Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of intraoperative dexmedetomidine with intravenous anesthesia on postoperative emergence agitation/delirium in pediatric patients undergoing tonsillectomy with or without adenoidectomy

Abstract Postoperative emergence agitation/delirium (POED) is a common complication in pediatric surgery patients, which increases the risk of developing postoperative airway obstruction and respiratory depression. This study aims to investigate the safety and efficacy of intraoperative infusion of dexmedetomidine (DEX) and its effects on POED in pediatric patients undergoing tonsillectomy with or without adenoidectomy. Sixty patients scheduled for tonsillectomy with or without adenoidectomy, aged 2 to 8 years, were randomly allocated into 2 groups (n = 30). Pediatric patients in the group DEX received intravenous (IV) DEX 1 &mgr;g/kg over 10 minutes, followed by 0.5 &mgr;g/kg/h continuous infusion, and the same volume of 0.9% saline was administrated in the group control. Anesthesia was maintained with target-controlled infusion (TCI) of propofol and remifentanyl. Intraoperative heart rate (HR), noninvasive blood pressure (NIBP), blood oxygen saturation (SPO2), recovery time, and extubation time were recorded. Pain level was evaluated using the objective pain score (OPS), pediatric anesthesia emergence delirium (PAED) scale and Cole 5-point scale (CPS) was used to evaluate POED when patients at 0, 5, 15 minutes, and then at intervals of 15 minutes for 60 minutes after parents arrival at postanesthesia care unit (PACU). The results showed that intraoperative HR was significantly lower in group DEX (P <0.05), mean diastolic and systolic NIBP was not statistically different between groups. Time to wake and time to extubation were lengthened in group DEX as compared with group control (P <0.05). OPS and CPS were lower in group DEX at 15, 30, and 45 minutes time points (P <0.05); however, there were no significantly differences in the PAED score at different time points in the PACU. The present data suggested that intraoperative infusion of dexmedetomidine combined with intravenous anesthetics can provide satisfactory intraoperative conditions for pediatric patients undergoing tonsillectomy with or without adenoidectomy, without adverse hemodynamic effects, though the lower incidence of POED was not observed.
Price-Setting Behaviour in the United Kingdom: A Microdata Approach

This article discusses recent work at the Bank of England using large databases of individual price quotes to investigate price dynamics in the United Kingdom. Understanding the dynamics of prices is important for policymakers concerned with meeting an inflation target. Based on price quotes underlying ONS aggregate price indices, consumer prices changed, on average, once every five months between 1996 and 2006, while producer prices changed once every four months between 2003 and 2007. Higher frequency supermarket price data covering the period from 2005 to 2008 suggest that prices change more often than this. There are considerable differences in the behaviour of prices between different types of products: for example, goods prices change more often than services prices. The individual price-level data are not clearly supportive of any one theory of price-setting.
Social motives in network formation: An experiment

Literature on network formation typically assumes that people create and remove relations as to maximize their outcome in the network. It is mostly neglected that people might also care about the outcomes of others when creating and removing links. In the current paper, we develop an experiment to investigate whether people show preferences that involve the outcomes of others during network formation. We find varying evidence for effects of social motives in the settings we compare in the experiment. In the final part of the paper, we discuss some explanations for these findings.
Steepest descent

The steepest descent method has a rich history and is one of the simplest and best known methods for minimizing a function. While the method is not commonly used in practice due to its slow convergence rate, understanding the convergence properties of this method can lead to a better understanding of many of the more sophisticated optimization methods. Here, we give a short introduction and discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of this method. Some recent results on modified versions of the steepest descent method are also discussed. WIREs Comp Stat 2010 2 719–722 DOI: 10.1002/wics.117
Is Inflation Targeting Effective?

This paper estimates the monetary transmission mechanisms in four inflation-targeting new EU members: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland. We use a structural vector error-correction model to identify the monetary shock with long-run restrictions. We find that a restrictive monetary shock has a significant negative effect on the inflation rate in all the countries considered. In response to a one-percentage-point shock in the nominal interest rate, inflation falls by half to one percentage point and returns to steady state after four to six months. Therefore, inflation targeting is likely to be an effective strategy on these countries' way to join the European Monetary Union. The policy might also be a relevant option for future EU member states.
ANALISIS PENGARUH SUKU BUNGA, INFLASI, CAR, BOPO, NPF TERHADAP PROFITABILITAS BANK SYARIAH

