Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study on chemotherapeutic sensitizing effect of nimotuzumab on different human esophageal squamous carcinoma cells

Esophageal cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. Although, surgery, radio- and chemotherapy are used to treat the disease, the identification of new drugs is crucial to increase the curative effect. The aim of the present study was to examine the chemotherapeutic sensitizing effect of nimotuzumab (h-R3) and cisplatin cytotoxic drugs cisplatin (DDP) and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) on esophageal carcinoma cells with two different epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expressions. The expression of EGFR was detected in the human EC1 or EC9706 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell line using immunohistochemistry. The inhibitory effect of DDP and 5-FU alone or combined with h-R3 on EC1 or EC9706 cell proliferation was detected using an MTT assay. Flow cytometry and the TUNEL assay were used to determine the effect of single or combined drug treatment on cell apoptosis. The results showed that the expression of EGFR was low in EC1 cells but high in EC9706 cells. The inhibitory effect of the single use of h-R3 on EC1 or EC9706 cell proliferation was decreased. The inhibitory effect between single use of h-R3 alone and combined use of the chemotherapy drugs showed no statistically significant difference (P>0.05) on the EC1 cell growth rate, but showed a statistically significant difference (a=0.05) on EC9706 cell growth rate. The results detected by flow cytometry and TUNEL assay showed that the difference between single use of h-R3 alone and the control group was statistically significant with regard to the EC1 apoptosis rate effect (P<0.05), but not statistically significant for EC9706 (P>0.05). However, statistically significant differences were identified in the apoptotic rate of EC9706 cells between the h-R3 combined chemotherapy group and single chemotherapy group (P<0.05), but not on in the EC1 chemotherapy group (P>0.05). In conclusion, the sensitization effect of h-R3 on chemotherapy drugs is associated with the expression level of EGFR in EC1 or EC9706 cells. The cell killing effect of the combined use of h-R3 with DDP and 5-FU showed no obvious synergistic effect compared to the single-drug group, but only an additive effect.
Empirical evaluation for finger input properties in multi-touch interaction

Current multi-touch interaction techniques typically only use the x-y coordinates of the human finger's contact with the screen. However, when fingers contact a touch-sensitive surface, they usually approach at an angle and cover a relatively large 2D area instead of a precise single point. In this paper, a Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) based multi-touch device is used to collect the finger imprint data. We designed a series of experiments to explore human finger input properties and identified several useful properties such as contact area, contact shape and contact orientation which can be exploited to improve the performance of multi-touch selecting and pointing tasks. Based on the experimental results, we discuss some implications for the design of human finger input interfaces and propose several design prototypes which incorporate these implications. A set of raw data and several concrete recommendations which are useful for the research community are also presented.
Business leadership and culture : national management styles in the global economy

How do business leaders think as a result of their national culture? This book provides a discussion and comparative analysis of five major cultures - American, Arab, Chinese, Japanese and Scandinavian - and how they reveal themselves in business practice. The text begins by introducing the concept of culture and why it is important, addressing issues such as values, beliefs and assumptions and the concequences of these. It then goes on to address corporate culture and business strategy as well as ome myths associated with national cultures.
An Electronic Publication Dedicated to Early Stellar Evolution and Molecular Clouds Effects of Collisions with Rocky Planets on the Properties of Hot Jupiters Interferometric Identification of a Pre-brown Dwarf

Observed Hot Jupiters exhibit a wide range of physical properties. For a given mass, many planets have inflated radii, while others are surprisingly compact and may harbor large central cores. Motivated by the observational sample, this paper considers possible effects from collisions of smaller rocky planets with gas giant planets. In this scenario, the Jovian planets migrate first and enter into ∼ 4 day orbits, whereas rocky planets (mass m p = 0.1 − 20M earth) migrate later and then encounter the gaseous giants. Previous work indicates that the collision rates are high for such systems. This paper calculates the trajectories of incoming rocky planets as they orbit within the gaseous planets and are subjected to gravitational, frictional, and tidal forces. These collisions always increase the metallicity of the Jovian planets. If the incoming rocky bodies survive tidal destruction and reach the central regions, they provide a means of producing large planetary cores. Both the added metallicity and larger cores act to decrease the radii of the gas giants at fixed mass. The energy released during these collisions provides the Jovian planet with an additional heat source; here we determine the radial layers where kinetic energy of the colliding body is dissipated, including the energy remaining upon impact with the existing core. This process could have long-term effects if the colliding body deposits significant energy deep in the interior, in regions of high opacity. Both Hot Jupiters and newly formed gas giants have inflated radii, large enough to allow incoming rocky planets to survive tidal disruption, enhance the central core mass, and deposit significant energy (in contrast, denser giant planets with the mass and radius of Jupiter are expected to tidally destroy incoming rocky bodies). It is not known whether brown dwarfs (stellar-like objects with masses less than the hydrogen-burning limit, 0.075 M ⊙) are formed in the same way as solar-type stars or by some other process. Here we report the clear-cut identification of a self-gravitating condensation of gas and dust with a mass in the brown-dwarf regime, made through millimeter interferometric observations. The level of thermal millimeter continuum emission detected from this object indicates a mass ∼ 0.02-0.03 M ⊙ , while the small radius < 460 AU and narrow spectral lines imply a dynamical mass of 0.015-0.02 M ⊙. The identification of such a pre-brown dwarf core supports models according to which brown dwarfs are 1
Post-Uruguay Round price linkages between developed and developing countries

