Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nighttime Bracing Versus Observation for Early Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis

Background: Spinal bracing is widely utilized in patients with moderate severity adolescent idiopathic scoliosis with the goal of preventing curve progression and therefore preventing the need for surgical correction. Bracing is typically initiated in patients with a primary curve angle between 25 and 40 degrees, who are Risser sign 0 to 2 and <1-year postmenarchal. The purpose of this study is to determine whether nighttime bracing using a Charleston bending brace is effective in preventing progression of smaller curves (15 to 25 degrees) in skeletally immature, premenarchal female patients relative to current standard of care (observation for curves <25 degrees). Methods: Premenarchal, Risser 0 female patients presenting to 2 pediatric orthopaedic specialty practices for evaluation of idiopathic scoliosis with Cobb angle measurements between 15 and 25 degrees were selected. They were randomized by location to receive nighttime bending brace treatment or observation. Patients in the observation group were converted to fulltime TLSO wear if they progressed to >25 degrees primary curve Cobb angle. Curve progression was monitored with minimum 2-year follow-up. Results: Sixteen patients in the observation group and 21 patients in the bracing group completed 2-year follow-up. All patients in the observation group progressed to fulltime bracing threshold. In the nighttime bracing group, 29% of the patients did not progress to 25 degrees primary curve magnitude. Rate of progression to surgical magnitude was similar in the 2 groups. Conclusions: Risser 0 patients presenting with mild idiopathic scoliosis are at high risk for progression to >25 degrees primary curve magnitude. Treatment with the Charleston nighttime bending brace may reduce progression to full-time bracing threshold. No difference in progression to surgical intervention was shown between nighttime bracing and observation for small curves. Level of Evidence: Level II—therapeutic study (prospective comparative study).
The Price of Cosmopolitanism: Globalization, Class Structure, and Language Endangerment in Shanghai

iv Acknowledgments . vi List of Figures . ix Chapter 1: Introduction.1 1.1 Linguistic and Social Background.5 1.1.1 Literary and Vernacular Chinese.5 1.1.2 Social Stratification in the Pre-reform Era (1949 – 1978). 8 1.1.3 Globalizing Shanghai.11 1.2 Analytical Framework.18 1.2.1 Language Ideology and Linguistic Capital.18 1.2.2 Right to the Global City.24 1.2.3 Nationalism versus Cosmopolitanism.31 1.3 Research Methods.41 1.4 Chapter Overview.46 Chapter 2: A Cosmopolitan Past.51 2.1 A Migrant City.52 2.1.1 Waves of Early Migration.55 2.1.2 During the Maoist Era.58 2.1.3 New Migrants.61 2.2 A Divided Landscape.68 2.2.1 Semi-Colonial Era.69 2.2.2 Transition of the Upper/Lower Corner Divide.76 2.3 A Hybrid Language.83 Chapter 3: “China Dream” vs Shanghai Dialect: The Impact of State Language Policies.91 3.1 A State Project.94 3.1.1 Legal Structure.98 3.1.2 National Campaigns and Workplace Regulations.100 3.2 Linguistic Capital Conversion.107 3.2.1 Aesthetic Values of Languages.109 3.2.2 Acquisition and Accumulation in School.113 3.2.3 Conversion on Two Markets.116 3.3 Rapid Endangerment.123 3.4 The Dialect Preservation Movement.130 3.4. 1 Role of the State.130 3.4. 2 Censored Voices.132 3.4. 3 Cultural Worth.135 3.5 Conclusion . 136
A Delphi examination of public sector ERP implementation issues

A Delphi survey of ERP life cycle management issues was conducted within five agencies of the Queensland government. The five agencies each implemented SAP Financials at around the same time using the services of a common implementation partner. Responses were elicited from ERP project participants, from managers at the agencies, and from users of the financial systems. Valid questionnaires were returned from 61respondents in the first round survey (response rate = 55%) and yielded 274 perceived issues. Through two rounds of the Delphi survey, these issues have been summarized and categorized into 10 major issue categories (with 38 sub-issues). The final survey round in which respondents will assign weights to these issues is currently underway. Lessons drawn from this study will assist in understanding the ERP life cycle and specific characteristics of the public sector ERP life cycle, and will provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of ERP systems for public sector organizations.
A human centromere antigen (CENP-B) interacts with a short specific sequence in alphoid DNA, a human centromeric satellite

