Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neonatal streptococcal infections.

Most serious neonatal streptococcal infections are caused by group-B streptococci. The pattern of serious group-B neonatal disease in Britain resembles that described in other countries; both "early-onset" and "late-onset" forms are seen, but reliable incidence rates have not yet been determined. Serological-type III strains predominate in neonatal meningitis in Britain, but not so markedly as in some parts of the U.S.A. A deficiency of group-II strains in meningitis is, however, apparent in both countries. Present information about the carriage of group-B streptococci suggests that antibiotic prophylaxis administered to mothers or infants is unlikely to reduce greatly the frequency of "early-onset" disease. The continuous presence of a suitable chemical disinfectant in the vagina during labour might be more effective. Insufficient is known about the epidemiology of "late-onset" neonatal disease for rational preventive measures to be designed. More information is required about the postnatal acquisition of group-B streptococci by neonates and its sources, and about passive transfer of type-specific antibody from the mother to her child.
Scale-Free Exponents of Resting State provide a Biomarker for Typical and Atypical Brain Activity

Scale-free networks (SFN) arise from simple growth processes, which can encourage efficient, centralized and fault tolerant communication (1). Recently its been shown that stable network hub structure is governed by a phase transition at exponents (>2.0) causing a dramatic change in network structure including a loss of global connectivity, an increasing minimum dominating node set, and a shift towards increasing connectivity growth compared to node growth. Is this SFN shift identifiable in atypical brain activity? The Pareto Distribution (P(D)~D^-\b{eta}) on the hub Degree (D) is a signature of scale-free networks. During resting-state, we assess Degree exponents across a large range of neurotypical and atypical subjects. We use graph complexity theory to provide a predictive theory of the brain network structure. Results. We show that neurotypical resting-state fMRI brain activity possess scale-free Pareto exponents (1.8 se .01) in a single individual scanned over 66 days as well as in 60 different individuals (1.8 se .02). We also show that 60 individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, and 60 individuals with Schizophrenia have significantly higher (>2.0) scale-free exponents (2.4 se .03, 2.3 se .04), indicating more fractionated and less controllable dynamics in the brain networks revealed in resting state. Finally we show that the exponent values vary with phenotypic measures of atypical disease severity indicating that the global topology of the network itself can provide specific diagnostic biomarkers for atypical brain activity.
Secretoglobin Superfamily Protein SCGB3A2 Deficiency Potentiates Ovalbumin-Induced Allergic Pulmonary Inflammation

Secretoglobin (SCGB) 3A2, a cytokine-like secretory protein of small molecular weight, which may play a role in lung inflammation, is predominantly expressed in airway epithelial cells. In order to understand the physiological role of SCGB3A2, Scgb3a2−/− mice were generated and characterized. Scgb3a2−/− mice did not exhibit any overt phenotypes. In ovalbumin- (OVA-) induced airway allergy inflammation model, Scgb3a2−/− mice in mixed background showed a decreased OVA-induced airway inflammation, while six times C57BL/6NCr backcrossed congenic Scgb3a2−/− mice showed a slight exacerbation of OVA-induced airway inflammation as compared to wild-type littermates. These results indicate that the loss of SCGB3A2 function was influenced by a modifier gene(s) in mixed genetic background and suggest that SCGB3A2 has anti-inflammatory property. The results further suggest the possible use of recombinant human SCGB3A2 as an anti-inflammatory agent.
The Role of Demographic Factors in the Relationship between High Performance Work System and Job Satisfaction: A Multidimensional Approach

This study explores the role of demographic factors in relationship between HPWS and job satisfaction. The data was collected from 674 academic faculties across 23 public sector universities of Pakistan. KruskalWallis Test reveals that perception of HPWS and Job satisfaction among academic faculty varies with rank, nature of job and age while gender has no significant difference in response. The results showed positive and significant correlation between HPWS and Job satisfaction . The demographic variables, rank and nature of tenure found to moderate the relationship between perception of the existence of HPWS and Job Satisfaction. While moderating effect of gender and age were not confirmed.
Automated construction of dynamic models of subcellular structure

7 Introduction . 7 Methods . 8 Image Dataset . 8 Image Processing . 9 Feature Extraction . 9 Manifold Embedding . 10 Regression . 11 Results . 11 Time-Series Evaluation of the Cell Cycle Parameter . 11 Predicting the Cell Cycle Parameter for Static Protein Images . 11 Conclusion . 13 Acknowledgment . 13 Chapter 3: Random-walk based simulation of cell and nuclear shape changes . 15 Abstract . 15. 15 Introduction . 15 Methods . 20 Image data . 20 Image preprocessing, segmentation, and alignment. 20 Joint representation of 3D cellular and nuclear shapes . 23 LDDMM for shape images with high aspect ratios . 23 Numerical integration improvements . 25 Application to larger images . 30
Modelling Oil Price Volatility Before, During and after the Global Financial Crisis

