Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Risk Factors Associated with Malaria Transmission in Tubu Village, Northern Botswana

This study investigated potential risk factors associated with malaria transmission in Tubu village, Okavango subdistrict, a malaria endemic area in northern Botswana. Data was derived from a census questionnaire survey, participatory rural appraisal workshop, field observations, and mosquito surveys. History of malaria episodes was associated with several factors: household income (P < 0.05), late outdoor activities (OR = 7.016; CI = 1.786–27.559), time spent outdoors (P = 0.051), travel outside study area (OR = 2.70; CI = 1.004–7.260), nonpossession of insecticide treated nets (OR = 0.892; CI = 0.797–0.998), hut/house structure (OR = 11.781; CI = 3.868–35.885), and homestead location from water bodies (P < 0.05). No associations were established between history of malaria episodes and the following factors: being a farmer (P > 0.05) and number of nets possessed (P > 0.05). Eave size was not associated with mosquito bites (P > 0.05), frequency of mosquito bites (P > 0.05), and time of mosquito bites (P > 0.05). Possession of nets was very high (94.7%). Close proximity of a health facility and low vegetation cover were added advantages. Some of the identified risk factors are important for developing effective control and elimination strategies involving the community, with limited resources.
Effectiveness of Exposure to Study Techniques on College Students’ Perceptions

AbstractEighty students who were given study technique guides, took quizzes, and participated in class discussions were matched with 80 students who were not exposed to these aids and activities. Subjects were matched on sex, college status, race, and mental ability and reading test scores. Each group responded to the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes three times during the semester. Trend analytical results showed significant (a) difference on Teacher Approval scale, with the experimental group scoring higher, (b) differences on five scales over trials reflecting upward shifts, and (c) differences on five scales on interactions displaying reverse patterns of perceptions on study habits by the two groups. Analysis of the semester grade-point averages showed no significant differences between the groups.
Use of monoclonal antibody directed against herpes simplex virus glycoproteins to protect mice against acute virus-induced neurological disease

Monoclonal antibodies HCl and HD1, directed against herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) glycoproteins gC and gD, respectively, were evaluated for their ability to passively immunize mice against acute virus-induced neurological disease after footpad inoculation with HSV-1 or herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2). Control virus-infected mice receiving a single intraperitoneal injection of normal serum died within 7 to 10 days after the spread of virus from footpad to spinal cord and brain. However, a single intraperitoneal injection of either HCl or HD1 antibody protected mice from neurological illness and death when administered to HSV-1 (strain HTZ)-infected mice at either 2 h before virus challenge or at 24 h after virus inoculation. To determine the in vivo specificity of the antibodies, passive transfer studies were performed with mice infected with the MP strain of HSV-1, a mutant of HSV-1 (mP) which is defective in the production of glycoprotein gC. Whereas HD1 antibody decreased the incidence of neurological illness in MP- and mP-infected mice, HCl antibody, which protected mP-infected animals, failed to protect mice infected with the MP strain. When HD1 antibody was administered to HSV-2 (strain G)-infected mice at either 2 h before virus challenge or at 6 h (but not 24 h) after virus inoculation, 100% of the infected animals receiving HD1 antibody survived. In contrast, 100% of HSV-2 (strain G)-infected animals passively immunized with HCl antibody developed neurological illness and died. These results provide in vivo evidence that the HSV-induced glycoprotein gC expresses type-specific antigenic determinants, whereas glycoprotein gD expresses type-common determinants.
Prospect for Relic Neutrino Searches

