Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk perception regarding HIV AIDS of wives whose husbands are staying away from them, in an Urban Slum area of Mumbai, INDIA

Aim : Assessment of Risk perception regarding HIV AIDS of wives whose husbands are staying away from them OBJECTIVES: 1. To assess the risk perceptions of wives regarding their husbands’ extramarital affairs while staying away from them, with regards to HIV/AIDS 2. To find out effect of various socio-economic factors on their perceptions. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of Sample of around 60 married females, whose husbands are staying away from them, selected by Snow ball sampling technique and using Central limit theorem in the reproductive age group of 18 to 45 years, were included. RESULTS: 88% of wives felt that due to their absence and separation there is a possibility of their husbands’ involvement in extramarital affairs. Also 82% of the wives even were ready to accept if and when such affair comes to light. 80% of the females were aware of HIV/AIDS and only 47% out of them knew about the risk of getting infection from their husbands. CONCLUSIONS: Most of the females are ready to accept the chances of development of husband’s extramarital affair due to separation but still are willing to continue with the relation inspite and despite of the knowledge about HIV/AIDS. And factors such as Future of children, financial security, she not earning are forcing her to continue with the relationship.
Computers or Tablets? Choosing Devices for Educational Videogames

Educational videogames are a very effective tool in the learning process, especially for the current generation, known as the digital natives generation. Many studies have shown their benefits in different fields, using computers and mobile devices, among others. Nevertheless, we have not found in the literature any comparative research between these two platforms. Is one of the platforms more effective than the other to improve the learning process with videogames? In this paper we present the research results by using "The courtesy of Spain", a videogame created to teach its namesake classical theater play's plot by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. The videogame was designed to be played in a same way on computers and mobile devices. A quasi-experiment was carried out with control group and experimental group. 141 students between 9 and 11 years old from a school in the Autonomous Community of Madrid (Spain), with no previous knowledge of the play participated in the experiment. The experimental group played on a tablet, while the control group played on a computer. The researchers' first impressions were that the best results would be on tablets due to their ease of use and their great reception among young people. However, the results show statistically significant differences in favor of the computer. They reveal that: 1) the device on which an educational videogame is played is important for its effectiveness and 2) perhaps, in the field of educational videogames, the urgency of replacing the devices that is patent in the industry is not backed up by a greater effectiveness of them.
Mesurer la performance globale de la chaîne logistique

La plupart des débats et des articles sur les mesures de la chaîne logistique portent en réalité sur les mesures de performance de la logistique interne. L’absence de définition acceptée par tous les acteurs de supply chain management et la complexité associée au recoupement des chaînes logistiques, rend difficile le développement de mesures. En dépit de ces problèmes les responsables continuent de chercher des mesures applicables à la chaîne logistique afin de mieux « visualiser » des secteurs qu’ils ne contrôlent pas directement mais qui ont une incidence directe sur la performance de leur entreprise. Nous proposons un cadre de travail pour développer des mesures logistiques qui traduisent la performance dans la valeur créée pour les actionnaires. Cette démarche est axée sur la gestion de l’Interface entre les processus de management des relations avec les clients et avec les fournisseurs à chaque stade de la chaîne logistique. Le transfert des améliorations apportées aux processus dans la rentabilité des clients et des fournisseurs offre une marche à suivre pour définir des mesures permettant d’identifier les opportunités d’amélioration de la rentabilité et d’aligner les objectifs de tous les acteurs de la chaîne.
Permafrost carbon: Stock and decomposability of a globally significant carbon pool

The magnitude of future CO2‐induced climate warming is difficult to predict because of uncertainties in the role of ecosystems and oceans as CO2 sources and sinks. Siberia has extensive areas (1 × 106 km2) of deep (up to 90 m) deposits of organic‐rich frozen loess (wind‐blown silt) that accumulated during the Pleistocene but have not been considered in most global carbon (C) inventories. Similar deposits occur less extensively in Alaska. Recent warming at high latitudes causes this permafrost (permanently frozen ground) to thaw, raising questions about the fate of C in thawing permafrost. Here we show that Siberian loess permafrost contains a large organic C pool (∼450 GT—more than half the quantity in the current atmosphere) that decomposes quickly when thawed, and could act as a positive feedback to climate warming.
Late defect on delayed contrast-enhanced multi-detector row CT scans in the prediction of SPECT infarct size after reperfused acute myocardial infarction: initial experience.

