Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on health service utilization across regions of Ethiopia: An interrupted time series analysis of health information system data from 2019–2020

The spread of COVID-19 and associated deaths have remained low in Ethiopia. However, the pandemic could pose a public health crisis indirectly through disruptions in essential health services. The aim of this study was to examine disruptions in health service utilization during the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic across 10 regions in Ethiopia. We analyzed utilization of 21 different health services across all of Ethiopia (except the Tigray region) for the period of January 2019 to December 2020. Data were extracted from the Ethiopian district health information system (DHIS2). Monthly visits in 2020 were graphed relative to the same months in 2019. Interrupted time series analysis was used to estimate the effect of the pandemic on service utilization in each region. We found that disruptions in health services were generally higher in urban regions which were most affected by COVID. Outpatient visits declined by 52%, 54%, and 58%, specifically in Dire Dawa, Addis Ababa and Harari, the three urban regions. Similarly, there was a 47% reduction in inpatient admissions in Addis Ababa. In agrarian regions, the pandemic caused an 11% to 17% reduction in outpatient visits and a 10% to 27% decline in inpatient admissions. Visits for children with diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition also declined substantially while maternal health services were less affected. Our study indicates that disruptions in health services were more pronounced in areas that were relatively harder hit by the pandemic. Our results show that the Ethiopian health system has a limited capacity to absorb shocks. During future waves of COVID or future pandemics, the Ethiopian health system must be better prepared to maintain essential services and mitigate the indirect impact of the pandemic on public health, particularly in urban areas.
Does Reality Overcome the Expected? Survey on Informal Caregivers’ Profile: A Nurse-Led Study in Times of COVID-19

The increasing overload of chronic conditions raises challenges for the health system. Informal caregivers have a major role in ensuring the quality of life of the cared-for person, despite the reported lack of working resources which can lead to unmet needs. This article reports on the first part of a nurse-led research project entitled ‘‘Informal caregiver’ profiles in Lisbon county: a health community approach. ’ We aimed to support decision-making by developing an informal caregiver profile to promote tailored interventions. A survey addressing the dyad was developed and submitted to a convenient, network-based, stratified sample of carers aged 18 years or above. More than thirty community partners supported the identification of caregivers. Data were submitted to univariate descriptive analysis. A profile of the cared-for person and the informal caregiver was uncovered by identifying 639 caregivers, of whom the majority lived with the cared-for person. Only four percent planned the transition to a caregiver role, and no more than 10% had access to support programs. Approximately half of the respondents found that COVID-19 negatively impacted their performance in the caregiver role. Developing a local and tailored strategy with collaboration between healthcare professionals, academics, and community partners is key to ensuring that meaningful support is provided to caregivers.
Aligning finance with the green transition: From a risk-based to an allocative green credit policy regime.

The green transition requires a substantive shift in financial flows that will not occur without policy interventions. We map out and critically assess the dominant, ‘risk-based’ approach which relies on changing the relative prices of green /dirty assets. Since it outsources the pace and nature of decarbonisation to private capital, the risk approach is poorly equipped to deal with the shift towards market-based finance, is vulnerable to arbitrage and regulatory capture, and is unable to deal with uncertainty or carbon lock-in dynamics. We propose an ‘allocative green credit policy’ regime that is organised around green industrial policy objectives and democratically agreed green missions. This draws on post-war credit policy regimes as it involves both quantitative and priced-based interventions in credit and institutional capital markets but also deals with the specific challenges posed by market-based finance. We discuss the implications of such a regime for central bank independence, inflation targeting and the management of stranded assets.
Pathways to Youth Political Participation: Media Literacy, Parental Intervention, and Cognitive Mediation

ABSTRACT The present study aims to investigate pathways to political participation among children and youth. From the perspective of the cognitive mediation model, we attempt to analyze youth participation by considering two socializing factors (i.e., school education for media literacy and family intervention for technology use) as external antecedents to the intrinsic process of cognitive mediation involving surveillance motivation, elaboration/reflection, and engagement. Our extended cognitive mediation model on youth participation is tested with national survey data collected in South Korea with the use of a multistage random sampling technique. Results show that media literacy education and parental mediation nurture surveillance motivation, and indirectly increase youth participation through motivation, reflection, and online news engagement. Implications for the cognitive mediation model and youth participation are discussed.
Epidemiology of Community-Acquired Respiratory Tract Infections in Patients Admitted at the Emergency Departments

