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    China Historical Christian Database version 2.5
    (2024-12-04) Mayfield, Alex; Ireland, Daryl; Menegon, Eugenio; Frei, Greta
    The China Historical Christian Database (CHCD) is a rich repository of historical, relational, and geographical data about Christianity in China from 1550 to 1950. The CHCD addresses these challenges by curating an open-access database built in Neo4j that records information about Christian institutions in China and those that worked inside of them. Drawing on historical sources, the CHCD contains temporal, relational, and geographic data. The CHCD will enable scholars to leverage geospatial analysis, network science, and data analytics to examine the religious, political, philosophical, and technological exchanges between China and the West.
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    Improved simplified clinical algorithm for identifying patients eligible for immediate initiation of antiretroviral therapy for HIV (SLATE II): protocol for a randomized evaluation
    (2024-11) Rosen, Sydney; Maskew, Mhairi; Brennan, Alana Teresa; Fox, Matthew P.; Vezi, L.; Ehrenkranz, Peter D.; Venter, WD Francois
    BACKGROUND The World Health Organization recommends rapid (≤ 7 days) or same-day initiation of antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV-positive patients. South Africa adopted this recommendation in 2017, but multiple clinic visits, long waiting times, and delays for laboratory tests remain common. Streamlined approaches to same-day initiation that allow the majority of patients to start ART immediately, while ensuring that patients who do require additional services receive them, are needed to achieve national and international treatment program goals. METHODS/DESIGN: The SLATE II (Simplified Algorithm for Treatment Eligibility) study is an individually randomized evaluation of a clinical algorithm to reliably determine a patient's eligibility for immediate ART initiation without waiting for laboratory results or additional clinic visits. It differs from the earlier SLATE I study in management of patients with symptoms of tuberculosis (under SLATE II these patients may be started on ART immediately) and other criteria for immediate initiation. SLATE II will randomize (1:1) 600 adult, HIV-positive patients who present for HIV testing or care and are not yet on ART in South Africa. Patients randomized to the standard arm will receive standard-of-care ART initiation from clinic staff. Patients randomized to the intervention arm will be administered a symptom report, medical history, brief physical exam, and readiness assessment. Symptomatic patients will also have a tuberculosis (TB) module with lipoarabinomannan antigen of mycobacteria test. Patients who have satisfactory results for all four components will be dispensed antiretrovirals (ARVs) immediately, at the same clinic visit. Patients who have any negative results will be referred for further investigation, care, counseling, tests, or other services prior to being dispensed ARVs. Follow-up will be by passive medical record review. The primary outcomes will be ART initiation in ≤ 7 days and retention in care 8 months after study enrollment. DISCUSSION: SLATE II improves upon the SLATE I study by reducing the number of reasons for delaying ART initiation and allowing more patients with TB symptoms to start ART on the day of diagnosis. If successful, SLATE II will provide a simple and streamlined approach that can readily be adopted in other settings without investment in additional technology.
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    Seminary of the wild research data
    Stahl, Wanda
    Practices and strategies for sustaining resilient spiritual leadership are critical in this time of climate crisis. Learnings from participants in the Seminary of the Wild eco-ministry certification program offer guidance for engaging in practices of education and formation that can help people of faith meet the challenges of these times and meaningfully contribute to the flourishing of their communities and the planet.
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    Dataset for Clarke et al. 2024
    (Science Advances, 2024) Clarke, John
    Mars’ water history is fundamental to understanding Earth-like planet evolution. Water escapes to space as atoms, and hydrogen atoms escape faster than deuterium giving an increase in the residual D/H ratio. The present ratio reflects the total water Mars has lost. Observations with the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) spacecraft provide atomic densities and escape rates for H and D. Large increases near perihelion observed each martian year are consistent with a strong upwelling of water vapor. Short-term changes require processes in addition to thermal escape, likely from atmospheric dynamics and superthermal atoms. Including escape from hot atoms, both H and D escape rapidly and the escape fluxes are limited by resupply from the lower atmosphere. In this paradigm for the escape of water, the D/H ratio of the escaping atoms and the enhancement in water are determined by upwelling water vapor and atmospheric dynamics rather than by the specific details of atomic escape.