In this paper, we evaluate the comparative performance of volatility models for oil price using daily returns of crude oil price. The innovations of this paper are in three folds: (i) we consider two prominent oil prices namely Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI); (ii) we analyse these prices across three subsamples namely periods before, during and after the global financial crisis; and (iii) we also analyse the comparative performance of both symmetric and asymmetric volatility models for these oil prices. We find inconsistent patterns in the performance of the volatility models over the subsamples. On the average, however, we find evidence of leverage effects in both oil prices and therefore, investors in the oil market react to news. Specifically, we find that bad news in the oil market increased volatility in crude oil price than good news. We also find high level of persistence in the volatility of WTI and Brent although the latter appears more persistent than the former while the period of global financial crisis recorded the highest level of persistence in both prices. Also, we find that during the global financial crisis, risk averse investors shifted assets from the oil market to other less risky assets.
Cointegration Test with Stationary Covariates and the CDS-Bond Basis During the Financial Crisis

This paper proposes a residual based cointegration test with improved power. Based on the idea of Hansen (1995) and Elliott & Jansson (2003) in the unit root testing case, stationary covariates are used to improve the power of the residual based Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test. The asymptotic null distribution contains difficult to estimate nuisance parameters for which there is no obvious method of estimation, therefore we propose a bootstrap methodology to obtain test critical values. Local-to-unity asymptotics and Monte Carlo simulations are used to evaluate the power of the test in large and small samples, respectively. These exercises show that the addition of covariates increases power relative to the ADF and Johansen tests, and that the power depends on the long-run correlation between the covariates and the cointegration candidates. The new test is used to test for cointegration between Credit Default Swap (CDS) and corporate bond spreads for a panel of U.S. firms during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The new test finds stronger evidence for cointegration between the two spreads for more firms, relative to ADF and Johansen tests.
Cost-effectiveness of simvastatin in the secondary prevention of coronary artery disease in Canada.

OBJECTIVE To determine the cost-effectiveness of simvastatin in the secondary prevention of coronary artery disease (CAD) in Canada. DESIGN Cost-effectiveness model based on results from the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (45 study) and cost and resource utilization data from Canadian sources to simulate the economic impact of long-term simvastatin treatment (15 years). PATIENTS Subjects with mean age of 59.4 years at recruitment into 4S study. OUTCOME MEASURES Overall death rate and incidence of 5 major nonfatal events associated with CAD: myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass grafting, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, stroke and transient ischemic attack. Direct medical costs associated with CAD were assessed from the perspective of provincial ministries of health (i.e., costs borne by the ministries); the impact of simvastatin treatment on these costs was determined. RESULTS The 4S study, with a median follow-up of 5.4 years, showed significantly reduced mortality and morbidity among the patients given simvastatin compared with the control subjects. Three premises were designed to predict the consequences of simvastatin treatment of CAD in Canada over 15 years, 10 years beyond the end of the 4S study. The 2 most probable premises, which assumed that the clinical benefits of simvastatin would be cumulative for either the first 10 years or the full 15 years of the model, had incremental costs per year of life gained (cost-effectiveness ratio) of $9867 and $6108 respectively. CONCLUSION This model suggests that simvastatin provides a cost-effective approach to the long-term prevention of secondary CAD in Canada.
Preliminary evaluation of a micro-force sensing handheld robot for vitreoretinal surgery

Highly accurate positioning is fundamental to the performance of vitreoretinal microsurgery. Of vitreoretinal procedures, membrane peeling is among the most prone to complications since extremely delicate manipulation of retinal tissue is required. Associated tool-to-tissue interaction forces are usually below the threshold of human perception, and the surgical tools are moved very slowly, within the 0.1-0.5 mm/s range. During the procedure, unintentional tool motion and excessive forces can easily give rise to vision loss or irreversible damage to the retina. A successful surgery includes two key features: controlled tremor-free tool motion and control of applied force. In this study, we present the potential benefits of a micro-force sensing robot in vitreoretinal surgery. Our main contribution is implementing fiber Bragg grating based force sensing in an active tremor canceling handheld micromanipulator, known as Micron, to measure tool-to-tissue interaction forces in real time. Implemented auditory sensory substitution assists in reducing and limiting forces. In order to test the functionality and performance, the force sensing Micron was evaluated in peeling experiments with adhesive bandages and with the inner shell membrane from chicken eggs. Our findings show that the combination of active tremor canceling together with auditory sensory substitution is the most promising aid that keeps peeling forces below 7 mN with a significant reduction in 2-20 Hz oscillations.
Microwave Power Limiting Devices Based on the Semiconductor–Metal Transition in Vanadium–Dioxide Thin Films

