Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome-a therapeutic challenge

syndrome a therapeutic challenge Acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are the leading cause of death in critical care, with mortality rates of 40 to 60%. In the US alone, there are 200,000 new cases annually [1]. ALI/ ARDS also constitute a considerable long-term illness and disability burden, with signifi cant neuromuscular, pulmonary and psychological morbidity seen in 50 to 70% of survivors, and just 49% returning to employment one year post-discharge [2]. Despite being a focus of ongoing intensive research eff orts over four decades, there are no pharmacologic therapies for ALI/ARDS [3]. Largescale clinical trials of multiple therapeutic strategies, including nitric oxide [4,5], anti-oxidants [6-9], surfactants [10], corticosteroids [11] and immunomodulating agents such as IL-10 [12] and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor [13] have all failed. Consequently, advances in the management of ALI/ARDS have relied on improvements in supportive measures, such as ‘protective’ mechanical ventilation strategies [3], restrictive intravenous fl uid management approaches [14], and prone positioning of severely hypoxaemic patients [15,16]. While these and other improvements in supportive care have decreased mortality [17], the failure of pharmacologic therapies suggests the need to consider novel approaches for ALI/ARDS. ALI/ARDS is a highly complex disease process. Earlier concepts of distinct disease phases, from an early ‘proinfl ammatory’ to a later ‘fi brotic’ phase, now appear to be an over-simplifi cation. Th ese ‘phases’ largely co-exist, with evidence of pro-infl ammatory responses leading to host damage, an impaired immune response to pathogens, and repair and fi brosis all present in the complex milieu that is clinical ALI/ARDS. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that strategies targeted at one aspect of the disease process have been unsuccessful. Th is suggests the need to consider more complex therapeutic approaches aimed at reducing early injury while maintaining host immune competence, and facilitating (or at least not inhibiting) lung regeneration Abstract
ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNALITIES OF MOTOR-VEHICLE USE IN THE US. IN: THE AUTOMOBILE

The paper reviews the external environmental costs of motor vehicle use in the United States. The paper provides: definitions, prescriptions, and scope of the study; review of the estimated of external costs; and examples of applications of external cost estimates. The paper's focus is on recent research with regard to the estimates of external costs. Its intent is to familiarize a general audience with the methods, data, results, and uses of analyses of the external costs of the motor vehicle use in the U.S. The estimates presented can be used in analyses of efficient pricing of motor vehicle goods, services, and infrastructure; in evaluating the social costs and benefits of transport investments and plans; and in analyses of trends in costs.
Location Choice as a Signal for Product Quality: The Economics of 'Made in Germany'

In the literature on international marketing it is generally agreed upon that the location of production has considerable effects on consumers' beliefs about product quality. In this paper, a rational choice explanation for this fact is offered. Due to differences in country-specific costs (such a high wages and taxes) and coutnry exit costs (such as compulsory social plans), location choice can act as a signaling device for product quality in the sense that high country-specific costs signal high product quality. The 'Made-in' label may be especially relevant as a signal if sinking resources before entering the market is not posible due to capital market constraints. Furthermore, potential implications for geographic labeling laws are explored.
X-RAY INSIGHTS INTO THE NATURE OF WEAK EMISSION-LINE QUASARS AT HIGH REDSHIFT

We present Chandra observations of nine high-redshift quasars (z = 2.7–5.9) discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with weak or undetectable high-ionization emission lines in their UV spectra (WLQs). Adding archival X-ray observations of six additional sources of this class has enabled us to place the strongest constraints yet on the X-ray properties of this remarkable class of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Although our data cannot rule out the possibility that the emission lines are overwhelmed by a relativistically boosted continuum, as manifested by BL Lac objects, we find that WLQs are considerably weaker in the X-ray and radio bands than the majority of BL Lacs found at much lower redshifts. If WLQs are high-redshift BL Lacs, then it is difficult to explain the lack of a large parent population of X-ray and radio bright weak-lined sources at high redshift. We also consider the possibility that WLQs are quasars with extreme properties, and in particular that the emission lines are suppressed by high accretion rates. Using joint spectral fitting of the X-ray spectra of 11 WLQs, we find that the mean photon index in the hard X-ray band is consistent with those observed in typical radio-quiet AGNs with no hint of an unusually steep hard-X-ray spectrum. This result poses a challenge to the hypothesis that WLQs have extremely high accretion rates, and we discuss additional observations required to test this idea.
Fear of Falling After Hip Fracture: A Systematic Review of Measurement Instruments, Prevalence, Interventions, and Related Factors

