Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disparities of Perceptions and Practices Related to Cervical Cancer Prevention and the Acceptability of HPV Vaccination According to Educational Level in a French Cross-Sectional Survey of 18–65 Years Old Women

Introduction We aimed to study the relationships between educational level, women's knowledge about cervical cancer (CC), and acceptance of HPV vaccination for their daughters. Methods We analysed data from a quantitative (self-administrated questionnaire) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) cross-sectional study performed in 2008 among 1,229 French 18–65-year-old women recruited by general practitioners. Women were categorized into three educational level groups: low (LEL: 43.9%), medium (MEL: 33.4%) and high (HEL: 22.6%). Results Knowledge about CC and its prevention was lower among LEL women. In the 180 mothers of 14–18-year-old daughters (99 LEL, 54 MEL, 45 HEL), acceptance of HPV vaccine was higher in LEL (60.4%) and MEL (68.6%) than in HEL mothers (46.8%). Among LEL mothers, those who were favourable to HPV vaccination were more likely to be young (OR = 8.44 [2.10–34.00]), to be vaccinated against hepatitis B (OR = 4.59 [1.14–18.52]), to have vaccinated their children against pneumococcus (OR = 3.52 [0.99–12.48]) and to present a history of abnormal Pap smear (OR = 6.71 [0.70–64.01]). Conclusion Although LEL women had poorer knowledge about CC and its prevention, they were more likely to accept HPV vaccination than HEL mothers.
Opinion mining in an informative corpus: Building lexicons

This paper presents first steps of an ongoing work aiming at the constitution of lexicons for opinion mining. Our work is corpus-oriented, the corpus being of informative nature (related to avionic manufacturers) rather than opinion-oriented (as in current works dealing with social networks). We especially investigate the question of interrelation between factual information and evaluative stance. Another aspect concerns the intensity of expressed opinions. Lexicons for adjectives and adverbs have been built, based on the given corpus, and we present the principles and method used for their construction.
Multi-agent Systems with Compasses

This paper investigates agreement protocols over cooperative and cooperative--antagonistic multi-agent networks with coupled continuous-time nonlinear dynamics. To guarantee convergence for such systems, it is common in the literature to assume that the vector field of each agent is pointing inside the convex hull formed by the states of the agent and its neighbors, given that the relative states between each agent and its neighbors are available. This convexity condition is relaxed in this paper, as we show that it is enough that the vector field belongs to a strict tangent cone based on a local supporting hyperrectangle. The new condition has the natural physical interpretation of requiring shared reference directions in addition to the available local relative states. Such shared reference directions can be further interpreted as if each agent holds a magnetic compass indicating the orientations of a global frame. It is proven that the cooperative multi-agent system achieves exponential state agreement if and only if the time-varying interaction graph is uniformly jointly quasi-strongly connected. Cooperative--antagonistic multi-agent systems are also considered. For these systems, the relation has a negative sign for arcs corresponding to antagonistic interactions. State agreement may not be achieved, but instead it is shown that all the agents' states asymptotically converge, and their limits agree componentwise in absolute values if and in general only if the time-varying interaction graph is uniformly jointly strongly connected.
Encouraging Civic Behaviour: A Randomised Controlled Trial of Interventions to Influence Organ Donor Registration 1