Neutrinos from the Big Bang are theoretically expected to be the most abundant particles in the Universe after the photons of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Unlike the relic photons, relic neutrinos have not so far been observed. The Cosmic Neutrino Background (CνB) is the oldest relic from the Big Bang, produced a few seconds after the Bang itself. Due to their impact in cosmology, relic neutrinos may be revealed indirectly in the near future through cosmological observations. In this talk we concentrate on other proposals, made in the last 30 years, to try to detect the CνB directly, either in laboratory searches (through tiny accelerations they produce on macroscopic targets) or through astrophysical observations (looking for absorption dips in the flux of Ultra-High Energy (UHE) neutrinos, due to the annihilation of these neutrinos with relic neutrinos at the Z-resonance). We concentrate mainly on the first possibility. We show that, given present bounds on neutrino masses, lepton number in the Universe and gravitational clustering of neutrinos, all expected laboratory effects of relic neutrinos are far from observability, awaiting future technological advances to reach the necessary sensitivity. The problem for astrophysical searches is that sources of UHE neutrinos at the extreme energies required may not exist. If they do exist, we could reveal the existence, and possibly the mass spectrum, of relic neutrinos, with detectors of UHE neutrinos (such as ANITA, Auger, EUSO, OWL, RICE and SalSA).
TROP2 is epigenetically inactivated and modulates IGF-1R signalling in lung adenocarcinoma

Trop‐2, a cell surface glycoprotein, contains both extracellular epidermal growth factor‐like and thyroglobulin type‐1 repeat domains. Low TROP2 expression was observed in lung adenocarcinoma tissues as compared with their normal counterparts. The lack of expression could be due to either the loss of heterozygosity (LOH) or hypermethylation of the CpG island DNA of TROP2 upstream promoter region as confirmed by bisulphite sequencing and methylation‐specific (MS) polymerase chain reaction (PCR). 5‐Aza‐2′‐deoxycytidine treatment on lung cancer cell (CL) lines, CL1‐5 and A549, reversed the hypermethylation status and elevated both TROP2 mRNA and protein expression levels. Enforced expression of TROP2 in the lung CL line H1299 reduced AKT as well as ERK activation and suppressed cell proliferation and colony formation. Conversely, silencing TROP2 with shRNA transfection in the less efficiently tumour‐forming cell line H322M enhanced AKT activation and increased tumour growth. Trop‐2 could attenuate IGF‐1R signalling‐mediated AKT/β‐catenin and ERK activation through a direct binding of IGF1. In conclusion, inactivation of TROP2 due to LOH or by DNA methylation may play an important role in lung cancer tumourigenicity through losing its suppressive effect on IGF‐1R signalling and tumour growth.
Regulated transcription of the immediate‐early gene Zif268: Mechanisms and gene dosage‐dependent function in synaptic plasticity and memory formation

The immediate‐early gene Zif268 is a member of the Egr family of inducible transcription factors. Data from gene expression studies have suggested that this gene may play a critical role in initial triggering of the genetic machinery that has long been considered a necessary mechanism for maintenance of the later phases of LTP and also for the consolidation or stabilization of long‐lasting memories. Until recently, however, the data supporting this assumption have been based primarily on circumstantial evidence, with no direct evidence to suggest that Zif268 is required for long‐lasting synaptic plasticity and memory. In this report, we review our own data using Zif268 mutant mice; we show that although the early phase of dentate gyrus LTP is normal in these mice, the later phases are not present, and the ability of the mice to maintain learned information over a 24‐h period is deficient. In addition, we present new information showing a task‐dependent gene dosage effect in Zif268 heterozygous mice. We show that spatial learning is particularly sensitive to reduced levels of Zif268, as one‐half of the complement of Zif268 in heterozygous mice is insufficient to maintain spatial long‐term memories. Hippocampus 2002;12:570–577. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Accounting Education Lags CPE Ethics Requirements: Implications for the Profession and a Call to Action

Abstract The accounting profession in the USA has experienced a crisis of legitimacy in the aftermath of a barrage of business scandals. Recent legislation has forced reforms reinforcing the need for additional ethics education. At the same time, the external pressure on university accounting degree programs has been to maintain the status quo of inadequate ethics in the curriculum, even while ethics courses in state CPE programs have grown dramatically. This creates a problem of bad pedagogy in that these new CPE ethics courses, focused on rote delivery of professional codes of conduct, are not grounded in conceptual frameworks which should be provided by university accounting programs. This state of affairs is circular in that it perpetuates inadequate ethics education for the profession. We propose that this deficiency be remedied by the requirement of a stand-alone ethics course delivered early in the accounting curriculum as a foundation for other degree requirements and subsequent CPE courses. The first step in this direction should be the creation of a White Paper that recommends specific content for such a course.
Tecnologia, paradoxos organizacionais e gestão de pessoas