Islamic Bank is well-known as a bank which is resistant to the global crisis that hitted Indonesia couple years ago. The performance of Islamic Bank could be maintained so that continuity of bussines also could be well maintained. Those performance could be measured by the size of the Islamic banking profitability. The factors affecting the profitability of Islamic banks used in this study are the interest rate, inflation, CAR, BOPO and NPF. While the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of interest rates, inflation, CAR, BOPO, and NPF toward the profitability of Islamic banks. The population used for the study is islamic banks whose financial statements have been published to Bank Indonesia from 2008 to 2011. For its Sampling in this study used purposive sampling obtained three islamic banks. The data of this study used secondary data from the website of each bank and also Bank Indonesia. The method of data analysis which was used is multiple linear regression analysis. The results of this study indicate that the interest rate variabel has no effect on ROA, inflation had no effect on ROA, CAR had no effect on ROA and neither did NPF. While BOPO variabel had significant influence with negatif direction.
How Can Sultan Qaboos University Respond to the Contemporary Challenges of the Omani Labour Market Needs and Community Expectations

Higher education systems in developing countries have mixed results in satisfying their nations’ labour market requirements, and community needs and expectations. Oman, a member of the Gulf Country Council (GCC), sustained the rapid economic development that has featured within the region over the past three decades. However, a contentious issue for the GCC, including Oman, is the provision of higher education qualifications sufficient for graduates to compete successfully in local labour markets dominated by experienced expatriates. This study explores the factors contributing to high unemployment for the mass communications graduates of Oman’s principal educational facility, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU). Semi-structured interviews with graduates, students and their parents, university and government representatives and public and private employers have revealed a range of views about the employability of the graduates and the university course which sought to prepare them for the labour market. The analysis of the interview data revealed that conventional human capital themes failed to account for the range of views about the effects of the course on graduate employability. Until a decade ago, human capital principles that value years of learning served Oman well as it provided sufficient educational capacity to deliver graduates for its expanding public services. However, when the country’s burgeoning public sector ceased the automatic acceptance of SQU graduates, later cohorts from mass communications courses were unable to source work in Oman’s small private sector mass media industry. The findings from the study were that traditional human capital accumulation is insufficient to deliver jobs; the human risk capital is too high. Risk factors for mass communications students include course admission, curriculum content and delivery, language fluency and technology. Further, employer perceptions of the mass communications qualification and of graduates’ commitment to a work ethic were barriers to employment. A significant contribution of the research is the recognition that the framework of educational practices, associated with what has been termed social capital, provides an alternative and more constructive means of analysis the data. The findings of the research point to the need for a university in a country such as Oman to expand its educational responsibility by taking on a social capital curriculum whose principal feature is the establishment of communicative links between local communities, the university and workplaces. A social capital curriculum, increasingly pursued as best practice for developed countries, can deliver work ready graduates acceptable to employers. Valid for GCC and wider use, a model of the capital theory elements, processes and risks is included in this comparative study.
Is Job Stability Declining in Germany? Evidences from Count Data Models

Is Job Stability Declining in Germany? Evidence from Count Data Models The macro evidence of increased adjustment pressure since the early seventies suggests that job mobility should have increased. Hence, retrospective and spell data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are combined in order to test the hypothesis that job stability for German workers declined between 1974 and 1994. Using count data regression models in which we control for labour market experience, various demographic factors, and occupation, we find that job stability did not decrease, but if anything increase, between 1974 and 1994. Our findings suggest that labour market inflexibility is an important factor in explaining the European unemployment problem. JEL Classification: J6
Societal foundations for explaining low fertility : Gender equity

BACKGROUND Gender equity theory in relation to fertility argues that very low fertility is the result of incoherence in the levels of gender equity in individually oriented social institutions and family-oriented social institutions. The salience of gender to the fertility transition is strong in theory but not as strong in specification of testable hypotheses, as has been pointed out in the literature. OBJECTIVE The paper aims to clarify the specification of gender equity theory through a discussion of the difference between equity and equality and to suggest methods that might be applied to test the theory. METHODS The theory is restated and further developed using literature from different disciplines. The method is described using a decomposition of fertility for women by human capital levels. RESULTS The clarification of the theory includes a reminder that the theory relates to differences in fertility between countries and not to differences in fertility between women in the same country. In comparisons between countries, higher gender equity leads to higher fertility. In comparisons of fertility across women in the same country, higher gender equity does not necessarily imply higher fertility. In relation to measurement, a specification is suggested that effectively compares women across countries controlling for their level of human capital. Simple graphics are used to indicate ways in which fertility between countries may vary. CONCLUSIONS The paper concludes that it is likely the gender equity theory can be tested more readily by examining the behaviour across countries of women with higher levels of human capital. 1 Australian National University. E-mail: Peter.McDonald@anu.edu. au. McDonald: Societal foundations for explaining low fertility: Gender equity 982 http://www.demographic-research.org
Climate Change Mitigation and Transport in Developing Nations