The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture attempted to lower distortions in the global agricultural markets. However, the significant fall in commodity prices in late 1990s may have reduced the incentives for both developed and developing countries to better integrate into the world markets. This study analyzes price linkages and adjustment between developed and developing countries during the post-Uruguay Round period. Prices of two key commodity markets, long-grain rice and medium-hard wheat, are assembled for major exporters and producers. Results from the multivariate cointegration analysis suggest partial market integration between developed and developing countries in the post-Uruguay Round period. Developed countries are found to be price leaders in these two markets, and in most cases, the changes in their prices have relatively large impacts on those of the developing countries. The new entrants into world markets (Vietnam and Argentina) have faced considerable price adjustment due to changes in the developed countries' prices.
Blue Horizontal-Branch Stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. II. Kinematics of the Galactic Halo

We carry out a maximum-likelihood kinematic analysis of a sample of 1170 blue horizontal-branch (BHB) stars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey presented by Sirko and coworkers. Monte Carlo simulations and resampling show that the results are robust to distance and velocity errors at least as large as the errors they estimated. The best-fit velocities of the Sun (circular) and halo (rotational) are 245.9 ± 13.5 km s-1 and 23.8 ± 20.1 km s-1 but are strongly covariant, so that v⊙ - vhalo = 222.1 ± 7.7 km s-1. If one adopts standard values for the local standard of rest and solar motion, then the halo scarcely rotates. The velocity ellipsoid inferred for our sample is much more isotropic [(σr,σθ,σϕ) = (101.4 ± 2.8, 97.7 ± 16.4, 107.4 ± 16.6) km s-1] than that of halo stars in the solar neighborhood, in agreement with a recent study of the distant halo by Sommer-Larsen and coworkers. The line-of-sight velocity distribution of the entire sample, corrected for the Sun's motion, is accurately Gaussian with a dispersion of 101.6 ± 3.0 km s-1.
Children's tactual exploration and copying without vision

Ž . D’Angiulli et al. 1998 have reported that congenitally blind children have higher recognition rates for tactual pictures than blindfolded sighted children. However, blindfolded children who were guided not only attained levels of recognition equal Ž . to that of blind children D’Angiulli et al., 1998 , they also equalled the performance of blindfolded Ž . adults D’Angiulli and Kennedy, 2000 . We present a further test of the hypothesis that guidance can facilitate children’s tactile exploration. We invited blind children to explore tactile patterns and to copy three in detail. Copying performance of this group was then compared to the performance of two groups of blindfolded sighted children, one assigned to a guided-exploration condition and the other to an unguided exŽ ploration condition self-guided exploration, not . guided by the experimenter . Our stimuli were outline pictures of common objects. We observed Ž . empirically D’Angiulli et al., 1998 that recognition rates per picture were below 45%; furthermore, pictures unidentified by the blind were often unidentified by the sighted children. These two facts allowed us to match a blind participant with a sighted, asking them both to draw the same unidentified pictures. Consequently, the children could not explore a picture, find some way to classify it as, say, a person or a telephone, and then proceed to draw a different instance of the category. Copying, instead, had to rely on the knowledge gained from the pattern in the stimulus. Therefore, copying accuracy was used to determine which groups of children did in fact gain and reproduce information about the stimulus patterns, and in which conditions of exploration: would guided children gain more stimulus pattern information than unguided, actively exploring children?
Sex Discrimination in Labor Markets: The Role of Statistical Evidence: Comment

