Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fertility Decline in Africa: A New Type of Transition?

Botswana Zimbabwe and Kenya appeared in 1990 to be experiencing fertility declines of 15-25% and there is some 1991 evidence that parts of Nigeria experienced fertility declines of over 10%. These trends are in contrast to the widely held belief that sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world not experiencing fertility transition. The nature of the African fertility transition is characterized and the reasons for resistance to fertility decline are summarized. The type of fertility transition specific to Africa is discussed and followed by a detailed account of the 1990 Ado-Ekiti Fertility Study in Ondo State in northeastern Nigeria. The study is presented in terms of the contraceptive providers the population surveyed social changes occurring in the region the use of contraception among unmarried women and the demand for fertility control. The Ado-Ekiti experience suggests that contraceptive use has increased due to a National Population Policy which has provided a plentiful supply of a variety of methods through family planning clinics and private distributors and has legitimized family planning for women as a moral right. Availability of family planning methods was not the only influence on fertility reduction. There had been unmet demand for 20 years and massive economic and social change. There arose a demand by young unmarried women for fertility control as age at marriage increased. Female education affected young unmarrieds and married women who substituted contraception for abstinence for birth spacing. Urbanization was another influence fed by economic growth. The Ado-Ekiti experience suggests that contraceptives should be readily available to all particularly young single teenage girls and women for child spacing; women must be recognized as leaders in urging and practing contraception even without their partners knowledge. Privacy in obtaining supplies must be provided. The rising demand is being fed by education and an increasingly modern economy. The unique feature of Africas transition is the uniformity among all ages; the patterns will not follow the Asian or European pattern.
Plasma facilitated delivery of DNA to skin

Non‐viral delivery of cell‐impermeant drugs and DNA in vivo has traditionally relied upon either chemical or physical stress applied directly to target tissues. Physical methods typically use contact between an applicator, or electrode, and the target tissue and may involve patient discomfort. To overcome contact‐dependent limitations of such delivery methodologies, an atmospheric helium plasma source was developed to deposit plasma products onto localized treatment sites. Experiments performed in murine skin showed that samples injected with plasmid DNA encoding luciferase and treated with plasma demonstrated increased levels of expression relative to skin samples that received injections of DNA alone. Increased response relative to injection alone was observed when either positive or negative voltage was used to generate the helium plasma. Quantitative results over a 26‐day follow‐up period showed that luciferase levels as high as 19‐fold greater than the levels obtained by DNA injection alone could be achieved. These findings indicate that plasmas may compete with other physical delivery methodologies when skin is the target tissue. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2009; 104: 1034–1040. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Alcohol, Sex, and Screens: Modeling Media Influence on Adolescent Alcohol and Sex Co-Occurrence

Alcohol use and sexual behavior are important risk behaviors in adolescent development, and combining the two is common. The reasoned action approach (RAA) is used to predict adolescents’ intention to combine alcohol use and sexual behavior based on exposure to alcohol and sex combinations in popular entertainment media. We conducted a content analysis of mainstream (n = 29) and Black-oriented movies (n = 34) from 2014 and 2013–2014, respectively, and 56 television shows (2014–2015 season). Content analysis ratings featuring character portrayals of both alcohol and sex within the same five-minute segment were used to create exposure measures that were linked to online survey data collected from 1,990 adolescents ages 14 to 17 years old (50.3% Black, 49.7% White; 48.1% female). Structural equation modeling (SEM) and group analysis by race were used to test whether attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioral control mediated the effects of media exposure on intention to combine alcohol and sex. Results suggest that for both White and Black adolescents, exposure to media portrayals of alcohol and sex combinations is positively associated with adolescents’ attitudes and norms. These relationships were stronger among White adolescents. Intention was predicted by attitude, norms, and control, but only the attitude–intention relationship was different by race group (stronger for Whites).
A Computational Approach to Zero-Crossing-Based Two-Dimensional Edge Detection

Abstract A commonly employed computational approach to the design of an edge detector is to formulate the edge detection problem as an optimization problem by defining a penalty function and constraints in terms of performance measures such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), spurious response, and edge localization. Unfortunately, this approach generally results in highly complex optimization problems for two-dimensional (2D) and higher dimensional edge detection. Therefore, most of the previously reported efforts have either proposed 1D optimal detectors or their approximations to higher dimensions. This paper presents a computational approach to optimal edge detector design, which utilizes some desirable properties of detector functions to simplify the optimization problems. Specifically, a zero-crossing-based 2D edge detector, which is the Laplacian of a rotationally invariant finite support function with a smooth boundary and yields optimal performance with respect to a penalty function defined in terms of a simplified SNR measure and Canny's edge localization, and spurious response measures. The performance of the proposed 2D step edge detector is theoretically and empirically analyzed and compared to that of the Laplacian of Gaussian detector. Experimental results with some synthetic and real images are presented
Enhancing the Accuracy of Mapping to Multidimensional Optimal Regions using PCA

