Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Moral Hazards Of Christian Obligations In Brazil's Rural Zona Da Mata

From 1999 through 2003, applied research in Brazil's Zona da Mata was undertaken to identify the reasons why some households choose, either actively or by default, not to participate in rural assistance efforts. Class-based guiding hypotheses held that participation would correlate positively with economic, demographic and health measures of household need, but found only limited support. These hypotheses found their greatest support within the community's small but rapidly growing Pentecostal congregation, but were generally contradicted within the community's much larger Catholic congregation, and totally contradicted by full participation, regardless of need or religious affiliation, within one of the research community's 14 hamlets. The hamlet's contradiction resulted from a pooling of an extended family's labour and resources to achieve full participation. The larger community's contradiction of the guiding hypotheses resulted from the wealthiest Catholic households' self-described ‘Christian obligations’ to provide garden produce upon request to the poorest Catholic households. The earth does not yield its fruits without a particular human response to God's gift, that is to say, without work. (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, cited in Neuhaus 1999)
Performance Simulation of a Quadrupole Mass Filter Operating in the First and Third Stability Zones

A method of computation that accurately simulates the performance of quadrupole mass filters (QMFs) is described. Behavior is described by determining the individual trajectories of a large number of ions (108) as they are injected into the QMF. The effects of the ratio of circular electrode radius r to electric field radius r0 on the performance characteristics have been investigated for zone 1 (a ap 0.237 and q ap 0.706) and zone 3 (a ap 3.16 and q ap 3.23) operation. We demonstrate that performance sensitivity to the r/r0 ratio is different for zone 3 than those previously reported for zone 1. The magnitude and variation of the ldquotailrdquo in the mass spectral peak shapes that are apparent for zone 1 is much decreased for zone 3 and does not influence QMF resolution. Variation in ion trajectories and associated power-spatial frequency spectra when operated in zones 1 and 3 with varying r/r0 geometrical ratios are also presented. We demonstrate that these provide an alternative method in determining an ideal value for r/r0.
Significance of Persistent Inflammation in Respiratory Disorders Induced by Nanoparticles

Pulmonary inflammation, especially persistent inflammation, has been found to play a key role in respiratory disorders induced by nanoparticles in animal models. In inhalation studies and instillation studies of nanomaterials, persistent inflammation is composed of neutrophils and alveolar macrophages, and its pathogenesis is related to chemokines such as the cytokine-induced neutrophil chemoattractant (CINC) family and macrophage inflammatory protein-1α and oxidant stress-related genes such as heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1). DNA damages occur chemically or physically by nanomaterials. Chemical and physical damage are associated with point mutation by free radicals and double strand brake, respectively. The failure of DNA repair and accumulation of mutations might occur when inflammation is prolonged, and finally normal cells could become malignant. These free radicals can not only damage cells but also induce signaling molecules containing immunoreaction. Nanoparticles and asbestos also induce the production of free radicals. In allergic responses, nanoparticles act as Th2 adjuvants to activate Th2 immune responses such as activation of eosinophil and induction of IgE. Taken together, the presence of persistent inflammation may contribute to the pathogenesis of a variety of diseases induced by nanomaterials.
Kapre: On-GPU Audio Preprocessing Layers for a Quick Implementation of Deep Neural Network Models with Keras

We introduce Kapre, Keras layers for audio and music signal preprocessing. Music research using deep neural networks requires a heavy and tedious preprocessing stage, for which audio processing parameters are often ignored in parameter optimisation. To solve this problem, Kapre implements time-frequency conversions, normalisation, and data augmentation as Keras layers. We report simple benchmark results, showing real-time on-GPU preprocessing adds a reasonable amount of computation.
Employing a dual polarisation microring to determine refractive index and thickness of a thin polymer layer

Dual polarisation biosensing is a novel optical technique that focuses on retrieving structural information from a bound or adsorbed layer of molecules, by using a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) microring. Both density and thickness of the layer can be monitored simultaneously. Due to a self-calibrating protocol that is quickly performed at the start of every experiment, a high accuracy can be obtained. In this paper, we determine the thickness and refractive index of a thin layer of polyethyleneimine (PEI), which adsorbs to the silicon surface of the microring. This results in a layer with a thickness of 1.158 and a refractive index of 1.453 RIU.
TGMS in Rapeseed (Brassica napus) Resulted in Aberrant Transcriptional Regulation, Asynchronous Microsporocyte Meiosis, Defective Tapetum, and Fused Sexine

