Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hepatitis B and hepatitis C in emergency department patients.

BACKGROUND Infections with hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) are common in inner-city populations, but their frequency and interrelations are not well established. METHODS During a six-week period, excess serum samples were collected, along with information on risk factors, from all adult patients presenting to an inner-city emergency department. The samples were assayed for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and antibodies to HCV and HIV-1. RESULTS Of the 2523 patients tested, 612 (24 percent) were infected with at least one of the three viruses. Five percent were seropositive for HBV, 18 percent for HCV, and 6 percent for HIV-1. HCV was found in 145 of the 175 intravenous drug users (83 percent), 36 of the 171 transfusion recipients (21 percent), and 5 of the 24 homosexual men (21 percent). Among black men 35 to 44 years of age, the seroprevalence of HCV was 51 percent. HBsAg was present in 9 percent of those whose only identifiable risk was possible heterosexual exposure. At least one viral marker was found in about 30 percent of the patients who were actively bleeding or in whom procedures were performed. Testing for HIV-1 alone would have failed to identify 87 percent of the patients infected with HBV and 80 percent of those infected with HCV. CONCLUSIONS In a population of patients in an inner-city emergency room, HBV, HCV, and HIV-1 are all highly prevalent. However, routine screening for HIV-1 alone would identify only a small fraction of the patients who pose risks of severe viral infections, including HBV and HCV, to providers.
Analysts' Compensation Contracts and Information Revelation

This paper considers the information content of stock reports when an investment bank offers her affiliated analyst a compensation contract that may induce him to misrepresent his stock report under uncertainty in investment banking opportunities. Our results suggest that the information content of the analyst's stock report strongly depends on whether or not investment banking opportunities are known to investors. If there is no uncertainty in such opportunities, the truthful revelation of information is always an optimal strategy. On the other hand, if there is uncertainty in investment banking opportunities and if their realization is unknown to investors when the analyst issues his stock report, the truthful revelation of information is an optimal strategy only in their absence. In the presence of investment banking opportunities, the analyst with an unfavorable signal tends to issue a more favorable report with greater frequency than a less favorable report although the analyst with a favorable signal issues a truthful report. Our results also show that the truthful revelation of information is more likely to be achieved if the investment bank needs to offer the analyst an incentive compensation contract in order to induce him to issue a profitable reporting for her than if she can directly control the analyst's report while maintaining the other constraints.
The Seventh-Century Islamic Gold Standard

Monetary systems are catalysts for economic, social and political progress. The interdependence between monetary, economic and political order is illustrated by currency competition between the Byzantine and Muslim empires in the seventh century. The evolution of an Islamic gold standard demonstrates that Byzantine and Muslim ruling circles were conversant with the dynamics of currency competition. In keeping with the theory of currency competition, the creation of the Muslim gold standard marked the beginning of a rapid economic outperformance by the Islamic empire.
Public Service Management by Numbers: Why Does it Vary? Where Has it Come From? What Are the Gaps and the Puzzles?

Targets, rankings and intelligence are common forms of public service management by numbers. So what's global and what's distinctively English about this phenomenon? What's new and what's old about the use of targets, rankings and intelligence? And what do we know we don't know about each of these forms of public service management by numbers? The special features of composite ranking systems seem to be a key part of the answer to all these questions
International comparisons of human resource management

C. Brewster and S. Tyson (eds) (1991) International Comparisons in Human Resource Management. London: Pitman. P. J. Dowling and R. S. Schuler (1990) International Dimensions of Human Resource Management. Boston, MA: PWS-Kent. R Pieper (ed.) (1990) Human Resource Management: An International Comparison. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. This review article assesses three major recent works in international human resource management. The author argues that the international character of human resource management can be said to rest on three things: (1) the increasing internationalization of business, which brings organizations into contact with different national cultures and promotes the spread of management practices across national boundaries, (2) underlying economic and technological trends, arising in part from the activity of multinational firms but mediated also by international institutions, which may produce similar patterns of adjustment in the organization and management of employment at the national, s.
Effect of direct arterial bypass on the prevention of future stroke in patients with the hemorrhagic variety of moyamoya disease.

