Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reactions to tobacco warning labels: predictors and outcomes of adaptive and maladaptive responses

Abstract Background: The Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) responses that emerge from spontaneous reactions to cigarette warning labels remain understudied. We identified the EPPM responses in reactions to cigarette warning labels and evaluated their predictors and relationship with warning perceptions. Methods: U.S. adult current smokers, transitioning smokers (quit in the past two years or currently quitting) and never smokers (n = 1838) saw nine of 81 cigarette warning labels. Participants freely wrote their thoughts after viewing the first label and reported perceived informativeness, negative emotions, and denial for this label. Responses were coded for the presence of the EPPM response categories. Multivariable logistic regression models described adaptive and maladaptive respondent characteristics, and linear regression models assessed the relationship between the response categories and label perceptions. Results: Participants’ responses contained adaptive (65.4%), maladaptive (16.5%), no response (14.7%), and mixed responses (both adaptive and maladaptive; 3.4%). Current smokers had decreased odds of adaptive response compared to never and transitioning smokers. Compared to text warnings, pictorial warnings were associated with increased odds of adaptive and decreased odds of maladaptive responses. Adaptive response was associated with increased odds of intentions to quit smoking. Adaptive respondents reported the highest levels of informativeness and negative emotions among the four response categories. Conclusions: The finding demonstrating predominantly adaptive (and few maladaptive) responses to warning labels supports the continued use of fear appeals in warning label design. The greater adaptive and lower maladaptive responses to pictorial warnings could serve as additional evidence for FDA to implement pictorial warning labels. Graphical Abstract
Stromal Palladin Expression Is an Independent Prognostic Factor in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

It has been clear that cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in the tumor microenvironment play an important role in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) progression. However, how CAFs relate to the patients’ prognosis and the effects of chemoradiation therapy (CRT) has not been fully investigated. Tissue microarrays (TMAs) representing 167 resected PDACs without preoperative treatment were used for immunohistochemical studies (IHC) of palladin, α-smooth muscle actin (SMA), and podoplanin. Correlations between the expression levels of these markers and clinicopathological findings were analyzed statistically. Whole sections of surgical specimens from PDACs with and without preoperative CRT, designated as the chemotherapy-first group (CF, n = 19) and the surgery-first group (SF, n = 21), respectively, were also analyzed by IHC. In TMAs, the disease-specific survival rate (DSS) at 5 years for all 167 cases was 23.1%. Seventy cases (41.9%) were positive for palladin and had significantly lower DSS (p = 0.0430). α-SMA and podoplanin were positive in 167 cases (100%) and 131 cases (78.4%), respectively, and they were not significantly associated with DSS. On multivariable analysis, palladin expression was an independent poor prognostic factor (p = 0.0243, risk ratio 1.60). In the whole section study, palladin positivity was significantly lower (p = 0.0037) in the CF group (5/19) with a significantly better DSS (p = 0.0144) than in the SF group (16/22), suggesting that stromal palladin expression is a surrogate indicator of the treatment effect after chemoradiation therapy.
Design and Evaluation of a Metadata-Driven Adaptation Node

MPEG-21 digital item adaptation (DIA) allows for a media codec agnostic multimedia adaptation approach which enables the implementation of generic adaptation engines. However, DIA is optimized for static, server-based adaptation. In this paper we introduce novel mechanisms to extend the DIA approach towards dynamic and distributed scenarios. This facilitates the placement of generic adaptation nodes which perform media codec agnostic and dynamic adaptation anywhere along the content delivery path. To validate our work we implemented such an adaptation node and evaluate its performance.
Induction of neuroplasticity and recovery in post-stroke aphasia by non-invasive brain stimulation

Stroke victims tend to prioritize speaking, writing, and walking as the three most important rehabilitation goals. Of note is that two of these goals involve communication. This underscores the significance of developing successful approaches to aphasia treatment for the several hundred thousand new aphasia patients each year and over 1 million stroke survivors with chronic aphasia in the U.S. alone. After several years of growth as a research tool, non-invasive brain stimulation (NBS) is gradually entering the arena of clinical aphasiology. In this review, we first examine the current state of knowledge of post-stroke language recovery including the contributions from the dominant and non-dominant hemispheres. Next, we briefly discuss the methods and the physiologic basis of the use of inhibitory and excitatory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as research tools in patients who experience post-stroke aphasia. Finally, we provide a critical review of the most influential evidence behind the potential use of these two brain stimulation methods as clinical rehabilitative tools.
The Impact of Ownership Structure on Debt Financing of Japanese Firms with the Agency Cost of Free Cash Flow

