Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of estrogen receptor beta gene polymorphisms with susceptibility to adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.

STUDY DESIGN A case-control study is presented. OBJECTIVE To investigate the association of estrogen receptor beta gene polymorphisms with susceptibility to adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Studies have shown that idiopathic scoliosis is related to genetic factors, such as XbaI site polymorphism of the estrogen receptor alpha gene. To our knowledge, however, the relationship of estrogen receptor beta gene polymorphisms and the individual susceptibility to idiopathic scoliosis has not been studied. METHODS This study included 218 patients with AIS and 140 healthy controls. Height, menarche status, curve pattern, Cobb angle, and Risser sign in female patients were recorded. Blood samples were taken from each subject by venipuncture. Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood leukocytes using standard phenol/chloroform extraction. PCR products from amplification of genomic DNA from all individuals were analyzed using denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography. Samples with aberrant HPLC profiles were sequenced in both the forward and the reverse directions on an ABI 3100 automated sequencer. The chi test was used to determine the significant difference in genotype distribution between patients with AIS and the controls. RESULTS The frequency of CC genotype of the exon ØK (in reality 5' UTR OK-1)was significantly higher in patients than that in controls (P < 0.05). The C alleles appeared to be overrepresented in patients compared with controls (P < 0.05). Furthermore, the frequencies of CC genotypes in female patients whose height was > or =160 cm and Cobb angle was > or =30 degrees were higher than those whose height was <160 cm and Cobb angle was <30 degrees (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION. : The sites of the exon ØK polymorphisms of estrogen receptor beta gene may be associated with a susceptibility of AIS. Furthermore, the sites of the exon ØK polymorphism may be associated with the height and the curve severity of patients.
Measuring Free Cash Flows for Equity Valuation: Pitfalls and Possible Solutions

In recent years, cash flow metrics have become increasingly popular as investors describe cash flows as more intuitive, more easily measured, and less prone to manipulation. However, many pitfalls exist in using standard cash flow measures because of the lack of consensus about what cash flow should include. In an article published in the Financial Analysts Journal in 1974, Joel M. Stern defined free cash flow (FCF) as net operating profit after taxes minus the amount of new capital invested. In practice, however, investors attempting to compare free cash flow from company to company will find a variety of different measures. Some companies define FCF as reported cash from operations minus capital expenditures. Other companies add some portion of the cash spent on mergers and acquisitions as well as financing payments, such as preferred and common dividends. Cash flows according to GAAP are not better and suffer from several limitations, such as inconsistency, misclassification, ease of manipulation, and measurement error. Other non-GAAP free cash flows also suffer from inconsistency and ignore important economic factors.
Beyond the Regulatory State

The traditional view of regulation as essentially a governmental function has become outmoded. Regulatory enforcement, and state activity generally, are diminishing. In their place, a devolution of control is occurring which entails the harnessing of private institutions and energies in furtherance of regulatory policy. This paper describes some of these new regulatory forms, and suggests that new private or hybrid regulatory orderings may emerge which are more stringent, yet more subtle, and ultimately more palatable to the target of regulation than conventional state control.
Analysis of genotypic variation in genes associated with virulence in Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans clinical isolates.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Although certain serotypes of Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans are associated more with aggressive periodontitis than are other serotypes, the correlation between distinct lineages and virulence traits in this species is poorly understood. This study aimed to evaluate the polymorphism of genes encoding putative virulence factors of clinical isolates, and to correlate these findings with A. actinomycetemcomitans serotypes, genotypes and periodontal status of the hosts. MATERIAL AND METHODS Twenty-six clinical isolates from diverse geographic populations with different periodontal conditions were evaluated. Genotyping was performed using pulse-field gel electrophoresis. Polymorphisms in the genes encoding leukotoxin, Aae, ApaH and determinants for serotype-specific O polysaccharide were investigated. RESULTS The isolates were classified into serotypes a-f, and exhibited three apaH genotypes, five aae alleles and 25 macrorestriction profiles. Two serotype b isolates (7.7%), obtained from Brazilian patients with aggressive periodontitis, were associated with the highly leukotoxic genotype; these isolates showed identical fingerprint patterns and aae and apaH genotypes. Serotype c, obtained from various periodontal conditions, was the most prevalent among Brazilian isolates, and isolates were distributed in two aae alleles, but formed a genetically distinct group based on apaH analysis. Cluster analysis showed a close relationship between fingerprinting genotypes and serotypes/apaH genotypes, but not with aae genotypes. CONCLUSION Apart from the deletion in the ltx promoter region, no disease-associated markers were identified. Non-JP2-like strains recovered from individuals with periodontal disease exhibited considerable genetic variation regarding aae/apaH genotypes, serotypes and XhoI DNA fingerprints.
PENGARUH CAPITAL ADEQUACY RATIO, PENYALURAN KREDIT DAN NON PERFORMING LOAN TERHADAP PROFITABILITAS