We report the interaction between a human centromere antigen and an alphoid DNA, a human centromeric satellite DNA, which consists of 170- bp repeating units. A cloned alphoid DNA fragment incubated with a HeLa cell nuclear extract is selectively immunoprecipitated by the anticentromere sera from scleroderma patients. Immunoprecipitation of the DNA made by primer extension defines the 17-bp segment on the alphoid DNA that is required for formation of DNA-antigen complex. On the other hand, when proteins bound to the biotinylated alphoid DNA carrying the 17-bp motif are recovered by streptavidin agarose and immunoblotted, the 80-kD centromere antigen (CENP-B) is detected. DNA binding experiments for proteins immunoprecipitated with anticentromere serum, separated by gel electrophoresis, and transferred to a membrane strongly suggest that the 80-kD antigen specifically binds to the DNA fragment with the 17-bp motif. The 17-bp motif is termed the "CENP-B box. " Alphoid monomers with the CENP-B box are found in all the known alphoid subclasses, with varying frequencies, except the one derived from the Y chromosome so far cloned. These results imply that the interaction of the 80-kD centromere antigen with the CENP-B box in the alphoid repeats may play some crucial role in the formation of specified structure and/or function of human centromere.
The Effect of Osmotherapy and Tight Control of Acidosis on Early Graft Function among Deceased-Donor Kidney Transplant Recipients: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Reperfusion injury and the acid-base status of the transplant are important factors affecting post-transplantation graft function. Objective: We hypothesized that infusing hypertonic saline (HS) or tight control of acid-base status of the blood rushing through renal graft using sodium bicarbonate may have beneficial effects on early graft function. Methods: Candidates for deceased-donor kidney transplant were randomized into three groups. HS group (n=33) received 50 mL/kg normal saline (NS) titrated during operation plus 4 mL/kg of 5% HS just within graft reperfusion phase; bicarbonate group (n=37) was administered 60 mL/kg NS while their metabolic acidosis (base excess ≤5 mEq/L) was tightly corrected every 30 min with sodium bicarbonate; and a control group (n=36) that received 60 mL/kg normal saline while they were administered sodium bicarbonate only, if they encountered severe metabolic acidosis (base excess ≤15 mEq/L). The primary outcome was defined as early post-operative renal function evaluated based on serial serum creatinine levels. The study was registered in Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (IRCT2013122815841N19). Results: Post-operative early graft function improved significantly during the first 3 days in the intervention groups (p<0.05). However, that beneficial effect no longer remained at the same level after the day four. Conclusion: Timely administration of HS or tight control of metabolic acidosis with sodium bicarbonate infusion improve early renal function during renal transplant surgery.
Analyses of elliptical coplanar coupled waveguides and coplanar coupled waveguides with finite ground width

In this paper, the quasi-TEM characteristic parameters of elliptical coplanar coupled waveguides and coupled coplanar waveguide with a finite ground width configuration are presented and analyzed. Computer-aided design (CAD)-oriented fast, simple, and accurate analytic formulas are derived by using conformal mapping techniques, which provide satisfactory accuracy at microwave frequencies and lead to closed-form analytical solutions suitable for CAD software packages. The results for the odd- and even-mode characteristic impedance, effective dielectric constant, and coupling coefficient have been computed by these formulas. Good agreement between the present results and published results is observed. For the planar case, simulations have also been undertaken with Sonnet electromagnetic-circuit solver software. The computed results agree well with those of the simulation ones.
INVESTIGATION OF AN ORDER-UP-TO POLICY WITH CONDITIONAL EXPECTATION FORECASTING AND ARBITRARY LEAD-TIMES

