Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Motivations and experiences of women who accessed “see and treat” cervical cancer prevention services in Zambia

Background: In Zambia, a country with a generalized HIV epidemic, age-adjusted cervical cancer incidence is among the highest worldwide. In 2006, the University of Alabama at Birmingham-Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia and the Zambian Ministry of Health launched a visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) -based “see and treat” cervical cancer prevention program in Lusaka. All services were integrated within existing government-operated primary health care facilities. Objective: Study aims were to (i) identify women’s motivations for cervical screening, (ii) document women’s experiences with screening and (iii) describe the potentially reciprocal influences between women undergoing cervical screening and their social networks. Design and methods: Focus group discussions (FGD) and in-depth interviews (IDI) were conducted with women who accepted screening and with care providers. Low-level content analysis was performed to identify themes evoked by participants. Between September 2009 and July 2010, 60 women and 21 care providers participated in 8 FGD and 10 IDI. Results: Women presented for screening with varying needs and expectations. A majority discussed their screening decisions and experiences with members of their social networks. Key reinforcing factors and obstacles to VIA screening were identified. Conclusions: Interventions are needed to gain support for the screening process from influential family members and peers.
Working in the Connected World: Social Capital — The KillerApp for HR in the 21st Century

In the 20th century, the human resources (HR) function became quite adept at managing human capital, defined as the skills, knowledge, and experience of individual employees within the firm. Just as HR was gaining competencies in this arena, the new economy came along and moved the goal posts. It is no longer sufficient to manage individual assets. The HR professional of the 21st century must manage connected assets1 with many of these not being employees of the firm! In the knowledge economy, content is no longer sufficient. everyone has access to multitudes of content. You cannot compete on what everyone knows. The new advantage is context — how internal and external content is interpreted, combined, made sense of, and converted to end product. Creating competitive context requires social capital, the ability to find, utilize and combine the skills, knowledge and experience of others. HR used to focus only on within-employee factors. The new competitive landscape requires focussing on between-employee factors, the connections that combine to create new processes, products and services. Social capital encompasses communities of practice, knowledge exchanges, information flows, interest groups, social networks and other emergent connections between employees, suppliers, regulators, partners and customers. Social capital is what connects various forms of human capital. It is these patterns of connections that produce advantage for one group, and constraint for another. In the networked economy the one with the best connections wins!
Limitations of the Mass Isotopomer Distribution Analysis of Glucose to Study Gluconeogenesis

We previously reported (Previs, S. F., Fernandez, C. A., Yang, D., Soloviev, M. V., David, F., and Brunengraber, H. (1995) J. Biol. Chem. 270, 19806–19815) that glucose made in isolated livers from starved rats perfused with physiological concentrations of lactate, pyruvate, and either [2-13C]- or [U-13C3]glycerol had a mass isotopomer distribution incompatible with glucose being made from a homogeneously labeled pool of triose phosphates. Similar data were obtained in live rats infused with [U-13C3]glycerol. We ascribed the labeling heterogeneity to major decreases in glycerol concentration and enrichment across the liver. We concluded that [13C]glycerol is unsuitable for tracing the contribution of gluconeogenesis to total glucose production. We now report isotopic heterogeneity of gluconeogenesis in hepatocytes, even when all cells are in contact with identical concentrations and enrichments of gluconeogenic substrates. Total rat hepatocytes were incubated with concentrations of glycerol, lactate, and pyruvate that were kept constant by substrate infusions. To modulate competition between substrates, the (glycerol)/(lactate + pyruvate) infusion ratio ranged from 0.23 to 3.60. Metabolic and isotopic steady states were achieved in all cases. The apparent contribution of gluconeogenesis to glucose production (f) was calculated from the mass isotopomer distribution of glucose. When all substrates were13C-labeled, f was 97%, as expected in glycogen-deprived hepatocytes. As the infusion ratio ([13C]glycerol)/(lactate + pyruvate) increased,f increased from 73% to 94%. In contrast, as the infusion ratio (glycerol)/([13C]lactate + [13C]pyruvate) increased, f decreased from 93% to 76%. In all cases, f increased with the rate of supply of the substrate that was labeled. Variations in fshow that the 13C labeling of triose phosphates was not equal in all hepatocytes, even when exposed to the same substrate concentrations and enrichments. We also showed that zonation of glycerol kinase activity is minor in rat liver. We conclude that zonation of other processes than glycerol phosphorylation contributes to the heterogeneity of triose phosphate labeling from glycerol in rat liver.
Effect of dietary protein sources on the small intestine microbiome of weaned piglets based on high‐throughput sequencing