PURPOSE To prospectively assess the accuracy of multi-detector row computed tomography (CT) in the prediction of infarct size after successful reperfusion of acute myocardial infarction (MI) by using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images obtained 6 weeks later as the reference standard. MATERIALS AND METHODS Institutional review board approval and informed consent were obtained. A total of 34 patients (29 men and five women; mean age, 56 years +/- 13) underwent dual-phase 16-detector row CT within 3 days +/- 3 after successful reperfusion of acute MI. Iodinated contrast medium (1.5 mL per kilogram of body weight) was injected at a flow rate of 3.5 mL/sec. A first arterial phase acquisition was followed 5 minutes later by a late acquisition, without reinjection of contrast medium. A radiologist and a cardiologist used a 17-segment model in a blind analysis of images obtained during late acquisition. For each segment, presence of late defect or late enhancement was recorded. Findings were compared with SPECT studies analyzed by a nuclear medicine physician and a cardiologist 6 weeks after the acute event. CT defects were compared with SPECT defects on a segmental and per-patient basis. Mean number of segments with late defects on multi-detector row CT scans was compared with infarct size on SPECT images by using the t test. RESULTS All patients had late enhancement in the infarcted myocardium. In 27 of 34 patients, a late defect surrounded by a subepicardial late enhancement was detected. Segments with late defect on CT scans were predictive of residual perfusion defects at 6-week follow-up, with sensitivity of 78%, specificity of 91%, and accuracy of 90%. On a per-patient basis, sensitivity was 93%, specificity was 100%, and accuracy was 94%. Mean number of segments with late defects on multi-detector row CT scans (ie, 3.1 segments) was not significantly different from infarct size on SPECT images (eg, 2.5 segments) (P = .2). CONCLUSION Late defect on multi-detector row CT scans indicates residual perfusion SPECT defect and infarct size after successfully reperfused MI, with sensitivity of 93%, specificity of 100%, and accuracy of 94%.
Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change: A Review

A review of the science on the relationship between climate change and tropical cyclones (TCs) is presented. Topics include changes in aspects of tropical climate that are relevant to TC activity; observed trends and low-frequency variability of TC activity; paleoclimate proxy studies; theoretical and modeling studies; future projections; roadblocks to resolution of key issues; and recommendations for making future progress.
Predicting and Interpolating State‐Level Polls Using Twitter Textual Data

Spatially or temporally dense polling remains both difficult and expensive using existing survey methods. In response, there have been increasing efforts to approximate various survey measures using social media, but most of these approaches remain methodologically flawed. To remedy these flaws, this article combines 1,200 state-level polls during the 2012 presidential campaign with over 100 million state-located political tweets; models the polls as a function of the Twitter text using a new linear regularization feature-selection method; and shows via out-of-sample testing that when properly modeled, the Twitter-based measures track and to some degree predict opinion polls, and can be extended to unpolled states and potentially substate regions and subday timescales. An examination of the most predictive textual features reveals the topics and events associated with opinion shifts, sheds light on more general theories of partisan difference in attention and information processing, and may be of use for real-time campaign strategy.
Effects of Litter Manipulation on Litter Decomposition in a Successional Gradients of Tropical Forests in Southern China

Global changes such as increasing CO2, rising temperature, and land-use change are likely to drive shifts in litter inputs to forest floors, but the effects of such changes on litter decomposition remain largely unknown. We initiated a litter manipulation experiment to test the response of litter decomposition to litter removal/addition in three successional forests in southern China, namely masson pine forest (MPF), mixed coniferous and broadleaved forest (MF) and monsoon evergreen broadleaved forest (MEBF). Results showed that litter removal decreased litter decomposition rates by 27%, 10% and 8% and litter addition increased litter decomposition rates by 55%, 36% and 14% in MEBF, MF and MPF, respectively. The magnitudes of changes in litter decomposition were more significant in MEBF forest and less significant in MF, but not significant in MPF. Our results suggest that change in litter quantity can affect litter decomposition, and this impact may become stronger with forest succession in tropical forest ecosystem.
Online Spike-and-slab Inference with Stochastic Expectation Propagation

We present OLSS, an online algorithm for Bayesian spike-and-slab model inference, based on the recently proposed stochastic Expectation Propagation (SEP) framework [7]. We use a fully factorized form to efficiently process high dimensional features; further, we extend the standard SEP by incorporating multiple approximate average likelihoods, each of which corresponds to a cluster of samples (e.g., positive and negative ones). This not only better summarizes the data across different regions, but also gives the flexibility to assign sample weights. On a large-scale click-through-rate (CTR) prediction task, OLSS demonstrates excellent sparsity and superior predictive performance to the popular methods in industry, including Vowpal Wabbit [6] and FTRL-Proximal [8].
Assessing Business Schools: Reply to Connolly