We study the bullwhip and inventory variance problem in a single echelon of a supply chain with arbitrary lead-times. We assume three different classes of demand; uncorrelated white noise demand, autoregressive (AR) demand and autoregressive moving average (ARMA) demand. We use conditional expectation to generate minimum mean square error forecasts of demand to use in the Order-Up-To (OUT) replenishment policy. We notice that in some instances of the demand patterns this alone is enough to avoid the bullwhip effect. But this smoothing property is not realized for all demands. We introduce a proportional feedback controller into the OUT policy that allows us to meet the smoothing objective for all demands. To achieve this we use both state space and transfer function analysis. Although both methods yield different, useful insights into our problem during analysis, both approaches converge to the same solutions.
Information Dynamics in Small-World Boolean Networks

Small-world networks have been one of the most influential concepts in complex systems science, partly due to their prevalence in naturally occurring networks. It is often suggested that this prevalence is due to an inherent capability to store and transfer information efficiently. We perform an ensemble investigation of the computational capabilities of small-world networks as compared to ordered and random topologies. To generate dynamic behavior for this experiment, we imbue the nodes in these networks with random Boolean functions. We find that the ordered phase of the dynamics (low activity in dynamics) and topologies with low randomness are dominated by information storage, while the chaotic phase (high activity in dynamics) and topologies with high randomness are dominated by information transfer. Information storage and information transfer are somewhat balanced (crossed over) near the small-world regime, providing quantitative evidence that small-world networks do indeed have a propensity to combine comparably large information storage and transfer capacity.
On independent sets in hypergraphs

The independence number α(H) of a hypergraph H is the size of a largest set of vertices containing no edge of H. In this paper, we prove that if Hn is an n‐vertex (r+1) ‐uniform hypergraph in which every r‐element set is contained in at most d edges, where 00 satisfies cr∼r/e as r→∞ . The value of cr improves and generalizes several earlier results that all use a theorem of Ajtai, Komlós, Pintz, Spencer and Szemerédi (J Comb Theory Ser A 32 (1982), 321–335). Our relatively short proof extends a method due to Shearer (Random Struct Algorithms 7 (1995), 269–271) and Alon (Random Struct Algorithms 9 (1996), 271–278). The above statement is close to best possible, in the sense that for each r≥2 and all values of d∈ℕ , there are infinitely many Hn such that α(Hn)≤br(ndlog⁡nd)1/r where br>0 depends only on r. In addition, for many values of d we show br∼cr as r→∞ , so the result is almost sharp for large r. We give an application to hypergraph Ramsey numbers involving independent neighborhoods.Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 44, 224‐239, 2014
Searching for a Mate: Evidence from a Speed Dating Experiment *

We study dating behavior using data from a Speed Dating experiment where we generate random matching of subjects and create random variation in the number of potential partners. Our design allows us to directly observe individual decisions rather than just final matches. Women put greater weight on the intelligence and the race of partner, while men respond more to physical attractiveness. Moreover, men do not value women's intelligence or ambition when it exceeds their own. Also, we find that women exhibit a preference for men who grew up in affluent neighborhoods. Finally, male selectivity is invariant to group size, while female selectivity is strongly increasing in group size. We provide a theoretical framework for interpreting these results. * We are grateful to Lawrence Katz, Edward Glaeser, and three anonymous referees for valuable suggestions. We would also like to thank
Protein quality control as a strategy for cellular regulation: lessons from ubiquitin-mediated regulation of the sterol pathway.

Selective intracellular protein degradation is involved in every aspect of cellular life. A unifying theme in eukaryotic protein degradation is found in the tagging and destruction mechanism called the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS): a particular protein is targeted for degradation by the recursive covalent addition of the small protein ubiquitin (Ub), which leads to recognition of the resulting multiubiquitin chain by the 26S proteasome. The breadth of use of UPS in cellular life is allowed by the specificity of target protein recognition; in this way, drastic differences in protein half-life can be observed in the same cellular compartment, thus assuring the required specificity for a regulatory mechanism that is sufficiently flexible to destroy any cellular protein.
Metal-Poor Globular Clusters and Galaxy Formation

