Citrus sinensis) (CSP), and banana peels (Musa sp) (MSP) were added to pasteurized milk before renneting separately for testing their abilities to prolonging the storage period of local soft cheese. These additives were successful in prolonging the storage period of the soft local cheese to 28, 30, and 40 days respectively compared with the control treatment (no additives (NA)), 15 days only. Powder plant additions were the best from the other additions; orange peel powder was the best one. Sensory evaluation of the cheese revealed that the cheese was accepted by tasters for its qualities represented by flavor, taste, bitterness, and color. The use of natural plant additions to cheese led to prolonging the duration of storage, and we recommend that it can be used in food processing rather than industrial preservatives.
An Empirical Study of Corporate Governance and Banks’ Performance in Vietnamese Commercial Banks

In the process of restructuring the Vietnamese banking system, corporate governance in banks has become a topic of concern for a wide range of authorities, bank executives and researchers. This paper examines the effect of corporate governance on banks’ performance in Vietnamese commercial banks through representing factors including size, independence level and diligence of board and auditing board, institutional and foreign ownership. Panel data collected from 26 commercial banks during the period from 2008 to 2014 is used. The paper uses a combination of pooled least squares regression and specific techniques of panel data which are fixed effects and uncertain effects. In addition, a generic generalizedmethod-of-moments approach is also considered. Applying a panel regression technique, the paper finds that size and institutional ownership have positive relation with banks’ performance, while independence level has a negative impact. Moreover, performance in Vietnamese commercial banks has no clear correlation with independence level or foreign ownership.
Studies of some Mechanical Properties of Maize Cob Particles/Unsaturated Polyester Resin Composites

Composites of Unsaturated polyester Resin and Maize Cob (MC/UPR) were prepared at different filler loading and some of their mechanical properties tested. It was found that as the filler content was increased, the composites could not form above 20% filler loading due to saturation of the UPR. It was also observed that as the filler content increased, the tensile strength, impact strength, hardness and flexural strength all decreased. The values obtained are within acceptable range to allow for the use of MC/UPR composites to be used in areas where strength is not of paramount importance. Keywords— flexural strength, hardness Maize cob, tensile strength, Unsaturated Polyester Resin
Family formation trajectories and migration status in the United States, 1970-2010

Studies often explain differences in family outcomes by migration status by referring to four hypotheses: socialization, selection, disruption, and assimilation/adaptation. These hypotheses were initially formulated as competing explanations, but some scholars have argued that they are complementary. Currently, however, this complementary relationship is not well understood. In this paper, I draw on these hypotheses jointly to examine family formation and dissolution trajectories in the US by migration status based on quantitative, nationally representative evidence. For the analysis, I use retrospective information on marriages, unions, and births to men and women from five waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (19952015) to construct a six-category typology of family trajectories. This typology divides men and women into groups with similar family formation and dissolution trajectories. I correlate this typology with information on each respondent’s race/ethnicity, educational attainment, place of birth, and age at migration. The patterns of these correlations demonstrate that gender and class explain differences in family trajectories to a greater extent than migration status. The relationship between family paths and migration depends on the migrants’ sex, age at migration, and socioeconomic background. These multiple dependencies underline the need for complementary rather than competing explanations. In addition, I examine differences in the prevalence of racially exogamous and endogamous marriages/unions in order to explore the possibility that other social mechanisms are driving these sexand class-specific relationships. Family formation and migration in the United States
High-Frequency Trading and Market Quality: The Case of 'Slightly Exposed' Market

Impacts of high-frequency trading (HFT) on market quality and various actors have been broadly studied. However, what happens when HFT is not a prominent figure in a market remains relatively unexplored. The paper seeks to answer this question focusing on 30 blue chip stocks in an emerging market, Borsa Istanbul, through Dec 2015 to Mar 2017. Despite a low share in the overall activity, HFT has observable effects: liquidity provision by non-HFT traders significantly reduces with HFT; HFT activity on the sell side induces higher volatility; and HFT generates profits on both positive and negative return days. These findings raise concerns regarding HFT and show potential externalities are not specific to the markets with HFT dominance.
Effect of Personalized, Computer-Based Instruction on Students’ Achievement in Solving Two-Step Word Problems

