Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of Physical Function with Clinical and Subclinical Brain Disease: The Framingham Offspring Study.

BACKGROUND Handgrip strength and gait speed are simple measures of physical capability and have been associated with current and future health outcomes. However, studies on their associations with brain structure and function in middle-aged adults are lacking. OBJECTIVE To assess the relationship of fast-paced walking speed and handgrip strength with risk of dementia, Alzheimer's disease (AD), and stroke, as well as the cross-sectional associations with cognitive and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures in a middle-aged community sample. METHODS Framingham Offspring (n = 2,176; mean age 62, 54% female) had physical function, brain MRI, and cognitive evaluations between 1999 and 2005 and were followed-up for incident dementia AD and stroke until 11 years later. We related walking speed and handgrip strength to incident dementia, AD, and stroke using Cox models, and to brain and cognitive measures using multivariable linear and logistic regression. Models were adjusted for age, sex, education, and vascular risk factors. RESULTS Slow walking and weak handgrip were associated with more than 2.5-fold increase in risk of AD. Weaker handgrip was associated with an increased risk of incident stroke (HR 1.74, 95% CI: 1.12-2.70/SDU, p = 0.01) in persons ≥65 years. Both measures were associated with lower total brain volume and poorer performance on tests of visual memory, language, executive function, and visuoperceptual function. Slower gait was also related to poorer verbal memory, and weaker handgrip to poorer abstraction. CONCLUSION Tests of walking speed and handgrip strength may serve as clinical markers of brain structure and function and may improve dementia risk prediction.
Relationship Bonding and Trust as a Foundation for Commitment in U.S.–Mexican Strategic Alliances: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

This article develops a model to understand the influence of relationship bonding on trust and commitment between partners in international strategic alliances. Theoretical foundations are drawn from resource dependency and social exchange theories as frameworks for the analysis of interdependency. The model is tested in the context of U.S.–Mexican strategic alliances. The results of this study show that trust and commitment assist in building interdependency between both partners and perceived structural dependency is a prerequisite to maintain and develop social dynamics in the relationship. Trust is built mainly on economic and strategic cooperation for U.S. managers whereas Mexican managers perceive social and affective dimensions as its driving forces. Both U.S. and Mexican managers perceive commitment to the relationship as supported on high levels of trust. The authors discuss the implications of these results for the management of the relationship and building interdependency from a cultural perspective.
Effect of Aminoguanidine in Ligature-induced Periodontitis in Rats

The role of nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species is well-demonstrated in inflammation. In this study, we evaluated the effect of aminoguanidine, a nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, in a rat model of periodontitis. We induced periodontitis in rats by placing a piece of 2/0 braided silk around the lower left 1st molar. At day 8, the gingivomucosal tissue encircling the mandibular 1st molar was removed for biochemical and histological analysis. Ligation significantly increased inducible nitric oxide synthase activity and expression, and damaged tissue revealed increased neutrophil infiltration, lipid peroxidation, and positive staining for nitrotyrosine formation and poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase activation. Ligation significantly increased Evans blue extravasation in gingivomucosal tissue and alveolar bone destruction. Aminoguanidine (100 mg/kg i.p., daily for 8 days) treatment significantly reduced all these inflammatory parameters, indicating that it protects against the tissue damage associated with periodontitis by reducing nitric oxide production and oxidative stress.
Examining the in fl uences of experience , personality and attitude on SCUBA divers ’ underwater behaviour : A structural equation model

This study examines and extends the empirical evidence of the causal relationships among experience, personality and attitude on the behaviour of scuba divers. The empirical data were collected from divers (n 1⁄4 413) in the five most popular islands for scuba diving in Malaysia. Measurements of diving attitude, experience and underwater behaviour were developed based on the literature and expert opinions. The ‘Big Five’model was utilised to measure the personality of divers. Data were analysed using the structural equation modelling to examine the relationships among the constructs. Past experience was found to be the most important factor in explaining divers’ underwater behaviour, followed by diving attitude and personality. Diving attitude partially mediates the relationships between experience and underwater behaviour. The paper discusses some of its theoretical and managerial contributions which could facilitate the design and management of potential detrimental impacts caused by divers in the marine
Beyond necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship: motivations and aspirations of young entrepreneurs in Uganda

