Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ethnic differences in human papillomavirus awareness and vaccine acceptability

Background: Studies of human papillomavirus (HPV) awareness and HPV vaccine acceptability have included few non-white participants, making it difficult to explore ethnic differences. This study assessed HPV awareness and HPV vaccine acceptability in a sample of women representing the major UK ethnic minority groups. Methods: A cross-sectional study design was used to assess awareness of HPV and acceptability of HPV vaccination. Participants were recruited using quota sampling to ensure adequate representation of ethnic minority women: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Caribbean, African and Chinese women (n = 750). A comparison sample of white British women (n = 200) was also recruited. Results: Awareness of HPV was lower among ethnic minority women than among white women (6–18% vs 39% in white women), and this was not explained by generational status or language spoken at home. In a subsample who were mothers (n = 601), ethnicity and religion were strongly associated with acceptability of HPV vaccination. Acceptability was highest among white mothers (63%) and lowest among South Asians (11–25%). Those from non-Christian religions were also less accepting of the vaccine (17–34%). The most common barriers to giving HPV vaccination were a need for more information, sex-related concerns and concern about side-effects. South Asian women were the most likely to cite sex-related concerns, and were also least likely to believe the vaccine would offer their daughters protection. Conclusion: These findings suggest some cultural barriers that could be addressed in tailored information aimed at ethnic minority groups. They also highlight the importance of recording ethnicity as part of HPV vaccine uptake data.
PSA-NCAM in postnatally generated immature neurons of the olfactory bulb: a crucial role in regulating p75 expression and cell survival

In the mammalian brain, ongoing neurogenesis via the rostral migratory stream (RMS) maintains neuronal replacement in the olfactory bulb throughout life. Mechanisms that regulate the final number of new neurons in this system include proliferation, migration and apoptosis. Here we show that the polysialylated isoforms of the neural cell adhesion molecule (PSA-NCAM) act as a pro-survival molecule in immature newborn neurons. Confocal microscopic analysis revealed a threefold increase in TUNEL-positive cells in the subventricular zone (SVZ) and the RMS of transgenic animals lacking the gene encoding NCAM (NCAM-/-), as compared with wild types. The enhanced apoptotic cell death occurred specifically in the population of mCD24-positive newborn neurons, but not in GFAP-positive astrocytes. Using in vitro cultures of purified SVZ-derived neurons, we demonstrate that the loss or inactivation of PSA on NCAM, as well as the deletion of NCAM, lead to reduced survival in response to neurotrophins including BDNF and NGF. These changes in cell survival are accompanied by an upregulation of p75 neurotrophin receptor expression in vitro as well as in vivo. Furthermore, the negative effects of PSA-NCAM inactivation on cell survival could be prevented by the pharmacological blockade of the p75 receptor-signaling pathway. We propose that PSA-NCAM may promote survival by controlling the expression of the p75 receptor in developing neurons.
Bioeffects of Static Magnetic Fields: Oxidative Stress, Genotoxic Effects, and Cancer Studies

The interaction of static magnetic fields (SMFs) with living organisms is a rapidly growing field of investigation. The magnetic fields (MFs) effect observed with radical pair recombination is one of the well-known mechanisms by which MFs interact with biological systems. Exposure to SMF can increase the activity, concentration, and life time of paramagnetic free radicals, which might cause oxidative stress, genetic mutation, and/or apoptosis. Current evidence suggests that cell proliferation can be influenced by a treatment with both SMFs and anticancer drugs. It has been recently found that SMFs can enhance the anticancer effect of chemotherapeutic drugs; this may provide a new strategy for cancer therapy. This review focuses on our own data and other data from the literature of SMFs bioeffects. Three main areas of investigation have been covered: free radical generation and oxidative stress, apoptosis and genotoxicity, and cancer. After an introduction on SMF classification and medical applications, the basic phenomena to understand the bioeffects are described. The scientific literature is summarized, integrated, and critically analyzed with the help of authoritative reviews by recognized experts; international safety guidelines are also cited.
Conflicting cues: The role of race, gender, and policy information in primary elections