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    Dataset: Modeling the concentration enhancement and selectivity of plastic particle transport in sea spray aerosols
    (2024) Dubitsky, Lena; Deane, Grant; Stokes, M. Dale; Bird, James
    This dataset was created from a combination of theoretical models investigating the concentration enhancement and selectivity of plastic particle transport in sea spray aerosols. Following the approach and assumptions outlined in a paper with the same title, the data reports the theoretical enrichment expected in film drops and jet drops on a per bubble size per particle size basis. The bounds of the enrichment depend on the attachment efficiency, which can vary from zero to one, and representative values for the model are calculated for both extremes. Furthermore, this enrichment combines with the bubble-size distribution modeled from a breaking wave along with the plastic particle size distribution modeled from observations to produce an estimate for the number flux of ejected particles per wave on a per bubble size per particle size basis. Calculation results are also provided for the particle surface area and volume flux on a per bubble size per particle size basis from bursting bubbles with and without scavenging (attachment efficiency one or zero). Finally, the ratios of the enrichment, number, area, and volume are computed when integrated across particle size and bubble size.
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    Raw data for Chapter 22 "Phytolith results from Tomb 16/H/50"
    (In: Megiddo VII: The Shmunis Excavations of Tomb 50 and Burial 45. Editors: Melissa S. Cradic, Matthew J. Adams, and Israel Finkelstein. Tel Aviv University Press., 2024-01-01) Wade, Kali R.; Marston, John M.
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    Mechanical MNIST – Unsupervised Learning Dataset
    (2023) Nguyen, Quan; Lejeune, Emma
    The Mechanical MNIST dataset collection contains Finite Element simulations of heterogeneous materials undergoing applied displacement. Here, we introduce a new benchmark dataset designed specifically for assessing unsupervised learning methods where the goal is to discover patterns from unlabeled data. To obtain this dataset, we generate displacement fields from Finite Element simulations and uniformly sample approximately 1500 displacement markers on each domain of interest. Since unsupervised learning aims to identify patterns in labeled data, we provide a dataset where the primary objective is to explore unlabeled data, while simultaneously providing “ground truth” information to ultimately evaluate the efficacy of different unsupervised learning approaches. It is important to note however, that in the intended applications of these methods, ground truth information will likely be absent, particularly in experimental studies of intricate heterogeneous soft tissue. Broadly speaking, this computationally generated dataset mimics the behavior of soft materials, while simultaneously providing ground truth information for method evaluation. In total, the dataset contains the following combinations of conditions: 6 different heterogeneous material patterns, 2 constitutive models, 4 controlled boundary conditions, and 1 random boundary condition. Here, we include the tutorials for our dataset with the name “dataset_tutorials.pdf”. This document contains the information to understand the contents of our dataset, as well as the instructions on how to use the data. The many options from our dataset should enable researchers to explore unsupervised learning methods on soft materials.
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    Dataset for: New Insights into the Role of Atmospheric Transport and Mixing on Column and Surface Concentrations of NO2 at a Coastal Urban Site
    (2023) Geddes, Jeffrey; Adams, Taylor
    This entry contains the raw nitrogen dioxide column abundance collected from Pandora direct sun spectrometer measurements at Boston University described in the publication: "New Insights into the Role of Atmospheric Transport and Mixing on Column and Surface Concentrations of NO2 at a Coastal Urban Site", published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JD038237).
