Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Primary esophageal repair for Boerhaave's syndrome whatever the free interval between perforation and treatment.

OBJECTIVES Boerhaave's syndrome is the most sinister cause of esophageal perforation responsible with mortality rate ranging from 20 to 30%. Combination of mediastinal contamination with microorganisms, gastric acid and digestives enzymes, long free interval between injury and initiation of treatment causes severe mediastinitis which is fatal in most untreated cases. The aim of this paper is to emphasize primary esophageal repair and resuscitation whatever the free interval from rupture and repair. METHODS A retrospective review of patients treated for Boerhaave's syndrome in our department from January 1980 to February 2003 was performed. The principle of treatment was surgical treatment and avoidance of esophageal exclusion or esophagectomy whichever was possible. RESULTS There were 25 patients (17 males and 8 females). All patients were operated on by primary esophageal repair, except for three who underwent immediate exclusion of the esophagus and one patient who deceased on arrival before being operated. Patients were classified according to free interval between perforation and treatment: group 1 (n=9; 36%) within the 24 h (range from 12 to 24 h) and group 2 (n=16; 64%) more than 24 h (range from 2 to 17 days). Altogether 6 patients deceased (24%). In hospital mortality rate for groups 1 and 2 was, respectively, 44% (four patients) and 13% (two patients), not significantly different. Mean hospital stay was 63 days. Two patients developed anastomotic leakage needing esophagectomy and retrosternal coloplasty in one or more steps. One patient developed pleural abscess treated by percutaneous drainage. Three patients presented temporary symptomatic esophageal stenosis, of whom one underwent dilation. CONCLUSIONS Long free interval before treatment does not preclude primary esophageal repair in Boerhaave's syndrome. Esophageal exclusion may be more often than not avoided in most cases.
Vascular smooth muscle cell calcium fluxes. Regulation by angiotensin II and lipoproteins.

This study examined 45Ca uptake, 45Ca efflux, and the distribution of exchangeable 45Ca in confluent, quiescent cultures of aortic smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) from normotensive Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). These parameters were investigated under basal conditions and after addition of angiotensin II (Ang II) and low (LDL) and high (HDL) density lipoproteins. Basal 45Ca uptake was approximately 50% greater in VSMCs from SHRs (p < 0.005 versus WKY). Calcium antagonists (diltiazem or nifedipine) abolished this difference. The 45Ca uptake response to Ang II was approximately twofold greater in SHR than in WKY VSMCs (p < 0.05), and Ang II-induced increments of 45Ca uptake were weakly inhibited (by approximately 15-25%) by calcium antagonists. Lipoproteins also stimulated 45Ca uptake in VSMCs, and the apparent affinity of this process was approximately fivefold greater for LDL than for HDL. Calcium antagonists did not inhibit either LDL- or HDL-induced 45Ca uptake. SHR and WKY VSMCs did not differ with respect to 45Ca uptake induced by either LDL or HDL. The initial size of the slowly exchangeable pool of intracellular Ca2+ was approximately 35% greater in SHR VSMCs (p < 0.05 versus WKY). Ang II-induced mobilization of intracellular calcium (measured as the decrease in 45Ca content of the slowly exchangeable pool) was threefold greater in SHR VSMCs (p < 0.005 versus WKY). LDL and HDL marginally stimulated 45Ca efflux from this pool (< or = 20% above control) and to comparable extents in both SHR and WKY VSMCs. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Human Papillomavirus Detection in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinomas and Its Clinical Implications

© 2012 Martin et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Human Papillomavirus Detection in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinomas and Its Clinical Implications
Conditional Risk Premia in International Government Bond Markets

The paper estimates conditional pricing models for 11 international government bonds and shows that, while local instruments capture the change in the bonds’ risks, global instruments model the variation in the factor risk premia. Altogether the changes in the factor risk premium capture 78.25% of the bonds’ predictability, while the dynamics in the betas account for less than 1%. One cannot conclude however that the conditional models are well-specified as parameter instability and relatively large mean squared errors were uncovered. These results extend for the first time some of the evidence from the equity market of Ferson and Harvey (1993), Harvey (1995) and Ghysels (1998) to the bond market.
Common Themes in the Divorce Transition Experience of Midlife Women