Enhancing the private sector, and especially entrepreneurship, has become a key feature of development policy in recent years. In many African countries, entrepreneurship is promoted as a way to solve the youth unemployment crisis, but little is known about the experiences of young entrepreneurs. This paper examines the motivations and aspirations of young business owners in Uganda. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Kampala, the paper shows the diversity and complexity of factors underpinning the decision to set up a business and the variety of future aspirations. The paper questions the common representation of entrepreneurs as either necessity- or opportunity-driven and discusses the widespread assumption that necessity-driven entrepreneurs in developing countries are unlikely to have growth aspirations. Adopting the notion of social embeddedness, this paper shows how entrepreneurship motivations and aspirations are closely intertwined with changes in the socio-economic environment, social networ.
Total quality management critical success factors, a comparison: The UK versus the USA

The present study attempted to determine if the TQM critical success factors identified in a 1996 European study by Black and Porter were pertinent to U.S. quality assurance professionals. The survey tool was sent to approximately 1,000 members of the American Society of Quality with 402 responding. The researcher determined that all of the TQM critical success factors identified in the 1996 Black and Porter study were important to U.S. quality assurance professionals. The factor stressing management commitment was the most important. Demographic factors appeared to contribute to a quality assurance professional's perception of which TQM critical factor was the most important.
Factors Affecting Take-up of and Drop-out from Home Composting Schemes

This paper reports survey results from Scotland and north-west England into home composting attitudes and behaviours. The results concentrate on: the take-up of home composting through promotional campaigns; and the reasons for drop-out. Motivations for take-up were balanced between environmental and gardening reasons, although capital cost was an important issue for some. Drop-outs occurred mainly through participants moving house or because of lack of success in producing compost. Few of those experiencing problems sought help. Those that did favoured official or professional sources. Neighbourhood social pressures to compost were relatively weak. The results are discussed in terms of the sustainability of home composting behaviour and the manage ment interventions that might be required in sustaining that behaviour.
The 2001 Superoutburst of WZ Sagittae: A Clue to the Dynamics of Accretion Disks

We examine the light curve of the 2001 July-August superoutburst of WZ Sagittae. During the decline from maximum light the locally defined decay time increases from ~4 to ~12 days mag-1 over the first ~15 days of the ~25 day superoutburst, as the system faded from mV ≃ 8.5 to mV ≃ 10. The superoutburst is caused by the sudden accretion of ~1024 g of gas onto the white dwarf, and the deviation from exponentiality in the decay light curve is expected qualitatively during a "viscous decay" in which the dominant mode of depletion of the gas stored in the accretion disk is accretion onto the central object. In other words, as the mass of the accretion disk decreases, the viscous timescale increases. We show that the data are also quantitatively consistent with the theoretical viscous decay time, both calculated via a simple scaling and also from time-dependent calculations, when one adopts standard model parameters for WZ Sge.
Ulcerative Enteritis (Quail Disease) in Lories

Abstract Ulcerative enteritis is found in a wide range of avian hosts but has not been described in psittacine birds. This case report describes ulcerative enteritis in four lories (two Trichoglossus sp. and two Eos sp.) that were found dead without any previous sign of disease. Macroscopically, all four birds showed good body condition. The only remarkable finding was a moderate dilatation of the small intestine with the presence of multiple yellow foci. Histologically, multiple ulcers extended into the submucosa and were filled with necrotic debris; bacteria and fibrin were observed in the intestinal mucosa. The liver and spleen exhibited a multifocal fibrinoid necrosis associated with a very moderate inflammatory reaction. Microbiological isolation revealed colonies of Clostridium colinum and Clostridium perfringens in the intestinal tract of the investigated birds.
Forecasting plant range collapse in a mediterranean hotspot: when dispersal uncertainties matter