We demonstrate a significant (>5 σ) correlation between the mean color of metal-poor globular cluster (GC) systems and parent galaxy luminosity. A Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo method is introduced to find the mean color and is easily generalizable to quantify multimodality in other astronomical data sets. We derive a GC color-galaxy luminosity relation of the form Z ∝ L0.15±0.03. When combined with evidence against a single primordial GC metallicity-galaxy luminosity relation for protogalactic fragments, the existence of such a correlation is evidence against both accretion and major merger scenarios as an explanation of the entire metal-poor GC systems of luminous galaxies. However, our relation arises naturally in an in situ picture of GC formation and is consistent with the truncation of metal-poor GC formation by reionization. A further implication is that the ages of metal-poor GCs in dwarf galaxies constrain the main epoch of galaxy formation in hierarchical models. If the ages of old metal-poor GCs in Local Group dwarfs (≳11 Gyr) are typical of those in dwarfs elsewhere, then the bulk of galaxy assembly (at least in clusters and groups) must have occurred at z ≳ 2.5, contrary to the predictions of some structure formation models.
Multimedia News Summarization in Search

It is a necessary but challenging task to relieve users from the proliferative news information and allow them to quickly and comprehensively master the information of the whats and hows that are happening in the world every day. In this article, we develop a novel approach of multimedia news summarization for searching results on the Internet, which uncovers the underlying topics among query-related news information and threads the news events within each topic to generate a query-related brief overview. First, the hierarchical latent Dirichlet allocation (hLDA) model is introduced to discover the hierarchical topic structure from query-related news documents, and a new approach based on the weighted aggregation and max pooling is proposed to identify one representative news article for each topic. One representative image is also selected to visualize each topic as a complement to the text information. Given the representative documents selected for each topic, a time-bias maximum spanning tree (MST) algorithm is proposed to thread them into a coherent and compact summary of their parent topic. Finally, we design a friendly interface to present users with the hierarchical summarization of their required news information. Extensive experiments conducted on a large-scale news dataset collected from multiple news Web sites demonstrate the encouraging performance of the proposed solution for news summarization in news retrieval.
modern macroeconomics is on the Wrong track

E VERYONE is painfully aware that we are in the middle of a major global economic and financial crisis. During a visit to the London School of Economics late last year, Queen Elizabeth ll asked why no economists had forecast the crisis. But indeed some had sounded warnings. A more interesting question is why no one, including policymakers, was inclined to listen. Perhaps the most important reason was that, in the runup to the crisis, many were making large sums of money. Another, the subject of this article, is that the prevailing paradigm of macroeconomics allows no room for crises of the sort we are experiencing. Simply improving our macroeconomic analytical frameworks will likely not be sufficient to avoid future crises. Nevertheless, a reevaluation is necessary. There are many dead ends from which to escape, but there are also many promising strands of thought to be pursued.
The Economics of Knowledge Regulation: An Empirical Analysis of Knowledge Flows

Successful innovation depends on the management of a firm’s knowledge base. This paper empirically investigates the determinants of knowledge regulation. Using a unique survey dataset, the analysis suggests that RD concerning collaborative relationships, firms regulate knowledge outflow less regardless of whether they are using formal or informal private channels compared to using public channels. Presumably firms that acquire knowledge from competing firms through formal private channels compared to public channels, try to establish opaque and soundproof fences to surround them, whereas firms that acquire knowledge from collaborating firms through formal or informal private channels do not want to restrict circulation, but rather facilitate inter-firm knowledge exchange. Our results have important implications for academics and R&D managers alike.
A new ordering constraint solving method and its applications

We show that it is possible to transform any given LPO ordering constraint C into a finite equivalent set of constraints S for which a special kind of solutions can be obtained. This allows to compute the equalities that follow from ordering constraints, and to decide e.g. whether an ordering constrained equation is a tautology. Another application we develop here is a method to check ordered rewrite systems for (ground) confluence. •This work has been done during a half-year stay at the Max-Planck-lnstitut fiir Informatik, Im Stadtwald, D-W-6600 Saarbriicken, Germany. Author's Permanent address: Technical University of Catalonia, Pau Gargallo 5, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: robertoCilsi. upc. es.
The Uneasy Triumph of a Concept: The ‘Disease’ Conception of Alcoholism

