Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevention of alcohol-related injuries in the Americas: from evidence to policy action

SUMMARY In the Americas, the volume of alcohol consumption and the way in which it is consumed present major public health problems. In 2005, adult per capita consumption of alcohol in the Americas was 8.7 L per year—higher than the world average of 6.1 L. Even more worrisome is the fact that alcohol con-sumption prevalence among students in the region is much higher than that for other regions. In addition, heavy chronic alcohol consumption is much higher in the Americas compared to the world average. By World Health Organization (WHO) Global Burden of Disease (GBD) region, 1 Central and Tropical Lat-in America exhibit the worst drinking patterns in the Americas, including a low rate of drinking with meals and a high prevalence of festive drinking. To reduce the burden of disease, economic loss, and social problems in the Americas that result from al-cohol consumption and harmful drinking patterns, policy makers should aim to reduce both per cap-ita consumption of alcohol and the prevalence of harmful drinking patterns. This chapter describes adult per capita consumption of alcohol; drinking patterns, including country scores
Associations of Youth Weight Status Categories and Cholesterol Levels: Analysis of Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

ABSTRACT SANDRA C. METCALF Associations of Youth Weight Status Categories and Cholesterol Levels: Analysis of Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (Under the direction of RODNEY LYN, PhD, Assistant Professor) Obesity is recognized as a risk factor for dyslipidemia, however studies specific to overweight youth and dyslipidemia are scarce. Nonetheless, expert bodies have established BMI at the 85 th percentile or greater as the threshold for “at risk” in youth and advocate for lipid screening. This study analyzed associations of weight categories and occurrence of dyslipidemia among a multi-racial sample of youth 6 to 18 years of age. In this NHANES cohort, overweight youth were at significant increased risk of dyslipidemias of total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Obese children and adolescents demonstrated even higher risk. This study supports the hypothesis that overweight youth are at increased risk for dyslipidemia. Despite the increased risk, test agreement for overweight and dyslipidemia was poor. BMI at the 85 th percentile did not provide good discrimination in detecting children with dyslipidemia and use of this threshold warrants further review.
Quality of life: An overview of issues for use in occupational therapy outcome measurement

The concept of quality of life (QOL) has been used as an outcome measure to indicate the global health, functioning and wellbeing of a person following illness, injury or disability, and to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Whilst QOL has been widely used for these purposes by researchers and practitioners in the health and social sciences, it has had limited application by occupational therapists. This has occurred despite the obvious links to occupational therapy philosophy, with both having a multifaceted, holistic, and client-centred approach to people’s lives, and a concern with the roles and functions that give life meaning and value. This paper reviews QOL literature in order to introduce occupational therapists to the issues involved with using this construct, from its conceptualization to its measurement. A guide to the decision-making processes involved in selecting an appropriate QOL outcome measure for use in occupational therapy practice is provided.
Development and Pilot Testing a Social Cognitive Theory-Based Intervention to Prevent Childhood Obesity among Elementary Students in Rural Kentucky

The purpose of this study was to develop and pilot test a social cognitive theory-based intervention for children to prevent childhood obesity. Focus groups were conducted with 5th grade students and their parents on the behaviors of physical activity, watching television, and eating habits, specifically fruit and vegetable intake and water consumption. Results from the focus groups were used to develop a 12-week program which was pilot tested in 5th grade physical education classes. The 12-week intervention was conducted with 122 students at a rural elementary school in Kentucky. Significant findings from the intervention were the increase in expectations for drinking water (p = 0.049), increase in expectations for watching television (p = 0.002), and increase in the number of glasses of water consumed (p = 0.022) from pre-test to post-test. Recommendations have been offered for future obesity reduction programs that can be implemented in the elementary schools.
Fatigue in rheumatic disease: an overview

Fatigue is a common and disabling symptom in a number of rheumatic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and osteoarthritis. Patients frequently rank fatigue as one of their most disabling symptoms, adversely affecting quality of life and employment opportunities. The aims of this article are to: first, define the concept of fatigue in rheumatic disease, its nature, prevalence and impact; second, describe questionnaires that have been validated as measures of fatigue among people with rheumatic diseases; third, outline the factors which have been identified as influencing fatigue, including disease activity/severity, disability, pain, sleep disturbance, mood, self-efficacy, illness perceptions and coping; and finally, synthesize the sparse evidence currently available regarding the best strategies for managing fatigue in rheumatic disease. Recent research has suggested that disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs and biologic therapies are effective in ameliorating fatigue in both.
Molecular detection of canine parvovirus in Jos, Nigeria