This dissertation is fundamentally concerned with how individuals use information cues during primary elections to evaluate and select among a field of candidates all belonging to the same political party. When partisan heuristic cues – well-established as the most critical determinant of vote choice – are effectively held constant, voters are expected to turn to other easily accessible information about candidates in order to sort them and identify the most suitable option. This project assesses one such type of information – the demographic status of candidates. Primary voters are expected to (1) prefer the most ideologically proximate candidate as their preferred party nominee and (2) employ ideological stereotypes embedded in demographic cues to help subtype and sort their primary options. Primary candidates, on the other hand, should appeal to different subgroups of voters via ideological signals embedded in policy messages presented to voters. Moreover, since certain primary candidates are considered counterstereotypical – not striking voters as typical demographic groups associated with particular parties – there are also possible gains and losses for candidates based purely on their demographic status and not merely the ideological tone of their messages. The interaction of different types of information should generate different preferences for various types of voters in primary elections. The first two chapters discuss demographic trends across America’s main political parties, discuss the void in the literature related to intra-party decision-making, and present a theory related to how both candidate and voter characteristics condition evaluations in a primary context. A third chapter details two survey experiments – a low-information setting and a high-information setting – that are fielded to test theoretical expectations. Chapters Four through Six present the results of the two studies. A concluding chapter summaries the findings and integrates this work into the larger literature on cue use in an electoral context. I also discuss limits of the current project and specify a series of steps to more thoroughly probe the issues initially tested in this dissertation.
Authoritarian Dominance, Self-Esteem, and Manifest Anxiety

A mail-out questionnaire was sent to addresses selected at random from the Australian electoral rolls. There were 95 respondents. It contained the Rosenberg Self-esteem scale, the Taylor Manifest Anxiety scale, and the Ray ‘Directiveness’ scale of authoritarian dominance. Reliabilities (alpha) of 0,83, 0,87 and 0,75 were observed. Authoritarianism was found to be weakly associated with better mental health (in the sense of greater self-esteem and less anxiety). This is consistent with previous findings from South Africa but is at variance with the account given by Adorno et al. (1950). It is pointed out that dominance is also generally adaptive in animal species.
Seizure Susceptibility in DBA and C57 Mice: The Effects of Various Convulsants

Summary: Convulsive dose 50s (CD50s) for various convulsive drugs and minimal and maximal electroshock seizure thresholds were determined in DBA and C57 mice. DBA mice had lower maximal electroshock seizure thresholds (MESTs, 15%) and CD50s for homocysteine thiolactone (HTL, 23%) and bicuculline (69%), and a higher CD50 for pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) at 3 weeks of age, the age of maximal audiogenic seizure (AGS) susceptibility. At 8 weeks, when DBA mice are not susceptible to AGSs, significant differences were a lower minimal electroshock seizure threshold (mEST, 37%) and maximal EST (MEST) (19%), lower CDsos for N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) (39%), kainic acid (KA, 50%), HTL (32%), strychnine (37%), and a higher CD50 for nicotine (55%) in DBA mice. Based on these data it is suggested that pathways involving NMDA and KA receptors are responsible for increased susceptibility to seizure initiation (mEST), and are opposed by glycine pathways, and that opposing GABA and cholinergic systems at higher CNS levels are involved in seizure spread (AGSs and MEST) in these mice. Latency patterns indicate that nicotine, strychnine, PTZ and bicuculline have high blood‐brain barrier (BBB) penetrability. Picrotoxin and the excitatory amino acid receptor agonists had longer latencies, suggesting low BBB penetrability. Age‐related changes in latency, however, give evidence that difficulty in drug penetration of the BBB is not responsible for differences observed in CD50s between strains.
Factors associated with childhood obesity in Spain. The OBICE study: a case–control study based on sentinel networks

