Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating volunteer tourism: has it made a difference?

ABSTRACT This paper examines the challenges of evaluating volunteer tourism and looks towards possibilities for rethinking the ways in which the phenomenon is conceptualised. We reflect on the debates and practices that have emerged since the first theoretical exploration introduced over 15 years ago in a book titled Volunteer tourism: Experiences that make a difference. This review paper commences with a discussion of the criticisms that have been targeted at both research and practice, and reflects on the need to rethink how volunteer tourism is evaluated. We argue that the volunteer tourism industry must respond to criticisms from academics and the media and move towards conscious choices that reframe volunteer tourism away from development aid towards intercultural mutuality and decommodification.
Impact of the Economic Downturn on Elective Lumbar Spine Surgery in the United States: A National Trend Analysis, 2003 to 2013

Study Design: Retrospective database analysis. Objective: The impact of the 2008-2009 economic downtown on elective lumbar spine surgery is unknown. Our objective was to investigate the effect of the economic downturn on the overall trends of elective lumbar spine surgery in the United States. Methods: The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) was used in conjunction with US Census and macroeconomic data to determine historical trends. The economic downturn was defined as 2008 to 2009. Codes from the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM), were used in order to identify appropriate procedures. Confidence intervals were determined using subgroup analysis techniques. Results: From 2003 to 2012, there was a 19.8% and 26.1% decrease in the number of lumbar discectomies and laminectomies, respectively. Over the same time period, there was a 56.4% increase in the number of lumbar spinal fusions. The trend of elective lumbar spine surgeries per 100 000 persons in the US population remained consistent from 2008 to 2009. The number of procedures decreased by 4.5% from 2010 to 2011, 7.6% from 2011 to 2012, and 3.1% from 2012 to 2013. The R 2 value between the number of surgeries and the S&P 500 Index was statistically significant (P ≤ .05). Conclusions: The economic downturn did not affect elective lumbar fusions, which increased in total from 2003 to 2013. The relationship between the S&P 500 Index and surgical trends suggests that during recessions, individuals may utilize other means, such as insurance, to cover procedural costs and reduce out-of-pocket expenditures, accounting for no impact of the economic downturn on surgical trends. These findings can assist multiple stakeholders in better understanding the interconnectedness of macroeconomics, policy, and elective lumbar spine surgery trends.
Characteristics of the morphological and functional status of kayakers and canoeists.

A study of anthropometric and functional characteristics was conducted in a sample of 29 athletes, flatwater racers 18 kayakers and 11 canoeists. The results of morphological tests suggest an evident reduction of subcutaneous fat, above-average values of limb circumferences (especially upper limbs) and of body mass, attributable to a high proportion of lean body mass. Trunk extension strength was to be below the average, while the strength of the remaining analyzed static movements were on the level of trained persons. Aerobic capacity, i.e. the functioning of the cardiopulmonary system, in the sample under discussion has shown above-average values, comparable to those obtained in athletes in the aerobic sports group. The results of discriminant analysis applied separately to morphological, dynamogenic and aerobic characteristics with the aim to identify possible differences between the two sports suggest that our sample constituted a homogeneous group, regardless of which of the two sports were practiced.
Radio frequency energy harvesting technology

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting is a promising technique to energize low power electronic devices due to the sustainability it could offer resulting from the surge in ambient wireless signals it could utilize. In this paper, a concise literature survey on this technique is presented. Firstly, the architecture of a RF energy harvesting network is briefly introduced. Secondly, background relating to the antenna and rectifier designs is provided. Finally, some state-of-the-art designs from recent years are presented.
[Interventricular septal wall motion abnormality in left bundle branch block].

An experimental study was performed to clarify the mechanism of perfusion defects in the interventricular septum on T1-201 scintigraphy, as seen in patients with left bundle branch block (LBBB) having normal coronary arteries. In anesthetized open-chest dogs, the following parameters were assessed during right atrial pacing as a control, left ventricular pacing to produce right bundle branch block (RBBB), and right ventricular pacing for LBBB; 1. intramuscular pressure in the interventricular septum, 2. blood flow of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) measured by an electromagnetic flowmeter; 3. regional myocardial blood flow (MBF) determined at three sites, including the interventricular septum, LAD area, and left circumflex coronary artery (LCx) area using the H2-washout method. Aortic pressure, left ventricular pressure, and M-mode echocardiograms were recorded during the procedures. During right ventricular pacing, LAD flow remained unchanged; whereas MBF at the interventricular septum decreased from 99.6 +/- 23.4 to 79.2 +/- 17.6 ml/min/100 g, but MBF at the LCx area increased from 103.2 +/- 19.8 to 122 +/- 18.4 ml/min/100 g. In contrast, there were no significant changes in regional flow in any sites during left ventricular pacing. During right ventricular pacing, an early systolic dip was observed in the septal wall concomitantly with the onset of rise in intramuscular pressure in the interventricular septum. However, the beginning of the rise in left ventricular pressure was delayed 33 +/- 4 msec after that of the septal intramuscular pressure. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Soybean proteome database: a data resource for plant differential omics.

