Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Premarital Childbearing Among Adolescents in Lesotho

The issue of premarital childbearing has been a concern of many analysts in southern Africa. This paper looks at the situation of premarital childbearing in Lesotho in comparative context with the neighbouring countries. The total fertility rate (TFR) estimated from the 1996 population census of Lesotho for all women combined was 4.1 births, a decline from a TFR of 5.5 in the mid-1970s. Only a small proportion of births in Lesotho are born out-of-wedlock. The Lesotho Safe Motherhood Initiative Survey data of 1995 found that only 3 per cent of never married Basotho women aged 15–19 had given birth; a very much lower rate than in Botswana where the rate was 21 per cent. There are a number of factors that influence the relatively low incidence of premarital, adolescent childbearing in Lesotho. It is argued that one factor is that, despite significant social change, Sesotho culture is still generally opposed to such pregnancies. Local derogatory names are given to children born out-of-wedlock, and their mothers are still referred to as 'spoilt' or 'destroyed' in order to discourage such behaviour. The strength of such stigmatisation appears to be much less, or negligible, in neighbouring countries. There is a growing tendency to separate motherhood from marriage in many societies in the region and in some cases having a child can increase the chance of marriage. In Lesotho, the culture against premarital sex is changing as well, and a substantial number of adolescent females conceive before marriage. It appears that a significant proportion resort to illegal, unsafe abortions and the government needs to be aware of these changes in the behaviour of adolescents and their needs.
Axoglial interaction via the notch receptor in oligodendrocyte differentiation.

INTRODUCTION Increasing evidence has revealed that the Notch signalling pathway is one of the pivotal systems that mediate oligodendrocyte development. The Notch receptor is a type I transmembrane molecule that represents a novel cellular signalling paradigm, namely, regulated intramembrane proteolysis (RIP). METHOD The typical Notch ligands, such as Delta, Serrate/Jagged and Lag2 (DSL), promote the formation of oligodendocyte precursor cells (OPCs) and maintain them in an uncommitted stage, thus retarding oligodendrocyte appearance in the central nervous system (CNS). RESULTS In contrast, our recent studies have revealed that F3/contactin, a GPI-linked neural adhesion molecule, interacts with Notch and speeds up the generation and maturation of oligodendrocytes. CONCLUSIONS Considering the distinct, albeit somewhat overlapping expression patterns of F3 and DSL in the CNS, the Notch receptor appears to function ligand-dependently during oligodendrocyte development. This multipotentiality may well designate the Notch receptor as one of the therapeutic targets that one can manoeuvre to treat demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, that is characterised by chronic myelin degeneration.
Immigration, society and modalities of citizenship in Singapore

In this article, I argue that three modalities of citizenship are at play in Singapore: liberal, communal and social. Using a grounded theoretical approach, I highlight the instances in which these modes of conceptualizing citizenship appear in discourse, practice and policy. While past scholarship has highlighted the contrast between liberal and communal modes of citizenship, the social mode has been largely subsumed and obscured within the rubric of communal (or communitarian) democracy and ethno-nationalist citizenship. The article analyzes the interplay among these three modes of citizenship as they played out in the discourse surrounding the 2011 General Election in Singapore. The tension between citizens and noncitizens has become a central political issue in Singapore. Less recognized, but highlighted in my analysis, liberal and communal senses of citizenship are in tension not only with each other but also with a notion of the social based on relationships of mutual benefit and obligation rather than communal, categorical belonging. Drawing on Robert Esposito's critique of modern ideas of community and (re)theorization of communitas, I argue that in the case of Singapore and elsewhere, reintroducing a notion of the social (as distinct from the communal) holds potential for discourses, practices and policies that can transcend the divisiveness associated with communalism and the socioeconomic inequalities associated with liberalism.
Leg Disorders in Broiler Chickens: Prevalence, Risk Factors and Prevention

Broiler (meat) chickens have been subjected to intense genetic selection. In the past 50 years, broiler growth rates have increased by over 300% (from 25 g per day to 100 g per day). There is growing societal concern that many broiler chickens have impaired locomotion or are even unable to walk. Here we present the results of a comprehensive survey of commercial flocks which quantifies the risk factors for poor locomotion in broiler chickens. We assessed the walking ability of 51,000 birds, representing 4.8 million birds within 176 flocks. We also obtained information on approximately 150 different management factors associated with each flock. At a mean age of 40 days, over 27.6% of birds in our study showed poor locomotion and 3.3% were almost unable to walk. The high prevalence of poor locomotion occurred despite culling policies designed to remove severely lame birds from flocks. We show that the primary risk factors associated with impaired locomotion and poor leg health are those specifically associated with rate of growth. Factors significantly associated with high gait score included the age of the bird (older birds), visit (second visit to same flock), bird genotype, not feeding whole wheat, a shorter dark period during the day, higher stocking density at the time of assessment, no use of antibiotic, and the use of intact feed pellets. The welfare implications are profound. Worldwide approximately 2×1010 broilers are reared within similar husbandry systems. We identify a range of management factors that could be altered to reduce leg health problems, but implementation of these changes would be likely to reduce growth rate and production. A debate on the sustainability of current practice in the production of this important food source is required.
Learning a Robust Consensus Matrix for Clustering Ensemble via Kullback-Leibler Divergence Minimization