Abstract Objective To estimate the association strength of dietary behaviour and sedentary habits in relation to childhood obesity in Spain. Design A matched case–control study was carried out using data collected by sentinel network paediatricians in general practices. Setting Five Spanish autonomous communities. Subjects Cases were 437 children (2–14 years old) with BMI >95th percentile according to Spanish reference tables. Controls were 751 children (2–14 years old; two paired per case) with BMI <84th percentile. Data were collected in two phases: individual (questionnaires filled in by sentinel paediatricians) and family (self-administered questionnaires filled in a family environment). Crude OR and adjusted OR (ORc and adj OR) for the given variables were calculated using a simple and multiple conditional logistic regression analysis. Results The factors with the greatest effect on obesity were family history of obesity: both parents (adj OR = 11·2), mother but not father (adj OR = 9·1), father but not mother (adj OR = 6·1), siblings (adj OR = 2·7); and eating between meals (adj OR = 2·5) and consumption of sweets and soft drinks >2 times/week (adj OR = 2·0). The highest protection effect was found for five meals per day (adj OR = 0·5), the regular consumption of breakfast (adj OR = 0·5) and for eating fruit for dessert (adj OR = 0·6). Factors related to sedentary habits did not appear as noteworthy. Conclusions We have determined the association between certain dietary behaviour and family history with childhood obesity in several Spanish regions.
Factors Driving an Organisation's Capability to Develop Mobile Compatible Websites

This research aims to identify factors which influence an organisation's capability to develop mobile compatible websites and whether this capability translates into the actual production of quality mobile websites. Two novel research instruments were developed: an online questionnaire to measure organisational capability based on a number of relevant technical, organisational and environmental factors and a "mobile website compatibility measurement" instrument to rate the capability of respondent organisations' mobile websites. The research findings indicate that internal technology, slack resources and business process flexibility explain 82% of an organisation's perceived capability to develop mobile websites. Additionally, this perceived organisational capability correlated strongly with the actual quality of those organisations' mobile websites.
Study of Emotional Intelligence and Its Impact on Student’s Life

The objective of the study is to find out Emotional Intelligence (EI) of engineering students (N=138) (age:18-20 years) at IIT, Roorkee, India. It is a quantitative and empirical study conducted through questionnaire administration. The descriptive statistics, regression analysis, correlations, F-test and ANOVA were used to analyse the sample data collected. The study aims to analyse EI of students as it is imperative to understand their abilities and traits through their emotions. From the study it was found that female students had higher score for EI and its components (Sensitivity, Competency and Maturity). Also, it was observed that Competency impacts Maturity more than Sensitivity, thereby suggesting that Maturity is also defined by the abilities which are skills learned and experienced in a student’s life. Also, the responses for the three components of EI did not show any significant variation with age, meaning thereby age as a factor does not impact EI as a personality trait for students.
A vailability to pigs of amino acids in cereal grains

1. Endogenous levels of amino acids in ileal digests were determined as the output from pigs given protein-free diets and by extrapolation to zero intake of linear regressions of ileal amino acid output v. dietary amino acid intake. The protein-free diets included 0 or 50 g cellulose/kg and extrapolations were made from two series of four diets which contained graded levels of wheat or barley as the only source of protein. Within each series, dietary fibre level (mg/g) was maintained at approximately 140 or 190 neutral-detergent fibre (NDF) respectively. Endogenous amino acid levels in faeces were also determined. 2. Endogenous amino acid output in faeces was linearly related to dietary fibre level; endogenous ileal output increased with dietary fibre up to approximately 100 mg NDF/g, after which endogenous output no longer increased. 3. The amino acid composition of endogenous ileal protein varied little among levels of output and among different experiments. The composition appears to be determined by the predominance of mucin protein, the slow absorption of some amino acids and the methods commonly used to measure output. The very high levels of proline and glycine in ileal digesta seemed characteristic only of protein-free and low-protein diets. 4. The amino acid composition of endogenous faecal protein also varied little among different estimates, but was considerably different from that of endogenous ileal protein. Furthermore, the similarity of bacterial and faecal proteins suggested that much of the endogenous faecal protein was of bacterial origin.
Center-to-limb variation of solar line profiles as a test of NLTE line formation calculations