— This study investigated the effect of personalized, computer-based instruction using individual student interests and preferences on students’ achievement in solving two-step word problems. 80 junior secondary school year three students were grouped by ability level based on pre-test scores, then randomly assigned to a personalized or non-personalized version of the computer-based instruction on two-step word problems. Students made significant pre-test-to-post-test gains across treatments and the personalized treatment yielded a significant achievement difference over the non-personalized one. Significant two-way interactions for treatment by ability level, treatment by test occasion and ability level by test occasion were recorded. Also, a significant three-way interaction reflected that personalized high-ability students, non-personalized high-ability students, and non-personalized low-ability students improved less from pre-test to post-test than personalized low-ability students.
Libertarianism, Culture, and Personal Predispositions

The United States has exhibited two potentially connected trends – increasing individualism and increasing interest in libertarian ideology. Previous research on libertarian ideology found higher levels of individualism among libertarians, and cross-cultural research has tied greater individualism to making dispositional attributions and lower altruistic tendencies. Given this, we expected to observe positive correlations between the following variables in the present research: individualism and endorsement of libertarianism, individualism and dispositional attributions, and endorsement of libertarianism and dispositional attributions. We also expected to observe negative correlations between libertarianism and altruism, dispositional attributions and altruism, and individualism and altruism. Survey results from 252 participants confirmed a positive correlation between individualism and libertarianism, a marginally significant positive correlation between libertarianism and dispositional attributions, and a negative correlation between individualism and altruism. These results confirm the connection between libertarianism and individualism observed in previous research and present several intriguing questions for future research on libertarian ideology.
Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Literature Review

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a disorder that has a big burden in the everyday life of the patient, and it’s not well-known because of the often-wrong idea portrayed by the media. To better understand this disorder, in this review we looked at four important questions. First, we looked at the prevalence of DID to have an idea of how many people have it, and we found it is not as rare as it is believed. Second, we looked at how it develops and we found three possibilities: Trauma Model, Fantasy Model, and a severe symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder. Third, we looked at the existent treatments and found that the trauma-focused psychotherapy is the preferred way of treatment, but we also found that quetiapine helps, as well as the use of relational psychoanalytic treatment. Lastly, we concluded that there is not a lot of research done in any area of DID and that is where we should focus on doing more research so we can know more about a forgotten disorder that affects the lives of so many people.
Applications of Network Pharmacology in Traditional Chinese Medicine Research

Human diseases, especially infectious ones, have been evolving constantly. However, their treatment strategies are not developing quickly. Some diseases are caused by a variety of factors with very complex pathologies, and the use of a single drug cannot solve these problems. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) medication is a unique treatment method in China. TCM formulae contain multiple herbs with multitarget, multichannel, and multilink characteristics. In recent years, with the flourishing development of network pharmacology, a new method for searching therapeutic drugs has emerged. The multitarget action in network pharmacology is consistent with the complex mechanisms of disease and drug action. Using network pharmacology to understand TCM is an emerging trend.
Working Document SEDAR 43 Oogenesis and fecundity type of Gray Triggerfish (Balistes capriscus) in the Gulf of Mexico