There several ratios that affect the profitability of a bank of which the CAR, NPL. NPL can weaken the influence CAR and lending to profitability. The purpose this study analyze effect variable CAR and lending to profitability with NPL moderating variable. This research carried out the banks listed the Indonesia Stock Exchange 2010-2012 period, using purposive sampling method in sample collection. The results showed that partially CAR and NPL not affect the profitability, while lending positive effect profitability. While NPL negatively affect the profitability of the relationship between CAR and NPL positive effect on relationship between the profitability of lending.
Real-ear measurement verification for open, non-occluding hearing instruments

Real-ear measurements using the modified pressure method with concurrent (real-time) equalization can be inaccurate, when amplified sound leaks out of the ear canal and reaches the reference microphone. In such situations the reference microphone will detect an increased sound level and reduce the output of the loudspeaker to maintain the desired level. The risk of having errors due to leaks increases if digital feedback suppression (DFS) is used, thus achieving higher feedback-free gain levels. The following hypotheses were tested: a) using the concurrent equalization method for fitting hearing instruments with DFS may result in underestimated real-ear insertion gain (especially when using open fittings) and b) as the benefit of the DFS system increases, this error also increases. Real-ear measurements were carried out in twenty-one subjects using the modified pressure method with stored equalization as well as with concurrent equalization. The results of the study supports both hypotheses. As a consequence it is recommended to use a stored equalization method for real-ear measurements of hearing instruments with DFS and open fitting.
Tax Policy When Countries Compete for Third Market Exports

We examine the welfare and other consequences of tax policy in a third market export model where duopolists located in two countries compete in prices. With tax competition between governments, we allow for welfare-maximizing governments in the two countries to delegate tax setting responsibility to policy-makers who have different objectives than the governments. The unique equilibrium in the tax competition environment involves both governments delegating tax setting responsibility to tax revenue-maximizing policy-makers. This equilibrium yields higher welfare for both countries than the outcome when the governments delegate to welfare-maximizing policy-makers. The paper also compares tax competition with tax harmonization and shows that when the entire export market is served, tax harmonization improves the welfare of the country that houses the low cost firm, while the other country may be immiserized.
The expansion of higher education led by private universities in Korea

This article explores the role of the Korean government in expanding private higher education over time and attempts to examine the impact of such expansion on access to and equity in higher education. The enrolment rate in Korean higher education has increased to over 80% within the past 60 years. This can be attributed to two factors: the rapid expansion of private universities which currently enrol about 80% of undergraduates, and the Koreans' educational aspirations rooted in the cultural esteem for education. The government's role is also paramount in the expansion by deregulating private universities. However, higher education expansion, mainly led by private resources with minimal government funding, has resulted in educational inequity. The Korean case demonstrates the importance of maintaining a balanced act between regulating and promoting the expansion of private higher education for a developing economy.
Analysis and diagnosis of income smoothing in Spain

This paper examines income smoothing behaviour for a sample of Spanish listed companies over the period 1991–97. Discretionary accruals are used as a measure of managers' accounting discretion. Our results strongly support the income smoothing hypothesis which predicts aggressive (conservative) accounting policies when a firm's current pre-managed performance undershoots (exceeds) target earnings, as proxied by median earnings for the firm's industry. Consistent with DeFond and Park (1997), we also provide some evidence supporting the anticipatory income smoothing hypothesis, whereby current period smoothing behaviour is partly conditioned on expected future performance.
Sequential Prediction of Social Media Popularity with Deep Temporal Context Networks

Prediction of popularity has profound impact for social media, since it offers opportunities to reveal individual preference and public attention from evolutionary social systems. Previous research, although achieves promising results, neglects one distinctive characteristic of social data, i.e., sequentiality. For example, the popularity of online content is generated over time with sequential post streams of social media. To investigate the sequential prediction of popularity, we propose a novel prediction framework called Deep Temporal Context Networks (DTCN) by incorporating both temporal context and temporal attention into account. Our DTCN contains three main components, from embedding, learning to predicting. With a joint embedding network, we obtain a unified deep representation of multi-modal user-post data in a common embedding space. Then, based on the embedded data sequence over time, temporal context learning attempts to recurrently learn two adaptive temporal contexts for sequential popularity. Finally, a novel temporal attention is designed to predict new popularity (the popularity of a new user-post pair) with temporal coherence across multiple time-scales. Experiments on our released image dataset with about 600K Flickr photos demonstrate that DTCN outperforms state-of-the-art deep prediction algorithms, with an average of 21.51% relative performance improvement in the popularity prediction (Spearman Ranking Correlation).
Earning While Learning: When and How Student Employment is Beneficial