We present new observations of the center-to-limb variation of spectral lines in the quiet Sun. Our long-slit spectra are corrected for scattered light, which amounts to 4-8% of the continuum intensity, by comparison with a Fourier transform spectrum of the disk center. Different spectral lines exhibit different behaviors, depending on their sensitivity to the physical conditions in the photosphere and the range of depths they probe as a function of the observing angle, providing a rich database to test models of the solar photosphere and line formation. We examine the effect of inelastic collisions with neutral hydrogen in NLTE line formation calculations of the oxygen infrared triplet, and the Na I $\lambda6160.8$ line. Adopting a classical one-dimensional theoretical model atmosphere, we find that the sodium transition, formed in higher layers, is more effectively thermalized by hydrogen collisions than the high-excitation oxygen lines. This result appears as a simple consequence of the decrease of the ratio $N_{\rm H}/N_{\rm e}$ with depth in the solar photosphere. The center-to-limb variation of the selected lines is studied both under LTE and NLTE conditions. In the NLTE analysis, inelastic collisions with hydrogen atoms are considered with a simple approximation or neglected, in an attempt to test the validity of such approximation. For the sodium line studied, the best agreement between theory and observation happens when NLTE is considered and inelastic collisions with hydrogen are neglected in the rate equations. The analysis of the oxygen triplet benefits from a very detailed calculation using an LTE three-dimensional model atmosphere and NLTE line formation. The $\chi^2$ statistics favors including hydrogen collisions with the approximation adopted, but the oxygen abundance derived in that case is significantly higher than the value derived from OH infrared transitions.
Broadband dielectric spectroscopy CMOS readout circuit for molecular sensing

The readout circuit of broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BDS) for molecular sensing is described. The circuit performs a high-precision capacitance-to-current conversion and amplification of the difference of signals generated by two very small capacitors in the conventional CMOS 0.18 /spl mu/m technology. We make use of the continuous-time common mode error amplification and offset-cancelling low-noise lock-in architecture to measure the admittance as a function of frequency. The power consumption of the front-end is under 30 /spl mu/W/channel. It has a quasi-linear conversion ratio of 164 pA/aF.
Id Gene Regulation and Function in the Prosensory Domains of the Chicken Inner Ear: A Link between Bmp Signaling and Atoh1

Bone morphogenetic proteins (Bmps) regulate the expression of the proneural gene Atoh1 and the generation of hair cells in the developing inner ear. The present work explored the role of Inhibitor of Differentiation genes (Id1-3) in this process. The results show that Id genes are expressed in the prosensory domains of the otic vesicle, along with Bmp4 and Bmp7. Those domains exhibit high levels of the phosphorylated form of Bmp-responding R-Smads (P-Smad1,5,8), and of Bmp-dependent Smad transcriptional activity as shown by the BRE-tk-EGFP reporter. Increased Bmp signaling induces the expression of Id1-3 along with the inhibition of Atoh1. Conversely, the Bmp antagonist Noggin or the Bmp-receptor inhibitor Dorsomorphin elicit opposite effects, indicating that Bmp signaling is necessary for Id expression and Atoh1 regulation in the otocyst. The forced expression of Id3 is sufficient to reduce Atoh1 expression and to prevent the expression of hair cell differentiation markers. Together, these results suggest that Ids are part of the machinery that mediates the regulation of hair cell differentiation exerted by Bmps. In agreement with that, during hair cell differentiation Bmp4 expression, P-Smad1,5,8 levels and Id expression are downregulated from hair cells. However, Ids are also downregulated from the supporting cells which contrarily to hair cells exhibit high levels of Bmp4 expression, P-Smad1,5,8, and BRE-tk-EGFP activity, suggesting that in these cells Ids escape from Bmp/Smad signaling. The differential regulation of Ids in time and space may underlie the multiple functions of Bmp signaling during sensory organ development.
Improving the performance of wavelet domain spread spectrum watermarking systems using space-time block codes

