Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Factors Affecting Quality of Life of Workers in Korea Participating in Leisure Activities Using Quantile Regression

INTRODUCTION: This study aimed to identify factors affecting the quality of life (QoL) of workers in Korea participating in leisure activities. METHODS: Cross-sectional survey data were collected from June 10 to June 20, 2013, examining QoL, job stress, social support, serious leisure, and health-related characteristics. Data from 101 participants were analyzed using t-tests, Pearson's correlation, multiple linear regression, and quantile regression. RESULTS: The workers’ mean QoL score was 23.10. Significant predictors of mean QoL score were job stress, social support, and serious leisure. Job stress correlated strongly with QoL in workers who were at 10% (QoL=17.00, p=.013) and 25% (QoL=20.00, p=.001) of the QoL distribution. Social support and serious leisure correlated significantly with QoL in workers who were at 50% (QoL=24.00) and 75% (QoL=27.00) of the QoL distribution. CONCLUSION: Quantile regression analysis identified factors affecting QoL in workers. Therefore, intervention strategies for increasing workers’ QoL should be tailored to workers’ QoL level.
Visual outcome and factors influencing surgical outcome of horizontal strabismus surgery in a teaching hospital in Malaysia: A 5-year experience

PURPOSE: The available data on strabismus surgery in South East Asian countries are scarce. This study aimed to identify visual outcome and factors influencing surgical outcome of horizontal strabismus surgery in a Southeast Asian cohort. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A retrospective review of patients who underwent horizontal strabismus surgery between 2013 and 2017 in Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia was conducted. Surgery was considered successful if the post-operative deviation was within 10 prism diopters at 6 months' postoperative period. Factors influencing the outcome of surgery at 6 months were identified. Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests were used in data analysis. RESULTS: Ninety-eight patients were included. Both genders were equally affected. Exotropia (58.2%) was the most common type. About 65.3% of patients had alternating strabismus, while 51% had an angle of deviation of more than 45 prism diopters. Amblyopia was documented in 14.3% of patients. Those operated on below 10 years of age comprised 64.3%. Ninety-four patients completed follow-ups at 6 months after the surgery. The success rate was 81.6%. Approximately 92% of the patients had best-corrected visual acuities of 6/12 and better at 6 months' postoperative period. There was no significant association between age of onset, gender, presence of amblyopia, type of deviation, amount of deviation, and postoperative best-corrected visual acuity with surgical outcome at 6 months' postoperative period (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The success rate was good. Postoperative best-corrected visual acuity was promising. Age of onset, gender, presence of amblyopia, type of deviation, amount of deviation, and postoperative best-corrected visual acuity did not influence the outcome of horizontal strabismus surgery in our review.
The relationship between female adiposity and physical attractiveness amongst adults in rural Ranaka village, Botswana

Objective: The aim was to assess the relationship between female adiposity and physical attractiveness among men and women in Botswana. Design: A cross-sectional study was undertaken. Setting: Ranaka rural village, Botswana. Subjects: Randomly selected adults (n = 113, men = 48 and women = 65), 18–50 years old were recruited. Outcome measures: Scores to indicate the attractiveness of 21 images of female bodies that represented different percentage body fat (%BF) according to participants’ age, gender and body mass index (BMI) were recorded. Results: The perceptions of physical attractiveness of female body size were similar among men and women, regardless of significant differences between the BMI of men and women. Younger (18–30 years) and older participants (31–50 years) separately, as well as underweight/normal weight versus overweight/obese groups all gave higher attractiveness scores for images with a lower %BF. All groups gave the highest score for the same image (%BF of 19% and waist:hip ratio (WHR) of 0.72), and the lowest score for an image with %BF of 49% and WHR of 0.81. There was a significant negative correlation between attractiveness score and %BF of the images for all groups, but no significant correlation between the attractiveness scores for the images and WHR. There was a consistent outlier in the graphs between attractiveness score and %BF with a %BF of 32% and a WHR of 0.61, with a relatively high score of 7.4 out of 9 for all groups. Conclusions: Participant groups according to gender, age or BMI gave similar attractiveness scores for leaner female body images.
Genome-wide survey of tandem repeats by nanopore sequencing shows that disease-associated repeats are more polymorphic in the general population

