Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
‘As prostitutes, we control our bodies’: perceptions of health and body in the lives of establishment-based female sex workers in Tijuana, Mexico

Many studies of female sex work focus on HIV and other sexually transmitted infections because sex workers are considered bridges between high-risk and low-risk populations. The voices of female sex workers as they pertain to health issues are often lacking in the literature. This paper offers a feminist constructivist grounded theory study with establishment-based female sex workers in Tijuana, Mexico. Analyses of interviews with 20 women reveal that they are aware of the impact of their work on their bodies, but conceptualise their health holistically and not just in terms of HIV. They emphasise that working in the sex industry has implications for sexual health, non-sexual physical health and mental health. The paper concludes that in order for public health interventions to have more sustainable impact on the lives of female sex workers, they should take into account the voices of the women, including how they define their health. The findings suggest that public health professionals need to be more aware that female sex workers have agency and a desire to control their health and their bodies.
Functional clustering by Bayesian wavelet methods

Summary. We propose a nonparametric Bayes wavelet model for clustering of functional data. The wavelet‐based methodology is aimed at the resolution of generic global and local features during clustering and is suitable for clustering high dimensional data. Based on the Dirichlet process, the nonparametric Bayes model extends the scope of traditional Bayes wavelet methods to functional clustering and allows the elicitation of prior belief about the regularity of the functions and the number of clusters by suitably mixing the Dirichlet processes. Posterior inference is carried out by Gibbs sampling with conjugate priors, which makes the computation straightforward. We use simulated as well as real data sets to illustrate the suitability of the approach over other alternatives.
Unit Connected Generator with Diode Valve Rectifier Scheme

The application of a diode bridge rectifier unit connected to a generator feeding a sending-end HVDC station shows a substantial reduction in the station cost. One of the major problems of this configuration is its slow recovery from a DC line fault. The authors propose and analyze a few types of control and protection schemes for the generator. The minimum time required to restore full power subsequent to a DC line fault is studied for each scheme. The results of a digital computer study are presented, as are some results obtained from a real-time physical component HVDC simulator. >
Structural and Neurobehavioral Delay in Postnatal Brain Development of Preterm Infants1

Postnatal brain development of healthy prematurely born infants was assessed to study possible influence of premature birth and early extrauterine environment on structural, biochemical, and functional brain development. Myelination and differentiation of gray and white matter were studied byin vivo magnetic resonance (MR) imaging (MRI), changes in cerebral metabolism by 1H MR spectroscopy (MRS), and changes in early human neurobehavior by the assessment of preterm infant's behavior (APIB). The stage of intrauterine and extrauterine brain development in prematurely born infants at term was compared with the stage of mainly intrauterine brain development in a group of full-term infants. Eighteen preterm infants unremarkable with respect to neurologic and medical status were studied at approximately 2 wk of postnatal age [gestational age (GA) 1: 32.5 ± 1.2 wk] and again at term(GA 2: 40.0 ± 1.1 wk). For comparison a group of 13 full-term born infants (GA T: 40.6 ± 2.1 wk) were studied by MR and six by APIB. When GA 2 to GA 1 was compared, significant maturational changes were found with MRI in gray and white matter and myelination, with 1H MRS in the concentration of N-acetylaspartate and with all scores of APIB. In preterm infants at term (GA 2) compared with full-term infants (GA T) significantly less gray and white matter differentiation and myelination was observed as well as significantly poorer performance in four neurobehavioral parameters (autonomic reactivity, motoric reactivity, state organization, attentional availability). We conclude that MRI and 1H MRS can be used to study postnatal brain development in preterm infants. Structural and biochemical maturation is accompanied by functional maturation as shown with the neurobehavior assessment. Preterm infants at term compared with full-term infants show a structural as well as a functional delay in brain development assessed at 40 wk of postconceptional age.
OBJECT-BASED FOREST CHANGE DETECTION USING HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE IMAGES

An object-based approach for forest disaster change detection using High Resolution (HR) satellite images is proposed. An automatic feature selection process is used to optimize image segmentation via an original calibration-like procedure. A multitemporal classification then enables the separation of wind-fall from intact areas based on a new descriptor that depends on the level of fragmentation of the detected regions. The mean shift algorithm was used in both the segmentation and the classification processes. The method was tested on a high resolution Formosat-2 multispectral satellite image pair acquired before and after the Klaus storm. The obtained results are encouraging and the contribution of high resolution images for forest disaster mapping is discussed.
Testability analysis and test-point insertion in RTL VHDL specifications for scan-based BIST