Although studies of student employment (‘earning while learning’) mostly find positive wage effects, they do not adequately consider the relation of the employment to the field of study. We investigate how different types of student employment during tertiary education affect short‐ and long‐term labour market returns. Beyond examining differences between non‐working and part‐time working students, we distinguish between student employment related and unrelated to the field of study. Our results show significant positive labour market returns of ‘earning while learning’ only for student employment related to the field of study. These returns consist of a lower unemployment risk, shorter job‐search duration, higher wage effects, and greater job responsibility.
Managing Knowledge for Global and Collaborative Innovations

In today's networked and interconnected world, improving communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing between people and organization is very important. Collaboration is more than just being connected through the Internet and various forms of social networks. Collaboration through information and communication technologies requires us to “prepare the mind” for partnerships. Many of the traditional business models, organizational structures, and educational systems are not yet ready for the new forms of collaboration that go beyond organizational boundaries. Concepts like “open innovation”, “value networks”, and “wisdom of crowds” are some of the ideas that influence our thinking on collaboration and information sharing. This book contains some of the best and most up-to-date work by researchers and practitioners in the field of knowledge management. It provides an insight into knowledge management practices and their applications to a wide range of complex issues. The peer-reviewed papers included in this volume are selected from the prestigious 2009 International Conference on Knowledge management held in Hong Kong. The book is a good reference source for information and knowledge professionals and can be read by both graduate and undergraduate students.
Knowledge exchange and networks: a new destination for tourism internships?

Traditional host-student internships always aim to provide positive real-world learning outcomes for students. The industry partners are often considered to benefit from the arrangement, primarily through recruitment opportunities and achieving corporate and social responsibility objectives. Supplementary host benefits can include knowledge exchange, such as receiving innovative ideas and the latest theories from the students, as well as developing a collaborative relationship with the university. It is these, usually peripheral, benefits that emerged as the key positive outcomes for the tourism industry stakeholders of an innovative destination immersion internship, conducted by the School of Tourism, The University of Queensland. A third key outcome, identified through the in-depth interviews, and not usually associated with internships, was engagement with the destination network. This paper reports on the industry participant's expectations, experiences and satisfaction with the destination-based internship program. In particular, the research considers the benefits and challenges beyond the established internship literature. The findings of this study show that there is broader scope and reciprocity from internship programmes than has previously been identified in the literature.
Adaptive robust control of nonholonomic systems using a switching approach

This paper investigates the problem of robust adaptive control for a class of nonholonomic systems in chained form with strong nonlinear drifts and unknown nonlinear parameters. Combining the parameter separation technique with the feedback domination design, a solution to the problem of global-adaptive control for the uncertain nonholonomic systems is obtained and a switching strategy is developed to eliminate the terms of uncontrollability. The presented adaptive control algorithm guarantees that all the states converge to the origin and other variables are bounded.
Selection and characterization of probiotic culture of Streptococcus thermophilus from dahi

For the isolation of probiotic cultures of Streptococcus thermophilus from dahi, we collected 120 samples from the southern regions of Punjab, Pakistan. Eleven isolates were obtained, and six were scrutinized for antibacterial activities against food-borne pathogens. The carbohydrate fermentation profile of these six strains was determined by the API50 CHL system. Additionally, these strains were amplified for their 16S rRNA regions to confirm their genotypic relationship. Furthermore, phenotypic characteristics among these strains were established by S-layer protein analysis of their cell walls by sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and by plasmid profiling. The outer cell wall layers of these strains have 6–14 different sizes of protein bands of 27, 34, 37, 40, 45 and 60 kDa molecular weight. Similarly, except S02FT, all strains have a single prominent plasmid of 23 kbp, whereas S02FT has an additional plasmid of 9 kbp. On the basis of this unique feature and a wide spectrum of killing patterns against pathogenic bacteria, S. thermophilus S02FT was further characterized. This culture showed an optimum antibacterial activity of 800 AU/ml at pH 5.0–5.5 and a temperature of 30–37°C. It grows well in in vitro acidic conditions and tolerates bile salt up to 2% concentration. It was resistant to nalidixic acid, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin and sulphamethoxazol, but showed intermediate behaviour to vancomycin and erythromycin.
Industrial Relations in Hotels and Catering: Neglect and Paradox?