Mapping to Multidimensional Optimal Regions (MOR) is a special purposed method for multiclass classification task. It reduces computational complexity in comparison to the other concepts of classifiers. In order to increase the accuracy of MOR, its code assignment process is enriched using PCA. In addition to the increment in accuracy, corresponding enhancement eliminates the unwanted variance of the results from the previous version of MOR. Another advantage is more controllability on the upper bound of V.C. dimension of MOR which results in a better control on its generalization ability. Additionally, the computational complexity of the enhanced-optimal code assignment algorithm is reduced in training phase. By the other side, partitioning the feature space in MOR is an NP hard problem. PCA plays a key role in the greedy feature selection presented in this paper. Similar to the new code assignment process, corresponding greedy strategy increases the accuracy of the enhanced MOR.
Identifying histological concepts on basal cell carcinoma images using nuclei based sampling and multi-scale descriptors

Histopathological sample examination involves a sequential analysis of several fields of view (FoV) at different magnification levels. Experts integrate this information by implicitly fusing morphometric and spatial features, mainly related with cell appearance, spatial distribution and organization. By performing this analysis a pathologist recognizes several micro structures such as follicle, epidermis, carcinoma and eccrine glands in basal skin tissue samples. In this article we present a new approach to histopathology classification using a multi-scale nuclei descriptor, located at a set of detected nuclei and constructed as a multiresolution pyramid. The method was evaluated in a multiclass challenging problem, i.e, identifying epidermis, hair follicle, eccrine glands and nodular carcinoma in 240 histopathology images of basal cell carcinoma. The experimental results show an average Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) of 0.93 in a 6-fold cross-validation for the set of four classes.
Predicting posttreatment cocaine abstinence for first-time admissions and treatment repeaters.

OBJECTIVES This study examined client and program characteristics that predict posttreatment cocaine abstinence among cocaine abusers with different treatment histories. METHODS Cocaine abusers (n = 507) treated in 18 residential programs were interviewed at intake and 1-year follow-up as part of the nationwide Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Study (DATOS). Program directors provided the program-level data in a mail survey. We applied the hierarchical linear modeling approach for the analysis. RESULTS No prior treatment and longer retention in DATOS programs were positive predictors of posttreatment abstinence. The interactive effect of these 2 variables was also significantly positive. Program that offered legal services and included recovering staff increased their clients' likelihood of cocaine abstinence. Crack use at both the client and program level predicted negative impact. None of the program variables assessed differentially affected the outcomes of first-timers and repeaters. CONCLUSIONS Although treatment repeaters were relatively difficult to treat, their likelihood of achieving abstinence was similar to that of first-timers if they were retained in treatment for a sufficient time. First-timers and repeaters responded similarly to the treatment program characteristics examined. The treatment and policy implications of these findings are discussed.
The integration of lean management and Six Sigma

Purpose – To eliminate many misconceptions regarding Six Sigma and lean management by describing each system and the key concepts and techniques that underlie their implementation. This discussion is followed by a description of what lean organizations can gain from Six Sigma and what Six Sigma organizations can gain from lean management.Design/methodology/approach – Comparative study of Six Sigma and lean management using available literature, critical analysis, and knowledge and professional experience of the authors.Findings – The joint implementation of the programs will result in a lean, Six Sigma (LSS) organization, overcoming the limitations of each program when implemented in isolation. A thorough analysis of the two programs provides some likely reasons why the programs alone may fail to achieve absolute perfection.Practical implications – A lean, Six Sigma (LSS) organization would capitalize on the strengths of both lean management and Six Sigma. An LSS organization would include three primary t.
On realizing the concept study ScienceSoft of the European Middleware Initiative: Open Software for Open Science

In September 2011 the European Middleware Initiative (EMI) started discussing the feasibility of creating an open source community for science with other projects like EGI, StratusLab, OpenAIRE, iMarine, and IGE, SMEs like DCore, Maat, SixSq, SharedObjects, communities like WLCG and LSGC. The general idea of establishing an open source community dedicated to software for scientific applications was understood and appreciated by most people. However, the lack of a precise definition of goals and scope is a limiting factor that has also made many people sceptical of the initiative. In order to understand more precisely what such an open source initiative should do and how, EMI has started a more formal feasibility study around a concept called ScienceSoft - Open Software for Open Science. A group of people from interested parties was created in December 2011 to be the ScienceSoft Steering Committee with the short-term mandate to formalize the discussions about the initiative and produce a document with an initial high-level description of the motivations, issues and possible solutions and a general plan to make it happen. The conclusions of the initial investigation were presented at CERN in February 2012 at a ScienceSoft Workshop organized by EMI. Since then, presentations of ScienceSoft have been made in various occasions, in Amsterdam in January 2012 at the EGI Workshop on Sustainability, in Taipei in February at the ISGC 2012 conference, in Munich in March at the EGI/EMI Conference and at OGF 34 in March. This paper provides information this concept study ScienceSoft as an overview distributed to the broader scientific community to critique it.
A 0.87 W Transceiver IC for 100 Gigabit Ethernet in 40 nm CMOS