In this paper, we propose to use Alamouti's orthogonal space-time block code to improve the performance and the robustness of the spread spectrum watermarking systems. After employing a space-time block code, we embed the coded watermark sequence into the host image in discrete wavelet transform domain. Simulation results show that the use of the space-time block codes considerably increases the robustness of the spead spectrum watermarking system under various attacks.
Coupled Inositide Phosphorylation and Phospholipase D Activation Initiates Clathrin-coat Assembly on Lysosomes*

Adaptors appear to control clathrin-coat assembly by determining the site of lattice polymerization but the nucleating events that target soluble adaptors to an appropriate membrane are poorly understood. Using an in vitro model system that allows AP-2-containing clathrin coats to assemble on lysosomes, we show that adaptor recruitment and coat initiation requires phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PtdIns(4,5)P2) synthesis. PtdIns(4,5)P2 is generated on lysosomes by the sequential action of a lysosome-associated type II phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase and a soluble type I phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate 5-kinase. Phosphatidic acid, which potently stimulates type I phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate 5-kinase activity, is generated on the bilayer by a phospholipase D1-like enzyme located on the lysosomal surface. Quenching phosphatidic acid function with primary alcohols prevents the synthesis of PtdIns(4,5)P2 and blocks coat assembly. Generating phosphatidic acid directly on lysosomes with exogenous bacterial phospholipase D in the absence of ATP still drives adaptor recruitment and limited coat assembly, indicating that PtdIns(4,5)P2functions, at least in part, to activate the PtdIns(4,5)P2-dependent phospholipase D1. These results provide the first direct evidence for the involvement of anionic phospholipids in clathrin-coat assembly on membranes and define the enzymes responsible for the production of these important lipid mediators.
Programmable DNA-binding proteins from Burkholderia provide a fresh perspective on the TALE-like repeat domain

The tandem repeats of transcription activator like effectors (TALEs) mediate sequence-specific DNA binding using a simple code. Naturally, TALEs are injected by Xanthomonas bacteria into plant cells to manipulate the host transcriptome. In the laboratory TALE DNA binding domains are reprogrammed and used to target a fused functional domain to a genomic locus of choice. Research into the natural diversity of TALE-like proteins may provide resources for the further improvement of current TALE technology. Here we describe TALE-like proteins from the endosymbiotic bacterium Burkholderia rhizoxinica, termed Bat proteins. Bat repeat domains mediate sequence-specific DNA binding with the same code as TALEs, despite less than 40% sequence identity. We show that Bat proteins can be adapted for use as transcription factors and nucleases and that sequence preferences can be reprogrammed. Unlike TALEs, the core repeats of each Bat protein are highly polymorphic. This feature allowed us to explore alternative strategies for the design of custom Bat repeat arrays, providing novel insights into the functional relevance of non-RVD residues. The Bat proteins offer fertile grounds for research into the creation of improved programmable DNA-binding proteins and comparative insights into TALE-like evolution.
ADHD Drug Prescribing Trend Is Increasing Among Children and Adolescents in Hong Kong

Objective:To investigate the prevalence of ADHD medication prescribing of school-aged children in Hong Kong (HK) from 2001 to 2013 and to compare with other countries. Method: Using the Hong Kong Hospital Authority Clinical Data Analysis and Reporting System, we investigated the epidemiology and prevalence of ADHD medication prescribing. Results: The prevalence of children on ADHD medication increased 14 times throughout the study period—0.072% in 2001 (95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.068%, 0.077%]) to 1.027% (95% CI = [1.008%, 1.047%]) in 2013. Prevalence in females increased at a faster rate than in males. The prescribing trend in kindergarten children (3- to 5-year-old) was relatively steady from 2001 to 2008—0.025% (95% CI = [0.019%, 0.033%]) in 2001—until a marked increase from 2009 to 2013—0.121% (95% CI = [0.105%, 0.139%]) in 2013. Conclusion: The prevalence of ADHD medication prescribing in Hong Kong is increasing but remains lower than most Western countries. However, the prevalence of ADHD medication prescribing for kindergarten children should be monitored to ensure appropriate use.