The thermo-sensitive genic male sterility (TGMS) line SP2S is a spontaneous rapeseed mutation with several traits that are favorable for the production of two-line hybrids. To uncover the key cellular events and genetic regulation associated with TGMS expression, a combined study using cytological observation, transcriptome profiling, and gene expression analysis was conducted for SP2S and its near-isogenic line SP2F grown under warm conditions. Asynchronous microsporocyte meiosis and abnormal tapetal plastids and elaioplasts were demonstrated in the anther of SP2S. The tetrad microspore did not undergo mitosis before the cytoplasm degenerated. Delayed degradation of the tetrad wall, which led to tetrad microspore aggregation, resulted in postponement of sexine (outer layer of pollen exine) formation and sexine fusion in the tetrad. The nexine (foot layer of exine) was also absent. The delay of tetrad wall degradation and abnormality of the exine structure suggested that the defective tapetum lost important functions. Based on transcriptomic comparisons between young flower buds of SP2S and SP2F plants, a total of 465 differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) were identified, including 303 up-regulated DETs and 162 down-regulated DETs in SP2S. Several genes encoding small RNA degrading nuclease 2, small RNA 2′-O-methyltransferase, thioredoxin reductase 2, regulatory subunit A alpha isoform of serine/threonine-protein phosphatase 2A, glycine rich protein 1A, transcription factor bHLH25, leucine-rich repeat receptor kinase At3g14840 like, and fasciclin-like arabinogalactan proteins FLA19 and FLA20 were greatly depressed in SP2S. Interestingly, a POLLENLESS3-LIKE 2 gene encoding the Arabidopsis MS5 homologous protein, which is necessary for microsporocyte meiosis, was down-regulated in SP2S. Other genes that were up-regulated in SP2S encoded glucanase A6, ethylene-responsive transcription factor 1A-like, pollen-specific SF3, stress-associated endoplasmic reticulum protein 2, WRKY transcription factors and pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) protein At1g07590. The tapetum-development-related genes, including BnEMS1, BnDYT1, and BnAMS, were slightly up-regulated in 3-mm-long flower buds or their anthers, and their downstream genes, BnMS1 and BnMYB80, which affect callose dissolution and exine formation, were greatly up-regulated in SP2S. This aberrant genetic regulation corresponded well with the cytological abnormalities. The results suggested that expression of TGMS associates with complex transcriptional regulation.
Improving comprehensive care in the haemophilia community: building on the HERO Study

1 Spahn D. Anemia and pacient blood management in hip and knee surgery. Anesthesiology 2010; 113: 482–95. 2 Madjdpour C, Spahn DR. Allogeneic red blood cell transfusions: efficacy, risks, alternatives and indications. Br J Anaesth 2005; 95: 33–42. 3 Tan J, Chen H, Liu Q, Chen C, Huang W. A meta-analysis of the effectiveness and safety of using tranexamic acid in primary unilateral total knee arthroplasty. J Surg Res 2013; 184: 880–7. 4 Wind TC, Barfield WR, Moskal JT. The effect of tranexamic acid on blood loss and transfusion rate in primary total knee arthroplasty. J Arthroplasty 2013; 28: 1080–3. 5 Rodriguez-Merchan EC, Ortega-Andreu M, Padilla-Eguiluz NG, Gomez-Cardero P, Martinez-Lloreda A, Gomez-Barrena E. Low volume formulation of intra-articular tranexamic acid (TXA), 25 cc TXA (2.5 g) plus 20 cc saline, is effective in decreasing blood transfusion rate in primary total knee replacement even without preoperative haemoglobin optimization. Blood Coagul Fibrinol 2016; doi:10.1097/ MBC.0000000000000457. 6 Morais S, Ortega-Andreu M, RodriguezMerchan EC et al. Blood transfusion after primary total knee arthroplasty can be significantly minimised through a multimodal blood-loss prevention approach. Int Orthop 2014; 38: 347–54. 7 Gomez-Barrena E, Ortega-Andreu M, Padilla-Eguiluz NG, P erez-Chrzanowska H, Figueredo-Zalve R. Topical intra-articular compared with intravenous tranexamic acid to reduce blood loss in primary total knee replacement: a double-blind, randomized, controlled, noninferiority clinical trial. J Bone Joint Surg Am 2014; 96: 1937–44. 8 Zhao-Yu C, Yan G, Wei C, Yuejv L, YingZe Z. Reduced blood loss after intra-articular tranexamic acid injection during total knee arthroplasty: a meta-analysis of the literature. Knee Surg Sports Traumatol Arthrosc 2014; 22: 3181–90. 9 Digas G, Koutsogiannis I, Meletiadis G, Antonopoulou E, Karamoulas V, Bikos C. Intra-articular injection of tranexamic acid reduce blood loss in cemented total knee arthroplasty. Eur J Orthop Surg Traumatol 2015; 25: 1181–8. 10 Pettersson H, Ahlberg A, Nilsson IM. A radiologic classification of haemophilic arthropathy. Clin Orthop Relat Res 1980; 149: 153–9.
Education , Perceived Control , and Volunteering 1