Tandem repeats are highly mutable and contribute to the development of human disease by a variety of mechanisms. It is difficult to predict which tandem repeats may cause a disease. One hypothesis is that changeable tandem repeats are the source of genetic diseases, because disease-causing repeats are polymorphic in healthy individuals. However, it is not clear whether disease-causing repeats are more polymorphic than other repeats. We performed a genome-wide survey of the millions of human tandem repeats using publicly available long read genome sequencing data from 21 humans. We measured tandem repeat copy number changes using tandem-genotypes. Length variation of known disease-associated repeats was compared to other repeat loci. We found that known Mendelian disease-causing or disease-associated repeats, especially CAG and 5′UTR GGC repeats, are relatively long and polymorphic in the general population. We also show that repeat lengths of two disease-causing tandem repeats, in ATXN3 and GLS, are correlated with near-by GWAS SNP genotypes. We provide a catalog of polymorphic tandem repeats across a variety of repeat unit lengths and sequences, from long read sequencing data. This method especially if used in genome wide association study, may indicate possible new candidates of pathogenic or biologically important tandem repeats in human genomes.
A machine learning approach for classification of equivalent mutants

Mutation testing is a fault‐based technique to test the quality of test suites by inducing artificial syntactic faults or mutants in a source program. However, some mutants have the same semantics as original program and cannot be detected by any test suite input known as equivalent mutants. Equivalent mutant problem (EMP) is undecidable as it requires manual human effort to identify a mutant as equivalent or killable. The constraint‐based testing (CBT) theory suggests the use of mathematical constraints which can help reveal some equivalent mutants using mutant features. In this paper, we consider three metrics of CBT theory, ie, reachability, necessity, and sufficiency to extract feature constraints from mutant programs. Constraints are extracted using program dependency graphs. Other features such as degree of significance, semantic distance, and information entropy of mutants are also extracted to build a binary classification model. Machine learning algorithms such as Random Forest, GBT, and SVM are applied under two application scenarios (split‐project and cross‐project) on ten Java programs to predict equivalent mutants. The analysis of the study demonstrates that that the proposed techniques not only improves the efficiency of the equivalent mutant detection but also reduces the effort required to perform it with small accuracy loss.
Ultraviolet irradiation enhanced formaldehyde-sensing performance based on SnO2@TiO2 nanofiber heteroarchitectures

With the development of society, formaldehyde has gradually become one of the most common air pollutants in urban environments, offices and homes. In this study, the SnO2@TiO2 heterostructure was prepared by an electrospinning technique, in which the TiO2 nanofibers were uniformly coated by the SnO2 nanoparticles. Gas sensors were prepared from this material and gas sensing properties against formaldehyde (HCHO) gas were investigated. The SnO2@TiO2 composite with a mass ratio of 1.5:1 (ST-1.5) has good sensing properties for HCHO under UV irradiation. The sensibility of ST-1.5 to HCHO with the concentration of 100 ppm under UV irradiation reaches 18.32, which is much higher than the amount of 4.5 in dark conditions. Also, the response and recovery times are decreased from 20 s to 13 s and 16 s to 9 s by UV irradiation, respectively. Importantly, the response to HCHO in high humidity environments is also enhanced by UV irradiation. The improved gas-sensing properties of the SnO2@TiO2 can be ascribed to an enhanced separation of photogenerated charge electron and hole, which greatly reduces the charge recombination.
Modelling beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours regarding the spread of English

