Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antenatal Care Provided and its Quality in Field Clinics in Gampaha District, Sri Lanka

A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out in the Gampaha District in Sri Lanka to assess the quality of care provided at antenatal field clinics. Checklists were used to assess the structure and process attributes of quality. An interviewer administered questionnaire assessed the quality of information provided to the clients and client satisfaction. The findings indicated that several resource components need upgrading in the district. The majority of clinics did not have adequate seating arrangements, lacked a footstool, a height measuring instrument and Vitamin C. Less than 50% of the staff were present at 8.00 a.m. in eight clinics. Health education material was substandard in nine clinics. No supervisory notes were made during the preceding year in fourteen clinics. Testing urine for sugar and albumin was substandard in 11 and eight clinics, respectively. Physical examination of pregnant females was substandard in all 20 clinics. No information was provided on some routine procedures carried out at the clinic such as blood pressure monitoring, weight gain and vaccines given. Client satisfaction exceeded 95% in all aspects except building and infrastructure and time spent at the clinic. Asia Pac J Public Health 2007; 19(3): 38-44.
Artificial neural networks for gesture classification with inertial motion sensing armbands

Applications of gesture classification and recognition are ubiquitous, from automatic interpretations of sign languages for hearing impaired individuals to real-time communications, commands, and controls of machines in human computer interactions. The desire for maximally natural user experience and interactive user interface of these systems are generally accomplished by computationally expensive image processing techniques or time-based multi-stage action models. Wearable electronics embedded with advanced sensors are emerging alternatives. Their predefined gestural data, however, is quite limited and inaccurate. Improving upon both, we adopt a casually comfortable armband, utilizing its raw nine-axis inertial motion signals, and applying feedforward neural networks with backpropagation. Discriminatory features were effectively discovered in the frequency domain, employing Daubechies wavelet transforms. Evaluated on hand signals for construction workers, we achieved over 88% accuracy.
edX-MAS: Model Analyzer System

In this article an interactive tool for supporting the generation of Predictive Models for edX MOOCs is presented. This tool is a modular and scalable application that, based on the data collected from a MOOC course, allows the simple application of a complete Data Science process, where Machine Learning algorithms are applied to generate predictive models which could be used to predict which learners have passed the course and therefore obtained a certificate. The presented tool is called "edX-MAS" and it helps the user to analyze and compare the prediction quality of different Machine Learning algorithms, allowing the possibility of exporting the results in order to do a more exhaustive analysis.
Determinants of Economic Growth in Ghana: Parametric and Nonparametric Investigations

This paper’s goal was to look for robust evidence on the determinants of economic growth by complementing the usual parametric time series analysis with nonparametric local linear kernel regression. The evidence from the two seemingly competing approaches (parametric versus nonparametric), complemented each other in this paper. However, the nonparametric model provided further evidence on the non-linearity of the relationship between real GDP on the one hand and labor force and terms of trade on the other. In sum we have robust evidence that the labor force, investment rate, financial development, terms of trade and trade openness are key drivers of growth in Ghana. Inflation has been found not to be a robust determinant of long run economic growth in Ghana. With the exception of inflation and trade openness, all the other regressors have positive impact on growth from both the parametric and nonparametric models.
Starting & Limiting Values for Reliability Growth

Modifications of the Duane model for reliability growth which permit formulating test plans prior to test-data availability are presented herein. The modified model yields finite and nonzero MTBFs at the start and end of development testing. The unmodified Duane model is inadequate for formulating the Development Test plan for a Reliability Program because the MTBF is zero at the start of testing and is unbounded for long tests. The parameters of the modified model; limiting MTBF, initial MTBF, and Duane shape parameter (logarithmic growth rate) are estimatable from handbooks and previous experience prior to the start of development tests. An implicit expression for the Duane-model scale-parameter as a function of the limiting MTBF, initial MTBF, and shape parameter is given. The time required and/or the reliability improvement potential of development tests are obtained from the model to plan the reliability program. When the development tests are underway interval estimates for the modified Duane model parameters, needed to monitor the progress of the reliability program, can be computed.
Price convergence in US cities: a cointegration approach with two structural breaks

This article investigates how the price indices of major cities of the US respond to the shock from a city and from monetary policy. We find that the crisis of Bretton Woods system in 1968 and the oil crisis in 1974 should be incorporated as structural breaks in monetary policy variables and price indices. Using cointegration technique with structural break in our aggregated data, we find that the average half-life is 1.75 years, which is closer to what some of others found in disaggregated data, and that the interest rate is an effective tool for controlling cities’ price in short run.
Beyond the Common-Sense of Practice: A Case for Organizational Informatics