The consistent effect of education on volunteering has been explained in a number of ways. In this study we test the hypothesis that perceived control beliefs are partly responsible. Using two waves of panel data from National Survey of Midlife in the United States we estimated cross-lagged structural equation models in which education is positioned as the exogenous variable and perceived control and volunteering are allowed to be reciprocally related across the two waves. We find that perceived control predicts volunteering, but there is no reciprocal effect: volunteering has no effect on sense of control. One reason, therefore, that educated people are more likely to volunteer is that they have stronger control beliefs. The findings enrich the theory of volunteering by introducing the idea of agency, showing one way in which resources influence the decision to volunteer.
Interrogating concepts of care in the HIV care continuum: ethnographic insights from the implementation of a “Universal Test and Treat” approach in South Africa

ABSTRACT South Africa currently sustains the largest antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme in the world. The number of people on ART is set to grow even more in the coming years as incidence remains stable, people on ART stay healthy, and guidelines for initiation become increasingly inclusive. The South African public health sector has increasingly relied on community- and home-based lay and professional “carers” to carry out the everyday tasks of rolling out the ART programme. Drawing on ethnographic research in one locality in the Western Cape, the paper explores the care practices of two such groups of carers implementing a ‘Universal Test and Treat’ (UTT) approach. The UTT approach being evlauated in this place is based on one model of the HIV treatment cascade, or care continuum, which focuses on the steps necessary to identify and link HIV-positive individuals to care and retain them in lifelong HIV treatment. In this context, community-based care workers are responsible for carrying out several discrete steps in the HIV care continuum, including testing people for HIV, linking HIV-positive individuals to care, and supporting adherence. In order to retain clients within the continuum, however, carers also perform other forms of labour that stretch their care work beyond more bounded notions of a stepwise progression of care. These broader forms of care, which can be material, emotional, social or physical in nature, appear alongside the more structured technical and biomedical tasks formally expected of carers. We argue that understanding the dynamics of these more distributed and relational forms of care is essential for the effective implementation of the care continuum, and of the UTT approach, in diverse contexts.
General Relationship of Global Topology, Local Dynamics, and Directionality in Large-Scale Brain Networks

The balance of global integration and functional specialization is a critical feature of efficient brain networks, but the relationship of global topology, local node dynamics and information flow across networks has yet to be identified. One critical step in elucidating this relationship is the identification of governing principles underlying the directionality of interactions between nodes. Here, we demonstrate such principles through analytical solutions based on the phase lead/lag relationships of general oscillator models in networks. We confirm analytical results with computational simulations using general model networks and anatomical brain networks, as well as high-density electroencephalography collected from humans in the conscious and anesthetized states. Analytical, computational, and empirical results demonstrate that network nodes with more connections (i.e., higher degrees) have larger amplitudes and are directional targets (phase lag) rather than sources (phase lead). The relationship of node degree and directionality therefore appears to be a fundamental property of networks, with direct applicability to brain function. These results provide a foundation for a principled understanding of information transfer across networks and also demonstrate that changes in directionality patterns across states of human consciousness are driven by alterations of brain network topology.
Rating of Educational and Psychological Journals

The present study was designed to assess the "reputation" or prestige value of a sample of 74 journals in the fields of education and psychology. The study attempts to provide a picture of how journal ratings vary as a function of professional interest areas. These areas correspond to the interest areas of the American Educational Research Association and are as follows: administration; curriculum and objectives; learning and instruction; measurement and research methodology; counseling and human development; history and historiography; social context of education; and school evaluation and program development. This study also attempts to compare psychologists' and educators' perceived prestige of selected journals.
Inverse Reinforcement Learning in Large State Spaces via Function Approximation

This paper introduces a new method for inverse reinforcement learning in large-scale and high-dimensional state spaces. To avoid solving the computationally expensive reinforcement learning problems in reward learning, we propose a function approximation method to ensure that the Bellman Optimality Equation always holds, and then estimate a function to maximize the likelihood of the observed motion. The time complexity of the proposed method is linearly proportional to the cardinality of the action set, thus it can handle large state spaces efficiently. We test the proposed method in a simulated environment, and show that it is more accurate than existing methods and significantly better in scalability. We also show that the proposed method can extend many existing methods to high-dimensional state spaces. We then apply the method to evaluating the effect of rehabilitative stimulations on patients with spinal cord injuries based on the observed patient motions.
Supervised spectral subspace clustering for visual dictionary creation in the context of image classification

When building traditional Bag of Visual Words (BOW) for image classification, the K-means algorithm is usually used on a large set of high dimensional local descriptors to build the visual dictionary. However, it is very likely that, to find a good visual vocabulary, only a sub-part of the descriptor space of each visual word is truly relevant. We propose a novel framework for creating the visual dictionary based on a spectral subspace clustering method instead of the traditional K-means algorithm. A strategy for adding supervised information during the subspace clustering process is formulated to obtain more discriminative visual words. Experimental results on real world image dataset show that the proposed framework for dictionary creation improves the classification accuracy compared to using traditionally built BOW.
The T2K Near Detector Data Acquisition Systems