Attitudes toward the global spread of English have been one of the major issues in research on the development of world Englishes. Because language attitudes construct an invisible language policy that influences the use of English in a local speech community (Curdt–Christiansen, 2009), many studies addressing the spread of English into non-English contexts have focused on the attitudes of diverse English users toward their local variety and other varieties of English (Ahn, 2014; He & Li, 2009; Wang & Gao, 2015). However, among the core components of language attitudes, that is, the cognitive component (i.e., belief system), affective component (i.e., attitudinal system), and behavioural component (i.e., behavioural intention), little research attention has been paid to the behavioural component other than by Ahn (2014), even though non-native speakers’ actual use of their local English is the process by which English spreads into non-English-speaking communities. Thus it is necessary to explore the factors influencing the speakers’ behaviours while using the local variety of English. In addition, previous research has not identified the mechanism by which the speakers’ beliefs and attitudes have influence their actual behavioural intentions in relation to their attitudes toward their own English. For example, Ahn (2014) reported that whereas Korean English teachers expressed positive attitudes toward Korean English, they were hesitant in their behavioural intentions to use it as a teaching model. However, this study did not deeply address associations among beliefs, attitudes, and actual behaviours in relation to the use of Korean English. In response to this gap, the present study provides an integrated framework for investigating the spread of English into local speech communities by modelling diverse factors of individual speakers’ decision-making processes in adopting the local variety of English.
A comparative study between intraoperativelow-dose ketamine and dexmedetomidine, as an anaesthetic adjuvant in lumbar spine instrumentation surgery for the post-operative analgesic requirement

Abstract Background: Spinal instrumentation and fusion surgery presents the anaesthesiologist with multiple issues like intraoperative blood loss, hemodynamic changes, prolonged surgery etc, but the most probing aspect is analgesia. While both ketamine and dexmedetomidine as adjuvants have shown to decrease intraoperative anaesthetics and post operative analgesic consumption but there are no comparative studies. The primary aim of this study was comparison of post-operative analgesic requirements for 1st 24 hours after surgery when either of the drugs was used as adjuvants. Methods: Adult patients aged 18-60 years, of either sex, and ASA status I or II scheduled for elective lumbar spine instrumentation (of 2 or more spinal levels) surgery were enrolled for the study. Patients were randomised into one of the 3 treatment regimens ketamine/group K (0.5mg/kg bolus followed by 250 mcg/kg/h infusion), dexmedetomidine/ group D (0.5mcg/kg bolus followed by 0.5 mcg/kg/h infusion) or the placebo/ group S (saline/placebo). The study drugs were started after turning the patient prone. Data were recorded for intraoperative hemodynamics, anesthetic consumption (inhalational agent and opioids), emergence through RAS scale (Riker sedation agitation scale), PCA (patient controlled analgesia)-fentanyl use and VAS (visual analog scale) score in the 1st 24 hours after surgery. Appropriate statistical analysis was done. Results: A total of 42 patients (14 in each group) were enrolled. The total PCA fentanyl consumed in first 24 hours of surgery was maximum with the group-S (1366.6±382.6 mcg) in compared with group- D (1035.4±391.8 mcg) and group- K (1164.9±503.6 mcg) (P=0.13). The post extubation RAS score was lower in group-K (3.7±0.6) when compared with group-D (4±0.4) and group-S (4.5±0.9) (P=.009). Total intraoperative sevoflurane and fentanyl consumption showed no difference (P=0.19 and P=0.28). VAS score at rest was higher at baseline with group-S (P=0.009). The ICU stay was comparable (group-D: 1.4±0.5 d, group-K: 1.5±0.5 d, group-S: 1.9±0.5 d) among the groups. Hospital stay was also comparable (P=0.09). Conclusion: In patients undergoing lumbar instrumentation surgery, opioid consumption, VAS scores, PCA pump bad demands, inhalational agent consumption, hospital stay were comparable when either ketamine or dexmedetomidine was used as intraoperative anesthetic adjuvants.
RESIDENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARDS TOURISM IN AN INDUSTRIAL BRAZILIAN CITY: A CLUSTER ANALYSIS