The objective of this review was to systematically describe and analyze fear of falling (FoF) in patients after a hip fracture, focusing on measurement instruments for FoF, the prevalence of FoF, factors associated with FoF, and interventions that may reduce FoF. Fifteen relevant studies were found through a systematic literature review, in which the PubMed, Embase, PsychINFO, and CINAHL databases were searched. Some of these studies indicated that 50% or more of patients with a hip fracture suffer from FoF, although adequate instruments still have to be validated for this specific group. FoF was associated with several negative rehabilitation outcomes, such as loss of mobility, institutionalization, and mortality. FoF was also related to less time spent on exercise and an increase in falls, although knowledge about risk factors, the prevalence over a longer time period, and the exact causal relations with important health outcomes is limited. Most studies suffer from selection bias by excluding patients with physical and cognitive disorders. Hence, more research is required, including in patients who are frail and have comorbidities. Only when knowledge such as this becomes available can interventions be implemented to address FoF and improve rehabilitation outcomes after a hip fracture.
Fiscal Policy and Growth in the OECD

This paper investigates the impact of public expenditures and taxation on economic growth using panel data for a sample of OECD countries. The empirical results suggest that fiscal policy influences growth through three main channels. First, the government contributes directly to factor accumulation through public investment in infrastructure and other assets. Second, public expenditure tends to crowd out private investment by reducing disposable income and the incentive to save. Third, there is evidence of a sizeable negative ‘externality’ effect of government on the level of productivity. According to the estimates, the effective cost of $1 of public expenditure is around $1.3 once the relevant distortions are taken into account. While this figure is viewed as an upper bound, it does suggest that taxes and public expenditures generate significant efficiency costs which should be taken into account when making budget decisions.
The economic performance of immigrants. The role of human and social capital

This study examines the role of human and social capital in the economic performance of immigrants. It improves upon previous research in several ways. First, it distinguishes between human capital acquired in the country of origin and destination. Second, it focuses not only on immigrants’ contacts within own ethnic group but also on contacts with natives. In addition, by using longitudinal data, it provides a more rigid test for a causal effect of social contacts on immigrants’ economic outcomes. Finally, it examines the possible interplay (i.e., mediation and moderation) between human and social capital in immigrants’ economic performance. With respect to human capital, the results show that the economic returns to origin-country schooling are larger for immigrants from more similar cultural and economic backgrounds to the native population than culturally and economically dissimilar immigrants. The returns to origin- and host-country human capital are not substantially affected by ethnic concentration in the region of living. It also appears that the economic returns to host-country human capital are larger than to origin-country human capital and that the higher returns to host-country human capital cannot be explained by increased social contacts with natives. Regarding social capital, the results show that immigrants profit from different kinds of social capital, in particular contacts with natives, as they provide immigrants with information and influence on the job search process. However, some of the benefits from social contacts with natives are indirect or spurious and can be attributed to host-country human capital
KRAS mutant colorectal tumors

The treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) remains one of the largest hurdles in cancer therapeutics to date. The most advanced treatment option for mCRC patients are anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that bind to and inhibit the activity of EGFR. While the use of anti-EGFR mABs has had great impact in the treatment of mCRC, it has now been widely accepted that mCRC tumors with a mutation in the small GTPase KRAS do not respond to these therapies. KRAS mutations allow for EGFR independent activation of various oncogenic signaling cascades. In attempts to inhibit KRAS mutant tumor growth, BRAF, MEK and farsenyltransferase inhibitors have been used, however, their clinical efficacy is still accruing in the setting of CRC. Recent data suggests that various other inhibitors, including inhibitors of Src family kinases (SFK) and hepatocyte growth factor receptor (MET), may have potential preclinical and clinical success in KRAS mutant tumors. Additionally, it is becoming increasingly clear that different KRAS missense mutations may have varied biological responses to cetuximab, suggesting that cetuximab may still be a potential therapeutic option in some KRAS mutant tumors. In this review, we highlight the importance for both improved multimodality approaches for treating KRAS mutant mCRC tumors and stratification of KRAS mutations in response to different treatment regimes in order to optimize the best possible care for mCRC patients.
Neural Ctrl-F: Segmentation-Free Query-by-String Word Spotting in Handwritten Manuscript Collections