1 st Draft and very preliminary findings, please treat with caution! Corrine Wales for their helpful comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank those who took part in the study, and the students at the University of Southampton who helped us conduct the experiments. Any errors or omissions are entirely the authors'. Influencing citizens in order to help resolve social dilemmas and to encourage civic behaviour is a core aspect of the work of modern government. Social dilemmas occur where there are conflicts of interest between individuals and society more broadly (Van Vugt et al 2000). Civic behaviour refers to 'action that shows regard for others; reflects both wisdom and responsibility in its employment and…is oriented toward the collective good' (Cotterill et al, 2009: 3). Consideration for the environment, paying taxes, and looking after one's own health are just a few areas where individual behaviour has a civic dimension, since individual actions or inactions have consequences for wider society. They are also social dilemmas, with the needs and desires of individuals often in conflict with those of society as a whole. In such areas governments are challenged to find ways of encouraging civic behaviour and there have been recent debates about the most effective methods for doing this (John et al. 2009). Much of the recent discussion of public policy interventions to influence citizen behaviour has centred around the use of policy tools which exploit principles from behavioural economics. These policy tools have gained popularity in the UK and elsewhere partly under the influence of arguments put forward by Thaler and Sunstein in their book Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). Several recent policy papers and think tank publications have also made the case for using such approaches While there is fairly robust science behind the principles underlying behavioural economics itself, there is less evidence of how well these principles stand up in empirical terms when they are translated into policy designs in the area of civic behaviour. There is also little evidence of how these approaches compare to other methods for generating civic behaviour. In particular, there is another school of thought which suggests an alternative to the largely top-down 'nudging' approach to behavioural change in citizens. The alternative put forward by John et al (2009) has a more bottom-up orientation and involves governments providing citizens with opportunities collectively to deliberate and 'think' their own way through to …
Four genes are required for the system II cytochrome c biogenesis pathway in Bordetella pertussis, a unique bacterial model

Unlike other cytochromes, c‐type cytochromes have two covalent bonds formed between the two vinyl groups of haem and two cysteines of the protein. This haem ligation requires specific assembly proteins in prokaryotes or eukaryotic mitochondria and chloroplasts. Here, it is shown that Bordetella pertussis is an excellent bacterial model for the widespread system II cytochrome c synthesis pathway. Mutations in four different genes (ccsA, ccsB, ccsX and dipZ) result in B. pertussis strains unable to synthesize any of at least seven c‐type cytochromes. Using a cytochrome c4:alkaline phosphatase fusion protein as a bifunctional reporter, it was demonstrated that the B. pertussis wild‐type and mutant strains secrete an active alkaline phosphatase fusion protein. However, unlike the wild type, all four mutants are unable to attach haem covalently, resulting in a degraded N‐terminal apocytochrome c4 component. Thus, apocytochrome c secretion is normal in each of the four mutants, but all are defective in a periplasmic assembly step (or export of haem). CcsX is related to thioredoxins, which possess a conserved CysXxxXxxCys motif. Using phoA gene fusions as reporters, CcsX was proven to be a periplasmic thioredoxin‐like protein. Both the B. pertussis dipZ (i.e. dsbD) and ccsX mutants are corrected for their assembly defects by the thiol‐reducing compounds, dithiothreitol and 2‐mercaptoethanesulphonic acid. These results indicate that DipZ and CcsX are required for the periplasmic reduction of the cysteines of apocytochromes c before ligation. In contrast, the ccsA and ccsB mutants are not corrected by exogenous reducing agents, suggesting that CcsA and CcsB are required for the haem ligation step itself in the periplasm (or export of haem to the periplasm). Related to this suggestion, the topology of CcsB was determined experimentally, demonstrating that CcsB has four transmembrane domains and a large 435‐amino‐acid periplasmic region.
Effect of TiO2 Nanofiber Density on Organic-Inorganic Based Hybrid Solar Cells (RESEARCH NOTE)

Abstract In this work, a comparative study of hybrid solar cells based on P3HT and TiO2 nanofibers was accomplished. Electrospinning, a low cost production method for large area nanofibrous films, was employed to fabricate the organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells based on poly (3-hexylthiophene) and TiO2 nanofibers. The performance of the hybrid solar cells was analyzed for four density levels of TiO2 nanofibers, which resulted in the average power conversion efficiency of about 0.0134 % under AM 1.5 simulated illuminations (100 mWcm-2). It is found that the higher densities of TiO2 lead to more interfaces area and generating exciton, so the power conversion efficiency will be increased till the active layer thickness is about 400 nm but with increasing thickness more than 400 nm the increasing density hasn’t positive effect.
Towards an Adaptive Hierarchical Anticipatory Behavior Control System