The fecundity of Gray Triggerfish (Balistes capriscus) has been difficult to estimate as few imminent and recent spawning females have been detected. Our study focused on verifying the pattern of oogenesis and fecundity type. From 1999-2012, 1092 female Gray Triggerfish were collected from the eastern Gulf of Mexico with subsets used to calculate condition indices and assess ovarian histology. Gonadosomatic and hepatosomatic indices and Fulton’s condition factor indicated liver and somatic energy stores increased prior to spawning and were depleted throughout the spawning period. This is characteristic of a capital pattern of energy storage and allocation to reproduction. Typical of a capital pattern, we observed a hiatus in oocyte size distribution and group synchronous oogenesis, both traits of a deterministic fecundity type. However, evidence that fecundity was not set prior to spawning included the observation of “de novo” vitellogenesis during the spawning season; sec ondary oocytes increased in number and failed to increase in mean size over time. Thus Gray Triggerfish exhibit an indeterminate fecundity type with mixed reproductive traits that may characterize species exhibiting female parental care in warm water environments. Further, we estimated secondary oocyte growth (37 μm/d) based upon the timelag of postovulatory degeneration. Using oocyte growth rate and the proportion of females bearing postovulatory follicles, the interspawning interval was estimated to range from 8 to11 d. This indicates production of 8-11 batches per female may occur during an estimated 86 d reproductive period. The hiatus in oocyte size distribution was used to define a minimum size (250 μm) from which to distinguish an advancing batch of secondary growth oocytes. Batch fecundity (BF) ranged from 0.34 to 2.0 million eggs and was significantly related to fork length (FL): BF=8,703.69*FL(mm) – 1,776,483 (r=0.56).
Idiosyncratic volatility: the myth-busting effect of measurement error and market structure*

We reexamine the evolution of idiosyncratic volatility (IV) of US firms between 1962 and 2016, and its relation to expected returns. The unusually high variance of new firmly listed stocks from 1962 to 1997 materializes in a trend in the IV and, contrary to the conclusions of related studies, in systemic risk. A decreasing market concentration attenuates the trend in the latter before 1997. The subsequent reversal of IV stems from the bias in correlations before 1997 due to measurement errors among existing illiquid stocks. Young and distressed stocks are crucial for obtaining the negative IV-expected return relation.
Hybrid Generative-Discriminative Learning

This work presents a hybrid generative-discriminative algorithm for supervised or semi-supervised learning, inspired by radial basis function network classiﬁers. The network is composed of two layers: (1) a layer with mixture models that creates an embedding of the input; (2) an output layer with a log-linear model that classiﬁes the embedded data. The mixtures may include Gaussian and/or categorical components (also called multinoullis ), thus being able to handle real, categorical, and mixed data. It can also learn from datasets containing missing entries, where the mixture layer can estimate the missing values at each iteration. The proposed learning scheme intertwines the (unsupervised) expectation-maximization algorithm for ﬁnite mixtures (running in the ﬁrst layer) with (supervised) logistic regression (running in the output layer); moreover, it allows the output layer to inﬂuence the weights of the components in the ﬁrst layer (according to their importance/weight for the classiﬁer), thus being interpretable as a form of back-propagation (without gradients). The algorithm handles semi-supervised learning and, as a by-product, performs density estimation, clustering, and dimensionality reduction of the input data. The experimental results on some classical datasets (involving real-valued, categorical, and mixed data) show competitive and promising results.
Strategy For Cellulase Immobilization And Its Partial Purification And Characterization

Conversion of cellulose to glucose units by cellulases, called hydrolysis, is a very complex step in ethanol production. It requires the mixing of aqueous suspensions of cellulose/cellulases so that cellulases (majority composed of the active site domain and the binding site domain) can attach to cellulose chains, cut or hydrolyze ß(1-4) glycosidic bonds between glucose units, de-attach and move to another location. Mixing extent (insufficient or excessive agitation) might influence the attachment of cellulases and possibly lead to lower glucose yields. A long-term goal of this research is to determine the strength of mixing required to be applied during the cellulose-cellulase mixing cycle. For that purpose, one of the objectives was to purify CBH I exocellulase from the commercial cellulase mixture. A partial purification of the CBH I that was performed on a much smaller scale with uncontrolled flow rate was successful. Another objective was to propose a scheme that would covalently immobilize CBH I exoceullase via its active site domain (ASD) on an atomic force microscopy-compatible support, a silicon support. A theoretically-developed hypothetical scheme was constructed (with the provided detailed procedure). The approach of immobilizing the inhibitor specific to the ASD of CBH I enzyme led to the possibility that no purification of CBH I could be required. Skipping CBH I purification step would save time and hassle associated with purification step. Once the ASD of CBH I is immobilized on a silicon support, the AFM force profile between the free-floating CDB and substrate cellulose could be established.
Effect of Matrix Rhythm Therapy on Chronic Vein Dysfunction Deep Foot Ulcer: A Case Report