Clustering ensemble has emerged as an important extension of the classical clustering problem. It provides a framework for combining multiple base clusterings of a data set to generate a final consensus result. Most existing clustering methods simply combine clustering results without taking into account the noises, which may degrade the clustering performance. In this paper, we propose a novel robust clustering ensemble method. To improve the robustness, we capture the sparse and symmetric errors and integrate them into our robust and consensus framework to learn a low-rank matrix. Since the optimization of the objective function is difficult to solve, we develop a block coordinate descent algorithm which is theoretically guaranteed to converge. Experimental results on real world data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
The Velvet Glove: Paternalism and Conflict in Gender, Class, and Race Relations

This landmark study analyzes and compares the ideologies that develop among unequal social groups. Mary Jackman employs a unique national survey to investigate all three of the most prominent relations of inequality in the United States: gender, class, and race. Where other scholars have emphasized conflict as the emblem of intergroup oppression, Jackman proposes a theory in which both dominant and subordinate groups maneuver to avoid open hostility as they strive to control resources within the confines of their mutual relationship. Hostility, Jackman points out, creates resistance in a relationship. Dominant groups therefore try to preempt the use of force by following a velvet-glove strategy of 'sweet persuasion'. They are drawn especially to the ideological mold of paternalism, in which the coercion of subordinates is grounded in love rather than hate. Dominant-group members pronounce authoritatively on the needs and welfare of all and then profess to 'provide' for those needs. Love, affection, and praise are offered to subordinates on strict condition that they comply with the terms of the unequal relationship. Whether in the home or in the arena of class or race relations, paternalism wraps control and authority in an ideological cocoon in which discriminatory actions are defined as benevolent and affection is made contingent on compliance. Jackman's emphasis on the practice of coercive love in race, class, and gender relations is sure to generate controversy and further research. Sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and anyone interested in group ideology will find here a provocative challenge to conventional views.
Name-Centric Service Architecture for Cyber-Physical Systems (Short Paper)

The goal of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) is to enable easy cooperation of a large number of computers and orchestration of services that are connected via a network. However, SOA for wireless sensor networks (WSN) and cyber-physical systems (CPS) is still a challenging task. Consequently, for design and development of large CPS like WSNs connected to clouds, SOA has not yet evolved as an integral technology. One of the limiting issues is service registration and discovery. In large CPS discovery of services is tedious, mostly due to the fact that services are often semantically bound to a region or an application function while SOA forces service endpoints to be based on addresses of nodes. Also, today, SOA technologies are not used for service composition within sensor nodes and between sensor nodes, and even worse, different methods exist for service access in a WSN and in the backend. Therefore, service development differs largely in WSN and cloud. To overcome this limitation, we suggest a name-centric service architecture for cyber-physical systems. Our architecture is based on (a) using URNs instead of URLs to provide a service-centric architecture instead of service-or location-centric networking, (b) using the well-known CCNx protocol as a basis for our architecture which supports location and access transparency, and (c) employing CCN-WSN as the resource-efficient lightweight implementation for WSNs to build a name-based service bus for CPS. We evaluate the architecture by implementing an example application for facility management.
A Hematological Menace: Multiple Venous Thrombosis Complicated by Acquired Factor VIII Deficiency