OBJECT The authors evaluated the effects of superficial temporal artery-middle cerebral artery (STA-MCA) bypass in the prevention of future stroke, including rebleeding or an ischemic event, in patients suffering from hemorrhagic moyamoya disease by comparing this method with indirect bypass and conservative treatment. METHODS Twenty-two patients who had hemorrhagic moyamoya disease but no aneurysm comprised the study group. These patients' clinical charts were examined with respect to their treatment and clinical course after an initial hemorrhagic episode. The mean age of the patients was 43 years and the follow-up period ranged from 0.8 to 15.1 years, with a mean of 8 years. Eleven patients (50%) were conservatively treated. Among the 11 patients who were surgically treated, STA-MCA bypass was performed in six patients (27%) and encephaloduroarteriosynangiosis (EDAS) in the other five patients (23%). Nine patients (41%) presented with an ischemic or rebleeding event during the follow-up period. The incidence of future stroke events in patients who had undergone an STA-MCA bypass was significantly lower (p<0.05) than that in patients who had been treated conservatively or with EDAS. Kaplan-Meier plots comparing stroke-free times in patients treated with direct bypass and those in patients who conservatively or with indirect bypass showed a significant difference (p<0.05) in favor of direct bypass. CONCLUSIONS The effect of STA-MCA bypass on the prevention of recurrent hemorrhage or an ischemic event in patients with hemorrhagic moyamoya disease has been statistically confirmed in this study.
International Trade and the Business Cycle

This paper develops a new empirical framework for analysing the dynamics of the trade balance in response to different types of macroeconomic shocks. The model provides a synthetic perspective on the conditional correlations between the business cycle and the trade balance that are generated by different shocks and attempts to reconcile these results with unconditional correlations found in the data. The results suggest that, in the post-Bretton Woods period, nominal shocks have been an important determinant of the forecast error variance for fluctuations in the trade balance in G-7 countries.
On the Impact of Phase Noise on Active Cancelation in Wireless Full-Duplex

Recent experimental results have shown that full-duplex communication is possible for short-range communications. However, extending full-duplex to long-range communication remains a challenge, primarily due to residual self-interference, even with a combination of passive suppression and active cancelation methods. In this paper, we investigate the root cause of performance bottlenecks in current full-duplex systems. We first classify all known full-duplex architectures based on how they compute their canceling signal and where the canceling signal is injected to cancel self-interference. Based on the classification, we analytically explain several published experimental results. The key bottleneck in current systems turns out to be the phase noise in the local oscillators in the transmit-and-receive chain of the full-duplex node. As a key by-product of our analysis, we propose signal models for wideband and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) full-duplex systems, capturing all the salient design parameters, thus allowing future analytical development of advanced coding and signal design for full-duplex systems.
Ataxia telangiectasia gene mutations in leukaemia and lymphoma

Ataxia telangiectasia (AT) is a rare multisystem, autosomal, recessive disease characterised by neuronal degeneration, genome instability, and an increased risk of cancer. Approximately 10% of AT homozygotes develop cancer, mostly of the lymphoid system. Lymphoid malignancies in patients with AT are of both B cell and T cell origin, and include Hodgkin's lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and several forms of leukaemia. The AT locus was mapped to the chromosomal region 11q22–23 using genetic linkage analysis in the late 1980s and the causative gene was identified by positional cloning several years later. The ATM gene encodes a large protein that belongs to a family of kinases possessing a highly conserved C-terminal kinase domain related to the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase domain. Members of this kinase family have been shown to function in DNA repair and cell cycle checkpoint control following DNA damage. Recent studies indicate that ATM is activated primarily in response to double strand breaks and may be considered a caretaker of the genome. Most mutations in ATM result in truncation and destabilisation of the protein, but certain missense and splicing errors have been shown to produce a less severe phenotype. AT heterozygotes have a slightly increased risk of breast cancer. Atm deficient mice exhibit many of the symptoms found in patients with AT and have a high frequency of thymic lymphoma. The association between mutation of the ATM gene and a high incidence of lymphoid malignancy in patients with AT, together with the development of lymphoma in Atm deficient mice, supports the proposal that inactivation of the ATM gene may be of importance in the pathogenesis of sporadic lymphoid malignancy. Loss of heterozygosity at 11q22–23 (the location of the ATM gene) is a common event in lymphoid malignancy. Frequent inactivating mutations of the ATM gene have been reported in patients with rare sporadic T cell prolymphocytic leukaemia (T-PLL), B cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (B-CLL), and most recently, mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). In contrast to the ATM mutation pattern in AT, the most frequent nucleotide changes in these sporadic lymphoid malignancies were missense mutations. The presence of inactivating mutations, together with the deletion of the normal copy of the ATM gene in some patients with T-PLL, B-CLL, and MCL, establishes somatic inactivation of the ATM gene in the pathogenesis of lymphoid malignancies, and strongly suggests that ATM functions as a tumour suppressor. The presence of missense mutations in the germline of patients with B-CLL has been reported, suggesting that some patients with B-CLL may be constitutional AT heterozygotes. The putative hereditary predisposition of B-CLL, although intriguing, warrants further investigation.
Clinical presentation and treatment responses in IgM-related AL amyloidosis*