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    Integration of point-of-care screening for type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension with COVID-19 rapid antigen screening in Johannesburg, South Africa
    (PLoS ONE, 2023-04-20) Brennan, Alana Teresa; Meyer-Rath, Gesine; Vetter, Beatrice; Majam, Mohammed; Msolomba, Vanessa; Venter, Francois; Carmona, Sergio; Gordon, Adena; Kao, Kekeletso
    Aims: We sought to evaluate the yield and linkage-to-care for diabetes and hypertension screening alongside a study assessing the use of rapid antigen tests for COVID-19 in taxi ranks in Johannesburg, South Africa. Methods: Participants were recruited from Germiston taxi rank. We recorded results of blood glucose (BG), blood pressure (BP), waist circumference, smoking status, height, and weight. Participants who had elevated BG (fasting>7.0; random>11.1mmol/L) and/or BP (diastolic>90 and systolic>140mmHg) were referred to their clinic and phoned to confirm linkage. Results: 1169 participants were enrolled and screened for diabetes and hypertension. Combining participants with a previous diagnosis of diabetes (n=23, 2%; 95% CI:1.3-2.9%) and those that had an elevated BG measurement (n=60, 5.2%; 95%CI:4.1-6.6%) at study enrollment, we estimated an overall indicative prevalence of diabetes of 7.1% (95% CI:5.7-8.7%). When combining those with known hypertension at study enrollment (n=124, 10.6%; 95%CI:8.9-12.5%) and those with elevated BP (n=202; 17.3%; 95%CI:15.2-19.5%), we get an overall prevalence of hypertension of 27.9% (95% CI:25.4-30.1%). Only 31.7% of those with elevated BG and 16.0% of those with elevated BP linked-to-care. Conclusion: By opportunistically leveraging existing COVID-19 screening in South Africa to screen for diabetes and hypertension, 24% of participants received a potential new diagnosis. We had poor linkage-to-care following screening. Future research should evaluate options for improving linkage-to-care, and evaluate the large-scale feasibility of this simple screening tool.
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    Dataset for: Implications of sea breezes on air quality monitoring in a coastal urban environment, evidence from high resolution modeling of NO2 and O3
    Geddes, Jeffrey; Wang, Bo
    This data contains observations and chemical transport model output relevant to an analysis of sea breeze impacts on local air quality in Boston. Model output are from a summer 2019 WRF-Chem simulation over the Northeast US, including the greater Boston region. Observational assets were compiled in order to evaluate the model performance.
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    Dataset: effects of salinity beyond coalescence on submicron aerosol distributions
    (2022-11-18) Dubitsky, Lena; Bird, James; Deane, Grant; Stokes, M. Dale
    This dataset was created from laboratory experiments investigating the effect of salinity on submicron aerosol production. Bubbles generated in solutions of sodium acetate and artificial seawater were tested with corresponding measurements of the submicron aerosol size distribution. The bubbling below and above the surface of the liquid are imaged.
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    Dataset for: Mate guarding by male orangutans in Gunung Palung National Park, Knott Lab
    Scott, Amy; Banes, Graham; Setiadi, Wuryantari; Saragih, Jessica; Susanto, Wahyu; Mitra Setia, Tatang; Knott, Cheryl
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    MAHMAZ maternity waiting home: setup cost dataset
    Juntunen, Allison; Scott, Nancy A.; Kaiser, Jeanette L.; Vian, Taryn; Ngoma, Thandiwe; Mataka, Kaluba K.; Bwalya, Misheck; Sakanga, Viviane; Kalaba, David; Biemba, Godfrey; Rockers, Peter C.; Hamer, Davidson H.; Long, Lawrence C.
    These datasets detail 1) the setup costs expended to set up 10 maternity waiting homes in rural Zambia and 2) the monthly occupancy of the maternity waiting homes. The former includes the date of purchase, cost category, and the purchase amount in Kwacha. The latter describes how many patients visited the maternity waiting home in the last year of our project. We utilized this data to create a manuscript describing the setup costs of these homes, and the cost per admission to the homes, to serve as a guide for future implementors.
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    Dataset: observational study of the clinical performance of a Public-Private Partnership national referral hospital network in Lesotho: Do improvements last over time?