Abstract This qualitative study report from a larger triangulated study focused on the experiences of midlife women in a divorce transition. Interviews were conducted with 24 midlife women drawn from divorce support groups and court records in northeastern Indiana who self-classified themselves into decider status groups: initiator, non-initiator, and mutual decider. Interpretive content analysis involving data reduction and pattern coding was used for data interpretation. Common themes were new roles, depression, coping, promoting better health, and new relationships. Understanding the divorce transition experience of midlife women enhances the provision of individualized care by nurses and health care professionals. Further study is indicated to develop and test interventions that promote the achievement of a healthy divorce transition.
Impact of JAK2V617F Mutation Burden on Disease Phenotype in Chinese Patients with JAK2V617F-positive Polycythemia Vera (PV) and Essential thrombocythemia (ET)

Most patients with polycythemia vera (PV) and half of essential thrombocythemia (ET) possess an activating JAK2V617F mutation. The objective of this study was to better define the effect of JAK2V617F mutant allele burden on clinical phenotypes in Chinese patients, especially thrombosis. By real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), the JAK2V617F mutation burden was detected in 170 JAK2V617F-positive patients, including 54 PV and 116 ET. The results showed that JAK2V617F allele burden was higher in PV than in ET (P< 0.001). Higher percentage of patients had JAK2V617F allele burden over 20% in PV than in ET (68.5% VS 26.7%) (P< 0.001). In PV patients, higher JAK2V617F allele burden was observed in female (P< 0.05) and leukocytosis patients (WBC above 10×109/L) (P< 0.001). Meanwhile, ET patients showed increased JAK2V617F allele burden in the group with higher hemoglobin (HGB above 150g/L) (P< 0.05), leukocytosis (WBC above 10×109/L) (P< 0.001), splenomegaly (P< 0.05) and thrombosis (P< 0.05). In conclusion, the JAK2V617F mutation allele burden is higher in Chinese patients with PV than ET. In PV patients, JAK2V617F mutation burden had influence on WBC counts. And the clinical characteristics of ET patients, such as WBC counts, hemoglobin level, splenomegaly and thrombosis, were influenced by JAK2V617F mutation burden. Male, high hemoglobin (HGB above 150g/L), and increased JAK2V617F mutation burden (JAK2V617F allele burden ≥16.5%) were risks of thrombosis (P< 0.05) for ET patients by Logistic Regression.
Tertiary level EFL teachers’ opinions and preferences about cultural instruction in foreign language education

The main aim of this study is to explore a group of English language teachers’ opinions and preferences about cultural instruction at tertiary level. This study, which adopted a qualitative research design, was carried out with 10 English language teachers in the English Preparatory Programme at a state university in Turkey. In order to collect data, an open-ended questionnaire was designed and administered to the participants. The data were analysed qualitatively, and some patterns were discovered from the respondents’ answers. The analysis of the data indicated that all the participants have positive opinions about culture teaching because they believe culture and language are inseparable. It was also found out that most of the participants support the instruction of cultural products like food, family, music, holiday and so forth, but they did not mention other dimensions of culture such as practices and perspectives in culture teaching. Another finding of the study was that participants mostly focus on British culture in their teaching; however, only a few of them have a multicultural approach to the teaching of culture. Finally, all the participants reported that they need training on cultural instruction. In the light of these findings, this study offers some suggestions for further research and points to some important implications for both in-service and pre-service foreign language education.
A Two-Stage Model of the Demand for Specialty Crop Insurance

Proposals for reform of the federal multiple-peril crop insurance program for specialty crops seek to change fees for catastrophic (CAT) insurance from a nominal fifty-dollar per contract registration fee to an actuarially sound premium. Growers argue that this would cause a significant reduction in participation rates, thus impeding the program's goals of eventually obviating the need for ad hoc disaster payments and worsening the actuarial soundness of the program. The key policy issue is, therefore, empirical one - whether the demand for specialty crop insurance is elastic or inelastic. Previous studies of this issue using either grower or county-level field crop data typically treat the participation problem as either a discrete insure / don't insure decision or aggregate these decisions to a continuous participation rate problem. However, a grower's problem is more realistically cast as one of simultaneously making a coverage level / insurance participation decision. Because the issue at hand considers a significant price increase for only one coverage level (50%), differentiating between these decisions is necessary both from an analytical and econometric standpoint. To model this decision, the paper develops a two-stage estimation procedure based on Lee's multinomial logit-OLS selection framework. This method is applied to a county-level panel data set consisting of eleven years of the eleven largest grape-growing counties in California. Results show that growers choose among coverage levels based upon expected net premiums and the variance of these returns, as well as the first two moments of expected market returns. At the participation-level, the mean and variance of indemnities are also important, as are several variables measuring the extent of self-insurance, such as farm size, enterprise diversity, or farm income. The results also show that the elasticity of 50% coverage insurance is elastic, suggesting that premium increases may indeed worsen the actuarial soundness of the program. These increases will also cause a significant adjustment of growers among coverage levels.
Team SRI-Sarnoff's AURORA System @ TRECVID 2011