In this study, we comprehensively investigated the effect of dietary protein sources on the gut microbiome of weaned piglets with diets comprising different protein source using High‐throughput 16SrRNA gene‐based Illumina Miseq. A total of 48 healthy weaned piglets were allocated randomly to four treatments with 12 piglets in each group. The weaned piglets were fed with diets containing soybean meal (SBM), cottonseed meal (CSM), SBM and CSM (SC) or fish meal (FM). The intestinal content samples were taken from five segments of the small intestine. DNA was extracted from the samples and the V3‐V4 regions of the 16SrRNA gene were amplified. The microbiota of the contents of the small intestine were very complex, including more than 4000 operational taxonomic units belonging to 32 different phyla. Four bacterial populations (i.e. Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Acidobacteria) were the most abundant bacterial groups. The genera Lactobacillus and Clostridium were found in slightly higher proportions in the groups with added CSM compared to the other groups. The proportion of reads assigned to the genus Escherichia/Shigella was much higher in the FM group. In conclusion, dietary protein source had significant effects on the small microbiome of weaned piglets.
Dual-Band Hybrid Coupler With Arbitrary Power Division Ratios Over the Two Bands

For the first time, a patch hybrid coupler that can provide arbitrary power division ratios over two arbitrary frequency bands, is presented in this paper. Complementary split ring resonators (CSRRs) are loaded onto each quadrant of a patch hybrid coupler to enable dual-band operation. The unique property of CSRR was found to give different power division ratios over the two frequency bands, which is difficult to implement using conventional approaches. An equivalent circuit has been extracted and used to describe the operating principles, along with the presentation of parametric analysis. To demonstrate the flexibility in realizing arbitrary power division ratios in two different frequency bands, five dual-band patch hybrid couplers are designed, fabricated, and measured. Good agreement between the simulated and measured results consolidates the work proposed.
Assessing the Composition and Diversity of the Australian Interest Group System

Any democratic society requires mechanisms for citizens to have effective political voice. Clearly, political parties provide a key channel for expressing views and preferences. However, organised interests provide another important mechanism for such representation. A crucial question in this regard is whether the interest group system is capable of ensuring the representation of a variety of public and private interests. Resolving these debates requires data that map the terrain and also are attentive to organisational diversity. This article takes up this challenge through exploring the composition and diversity of the Australian system of organised interests, using a new data set based on the Directory of Australian Associations. This system-level approach delivers important insights into the nature of the Australian interest group system, as well as provides a framework for subsequent work interpreting and contextualising advocacy activities of particular groups, or lobbying dynamics in specific policy domains.
Reduced abundance of the E3 ubiquitin ligase E6AP contributes to decreased expression of the INK4/ARF locus in non–small cell lung cancer