A deep foot ulcer is an open sore on the foot that extends from superficial skin to the full thickness of the skin and may involve tendons, bones and other deep structures [1]. It is more likely seen in people with poor circulation and hence difficult to heal. The majority (60-80%) of foot ulcers heal, while 10-15% of them will remain active, and 5-24% of them will finally lead to limb amputations [2]. If the ulcer is not treated in the right way then there are more chances of infecting this ulcer and leading to an abscess, cellulitis, gangrene or bone infections like osteomyelitis. Foot ulcers are difficult to treat in any patient and it is more difficult having any peripheral neuropathy, circulatory problems, abnormality of bones or muscles, atherosclerosis, Raynaud’s phenomenon etc. If it not treated on time it may further lead to amputation [3]. Neuropathic wounds heal over a period of 20 weeks, while neuroischemic ulcers take longer duration and will more often lead to limb amputation [4]. The prevention of diabetic foot is crucial, considering the negative impact on a patient’s quality of life and the associated economic burden on the healthcare system [5].
Neighborhood Effects on Social Participation of Children With and Without Disabilities

​​ ​Few​ ​studies​ ​have​ ​examined​ ​how​ ​neighborhood​ ​characteristics​ ​affect​ ​the​ ​social participation​ ​of​ ​children​ ​with​ ​and​ ​without​ ​disabilities. ​ ​Analysis​ ​of​ ​survey​ ​data​ ​from​ ​20 low-income​ ​U.S.​ ​neighborhoods​ ​confirmed​ ​that​ ​neighborhood​ ​safety​ ​and​ ​stability​ ​influence social​ ​participation. ​ ​Furthermore,​ ​children​ ​with​ ​disabilities​ ​have​ ​lower​ ​odds​ ​of​ ​social participation,​ ​though​ ​disparities​ ​vary​ ​by​ ​location.
Relating CMIP5 Model Biases to Seasonal Forecast Skill in the Tropical Pacific

We examine links between tropical Pacific mean state biases and El Niño/Southern Oscillation forecast skill, using model‐analog hindcasts of sea surface temperature (SST; 1961–2015) and precipitation (1979–2015) at leads of 0–12 months, generated by 28 different models from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Model‐analog forecast skill has been demonstrated to match or even exceed traditional assimilation‐initialized forecast skill in a given model. Models with the most realistic mean states and interannual variability for SST, precipitation, and 10‐m zonal winds in the equatorial Pacific also generate the most skillful precipitation forecasts in the central equatorial Pacific and the best SST forecasts at 6‐month or longer leads. These results show direct links between model climatological biases and seasonal forecast errors, demonstrating that model‐analog hindcast skill—that is, how well a model can capture the observed evolution of tropical Pacific anomalies—is an informative El Niño/Southern Oscillation metric for climate simulations.
Persuasion with unknown beliefs

A sender designs an information structure to persuade a receiver to take an action. The sender is ignorant about the receiver's prior, and evaluates each information structure using the receiver's prior that is the worst for the sender. I characterize the optimal information structures in this environment. I show that there exists an optimal signal with two realizations, characterize the support of the signal realization recommending approval,, and show that the optimal signal is a hyperbola. The lack of knowledge of the receiver's prior causes the sender to hedge her bets: the optimal signal induces the high action in more states than in the standard model, albeit with a lower probability. Increasing the sender's ignorance can hurt both the sender and the receiver.