Objectives: Community-acquired respiratory infections (CARTIs) are responsible for serious morbidities worldwide. Identifying the aetiology can decrease the use of unnecessary antimicrobial therapy. In this study, we intend to determine the pathogenic agents responsible for respiratory infections in patients presenting to the emergency department of several Lebanese hospitals. Methods: A total of 100 patients presenting to the emergency departments of four Lebanese hospitals and identified as having CARTIs between September 2017 and September 2018 were recruited. Specimens of upper and lower respiratory tract samples were collected. Pathogens were detected by a multiplex polymerase chain reaction respiratory panel. Results: Of 100 specimens, 84 contained at least one pathogen. Many patients were detected with ≥2 pathogens. The total number of pathogens from these 84 patients was 163. Of these pathogens, 36 (22%) were human rhinovirus, 28 (17%) were Streptococcus pneumoniae, 16 (10%) were metapneumovirus, 16 (10%) were influenza A virus, and other pathogens were detected with lower percentages. As expected, the highest occurrence of pathogens was observed between December and March. Respiratory syncytial virus accounted for 2% of the cases and only correlated to paediatric patients. Conclusion: CARTI epidemiology is important and understudied in Lebanon. This study offers the first Lebanese data about CARTI pathogens. Viruses were the most common aetiologies of CARTIs. Thus, a different approach must be used for the empirical management of CARTI. Rapid testing might be useful in identifying patients who need antibiotic therapy.
Decentralized tracking of interconnected systems

Decentralized funnel controllers are applied to finitely many interacting single-input single-output, minimum phase, relative degree one systems in order to track reference signals of each system within a prespecified performance funnel. The reference signals as well as the systems belong to a fairly large class. The result is a generalization of the work by [2].
Pooled Estimation of Long-run Relationships in Dynamic Heterogeneous Panels

It is now quite common to have panels in which T, the number of time series observations on the N groups, is quite large. The usual practice is either to estimate N separate regressions and calculate the mean, which we call the Mean Group estimator, or to pool the data and assume the slope coefficients and variances are identical. In this paper, the authors propose an intermediate procedure, referred to as the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator, which constrains the long-run coefficients to be identical, but allows the short- run coefficients and error variances to differ across groups. The stationary case is considered as well as the case where the underlying regressors follow unit root processes, and for both cases the asymptotic distribution of the PMG estimator as T tends to infinity is derived, for a fixed N. The authors also provide an empirical application to aggregate consumption functions across 24 OECD economies.
The Role of Organizational Trust an Empirical Estimation of Agriculture Transformation and Rural Development in Pakistan under SDGs

Agriculture sector still support more than half population of the country. Contribution of agriculture is important for Pakistan’s development. Agriculture has been always the main sector of the economic growth of the Pakistan. This study has been conducted to investigate the role of agriculture sector in rural development of Pakistan. To achieve economic sustainability and growth, Pakistan planned to adopt 17 SDGs and under that SDG 2 promote agriculture sustainability. So, it is aimed to measure the progress of Pakistan on this defined indicator to analysis the impact of structural transformation on agriculture sustainability. Time series data has been taken from 1972-2017. ARDL method of estimation has been used for the fulfillment of the objective of the study. Agriculture productivity has been taken as the dependent variable and Employment in Agriculture, Agricultural land, Agricultural Machinery and Fertilizer Consumption are taken as independent variables. For the estimation double log equation has been used. To check the co integration among the dependent and independent variables ARDL bound test has been utilized. It has been observed that through the existing body of knowledge that agriculture machinery, agriculture land and fertilizer consumption in agriculture sector has positive effect in the rural sector. But it has been observed that employment in agriculture have not significant effect on the agriculture value added in Pakistan. It is necessary to enhance the agriculture sector for the rural development which ultimately boosts the economic growth.
Expanded agroecological niches and redistributed risks in northern Peru’s Chicama Valley during late-Holocene ENSO climate changes

South American arid lands present unique constellations of climatic risk to their human inhabitants, due to volatile events that can create markedly different hydroclimate conditions over interannual–centennial scales. However, a main driver of such volatility – the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – occurs with semiregular periodicity. Paleoclimatic and archeological evidence indicate not only that the strength and periodicity of ENSO patterns have changed over the late-Holocene, but their impacts were likely recognized, adapted to, and perhaps capitalized upon by agriculturalists employing adaptive risk strategies. We examine relationships over the last 1.3 kyr between ENSO periodicity, ecological transitions, and archeological settlement in Peru’s Chicama Valley through a coupled paleohydroclimate and agroecology model. We reconstruct periods when ENSO-like conditions dominated past hydroclimates and present a quantitative, spatially-explicit analysis of ecological productivity during modern ENSO-positive hydroclimate conditions. We show that archeological settlement patterns are sensitive to these transformations and reflect efforts to capitalize on expanded agroecological niches. Such expanded niches potentially offset the adverse impacts and risks associated with abrupt ENSO climate events. These results suggest archeological communities were aware of ENSO risk and managed productive strategies accordingly, highlighting the importance of a risk calculus that considers the net ecological effects of climate events.
Streaming Verstehen: Whither Feature Film in the Classroom?