In this paper, we present results from the experimental evaluation for the TRECVID 2011 MED11 (Multimedia Event Detection) task as a part of Team SRI-Sarnoff's AURORA system being developed under the IARPA ALADDIN Program. Our approach employs two classes of content descriptions for describing videos depicting diverse events: (1) Low level features and their aggregates, and (2) Semantic concepts that capture scenes, objects and atomic actions that are local in space-time. In this presentation we summarize our system design and the content descriptions used. We also present four MED11 experiments that we submitted, discuss the results and lessons learned.
Tangible Information and Citizen Empowerment: Identification Cards and Food Subsidy Programs in Indonesia

Redistribution programs in developing countries often “leak” because local officials do not implement programs as the central government intends. We study one approach to reducing leakage. In an experiment in over 550 villages, we test whether mailing cards with program information to targeted beneficiaries increases the subsidy they receive from a subsidized rice program. On net, beneficiaries received 26 percent more subsidy in card villages. Ineligible households received no less, so this represents substantially lower leakage.
Action-embedded pedagogy in entrepreneurship education: an experimental enquiry

ABSTRACT Scholarly community has raised concerns over the effectiveness of traditional classroom pedagogy in entrepreneurship education (EE), highlighting the need for alternative pedagogic approach. Our study explores the superiority of action learning pedagogy over traditional classroom pedagogy for EE, to overcome these challenges. The impact of both pedagogic approaches was assessed through entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. A randomized experimental, pre-and-post-tests with control and treatment groups design was followed to accomplish the study objectives. The results affirmed that those who were exposed to action learning pedagogy (treatment group) would have significantly high level of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention compared to those with traditional classroom pedagogy (control group). It was also found that the EE has positive influence on entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention between both the groups. The study reiterates that EE, with action learning, has a high degree of influence on entrepreneurial intention, and, hence, its importance in EE.
An Investigation of the Reasons Behind the Weaknesses in English Among Public Secondary School Leavers

Although the school English Textbooks are based on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Yemeni students study English for six years in the public schools, the language competency of most secondary school leavers is considerably low. They cannot communicate with others even by using simple sentences, orally or in writing. Such weaknesses are obviously noticed when such students sit for the entrance exams as prerequisite for English studies, engineering and medicine. These weaknesses can be due to many reasons. This paper attempts to explore the reasons which may cause such poor outcomes. Twenty three (23) female English teachers and forty seven (47) female school students participated in this study by writing the reasons which, according to them, affect learning and acquiring English negatively. An open-ended questionnaire was used. Both teachers and students listed about 59 reasons. Teaching English by non-specialist teachers was considered by teachers and students the first reason, followed by the absence of family and societal encouragement, lack of instructional aids and materials, students not caring about English and concentrating during the class, and their negative attitudes towards English which stems from western colonization of the Arab World.
Structural coloration and sexual selection in the barn swallow Hirundo rustica

Structural coloration has been hypothesized to play a role in sexual selection, and we tested whether this was the case in a field study of the barn swallow Hirundo rustica. The dorsal iridescent plumage of barn swallows has a strong reflectance in the ultraviolet (UV) region, with adult males on average reflecting 8-9% more than adult females, as revealed by a 2-year study in southwestern Spain. The correlation between structural coloration (described by the reflectance in the UV part of the spectrum, UV chroma and blue chroma) and three other secondary sexual characters significantly associated with male mating success (tail length, tail asymmetry, and red facial coloration) was weak and generally nonsignificant. Nor was there a significant relationship between color parameters and body condition. We tested for an association between structural coloration of the dorsal plumage and sexual selection in a number of independent tests. Arrival date of males was not significantly related to color; there was no significant relationship between coloration and probability of survival or age; mated males did not have stronger reflectance than unmated males; and the duration of the premating period was not significantly related to color. Reproductive success was not significantly correlated with plumage coloration in males, nor was the feeding rate of offspring by brightly colored males higher than that of males with less bright plumage. Given that sample sizes were large, and the power of statistical tests high, we conclude that current sexual selection on the coloration of the dorsal plumage in the barn swallow is, at best, weak. Copyright 2002.
Intergenerational partnerships in adult day centers: importance of age-appropriate environments and behaviors.