Joinville is the biggest city of Santa Catarina State (Brazil) and its main economic activity is industry. The service sector is expanding rapidly and tourism has been gaining momentum, especially regarding business and events. Although tourism is also an important economic activity, there were no studies about residents’ perception regarding it in Joinville (SC – Brazil) until now, hence the purpose of this study. We conducted 498 surveys with residents from every neighborhood in the city. The questionnaire had 20 questions. The data were tabulated, then we performed a non-hierarchical cluster analysis. We identified four clusters: Moderate Optimists, Optimists, Sceptics and Enthusiasts, the latter being the most representative. It was concluded that Joinville residents perceive tourism positively. On the other hand, tourism needs to be planned and needs a more effective promotion. This way, residents can have a better understanding of its economic, sociocultural and environmental benefits.
A Qualitative Study Of The Early Work Experiences Of Recent Graduates In Engineering.

After several years of demanding study, new engineers graduate from higher education as professionals eager to apply their expertise to solving “real world” problems. Yet, the transition from school to the workplace involves a socialization process through which new graduates attempt to learn the specific tasks and expectations of their job and begin to integrate into the social context of the organization. This paper reports the findings of a study investigating the socialization experiences of newly hired engineers in a large US-based, global manufacturing company.
Relationship between lecture capture usage and examination performance of undergraduate bioscience students

ABSTRACT Lecture capture recordings of audio together with video images of slides are widely used in higher education institutions. Lecture capture is highly valued by students. However, the effect of lecture capture usage on student learning is not well understood and is the subject of some controversy. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between lecture capture usage and examination performance of undergraduate students in order to test the hypothesis that students who use lecture capture recordings more extensively perform better in their end of module examinations. The hypothesis was tested using data from students enrolled on a range of second-year (stage 2) and third-year (stage 3) bioscience modules and fitted to linear mixed models considering potential confounding from gender, nationality and disability status. The results showed that there was no relationship between lecture capture usage and examination performance in this cohort of students. However, a recorded disability and non-UK nationality were both moderately predictive of poorer performance. These findings suggest that lecture capture has neither a positive nor a negative effect on academic performance. This raises a question over the value of providing lecture capture at higher education institutions.
Emergent Intracranial Balloon Angioplasty and Bailout Self-Expandable Stent Placement in Acute Large Vessel Occlusion of the Anterior Circulation: Experience of a Single Institution

Many revascularization techniques have improved clinical outcomes and reduced mortality in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients with large-vessel occlusion. Intravenous recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (IV-rtPA) is considered the first-line treatment for AIS within a 4.5 h time window (1, 2). However, endovascular revascularization therapy (ERT) is superior to IV-rtPA alone for achieving large-vessel revascularization (3-6). Although there are many suitable devices for ERT, recanalization failure of ERT occurs in some cases, and balloon angioplasty has been performed as a rescue method (7). Balloon angioplasty can be useful in cases of in-situ stenosis or stenosis caused by atherosclerosis. Previous studies have compared several methods for mechanical thrombolysis (8). To our knowledge, only a few studies focused on the use of balloon angioplasty, with or without stenting, to achieve recanalization in ERT for AIS (8). In this study, we retrospectively evaluate the outcomes of using balloon anEmergent Intracranial Balloon Angioplasty and Bailout SelfExpandable Stent Placement in Acute Large Vessel Occlusion of the Anterior Circulation: Experience of a Single Institution 전방 순환계의 급성 대혈관 폐색에서 응급 두개내 풍선 혈관확장술과 구제적 자가 확장 스텐트삽입: 단일 기관의 경험
An assessment of factors influencing bear viewing experiences on the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge: implications for management