This paper, using 833 observations of listed Japanese firms between the years 1992 to 2000, explore the implications of the free cash flow hypothesis concerning the disciplinary role of ownership structure in corporate capital structure policy. The results show (1) the sensitivity of ownership structure to leverage depends on growth opportunities and free cash flow. (2) Keiretsu classification affects relations between ownership structure and leverage. Overall, the results generally support the free cash flow hypothesis.
Primary Synchronization Signal in E-UTRA

In this paper, we describe the signal design for primary synchronization channel adopted for E-UTRA cellular system. By designing the signal to be centrally symmetric in the time-domain, the symmetric samples can be added prior to multiplication with the replica sample, thereby saving one multiplication per two received samples. Furthermore, a pair of centrally symmetric P-SCH signals can be generated such that one signal is a complex conjugated version of the other signal. The multiplication complexity of detecting both these signals can be reduced to that of just one of the signals.
Comparison of QT Dispersion With Left Ventricular Mass Index in Early Diagnosis of Cardiac Dysfunction in Patients With β-Thalassemia Major

Background: In electrocardiography (ECG), QT is the interval between the onset of Q wave to the end of the T wave. This interval may be a sign of changes in the ventricular structure in hematologic disorders such as thalassemia major. Objectives: The main goal of this study was to compare the diagnostic value of corrected QT dispersion (QTcd) and QT dispersion (QTd) with left ventricular mass (LVM) and left ventricular mass index (LVMI) as well as to determine their sensitivity and specificity in early detection of the cardiac involvement in patients with β-thalassemia major. Patients and Methods: In a case-control study, 60 patients older than ten years of age with thalassemia major who received regular blood transfusion and iron chelators were selected as the case group and were compared with 60 healthy age- and sex-matched subjects. All patients had myocardial performance index (MPI) of more than 0.5 and MPI for controls was less than 0.5. Echocardiography and ECG were performed for both groups and data were analyzed using appropriate statistical tests. Results: The mean age of cases and controls were 16 ± 2.8 and 16.08 ± 3.01 years, respectively. Male to female ratio was 33:27 in case group and 31:29 in the control group. LVMI in the case group was greater than control group. QTd and QTcd were larger in case group than in control group. The sensitivity and specificity of LVM, LVMI, QTd, and QTcd were as follows: 88.3%, 77.1%; 86.7%, 80%; 93.8%, 80%; and 91.7%, 86.7%, respectively. Conclusions: This study showed acceptable sensitivity and specificity of QTcd and QTd in comparison to LVMI; it seems that standard ECG can be used for early diagnosis of cardiac involvement in asymptomatic patients with thalassemia major.
Scope and Limits of an Anamnestic Questionnaire in a Control-Induced Low-Endemicity Helminthiasis Setting in South-Central Côte d’Ivoire

Background Schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis are two high-burden neglected tropical diseases. In highly endemic areas, control efforts emphasize preventive chemotherapy. However, as morbidity, infection, and transmission begin to decrease, more targeted treatment is likely to become more cost-effective, provided that comparatively cheap diagnostic methods with reasonable accuracy are available. Methodology Adults were administered an anamnestic questionnaire in mid-2010 during a cross-sectional epidemiological survey in the Taabo health demographic surveillance system in south-central Côte d’Ivoire. Questions pertaining to risk factors and signs and symptoms for schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis were included. The individuals’ helminth infection status and their belonging to three different anthelmintic treatment groups were compared with the questionnaire results (i) to inform the local health authorities about the epidemiological and clinical footprint of locally prevailing helminthiases, and (ii) to explore the scope and limits of an anamnestic questionnaire as monitoring tool, which eventually could help guiding the control of neglected tropical diseases in control-induced low-endemicity settings. Principal Findings Our study sample consisted of 195 adults (101 males, 94 females). We found prevalences of hookworm, Trichuris trichiura, Schistosoma haematobium, and Schistosoma mansoni of 39.0%, 2.7%, 2.1%, and 2.1%, respectively. No Ascaris lumbricoides infection was found. Helminth infection intensities were generally very low. Seven, 74 and 79 participants belonged to three different treatment groups. Multivariable logistic regression models revealed statistically significant (p<0.05) associations between some risk factors, signs, and symptoms, and the different helminth infections and treatment groups. However, the risk factors, signs, and symptoms showed weak diagnostic properties. Conclusions/Significance The generally low prevalence and intensity of helminth infection in this part of south-central Côte d’Ivoire indicates that recent control efforts have turned our study area into a low endemicity setting. Our anamnestic questionnaire had low sensitivity and specificity to identify infected individuals or treatment groups.
Evidence of an Untruncated Accretion Disk in the Broad-Line Radio Galaxy 4C 74.26