The Mediterranean Basin is threatened by climate change, and there is an urgent need for studies to determine the risk of plant range shift and potential extinction. In this study, we simulate potential range shifts of 176 plant species to perform a detailed prognosis of critical range decline and extinction in a transformed mediterranean landscape. Particularly, we seek to answer two pivotal questions: (1) what are the general plant‐extinction patterns we should expect in mediterranean landscapes during the 21st century? and (2) does dispersal ability prevent extinction under climate change?
Metformin as a Cause of Late‐Onset Chronic Diarrhea

Metformin is an effective and commonly administered drug for controlling plasma glucose concentrations in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Gastrointestinal adverse effects such as abdominal pain, nausea, dyspepsia, anorexia, and diarrhea are common and widely accepted when occurring at the start of metformin therapy. Diarrhea occurring long after the dosage titration period is much less well recognized. Our patient began to experience nausea, abdominal cramping, and explosive watery diarrhea that occasionally caused incontinence after several years of stable metformin therapy. A trial of metformin discontinuation resolved all gastrointestinal symptoms. A review of the literature revealed two reports that suggest diarrhea occurring long after the start of metformin therapy is relatively common, based on surveys of patients with diabetes. Metformin‐induced diarrhea is differentiated from diabetic diarrhea, which is clinically similar, except diabetic diarrhea is rare in patients with type 2 diabetes. Patients with type 2 diabetes who are taking metformin and experience diarrhea deserve a drug‐free interval before undergoing expensive and uncomfortable diagnostic tests, even when the dosage has been stable over a long period.
Tourist destination brand equity and internal stakeholders

Successful destination branding strategies require the commitment and mobilization of internal stakeholders in order to reinforce the communication of the brand message to the tourist market. To this purpose, the literature suggests that adopting an inclusive and participative approach to the branding process can increase and maintain the stakeholders’ willingness to share the brand mission. However, the results of such sharing and involvement strategies in terms of internal brand equity creation are still under research. In order to fill such a gap, the article proposes to build on the established consumer-based brand equity model for assessing the internal stakeholder-based brand equity of tourist destinations. The model, comprising four dimensions – brand awareness, image, commitment, and satisfaction/loyalty – is then applied to the analysis of South Tyrol’s (Italy) regional branding strategy, through a survey of internal brand users. Findings confirm the importance of a participative approach to the branding process in order to enhance its overall internal equity. Findings also show a relevant information gap regarding brand performance that impacts the stakeholders’ commitment. This confirms the link between the internal and external performance of destination brands. Moreover, significant differences in the levels of brand awareness, commitment, and satisfaction among different categories of stakeholders suggest that the brand authorities should enact targeted internal communication efforts.
THE CLINICAL USEFULNESS OF C‐REACTIVE PROTEIN MEASUREMENTS