E6AP exhibits tumor suppressor activity that may help stratify NSCLC patients. INK4/ARF repression in lung cancer by loss of E6AP The abundance of the cell cycle decelerator p16INK4a, encoded at the INK4/ARF locus, is decreased in various cancers. Gamell et al. found that the absence of p16INK4a in some patients is explained by the lack of the E3 ubiquitin ligase E6AP. E6AP bound to and inhibited the activity of transcription factor E2F1; a decrease in E6AP abundance enabled E2F1-mediated expression of the cell cycle promoter CDC6, which encodes a transcriptional regulator that represses INK4/ARF expression. The findings identify a tumor-suppressive role for E6AP in lung cancer and suggest that targeting the E2F1-CDC6 pathway might slow tumor growth in some NSCLC patients. The tumor suppressor p16INK4a, one protein encoded by the INK4/ARF locus, is frequently absent in multiple cancers, including non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Whereas increased methylation of the encoding gene (CDKN2A) accounts for its loss in a third of patients, no molecular explanation exists for the remainder. We unraveled an alternative mechanism for the silencing of the INK4/ARF locus involving the E3 ubiquitin ligase and transcriptional cofactor E6AP (also known as UBE3A). We found that the expression of three tumor suppressor genes encoded in the INK4/ARF locus (p15INK4b, p16INK4a, and p19ARF) was decreased in E6AP−/− mouse embryo fibroblasts. E6AP induced the expression of the INK4/ARF locus at the transcriptional level by inhibiting CDC6 transcription, a gene encoding a key repressor of the locus. Luciferase assays revealed that E6AP inhibited CDC6 expression by reducing its E2F1-dependent transcription. Chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis indicated that E6AP reduced the amount of E2F1 at the CDC6 promoter. In a subset of NSCLC samples, an E6AP-low/CDC6-high/p16INK4a-low protein abundance profile correlated with low methylation of the gene encoding p16INK4a (CDKN2A) and poor patient prognosis. These findings define a previously unrecognized tumor-suppressive role for E6AP in NSCLC, reveal an alternative silencing mechanism of the INK4/ARF locus, and reveal E6AP as a potential prognostic marker in NSCLC.
Behaviors of nitrogen, iron and sulfur compounds in contaminated marine sediment

The marine sediment sustains from the anoxic condition due to increased nutrients of external sources. The nutrients are liberated from the sediment, which acts as an internal source. In hypoxic environments, anaerobic respiration results in the formation of several reduced matters, such as N2 and NH4, N2O, Fe, H2S, etc. The experimental results have shown that nitrogen and sulfur played an influential, notable role in this biogeochemical cycle with expected chemical reductions and a ‘diffusive’ release of present nutrient components trapped in pore water inside sediment toward the bulk water. Nitate/ammonium, sulfate/sulfides, and ferrous/ferric irons are found to be the key players in these sediment-waters mutual interactions. Organonitrogen and nitrate in the sediment were likely to be converted to a form of ammonium. Reductive nitrogen is called dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium and denitrification. The steady accumulation in the sediment and surplus increases in the overlying waters of ammonium strongly support this hypothesis as well as a diffusive action of the involved chemical species. Sulfate would serve as an essential electron acceptor so as to form acid volatile sulfides in present of Fe, which ended up as the Fe positively with an aid of the residential microbial community.
A task-oriented approach to select experts for aerospace Cops projects

The expert selection is an important decision problem in the research and development process of complex product systems (CoPS) projects and suitable experts will facilitate the successful task achievement. Existing methods for the expert selection are mostly based on the individual performance, whereas the task characteristics of CoPS projects and the knowledge correlationship between candidates and CoPS projects are seldom considered. This paper generates a task-oriented method to select experts for CoPS projects in the background of aerospace engineering management. A fuzzy multi-stage approach for the knowledge correlationship measurement is proposed and furthermore an illustrative example is employed for the potential application of this method.
A 40V current sensing circuit with fast on/off transition for high-voltage power management