Patient: Male, 21 Final Diagnosis: Acquired Factor VIII Deficiency Symptoms: Abdominal hematoma • DVT • life threatening bleeding Medication: — Clinical Procedure: Life saving medical therapy Specialty: Hematology Objective: Rare disease Background: Acquired hemophilia A (AHA) classically presents with spontaneous bleeding of mucosal sites, GI tract, and sub-cutaneous tissues, often leading to large hematomas and ecchymosis. Among documented cases, 50% are idiopathic and few have been associated with trauma or surgery. We present a case of life-threatening bleeding caused by AHA, following trauma and complicated by multiple venous thrombi. Case Report: A 21-year-old man presented with multiple injuries secondary to trauma leading to extensive life-saving surgery. Two weeks post-operatively, he developed multiple deep venous thrombi and was started on anticoagulation. Twenty-four days post-operatively, he started bleeding from multiple mucosal sites and developed an abdominal hematoma. Anticoagulation was stopped, with administration of fresh frozen plasma and vitamin K. Diagnosis of AHA was made based on low factor VIII level and presence of factor VIII inhibitors after an appropriate battery of tests ruled out other possible diagnoses. He was started on steroids and recombinant factor VIIa, leading to immediate improvement. Once stable, Rituximab infusions resulted in decreasing factor VIII inhibitor levels, with gradual normalization of PTT. Conclusions: AHA remains a diagnostic challenge because of its rarity, leading to delay in diagnosis and causing significant morbidity and mortality. Elevated PTT relative to PT/INR is a strong clue which should be followed by mixing studies. Very few cases have been associated with surgery or trauma and relatively few large, controlled trials have compared different treatment modalities for AHA. Growing evidence supports anti-CD20 (Rituximab) as an effective treatment option, as in this case.
Effects of the Built Environment on Physical Activity of Adults Living in Rural Settings

Objective. To conduct a systematic review of the literature to examine the influence of the built environment (BE) on the physical activity (PA) of adults in rural settings. Data Source. Key word searches of Academic Search Premier, PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Sport Discus were conducted. Study Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria. Studies published prior to June 2008 were included if they assessed one or more elements of the BE, examined relationships between the BE and PA, and focused on rural locales. Studies only reporting descriptive statistics or assessing the reliability of measures were excluded. Data Extraction. Objective(s), sample size, sampling technique, geographic location, and definition of rural were extracted from each study. Methods of assessment and outcomes were extracted from the quantitative literature, and overarching themes were identified from the qualitative literature. Data Synthesis. Key characteristics and findings from the data are summarized in Tables 1 through 3. Results. Twenty studies met inclusion and exclusion criteria. Positive associations were found among pleasant aesthetics, trails, safety/crime, parks, and walkable destinations. Conclusions. Research in this area is limited. Associations among elements of the BE and PA among adults appear to differ between rural and urban areas. Considerations for future studies include identifying parameters used to define rural, longitudinal research, and more diverse geographic sampling. Development and refinement of BE assessment tools specific to rural locations are also warranted.
Lineage-Specific Loss of Function of Bitter Taste Receptor Genes in Humans and Nonhuman Primates Sequence data from this article have been deposited with the EMBL/GenBank Data Libraries under accession nos. AB198983, AB199308.

Since the process of becoming dead genes or pseudogenes (pseudogenization) is irreversible and can occur rather rapidly under certain environmental circumstances, it is one plausible determinant for characterizing species specificity. To test this evolutionary hypothesis, we analyzed the tempo and mode of duplication and pseudogenization of bitter taste receptor (T2R) genes in humans as well as in 12 nonhuman primates. The results show that primates have accumulated more pseudogenes than mice after their separation from the common ancestor and that lineage-specific pseudogenization becomes more conspicuous in humans than in nonhuman primates. Although positive selection has operated on some amino acids in extracellular domains, functional constraints against T2R genes are more relaxed in primates than in mice and this trend has culminated in the rapid deterioration of the bitter-tasting capability in humans. Since T2R molecules play an important role in avoiding generally bitter toxic and harmful substances, substantial modification of the T2R gene repertoire is likely to reflect different responses to changes in the environment and to result from species-specific food preference during primate evolution.
Prediction of arterial wall failure under acceleration stress in high-performance aircraft.

Experimental results indicate that the passive mechanics (no smooth muscle action) of the larger arteries, such as the aorta and pulmonary, in humans are closely related to the elastin content at low strain and to the collagen content at high strain. In an aerial combat maneuver, the acceleration stress typically rises to a maximum, remains there for several seconds, and then falls off. The arterial wall viscoelastic property relevant here is hysteresis. The strain remaining when the stress is removed is called "permanent set. " This so-called permanent set will decay away exponentially with a comparatively long time constant on the order of several hundred seconds. A first approximation to the permanent set, after a hysteresis loop has been executed, has been derived. Collagen can only stretch by 20% before failing. Choosing combat scenarios in which the maneuver is repeated at 1-min intervals so that the decay in permanent sets can be ignored, the number of maneuvers required to damage or rupture the collagen is computed for ranges of acceleration (g) values equivalent to increases in the arterial intraluminal pressures. The calculations are done for the external carotid, abdominal aorta and pulmonary arteries. For example, applying the continual recruitment of collagen fibers theory to the pulmonary artery produces the following result. The permanent set at net acceleration value of 5 g is 0.085 and the number of sequential maneuvers required to damage 2.5% of the collagen is 2.4. Based on discontinuous recruitment of 100% collagen at a strain of 1.7 in the pulmonary artery, the number of maneuvers required to rupture the collagen would be 58 at an acceleration of 5 g. At 10 g, this number falls to about 10 maneuvers. The results emphasize the importance of present protective measures, such as the use of G suits and valsalva maneuvers. But these measures can only reduce the effects predicted here, not eliminate them. The results also highlight the necessity for servo-controlled seat orientation, and for the introduction of integrating accelerometers for all aircrew to record acceleration exposure history.
Venture Capital Financing and the Informativeness of Earnings