In this paper, we approach the problem of segmentation-free query-by-string word spotting for handwritten documents. In other words, we use methods inspired from computer vision and machine learning to search for words in large collections of digitized manuscripts. In particular, we are interested in historical handwritten texts, which are often far more challenging than modern printed documents. This task is important, as it provides people with a way to quickly find what they are looking for in large collections that are tedious and difficult to read manually. To this end, we introduce an end-to-end trainable model based on deep neural networks that we call Ctrl-F-Net. Given a full manuscript page, the model simultaneously generates region proposals, and embeds these into a distributed word embedding space, where searches are performed. We evaluate the model on common benchmarks for handwritten word spotting, outperforming the previous state-of-the-art segmentation-free approaches by a large margin, and in some cases even segmentation-based approaches. One interesting real-life application of our approach is to help historians to find and count specific words in court records that are related to women's sustenance activities and division of labor. We provide promising preliminary experiments that validate our method on this task.
Skill Diffusion in Temporary Migration? Returns to Western European Working Experience in the EU Accession Countries

Temporary migration is of growing significance in Europe. Upon migration to a country with higher technological development that typically coincides with positive wage differentials, temporary migrants may upgrade their skills by learning on the job and subsequently import the newly acquired human capital to their source country, thus adding to international know-how diffusion and the catching up of the respective economy. This paper is the first to provide supportive evidence of this hypothesis in a cross-country East to West European perspective, using the 2003 Youth Eurobarometer dataset.
Transferring Western HRM practices to developing countries: The case of a privatized utility in Jordan

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore the nature of the human resource reforms introduced by a French multinational into a privatized Jordanian utility and the impact of these reforms on worker experiences, attitudes and behaviour.Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of a single‐company case study using longitudinal interview data (44 interviews over a period of two and a half years) and a staff survey (202 completed and usable replies). Findings – Employees had experienced changes as a result of the HR reforms and these experiences were, at the aggregate level, associated with a number of positive attitudinal and behavioural outcomes. There were marked differences between different categories of staff in these respects, with more senior staff and those with higher educational qualifications being those most likely to report positive attitudinal and behavioural outcomes.Research limitations/implications – Studies of the transfer of Western management techniques to developing countries .
The building blocks of the full body ownership illusion

Previous work has reported that it is not difficult to give people the illusion of ownership over an artificial body, providing a powerful tool for the investigation of the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying body perception and self consciousness. We present an experimental study that uses immersive virtual reality (IVR) focused on identifying the perceptual building blocks of this illusion. We systematically manipulated visuotactile and visual sensorimotor contingencies, visual perspective, and the appearance of the virtual body in order to assess their relative role and mutual interaction. Consistent results from subjective reports and physiological measures showed that a first person perspective over a fake humanoid body is essential for eliciting a body ownership illusion. We found that the illusion of ownership can be generated when the virtual body has a realistic skin tone and spatially substitutes the real body seen from a first person perspective. In this case there is no need for an additional contribution of congruent visuotactile or sensorimotor cues. Additionally, we found that the processing of incongruent perceptual cues can be modulated by the level of the illusion: when the illusion is strong, incongruent cues are not experienced as incorrect. Participants exposed to asynchronous visuotactile stimulation can experience the ownership illusion and perceive touch as originating from an object seen to contact the virtual body. Analogously, when the level of realism of the virtual body is not high enough and/or when there is no spatial overlap between the two bodies, then the contribution of congruent multisensory and/or sensorimotor cues is required for evoking the illusion. On the basis of these results and inspired by findings from neurophysiological recordings in the monkey, we propose a model that accounts for many of the results reported in the literature.
Financial Concerns and Overall Life Satisfaction: A Joint Modelling Approach

This paper explores the relationship between the household's financial position and overall life satisfaction. The empirical analysis, based on a large nationally representative panel survey for Germany, aims to ascertain the impact of a household's subjective and monetary financial positions on overall life satisfaction. Within a fixed effects framework, the level of household assets and net wealth are positively related to overall life satisfaction, as is household income. Allowing for different types of debt to have differential impacts on overall life satisfaction reveals that unsecured debt, opposed to secured debt, has a detrimental impact on overall life satisfaction. In addition, the household's subjective financial position is found to be an important determinant of overall life satisfaction. The potential endogeneity of the subjective financial measures in the overall life satisfaction equation is accounted for using a recursive bivariate ordered probit model. The results suggest that the subjective financial position mediates the association between the household's monetary financial position and overall life satisfaction.
The effect of renal diet in association with enalapril or benazepril on proteinuria in dogs with proteinuric chronic kidney disease

