Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality of life in patients with familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy long-term after liver transplantation

Liver transplantation aims to halt the progression of the disease in patients with familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy (FAP) caused by hereditary transthyretin-related (ATTR) amyloidosis. Insight in health-related quality of life of these transplanted FAP-patients can be of help to optimize health care delivery. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to assess the health-related quality of life of patients with FAP long-term after transplantation. Nine patients with a post-transplant follow-up of 4 years or more were included in the study. During the annual checks, health-related quality of life was measured with the Short Form-36 (SF-36). Data were compared with non-FAP transplanted patients with the same duration of follow-up and with the normal Dutch population. Pre-transplant, all patients had signs of mild to moderate peripheral polyneuropathy. The results showed that in patients with FAP health-related quality of life was stable in the first 4 years after transplantation. The domain of physical well-being at 4 years after transplantation was significantly lower compared to non-FAP transplanted patients and control Dutch population. The domain of emotional well-being was comparable with non-FAP controls. However, on most health areas patients with FAP scored lower than the non-FAP transplanted patients and the Dutch controls. After four years, the three patients with FAP with longest follow-up (9–12 years) deteriorated in all health domains, except in self-perceived mental health. This study, including only a small number of patients with FAP, shows a relatively low health-related quality of life after liver transplantation, which may deteriorate further with longer follow-up.
Lentivirus-mediated RNA interference inhibits the tumorigenicity of cluster of differentiation 44+ tumor cells in hypopharyngeal cancer

The present study aimed to investigate whether the inhibition of cluster of differentiation (CD)44 expression reduces the tumorigenicity of CD44+ cancer stem cells in hypopharyngeal cancer. To assess this, effective recombinant CD44 short hairpin RNA-expressing lentiviruses were produced. Lentivirus-mediated RNA interference (RNAi) was then used to knockdown CD44 gene expression in the hypopharyngeal cancer FaDu cell line. The viability of FaDu cells in the two control groups and the RNAi group (RNAi-CD44 lentiviral vector) was detected using an MTT assay in vitro. Cells from each group were injected into non-obese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficiency mice and their tumorigenicity determined in vivo. Following lentivirus-mediated RNAi, an MTT assay indicated that cells from the RNAi group exhibited lower viability than the control group. The in vivo tumorigenicity study further revealed a significant difference in tumorigenic rates between the RNAi group and the control group (Fisher's exact test, P<0.05). In addition, tumors in the RNAi group of animals had a longer incubation period than those in the control groups, and the mean tumor volume was also significantly smaller (t=3.47, P<0.05). Pathological study confirmed that all tumors were poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinomas with cellular heterogeneity. The viability of the hypopharyngeal cancer FaDu cells in vitro and their tumorigenicity in vivo were markedly inhibited once CD44 was knocked down. The results of the present study therefore suggest that CD44 may confer tumorigenic characteristics upon CD44+ cancer stem cells in hypopharyngeal cancer.
The Disappearing Relationship Between Directors' Pay and Corporate Performance

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the remuneration of the highest paid director and the economic performance of approximately 300 large UK companies over the 1980s and early 1990s. The rate of growth of directors' remuneration was very high over this time period (about 20 per cent per year on average) and very weakly linked to corporate performance. Any such link breaks down after 1988, when the very high pay awards received by top directors in the recessionary period up to 1991 appear to be unrelated to the performance of their companies, whether corporate performance is measured using stock market data or using accounting data on earnings per share. Rather, it appears that corporate growth is an important determinant of the change in directors' remuneration. These results strongly call into question the effectiveness of current systems of pay determination for top company directors.
The effects of testosterone on osteoporosis in men

Although the pathogenesis of osteoporosis in men is multi‐factorial, testosterone is known to play an important role in the maintenance of the male skeleton. This role, however, appears complicated as it may be mediated in part by aromatization to oestradiol. Testosterone replacement therapy improves bone density in men with hypogonadal osteoporosis, particularly if the epiphyses are still open. There is no well‐established treatment for idiopathic osteoporosis in men, but testosterone supplementation may prove to be useful. Further studies are required to confirm the safety and efficacy of this treatment in eugonadal men with osteoporosis.
Do Management Changes Matter? An Empirical Investigation of REIT Performance

Managementâ€™s (board of directors or executive officers) contribution to a firm is difficult to directly observe, although stock return performance can be a source of information. This study addresses this issue by extending the work of McIntosh, Rogers, Sirmans and Liang (1994) by analyzing management changes within REITs from 1984 to 2002. The findings indicate a significant relationship between negative performance and a management change from a period three months prior to the change in management. Logit and probit analysis are used to determine whether negative firm performance (measured by its relationship to market returns) can predict the likelihood of a management change. No predictive ability is found.
Monetary Policy Today: Sixteen Questions and about Twelve Answers