Despite recent successes in control theoretical programs f or limb control, behavior-based cognitive approaches for control are somewhat lacking behind. Insights in psychology and neuroscience suggest that the most important ingredients for a successful developmental approach to control are anticipatory mechanisms and hierarchical structures. Anticipatory mechanisms are beneficial in handling noisy sensors, bridging se nsory delays, and directing attention and action processing capacities. Moreover, action selection may be immediate using inverse modeling techniques. Hierarchies enable anticipatory influences on multiple levels of abstraction in time and spac e. This paper provides an overview over recent insights in anticipatory, hierarchical, cognitive behavioral mechanis ms, reviews previous modeling approaches, and introduces a novel model well-suited to study hierarchical anticipatory behavioral control in simulated as well as real robotic control sc enarios.
Pyruvate Carboxylase Deficiency: A Benign Variant with Normal Development

ABSTRACT: The devastating nature of a pyruvate carboxylase deficiency is underscored by the uniformly fatal outcome of the neonatal (French) type and the severely disabling and ultimately fatal outcome of the infantile (North American) type. We report a γ-y-old girl with metabolic and biochemical features of the North American phenotype. Remarkably, the clinical course has been benign with preservations of motor and mental abilities. The residual enzyme activity in cultured skin fibroblast homogenates was 1.8% and cross-reacting material was present in normal abundance and electrophoretic mobility. She has had several episodes of metabolic acidosis with elevated lactate, pyruvate, alanine, β-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate, lysine, and proline values, and undetectably low aspartate concentrations. These crises have been managed by rehydration and bicarbonate therapy. We are unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the uniquely benign clinical course that has been experienced by this patient.
Quality Assessment of Stereoscopic Images

Several metrics have been proposed in literature to assess the perceptual quality of two-dimensional images. However, no similar effort has been devoted to quality assessment of stereoscopic images. Therefore, in this paper, we review the different issues related to 3D visualization, and we propose a quality metric for the assessment of stereopairs using the fusion of 2D quality metrics and of the depth information. The proposed metric is evaluated using the SAMVIQ methodology for subjective assessment. Specifically, distortions deriving from coding are taken into account and the quality degradation of the stereopair is estimated by means of subjective tests.
Systemic Acquired Resistance

Upon infection with necrotizing pathogens many plants develop an enhanced resistance to further pathogen attack also in the uninoculated organs. This type of enhanced resistance is referred to as systemic acquired resistance (SAR). In the SAR state, plants are primed (sensitized) to more quickly and more effectively activate defense responses the second time they encounter pathogen attack. Since SAR depends on the ability to access past experience, acquired disease resistance is a paradigm for the existence of a form of “plant memory”. Although the phenomenon has been known since the beginning of the 20th century, major progress in the understanding of SAR was made over the past sixteen years. This review covers the current knowledge of molecular, biochemical and physiological mechanisms that are associated with SAR.
Unusual Fungal Infections in Renal Transplant Recipients

Fungal infections are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in renal transplant recipients. The causative agent and the risk factors differ depending on the period after the kidney transplant. Also the incidence varies according to the geographical area. We are reporting three cases of fungal infections in renal transplant recipients. Two of them have etiological agents which are common among immunosuppressed patients, but with an atypical clinical presentation, while one of them is a subcutaneous infection caused by a less frequent dematiaceous fungus, Aureobasidium pullulans. These cases highlight how a high index of clinical suspicion and prompt diagnosis is very much essential for better outcome. The emerging fungal infections and paucity of data regarding their management pose a challenge to the transplant physicians.
We Have No Feelings, We Have Emoticons ;-)

Positive emotions have been proven to be a key factor for successful learning. In modern personalized learning environments informal learning takes a prominent role and with this the use of computer-mediated communication. Communication data, like for example chat logs, can be harvested for sentiments. Most sentiment analyses operate processing only verbal information. But the messages exchanged in text based chat also contain low key nonverbal communication. Emoticons are used to compensate the missing visual information and communicate emotions. In this paper we want to introduce a method to perform a sentiment analysis on text based chat logs relying only on emoticons to detect positive sentiment. We implemented and tested this method for the instant messenger Skype. Our first results show emoticons do indeed represent a strong indicator for detecting positivity within chat communication.
On the Neighborhoods of Neighbor Joining Trees