Abstract Emissions from the transport sector represent the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. There is little prospect that this situation will be resolved with a single technological fix. As developing nations quickly move to catch up with the motorization levels of developed nations, the sheer number of private vehicles may overwhelm any advances made by cleaner fuels. By 2030, there is projected to be more vehicles in the developing world than in developed nations. Despite the growth in developing‐nation transport emissions, the sector has produced relatively few mitigation projects within the mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. However, a few developing cities, such as Bogota, Colombia, have demonstrated innovation in low‐cost solutions to reducing emissions. This research employs scenario analysis to examine the size and cost of potential emission reduction options from the urban transport sector of developing nations. In particular, the analysis compares the cost of greenhouse gas emission reductions from fuel technology options to reductions from measures promoting mode shifting. This comparative analysis indicates that a diversified package of measures with an emphasis on mode shifting is likely to be the most cost‐effective means to greenhouse gas emission reductions.
New Business Start-ups: The More The Better?

The importance of new ventures in the economic process is well established and many governments embark on programs designed to stimulate new businesses start-ups in the belief that increasing the number of new businesses will have a positive impact. Much effort is expended in trying to reduce the failure rate of businesses, usually based on the belief that failure is the result of rectifiable shortcomings within a business, particularly a failure in management. This paper looks at start-up businesses in New Zealand for the period 1987 to 1994. It shows that during the period studied, 5.75 times as many new businesses started up as the economy was able to absorb, and argues that this large oversupply is the underlying cause of the high rate of business failure. Conventional methods aimed at reducing business failure are therefore incapable of reducing the failure rate, they merely help decide who the survivors will be. The paper argues that, in New Zealand, programs aimed at increasing the volume of new business start-ups are misguided and that it is impossible for the economy to absorb the volume of new firms entering the market. It seems likely that a similar situation exists in other western countries and that public policy efforts would be better directed at improving the quality of start-ups rather than the quantity.
Short-Term Effect of Gabapentin on Subjective Tinnitus in Acoustic Trauma Patients

Introduction: Although several treatment approaches have been proposed for tinnitus, there are currently no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved agents available to treat this condition. In this study, we evaluated the effect of gabapentin on the sensation of subjective tinnitus in patients with acoustic trauma referring to the ear, nose and throat (ENT) clinic of Taleghani Hospital during 2014. Materials and Methods: In this double-blind, randomized clinical trial, 103 patients with tinnitus due to acoustic trauma who were referred to the ENT clinic of Taleghani Hospital during 2014 were randomized to the gabapentin (300 mg bid, n=55) or control (n=48) groups. The two groups were then compared before and after 6 weeks of treatment using a visual analog scale (VAS). At least a 30% reduction in VAS was considered a response to treatment. Results: Differences between the two groups regarding sex, age, duration of disease, and audiometry results was not significant (P>0.05). After 6 weeks’ treatment, the VAS significantly decreased in both groups (P<0.001), but the reduction was significantly greater in the gabapentin group compared with control (P<0.001). Forty-nine patients (89%) in the gabapentin group and 28 control patients (58.3%) responded to treatment (≥30% reduction in VAS), with the difference between the two groups being statistically significant (P<0.001). Conclusion: We conclude that gabapentin 300 mg bid for 6 weeks is an effective treatment for acoustic tinnitus. In addition, the placebo effect in relieving tinnitus is remarkable.
Complex dynamics of synergistic coinfections on realistically clustered networks

Significance Concurrent infection with multiple pathogens is an important factor for human disease. For example, rates of Streptococcus pneumoniae carriage (a leading cause of pneumonia) in children under five years can exceed 80%, and coinfection with other respiratory infections (e.g., influenza) can increase mortality drastically; despite this, examination of interacting coinfections on realistic human contact structures remains an understudied problem in epidemiology and network science. Here we show that clustering of contacts, which usually hinders disease spread, can speed up spread of both diseases by keeping synergistic infections together and that a microscopic change in transmission rates can cause a macroscopic change in expected epidemic size, such that clustered networks can sustain diseases that would otherwise die in random networks. We investigate the impact of contact structure clustering on the dynamics of multiple diseases interacting through coinfection of a single individual, two problems typically studied independently. We highlight how clustering, which is well known to hinder propagation of diseases, can actually speed up epidemic propagation in the context of synergistic coinfections if the strength of the coupling matches that of the clustering. We also show that such dynamics lead to a first-order transition in endemic states, where small changes in transmissibility of the diseases can lead to explosive outbreaks and regions where these explosive outbreaks can only happen on clustered networks. We develop a mean-field model of coinfection of two diseases following susceptible-infectious-susceptible dynamics, which is allowed to interact on a general class of modular networks. We also introduce a criterion based on tertiary infections that yields precise analytical estimates of when clustering will lead to faster propagation than nonclustered networks. Our results carry importance for epidemiology, mathematical modeling, and the propagation of interacting phenomena in general. We make a call for more detailed epidemiological data of interacting coinfections.
Tax treaties and foreign direct investment: a network approach