My assignment is to survey the main questions swirling around monetary policy today. I emphasize three words in this sentence, each for a different reason. Main is because one person's side issue is another's main issue. So I had to be both selective and judgmental in compiling my list, else this paper would have been even longer than it is. Policy indicates that I have restricted myself to issues that are truly relevant to real-world policymakers, thus omitting many interesting but purely academic issues. Today means that I focus on current issues, thus passing over some illustrious past issues. All these omissions still leave a rather long list; so I will treat some issues quite briefly.
Update on the diagnosis and treatment of social anxiety disorder.

Social anxiety disorder is characterized by marked fear of performance, excessive fear of scrutiny, and fear of acting in a way that will be embarrassing. Although the incidence of social anxiety disorder is approximately 13%, this disorder has been termed "the neglected anxiety disorder" because it is often missed as a diagnosis. Social anxiety disorder has an early onset in most patients and tends to manifest during adolescence. However, many patients do not receive therapy until a comorbid disorder (e.g., panic) is diagnosed later in life. There are 2 distinct subtypes of social anxiety disorder, generalized and nongeneralized, that differ in terms of symptoms, course of illness, morbidity, pathophysiology, and response to treatment. Both pharmacologic and psychotherapeutic treatments are effective, and the 2 modalities have complementary strengths. The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may be considered first-line therapy for the generalized subtype of social anxiety disorder because of proved efficacy and well-tolerated adverse effect profiles. Other agents may be useful for treatment-refractory patients. However, there is a substantial rate of relapse even after prolonged treatment. There is evidence that patients who receive cognitive-behavioral therapy may have lower rates of relapse. Early and aggressive treatment of social anxiety disorder may prevent development of comorbid disorders and can substantially improve patients' quality of life.
Helpful Reviewers in TripAdvisor, an Online Travel Community

ABSTRACT Online communities need a critical mass for communication, information, and entertainment and should provide useful information for their members in order to obtain this critical mass. The abundance of online travel reviews increases cognitive costs of travelers, and travelers use extrinsic cues to judge the quality of online reviews to eliminate costs associated with the information process. Of various cues used in online environments, this study examined an online reputation system in TripAdvisor.com and profiled the reviewers who post helpful reviews in the online travel community. The key findings include that helpful reviewers are those who travel more, actively post reviews, belong to any age and gender groups, and give lower hotel ratings. This study adds to research of online travel reviewers by characterizing helpful information creators among online content creators.
Intercellular Communication in Response to Radiation Induced Stress: Bystander Effects in Vitro and in Vivo and Their Possible Clinical Implications

Communication between cells is important for maintaining homeostasis, the physiological regulatory processes that keep the internal environment of a system in a constant state. A disease can disturb the internal equilibrium of cells, and this can be further disrupted by various therapies. Malignances are the diseases that need to be treated by highly aggressive methods, such as radiotherapy, which affects not only tumor cells but also normal cells adjacent to the tumor and usually included in the radiation field. This treatment may interfere with normal intercellular communication. It has been a central radiobiological dogma for decades that damaging effects of ionizing radiation are the result of direct ionization of cell structures, particularly DNA, or are due to indirect damage via water radiolysis products. Indeed, DNA damage such as chromosomal aberrations, micronuclei, sister chromatid exchange and mutagenesis result from ionizing radiation. All of these types of damage, if unrepaired, can lead to cell death or, if misrepaired, can lead to genomic instability and carcinogenesis. Recently however, the attention was focused on the third mechanism, a phenomenon termed “radiation induced bystander effect” (RIBE). This phenomenon is a non-targeted effect where molecular signal(s) produced by directly irradiated cells elicit subsequent responses in unirradiated neighbors. These responses are manifested as decreased survival, increased sister chromatid exchanges (SCE), chromosomal aberrations (CA), micronucleus (MN) formation, gene mutations, apoptosis, genomic instability, neoplastic transformation and a variety of damage-inducible stress responses (reviewed in Morthersill and Seymour, 2001, Lorimore et al., 2003, Morgan, 2003a, 2003b, Little, 2006a,b, Chapman et al. 2008, Rzeszowska-Wolny et al., 2009a). Bystander effect accompanies very low doses of alpha particles (mGy and cGy), (Nagasawa and Little, 1992, Lorimore et al., 1998), as well as irradiation of cells with a low LET radiation (Xand gamma rays), even at conventionally used higher clinical doses (Morthersill and Seymour, 1997, 1998, 2002b, Przybyszewski et al., 2004). The mechanisms responsible for RIBE are complex and not quite well-known. Mechanisms by which bystander signals may be transmitted from irradiated to non-irradiated cells involve direct cell-to-cell contact mediated by gap
Are all academic entrepreneurs created alike? Evidence from Germany