This paper describes a low-power 100 Gigabit Ethernet transceiver IC compliant with IEEE802.3ba 100GBASE-LR4 in 40 nm CMOS. The proposed bidirectional full-duplex transceiver IC contains a total of eight 28 Gb/s CDRs. Each CDR lane incorporates phase-rotator-based delay- and phase-locked loop (D/PLL) architecture for enhanced jitter filtering. All the CDR lanes operate independently while sharing a single voltage-controlled oscillator and supporting referenceless clock acquisition. To reduce power consumption, a multidrop clock distribution scheme with single on-chip transmission-line (T-line) and quadrate RX and TX schemes without CML logic gates are incorporated. Embedded built-in self-test modules featuring a random accumulation jitter generator enables bit error rate (BER) and jitter tolerance self tests without any external equipment. The TX featuring a three-tap pre-emphasis provides a variable output swing ranging from 478 mVppd to 1.06 Vppd. RX equalizers employing a continuous-time linear equalizer and a one-tap decision feedback equalizer compensate for the channel loss up to 25 dB at the Nyquist rate. The measured RX input sensitivity for a BER of 10 -12 is 42 mVppd. The proposed IC consumes only 0.87 W at 28.0 Gb/s with a BER less than 10 -15 on PRBS31 testing. The power efficiency of the proposed transceiver is 3.9 mW/Gb/s, which is the best among the efficiencies achieved by recently published 25 Gb/s transceivers.
Recent clinical trials of cancer immunogene therapy in companion animals

This mini-review presents the results of veterinary clinical trials on immunogene therapy published from 2014 to 2016. A variety of tumors, among them melanoma (canine and equine), mastocytoma (canine), mammary adenocarcinoma (canine) and fibrosarcoma (feline) were treated by using diverse strategies. Non-viral vectors were usually employed to transfer genes of cytokines, suicide enzymes and/or tumor associated antigens. In general terms, minor or no adverse collateral effects were related to these procedures, and treated patients frequently improved their conditions (better quality of life, delayed or suppressed recurrence or metastatic spread, increased survival). Some of these new methodologies have a promising future if applied as adjuvant treatments of standard approaches. The auspicious results, derived from immunogene therapy studies carried out in companion animals, warrant their imperative usage in veterinary clinical oncology. Besides, they provide a strong preclinical basis (safety assays and proofs of concept) for analogous human clinical trials.
US import demand for swordfish

Abstract Recently, there have been concerns in the USA that harvest of swordfish is harmful or the stocks are poorly managed. This has led to several campaigns targeting swordfish in general as well as swordfish from specific source. The effect of campaigns and regulatory measures against specific sources depend on the demand structure. In this paper, the Generalized Composite Commodity Theorem (GCCT) is applied to test whether imports of swordfish can be treated as a separate group. US import demand for swordfish is then estimated using an Almost Ideal Demand System.
Integration of European Bond Markets

I investigate the time variation in the integration of EU government bond markets. The integration is measured by the explanatory power of European factor portfolios for the individual bond markets for each year. The integration of the government bond markets is stronger for EMU than non-EMU members and stronger for old than new EU members. For EMU countries, the integration is weaker the lower the credit rating is. During the recent crisis periods, the integration is weaker, particularly for EMU countries.
Health inequality and the use of time for workers in Europe

This paper analyzes the relationship between health inequality and time allocation decisions of workers in six European countries. Using the Multinational Time Use Study, we find that a better perception of own health is associated with more time devoted to market work activities in all the countries, and with less time in housework activities, for both men and women. However, the evidence for the associations between health and leisure is mixed. This study represents a first step in understanding cross-country differences in the relationship between health status and time devoted to a range of activities for workers, in contrast with other analyses that have mainly focused only on market work. A better understanding of these cross-country differences may help to identify the effects of public policies on inequalities in the uses of time.
Comparison of Swim Recovery and Muscle Stimulation on Lactate Removal After Sprint Swimming