The article presents a reply to a paper about the effect of MBA degrees on the salaries of business school graduates. M. Connolly's research on the economic returns to MBA graduates from the University of Miami over a recent 4-year period, undertaken to show that the MBA degree is alive and well, has a number of problems. Furthermore, the question of the economic return on the MBA degree encompasses only a relatively small aspect of the article about business schools and their future. Connolly's estimates of the rate of return on the MBA degree rely on the difference between the salary of people when they enter the program and the salary when they leave. Connolly's analysis also looks only at starting salary and then extrapolates into the future, using a higher growth rate of wages for MBA degree holders based on data from a general survey of the workforce. The argument presented in the paper was never that business schools, particularly elite schools, failed to provide a brand or a signal that would offe.
Know That You Know ? Factors Used to Infer Another ’ s Expertise and to Communicate One ’ s Own Expertise

An important aspect of being able to access the knowledge of individuals is the ability to identify the expertise of others, and the complementary ability to communicate one’s own expertise where needed. We initially examine three research questions: What factors are used in judging expertise? Are some of these factors inter-related? Which factors are considered the most important? We report three studies in which managers and students respond to scenarios in which they need to infer or communicate expertise and rate their relative importance. Our results identified 26 factors, some of which can be grouped into higher-level categories that people use to infer and communicate expertise. There is no significant difference in the frequency with which a given factor is mentioned across the infer and communicate scenarios. We also found no significant difference in the responses of the managers and students. Next, a fourth research question is introduced, arising from an analysis of what it means for a factor to be important: Is there a correspondence between different measures of importance? Four different types of importance are identified, and two of these are compared in the present context: weight importance and recall importance. We found little correlation among the factors that were rated as important according to recall and weight importance. In response to the title question, subjects used and treated as important a variety of factors in identifying expertise. Foremost were experience factors; social factors, including recommendations from various others; and direct contact with the potential expert, through their self-presentation or past performance.
Peroxiredoxin as a Peroxidase for as well as a Regulator and Sensor of Local Peroxides

Peroxiredoxins (Prxs) contain an active site cysteine that is sensitive to oxidation by H2O2. Mammalian cells express six Prx isoforms that are localized to various cellular compartments. The oxidized active site cysteine of Prx can be reduced by a cellular thiol, thus enabling Prx to function as a locally constrained peroxidase. Regulation of Prx via phosphorylation in response to extracellular signals allows the local accumulation of H2O2 and thereby enables its messenger function. The fact that the oxidation state of the active site cysteine of Prx can be transferred to other proteins that are less intrinsically susceptible to H2O2 also allows Prx to function as an H2O2 sensor.
Parallel Representation of Stimulus Identity and Intensity in a Dual Pathway Model Inspired by the Olfactory System of the Honeybee

The honeybee Apis mellifera has a remarkable ability to detect and locate food sources during foraging, and to associate odor cues with food rewards. In the honeybee’s olfactory system, sensory input is first processed in the antennal lobe (AL) network. Uniglomerular projection neurons (PNs) convey the sensory code from the AL to higher brain regions via two parallel but anatomically distinct pathways, the lateral and the medial antenno-cerebral tract (l- and m-ACT). Neurons innervating either tract show characteristic differences in odor selectivity, concentration dependence, and representation of mixtures. It is still unknown how this differential stimulus representation is achieved within the AL network. In this contribution, we use a computational network model to demonstrate that the experimentally observed features of odor coding in PNs can be reproduced by varying lateral inhibition and gain control in an otherwise unchanged AL network. We show that odor coding in the l-ACT supports detection and accurate identification of weak odor traces at the expense of concentration sensitivity, while odor coding in the m-ACT provides the basis for the computation and following of concentration gradients but provides weaker discrimination power. Both coding strategies are mutually exclusive, which creates a tradeoff between detection accuracy and sensitivity. The development of two parallel systems may thus reflect an evolutionary solution to this problem that enables honeybees to achieve both tasks during bee foraging in their natural environment, and which could inspire the development of artificial chemosensory devices for odor-guided navigation in robots.
Smooth random change point models

Change point models are used to describe processes over time that show a change in direction. An example of such a process is cognitive ability, where a decline a few years before death is sometimes observed. A broken‐stick model consists of two linear parts and a breakpoint where the two lines intersect. Alternatively, models can be formulated that imply a smooth change between the two linear parts. Change point models can be extended by adding random effects to account for variability between subjects. A new smooth change point model is introduced and examples are presented that show how change point models can be estimated using functions in R for mixed‐effects models. The Bayesian inference using WinBUGS is also discussed. The methods are illustrated using data from a population‐based longitudinal study of ageing, the Cambridge City over 75 Cohort Study. The aim is to identify how many years before death individuals experience a change in the rate of decline of their cognitive ability. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dysplastic Histogenesis of Cartilage Growth Plate by Alteration of Sulphation Pathway: A Transgenic Model