We exemplify in this article the contradictions and paradoxes produced by the implementation of a new technology. In fact, The New Institutionalism theory shows that organizations adopt new technologies to adapt to their environment in order to obtain legitimation and resources. When managers implement a new technology or strategy in order to adapt the organization to their business environment, they usually produce two consequences. The first, labeled the objective structural consequence, restructures organizational tasks and relationships to enhance efficiency and productivity. The second, the subjective human consequence, weakens or counteracts the intended efficiency and productivity of the structuralarrangement. We will present and discuss some of the tensions and paradoxes produced by the subjective human consequence described above.
De-Constructing Concepts of Care

`Care' has been the focus of much sociological and policy related research in the last decade. However, a review of this research literature reveals that the concept of `care' is not uniformly defined, nor is its epistemological status clear. This paper explores the problematic nature of the concept of care in sociological research. In the first section, concepts of care characteristic of 1980s research are deconstructed and compared. This demonstrates their variable and partial character. The second section contrasts the ways in which feminist writers Hilary Graham (1991) and Clare Ungerson (1990) have recently begun to recon- ceptualise care. It is argued that these authors are working along quite different conceptual paths, and that neither reconceptualisation transcends the problem of the partiality of preceding concepts of care. In section three, a unified concept of care is introduced and the question of the theoretical status of the category `care' is addressed.
Increasing chromosome 1 copy number parallels histological progression in breast carcinogenesis

Chromosome 1 copy number in the benign breast lesions hyperplasia and atypical duct hyperplasia (ADH) was investigated using fluorescence in situ hybridization on paraffin sections. Progression of chromosome 1 changes occurring in parallel with histological progression from normal through hyperplasia and ADH to ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and invasive carcinoma was also assessed, both overall and within individual patients. The mean signal number for normal cells was 1.14, while that for hyperplasia was 1.56 and ADH was 1.5, while values for DCIS of 1.95 and invasive duct carcinoma of 1.79, were higher (P< 0.001). Six of the seven cases also showed a significant trend towards an increasing proportion of cells with greater than 2 signals per nucleus occurring with histological progression (P< 0.001). These results support the concept that benign proliferative breast disease is a biological precursor of in-situ and invasive ductal carcinoma, the early histological changes possibly indicating a field effect with further genetic changes required for the development of a malignant phenotype. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Electrophoretic deposition of biomaterials

Electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is attracting increasing attention as an effective technique for the processing of biomaterials, specifically bioactive coatings and biomedical nanostructures. The well-known advantages of EPD for the production of a wide range of microstructures and nanostructures as well as unique and complex material combinations are being exploited, starting from well-dispersed suspensions of biomaterials in particulate form (microsized and nanoscale particles, nanotubes, nanoplatelets). EPD of biological entities such as enzymes, bacteria and cells is also being investigated. The review presents a comprehensive summary and discussion of relevant recent work on EPD describing the specific application of the technique in the processing of several biomaterials, focusing on (i) conventional bioactive (inorganic) coatings, e.g. hydroxyapatite or bioactive glass coatings on orthopaedic implants, and (ii) biomedical nanostructures, including biopolymer–ceramic nanocomposites, carbon nanotube coatings, tissue engineering scaffolds, deposition of proteins and other biological entities for sensors and advanced functional coatings. It is the intention to inform the reader on how EPD has become an important tool in advanced biomaterials processing, as a convenient alternative to conventional methods, and to present the potential of the technique to manipulate and control the deposition of a range of nanomaterials of interest in the biomedical and biotechnology fields.
Effects of manual hyperinflation maneuver associated with positive end expiratory pressure in patients within coronary artery bypass grafting.