Neric, FB, Beam, WC, Brown, LE, and Wiersma, LD. Comparison of swim recovery and muscle stimulation on lactate removal after sprint swimming. J Strength Cond Res 23(9): 2560-2567, 2009-Competitive swimming requires multiple bouts of high-intensity exercise, leading to elevated blood lactate. Active exercise recovery has been shown to lower lactate faster than passive resting recovery but may not always be practical. An alternative treatment, electrical muscle stimulation, may have benefits similar to active recovery in lowering blood lactate but to date is unstudied. Therefore, this study compared submaximal swimming and electrical muscle stimulation in reducing blood lactate after sprint swimming. Thirty competitive swimmers (19 men and 11 women) participated in the study. Each subject completed 3 testing sessions consisting of a warm-up swim, a 200-yard maximal frontcrawl sprint, and 1 of 3 20-minute recovery treatments administered in random order. The recovery treatments consisted of a passive resting recovery, a submaximal swimming recovery, or electrical muscle stimulation. Blood lactate was tested at baseline, after the 200-yard sprint, and after 10 and 20 minutes of recovery. A significant interaction (p < 0.05) between recovery treatment and recovery time was observed. Blood lactate levels for the swimming recovery were significantly lower at 10 minutes (3.50 ± 1.57 mmol·L−1) and 20 minutes (1.60 ± 0.57 mmol·L−1) of recovery than either of the other 2 treatments. Electrical muscle stimulation led to a lower mean blood lactate (3.12 ± 1.41 mmol·L−1) after 20 minutes of recovery compared with passive rest (4.11 ± 1.35 mmol·L−1). Submaximal swimming proved to be most effective at lowering blood lactate, but electrical muscle stimulation also reduced blood lactate 20 minutes postexercise significantly better than resting passive recovery. Electrical muscle stimulation shows promise as an alternate recovery treatment for the purpose of lowering blood lactate.
Persistence of type-specific human papillomavirus infection among cytologically normal women.

Determinants of genital human papillomavirus (HPV) persistence in 393 women initially cytologically normal were investigated by testing them for HPV DNA twice over a median interval of 14.9 months. At each visit, interview information was obtained and a cervicovaginal lavage sample was collected for polymerase chain reaction-based HPV testing. Twenty-six percent of the women were HPV-positive at the first sampling. Data on HPV type was available for 86 HPV-positive women (84%); 35 of these women (41%) had persistent type-specific HPV detection. Persistence decreased with time between samplings. Women aged > or = 30 years had a higher percentage of persistence (65%) than those < or = 24 years (32%, P = .02). The percentage of persistence was higher among women infected with HPV types known to be cancer-associated (45%) than among those infected with other types (24%, P = .11). These findings were independent of each other and of timing between samplings. Although based on a prevalent cohort, these results are concordant with previous suggestions that HPV infection is usually transient and that cervical cancer may arise from within the subset of women with persistent HPV infection.
Do Neighbourhoods Influence Long-term Labour Market Success? A Comparison of Adults Who Grew up in Different Public Housing Projects

This paper examines whether long-run labour market outcomes depend on residential environment among adults who grew up in subsidized housing in Toronto. The housing program in Toronto provides a full spectrum of neighbourhood quality types to measure outcome differences, and offers a real-life example of large scale neighbourhood quality reform. A primary advantage with this approach is that, conditional on participation in public housing, residential choice is substantially limited. Families that applied for public housing could not specify which project they wished to be housed in and were constrained to what was offered based on availability at the time they applied and by family size. Unlike previous housing mobility experiments, the availability of administrative tax records are used to measure both short and long run outcomes. The results indicate almost no difference in educational attainment, adult earnings, income, and social assistance participation between children from different public housing types. Average outcomes, estimated wage distributions, and outcome correlations among unrelated project neighbours show no significant neighbourhood impact. In contrast, family differences seem to matter a great deal.
The Harmonious Society, Corporate Social Responsibility and Legal Responses to Ethical Norms in Chinese Company Law

In 2005, President Hu instructed China's leading officials and party cadres to put “building a harmonious society” at the top of their agendas in order to build a society that placed people first. This vision shifts China's primary focus from GDP figures and economic growth towards a more balanced, people-oriented and sustainable model, maintaining growth but also addressing social and environmental concerns. From the corporations' perspective, actions taken by the government in response to the need for a more harmonious society have increased the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in China, making it a more relevant factor in the process of rapid economic development. It is suggested that the progressive and enlightened changes involved in adopting social elements in Chinese company law (CCL), with an associated emphasis on the rights of employees and creditors, will promote CSR in Chinese companies. The vision of a harmonious society will also encourage positive corporate decisions for the benefit of social welfare beyond mere compliance with regulatory norms. It is necessary to promote a beneficial relationship between corporate economic responsibility and social responsibility within the corporate law framework, in order to make a significant contribution to China's development towards a harmonious society. After the enforcement of CCL 2006, despite positive progress between 2006 and 2011 (reflected in the data regarding the performance of directors' duties towards stakeholders), the rapid development of the Chinese economy also raises many social problems which remain a concern. The enforcement of CSR-related legal requirements still depends on political interference, public awareness and business disclosure of social and environmental issues, all in the context of improvements in and support for a sound legal system in China.