The Soybean Proteome Database aims to be a data repository for functional analyses of soybean responses to flooding injury, recognized as a major constraint for establishment and production of this plant. The current release contains 21 reference maps of soybean (Glycine max cv. Enrei) proteins electrophoresed on two-dimensional polyacrylamide gels of which the samples were collected from several organs, tissues and organelles. These reference maps include 7311 detected proteins and 532 identified proteins, or proteins for which a sequence or peptide peak has been determined. The database is searchable by protein properties such as accession number, description and isoelectric point and molecular weight range. The Soybean Proteome Database also integrates multiple "omes". An omics table reveals relationships among 106 mRNAs, 51 proteins and 89 metabolites that vary over time under flooding stress. The tabulated metabolites are anchored to a metabolome network. A unified temporal-profile tag attached to the mRNAs, proteins and metabolites facilitates retrieval of the data based on the temporal expression profiles. A graphical user interface based on dynamic HTML facilitates viewing the metabolome network as well as the profiles of multiple omes in a uniform manner. The entire database is available at http://proteome.dc. affrc.go. jp/Soybean/.
Fostering Sustainable Travel Behavior: Role of Sustainability Labels and Goal-Directed Behavior Regarding Touristic Services

Individuals around the globe engage in sustainable consumption in their everyday life, e.g., when it comes to individual transportation. Although tourism behavior contributes to global carbon emissions to a considerable extent, consumers’ awareness of sustainability in the tourism industry is still underresearched. Placing eco-labels next to tourist offers on websites might direct consumer’s perception towards more sustainable offers. By employing eye-tracking techniques and surveys, this research aimed at linking information about sustainable tourist offers, perception of eco-labels and subsequent perception and preferences of tourism services. In Study 1, eight existing hotel offers with sustainability certification (four different labels) were selected and their websites presented to 48 participants (four websites each), whose eye movements were tracked. After looking at each website, they rated the overall appearance of the website. Based on the results, in the second study, participants’ (n = 642) awareness of labels, their values and attitudes regarding sustainable behavior were found to influence their preference for certified tour operators. In addition, individuals’ ideas of their perfect holidays were captured to allow a better understanding of their motivation. This research proposes implementing appropriate sustainable labeling in the tourism industry to increase awareness about sustainability among travelers and subsequently increase sustainable travel behavior.
Partial truths in the pursuit of patient safety

The paper explores several issues in the form of partial truths that dominate current thinking as investigators continue their pursuit of patient safety. Among the partial truths examined—cast as bipolar orientations—are evidence-based medicine versus quality improvement, ‘knowledge in the head’ versus ‘knowledge in the world’, sharp end versus blunt end, reporting systems versus local knowledge, changing beliefs versus changing behaviour and system components versus system interdependencies. The paper provides a cautionary note regarding the downside of creating dichotomies that tend to assert too much. An enhanced understanding of patient safety will likely result from rising above bipolar orientations and valuing them as partial approaches to a complex and dynamic problem space.
Four-Wire Unidirectional Three-Phase/Level/Switch (VIENNA) Rectifier

This paper presents a four-wire Vienna rectifier (VIENNA4) and proposes a control system capable of balancing the partial DC link voltages in both symmetrical and asymmetrical loads. The main application for this type of rectifier is a transformerless AC-DC-AC converter used in uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). The proposed control scheme is verified by simulations and the measurements from the prototype. The rectifier system was designed to operate at a nominal output power of 10 RW with a DC link voltage of 700 V. The digital implementation of the control system and the modulator are realised with Motorola MPC555 microcontroller
Prophylactic immunization against experimental leishmaniasis. II. Further characterization of the protective immunity against fatal Leishmania tropica infection induced by irradiated promastigotes.