OBJECTIVE To verify the effects of manual hyperinflation maneuver associated with positive end expiratory pressure in coronary artery bypass grafting patients. METHODS This was a randomized trial, conducted from August 2007 to July 2008 in the intensive care unit of the Hospital Luterano (ULBRA). The patients were divided in the groups intervention - with manual hyperinflation plus positive end expiratory pressure - and controlThe ventilatory variables were measured before and after the manual hyperinflation. The t Student's test was used for independent and paired samples as well as Fisher's exact test and McNemar's Chi-square test with 0.05 significance level. RESULTS Eighteen patients were included. The mean age was 64± 11 years and 55.6% were female. The inspired tidal volume was 594± 112ml in the intervention group and 487± 51ml in the control group (p=0.024) and the expired tidal volume was 598± 105ml in the intervention group and 490± 58ml in the control group (p=0.02). The mean pre-maneuver static pulmonary compliance in the intervention group was 41.6± 12.1 ml/cmH2O and post maneuver it was 47.4± 16.6 ml/cmH2O (p=0.03). There was no significant between groups difference in the following variables: oxygen peripheral saturation, oxygen arterial pressure, extubation time and radiological changes. CONCLUSION The results show that the manual hyperinflation associated with positive end expiratory pressure maneuver trends to promote increased lung volumes and static compliance, however these findings require further confirmation.
No . 2006 / 04 Aid Project Proliferation and Absorptive Capacity

Much public discussion about foreign aid has focused on whether and how to increase its quantity. But recently aid quality has come to the fore, by which is meant the efficiency of the aid delivery process. This paper focuses on one process problem, the proliferation of aid projects and the associated administrative burden for recipients. It models aid delivery as a set of production activities (projects) with two inputs—the donor’s aid and a recipient-side resource—and two outputs—development and ‘throughput’, which represents the private benefits of implementing projects, from kickbacks to career rewards for disbursing. The donor’s allocation of aid across projects is taken as exogenous while the recipient’s allocation of its resource is modelled and subject to a budget constraint. Unless the recipient cares purely about development, an aid increase can reduce development in some circumstances. Sunk costs, representing for the recipient the administrative burden of donor meetings and reports, are introduced. Using data on the distribution of projects by size and country, simulations of aid increases are run in order to examine how the project distribution evolves, how the recipient’s resource allocation responds, and how this affects development if the recipient is not a pure development optimizer. A threshold is revealed beyond which marginal aid effectiveness drops sharply. It occurs when development maximization calls for the recipient to withdraw from some donor-backed projects, but the recipient does not, for the sake of throughput. Donors can push back this threshold by moving to larger projects if there are scale economies in aid projects.
Detection and Characterization of a Novel Reassortant Mammalian Orthoreovirus in Bats in Europe

A renewed interest in mammalian orthoreoviruses (MRVs) has emerged since new viruses related to bat MRV type 3, detected in Europe, were identified in humans and pigs with gastroenteritis. This study reports the isolation and characterization of a novel reassortant MRV from the lesser horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros). The isolate, here designated BatMRV1-IT2011, was first identified by electron microscopy and confirmed using PCR and virus-neutralization tests. The full genome sequence was obtained by next-generation sequencing. Molecular and antigenic characterizations revealed that BatMRV1-IT2011 belonged to serotype 1, which had not previously been identified in bats. Phylogenetic and recombination detection program analyses suggested that BatMRV1-IT2011 was a reassortant strain containing an S1 genome segment similar to those of MRV T1/bovine/Maryland/Clone23/59 and C/bovine/Indiana/MRV00304/2014, while other segments were more similar to MRVs of different hosts, origins and serotypes. The presence of neutralizing antibodies against MRVs has also been investigated in animals (dogs, pigs, bovines and horses). Preliminary results suggested that MRVs are widespread in animals and that infections containing multiple serotypes, including MRVs of serotype 1 with an S1 gene similar to BatMRV1-IT2011, are common. This paper extends the current knowledge of MRVs and stresses the importance to continue and improve MRV surveillance in bats and other mammals through the development and standardization of specific diagnostic tools.
Psychopathic characteristics are related to high basal urinary oxytocin levels in male forensic patients