Noting how organizations today are increasingly dependent on IT for a broad range of organizational activities, the thesis starts from the observation that many IT-related endeavors nevertheless fail. In tracing part of the problem to the inability of many organizations to cope with changes in the surrounding material and social context, the emphasis is put on the processes by which IT-artifacts are adapted and re-adapted, after they have been put into daily use. Assuming human sensemaking as a good basis for coping with the changes, qualitative data from two organizations — a Swedish social services department and a software firm — provides an empirical context for assessing how sensemaking processes affect IT-adaptation.Conceptually, the thesis draws on Karl Weick's thinking, introducing the "double interact" and the "response repertoire" as sensitizing concepts with which to understand the mechanisms generating adaptation of IT-artifacts. Methodologically, the interpretive case study is employed, using the "hermeneutic circle" as the guiding principle for the research process.The thesis draws some specific implications concerning how IT-adaptation can be understood in organizations. The generic IT-adaptation process can be divided into two elementar}- phases, exploration and exploitation. During the exploration phase, several individual interpretations of a particular IT-artifact co-exist, occasioning ambiguity about its meaning in organizational daily activity. During the exploitation phase, the IT-artifact itself is in the background of matters of attention, providing organizational actors, who pursue individual goals and desires, the opportunity to exploit the shared and taken-for-granted meaning they see in the artifact. While the exploitation phase is important for organizational efficacy, there is nevertheless a risk that the meaning exploited becomes outdated by surrounding socio-material changes over time. Among other proposals, the thesis therefore suggests that triggering sensemaking processes can be important for meaningful IT-adaptation. In addition, it suggests the activity of searching for the interlacing areas of professional identity of actor groups, as a means to make IT-artifacts meaningful in organizing endeavors.
Alternative Long‐horizon Exchange‐rate Predictors

This paper employs quarterly observations on US dollar prices of the pound, Deutschmark, Swiss franc, and yen from 1973,2 to 1994,4 to sort out three broad issues raised by recent work showing that economic fundamentals have predictive power for exchange rates at long horizons. Three alternative fundamentals have been proposed in the literature: those implied by purchasing-power parity, uncovered interest parity, and the flexible-price monetary model. We first ask which of these three alternative fundamentals has the most predictive power. Secondly, we ask if pooling across currencies or if using multivariate statistical techniques improves prediction accuracy over standard regression techniques. Thirdly, we examine whether the conclusions drawn from statistical analyses of in-sample econometric estimates concerning long-horizon convergence of exchange rates and their fundamentals coincide with those implied by analyses of out-of-sample forecasts. The short answers to these questions are; the monetary-model fundamentals, yes, and a qualified no. Copyright @ 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Very Compact Stacked LC Resonator-Based Bandpass Filters With a Novel Approach to Tune the Transmission Zeros

This letter presents very compact stacked LC resonator structures and their coupling and excitation techniques for designing the bandpass filters operating in the 3.5 GHz WiMAX band. Using a coupled stacked LC-resonator structure not only greatly reduces the overall size but also can create multiple transmission zeros to enhance roll-off rate or desired stopband rejection for the designed bandpass filters. Furthermore, this letter develops a simple technique of etching a rectangular C-shaped slot in the bottom ground plane to flexibly adjust the transmission-zero frequencies without changing the size and shape of the filter.
Do Real Interest Rates Really Contain a Unit Root? More Evidence from a Bootstrap Covariate Unit Root Test

This paper re‐examines the empirical finding that international real interest rates usually have a unit root. This conclusion is put forth in Rapach and Weber (2004), using the Ng and Perron (2001) tests. We use Rudebusch's (1993) approach to construct the small sample distributions of the Ng and Perron tests, and calculate their asymptotic sizes, size‐adjusted powers and rejection rates. These numbers show that the lack of power in the Ng and Perron tests might account for the findings of Rapach and Weber (2004): that the unit root null cannot be rejected for most OECD countries. Size distortions are mild in the case of Ng and Perron tests for two series, but are serious for the Phillips and Perron Z‐test on inflation rates. We then apply a powerful covariate augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root test to examine the series for which stationarity cannot be determined with the Ng and Perron tests. The bootstrap technique is also used to control possible size distortions. In contrast to the results of Rapach and Weber (2004), the bootstrap covariate augmented Dickey–Fuller test yields striking evidence that real interest rates are stationary for 14 of 16 OECD countries, because nominal interest rates are stationary for the 14 countries, while inflation rates are stationary for all countries.
Triadin Deletion Induces Impaired Skeletal Muscle Function*