We present a novel concept of microwave (MW) power-limiting devices based on reversible semiconductor-to-metal transition (SMT) of vanadium-dioxide thin films integrated on coplanar waveguides. We designed, simulated, and fabricated devices, which can be reversibly driven from a low-loss (<; 0.7 dB) transmission state into an attenuating state (> 20 dB) as the VO2 material is changing from semiconductor to the metal state when the incident MW power exceeds a threshold value. These devices are broadband and present a tunable threshold power value. They could be easily integrated as protection circuits from excess power in a large variety of MW components.
Escalating Food Prices: The Threat to Poor Households and Policies to Safeguard a Recovery for All

This working paper: (i) briefly reviews possible causes of the food price spike that began in mid-2010; (ii) examines recent local food price movements in 58 developing countries during 2010; (iii) discusses the adverse impacts of food price increases on households; (iv) presents a rapid desk review of international and domestic policy responses in 98 developing countries under a three-pillar policy framework—supporting consumption, boosting production and regulating/managing food markets; and (v) calls for urgent and coordinated policy actions by national governments and the international community.
Instrument Identification in Monophonic Music Using Spectral Information

Various kinds of feature sets have been proposed to represent characteristics of musical instruments. While those feature sets have been chosen in a rather heuristic way, in this study, we demonstrate that the log-power spectrum suffices to represent characteristics that are essential to identifying instruments. For efficient encoding of instrument characteristics, we then reduce the number of features by applying the well-known dimension reduction techniques: principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). For the classification of eight instruments, the features obtained by applying PCA-LDA to the log-power spectrum performed very well in comparison to existing methods with a recognition rate of 91% with as few as ten features.
Economic Growth, Environmental Issues and Trade

This paper explores the implications for trade relations of the greening of world politics. It modifies the standard theory of changing comparative advantages in a growing world economy to show the effects on trade of taking into account the fact that the demand for domestic environmental policies increases as economies expand. The demands for environmental policies would not be a problem if they were confined to first-best policies. Trade problems arise, however, when those policies undermine an industry's competitiveness (from which protection is sought), or when a trade policy measure is adopted in an attempt to impose one's own standards on another country's environment, or when trade liberalization is opposed by environmentalists. The paper shows how all three unnecessarily threaten to undermine the global trading system and how, in the cases of coal and food, trade liberalization could well improve rather than worsen the global environment.
Improving Knowledge Work Processes

Are traditional reengineering approaches appropriate for improving knowledge work processes? In a study of thirty organizations, the authors found that improvement methods for knowledge work ranged from the classical top-down approach to a more laissez-faire philosophy that allowed professionals to design and execute their own work. Companies should probably choose an intermediate approach that reflects the type of knowledge work, the organizational culture, and the project's business requirements. They must recognize that the nature of knowledge work is different from administrative and operational work and that the people who perform it resist structured approaches.
Determinants of Relative Investor Demand for Common Stocks

This paper examines the demand for a firm's common stock by wealthy relative to less wealthy individual investors and by individual relative to institutional investors as a function of risk, information environment (proxied by firm size and S&P 500 membership), and form of return payout (i.e., dividends versus capital gains). The findings indicate that among individual investors demand for the stocks of riskier, larger, and low-dividend-yield firms increases with wealth. The findings also suggest that relative to individual investors, institutional investors prefer the stocks of larger firms, S&P 500 firms, and firms paying low dividend yields. Overall, these results suggest that investors find a number of firm-specific factors important in their investment choices and that the importance of such factors varies systematically with investor size.
Changes in the structure of synapses associated with learning

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of training on a region of the chick brain known to be critically involved in imprinting, the intermediate and medial extent of the hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV). In the first experiment, three groups of chicks were used: (i) dark-reared (n = 9), (ii) trained for 20 min (n = 17), and (iii) trained for 140 min (n = 7). Chicks were trained by exposing them when they were approximately 21 hr old to a flashing red light. Chicks were killed when they were approximately 30 hr old and blocks of tissue were removed from the right and left IMHV. Stereological techniques were used to measure from electron micrographs the numerical density of dendritic spine and shaft synapses and the length of the postsynaptic density of these synaptic junctions. There was a significant effect of training only in the left IMHV and on only one measure, the overall mean length of the postsynaptic density of spine synapses, SPL. This measure was significantly greater by 17.2% in chicks trained for 140 min than in dark-reared controls. There was no significant effect of training for 20 min. In the second experiment one group of chicks (n = 15) was exposed to a rotating red box for a total of 3 hr. Another group of chicks was dark-reared (n = 15). The chicks were killed when they were approximately 46 hr old. Samples from the hyperstriatum accessorium and IMHV of the right and left sides were analyzed. Training was associated with a significant change, an increase, only of SPL in the left IMHV. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Oral Reading and Expressive Language After Childhood Traumatic Brain Injury: Trajectory and Correlates of Change Over Time