Scholars have long praised the ways in which film can provide students with an opportunity for deep intellectual and emotional connections to classroom material. With contemporary technology, however, instructors are instead turning toward shorter audiovisual material that can be accessed with little preparation, take up less class time, and cater to an instructor’s needs. But what has been lost? Are film’s established advantages now irrelevant? Here we aim to begin a conversation about the continued use of film in the classroom. We do so through an analysis of surveys sent to students who have previously taken a class that used streaming services to assign over a dozen films as homework assignments over the course of the semester. Results show that films remain an immersive and reflexive complement to course readings and often continue to have an impact on students after the class has concluded. Nevertheless, instructor guidance remains essential.
Observing short-timescale cloud development to constrain aerosol–cloud interactions

Abstract. The aerosol impact on liquid water path (LWP) is a key uncertainty in the overall climate impact of aerosol. However, despite a significant effort in this area, the size of the effect remains poorly constrained, and even the sign is unclear. Recent studies have shown that the relationship between droplet number concentration (Nd) and LWP is an unreliable measure of the impact of Nd variations on LWP due to the difficulty in establishing causality. In this work, we use satellite observations of the short-term development of clouds to examine the role of Nd perturbations in LWP variations. Similar to previous studies, an increase followed by a general decrease in LWP with increasing Nd is observed, suggesting an overall negative LWP response to Nd and a warming LWP adjustment to aerosol. However, the Nd also responds to the local environment, with aerosol production, entrainment from the free troposphere and wet scavenging all acting to modify the Nd. Many of these effects act to further steepen the Nd–LWP relationship and obscure the causal Nd impact on LWP. Using the temporal development of clouds to account for these feedbacks in the Nd–LWP system, a weaker negative Nd–LWP relationship is observed over most of the globe. This relationship is highly sensitive to the initial cloud state, illuminating the roles of different processes in shaping the Nd–LWP relationship. The nature of the current observing system limits this work to a single time period for observations, highlighting the need for more frequent observations of key cloud properties to constrain cloud behaviour at process timescales.
Optical-Near-Infrared Color Gradients in Early-Type Galaxies at z ≤ 1.0

Recent studies based on line indices of nearby early-type galaxies suggest that stars in the galaxies' inner part may be younger and more metal-rich than stars in the outer part. If confirmed, the finding has a profound implication for the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies, since such age gradients naturally arise if merging played an important role in their formation/evolution. As an independent test for the existence of the age gradient, we investigate the optical-near-infrared color gradients of six field early-type galaxies at z ≃ 0.4-1.0, where the age gradient is expected to be detectable when combined with z = 0 calibrations. By utilizing Hubble Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer H-band imaging along with Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 optical data, we obtain a broad-wavelength baseline, giving results that are sensitive to the expected age gradient. When compared with simple model predictions, five of the objects show negligible age gradients and are metallicity gradient dominated, while the remaining object shows a color gradient consistent with the age + metallicity gradient picture. Our results suggest that stars within early-type galaxies may be coeval at z ~ 1, but sprinkling of young stars might have occurred at z < 1.
EFFECT OF PARTIAL SUBSTITUTION OF SPRAY DRIED RIPE HOM THONG BANANA POWDER WITH HOM THONG BANANA FLOUR ON IN VITRO STARCH DIGESTIBILITY AND ANTIOXIDANT PROPERTIES OF HOM THONG BANANA TABLETS AND THEIR CHEMOMETRICS

Hom Thong banana flour (HTBF) contains the large amounts of the phenolic compounds and resistant starch (RS). The application of HTBF in food products improves their antioxidant activities and glycemic index (GI). The objective of research was to estimate the different ratios of spray dried ripe Hom Thong banana powder (SDRHTBP) to HTBF, 95:5 and 90:10 on the color, hardness, resistant starch (RS), non-resistant starch (Non-RS), and total starch (TS) contents and in vitro starch hydrolysis index (HI), estimated glycemic index determination (EGI), total phenolic content (TPC), Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC), and chelating ability on Fe2+ of Hom Thong banana tablets (HTBT). When increased substitution ratios of HTBF, the L*, a*, and b* values and the hardness value, HI, and EGI of HTBT decreased; whereas, the TPC, chelating ability on Fe2+ assay, TEAC, and RS content increased. Obviously, the higher substitution ratios of HTBF were related to those parameters. Using PCA, the correlation among these parameters clearly revealed which TPC and RS contents were good indicators for Non-RS content, HI, EGI, chelating ability on Fe2+ assay, TEAC, L*, a*, b*, and hardness. Eventually, the HTBF substitution can be an alternative way to help reducing a sugar level used in the confectionery production and to get a novel confectionary with health benefits.
An alternative hyper-Poisson distribution