In a recent article in this Review (Kuhn, 1987), Peter Kuhn seeks to assess the relative importance of statistical and other types of evidence in determining women's perceived level of discrimination. The author's point of departure is what he characterizes as a "surprising" relationship. He finds a robust, but statistically insignificant, negative correlation between the conventional measure of salary discrimination ("statistical evidence," in Kuhn's terminology) facing a female worker and the probability that the worker will report discrimination on a confidential survey. In other words, workers facing higher levels of measured salary discrimination are less likely to perceive discrimination. Kuhn explains this finding by hypothesizing the existence of some other evidence ("4nonstatistical evidence"), which, in addition to the salary differential, leads women to recognize and report sex discrimination in their employment. If the quantity of nonstatistical evidence is low, according to Kuhn, women may not report discrimination even if the statistically measured salary differential is large. Kuhn assumes that the quantity of nonstatistical evidence, which is observed by the worker, but not the researcher, is a function of the worker's observed human capital characteristics. Finally, Kuhn evaluates the effect of the nonstatistical evidence using the worker's observed characteristics as a proxy for the unobserved nonstatistical evidence. According to Kuhn's findings, the unobserved variable is a more important determinant of the worker's decision to report discrimination than is the level of statistically measured wage discrimination. Kuhn uses these results to question the importance of recent Supreme Court decisions allowing statistical measures of discrimination to be admitted into evidence in civil sex discrimination suits. As he concludes that such evidence is not the primary factor influencing workers' reporting behavior, allowing these measures to be presented in court should not lead to a large increase in litigation. In this comment, we argue that Kuhn's result, that workers facing a high level of measured discrimination are less likely to report the discrimination, may be explained by incorporating the quality of information, employers' preferences, and the costs of discrimination into the model. We derive conditions under which the negative correlation between measured and reported salary discrimination may be seen as the result of a rational balancing by employers of the benefits and costs of discrimination. Briefly, employers are more likely to discriminate when employees have less accurate information and the probability of reporting, and hence detection, is low. We also offer statistical evidence from the academic labor market to illustrate this alternative hypothesis.
Can New Ventures Control Learning and Leakage in Alliances ? The Partial Tradeoff between Knowledge Acquisition and Protection in Partnerships Formed by Newly Created Businesses Short title : Controlling Learning and Leakage in Alliances

This paper explores the extent to which new ventures can control knowledge transfers to and from their alliance partners. We identify individual and organizational-level mechanisms that underlie both the intent to learn new knowledge and the intent to protect from unwanted knowledge leakage in alliances. In turn, we assess whether intent to learn and intent to protect conflict with or reinforce each other. We test our predictions on a sample of 107 alliances involving e-commerce ventures. Our findings suggest that new ventures can use alliances as reliable sources of external knowledge, while also facing an asymmetric trade-off between learning and leakage such that learning efforts interfere with protection but protection efforts do not damage learning outcomes.
Online Video Game Addiction: A Review and an Information Systems Research Agenda

Using IT systems for extensive amounts of time can have negative affects on one’s life. In particular, online video games have received recent attention for their potential addictive nature. While most scholarly works in this domain have been performed by psychologists and psychiatrists, this manuscript posits that there is a great opportunity for information systems researchers to provide a unique contribution in understanding this phenomenon. A selective literature review is conducted to develop an information systems-based framework that maps extant video game research and identifies research gaps
Citizen Journalism and Political participation: The Youdecide project and the 2007 Australian Federal Election

The 2007 Australian Federal election not only saw the election of a Labor government after 11 years of John Howard's conservative Coalition government. It also saw new levels of political engagement through the Internet, including the rise of citizen journalism as an alternative outlet and mode of reporting on the election. This paper reports on the Youdecide 2007 project, an initiative undertaken by a QUT-based research team to facilitate online news reporting on the election on a 'hyper-local', electorate-based model. We evaluate the Youdecide initiative on the basis of: promoting greater citizen participation in Australian politics; new ways of engaging citizens and key stakeholders in policy deliberation; establishing new links between mainstream media and independent online media; and broadening the base of political participation to include a wider range of citizen and groups.
A Comparitive Study between Vecuronium and Rocuronium for Intubating Condition and Hemodynamic Changes

Background: Neuromuscular blockers (NMB) are very important for generalanesthesia, Rocuronium and Vecuronium are used as non-depolarizing muscle relaxants. In a randomized study we had compared both drugs as regard theonset of action, intubating condition and hemodynamic changes. Method:-Sixty patients ( 20 to 60 year), scheduled to undergo elective general surgery, were included in thisrandomized, double-blind controlledstudy.After induction of anaesthesia, patientswere divided randomly into two groups according to the muscle relaxant used. Group I received Inj. rocuronium while GroupII received Inj.vecuronium. Haemodynamic parameters comprising of heart rate, mean arterial pressure were measuredpreoperatively, pre induction, post induction, post relaxant, post intubation (1 min) and after 3, 5,7,10,15 and 30 min after intubation. Results:-Rocuronium has maintained excellent cardiovascular stability for the dose used in present study. There was an increase inheart rate following rocuronium administration but the average maximum increase of 5 beats/min was clinically insignificant.Rocuronium is 3-6 times less potent than vecuronium as a neuromuscular blocker but is slightly more potent in blocking theresponses to either vagal or preganglionic sympathetic stimulation.
Patterns of Opioid Utilization in Pregnancy in a Large Cohort of Commercial Insurance Beneficiaries in the United States