Triadin is a multiple proteins family, some isoforms being involved in muscle excitation-contraction coupling, and some having still unknown functions. To obtain clues on triadin functions, we engineered a triadin knock-out mouse line and characterized the physiological effect of triadin ablation on skeletal muscle function. These mice presented a reduced muscle strength, which seemed not to alter their survival and has been characterized in the present work. We first checked in these mice the expression level of the different proteins involved in calcium homeostasis and observed in fast muscles an increase in expression of dihydropyridine receptor, with a large reduction in calsequestrin expression. Electron microscopy analysis of KO muscles morphology demonstrated the presence of triads in abnormal orientation and a reduction in the sarcoplasmic reticulum terminal cisternae volume. Using calcium imaging on cultured myotubes, we observed a reduction in the total amount of calcium stored in the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Physiological studies have been performed to evaluate the influence of triadin deletion on skeletal muscle function. Muscle strength has been measured both on the whole animal model, using hang test or electrical stimulation combined with NMR analysis and strength measurement, or on isolated muscle using electrical stimulation. All the results obtained demonstrate an important reduction in muscle strength, indicating that triadin plays an essential role in skeletal muscle function and in skeletal muscle structure. These results indicate that triadin alteration leads to the development of a myopathy, which could be studied using this new animal model.
Defining, Estimating and Using Credit Term Structures. Part 3: Consistent Cds-Bond Basis

In the third part of this series we introduce consistent relative value measures for CDS-Bond basis trades using the bond-implied CDS term structure derived from fitted survival rate curves. We explain why this measure is better than the traditionally used Z-spread or Libor OAS and offer simplified hedging and trading strategies which take advantage of the relative value across the entire range of maturities of cash and synthetic credit markets.
Image Difference Between Culture and Nature Destination Visitors in Tropical Africa: Case Study of Nigeria

The study evaluates images of tourism destinations in diverse cultures and nature destinations in Nigeria amongst 880 domestic and foreign tourists surveyed by systematic random sampling. Colour photographs and structure questionnaires were employed to evaluate the destination preferences and images considered very important to various tourist groups, and comparison was also undertaken through chi-square test. The results revealed nature destinations, especially ecotourism/wildlife and landform areas, as desired most by tourists. Natural attraction, landform features, facilities/ amenities and historic/archeological features represented most important images underlying destination perception and selection. Safety/security and prompt services/ personal quality were least appreciated destination features. Significant differences emerged between domestic and foreign tourists and tourist groups in various destinations, in types of destinations preferred and in environmental images held of tourism destinations. Implications of the study for destination planning, management and marketing are highlighted.
Long-Term Follow-up of Residual Mediastinal Masses in Treated Hodgkin's Disease Using MR Imaging

Purpose: Long-term follow-up of residual mediastinal masses in treated Hodgkin's disease using MR imaging. Material and Methods: Ten patients, with substantial residual mediastinal masses of low signal intensity (SI) in the T2-weighted image (T2WI), were reinvestigated with MR 19–79 months after completing treatment of Hodgkin's disease. All patients were in complete remission. Results: During the follow-up period, the masses had decreased in size by 0–95% (median 67%) as compared to their initial post-therapy size. The SI continued to be low in the T2WI and was unaffected by the degree of size reduction. Conclusion: It is speculated that these mainly fibrotic residual masses undergo slow degradation of the fibrotic part and/or resorption of remaining inflammatory tissue. It is important to understand the natural, long-term MR imaging changes of these residual masses in order more easily to recognize tumour recurrence or other pathologic conditions.
The Gaia-ESO Survey: a quiescent Milky Way with no significant dark/stellar accreted disc

According to our current cosmological model, galaxies like the Milky Way are expected to experience many mergers over their lifetimes. The most massive of the merging galaxies will be dragged towards the disc plane, depositing stars and dark matter into an accreted disc structure. In this work, we utilize the chemodynamical template developed in Ruchti et al. to hunt for accreted stars. We apply the template to a sample of 4675 stars in the third internal data release from the Gaia-ESO Spectroscopic Survey. We find a significant component of accreted halo stars, but find no evidence of an accreted disc component. This suggests that the Milky Way has had a rather quiescent merger history since its disc formed some 8-10 billion years ago and therefore possesses no significant dark matter disc.
Nutritional and Health Perspectives of Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): An Overview

Beans, the variants of Phaseolus vulagris, are nutritionally and economically important food crop in each part of the world. Besides providing nutrients such as multifaceted carbohydrates, elevated proteins, dietary fiber, minerals, and vitamins, these also contain rich variety of polyphenolic compounds with prospective health benefits. This review mainly focuses the important nutritional aspects of beans as well as their contribution in decreasing the risks of chronically degenerative diseases.
Fault-Tolerant Operation of Three-Phase Cascaded H-Bridge Converters Using an Auxiliary Module