We consider the problem of tting an n n distance matrix D by a tree metric T. This problem is NP-hard for most reasonable distance functions between D and T. Within the biology community, the so-called Neighbor-Joining (NJ) heuristic 16] has wide acceptance. We examine the local optimality of NJ trees. We provide a systematic approach to local optimization for NJ trees. Further, we explore the pros and cons of the two most popular criteria for tree tting optimization: parsimony and L 2. We show that these two exhibit very diierent behavior for local optimization and discuss some of the implications these diierences may have for practitioners.
Basigin Promotes Cardiac Fibrosis and Failure in Response to Chronic Pressure Overload in Mice

Objective— Basigin (Bsg) is a transmembrane glycoprotein that activates matrix metalloproteinases and promotes inflammation. However, the role of Bsg in the pathogenesis of cardiac hypertrophy and failure remains to be elucidated. We examined the role of Bsg in cardiac hypertrophy and failure in mice and humans. Approach and Results— We performed transverse aortic constriction in Bsg +/– and in wild-type mice. Bsg +/– mice showed significantly less heart and lung weight and cardiac interstitial fibrosis compared with littermate controls after transverse aortic constriction. Both matrix metalloproteinase activities and oxidative stress in loaded left ventricle were significantly less in Bsg +/– mice compared with controls. Echocardiography showed that Bsg +/– mice showed less hypertrophy, less left ventricular dilatation, and preserved left ventricular fractional shortening compared with littermate controls after transverse aortic constriction. Consistently, Bsg +/– mice showed a significantly improved long-term survival after transverse aortic constriction compared with Bsg +/+ mice, regardless of the source of bone marrow (Bsg +/+ or Bsg +/– ). Conversely, cardiac-specific Bsg-overexpressing mice showed significantly poor survival compared with littermate controls. Next, we isolated cardiac fibroblasts and examined their responses to angiotensin II or mechanical stretch. Both stimuli significantly increased Bsg expression, cytokines/chemokines secretion, and extracellular signal–regulated kinase/Akt/JNK activities in Bsg +/+ cardiac fibroblasts, all of which were significantly less in Bsg +/– cardiac fibroblasts. Consistently, extracellular and intracellular Bsg significantly promoted cardiac fibroblast proliferation. Finally, serum levels of Bsg were significantly elevated in patients with heart failure and predicted poor prognosis. Conclusions— These results indicate the crucial roles of intracellular and extracellular Bsg in the pathogenesis of cardiac hypertrophy, fibrosis, and failure in mice and humans.
Surgical decompression of branch retinal vein occlusion via arteriovenous crossing sheathotomy: a prospective review of 15 cases.

BACKGROUND Branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO), the second most common vascular disorder of the retina, typically occurs at arteriovenous (A/V) crossings where the arteriole and venule share a common adventitial sheath. Mechanical narrowing of the venous lumen at these intersections is thought to play a pathoetiologic role in BRVO. METHODS We performed surgical decompression of BRVO via A/V crossing sheathotomy in 15 patients with decreased visual acuity due to macular hemorrhage, edema, and ischemia. Reperfusion of the retina was achieved by surgically separating the overlying retinal arteriole from the venule via vitrectomy and adventitial sheathotomy techniques. RESULTS Intraoperative decompression of the A/V crossing was achieved in all 15 patients. All patients showed clinical improvement as determined by fundus examination, photography, and fluorescein angiography. Postoperative visual acuities were equal or improved in 80% of patients. Ten of the 15 subjects (67%) had improved visual acuity with an average gain of four lines of vision. CONCLUSION Surgical decompression of BRVO via A/V crossing sheathotomy is a technically feasible procedure that can result in rapid reperfusion of the retina. Resolution of macular hemorrhage, edema, and ischemia may improve visual prognosis in patients with this common retinal vascular disorder.
Holistic lexicon reduction for handwritten word recognition