Pyrexia in the neutropenic patient is a common problem in haematology. Its occurrence increases with the severity and duration of neutropenia (Bodey et al, 1966) and, with presentday cytotoxic regimens, is almost inevitable. Parented broad-spectrum antibiotics are usually administered to cover the possibility of bacterial infections, although blood products, drug allergies, disease activity or infections due to viral, protozoal or fungal agents can all cause pyrexia. Clinical indicators are often misleading. To await culture results increases mortality and prompt antibiotic administration is indicated (Whitecar et al, 19 70). C-reactive protein (CRP) levels rise rapidly following an endotoxin stimulus from a normal value of < 1 mg/l to values several hundred-fold higher within 24 h (Pepys, 1981). The elimination of CRP is equally rapid with a half-life of 8.9 h (Gewurz et al, 1982). In the neutropenic patient CRP has been shown to rise quickly following the onset of a bacterial infection, usually to values > 100 mg/l (Mackie et al, 1979; Rose et al, 1981; Schofield et al, 1982; Williams P t al, 1982). Smaller rises in CRP level may occur during pyrexias due to drug allergies, viral and fungal infections, disease activity (except in lymphomas where it may bc quite high) and reactions to blood products but does not usually exceed 100 mg/l (Gozzard et ul, 1986). CRI’ levels are unaffected by the disease activity of acute leukaemia (Peltola et al, 19 8 3 ) . Tissue injury stimulates CKP production but a supervening bacterial infection further elevates the level (Rose et al, 1981). Necrosis of the bone marrow following cytotoxic administration does not cause a CRP elevation. Fungal infections produce variable effects but deep-seated infections can elevate CRP above 100 mg/l (Kostiala, 1984). Although CRP levels are usually raised during bacterial infections the level on the first day of pyrexia may be < 100 mg/l. Consequently CRP estimations cannot define the necessity for antibiotic administration. However, CRP rises over the first 48-72 h and in successfully treated incidents the level falls with resolution of pyrexia and clinical improvement. Not uncommonly the CRP level falls before the pyrexia remits, giving early confirmation of a successful outcome. The shortest half-life in clinical practice is 24 h but a variable fall in CRP level is recognized, possibly reflecting a slowly remitting bacterial infection. This can only be confirmed by further clinical trials. The most informative results occur in those circumstances in which the temperature is suppressed without resolution of the infection. If clinical indicators were followed, antibiotics might be stopped after several days of normal temperature, often with reappearance of pyrexia 2-3 d later. Indeed, in this situation it is not uncommon for pyrexia to recur during treatment, a difficult situation for the clinician. CRP levels are sustained, even though the temperature is abolished, indicating incomplete or Correspondence: Dr D. I. Gozzard, Department of Clinical Haematology, The Royal Infirmary. Manchester M13 9WL.
The ECB’s Non-Standard Monetary Policy Measures: The Role of Institutional Factors and Financial Structure

This paper aims to make two contributions: to review the ECB’s non-standard monetary policy measures in response to the financial and sovereign debt crisis against the background of the institutional framework and financial structure of the euro area; and to interpret this response from a flow-of-funds perspective. The paper highlights how the ECB’s non-standard measures are motivated differently from quantitative easing policies. As a complement to standard interest rate decisions, rather than a substitute, they aim at supporting their effective transmission to the economy rather than at delivering additional monetary stimulus directly. The flow-of-funds analysis proposes an interpretation of central banks’ crisis response as reflecting their capacity to act as the ‘ultimate sector’ that can take on leverage when other sectors are under pressure to deleverage. It also provides examples for tracing the impact of non-standard measures across different sectors and markets. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.
Religious Freedom, the Muslim Identity and the Secularist Social-Engineering Project in Turkey

In Turkey, the hegemonic Kemalist power elite, the torchbearers of a civilizing mission, have imagined and attempted to socially engineer a secular homogenous Turkish nation. Due to the existence of the Kurds, who comprise around 20 per cent of the population, and millions of non-Turkish Muslim migrants from the former Ottoman territories, this project could not be strictly based on race. Thus, the Kemalist state has also tried to assimilate the Kurds and non-Turkish Muslims into a so-called inclusive Turkish manifest socio-political identity, which was based only on ethnic Turks’ culture, the Kurdish culture particularly being almost completely disregarded in moulding this new identity. This included banning and even criminalizing the speaking of Kurdish in the public spaces. However, not only the Kurds, who suffered the most, but also others, such as practising Muslims, Islamists, leftists, liberals, Kurdish nationalists, Kurdish Islamists and Alevis and so on, have either with their mere existence or actively challenged this mono-cultural Kemalist nation-building project.
Rotation and internal structure of Population III protostars