PURPOSE This research identified the potential for infantilization of clients in centers that offer an occasional program of combined adult and child day care. DESIGN AND METHODS The study used a comparative ethnographic approach, which analyzed observation and interview data collected from two adult day centers that offered intergenerational activities. Special attention was paid to the environment, behaviors, and clients' interaction patterns. RESULTS The adult day center cultures varied widely in age appropriateness, opportunities for autonomy, privacy regulation, choice, and adult interaction, especially as children were introduced into the setting. Infantilization occurred in the intergenerational program when the adults and children were treated as status equals, and the activities and environments were only child oriented. Older persons perceived a need for an "escape option" if contact with children was overstimulating or age inappropriate. Positive intergenerational experiences involved adults in a mentoring role, voluntary participation, and client-initiated contact with children. IMPLICATIONS This study explores the influence of intergenerational programming in adult day centers, and bridges the gap between theory and practice with implications for other aging services.
Globalizing human resource management

The book explores what is happening to HRM in a global context and how far are organizations able to understand and to move towards the notion of globalized HRM. Part One outlines the nature of globalization and introduces important areas of International HRM and International B.usiness theory. Part Two explains the strategic objectives for Global HRM in terms of building global capabilities at the organizational level and developing international management competencies at the individual level. Part Three then focuses on seven important global integration mechanisms and processes: business model innovation and the building of global capabilities; the development of a global mindset and leadership model; global talent management; the actions associated with the management of an international labor force; the pursuit of global employer brands; significant shifts in the global sourcing, shoring and types of strategic partnership; and the standardization and e-enablement of HRM.
Gamification towards sustainable mobile application

Gamification is not a newly emerging concept. Perhaps, it is a new term to some people. Gamification is a powerful new strategy to influence and motivate groups of people. It applies game mechanics to non-game activities to change the user's behavior of an application. It improves the engagement of user by keeping score of points earned through various activities on the application. The recent gamified websites or a related service such as Foursquare is a location-based application that pinpoints where you are and your activities. Users of the Foursquare can “check in” to various locations on their mobile phones and gain incentives like badges or deals. Gamification is utilised as a mean to build up user loyalty, and not so much to gain their long-term engagement. This article discusses how the gamification can help to drive the sustainability after a mobile application has been delivered and is in use. It is important to make mobile application continuously visible and sustainable if the concept of gamification has been used correctly. The more users can gain from the virtual and tangible rewards of using our application, the more we can be rewarded from our users. It also discusses how adding a “game layer” has improved the basic functions in society like educating people to become more responsible and helpful and use badges as virtual reward to users who contribute photos. Interactive mobile application designed to change the way of people report road accident cases with applying a simplicity and convenience principles. For instance, user just needs to snap photo and touch on screen to report a road accident case.
The Transcription Factor ZNF395 Is Required for the Maximal Hypoxic Induction of Proinflammatory Cytokines in U87-MG Cells

Hypoxia activates the expression of proangiogenic and survival promoting factors as well as proinflammatory cytokines that support tissue inflammation. Hypoxia and inflammation are associated with tumor progression. The identification of the factors participating in the hypoxia associated inflammation is essential to develop strategies to control tumor hypoxia. The transcription factor ZNF395 was found to be overexpressed in various tumors including glioblastomas particularly in the network of a hypoxic response pointing to a functional role of ZNF395. On the other hand, ZNF395 was suggested to have tumor suppressor activities which may rely on its repression of proinflammatory factors. To address these conflictive observations, we investigated the role of ZNF395 in the expression of proinflammatory cytokines in the astrocytoma cell line U87-MG under hypoxia. We show that ZNF395 is a target gene of the hypoxia inducible factor HIF-1α. By gene expression analysis, RT-PCR and ELISA, we demonstrated that the siRNA-mediated suppression of ZNF395 impairs the hypoxic induction of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and LIF in U87-MG cells. At ambient oxygen concentrations, ZNF395 had no enhancing effect, indicating that this transcriptional activation by ZNF395 is restricted to hypoxic conditions. Our results suggest that ZNF395 contributes to hypoxia associated inflammation by superactivating proinflammatory cytokines.