Canine parvovirus (CPV) remains the most significant viral cause of enteritis in puppies over the age of two months. This study was meant to detect the virus by targeting the VP2 gene, a 583 bp gene (nucleotide 4003 to 4585) of the capsid protein. The detection of the virus was carried out by conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on one hundred and nine samples. Seventy five of these were rectal swabs while thirty four were necropsy tissues, all from dogs presenting with symptoms suggestive of parvovirus enteritis from veterinary clinics in Jos metropolis. Results revealed that 47.70% of the samples were found to be positive for the virus. The rate of detection was more in necropsy tissues (64.71%) relative to rectal swabs (40.00%). A breakdown of the incidence of the infection across breeds of dogs showed that the Rottweillers had 60.00%, Doberman pinchers had 54.54%, Pitbulls had 53.33% while Tan coloured and local breeds of dogs had 50.00 and 21.42%, respectively. With a prevalence rate of 47.70%, the findings have confirmed that the virus is circulating in Jos, Nigeria. As such, stake holders must quickly intervene to arrest the situation given the high economic losses associated with the disease. Key words: Canine parvovirus, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Jos.
Exploring health visitors' perceptions of the public health nursing role

This small exploratory study in one local area in Scotland aimed to identify health visitors' perceptions of public health nursing and the factors that influenced their capacity to adopt a broad public health role in line with current policy direction in Scotland. The literature review focused on the historical and political context of public health nursing and the extent to which health visitors across the UK have managed to shift practice towards a greater emphasis on community focused public health work. This study involved 10 qualitative interviews with practising health visitors, who had at least 2 years' experience and trained prior to September 2001 when the public health nursing course replaced the health visiting course in Scotland. Participants identified a range of barriers to local implementation of the model of public health nursing practice set out in recent national policy. Findings suggested that theoretical perspectives of public health and leadership issues for health visitors perpetuate the dominant clinical agenda in their work setting. Although participants were generally willing to develop wider public health work they identified a number of constraints related to the perceived higher value given to clinical duties. This was reinforced by the low priority given to public health work at all levels within the organization and by primary care team colleagues. The study found participants felt powerless to influence change and were frustrated by unrealistic expectations of their ability to develop their public health nursing role without adequate support and planning infrastructure. Dominant themes that emerged from the investigation reinforce the need for effective leadership and application of social science theory to enable public health nurses to challenge the perceived dominant biomedical approach to public health in primary care.
Outcome of Treatment with Antidepressants in Patients with Hypertension and Undetected Depression

Objective: The objective of the research was to determine whether the administration of antidepressants, concurrently with antihypertensive therapy, leads to the better regulation of blood pressure in patients with hypertension and increased depressiveness. Methods: Research was conducted in two outpatient family clinics in Rijeka, Croatia, on 452 patients with arterial hypertension who had not been diagnosed with depression prior to the study. The diagnosis of hypertension was made in accordance with the European Society of Hypertension and the European Society of Cardiology Guidelines for the Management of Arterial Hypertension. Using the Beck Depression Inventory and the ICD-10 criteria for depression, a group of depressed hypertensive patients (N = 134) was selected. Out of a total of 134 selected patients, 73 patients (N = 73) were receiving antidepressants together with antihypertensives for 24 weeks. They formed the experimental group. The rest of the patients (N = 61) continued to receive only antihypertensives and they formed the control group. Results: After the end of the 24-week therapy, the experimental group of patients had significantly lower levels of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (Z = 7.42; P < 0.001; and Z = 7.36; P < 0.001). The control group saw no significant difference between the level of blood pressure (both systolic and diastolic) prior to and after this period. Conclusion: The application of antidepressant therapy in patients with hypertension who are also depressed may be associated with the better control of blood pressure, which reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in addition to alleviating depressive symptoms.
Management of reproductive tract infections among health providers and in the community in Lao People s Democratic Republic