Abstract Amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis is a multi-organ disease due to deposition of misfolded monoclonal immunoglobulin light chains. IgM AL amyloidosis is a rare variant, about 6% of AL amyloidosis cases, and more data are needed for treatment guidance. In IgM AL amyloidosis, the clonal cell of origin may be a plasma or lymphoplasmacytic cell, and treatments targeting each are employed. We describe presenting clinical and laboratory features of 95 patients with IgM AL amyloidosis treated at Boston University Amyloidosis Center from 1996 to 2012. The median diagnosis age was 66 years (range: 38–89) with 56% males. Organ involvement rates were: kidney (51%); heart (40%); lymph nodes (25%) and gastrointestinal tract (17%). Treatment responses were analyzed for 46 patients seen after 2003. Five treatment regimens were assigned by bone marrow pathology and patient-specific factors. Overall hematologic response rates and very good partial or complete hematologic response rates, respectively, were: high-dose melphalan/stem cell transplant (HDM/SCT) 100%;80%, Bortezomib 82%;27%, Rituximab 80%;27%, immunomodulatory agents (IMids) 75%;0%, and standard dose alkylating agents (Melphalan or cyclophosphamide) 63%;19%. Overall, 5-year survival rates were significantly higher in patients with a hematological response: 79.2 ± 8.5% versus 41 ± 14.9% in non-responders, which is more favorable than typically expected in AL amyloidosis.
The Timeliness of Restatement Disclosures and Financial Reporting Credibility

This study investigates whether prompt discovery and disclosure of earnings restatements is associated with greater post-restatement financial reporting credibility. We measure the timeliness of restatement detection by the length of time between the end of the misstated period and the subsequent restatement announcement. We document that shorter detection periods are significantly associated with high-quality corporate governance characteristics and executive and/or auditor turnover, but not with characteristics of restatements. We also find that firms with shorter detection periods exhibit a more moderate decline in the information content of earnings following restatement announcements relative to firms with longer detection periods, and that detection period length has an incremental effect on the information content of earnings relative to executive and/or auditor turnover alone. In addition, we find that restatement disclosures are more timely following the implementation of the SOX-era reforms, and that only firms with shorter detection periods experience more moderate post-restatement declines in the information content of earnings following the implementation of the SOX-era reforms. The results from this study suggest that the timeliness of restatement detection and disclosure is associated with greater financial reporting credibility following restatements.
THE EFFECTS OF THE 2008/9 ECONOMIC RECESSION ON NGO SUSTAINABILITY AND FUNCTIONING IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIAL SERVICES, HEALTH AND EDUCATION SECTORS

The economic crisis of 2008/2009 first emerged in the developed economies in 2008 and spilled over into developing countries and economies in transition through international financial and trade channels. This is the greatest financial crisis the world has faced since the Great Depression (Hanfstaengl, 2010; Sandra, 2008). At the height of the recession many feared that it would change into a depression. Banks were “unwilling to lend, credit spreads had widened sharply, stock markets had plunged and economies everywhere were stumbling” (Bustillo & Velloso, 2009:7). Some of the immediate effects of the economic recession on society included higher food prices and other living costs. Furthermore, corporations experienced reductions in their profit margins. It could reasonably be assumed that the NGO sector would suffer significantly as corporate donors and philanthropists typically contribute less during economic downturns.
Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?

This new research report analyzes community development and decentralization projects, shows that such projects often fail to be sensitive to complex contexts, including social, political, historical and geographical realities, and fall short in terms of monitoring and evaluation systems, which hampers learning. Citing numerous examples, including projects and programs supported by the World Bank, the authors demonstrate that participatory projects are not a substitute for weak states, but instead require strong central support to be effective. Promoting participation through community development projects and local decentralization has become a central tenet of development policy. The World Bank alone has invested about $85 billion over the last decade on development assistance for participation. However, some observers feel that policy making in the area is conceptually weak, that project design is informed more by slogans than careful analysis. There have also been questions about whether participatory development is effective in reducing poverty, improving service delivery, and building the capacity for collective action. Some observers also find that participatory projects are complex to implement and deeply affected by context, and are thus unsuited for large development institutions such as the World Bank. This groundbreaking report carefully examines each of these concerns. It outlines a conceptual framework for participation that is centered on the concept of civil society failure and how it interacts with market and government failures. The authors use this framework to understand the key policy debates surrounding participatory development and to frame the key policy questions. The report conducts the most comprehensive review of the evidence on the impact of participatory projects to date, looking at more than 400 papers and books. The report argues that participatory development is most effective when it works within a 'sandwich' formed by support from an effective central state and bottom-up civic action. This report represents an important contribution. It has significant implications for how to improve participation in development interventions and for development policy more broadly.
Analisys of the cyclical behaviour of the portuguese economy from 1953 to 1993