This paper discusses some aspects of the growth, development and influence of the “disease” conception of alcoholism, the positivistic base of this conception, and on the criticisms centering on the validity and usefulness of the conception to fully explain the alcoholism phenomenon. Though the ‘disease conception’ has seemingly triumphed, it occupies an uneasy status, for the tempo of the criticism of the concept has increased in recent years, in these (and other) areas: (1) the alleged “predisposing characteristics” of alcoholics; (2) alcoholism as a progressive, inexorable process; (3) the notion of supposed “loss of control,” (4) the necessity of abstinence in treatment; (5) the reification of the concept; (6) the all-inclusive properties of the concept. It is suggested that more modest, less ambitious, more phenomenologically oriented terminology and concepts be employed, to do some justice to the complex and variegated nature of the alcoholism phenomenon.
Novel Human Interleukin-15 Agonists

IL-15 is an immunostimulatory cytokine trans-presented with the IL-15 receptor α-chain to the shared IL-2/IL-15Rβ and common γ-chains displayed on the surface of T cells and NK cells. To further define the functionally important regions of this cytokine, activity and binding studies were conducted on human IL-15 muteins generated by site-directed mutagenesis. Amino acid substitutions of the asparagine residue at position 72, which is located at the end of helix C, were found to provide both partial agonist and superagonist activity, with various nonconservative substitutions providing enhanced activity. Particularly, the N72D substitution provided a 4–5-fold increase in biological activity of the IL-15 mutein compared with the native molecule based on proliferation assays with cells bearing human IL-15Rβ and common γ-chains. The IL-15N72D mutein exhibited superagonist activity through improved binding ability to the human IL-15Rβ-chain. However, the enhanced potency of IL-15N72D was not observed with cells expressing the mouse IL-15Rα-IL-15Rβ-γc complex, suggesting that this effect is specific to the human IL-15 receptor. The enhanced biological activity of IL-15N72D was associated with more intense phosphorylation of Jak1 and Stat5 and better anti-apoptotic activity compared with the wild-type IL-15. IL-15N72D superagonist activity was also preserved when linked to a single-chain TCR domain to generate a tumor-specific fusion protein. Thus, the human IL-15 superagonist muteins and fusions may create opportunities to construct more efficacious immunotherapeutic agents with clinical utility.
Real-Time Sequence-Validated Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assays for Detection of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV)

The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), an emerging human coronavirus, causes severe acute respiratory illness with a 35% mortality rate. In light of the recent surge in reported infections we have developed asymmetric five-primer reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assays for detection of MERS-CoV. Isothermal amplification assays will facilitate the development of portable point-of-care diagnostics that are crucial for management of emerging infections. The RT-LAMP assays are designed to amplify MERS-CoV genomic loci located within the open reading frame (ORF)1a and ORF1b genes and upstream of the E gene. Additionally we applied one-step strand displacement probes (OSD) for real-time sequence-specific verification of LAMP amplicons. Asymmetric amplification effected by incorporating a single loop primer in each assay accelerated the time-to-result of the OSD-RT-LAMP assays. The resulting assays could detect 0.02 to 0.2 plaque forming units (PFU) (5 to 50 PFU/ml) of MERS-CoV in infected cell culture supernatants within 30 to 50 min and did not cross-react with common human respiratory pathogens.
Optimal Monetary Policy with Durable Consumption Goods and Factor Demand Linkages

This paper deals with the implications of factor demand linkages for monetary policy design. We consider a dynamic general equilibrium model with two sectors that produce durable and non-durable goods, respectively. Part of the output of each sector serves as a production input in both sectors, in accordance with a realistic input-output structure. Strategic complementarities induced by factor demand linkages significantly alter the transmission of exogenous shocks and amplify the loss of social welfare under optimal monetary policy, compared to what is observed in standard two-sector models. The distinction between value added and gross output that naturally arises in this context is of key importance to explore the welfare properties of the model economy. A flexible inflation targeting regime is close to optimal only if the central bank balances inflation and value added variability. Otherwise, targeting gross output variability entails a substantial increase in the loss of welfare.