A high-voltage replica based current sensor is presented, along with challenges and design techniques which are rarely discussed in literature so far. The performance is evaluated by detailed small signal and large signal analysis. By dedicated placing of high-voltage cascode devices, while keeping as many low-voltage devices as possible, a high gain-bandwidth product is achieved. A decoupling and biasing circuit is introduced which improves the response time of the current sensor at on/off transitions by a factor of five. The current sensor is implemented in a 180 nm HV BiCMOS technology. The sensor achieves a DC loop gain of 83 dB and a gain-bandwidth product of 7 MHz. With the proposed techniques, the gain-bandwidth product is increased by a factor of six. The measurable current range is between 60 mA and 1.5 A. The performance is demonstrated in a 500 kHz buck converter at an input voltage of 40 V. The overall circuit concept is suitable for 100 V and beyond, enabling high performance power management designs including switched mode power supplies and motor applications.
Temperature-driven growth of antiferromagnetic domains in thin-film FeRh

The evolution of the antiferromagnetic phase across the temperature-driven ferromagnetic (FM) to antiferromagnetic (AF) phase transition in epitaxial FeRh thin films was studied by x-ray magnetic linear and circular dichroism (XMLD and XMCD) and photoemission electron microscopy. By comparing XMLD and XMCD images recorded at the same temperature, the AF phase was identified, its structure directly imaged, and its evolution studied across the transition. A quantitative analysis of the correlation length of the images shows differences between the characteristic length scale of the two phases with the AF phase having a finer feature size. The asymmetry of the transition from FM to AF upon cooling and AF–FM upon heating is evidenced: upon cooling the formation of AF phase is dominated by nucleation at defects, with little subsequent growth, resulting in a small and non-random final AF domain structure, while upon heating, heterogeneous nucleation at different sites followed by significant domain size growth of the FM phase is observed, resulting in a non-reproducible final FM large domain structure.
TNF‐α suppresses dendritic cell death and the production of reactive oxygen intermediates induced by plasma withdrawal

Abstract: Mature dendritic cells (DCs) were generated by culturing human peripheral blood monocytes for 7 days and, then, treating them with a cytokine cocktail for 2 days. The viability of the mature DCs (Day 9) obtained was approximately 60–70%, and this gradually declined when they were recultured in X‐VIVO 15 media containing 2% human plasma (40% viability after 3 days of reculture). DC death accelerated on withdrawing plasma from the culture (20% viability after 3 days). However, the addition of tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) to the medium completely restored DC viability in the absence of plasma. Such a protective effect was not afforded by other cytokines, such as granulocyte‐macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (GM‐CSF), interleukin‐1α (IL‐1α), IL‐4, IL‐6 and prostaglandin E2 which are used for the maturation of DCs. These results indicate that TNF‐α is specifically required to maintain the viability of mature DCs. The withdrawal of plasma rapidly (within 15 min) elevated cellular levels of reactive oxygen intermediates (ROIs), which have been proposed to regulate the ability of DCs to control inflammatory reactions. The possibility that ROIs act as mediators of DC death was eliminated by the observation that scavengers of ROIs, such as catalase, N‐acetylcysteine, glutathione, failed to prolong DC life span in the absence of plasma. Interestingly, TNF‐α was found to almost completely abolish the production of ROIs induced by plasma withdrawal. To summarize, our results suggest that TNF‐α controls not only the inflammatory functions of DCs but also their survival.
Effect of Educational Returns Abroad on Domestic Schooling: A British Gurkha Army Experiment

Do individuals in one country respond to changes in educational returns that occur in another country? The connection between foreign labor markets and domestic schooling in the presence of future migratory opportunity is the essence of every “brain gain” model. Empirical evidence, however, of whether migration prospects affect-schooling decisions is non-existent. The main challenge of identifying the causal effect of educational returns abroad on human capital investment is the lack of suitable natural identification strategies and the infeasibility of designing a randomized-control experiment. This paper analyzes a unique natural experiment in Nepal where a change in the educational requirement for British Gurkha Army recruitment led to an exogenous change in educational returns abroad for Monglo-ethnic Nepalese men. The results suggest that an increase in educational requirement led to an average increase in years of education completed by January 2011. It led Gurkha men aged 15 in 1993 to raise their education by 0.69 years, aged 12 in 1993 by 0.95 years, and aged 6 in 1993 by 1.38 years. It induced 19.5% of Gurkha men to enroll in school and 28.6% of Gurkha men to complete at least 8 years of schooling.
AHSExplorer : Discovering the Dynamics of Affordable Rental Housing