    Scott, Nancy A.; Kaiser, Jeanette L.; Jack, Brian W.; Nkabane-Nkholongo, Elizabeth L.; Juntunen, Allison; Nash, Tshema; Alade, Mayowa Oluwatosin; Vian, Taryn
    Public-private partnerships (PPP) may increase healthcare quality but lack longitudinal evidence for success. The Queen ‘Mamohato Memorial Hospital (QMMH) in Lesotho is one of Africa's first healthcare PPPs. We compare data from 2012 and 2018 on capacity, utilization, quality, and outcomes to understand if early documented successes have been sustained using the same measures over time. In this observational study using administrative and clinical data, we assessed beds, admissions, average length of stay (ALOS), outpatient visits, and patient outcomes. We measured triage time and crash cart stock through direct observation in 2013 and 2020. Operational hospital beds increased from 390 to 410. Admissions decreased (-5.3%) while outpatient visits increased (3.8%). ALOS increased from 5.1 to 6.5 days. Occupancy increased from 82% to 99%; half of the wards had occupancy rates ≥90%, and Neonatal ward occupancy was 209%. The proportion of crash cart stock present (82.9% to 73.8%) and timely triage (84.0% to 27.6%) decreased. While overall mortality decreased (8.0% to 6.5%) and neonatal mortality overall decreased (18.0% to 16.3%), mortality among very low birth weight neonates increased (30.2% to 36.8%). Declines in overall hospital mortality are promising. Yet, continued high occupancy could compromise infection control and impede response to infections, such as COVID-19. High occupancy in the Neonatal ward suggests that the population need for neonatal care outpaces QMMH capacity; improvements should be addressed at the hospital and systemic levels. The increase in ALOS is acceptable for a hospital meant to take the most critical cases. The decline in crash cart stock completeness and timely triage may affect access to emergency treatment. While the partnership itself ended earlier than anticipated, our evaluation suggests that generally the hospital under the PPP was operational, providing high-level, critically needed services, and continued to improve patient outcomes. Quality at QMMH remained substantially higher than at the former Queen Elizabeth II hospital.
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    Isoprene and soil NOx impacts on nonattainment ozone from GEOS-CHem
    (2022) Geddes, Jeffrey
    Ozone (O3) is a criteria air pollutant that continues to pose a threat to more than one hundred million Americans each year, despite progress in regulating precursor emissions. In many O3-polluted areas, the role of natural emissions of isoprene in the production of ground-level O3 has been well recognized, but this chemistry depends strongly on local anthropogenic emissions which have been changing rapidly. We use an updated estimate of anthropogenic emissions to demonstrate that many areas that remain in nonattainment of the federally mandated O3 standard are now much less sensitive to natural isoprene emissions, with biogenic nitrogen oxide emissions from soils becoming more and more important. The role of these soil emissions on O3 in nonattainment areas has not been well characterized, but, as we show in our companion article in JGR-Atmospheres, this will become increasingly necessary for good O3 policy in nonattainment areas.