The genetic vulnerability of BALB/c mice to Leishmania tropica (L. major) infection renders them incapable of controlling a primary cutaneous lesion that leads to uniformly fatal visceral disease. Potent, long-lasting protection involving both lesion healing and survival can be induced by repeated prophylactic i.v. immunization with gamma-irradiated (150K rad) L. tropica promastigotes. The effect is not dependent on continuing viability or cellular invasiveness of the irradiated parasites because their effective immunogenicity withstands heating at 56 degrees C for 1 hr. Immunity is not stage specific and encompasses both amastigote and promastigote challenges. Similar prophylaxis can be induced by immunization with heterologous irradiated L. donovani promastigotes. Repeated i.v. immunization with irradiated L. tropica promastigotes induces an antibody response in the isotype sequence M leads to G1/G3 leads to G2a/G2b leads to A with substantially higher titres than are found in response to the infection itself. Splenectomy before immunization drastically reduces this antibody response without incurring any impairment of the extent of protection. Passive transfer of large amounts (up to 10 ml) of hyperimmune serum (or isotype fractions thereof) throughout the first 8 wk of infection fails to arrest disease progression during this period. Despite the previously described lack of any detectable cutaneous DTH reactivity, which has hitherto correlated with protective cell-mediated immunity, the results obtained do not support attribution of an alternative causal role to the humoral response.
A photosensitive polyimide based method for an easy fabrication of multichannel neural electrodes

To develop practical and inexpensive multichannel neural electrodes, we designed and fabricated photosensitive polyimide based flexible multichannel neural electrodes using MEMS technologies. Compared to a conventional micromachining with non-photosensitive materials, the advantage of applying photosensitive polyimide is the elimination of the dry etching, which involves the complex multilevel processes for controlling the etching conditions to define the outline of the neural electrodes and expose the microelectrodes. Thus, photosensitive polyimide allows more options in optimization of the configuration and size of neural electrodes depending on experimental purposes, and enables fabrication at a lower cost with improvement of process yields.
Assessment of brain metabolites change during visual sexual stimulation in healthy women using functional MR spectroscopy.

INTRODUCTION Numerous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies demonstrated the key brain areas associated with visual sexual arousal. However, the changes in brain metabolites involved in sexual stimuli have not been reported. AIM This study utilized functional MR spectroscopy (fMRS) to evaluate the changes in brain metabolites associated with sexual arousal induced by stimulation with erotic video clips in healthy women. METHODS Twenty-three healthy, right-handed women (38.4 ± 10.0 years) participated in (1) H-fMRS and fMRI studies. T1 and T2 MR images were used for voxel localization of the anterior cingulate gyrus, which is one of the most important key centers associated with sexual arousal. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The changes of brain metabolites were measured using (1) H-fMRS during time-course activation: "before," "during," and "after" visual sexual stimulation. The time-course variation of the brain metabolites was analyzed by the repeated-measures analysis of variance. RESULTS The CVmean of all the metabolites had <30% (range, 9-29%). The ICCs of α-glutamine-glutamate (Glx), choline (Cho), β·γ-Glx, N-acetylaspartate (NAA) and lactate (Lac) all exceeded 0.6. However, myo-inositol (mI) and lipid (Lip) were <0.6. The concentration of brain metabolites including α-Glx, β·γ-Glx, Cho, and Lac comparatively increased significantly during visual sexual stimulation. CONCLUSIONS (1) H-fMRS, for the first time, was applied to assess the brain metabolic changes during visually-evoked sexual arousal. The fMRS outcomes in relation to functional MRI data will be useful to understand the neural mechanism associated with sexual arousal.
No-reference Image Quality Assessment Algorithm Based on Wavelet Energy and Texture Analysis

A new no-reference image quality assessment(QA) algorithm based on wavelet energy and texture analysis (WETA) is proposed in this paper. The detection of common distortion metrics, like block effects, blurring and noise is the basis of WETA algorithm. The wavelet energy difference is used as macroscopic statistical feature to compensate for the limitation of basic distortion detection, which is obtained by natural lossless images energy model. To cover the masking effect of local background and brightness to distortion performance in human eye, this paper utilizes the derivative features of gray level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM) to represent texture feature and image complexity. Finally, the objective quality assessment method is given by fusing distortion performance, wavelet energy difference and texture information into BP neural network for studying. Experiments show that WETA is high consistent to subjective QA scores without referring to original image, and less time-consuming.
Obesity, race/ethnicity and life course socioeconomic status across the transition from adolescence to adulthood

Background: Differences in the association of socioeconomic status (SES) with obesity may underlie the racial/ethnic disparities in obesity that increase dramatically across the transition to adulthood in the United States. The aim of this study was to examine racial/ethnic differences in the influence of life course SES on longitudinal obesity patterns from adolescence to adulthood. Methods: Latent class analysis was used on a nationally representative, diverse sample of 12 940 adolescents followed into young adulthood (mean age = 21.7 years) to identify life course SES group profiles based on SES data in adolescence and young adulthood. Gender-stratified multinomial logistic regression models estimated the association of SES groups with obesity incidence and persistence versus staying non-obese. Results: No significant interactions with race/ethnicity were observed, although racial/ethnic minorities had the highest obesity risk across SES groups. Racial/ethnic-pooled associations between disadvantaged SES exposure and higher obesity risk were strong but differed by gender. Males with a disadvantaged background who experienced early transitions into the labour force, marriage and residential independence had the highest risk of obesity incidence (relative risk ratio (RRR) = 1.64; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.12 to 2.40), while females exposed to persistent adversity were at highest risk (RRR = 3.01, 95% CI 1.95 to 4.66). In general, SES group membership had a stronger relationship with obesity persistence than incidence. Conclusions: The relationship between SES and obesity patterns is similar across race/ethnicity and differs by gender during the transition to adulthood. However, stronger associations with obesity persistence and enduring racial/ethnic disparities in obesity risk across SES groups suggest that these social factors play a larger role in disparities earlier in the life course.
HPV Prevalence in cytomorphologically normal cervical scrapes of pregnant women as determined by PCR: The age‐related pattern