Oral reading and expressive language skills were examined in 2 cohorts of children aged 5–15 years, who had mild, moderate, or severe traumatic brain injury. Children recruited prospectively from time of injury were assessed on 5 occasions over 2 years in a longitudinal study of change in reading skills, using the Gray Oral Reading Test-3rd Edition, and in expressive language, using the Formulated Sentences subtest of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-3rd Edition. Contributions of related cognitive-linguistic skills were also examined. Children recruited retrospectively were studied on a single occasion in a cross-sectional design investigating the contribution of age-related variables to the reading and sentence formulation scores. Similar to previous studies of childhood traumatic brain injury, children injured when younger initially showed a more rapid rate of recovery but poorer overall performance on outcome measures than did children injured when older. Socioeconomic status strongly predicted outcome for both reading and expressive language.
Neighborhood Hierarchy of Needs

ABSTRACT: Neighborhood and homeowners associations represent two forms of neighborhood governance in the United States, and these residential community associations (RCAs) aid in neighborhood development. In this article, I make the case that RCAs address a hierarchy of needs in the development of the neighborhood. I use a mixed methods approach with surveys and elite interviews of neighborhood and homeowners association presidents in Tallahassee, Florida, to understand what issues and activities are important for their neighborhoods and organizations. With this information, I create a neighborhood hierarchy of needs of issues and organizational needs neighborhoods address in their existence and development. Lower order needs of neighborhoods and neighborhood organizations include addressing crime, engaging in community-building activities, improving aesthetics, and becoming more formally organized. Higher order needs include providing public goods and commons goods, working with local government on planning projects, hiring a professional staff, and enforcing neighborhood rules and regulations. Pursuing these needs leads to the highest order need in the hierarchy—improving property values. I find that homeowners associations operate at higher levels in the hierarchy of needs due to their legally defined structures and responsibilities established at their inception.
Diverse communities

T HERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOCIETY, s a i d Margaret Thatcher, only family and the individual. This is not a view which could be tenable in a Jewish context where religion is lived out in the community. Family is important, and many rituals take place in the family home, but community, a gathering of families into a congregation, is also of vital importance. This article looks at different historical Jewish definitions of what is meant by a community, and also at the way the modem Jewish world has developed different groupings as a result of the varying circumstances and cultures in the countries in which Jews five.
Perceived needs in women with gestational diabetes: A qualitative study

Introduction Diabetes is the most common medical complication of pregnancy. It can be associated with many complications for mother and fetus. Gestational diabetes is also one of the main health issues in Iran. Therefore, the present study is aimed at a deeper understanding of women’s experiences of gestational diabetes and their perceived needs to inform future lifestyle interventions. Methods This qualitative content analysis study was carried out in 2015. Participants were pregnant women diagnosed with gestational diabetes in the 24th to 36th week of pregnancy, who were referred to the clinics affiliated with Shahid Beheshti Medical Science University in Tehran, Iran. In-depth interviews were conducted with participants, using semi-structured questions. Interviews were audio taped and transcribed verbatim. Conventional content analysis was carried out for data analysis. Interviews continued until data saturation was obtained. Data were coded in MAXQDA software (version 11). Results Content analysis highlighted two themes; educational needs and need to support. The former was featured with five main categories: information sources, education process, unknown and known, weaknesses of public information system, and eagerness to learn. The latter was featured with two main categories: family support and social support. Conclusion Clarifying the needs of the mothers with gestational diabetes, leads to better and proper education planning and a program toward the improvement of health, self-care, and prevention of diabetes.
Resolutions of Facet Ideals

Abstract In this paper we study the resolution of a facet ideal associated with a special class of simplicial complexes introduced by Faridi. These simplicial complexes are called trees, and are a generalization (to higher dimensions) of the concept of a tree in graph theory. We show that the Koszul homology of the facet ideal I of a tree is generated by the homology classes of monomial cycles, determine the projective dimension and the regularity of I if the tree is 1-dimensional, show that the graded Betti numbers of I satisfy an alternating sum property if the tree is connected in codimension 1, and classify all trees whose facet ideal has a linear resolution.