Given that hotels and catering comprise an important part of the service sector representing the changing face of the economy, their neglect in industrial relations discourse about the ‘new’ industrial relations is no longer sustainable. Previously unpublished data from the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey 1990 (WIRS3) have provided the first opportunity for systematic analysis and evaluation of employment relationship issues in the industry and finds them to be different from those observed elsewhere in the economy. Consequently, hotels and catering can be said to manifest a predominance of ‘unbridled individualism’ associated with ‘poor’ industrial relations outcomes which, paradoxically, exist alongside an above average presence of personnel specialists.
State of the States 2010: The Role of Policy in Clean Energy Market Transformation

This report builds on the emerging body of literature seeking to identify quantitative connections between clean energy policy and renewable energy. The methods presented test the relationships between a broad set of policies and clean energy resources (energy efficiency, biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind). Energy efficiency findings are an initial foray into this type of analysis and indicate significant connections between reduced energy use and buildings codes, energy efficiency resource standards (in some cases), and electricity price. Renewable energy findings specify that there is most often a relationship between state policies and solar and wind development, indicating that while policies might apply to a wide variety of renewable resources, further tailoring of policy specifics to resource needs may lead to increased development of a wider variety of renewable energy resources. Further research is needed to refine the connections between clean energy development and policy, especially in the area of the impact of the length of time that a policy has been in place.
Impact of Cultural Values on Young Consumers’ Choice of International Tertiary Education

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the following choice issues among young consumers (Generation Y): how cultural values influence a student’s decision on study destinations, and how cultural values influence student’s preferred sources of information for university choice? High school students from Singapore and Malaysia, intending to study in New Zealand were surveyed with an instrument based on Schwartz’s Value Survey and the understanding that cultural values are a powerful force shaping consumers’ motivations, lifestyles and product choices.The results of this research suggests that cultural values have an impact on student’s intended choice of international tertiary education and their preferred sources of information for university enrollment. The results have important implications for marketers of export education. There are few studies which try to understand how cultural values influence a student’s decision on study destinations and their preferred sources of information for university choice.
Septic Arthritis After Arthroscopic Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction

Background: Septic arthritis after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction is a rare but severe complication. Treatment regimens differ, and optimal management has not been established. Purpose: To determine the incidence of postoperative infections after ACL reconstruction, to identify the microbiological spectrum, and to evaluate a standardized graft-retaining treatment protocol consisting of sequential arthroscopic irrigation and debridement (I&D) procedures and antibiotic therapy until C-reactive protein levels are within normal range. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: From January 2004 to June 2014, a total of 7096 consecutive arthroscopic ACL reconstructions were performed at a single institution (5907 primary and 1189 revision reconstructions). Thirty-six cases with postoperative septic arthritis were identified and retrospectively analyzed with regard to incidence, clinical presentation, time to and number of arthroscopic reoperations, and microbiological findings. The follow-up examination consisted of a clinical examination, instrumeted measurement of laxity (KT-1000 arthrometer), classification according to objective and subjective International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) scores, and radiological evaluation. Results: The incidence of septic arthritis was 0.51% (n = 36), with 0.41% (n = 24) in primary and 1.01% (n = 12) in revision reconstructions (odds ratio, 2.5; P = .008). The first I&D was performed a mean (±SD) of 19.6 ± 10.6 days after the index procedure. Eradication was achieved in all patients after a mean of 2.25 ± 1.22 procedures, with graft retention in all but 1 patient (97.2%). The mean duration of antibiotic treatment was 5.4 ± 2.3 weeks (range, 2.1-12.9 weeks) and ≤4 weeks in 13 patients (36%). No recurrence of infections was seen. Coagulase-negative staphylococci (62.5%) and Staphylococcus aureus (21.9%) were the most frequent pathogens. Twenty-nine patients were available for follow-up (80.6%) after a mean 4.7 ± 3.2 years (range, 0.7-11.2 years). Two patients suffered recurrent nontraumatic ACL insufficiency (6.9%), and all others (93.1%) had an intact graft, with a mean KT-1000 arthrometer side-to-side difference of 1.4 ± 0.9 mm. The mean subjective IKDC score was 80.4 ± 11.2. No emergence or deterioration of osteoarthritis related to infections was seen. Conclusion: Postoperative septic arthritis is rare but serious after arthroscopic ACL reconstruction. Graft retention and good to excellent clinical results can be obtained with an arthroscopic treatment protocol. The duration of antibiotic therapy should be based on the individual course.