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    Mechanical MNIST – Distribution Shift
    (2022) Yuan, Lingxiao; Park, Harold S.; Lejeune, Emma
    The Mechanical MNIST – Distribution Shift dataset contains the results of finite element simulation of heterogeneous material subject to large deformation due to equibiaxial extension at a fixed boundary displacement of d = 7.0. The result provided in this dataset is the change in strain energy after this equibiaxial extension. The Mechanical MNIST dataset is generated by converting the MNIST bitmap images (28x28 pixels) with range 0 - 255 to 2D heterogeneous blocks of material (28x28 unit square) with varying modulus in range 1- s. The original bitmap images are sourced from the MNIST Digits dataset, (http://www.pymvpa.org/datadb/mnist.html) which corresponds to Mechanical MNIST – MNIST, and the EMNIST Letters dataset (https://www.nist.gov/itl/products-and-services/emnist-dataset) which correspond to Mechanical MNIST – EMNIST Letters. The Mechanical MNIST – Distribution Shift dataset is specifically designed to demonstrate three types of data distribution shift: (1) covariate shift, (2) mechanism shift, and (3) sampling bias, for all of which the training and testing environments are drawn from different distributions. For each type of data distribution shift, we have one dataset generated from the Mechanical MNIST bitmaps and one from the Mechanical MNIST – EMNIST Letters bitmaps. For the covariate shift dataset, the training dataset is collected from two environments (2500 samples from s = 100, and 2500 samples from s = 90), and the test data is collected from two additional environments (2000 samples from s = 75, and 2000 samples from s = 50). For the mechanism shift dataset, the training data is identical to the training data in the covariate shift dataset (i.e., 2500 samples from s = 100, and 2500 samples from s = 90), and the test datasets are from two additional environments (2000 samples from s = 25, and 2000 samples from s = 10).  For the sampling bias dataset, datasets are collected such that each datapoint is selected from the broader MNIST and EMNIST inputs bitmap selection by a probability which is controlled by a parameter r. The training data is collected from two environments (9800 from r = 15, and 200 from r = -2), and the test data is collected from three different environments (2000 from r = -5, 2000 from r = -10, and 2000 from r = 1).  Thus, in the end we have 6 benchmark datasets with multiple training and testing environments in each. The enclosed document “folder_description.pdf'” shows the organization of each zipped folder provided on this page. The code to reproduce these simulations is available on GitHub (https://github.com/elejeune11/Mechanical-MNIST/blob/master/generate_dataset/Equibiaxial_Extension_FEA_test_FEniCS.py). 
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    Dataset for: Mother-offspring proximity maintenance as an infanticide avoidance strategy in Bornean orangutans
    (2022-05-19) Scott, Amy; Knott, Cheryl; Mitra Setia, Tatang; Susanto, Tri Wahyu
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    Simplified clinical algorithm for identifying patints eligible for immediate initiation of antiretroviral therapy for HIV (SLATE): protocol for a randomised evaluation
    (Boston University, 2017-05) Rosen, Sydney; Fox, Matthew P.; Larson, Bruce A.; Brennan, Alana Teresa; Maskew, Mhairi; Tsikhutsu, Isaac; Ehrenkranz, Peter D.; Venter, WD Francois
    INTRODUCTION: African countries are rapidly adopting guidelines to offer antiretroviral therapy (ART) to all HIV-infected individuals, regardless of CD4 count. For this policy of 'treat all' to succeed, millions of new patients must be initiated on ART as efficiently as possible. Studies have documented high losses of treatment-eligible patients from care before they receive their first dose of antiretrovirals (ARVs), due in part to a cumbersome, resource-intensive process for treatment initiation, requiring multiple clinic visits over a several-week period. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The Simplified Algorithm for Treatment Eligibility (SLATE) study is an individually randomised evaluation of a simplified clinical algorithm for clinicians to reliably determine a patient's eligibility for immediate ART initiation without waiting for laboratory results or additional clinic visits. SLATE will enroll and randomize (1:1) 960 adult, HIV-positive patients who present for HIV testing or care and are not yet on ART in South Africa and Kenya. Patients randomized to the standard arm will receive routine, standard of care ART initiation from clinic staff. Patients randomized to the intervention arm will be administered a symptom report, medical history, brief physical exam and readiness assessment. Patients who have positive (satisfactory) results for all four components of SLATE will be dispensed ARVs immediately, at the same clinic visit. Patients who have any negative results will be referred for further clinical investigation, counseling, tests or other services prior to being dispensed ARVs. After the initial visit, follow-up will be by passive medical record review. The primary outcomes will be ART initiation ≤28 days and retention in care 8 months after study enrollment. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethics approval has been provided by the Boston University Institutional Review Board, the University of the Witwatersrand Human Research Ethics Committee (Medical) and the KEMRI Scientific and Ethics Review Unit. Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and made widely available through presentations and briefing documents.