Mutations in the diastrophic dysplasia sulphate transporter (dtdst) gene causes different forms of chondrodysplasia in the human. The generation of a knock-in mouse strain with a mutation in dtdst gene provides the basis to study developmental dynamics in the epiphyseal growth plate and long bone growth after impairment of the sulphate pathway. Our microscopical and histochemical data demonstrate that dtdst gene impairment deeply affects tissue organization, matrix structure, and cell differentiation in the epiphyseal growth plate. In mutant animals, the height of the growth plate was significantly reduced, according to a concomitant decrease in cell density and proliferation. Although the pathway of chondrocyte differentiation seemed complete, alteration in cell morphology compared to normal counterparts was detected. In the extracellular matrix, it we observed a dramatic decrease in sulphated proteoglycans, alterations in the organization of type II and type X collagen fibers, and premature onset of mineralization. These data confirm the crucial role of sulphate pathway in proteoglycan biochemistry and suggest that a disarrangement of the extracellular matrix may be responsible for the development of dtdts cartilage dysplasia. Moreover, we corroborated the concept that proteoglycans not only are structural components of the cartilage architecture, but also play a dynamic role in the regulation of chondrocyte growth and differentiation.
A Comparison of User Strategies in Image Retrieval with Relevance Feedback

Given the difficulty of setting up large-scale experiments with real users, the comparison of content-based image retrieval methods using relevance feedback usually relies on an emulation of the user, following a single, well-prescribed strategy. Since the behavior of real users cannot be expected to comply to strict specifications, it is very important to evaluate the sensitiveness of the retrieval results to likely variations of users’ behavior. It is also important to find out whether some strategies help the system to perform consistently better, so as to promote their use. We compare here two algorithms of SVM-based relevance feedback using the angular kernel. In these experiments, the user is emulated according to seven significantly different strategies on four ground-truth databases of different complexity. We first find that the ranking of the two algorithms does not depend much on the selected strategy. Second, the ranking between strategies appears to be relatively independent of the complexity of the ground-truth classes, which allows us to identify desirable characteristics in the behavior of the user.
A Model for a Seismic Computerized Alert Network

In large earthquakes, damaging ground motions may occur at large epicentral distances. Because of the relatively slow speed of seismic waves, it is possible to construct a system to provide short-term warning (as much as several tens of seconds) of imminent strong ground motions from major earthquakes. Automated safety responses could be triggered by users after receiving estimates of the arrival time and strength of shaking expected at an individual site. Although warning times are likely to be short for areas greatly damaged by relatively numerous earthquakes of moderate size, large areas that experience very strong shaking during great earthquakes would receive longer warning times.
Fuzzy Hidden Markov Models: A New Approach In Multiple Sequence Alignment

This paper proposes a novel method for aligning multiple genomic or proteomic sequences using a fuzzyfied Hidden Markov Model (HMM). HMMs are known to provide compelling performance among multiple sequence alignment (MSA) algorithms, yet their stochastic nature does not help them cope with the existing dependence among the sequence elements. Fuzzy HMMs are a novel type of HMMs based on fuzzy sets and fuzzy integrals which generalizes the classical stochastic HMM, by relaxing its independence assumptions. In this paper, the fuzzy HMM model for MSA is mathematically defined. New fuzzy algorithms are described for building and training fuzzy HMMs, as well as for their use in aligning multiple sequences. Fuzzy HMMs can also increase the model capability of aligning multiple sequences mainly in terms of computation time. Modeling the multiple sequence alignment procedure with fuzzy HMMs can yield a robust and time-effective solution that can be widely used in bioinformatics in various applications, such as protein classification, phylogenetic analysis and gene prediction, among others.
A Bacterial Laccase for Enhancing Saccharification and Ethanol Fermentation of Steam-Pretreated Biomass

Different biological approaches, highlighting the use of laccases, have been developed as environmentally friendly alternatives for improving the saccharification and fermentation stages of steam-pretreated lignocellulosic biomass. This work evaluates the use of a novel bacterial laccase (MetZyme) for enhancing the hydrolysability and fermentability of steam-exploded wheat straw. When the water insoluble solids (WIS) fraction was treated with laccase or alkali alone, a modest increase of about 5% in the sugar recovery yield (glucose and xylose) was observed in both treatments. Interestingly, the combination of alkali extraction and laccase treatment boosted enzymatic hydrolysis, increasing the glucose and xylose concentration in the hydrolysate by 21% and 30%, respectively. With regards to the fermentation stage, the whole pretreated slurry was subjected to laccase treatment, lowering the phenol content by up to 21%. This reduction allowed us to improve the fermentation performance of the thermotolerant yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus CECT 10875 during a simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) process. Hence, a shorter adaptation period and an increase in the cell viability—measured in terms of colony forming units (CFU/mL)—could be observed in laccase-treated slurries. These differences were even more evident when a presaccharification step was performed prior to SSF. Novel biocatalysts such as the bacterial laccase presented in this work could play a key role in the implementation of a cost-effective technology in future biorefineries.