3 LIST OF PUBLICATIONS . 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . 6 PREFACE . 7 1 BACKGROUND.8 1.1 Definition and aetiology of reproductive tract infections. 8 1.2 The importance of RTI/STI . 8 1.3 Management and control of RTI/STI in general.12 1.4 Lao People’s Democratic Republic . 16 1.5 Rationale and conceptual framework . 26 2 OBJECTIVES . 29 2.1 General objective . 29 2.2 Specific objectives . 29 3 METHODS . 30 3.1 Study design.30 3.2 Study settings . 31 3.3 Study subjects and sample selection . 32 3.4 Data collection . 33 3.5 Data analysis . 36 3.6 Ethical issues . 37 4 RESULTS . 38 4.1 Antimicrobial self-medication for RTI/STI (Paper I) . 38 4.2 Clinical and microbiological identification of RTI/STI and antimicrobial resistance pattern of N. gonorrhoeae (Paper II) . 39 4.3 Community perceptions, treatment-seeking behaviour, and understanding of health information regarding RTI/STI (Paper III) . 41 4.4 Health providers' competence in the management of RTI/STI (Paper IV). 43 5 DISCUSSION . 47 5.1 High rates of RTI/STI combined with high antimicrobial resistance – health concerns and options for improvement . 47 5.2. Community perceptions, treatment-seeking behaviour and antimicrobial self-medication for RTI/STI – suggested interventions at community level . 50 5.3. Health providers' competence in the management of RTI/STI – call for action . 54 5.4. Methodological considerations . 56 5.5. Implications for future research and practice . 59 6 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS . 60 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . 61 8 REFERENCES . 64 APPENDICES . 74
The effect of population-based health needs assessment on health visitor practice

This paper reports on a study examining the effects of undertaking population-based health needs assessment (HNA) on the knowledge, views and working practices of health visitors. Data were generated through indepth interviews with health visitors who had all utilized a standard mechanism for needs assessment. This was analysed to assess the impact of this work on the research respondents’ knowledge base, their attitudes and approaches to health visiting and their everyday practice. Findings suggest that undertaking health needs assessment increased understanding of public health concepts, enabled a profound reflection on current working practices and increased respondent’s desire to practise differently. However, despite these forces for change, the practitioners in this study found it very difficult to refocus their work in the way they desired due to a combination of inhibiting factors, including custom and practice and the perceptions and demands of others. If health visitors are to expand the scope of their work to incorporate an increased amount of community based activity as the UK Government is proposing, this study would suggest that these inhibiting factors must be addressed not only by health visitors themselves, but also by their employers and other primary care professionals.
Surgery and Care Giving: How Patients and Care Givers Cope with Loneliness

This research, conducted on patients and caregivers, examined the manner in which they cope with loneliness. Patients were divided into those who were approached before they had surgery, and those post operatively. We collected information about their tumors, which were either benign or malignant. The patients’ coping with loneliness was compared to their caregivers who were either intimate partners or ‘others’, i.e. family members and friends. The loneliness questionnaire, has already been extensively utilized in previous studies, and was used to explore the various aspects of loneliness of those groups. Significant differences in sub scale scores were found in patients pre and post surgery, with those who have already had surgery scoring higher. Interestingly, the only significant difference in the caregiver group was between men and women, in line with the socialization process of the genders, which makes women more open and vocal about their feelings and needs.
Implantable cardioverter defibrillator treatment : benefits and pitfalls in the currently indicated population

On one hand, clinicians have expressed concern that the number-needed-to-treat for primary prevention implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) might be too high and that the population eligible for primary prevention ICD treatment is of such magnitude that ICD therapy will strain financial resources and the pool of trained personnel. On the other hand, the currently implanted population has a relatively low incidence of ventricular arrhythmia. Therefore, additional clinically applicable tools are necessary to aid in the optimal allocation of ICD treatment. The current thesis explores possibilities for risk stratification for mortality and ventricular arrhythmia using easily available clinical parameters and evaluates the usefulness of novel, not routinely acquired parameters. The results of these studies should assist clinicians in the identification of patients who, although currently indicated, should not receive ICD treatments because of ery low risk of ventricular arrhythmia or very high risk of non arrhythmic death. Finally, this thesis clearly maps the drawbacks, accompanying ICD treatment.
Association of adiposity, measures of metabolic dysregulation, and elevated alanine aminotransferase in subjects with normal body mass index

Abstract Background: Differences in body fat (BF) distribution in patients with normal body mass index (BMI) with elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) remains poorly described. Objective: To determine the relationship between total BF, waist circumference (WC), insulin resistance (IR), and cardiometabolic risk profile in subjects with elevated ALT and normal BMI. Methods: We analyzed cross-sectional data from 4,914 US participants in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey database, who were ≥20 years of age, had normal BMI, and had body composition assessed by bioimpedance. Results: Mean ± SD age was 41.4 ± 0.3 years, and 58% participants were women. BF was 20 ± 0.1% in men and 29.9 ± 0.1% in women. As total BF increased by tertiles, there was a tendency towards a higher prevalence of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in men (6.1%, 6.5%, 9.5%, P = 0.13), but not in women (8.7%, 8.2%, 10.7%, P = 0.71). As WC increased by tertiles, there was a higher prevalence of elevated ALT in men (2.6%, 8.6%, 6.6%, P < 0.0001), but not in women. As ALT increased, men had significantly higher levels of nonhigh density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), increased apolipoprotein B, increased IR, and lower levels of C-reactive protein, whereas, women had higher levels of non-HDL-C and increased IR. Conclusion: In subjects with normal BMI, increased WC is associated with a higher prevalence of elevated ALT in men, but not in women. Higher levels of ALT correlated with a poor cardiometabolic risk profile.
SIP Flooding Attack Detection Using a Trust Model and Statistical Algorithms