T2K is a second generation long-baseline experiment in Japan, designed to perform precision studies of neutrino oscillations. A neutrino beam originating at the J-PARC facility is sampled by two near detectors, approximately 280 m distant from the source and directed towards the Kamioka underground facility, 295 km distant, where the Super-Kamiokande water Cerenkov detector is situated. Both the on-axis (INGRID) and off-axis (ND280) near detectors employ the MIDAS framework for their data acquisition systems. Events are selected via a flexible hardware trigger, which allows mixed operating modes incorporating beam spill, cosmic and calibration triggers. Data are acquired from the front-end electronics over optical Gigabit Ethernet links by custom MIDAS front-end applications distributed over a cluster of Linux computers. Event fragments from all sub-detectors are merged and logged on a central backend processor and then copied to remote storage for long-term archival. The system is also designed to allow flexible partitioning of sub-detectors for standalone diagnostics and calibration. We present the design of the DAQ system and report on experience gathered during early operation of the near detectors.
DIR based clustering for interference alignment in Ultra-dense networks

Ultra-dense networks are regarded as a promising candidate for providing high data rate at low implementation cost. With a dense and irregular deployment of access points, spatial reuse will be improved, and varying cellular coverage also known as the amorphous cell is provided, which leads to a more complicated interference environment. In this paper, a novel interference coordination strategy, based on applying interference alignment (IA) in each disjoint sub-cluster of these amorphous cells, is proposed. A main merit is its ability to effectively identify and mitigate the dominant interference for each victim user. The coordinating base stations in the sub-clusters are selected based on the ratio between the dominant interference (DI) and the rest of the perceived interference, called the dominant interference ratio (DIR), and thus interference alignment adapts to the varying interference situation by controlling the overall high-level interference. How to efficiently form IA sub-clusters has been well studied by a modified k-means algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate significant performance gains (about 30 %) of the proposed clustering IA strategy, compared with the random clustering case, and information sharing overhead is greatly reduced.
Cardiometabolic Risk Factor Changes Observed in Diabetes Prevention Programs in US Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) study showed that weight loss in high-risk adults lowered diabetes incidence and cardiovascular disease risk. No prior analyses have aggregated weight and cardiometabolic risk factor changes observed in studies implementing DPP interventions in nonresearch settings in the United States. Methods and Findings In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we pooled data from studies in the United States implementing DPP lifestyle modification programs (focused on modest [5%–7%] weight loss through ≥150 min of moderate physical activity per week and restriction of fat intake) in clinical, community, and online settings. We reported aggregated pre- and post-intervention weight and cardiometabolic risk factor changes (fasting blood glucose [FBG], glycosylated hemoglobin [HbA1c], systolic or diastolic blood pressure [SBP/DBP], total [TC] or HDL-cholesterol). We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Clinicaltrials.gov databases from January 1, 2003, to May 1, 2016. Two reviewers independently evaluated article eligibility and extracted data on study designs, populations enrolled, intervention program characteristics (duration, number of core and maintenance sessions), and outcomes. We used a random effects model to calculate summary estimates for each outcome and associated 95% confidence intervals (CI). To examine sources of heterogeneity, results were stratified according to the presence of maintenance sessions, risk level of participants (prediabetes or other), and intervention delivery personnel (lay or professional). Forty-four studies that enrolled 8,995 participants met eligibility criteria. Participants had an average age of 50.8 years and body mass index (BMI) of 34.8 kg/m2, and 25.2% were male. On average, study follow-up was 9.3 mo (median 12.0) with a range of 1.5 to 36 months; programs offered a mean of 12.6 sessions, with mean participant attendance of 11.0 core sessions. Sixty percent of programs offered some form of post-core maintenance (either email or in person). Mean absolute changes observed were: weight -3.77 kg (95% CI: -4.55; -2.99), HbA1c -0.21% (-0.29; -0.13), FBG -2.40 mg/dL (-3.59; -1.21), SBP -4.29 mmHg (-5.73, -2.84), DBP -2.56 mmHg (-3.40, 1.71), HDL +0.85 mg/dL (-0.10, 1.60), and TC -5.34 mg/dL (-9.72, -0.97). Programs with a maintenance component achieved greater reductions in weight (additional -1.66kg) and FBG (additional -3.14 mg/dl). Findings are subject to incomplete reporting and heterogeneity of studies included, and confounding because most included studies used pre-post study designs. Conclusions DPP lifestyle modification programs achieved clinically meaningful weight and cardiometabolic health improvements. Together, these data suggest that additional value is gained from these programs, reinforcing that they are likely very cost-effective.