An alternative form of hyper-Poisson distribution is introduced through its probability mass function and studies some of its important aspects such as mean, variance, expressions for its raw moments, factorial moments, probability generating function and recursion formulae for its probabilities, raw moments and factorial moments. The estimation of the parameters of the distribution by various methods are considered and illustrated using some real life data sets.
A Systematic Review Exploring the Effect of Human Immunodeficiency Virus on Cardiac Diseases

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) primarily affects the immune systems, which, if progressed, will lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Currently, there is no effective cure for the disease, and patients are affected lifelong, but there are antiretroviral medications that can control the disease's symptoms and progression. In addition, taking precautions during sexual contact, especially in the male homosexual population, while handling the patient's bodily fluids such as blood and saliva, and during childbirth by an infected mother is necessary to prevent the transmission of the virus. We used 15 studies, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses, observation studies, randomized clinical trials, and comprehensive reviews, to determine how HIV interferes with heart disease, increasing morbidity and mortality. We have used specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, focusing on specified age groups within a particular timeline. Some of the included studies found that many side effects from antiretroviral drugs can impact heart conditions, along with HIV, while others did not show a strong correlation between HIV and some heart diseases. In conclusion, after reviewing the literature, the results are inconclusive. More extensive trials focusing on the impact HIV has on heart disease are required to establish a strong correlation between HIV and heart disease to prevent morbidity and mortality.
Modular subgroups of finite groups II

The subgroup M of the group G is said to be modular in G (M m G) if (UuM) nV Uu (MnV) for allU, VGsuchthatU V, and (UuM) nV (UnV) uM for allU, V_GsuchthatM V. In [5] we proved among other results that M/Ma is nilpotent and MO/Ma is supersolvable for a modular subgroup M ofJa finite group G (Ma being the core, M the normal closure of M in G). One of the problems that remained open in [5] was to discover the exact structure of G/Ma, Ma/Ma, and M/Ma. In the present paper we solve this problem modulo the quasinormal Sylow subgroups of M/Ma. We prove the following
THE CIRCUMGALACTIC MEDIUM OF THE MILKY WAY IS HALF HIDDEN

We assess the fraction of the Milky Way (MW)'s circumgalactic medium (CGM) eluding detection due to its velocity being similar to gas in the disk. This is achieved using synthetic observations of the CGM in a simulated MW-mass galaxy that shows similar CGM kinematics to the MW and external L ∼ L * ? > galaxies. As viewed by a mock observer at a location similar to the Sun, only 50% (by mass) of the gas moves at high velocity ( ∣ v LSR ∣ ≥ 100 km s - 1 ? > or ∣ v DEV ∣ ≥ 50 km s - 1 ? > ) in the simulated CGM and would be observable. The low-velocity gas is thermodynamically similar to the high-velocity gas, indicating that the 50% observable fraction is applicable to spectral lines from the radio to the ultraviolet. We apply the observable mass fraction (50%) to current estimates of the MW’s CGM, and find a corrected total mass of 2.8 × 10 8 M ⊙ ? > for gas below 106 K within ∼15 kpc (this excludes the Magellanic System). This is less than the total mass of the CGM extending out to ∼150 kpc in other L ∼ L * ? > galaxies. However, we find similar O vi column densities when the discrepancy in path length between the MW and external galaxies is considered. The coherent spatial and kinematic distribution of low-velocity gas in the simulated CGM suggests that current H i observations of the MW’s CGM may miss large low-velocity H i complexes. In addition, current mass estimates of the MW’s CGM based on high-velocity line observations with distance constraints may miss a non-negligible fraction of gas in the outer halo, which can be obscured if it moves at a velocity similar to the gas in the lower halo.
Anatomical Variations of the Mandibular Canal and Mental Foramen in Full Edentulous Iranian Subpopulation: A Cone-Beam Computed Tomographic Study

Background: This study sought to determine the anatomical variations of the mental foramen (MF) and the mandibular canal (MC) in the full edentulous Iranian subpopulation using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). These variations can have significant clinical implications in dental implant surgery. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study evaluated the mandible CBCT scans of 384 completely edentulous patients that required dental implant treatment. The CBCT scans were retrieved from four radiology clinics in Tehran, Iran, using quota sampling. The reconstructed images were evaluated to determine the dimensions and position of the MC and its cortication at the site of the mandibular first molar, the branching of the MC, the existence of the anterior loop of the mental nerve, and anatomical variations of the MF. The correlations of variables with age and gender were analyzed using the independent t-test, chi-square test, and analysis of variance based on the type of the variable. Results: The cortication of the MC at the site of the mandibular first molar was present in 72.9% of the cases and was significantly more common in male patients (P = 0.0001). Bifid mandibular canal, accessory MF, and anterior loop of mental nerve were present in 9.9%, 65%, and 54.7% of the samples, respectively, and they had no significant correlation with age/gender. The mean MC diameter, the mean MF height, and the mean distance from the inferior border of the mandible to the center of MF were all significantly higher in male patients (P