This paper proposes a new testability analysis and test-point insertion method at the register transfer level (RTL), assuming a full scan and a pseudorandom built-in self-test design environment. The method is based on analyzing the RTL synchronous specification in synthesizable very high speed integrated circuit hardware descriptive language (VHDL). A VHDL intermediate form representation is first obtained from the VHDL specification and then converted to a directed acyclic graph (DAG) that represents all data dependencies and flow of control in the VHDL specification. Testability measures (TMs) are computed on this graph. The considered TMs are controllability and observability for each bit of each signal/variable that is declared or may be implied in the VHDL specification. Internal signals of functional modules (FMs) such as adders and comparators are also analyzed to compute their controllability and observability values. The internal signals are obtained by decomposing at the RTL large FMs into smaller ones. The calculation of TMs is carried out at a functional level rather than the gate level, to reduce or eliminate errors introduced by ignoring reconvergent fanouts in the gate network, and to reduce the complexity of the DAG construction. Based on the controllability/observability values, test-point insertion is performed to improve the testability for each bit of each signal/variable. This insertion is carried out in the original VHDL specification and thus becomes a part of it unlike in other existing methods. This allows full application of RTL synthesis optimization on both the functional and the test logic concurrently within the designer constraints such as area and delay. A number of benchmark circuits were used to show the applicability and the effectiveness of our method in terms of the resulting testability, area, and delay.
Can TCP metastability explain cascading failures and justify flow admission control in the Internet?

This paper discusses implications of possible metastability of TCP-type fair bandwidth sharing under random flow arrivals/departures for understanding and defending the Internet against cascading failures. Cascading failures can be viewed as a process of network transition from desirable metastable mode with finite number of flows in progress to the congested mode. It is possible to eliminate or reduce the possibility of cascading failures with properly designed flow admission control which stabilizes the network in a close neighborhood of the desirable metastable state.
Programming Techniques and Data Structures

Two high-level pointer operations, rotation and slide, reduce concei~tual difficulties when writing pointer programs and increase the reliability of programs. We analyze theoretically as well as empll'ically why these operations are more convenient and introduce a mechanically checkable notion of the safety of rotations. Several examples show that safety is a good indication of program correctness. Examples of list marking and list copying programs demonstrate the utility of these operations.
Will the world run out of land? A Kaya-type decomposition to study past trends of cropland expansion

Globally, the further expansion of cropland is limited by the availability of adequate land and by the necessity to spare land for nature conservation and carbon sequestration. Analyzing the causes of past land-use changes can help to better understand the potential drivers of land scarcities of the future. Using the FAOSTAT database, we quantify the contribution of four major factors, namely human population growth, rising per-capita caloric consumption (including food intake and household waste), processing losses (including conversion of vegetal into animal products and non-food use of crops), and yield gains, to cropland expansion rates of the past (1961–2007). We employ a Kaya-type decomposition method that we have adapted to be applicable to drivers of cropland expansion at global and national level. Our results indicate that, all else equal, without the yield gains observed globally since 1961, additional land of the size of Australia would have been put under the plough by 2007. Under this scenario the planetary boundary on global cropland use would have already been transgressed today. By contrast, without rising per-capita caloric consumption and population growth since 1961, an area as large as nearly half and all of Australia could have been spared, respectively. Yield gains, with strongest contributions from maize, wheat and rice, have approximately offset the increasing demand of a growing world population. Analyses at the national scale reveal different modes of land-use transitions dependent on development stage, dietary standards, and international trade intensity of the countries. Despite some well-acknowledged caveats regarding the non-independence of decomposition factors, these results contribute to the empirical ranking of different drivers needed to set research priorities and prepare well-informed projections of land-use change until 2050 and beyond.
A sharp-switching gateless device (Z3-FET) in advanced FDSOI technology

A systematic study of a novel band modulation device (Z3-FET: Zero gate, Zero swing slope and Zero impact ionization) fabricated in most advanced Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator technology is presented. Since the device has no front gate, the operation mechanism is controlled by two buried ground planes. Characteristics such as sharp switching, low leakage, and controllable triggering are measured and discussed. We explore several variants (thin and thick silicon film) and show promising results in terms of high current and switching performance.
Distributed ad-hoc passive routing path selection algorithm with prioritized broadcasting order based on non-realtime and semi-global routing information