The US Government collects numerous statistics related to housing within the United States. One of these data sets, the American Housing Survey (AHS), provides a very rich source of information. However, exploring complex timeseries data can present many problems. AHSExplorer is an application developed to explore the information within this data set. In particular, AHSExplorer provides a means of describing transition patterns for housing states and provides three means of exploring the data. AHSExplorer is used to show the patterns of how the houses change over time, specifically the dynamics of how affordable rental houses are formed. We hope that this application can be used by policy makers and researchers to better understand the wealth of information available in the AHS.
Remedies for the Eurozone Crisis: Quack and Otherwise

The on-going crisis of the eurozone is calling its continued existence into doubt, and raising questions on whether it can function effectively. The view of the nature of the eurozone crisis as arising from ‘design faults’ of the Economic and Monetary Union and a balance of payments crisis with large current account imbalances between countries is developed. The policy remedies (in the form of the ‘fiscal compact’) which are being put into place will not work in their own terms and will make the economic performance of the eurozone countries worse. Some Keynesian remedies for the crisis in terms of alternative policy proposals for the operation of the Economic and Monetary Union are outlined.
Defeating Drug Resistance in Pathogens : Guidance from Evolutionary Theory

Many of the greatest challenges in medicine and public health involve the evolution of drug resistance by pathogens. Recent advances in the theory of natural selection suggest that there are two broad classes of pathogen traits that can be targeted by drugs or vaccines. The first class, consisting of traits that benefit the individual organisms bearing them, causes a strong evolutionary response and the rapid emergence of drug resistance. The second class, consisting of traits that benefit groups of pathogen organisms including the individual provider, causes a weaker evolutionary response and less drug resistance. While most previous drug development has targeted the first class, it would be advantageous to focus on the second class as targets for drug and vaccine development. Specific examples and test cases are discussed.
Modeling Dynamic ICT Services Markets

ICT services markets function as an arena for deployment and diffusion of new ICT services. Such markets are characterized by dynamic and temporal competition between the providers of ICT services. New service providers enter the market as others fail to generate enough profit and leave the market, while market leaders often come and go as the market evolves. In this paper we propose a modeling framework focusing on the temporal characteristics of competition among multiple service providers in dynamic ICT markets. Market properties that are discussed and quantified include network effects, positive feedback and churning. First, we provide an analytical model for a market with two competing service providers. Then, a simulation based case study of the market for social network services using the proposed market model is presented. Simulation results illustrate different evolution scenarios.
A structural equation model of New York restaurant grades over a 2-year period

ABSTRACT This study identified disparities in cuisine types and boroughs for attaining the highest restaurant grade in New York using regression modeling. The first structural equation models have been developed for the modeling of the highest grade possible with borough and cuisine type based upon the citywide results of these eight restaurant types from calendar years 2011 and 2012. The results suggest that certain styles of restaurants have lower odds of receiving the highest grade in comparison to American-style restaurants.
Seasonal and long term changes of the phytoplankton in the lake Tortum in relation to environmental factors, Erzurum, Turkey

Seasonal changes in phytoplankton community structure of the lake Tortum were studied over one year period, from March 2002 to February 2003. The collected data were compared with the data collected 21 years ago. Chlamydomonas microsphaerella, Cyclotella krammeri, C. glomerata, and Ceratium hirundinella were identified to be dominant several times during the study period. Species diversity and biomass of the phytoplankton were very low in spite of sufficient and high levels of nutrient concentrations. Maximum phytoplankton density levels were observed during summer and late autumn. Phytoplankton density was positively correlated with nutrients, temperature and pH, and it was negatively correlated with Secchi depth and dissolved oxygen. Phytoplankton growths were negatively affected from water transparency and high levels of water mass transport (circulation) and velocity in the lake.