The holistic paradigm in HWR has been applied to recognition scenarios involving small, static lexicons, such as the check amount recognition task. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using holistic information for lexicon reduction when the lexicons are large or dynamic, and training, in the traditional sense of learning decision surfaces from training samples of each class, is not viable. Two experimental lexicon reduction methods are described. The first uses perceptual features such as ascenders, descenders and length and achieves consistent reduction performance with cursive, discrete and mixed writing styles. A heuristic feature-synthesis algorithm is used to 'predict' holistic features of lexicon entries, which are matched against image features using a constrained bipartite graph matching scheme. With essentially unconstrained handwritten words, this system achieves reduction of 50% with less than 2% error. More effective reduction can be achieved if the problem can be constrained by making assumptions about the nature of input. The second classifier described operates on pure cursive script and achieves effective reduction of large lexicons of the order of 20,000 entries. Downstrokes are extracted from the contour representation of cursive words by grouping local extrema using a small set of heuristic rules. The relative heights of downstrokes are captured in a string descriptor that is syntactically matched with lexicon entries using a set of production rules. In initial tests, the system achieved high reduction (99%) at the expense of accuracy (75%).
Complex Moduli of Chopped Fiber and Continuous Fiber Composites: Comparison of Measurements with Estimated Bounds

Measured complex moduli of two E-glass/polyester chopped fiber com posites (PPG SMC-R25 and PPG SMC-R65), of an E-glass/polyester hybrid chopped/continuous fiber composite (PPG XMC-3) and of an E-glass/ epoxy continuous fiber composite (3M Scotchply) are compared with esti mated bounds on the moduli. The measured storage moduli of the chopped fiber composites and of the hybrid composites and the storage and loss moduli of the continuous fiber composite generally fall within the bounds. However, the measured loss moduli of the chopped fiber composites and of the hybrid composites are greater than the estimated upper bounds, even when a liberal estimate of glass fiber damping is assumed in the calculation of the bounds. These results indicate that the chopped fiber composites may have other damping mechanisms in addition to those present in the resin matrix and glass fiber materials.
How much compensation is too much? An investigation of the effectiveness of financial overcompensation as a means to enhance customer loyalty

The present paper examines the effectiveness of financial overcompensation as a means to enhance customer loyalty after a product failure. Overcompensation implies that customers are entitled to a refund that is larger than the purchase price. It is, however, still unclear whether large overcompensations entail saturation effects, or alternatively, result in an actual drop in customer loyalty. We predicted that the overcompensation-loyalty relationship is generally characterized by an inverted U-shaped function. In line with this prediction, the results of four studies showed that mild overcompensations had, on average, a positive effect on customer loyalty beyond equal compensation, but only up to compensation levels of approximately 150% of the purchase price of faulty products. Beyond this level, the effectiveness of overcompensation diminished, eventually leading to a general drop in customer loyalty. Despite this overall pattern, two studies revealed robust individual differences in how customers react to increasing overcompensation. A majority of customers increased their loyalty when the overcompensation enlarged, but the curve flattened out in the high range. However, there was also a smaller portion of customers who reacted negatively to every form of overcompensation. A practical implication of these findings, therefore, is that companies should not offer compensations that are greater than 150% of the initial price, as these do not contribute to greater loyalty in any category of customers.
A Simple Object Tracking System Using ITDOA without Time Synchronization

These days, there has been an increasing demand for a simple and more accurate localization technique. In this paper, we propose a simple scheme for tracking the object's movement and a system for tracking objects. This scheme is based on the difference of the signal's arrival times, which is so-called inter-node time difference-of-arrival (ITDOA). It has a similar measurement characteristic to classical time difference-of-arrival (TDOA) measurement. However, the ITDOA scheme has an advantage over TDOA; it does not require any time synchronization between reference nodes. We evaluate the performance of ITDOA scheme using network simulator (NS-2).