This paper presents a new fault-tolerant solution for cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converters, which generates equal output voltages in both prefault and single fault conditions. To generate a balanced three-phase voltage with the highest amplitude regardless of the fault location and its type, an auxiliary module is employed in series with the CHB converter. The auxiliary module is a two-level voltage-source inverter with a capacitive dc link. The module is brought to the circuit after fault detection and its capacitor is charged by a novel algorithm to the reference value. Then, using the space vector modulation, the inverter's reference space vector is synthesized and the voltage of auxiliary module is kept constant. The validation of the proposed method is confirmed by simulations and experiments on a three-phase five-level CHB converter.
The Effect of Voluntary Disclosure and Preemptive Preannouncements on Earnings Response Coefficients (ERC) When Firms Manage Earnings

We study analytically the effect of preliminary voluntary disclosure and preemptive preannouncement on the slope of the regression of returns on earnings surprise—the earnings response coefficient (ERC). When firms do not manage earnings, additional disclosure has no effect, and the ERC is proportional to price/permanent earnings ratio. If they manage earnings by attempting to inflate them, the response to (100% credible) negative earnings surprise is stronger than the response to (less than 100% credible) positive surprise. To avert litigation, firms that manage earnings adopt a partial voluntary disclosure strategy—either public revelation of good news and withholding bad news, or public revelation of bad news and withholding good news. Voluntary disclosure affects ERC on positive earnings surprise only, depending on what the firm reveals: the good- news revealing ERC (GRC) is higher than the bad-news revealing ERC (BRC), because good news enhances the credibility of the positive earnings surprise, even though the market discounts good news. Furthermore, preemptive pre-announcements improve ERC accuracy by narrowing the scope of earnings management.
A study evaluating the effect of Educational Needs Assessment Tool (ENAT) focused patient education, on health outcomes in patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis: Protocol of an ongoing study

Aims and objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of a patient education tool (the ENAT) on self efficacy, patient knowledge, health outcomes and its usability in practice. Background: The effectiveness and value of patient education in rheumatoid arthritis have been questioned. The ENAT was developed to help the nurses to provide more focused, individualized and relevant education. The psychometric properties of the ENAT have been assessed. Design: This study is a single blind randomized controlled trial using both quantitative and qualitative methodology. The primary outcome is patient self efficacy. Secondary outcomes are physical function, psychological status, pain levels, social interaction and patient knowledge of disease. Methods: 130 RA patients will be randomized into an experimental (EG) or control group (CG). The EG patients will complete the ENAT prior to seeing a Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) at weeks 0, 16 and 32. The CNS will use the ENAT as a template to meet patients perceived educational needs in addition to the usual care. The CG will receive their usual care from the CNS without the aid of the ENAT. To determine the ENAT’s usability, semi-structured quailtative interviews will take place with the practitioners and a sample of patients once they have completed the quantitative arm of the study. Results: The study commenced in April 2011 and the results are expected to be available after April 2013. Conclusions: It is hypothesized that nurses’ use of the ENAT will lead to increased patient self efficacy, and improved patient knowledge and health outcomes among the patients who used it. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that the ENAT will be easy for staff and patients to use. Relevance to clinical practice: The ENAT was developed to assess the perceived educational needs of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and thus help the nurses to provide more focused, individualised and relevant education.
Development of extraocular muscles requires early signals from periocular neural crest and the developing eye.

OBJECTIVES To identify and explain morphologic changes of the extraocular muscles (EOMs) in anophthalmic patients. METHODS Retrospective medical record review of patients with congenital anophthalmia, using magnetic resonance imaging and intraoperative findings to characterize EOM morphology. We then used molecular biology techniques in zebrafish and chick embryos to determine the relationships among the developing eye, periocular neural crest, and EOMs. RESULTS In 3 human patients with bilateral congenital anophthalmia and preoperative orbital imaging, we observed a spectrum of EOM morphologies ranging from indiscernible muscle tissue to well-formed, organized EOMs. Timing of eye loss in zebrafish and chick embryos correlated with the morphology of EOM organization in the orbit (eye socket). In congenitally eyeless Rx3 zebrafish mutants, or following genetic ablation of the cranial neural crest cells, EOMs failed to organize, which was independent of other craniofacial muscle development. CONCLUSIONS Orbital development is dependent on interactions between the eye, neural crest, and developing EOMs. Timing of the ocular insult in relation to neural crest migration and EOM development is a key determinant of aberrant EOM organization. Additional research will be required to study patients with unilateral and syndromic anophthalmia and assess for possible differences in clinical outcomes of patients with varied EOM morphology. CLINICAL RELEVANCE The presence and organization of EOMs in anophthalmic eye sockets may serve as a markers for the timing of genetic or teratogenic insults, improving genetic counseling, and assisting with surgical reconstruction and family counseling efforts.