We present evidence of a broad ionized Fe Kα line in the XMM-Newton spectrum of the broad-line radio galaxy (BLRG) 4C 74.26. This is the first indication that the innermost regions of the accretion flow in BLRGs contain thin, radiatively efficient disks. Analysis of the 35 ks XMM-Newton observation finds a broad line with an inner radius close to the innermost stable circular orbit for a maximally spinning black hole. The outer radius of the relativistic line is also found to be within 10 gravitational radii. The Fe Kα line profile gives an inclination angle of ~40°, consistent with the radio limit. There are two narrow components to the Fe Kα complex: one at 6.4 keV from neutral Fe and one at 6.2 keV. These may form the blue and red horns of a diskline from farther out on the disk, but a longer observation is required to confirm this hypothesis. We discuss the implications of this observation for models of jet production and suggest that BLRGs and radio-loud quasars will have larger-than-average black hole masses, thus resulting in thicker accretion flows close to the black hole.
ALTERNATIVE MUON FRONT-END FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DESIGN STUDY (IDS)

We discuss alternative designs of the muon capture front end of the Neutrino Factory International Design Study (IDS). In the front end, a proton bunch on a target creates secondary pions that drift into a capture channel, decaying into muons. A sequence of RF cavities forms the resulting muon beams into strings of bunches of differing energies, aligns the bunches to (nearly) equal central energies, and initiates ionization cooling. This design is affected by limitations on accelerating gradients within magnetic fields. The effects of gradient limitations are explored, and mitigation strategies are presented.
Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies

We review the physical properties of nearby, relatively luminous galaxies, using results from newly available massive data sets together with more detailed observations. First, we present the global distribution of properties, including the optical and ultraviolet luminosity, stellar mass, and atomic gas mass functions. Second, we describe the shift of the galaxy population from "late" galaxy types in underdense regions to "early" galaxy types in overdense regions. We emphasize that the scaling relations followed by each galaxy type change very little with environment, with the exception of some minor but detectable effects. The shift in the population is apparent even at the densities of small groups and therefore cannot be exclusively due to physical processes operating in rich clusters. Third, we divide galaxies into four crude types -- spiral, lenticular, elliptical, and merging systems -- and describe some of their more detailed properties. We attempt to put these detailed properties into the global context provided by large surveys.
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 neutralization is determined by epitope exposure on the gp120 oligomer

The major target of the neutralizing antibody response to infection by the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is the outer envelope glycoprotein, gp120. The spectrum of HIV-1 neutralization specificity is currently represented by monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that can be divided broadly into five groups. We have studied the binding of these mAbs to functional oligomeric and soluble monomeric gp120 derived from the molecular clone of a cell line-adapted isolate of HIV-1, and compared these binding properties with virus neutralization. Binding of all mAbs except those reactive with the V3 loop was much weaker to oligomeric than to monomeric gp120. This reduction in binding to oligomeric gp120 was determined mostly by a slower relative rate of association, although the dissociation rate also had some influence on relative variation in mAb affinity. Virus neutralization correlated broadly with mAb binding to the oligomeric rather than to the monomeric form of gp120, and neutralization potency was related to the estimated association rate. Thus, with the exception of the hypervariable V3 loop, regions of HIV-1 gp120 with the potential to induce a neutralization response are likely to be poorly presented for antibody recognition on the surface of cell line-adapted virions.
Efficient hardware implementation of the stream cipher WG-16 with composite field arithmetic

The Welch-Gong (WG) stream cipher family was designed based on the WG transformation and is able to generate keystreams with mathematically proven randomness properties such as long period, balance, ideal tuple distribution, ideal two-level autocorrelation and high and exact linear complexity. In this paper, we present a compact hardware architecture and its pipelined implementation of the stream cipher WG-16, an efficient instance of the WG stream cipher family, using composite field arithmetic and a newly proposed property of the trace function in tower field representation. Instead of using the original binary field F2^16, we demonstrate that its isomorphic tower field F(((2^2)^2)^2)^2 can lead to a more efficient hardware implementation. Efficient conversion matrices connecting the binary field F2^16 and the tower field F(((2^2)^2)^2)^2 are also derived. Our implementation results show that the pipelined WG-16 hardware core can achieve the throughput of 124 MHz at the cost of 478 slices in an FPGA and 552 MHz at the cost of 12,031 GEs in a 65 nm ASIC, respectively.
The Rise of Hypercompetition in the Us Manufacturing Sector, 1950 to 2002