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) has been constantly evolving to meet the tremendous rise in popularity of mobile services and Internet applications. Since IMS uses Session Initiation Protocol as the main protocol to control a signal, it inherits numerous known security vulnerabilities. One of the most severe issues is the Denial of Service attack. To address this problem, we introduce an anomaly-based detection system using the Tanimoto distance to identify deviations in the traffic. A modified moving average is applied to compute an adaptive threshold. To overcome a drawback of the adaptive threshold method, we present a momentum oscillation indicator to detect a gradually increasing attack. Generally, anomaly-based detection systems trigger many alarms and most of them are false positives that impact the quality of the detection. Therefore, we first present a false positive reduction method by using a trust model. A reliable trust value is calculated through the call activities and the human behavior of each user. The system performance is evaluated by using a comprehensive synthetic dataset containing various malicious traffic patterns. The experimental results show that this system accurately identified attacks and has the flexibility to deal with many types of attack patterns with a low false alarm.
Traffic Light Detection Considering Color Saturation Using In-Vehicle Stereo Camera

One of the major causes of traffic accidents according to the statistical report on traffic accidents in Japan is the disregard of traffic lights by drivers. It would be useful if driving support systems could detect and recognize traffic lights and give appropriate information to drivers. Although many studies on intelligent transportation systems have been conducted, the detection of traffic lights using images remains a difficult problem. This is because traffic lights are very small as compared to other objects and there are many objects similar to traffic lights in the road environment. In addition, the pixel colors of traffic lights are easily over-saturated, which renders traffic light detection using color information difficult. The rapid deployment of the new LED traffic lights has led to a new problem. Since LED lights blink at high frequency, if they are captured by a digital video camera, there are frames in which all the traffic lights appear to be turned off. It is impossible to detect traffic lights in these frames by searching the ordinary color of traffic lights. In this paper, we focus on the stable detection of traffic lights, even when they are blinking or when their colors are over-saturated. A method for detecting candidate traffic lights utilizing intensity information together with color information is proposed for handling over-saturated pixels. To exclude candidates that are not traffic lights efficiently, the sizes of the detected candidates are calculated using a stereo image. In addition, we introduce tracking with a Kalman filter to avoid incorrect detection and achieve stable detection of blinking lights. The experimental results using video sequences taken by an in-vehicle stereo camera verify the efficacy of the proposed approaches.
Knowledge and behavior related to oral health among Jimma University Health Sciences students, Jimma, Ethiopia

Background: Oral health practices are essential for prevention of dental and other associated systemic diseases. This study explores Jimma University Health Sciences students, with the respect to frequency and quality of use and the effect of gender differences on the distribution of oral health knowledge and behavior. Materials and Methods: Self-reported questionnaires were distributed to be completed by the participants from health sciences students. These students were selected at random after having read a consent letter. Three hundred students (males 206 and 94 females) were completed the questionnaires. The data were processed and analyzed by means of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 14.0, Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA). Results: About 57.6% males and 52.5% females scored highly in knowledge of caries. The corresponding rates regarding the knowledge of gingivitis were 49% and 44% respectively. Tooth brushing and the use of mefakia (chewing stick) ≤2 times a day was confirmed by 56.8% males and 58.2% females and by 74.8% males and 62.8% females, respectively. Conclusion: Awareness of oral health issues is high, but specific misconceptions exist. There is gender equality in knowledge and practice of oral hygiene among health sciences students. Mefakia chewing stick was equally used with toothbrush for oral hygiene practice.
Large-scale Image Retrieval as a Classification Problem

In this paper, we propose a new, effective, and unified scoring method for local feature-based image retrieval. The proposed scoring method is derived by solving the large-scale image retrieval problem as a classification problem with a large number of classes. The resulting proposed score is based on the ratio of the probability density function of an object model to that of a background model, which is efficiently calculated via nearest neighbor density estimation. The proposed method has the following desirable properties: (1) has a sound theoretical basis, (2) is more effective than inverse document frequency-based scoring, (3) is applicable not only to quantized descriptors but also to raw descriptors, and (4) is easy and efficient in terms of calculation and updating. We show the effectiveness of the proposed method empirically by applying it to a standard and improved bag-of-visual words-based framework and a k-nearest neighbor voting framework.