ABSTRACT The Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska called for an assessment of visitor experiences at the Frazer bear viewing area. A two-phase visitor survey in 2016 reached ≥74% of total Frazer bear viewers, achieving a 91% response rate (n = 506) for the intercept portion and a 43% response rate (n = 219) for the online portion. Analysis revealed that the number of bears and fish ladder structures were associated with high overall trip satisfaction. Negative perceptions of artificial structures were associated with specific prior bear viewing experiences, but were not associated with the motivation of seeking a wilderness experience. Since 93% of respondents were satisfied or highly satisfied, understanding individual factors associated with satisfaction has greater utility than assessing overall satisfaction. Managers often intend for viewing to produce broader benefits for bears through visitor education efforts. Efforts could benefit from understanding the role of specific visitor motivations and expectations.
Improvement in motor functions and emotional changes in patients with Parkinson’s disease after dbs therapy

Introduction. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a method of treatment in advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Aim. The aim of our study was to verified the impact of stimulation of subthalamic nucleus (STN) on the improvement of motor and emotional functions in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Material and methods. We analysed data of 40 patients who underwent bilateral DBS for treatment of Parkinson’s disease in our department between September 2009 and December 2014. Patients were assessed with UPDRS motor score before surgery: with and without medicaments and 3 months after surgery. Every patient underwent psychological evaluation during which time level of depression and fear in our patients with BDI were tested. All patients had another psychological evaluation after one year of stimulation. Results. All stimulators were turned on after 3-4 weeks. The parameters of stimulation were as follows: monopolar stimulation, pulse with (PW) 60 msec. , frequency 130 Hz, amplitude average 2.6 mA. The only one contact was active in 88% of cases, 2 contacts active in 12% of cases. Diminishing of depression tendencies and the level of anxiety were observed. The reduction in motor UPDRS score by 62% and a reduction in daily levodopa-equivalent dose by 71% were achieved. Conclusions. Stimulation of subthalamic nucleus allows to achieve significant improvement in motor functions in patients with advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease and to diminish the amount of taken medicaments. Improvement in motors function in patients with advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease have a positive effect on the of the emotional sphere.
Genetic and environmental factors associated with Helicobacter pylori and peptic ulcer disease

1 Chapter 1 General introduction 3 1 Historical background 4 1.1 Helicobacter genus 4 1.2 Characteristics of H. pylori 6 1.3 Classification 7 1.3. 1 Phenotyping methods 7 1.3. 1.1 Biotyping 7 1.3. 1.2 Serotyping 8 1.3. 1.3 Haemagglutination 8 1.3. 1.4 Outer membrane proteins 9 1.3. 1.5 Immunoblotting 9 1.3. 1.6 Protein profiles 9 1.3. 2 DNA-based typing methods 10 1.3. 2.1 Restriction endonuclease digest patterns 10 1.3. 2.2 Southern blot hybridization analysis 11 1.4 Epidemiology of infection 11 1.4. 1 Transmission of infection 11 1.4. 1.1 Faecal-oral transmission 12 1.4. 1.2 Oral-oral transmission 12
Secular Economic Changes and Bond Yields

Abstract We build a model of bond yields in an economy with secular changes to inflation, real rate, and output growth. Long-run restrictions identify nominal shocks that do not influence the long-run real rate and output growth. Before the anchoring of inflation around the mid-1990s, nominal shocks lifted the output gap and inflation. This led to a higher and steeper yield curve because the short rate was expected to peak after several quarters, following declines in the responses of growth and inflation. With inflation anchored, nominal shocks have small impacts on inflation, output, and bond yields, mostly via the term premium.
Natural disasters and the life course paradigm: The case of 2011 Japanese triple disaster

ABSTRACT Recent research in several disciplines suggests the use of the life course paradigm for understanding the effects of natural disasters on people. This study examines the effects of the March 2011 Japanese disaster in the context of the life course paradigm. While all previous studies on the effects of natural disasters have been based on surveys using retrospective measures of disasters and their effects, the present study is unique in that it uses data from surveys completed before and after the Japanese disaster, allowing the assessment of the effects of this disaster from a natural experiment. The findings support the value of the life course paradigm in understanding the processes by which people’s lives are affected by disasters, including their consumption behaviors in response to disasters.