Treating proteinuria in dogs reduces the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD); renal diets and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE)-inhibitors are cornerstones of treatment. Whether different ACE-inhibitors have distinct kidney protective effects is unknown; it is therefore hypothesized that renal diets and enalapril or benazepril have different beneficial effects in proteinuric CKD dogs. Forty-four dogs with proteinuric CKD (IRIS stages 1-4) were enrolled in the study and were fed renal diet for 30 days. Thereafter, they were randomly assigned to one of 2 groups. Dogs in group A (n=22) received enalapril (0.5 mg/kg, q12h) and in group B (n=22) benazepril (0.5 mg/kg, q24h); in both groups, dogs were fed the same renal diet. After randomization, dogs were monitored for 120 days. Body weight and body condition score (BCS), serum concentrations of creatinine, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), albumin and total proteins, and urine protein-to-creatinine (UPC) ratio were compared at different time-points. After 30 days of renal diet, creatinine, BUN and UPC ratio decreased significantly (p<0.0001). Compared to randomization, body weight, BCS, albumin, total proteins, creatinine and BUN did not vary during follow-up in the 44 dogs and differences between group A and B were not observed. However, the UPC ratio of group A at day 60, 90 and 150 was significantly lower than in group B and compared to randomization (p<0.05). In group B it did not vary overtime. It is concluded that the renal diet is beneficial to decrease creatinine, BUN and UPC ratio in proteinuric CKD dogs. Enalapril further ameliorates proteinuria if administered along with renal diet.
An Economic Analysis of the Protestant Reformation

This paper seeks to explain the initial successes and failures of Protestantism on economic grounds. It argues that the medieval Roman Catholic Church, through doctrinal manipulation, the exclusion of rivals, and various forms of price discrimination, ultimately placed members seeking the Z good “spiritual services” on the margin of defection. These monopolistic practices encouraged entry by rival firms, some of which were aligned with civil governments. The paper hypothesizes that Protestant entry was facilitated in emergent entrepreneurial societies characterized by the decline of feudalism and relatively unstable distribution of wealth and repressed in more homogeneous, rent‐seeking societies that were mostly dissipating rather than creating wealth. In these societies the Roman Church was more able to continue the practice of price discrimination. Informal tests of this proposition are conducted by considering primogeniture and urban growth as proxies for wealth stability.
Cancer in Coking Plant Workers

A review of death certificates, received in con nexion with a funeral benefit scheme, suggested to the officials of the National Union of Mineworkers that there seemed to be an unduly high proportion of deaths due to cancer among workers in coking plants. At the request of the National Joint Con sultative Council, a special study was made of the mortality experience of the industry. Its methods and results are reported below. Apart from an unpublished report by Sir Thomas Oliver in 1930, little has been written about the health of workers in the coking plants of this country; and Oliver's study is impressionistic rather than factual in its approach. Indeed it is usual for coke workers to be taken together with gas workers in the Registrar-General's account of occupational mortality. The basic processes in the production of metallurgical coke and of gas for industrial or domestic use are, of course, similar, and strong suggestions of an increased liability of gas workers to cancer of the skin and bladder (Henry, Kennaway, and Kennaway, 1931) and of the lung (Kennaway and Kennaway, 1947; Doll, 1952) are relevant to our problem. Thus we note that in Table 1 skilled gas workers had, at all ages over 35, higher death rates from cancer than males of the same social class. Table 1 CANCER DEATH RATES IN SKILLED GAS WORKERS AND MALES OF SAME SOCIAL CLASS* (REGISTRAR-GENERAL'S DECENNIAL SUPPLEMENT ON OCCUPATIONAL MORTALITY 1930-32)
Calculation of aggregate loss distributions

Estimation of the operational risk capital under the Loss Distribution Approach requires evaluation of aggregate (compound) loss distributions which is one of the classic problems in risk theory. Closed-form solutions are not available for the distributions typically used in operational risk. However with modern computer processing power, these distributions can be calculated virtually exactly using numerical methods. This paper reviews numerical algorithms that can be successfully used to calculate the aggregate loss distributions. In particular Monte Carlo, Panjer recursion and Fourier transformation methods are presented and compared. Also, several closed-form approximations based on moment matching and asymptotic result for heavy-tailed distributions are reviewed.
Atherosclerotic Plaques in ApoE-Deficient Mice Integrin and ICAM-1 Markedly Attenuate Macrophage Homing to 4 α Inhibition of Print

Atherosclerotic Plaques in ApoE-Deficient Mice Integrin and ICAM-1 Markedly Attenuate Macrophage Homing to 4 α Inhibition of Print ISSN: 0009-7322. Online ISSN: 1524-4539 Copyright © 1998 American Heart Association, Inc. All rights reserved. is published by the American Heart Association, 7272 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 75231 Circulation doi: 10.1161/01.CIR. 97.1. 75 1998;97:75-81 Circulation. http://circ.ahajournals. org/content/97/1/75 World Wide Web at: The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is located on the