The recently published “Historical Series for the Portuguese Economy” (Banco de Portugal, 1997) discloses new information on the annual behaviour of the major macroeconomic variables over the course of the four decades running between 1953 and 1993. This work provides the ground for studies on the performance of the Portuguese economy in the second half of our century. The new data set presents fairly disaggregated information on the following areas: Monetary and Financial statistics, Balance of Payments statistics, General Government statistics and Output, Expenditure and Income. Given the set's consistency, scope and detail, the major facts which characterised the economic behaviour in the period under review can now be identified with improved accuracy and reliability. This study is a first approach to this new pack of information, and aims at providing an overview of the cyclic events taking place over the course of these four decades. Output tends to drift around a long-run trend (see chart 1); economic cycles are the deviations from that trend. Other economic variables follow the output cycle — either procyclically or counter-cyclically, in some cases with a lag, in other cases, with no lag or even in advance. Although the periodicity and size of those changes are somewhat irregular, these movements are quite similar as regards the way variables behave throughout the cycle. This phenomenon is observable both at the country level as in acrosscountry comparisons. This analysis emphasises the real cycles, and the main variables reflecting output, expenditure and employment were hence selected. Previous studies refer to similar periods of the Portuguese history, also collecting the stylised facts that characterise the economic cycles. However, these studies use distinct data sources (see Correia, Neves and Rebelo (1992, 1993)). The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: section 2 presents a short description of the data. The third section discusses the major results. Here, the comparison between the two main subperiods (i.e., the sub-sample running up to 1974 and the post-1974 period) is thoroughly analysed. Comparisons with results obtained by using other data sources are drawn in section 4. The last section concludes.
Comparison of mutual information-based warping accuracy for fusing body CT and PET by 2 methods: CT mapped onto PET emission scan versus CT mapped onto PET transmission scan.

UNLABELLED This article assesses the resulting accuracies of 2 registration methods using the same multimodal mutual information registration algorithm. In the indirect, fusion method, the CT dataset is warped onto the PET transmission scan, and then the patient's attenuation-corrected emission dataset is substituted for the transmission dataset. In the direct, fusion method, the CT is warped directly onto the attenuation-corrected emission dataset. METHODS CT and (18)F-FDG PET image datasets from 14 subjects with malignant lesions in the thorax were registered. In both CT and PET imaging acquisitions, the patient's arms were at the patient's side, resting on the scanning couch in a manner similar to that of routine PET acquisition procedures. The accuracy of the 2 warping registrations was assessed by measuring the distance between lesion centroids on CT and PET emission after fusion. RESULTS The indirect method has a statistically smaller mean error, 6.2 mm, than the direct method, 10.6 mm. CONCLUSION The indirect method appears to be the more accurate/reliable choice for fusing body CT and FDG PET.
Viral factors determine progression to AIDS in simian immunodeficiency virus-infected newborn rhesus macaques

To evaluate how viral variants may affect disease progression in human pediatric AIDS, we studied the potential of three simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) isolates to induce simian AIDS in newborn rhesus macaques. The three virus isolates were previously shown to range from pathogenic (SIVmac251 and SIVmac239) to nonpathogenic (SIVmac1A11) when inoculated intravenously into juvenile and adult rhesus macaques. Six newborn macaques inoculated with pathogenic, uncloned SIVmac251 developed persistent, high levels of cell-associated and cell-free viremia, had no detectable antiviral antibodies, and had poor weight gain; these animals all exhibited severe clinical disease and pathologic lesions diagnostic for simian AIDS and were euthanatized 10 to 26 weeks after inoculation. Two newborns inoculated with pathogenic, molecularly cloned SIVmac239 developed persistent high virus load in peripheral blood, but both animals had normal weight gain and developed antiviral antibodies. One of the SIVmac239-infected neonates exhibited pathologic lesions diagnostic for SAIDS and was euthanatized at 34 weeks after inoculation; the other SIVmac239-infected neonate remained alive and exhibited no significant clinical disease for more than 1 year after inoculation. In contrast, three newborn rhesus macaques inoculated with the nonpathogenic molecular clone, SIVmac1A11, had transient, low-level viremia, seroconverted by 10 weeks after inoculation, had normal weight gain, and remained healthy for over 1 year. These results indicate that (i) newborn rhesus macaques infected with an uncloned, virulent SIVmac isolate have a more rapid, fulminant disease course than do adults inoculated with the same virus, (ii) the most rapid disease progression is associated with lack of a detectable humoral immune response in SIV-infected infant macaques, (iii) a molecularly cloned, attenuated SIV isolate is nonpathogenic in neonatal macaques, and (iv) SIV-infected neonatal macaques exhibit patterns of infection, virus load, and disease progression similar to those observed in human immunodeficiency virus-infected children. This SIV/neonatal rhesus model of pediatric AIDS provides a rapid, sensitive model with which to compare the virulence of SIV isolates and to study the mechanisms underlying the differences in disease progression in human immunodeficiency virus-infected infants.