Multinational investors often reduce tax on dividends by using indirect investment routes. This paper constructs a tax rate matrix to represent a real-world network of tax treaties between 70 countries and develops a computation algorithm to study the structure of tax-minimizing (direct or indirect) investment routes in the tax treaty network. The treaty shopping rate, defined as the difference between the foreign tax rates of the direct route and a tax-minimizing route, is about 3.66 percentage points on average. This paper also examines the relationship between FDI and the structure of tax-minimizing routes. Empirical results show that the existence of a tax-minimizing direct route is positively and significantly related to FDI. The inward FDI stock via a tax-minimizing direct route is about 2.14 times larger than the inward FDI stock via a direct route that is not tax-minimizing. By making a direct route tax-minimizing, countries can encourage FDI via the direct route and reduce treaty shopping.
Increased nitric oxide production by airway cells of sensitized and challenged IL‐10 knockout mice

The anti‐inflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)‐10 suppresses induciblenitric oxide synthase (iNOS); therefore, NO production should increasein the absence of IL‐10. Production of NO (as nitrite) bybronchoalveolar lavage cells of IL‐10 knockout (−/−) micewas assessed after ovalbumin sensitization and airway challenge (S/C)and was compared with the IL‐10‐sufficient, wild‐type (WT) C57Bl6.Eosinophil recruitment occurred in S/C WT and IL‐10−/−mice, suggesting allergic airway inflammation. Alveolar macrophages(per g mouse) were unchanged (∼3×104 cells) with theexception of a doubling in the S/C IL‐10−/− mice(∼6×104 cells, P<0.05). NO production (permillion cells) was doubled in cells from S/C IL‐10−/−(15.3 μM) mice compared with WT (7.6 μM, P<0.05). Inhibition of iNOS byl‐N5‐(1‐iminoethyl)‐ornithine reduced NOproduction in all S/C mice, confirming that the increase was a resultof up‐regulation of iNOS. We conclude that IL‐10 is a critical cytokineregulating iNOS in murine airway cells and that its absence can lead toup‐regulation of iNOS and development of allergic airwayinflammation.
On the Capital Structure of Non‐Profit Organisations: A Replication and Extension with Belgian Data

The empirical tests of non‐profit organisations' capital structure theories by Jegers and Verschueren (2006) on a sample of Californian non‐profit organisations (data on 1999) are replicated and extended for a more recent Belgian sample (844 observations pertaining to 2007). Three complementary theories to explain the presence and levels of overall debt and financial debt are examined: equity constraints, agency, and borrowing constraints. The decision to borrow and the amount to be borrowed are analysed separately. The estimations obtained reveal that both are driven by different mechanisms. After having removed outliers, the results show effective equity constraints when explaining debt levels, as observed in the Californian sample with respect to the overall amount of debt. The results also indicate an agency explanation of debt: both the decision to borrow from financial institutions, and the overall amount of (financial) debt are positively affected by the presence of a potential agency gap between board and management. In the Californian sample, the results on this were mixed. Borrowing constraints were almost never discovered, similar to the conclusions reached by Jegers and Verschueren. However, slightly reducing the sample by removing outliers makes borrowing constraints apparent. As to the control variables, size positively affects the probability of borrowing, but, for the organisations taking on debt, negatively affects the level of borrowing. As could be expected, the amount of tangible fixed assets in place is positively related to the amount of financial debt.
Properties of Gluten Intolerance: Gluten Structure, Evolution, Pathogenicity and Detoxification Capabilities

Theterm gluten intolerance may refer to three types of human disorders: autoimmune celiac disease (CD), allergy to wheat and non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS). Gluten is a mixture of prolamin proteins present mostly in wheat, but also in barley, rye and oat. Gluten can be subdivided into three major groups: S-rich, S-poor and high molecular weight proteins. Prolamins within the groups possess similar structures and properties. All gluten proteins are evolutionarily connected and share the same ancestral origin. Gluten proteins are highly resistant to hydrolysis mediated by proteases of the human gastrointestinal tract. It results in emergence of pathogenic peptides, which cause CD and allergy in genetically predisposed people. There is a hierarchy of peptide toxicity and peptide recognition by T cells. Nowadays, there are several ways to detoxify gluten peptides: the most common is gluten-free diet (GFD), which has proved its effectiveness; prevention programs, enzymatic therapy, correction of gluten pathogenicity pathways and genetically modified grains with reduced immunotoxicity. A deep understanding of gluten intolerance underlying mechanisms and detailed knowledge of gluten properties may lead to the emergence of novel effective approaches for treatment of gluten-related disorders.