Using data from a large survey of German researchers in public science and based on a formal structure, this paper examines determinants of academic entrepreneurship. The key contribution is to discern factors driving research-driven entrepreneurship versus overall academic entrepreneurship. The extant literature has almost exclusively focused on the latter and implicitly assumed academic entrepreneurs to commercialize their research. Results show that, despite some plausible similarities in the determinants, there are significant differences. In particular, while both entrepreneurship categories benefit from greater patent applications, more time spent on consulting by the researcher and from participation in European conferences, research leaders and engineering science disciplines are more likely to lead to research-driven entrepreneurs. However, the positive influences of university employment (compared with being employed at a public research organization) on overall academic entrepreneurship fail to show up in research-driven entrepreneurship. One implication is that universities may be unduly patting themselves on the back – they might yield more entrepreneurs, but not necessarily research-driven entrepreneurs.
Entry, Size Distribution, Scale, and Scope Economies in the Life Insurance Industry

Existing empirical studies in the life insurance industry in the United States and Canada find evidence of economies of scale in at least some aspects of the production of life insurance, with consequent implications for the efficiency of life insurance markets. However, these empirical results are inconsistent with the institutional facts in the industry. First, overall economies of scale (Houston and Simon 1970) are at odds with the evidence that over a substantial period of time, the life insurance market in Canada and the United States has supported a large and growing number of independent firms of vastly different sizes.1 Second, if economies of scale account for the differences in firm size, with small firms ex-
The Effects of Product Type and Donation Magnitude on Willingness to Pay More for a Charity-Linked Brand

This research investigates how the nature of a product and the magnitude of a donation to charity interact to determine the effectiveness that a charity incentive will have in promoting a product. The results suggest that sensitivity to magnitude in the case of charity incentives (i.e., the size of the contribution made per purchase) is not as strong as sensitivity to magnitude in the case of monetary incentives (i.e., the percentage of the price being discounted). In addition, it is found that with large donation magnitudes competing with large monetary incentives, charity incentives will be significantly more effective in promoting products perceived as "frivolous luxuries" (e.g., a hot fudge sundae or a luxury cruise) than in promoting products perceived as "practical necessities" (e.g., a roll of paper towels or a new washing machine).
The Truncation-by-Death Problem

Although experiments are viewed as the gold standard for evaluation, some of their benefits may be lost when, as is common, outcomes are not defined for some sample members. In evaluations of marriage interventions, for example, a key outcome—relationship quality—is undefined when a couple splits up. This article shows how treatment-control differences in mean outcomes can be misleading when outcomes are not defined for everyone and discusses ways to identify the seriousness of the problem. Potential solutions to the problem are described, including approaches that rely on simple treatment-control differences-in-means as well as more complex modeling approaches.
Relative economic values of open space provided by National Forest and military lands to surrounding communities in Colorado

Open space lands are provided by a variety of entities from private individuals to the federal government and these entities make management decisions based on a very broad range of priorities. The net benefits of additional open space depend on the number, quality, and composition of existing open space in the vicinity. In areas where open space is abundant and there is a significant proportion that is federally owned, the net benefits are not well understood. In this study, the marginal willingness to pay for proximity to public open space is estimated using the hedonic property method and home sales transactions in 2007 for El Paso County Colorado, a location that boasts of having over 150,000 acres of open space. Results from a generalized spatial two-stage least squares regression indicate that homes in close proximity to open space provided locally by city, county, and state governments sell for a premium, but larger premiums are associated with proximity to the Pike National Forest and Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station likely at least partially due to the natural amenities of the Rocky Mountains. In contrast, proximity to Fort Carson Army Installation is found to negatively affect house sales prices likely due to undesirable activities that occur on and around the installation. As for the other area of federal lands, proximity to the U.S. Air Force Academy and to Peterson Air Force Base was found to negatively affect house prices; however, these effects were not statistically significant.
Inventor's Knowledge Set as the Antecedent of Patent Importance

This paper investigates the antecedents of patent importance by looking at the prior knowledge set of academic inventors. Using independent methodologies, we distinguish between the scientific knowledge set and the technical knowledge set, and separate these from other kinds of prior expertise. We find that the patents of the inventors who have a prior scholarly knowledge of the topic are on average more important (more cited after 6 years). Conversely, we find an inverted U-shape relationship between prior technical relatedness and patent importance. These results are potentially useful to support the work of practitioners such as university technology managers, which often face difficulties in identifying the importance and perspective value of the disclosed inventions, amid high market and legal uncertainty and budget shortages.
Efficiency and Stock Performance in European Banking