Background: There are few data regarding the utilization of opioids during pregnancy. The objective of this study was to define the prevalence and patterns of opioid use in a large cohort of pregnant women who were commercial insurance beneficiaries. Methods: Data for the study were derived from a deidentified research database of women from across the United States who had both medical and prescription benefits. By using diagnostic codes, the authors defined a cohort of 534,500 women with completed pregnancies who were enrolled in a commercial insurance plan from 6 months before pregnancy through delivery. Results: Overall, 76,742 women (14.4%) were dispensed an opioid at some point during pregnancy. There were 30,566 women (5.7%) dispensed an opioid during the first trimester, 30,434 women (5.7%) during the second trimester, and 34,906 women (6.5%) during the third trimester. Of these, 11,747 women (2.2%) were dispensed opioids three or more times during pregnancy. The most commonly dispensed opioids during pregnancy were hydrocodone (6.8%), codeine (6.1%), and oxycodone (2.0%). The prevalence of exposure at anytime during pregnancy decreased slightly during the study period from 14.9% for pregnancies that delivered in 2005 to 12.9% in 2011. The prevalence of exposure varied significantly by region and was lowest in the Northeast and highest in the South. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that opioids are very common exposures during pregnancy. Given the small and inconsistent body of literature on their safety in pregnancy, these findings suggest a need for research in this area.
Cognitive Template for a Phonetic Correlate of Syllable Structure

The study was designed to test a coarticulatory origin for the long-short segment duration pattern typical of syllable onset clusters. The hypothesis was that the internal members of these clusters are shortened due to coproduction with the following vowel. Specifically, the internal consonants are terminated when the downward-moving jaw makes for inefficient consonantal articulation. To test the hypothesis, native-English speakers produced nonsense words with intervocalic consonant sequences in four speech production conditions: (1) normal speech, (2) bite-block speech without auditory feedback, (3) clenched-jaw speech without auditory feedback; (4) normal speech without auditory feedback. Overall, the results show that speakers preserve consonant duration patterns that conform to intended syllable structures despite articulatory and perceptual disruptions to the system. Such results do not support or exclude a coarticulatory origin for syllable-related consonant duration patterns. Instead, they suggest that these patterns are important to the mental representation of syllables, at least in English.
Wage Inequality Changes in Brazil: Market Forces, Macroeconomic Instability and Labor Market Institutions (1981-1997)

In this paper, I examine the sources of wage inequality changes among prime age male workers in Brazil during the 1980's and 1990's. Inequality increased in the 1980's and decreased in the 1990's. I begin by decomposing these changes into three effects. First, the effect due to changes in the skill distribution of the workers; second, the effect due to changes in skill prices and premiums; and third, the residual effect which is interpreted as due to changes in the distribution of unobservable skills and their prices. I find that most of the sources of these changes are due to changes in (i) the unabservable skill prices and (ii) the observable skill prices associated to industry, occupation and occupation status. After showing that these changes in skill prices are not consistent with the changes in the supply of and demand for labor during these periods, I examine the possibility that the minimum wage policy and the macreconomic instability of the period can explain these changes. I find that inflation is strongly associated with inequality mainly due to its unanticipated component. This may be interpreted as indirect evidence that the indexation system adopted in Brazil during the high-inflation years may be a mechanism through which inflation affected wage inequality.
Generating Abstract Explanations of Spurious Counterexamples in C Programs

Counterexample driven refinement is a promising technique to generate automatic abstractions for model checking software. A central problem in automating this approach is the refinement of models from spurious error traces. We present a solution to this problem for C programs. Our solution introduces compile time names for run time values, and handles all constructs in the C programming language. We present Newton, an implementation of our solution, and empirical results from running Newton on several C programs.
Industrial specialization and the asymmetry of shocks across regions

Economic integration, through greater capital market integration, will induce higher regional specialization in production, rendering regional shocks less symmetric. To support this claim empirically, we develop a utility based measure of shock asymmetry and calculate it for each U.S. state. We regress it (using both ordinary least squares and instrumental variables) on a state-by-state 1-digit industrial specialization index and a 2-digit manufacturing specialization index, controlling for relevant economic and demographic variables. The main empirical result is that both specialization indices are positively and significantly correlated with the degree of shock asymmetry in both ordinary least squares and instrumental variables regressions. ; This finding, combined with the causal relation running from inter-regional capital market integration to regional specialization in production found in Kalemli-Ozcan, Sorensen, and Yosha (1999), points to the following chain of events: Economic integration fosters the development of institutions that facilitate inter-regional risk sharing. Equipped with better insurance against asymmetric shocks, regions can afford to increase their specialization in production which, in turn, renders shocks more asymmetric. This mechanism counter-balances the effect suggested by Frankel and Rose (1998)--that economic integration among regions (or countries) will induce more trade among them rendering regional shocks more symmetric. Which effect will dominate is an open empirical question.