We analyze the cosmological simulations performed in the recent work of Greif et al. (2012), which followed the early growth and merger history of Pop III stars while resolving scales as small as 0.05 R⊙. This is the first set of cosmological simulations to self-consistently resolve the rotation and internal structure of Pop III protostars. We find that Pop III stars form under significant rotational support which is maintained for the duration of the simulations. The protostellar surfaces spin from �50% to nearly 100% of Keplerian rotational velocity. These rotation rates persist after experiencing multiple stellar merger events. In the brief time period simulated (� 10 yr), the protostars show little indication of convective instability, and their properties furthermore show little correlation with the properties of their host minihaloes. If Pop III protostars within this range of environments generally form with high degrees of rotational support, and if this rotational support is maintained for a sufficientamount of time, this has a number of crucial implications for Pop III evolution and nucleosynthesis, as well as the possibility for Pop III pair-instability supernovae, and the question of whether the first stars produced gamma-ray bursts.
Development of route oriented Petri net for cycle time evaluations in SMT assemblies industries

The surface mounting technology (SMT) assembly procedures consist of calibrating the printed circuit board (PCB); vacuuming components form the feeder stations; compensating the orientation of the vacuumed surface mountable component (SMC); placing SMC chips on PCB. To increase the throughput of the assemblies, the synchronous vacuuming of SMC components is designed. Evaluating the cycle times of SMT assemblies requires the modeling of the specified times of image processing, vacuuming and releasing components and the route dependent robot movement times. In this paper, the route oriented Petri nets (ROPN) is newly proposed to solve the SMT assembly problems in flexible routes. Based on the ROPN modeling capabilities, the flexible component mounting routes and the synchronous vacuuming procedures can be modeled actually. Finally, two actual testing PCB board data were evaluated and the results had been compared with the actual cycle times to verify the proposed approaches.
Effective targeting of chronic myeloid leukemia initiating activity with the combination of arsenic trioxide and interferon alpha

Imatinib is the standard of care in chronic meloid leukemia (CML) therapy. However, imatinib is not curative since most patients who discontinue therapy relapse indicating that leukemia initiating cells (LIC) are resistant. Interferon alpha (IFN) induces hematologic and cytogenetic remissions and interestingly, improved outcome was reported with the combination of interferon and imatinib. Arsenic trioxide was suggested to decrease CML LIC. We investigated the effects of arsenic and IFN on human CML cell lines or primary cells and the bone marrow retroviral transduction/transplantation murine CML model. In vitro, the combination of arsenic and IFN inhibited proliferation and activated apoptosis. Importantly, arsenic and IFN synergistically reduced the clonogenic activity of primary bone marrow cells derived from CML patients. Finally, in vivo, combined interferon and arsenic treatment, but not single agents, prolonged the survival of primary CML mice. Importantly, the combination severely impaired engraftment into untreated secondary recipients, with some recipients never developing the disease, demonstrating a dramatic decrease in CML LIC activity. Arsenic/IFN effect on CML LIC activity was significantly superior to that of imatinib. These results support further exploration of this combination, alone or with imatinib aiming at achieving CML eradication rather than long‐term disease control.
Intellectual capital performance drivers in the Greek banking sector

The field for Intellectual Capital (IC) and the related philosophy of Knowledge Management (KM) has arisen recently to an interesting research object worldwide. Researchers round the globe presented interesting realistic contributions to the “intellectual” matter like Tobin’s “q”, Intangible Assets Monitor ‐IAM or “Skandia Navigator”. Increasingly the metrication of the intellectual intangibility, the visualization of the invisible intellectual brain power or the calculation of the intellectual potentiality provoked many “serious” researchers to fight like the hero of La Mancha “again wind, light and sound”. A. Pulic “VAIC™ – Value Added Intellectual Capital Method” is one way to bridge the distance from “tacit to ex plicit” because it helps to understand the metrics of intangibility. In the present research the data (published balance sheet and profit/loss account information) of seventeen main Greek banks for the period 1996 to 1999 is analyzed. The focus is put on the used human capital (HC) and physic.