Are there long-term costs to obtaining venture capital financing? We explore the hypothesis that venture capital backed firms do not efficiently transform to the corporate structure of public firms and have difficulties publicly communicating with arm's length investors. Our results are three-fold. First, we find that, on average, reported accounting earnings are less informative for venture capital backed firms. Second, the informativeness of reported earnings is a decreasing function of venture capitalists' ownership of firm equity and a decreasing function of venture capitalists' board representation. Third, stock prices of venture capital backed firms reflect future earnings to a lesser extent relative to non-venture capital backed firms. Our findings support the hypothesis that venture capitalists manage the flow of public information to capital markets and preserve short-term interests arising from specific investment and ownership horizons. This evidence suggests that the benefits of receiving venture capital financing are not without costs.
MPYS/STING-Mediated TNF-α, Not Type I IFN, Is Essential for the Mucosal Adjuvant Activity of (3′–5′)-Cyclic-Di-Guanosine-Monophosphate In Vivo

The bacterial second messenger (3′–5′)-cyclic-di-guanosine-monophosphate (CDG) is a promising mucosal adjuvant candidate that activates balanced Th1/Th2/Th17 responses. We showed previously that CDG activates stimulator of IFN genes (STING)-dependent IFN-I production in vitro. However, it is unknown whether STING or IFN-I is required for the CDG adjuvant activity in vivo. In this study, we show that STING−/− mice (Tmem173) do not produce Ag-specific Abs or Th1/Th2/Th17 cytokines during CDG/Ag immunization. Intranasal administration of CDG did not induce TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-12, or MCP-1 production in STING−/− mice. Surprisingly, we found that the cytokine and Ab responses were unaltered in CDG/Ag-immunized IFNAR−/− mice. Instead, we found that CDG activates STING-dependent, IFN-I–independent TNF-α production in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, using a TNFR1−/− mouse, we demonstrate that TNF-α signaling is critical for CDG-induced Ag-specific Ab and Th1/Th2 cytokine production. This is distinct from STING-mediated DNA adjuvant activity, which requires IFN-I, but not TNF-α, production. Finally, we found that CDG activates STING-dependent, but IRF3 stimulation–independent, NF-κB signaling. Our results established an essential role for STING-mediated TNF-α production in the mucosal adjuvant activity of CDG in vivo and revealed a novel IFN-I stimulation–independent STING–NF-κB–TNF-α pathway.
Non-linear influences of the built environment on transportation emissions: Focusing on densities

Compact development is often recommended to reduce auto-dependency thereby decreasing related energy consumptions and transportation emissions. However, there could be a non-linear relationship between density and transportation emissions because of a possible non-linear association between density and vehicle miles travelled (VMT); low travel speed due to congestion; and the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and vehicle characteristics (e.g., vehicle type and age). In addition, the self-selection issue can exist in the land use-transportation emissions analysis because transportation emissions are often estimated based on travel behavior. Using the 2006 Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) Household Activity survey, the follow-up stated preference survey, the Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) data, and the GIS network data, this study investigates the non-linear effects of densities on CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions with the consideration of self-selection. Specifically, quadratic forms of population and employment densities, different population density group indicators, and attitudinal factors are employed in the regression models. The results indicate that people living in denser neighborhoods tend to generate fewer CO2e emissions. However, this effect becomes insignificant as population density reaches a certain level.
Security evaluation methodology for intrusion recovery protocols in wireless sensor networks

Researchers have designed intrusion recovery protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) with the aim of restoring compromised services and promoting a secure and reliable environment in WSNs. Currently, evaluation frameworks in WSNs have been proposed in a generic security context and do not constitute a representative assessment of intrusion recovery protocols. This paper proposes an evaluation methodology to aid the evaluation and comparison of intrusion recovery protocols in WSNs. The methodology defines the intrusion recovery protocol aspects that should be evaluated using a number of evaluation criteria and guides researchers in identifying the evaluation direction they should follow.