Background: Cerebral levels of oxytocin, elevated by intranasal administration, can increase trust, empathy and altruism, and decrease fear. We hypothesised that low levels of these characteristics (found in some personality-disordered forensic patients), would be associated with reduced oxytocin levels. Aims: To assess whether patients, with psychopathic characteristics associated with selfishness, callousness and the remorseless use of others, plus a chronically unstable, antisocial and socially deviant lifestyle, would show depressed levels of oxytocin. Method: Basal urinary oxytocin levels (an indicator of cerebral oxytocin) were assessed in 47 forensic psychiatric patients. Levels were compared with those in 21 non-patient controls, and correlated with psychopathic characteristics. Results: Oxytocin levels were markedly elevated in the patient sample compared to controls. Levels were also strongly correlated with traits associated with a socially deviant lifestyle. Conclusions: The results point to oxytocin playing a role in antisocial, as well as prosocial behaviours.
Efficient Adaptive Scheduling of Multiprocessors with Stable Parallelism Feedback

With proliferation of multicore computers and multiprocessor systems, an imminent challenge is to efficiently schedule parallel applications on these resources. In contrast to conventional static scheduling, adaptive schedulers that dynamically allocate processors to jobs possess good potential for improving processor utilization and speeding up job's execution. In this paper, we focus on adaptive scheduling of malleable jobs with periodic processor reallocations based on parallelism feedback of the jobs and allocation policy of the system. We present an efficient adaptive scheduler Acdeq that provides parallelism feedback using an adaptive controller A-Control and allocates processors based on the well-known Dynamic Equipartitioning algorithm (Deq). Compared to A-Greedy, an existing adaptive scheduler that experiences feedback instability thus incurs unnecessary scheduling overheads, we show that A-Control achieves much more stable feedback among other desirable control-theoretic properties. Furthermore, we analyze algorithmically the performances of Acdeq in terms of its response time and processor waste for an individual job as well as makespan and total response time for a set of jobs. To the best of our knowledge, Acdeq is the first multiprocessor scheduling algorithm that offers both control-theoretic and algorithmic guarantees. We further evaluate Acdeq via simulations by using Downey's parallel job model augmented with internal parallelism variations. The results confirm its improved performances over Agdeq, and they show that Acdeq excels especially when the scheduling overhead becomes high.
An 8.0-Gb/s HyperTransport Transceiver for 32-nm SOI-CMOS Server Processors

We present an 8.0-Gb/s HyperTransport source-synchronous I/O integrated in a 32-nm SOI-CMOS processor for high-performance servers. Based on a 45-nm design capping at 6.4 Gb/s, the 32-nm transceiver achieves up to 8.0 Gb/s over long-reach board channels by incorporating several jitter- and power-reduction enhancements. First, a high-bandwidth digital clean-up PLL is introduced to attenuate high-frequency jitter in the received forwarded clock before the data is sampled. This PLL achieves a highly programmable jitter bandwidth of 20-296 MHz (measured with 0.2 UIpp input jitter) and 0.90-1.50 ps output rms jitter by implementing an extended bang-bang phase detector for additional phase-error magnitude information and flexible bang-bang control of a current-starved ring-based oscillator. Second, several power-hungry circuits, namely the transmitter input FIFO and output driver as well as the receiver deserializer, are redesigned for 8.0-Gb/s operation to maintain thermal compatibility with the existing 45-nm socket package. The fabricated 20-lane I/O consumes 1.70 W at 8.0 Gb/s with an energy efficiency of 11.8 pJ/bit. This reflects a 4.9% increase in HyperTransport power consumption and only 0.3% increase in total processor target power relative to 45-nm operation at 6.4 Gb/s.