Diverging data exist on human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence in cytomorphologically normal scrapes during pregnancy. The prevalence of HPV was therefore investigated by polymerase chain reaction method (PCR) in cytomorphologically normal scrapes of 709 pregnant women and 3, 948 non‐pregnant women visiting the same hospital during the same time period. The prevalence of all types of HPV among pregnant women was 9.6% (68/709) and the high risk HPV types 16 and 18 were found in 3.1% (22/709). In the non‐pregnant women the prevalence of all types of HPV was 10.9% (432/3, 948) with 2.9% (116/3, 948) HPV types 16 and 18. The highest prevalence of HPV was present in women at younger ages in both groups. With increasing age the prevalence declines from about 19% (15–25 yrs) to 5% (40–49 yrs). The age‐adjusted odds ratio of prevalence of all types of HPV in pregnant versus non‐pregnant women was 0.73 (95% CI 0.56–;0.96, P = 0.025) and statistically significant. When HPV types 16 and 18 were considered, significant differences were not found. HPV of all types and types 16/18 prevalence was higher in the second half of pregnancy than in the first part but did not reach statistical significance. High HPV copy numbers in the scrapes were found during the first half of the pregnancy and not during the second half using a semi‐quantitative HPV 16/18 PCR detection method. Since the difference in HPV prevalence between non‐pregnant and pregnant women is very small, it is concluded that HPV prevalence in cytomorphologically normal smears is hardly influenced by pregnancy. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Object-mediated innovation: Case study of adventures in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan

In the new economic era, cross-boundary innovation is a critical topic, particularly in the cultural and creative industries. In this study, we introduce knowledge management literature to indicate that there are at least three frontiers of knowledge that cross domains: (a) knowledge that must be transferred to resolve syntactic differences, which requires establishing a common ground; (b) knowledge that must be translated to resolve semantic differences; and (c) knowledge that must be transformed to satisfy the interests of two parties. To facilitate the cross-boundary sharing of knowledge, a boundary object was proposed for establishing a communication interface. This study examined the collaboration between the National Palace Museum (NPM) and Digimax that was undertaken to develop a film “Adventures in the NPM. ” The research objective was to analyze the process of co-creating this film and the mutual exchange and sharing of knowledge. We examined the data by conducting triangulation through multiple sources. The results showed that the cross-boundary sharing of knowledge can be divided into three types, namely, translation, the process by which animated characters are converted into heritage; transformation from heritage significance into animated stories; and transcendence, the cultural implications derived from the symbolic meaning. We also identified the boundary objects of each process. In conclusion, this study contributes to the literature of cross-domain knowledge management and the practices of creative industries.
Combating fake news: an agenda for research and action

Drawn from presentations by Yochai Benkler (Harvard), Adam Berinsky (MIT), Helen Boaden (BBC), Katherine Brown (Council on Foreign Relations), Kelly Greenhill (Tufts and Harvard), David Lazer (Northeastern), Filippo Menczer (Indiana), Miriam Metzger (UC Santa Barbara), Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth), Eli Pariser (UpWorthy), Gordon Pennycook (Yale), Lori Robertson (FactCheck.org), David Rothschild (Microsoft Research), Michael Schudson (Columbia), Adam Sharp (formerly Twitter), Steven Sloman (Brown), Cass Sunstein (Harvard), Emily Thorson (Boston College), and Duncan Watts (Microsoft Research).
Understanding the relationship between egg-and antigen-based diagnostics of Schistosoma mansoni infection pre-and post-treatment in Uganda Additional le 1-Detailed model description

The model is based on a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between an individual's true infection status (which is unobserved), their intensity of parasite infection (also unobserved) and their detectability by the di erent diagnostics. We rst describe the model for their true infection status and then the model for Kato-Katz (KK) and Circulating Cathodic Antigen (CCA). This supplementary material extends the model description from the main manuscript, with clari cations for the choice of distributions and other model parameters, as well as more details on the model posteriors and t to the data.