In an ad-hoc network, we need to find the path to the destination prior to the start of transmission between two users. In such an environment, proactive routing protocols, such as AODV and DSR, are widely used to discover a suitable routing path for two ends. However, without taking other issues, such as energy, jitter and so on, into account, the chosen relay nodes in these routing protocol is optimal from the viewpoints of energy and jitter. In this work, we address a distributed ad-hoc passive Routing Path Selection Algorithm (DPPA) to select the relay nodes. The concept of DPPA is derived from Power-Aware Source Routing protocol (PSR)[2] and AODV. In DPPA, we prioritize the broadcasting order of co-located nodes according to the energy level and dynamically adjust the broadcasting jitter according to the relative energy levels of co-located nodes. In addition, the listening delay is also dynamically adjusted according to the broadcasting jitter time. Adopting these mechanism, the route initial delay could be greatly reduced. Meanwhile, we propose a novel relay node selection metric, which utilizes the information of the reverse path. Based on this information, we are able to have semiglobal non-realtime network information to choose the optimal routing path. Though simulation, it has shown that the proposed mechanism outperforms PSR in terms of initial delay and energy.
Selective user interaction

Query expansion [12] refers to the process of including related terms in the original query to produce expanded queries, while query relaxation [8] refers to the dropping or down-weighting of terms from the original query to produce sub-queries. The automatic versions of both query expansion (AQE) and query relaxation (AQR) are known to fail in a large fraction of queries, and overall (average) improvements in performance can be attributed to high gains on a smaller fraction [7]. The potential to address the mistakes made by automatic techniques by involving the user [6] motivates interactive versions of these techniques (IQE, IQR). Previous research has shown that involving users in selection [4, 5, 10, 1] or rejection of terms or sets of terms [8] suggested by an automatic method has the potential to further improve performance. However, the same problems that plague automatic techniques are prevalent in interactive techniques: i.e. user interaction has the potential to lead to improvements only for a subset of queries. Further, a second problem has generally been ignored: frequently none of the options selected by the automatic procedures and presented to the user are any better than the original query. In this paper we develop and present procedures for determining when to interact with a user to obtain explicit feedback in the IQR and IQE settings. We show that by using these procedures we can avoid interaction for almost 40% of TREC queries without compromising significant improvements over the baseline. We also develop procedures to rank queries by their potential for improvement through user interaction, enabling systems to interact with users working under time and cognitive load constraints.
Deterrence, Lawsuits, and Litigation Outcomes Under Court Errors

This article presents a strategic model of liability and litigation under court errors. Our framework allows for endogenous choice of level of care and endogenous likelihood of filing and disputes. We derive sufficient conditions for a unique universally divine mixed-strategy perfect Bayesian equilibrium under low court errors. In this equilibrium, some defendants choose to be grossly negligent; some cases are filed; and some lawsuits are dropped, some are resolved out of court, and some go to trial. We find that court errors in the size of the award, as well as damage caps and split awards, reduce the likelihood of trial but increase filing and reduce the deterrence effect of punitive damages. We derive conditions under which the adoption of the English rule for allocating legal costs reduces filing. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.
Propuesta de Interacción Multimodal: Caso de estudio Navegación en Mapas

Este trabajo presenta una propuesta del componente de interaccion de usuario multimodal para ser integrado principalmente con aplicaciones de computacion visual 2D/3D. El componente considera multiples canales de entrada de informacion funcionando simultaneamente. Sobre cada canal de entrada se define un proceso de tratamiento de informacion que corresponde a una modalidad de interaccion disponible al usuario. La informacion resultante de las diferentes modalidades se integra para definir acciones/comandos conjuntos de interaccion hacia la aplicacion computacional. La interaccion multimodal busca ser mas natural para el usuario, lo cual significa una interaccion mas facil y agradable. La propuesta fue validada integrando una componente de interaccion multimodal basada en gestos manuales y voz con la aplicacion Bing-Maps para realizar la tarea de navegacion en mapas 2D en un ambiente de visualizacion de mediano formato. El prototipo de integracion fue validado por un conjunto de usuarios y se obtuvieron resultados preliminares de su funcionalidad y de la experiencia de usuario resultante.
3,4-Diaminopyridinium hydrogen succinate

In the title compound, C5H8N3 +·C4H5O4 −, the pyridine N atom of the 3,4-diaminopyridine molecule is protonated. The protonated N atom participates in an N—H⋯O hydrogen bond to a succinate O atom of the singly deprotonated succinate anion. Each of the two amino groups are hydrogen-bonded to the O atoms of two different sets of succinate groups. The crystal structure is further stabilized by O—H⋯O and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds.
RoHS - regulated substances in mixed plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment

This paper summarizes the findings of a research study, which was commissioned by the WEEE Forum to contribute to a formulation of normative requirements with respect to depollution of WEEE. Two main questions are addressed: (i) What are the concentrations of substances regulated by the Directive 2002/95/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (RoHS Directive) in mixed plastics from selected WEEE categories and products? , and (ii) What are the implications for an environmentally sound recovery of plastics from WEEE? The study included 53 sampling campaigns for mixed plastics from WEEE. The samples were analysed with regard to flame retardants (PentaBDE, OctaBDE, DecaBDE, DecaBB) and heavy metals (cadmium, chromium, mercury and lead) regulated in the RoHS Directive. Besides these substances, other brominated flame retardants known to occur in electronics (HBCD, TBBPA) as well as the total bromine and phosphorus contents were considered. Results were evaluated with regard to the maximum concentration values defined in the Directive.
Open Tibial Shaft Fractures: II. Definitive Management and Limb Salvage

Definitive treatment of open fractures of the tibial diaphysis is challenging. The high‐energy nature of these fractures, as well as the contamination of the fracture site and devitalization of the soft‐tissue envelope, greatly increases the risk of infection, nonunion, and wound complications. The goals of definitive treatment include wound coverage or closure; prevention of infection; restoration of length, alignment, rotation, and stability; fracture healing; and return of function. Advances in orthobiologics, modern plastic surgical techniques, and fracture stabilization methods, most notably locked intramedullary nailing, have led to improved prognosis for functional recovery and limb salvage. Despite improved union and limb salvage rates, the prognosis for severe type III open fracture of the tibial shaft remains guarded, and outcomes are often determined by patient psychosocial variables.
Nonholonomic Source Localization in 3-D Environments Without Position Measurement

Based on the extremum seeking (ES) algorithm, an adaptive scheme for nonholonomic source localization in a 3-D environment without position information is developed. While the previous works use the sinusoidally perturbed form of ES, this technical note employs the recently form of ES in which the measured quantity for optimization appears as the argument of a sine/cosine function. The proposed scheme takes advantage of the fact that the key part of the recently form of ES algorithm (the sine/cosine function) already exists in the vehicle model. Stability analysis of the proposed scheme is performed using the averaging theory and its performance is illustrated with simulation examples.
Getting the measure of syphilis: qPCR to better understand early infection

Objectives Until recently, PCR had been used to detect but not quantify Treponema pallidum. To understand infection kinetics of this uncultivable organism, a real-time PCR assay was developed to quantify 47 kDa membrane lipoprotein gene DNA (tpp47). Methods Assay specificity was determined against DNA from humans, skin organisms and sexually transmitted pathogens. tpp47 DNA (Nichols strain) was used to construct a standard curve for T pallidum quantification. Blood and ulcer samples were obtained from 99 patients being investigated or screened for syphilis and tpp47 was quantified. Results The assay was specific, not cross-reactive with other organisms tested and sensitive, with a detection limit of a single copy of tpp47 DNA. For ulcer samples, the assay was 100% sensitive and 97.14% specific. Sensitivity fell to 34.1% for blood samples but specificity remained high (100%). tpp47 DNA was more commonly detected, and at a higher copy number, in blood of patients with secondary infection (sensitivity 57.89%) compared with primary infection. Quantity of tpp47 DNA was higher in primary infection ulcers, especially in HIV-1-positive patients, than in ulcers persisting into secondary disease. Conclusions Quantifying T pallidum provides insight into syphilis infection kinetics: Ulcers of primary disease in HIV-1-positive patients are perhaps more infectious and the presence and load of T pallidum bacteraemia is variable, with a peak in the secondary stage. Quantitative PCR has the potential to map T pallidum infection and to highlight the impact of HIV on syphilis.
Identification of ribonucleotide reductase mutation causing temperature-sensitivity of herpes simplex virus isolates from whitlow by deep sequencing

Herpes simplex virus 2 caused a genital ulcer, and a secondary herpetic whitlow appeared during acyclovir therapy. The secondary and recurrent whitlow isolates were acyclovir‐resistant and temperature‐sensitive in contrast to a genital isolate. We identified the ribonucleotide reductase mutation responsible for temperature‐sensitivity by deep‐sequencing analysis.
Single-Atom Electrocatalysts.

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic increase in the production of sustainable and renewable energy. However, the electrochemical performances of the various systems are limited, and there is an intensive search for highly efficient electrocatalysts by more rational control over the size, shape, composition, and structure. Of particular interest are the studies on single-atom catalysts (SACs), which have sparked new interests in electrocatalysis because of their high catalytic activity, stability, selectivity, and 100 % atom utilization. In this Review, we introduce innovative syntheses and characterization techniques for SACs, with a focus on their electrochemical applications in the oxygen reduction/evolution reaction, hydrogen evolution reaction, and hydrocarbon conversion reactions for fuel cells (electrooxidation of methanol, ethanol, and formic acid). The electrocatalytic performance is further considered at an atomic level and the underlying mechanisms are discussed. The ultimate goal is the tailoring of single atoms for electrochemical applications.