During the past decades, competitive pressures have increasingly driven banks to change the strategic focus on generating returns to shareholders. All things being equal, cost efficient banks should be more profitable and therefore generate greater shareholder returns. The purpose of this paper is to contribute further evidence on bank efficiency by defining alternative efficiency measures and investigating the link between such measures and the market performance of financial institutions. Employing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) we estimate measures of bank cost efficiency for a sample of European banks listed in the year 2000. The results seem to indicate that percentage change in stock prices reflect percentage change in cost efficiency, particularly those derived from DEA. This suggests that stocks of cost efficient banks tend to outperform their inefficient counterparts.
An Econometric Analysis of the Olive Oil Market in Italy

This paper analyzes the olive oil market in Italy. In the specified model, consumption and import demand form conditional demand systems and the relevant policy variables are endogenous. Empirical evidence based on a three-fat almost ideal demand system shows that olive oil is elastic with respect to the group expenditure; that olive oil, seed oils, and butter behave like net substitutes and as gross complements; and that olive oil conditional demand is rather reactive to its own price. The policy multipliers support answers that are coherent with the assumptions, but contradict common opinions. In particular, sectoral instruments are not that effective in enhancing the market. Copyright 1991 by Oxford University Press.
Liberalization and protection: antidumping duties in the Indian pharmaceutical industry

In this paper we investigate whether antidumping (AD) actions in the Indian pharmaceutical industry have restricted trade from countries that were named to be dumping, or whether trade was diverted to other countries not named in these petitions. We found no evidence of trade diversion. It is bad news for consumers, as a restrictive trade policy translates into higher prices for the importing good. In a country where only 30% of the population can afford access to modern drugs, the trade effect due to AD laws must be carefully evaluated.
Entrepreneurship Within Urban and Rural Areas: Creative People and Social Networks

Freire-Gibb L. C. and Nielsen K. Entrepreneurship within urban and rural areas: creative people and social networks, Regional Studies. This research puts forth hypotheses regarding the role of individual creativity and social networks in becoming an entrepreneur and surviving the critical first years in both urban and rural areas. Creativity is found to lead to start-ups in urban areas, where the environment is not only more supportive but also more competitive, but not in rural areas. However, creativity does not increase the chance of success. The particular importance of social networks in rural areas is likely due to stronger ties and fewer supporting institutions.
In vivo Imaging of Brain Dopaminergic Neurotransmission System in Small Animals with High-resolution Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography

High-resolution single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) provides a unique capability to image the biodistribution of radiolabeled molecules in small laboratory animals. Thus, we applied the high-resolution SPECT to in vivo imaging of the brain dopaminergic neurotransmission system in common marmosets using two radiolabeled ligands, [^123I]2 β -carbomethoxy-3 β -(4-iodophenyl)tropane ( β -CIT) as a dopamine transporter (DAT) ligand and [^123I]iodobenzamide (IBZM) as a dopamine D_2 receptor (D_2R) ligand. Specific images of the striatum, a region with a high density of dopaminergic synapses, were obtained at 240 min and 60 min after injection of [^123I] β -CIT and [^123I]IBZM, respectively. Furthermore, a significantly low accumulation of [^123I] β -CIT in the striatum was observed in MPTP-treated animals compared with results for a control group, and a similar accumulation in the control group was observed with the pretreatment of deprenyl in the MPTP-treated animals. However, the striatal accumulation of [^123I]IBZM showed no changes among the control, MPTP-treated, and deprenyl-MPTP-treated groups. These SPECT imaging results agreed well with those of DA concentration and motor behavior. Since MPTP destroys nigrostriatal dopamine nerves and produces irreversible neurodegeneration associated with Parkinsonian syndrome, SPECT imaging data in this study demonstrated that deprenyl shows its neuroprotective effect on Parkinsonism by protecting against the destruction of presynaptic dopamine neurons.
Developing Effective Electronic Information Seekers

As electronic sources of information expand and build depth, there is an increasing reliance on information seeking to support work activities and decision-making. Despite the growing importance of these information sources, little is known about the process of information seeking, and the ways in which skills may be improved. This paper describes a series of studies that seek to identify factors which enhance information seeking, and, in particular, to explore the relationship between motivational influences and information search strategy. The results indicate the need for reviews of organisational training and infrastructure to ensure workers are sufficiently skilled in basic information seeking.