Recent theoretical work has posited that many industries have become hypercompetitive, characterized by volatile or transient competitive advantage. This study documents the spread of hypercompetition in the US manufacturing sector from 1950 to 2002. In so doing, the study provides careful definition of different types of competition, offers specific constructs to measure types of competition within industries, and estimates these constructs. We find a monotonic shift towards more temporary advantages as well as indicators of increasing structural instability. These results indicate a shift towards hypercompetition in most manufacturing industries, with acceleration in this transition around 1980. These findings are consistent with theoretical work about the decreasing sustainability of competitive advantage and they suggest that the field of strategy must develop new approaches for winning with a series of unsustainable advantages.
Financial Distress and the Cross Section of Equity Returns

We explicitly consider financial leverage in a simple equity valuation model and study the cross-sectional implications of potential shareholder recovery upon resolution of financial distress. We show that our model is capable of simultaneously explaining lower returns for financially distressed stocks, stronger book-to-market effects for firms with high default likelihood, and the concentration of momentum profits among low credit quality firms. The model further predicts (i) a hump-shaped relationship between value premium and default probability, and (ii) stronger momentum profits for nearly distressed firms with significant prospects for shareholder recovery. Our empirical analysis strongly confirms these novel predictions.
RECONFIGURATION OF CHAINS AND NETWORKS : POSITIONING PAPER

1. Prologue The Netherlands must remain a beautiful and prosperous country and, to maintain it, large-scale investments will be needed in the decades to come. This is the gist of the mission letter that the Dutch Cabinet sent to Parliament in 1996. In response, the so-called ICES/KIS work group defined six score themes within which knowledge had to be developed, mobilized and applied to help these investments do their work. This led to the foundation of the so-called ICES/KIS Communication Technology), whose mission it is to create a (virtual) knowledge center for chain and network studies in which knowledge will be developed, maintained and distributed. This knowledge needs to deliver a fundamental contribution to the transformation of traditional governmental controlled sectors into flexible and competitive chains and networks on the one hand and to resolve societal bottlenecks on the other hand. In this positioning paper, we sketch the economic and business context of the KLICT subprogram " Reconfiguration of chains and networks " , discuss its theoretical grounding, and identify the main research challenges. In its broadest definition, the reconfiguration of chains and networks concerns the organization and orchestration of activities in chains and networks; the redesign of chains and networks with respect to spatial limitations, environmental considerations, 2 and urban vitality; and physical networks for supporting physical product flows together with the reallocation of economic activities in chains and networks. We take a slightly different perspective, in compliance with the agrifood-logistics vision of the Ministry of LNV, a major stakeholder of the KLICT initiative, which centers on the organizing and orchestrating of activities, the coordination and collaboration in chains and networks, and the clustering and relocating of economic activities. Such a perspective is prudent in view of the roots and focus of the KLICT institute on the agribusiness and food chains and networks. In our discussion, we take primarily a business, supply chain management perspective and much less an economics perspective. The focus therefore lies mostly on organizing and orchestrating of activities and collaboration in chains and networks, and much less so on clustering and relocating economic activities. We start by describing the business, economic and societal environment, with a particular focus on the Netherlands, in Section 2. Then, in Section 3, we introduce supply chain management and its theoretical grounding, followed in Section 4 by a discussion of the main drivers for the reengineering and redesign of supply …
Presidential Address : The Limits of Financial Globalization

Despite the dramatic reduction in explicit barriers to international investment activity over the last 60 years, the impact of financial globalization has been surprisingly limited. I argue that country attributes are still critical to financial decision-making because of “twin agency problems” that arise because rulers of sovereign states and corporate insiders pursue their own interests at the expense of outside investors. When these twin agency problems are significant, diffuse ownership is inefficient and corporate insiders must co-invest with other investors, retaining substantial equity. The resulting ownership concentration limits economic growth, financial development, and the ability of a country to take advantage of financial globalization. AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II, the financial markets of most countries were closed to cross-border trade in financial assets. Since then, many countries have sharply reduced such barriers. The liberalization of trade in financial assets is often called “financial globalization. ” In neoclassical models, financial globalization generates major economic benefits. In particular, it enables investors worldwide to share risks better, it allows capital to flow where its productivity is highest, and it provides countries an opportunity to reap the benefits of their respective comparative advantages (see Stulz (1999a), for a review). Using models in which the only friction is the existence of explicit barriers to trading in financial assets across countries, such as taxes on international trade in financial assets, economists conclude that financial globalization is beneficial because aggregate welfare is higher absent this friction. With complete financial globalization and perfect markets within countries, a country irrelevance proposition holds according to which asset prices, portfolios, and firm financial policies are not country dependent. The empirical evidence for the predictions of these neoclassical models is mixed. While some authors find a positive impact of financial globalization on ∗Reese Chair in Banking and Monetary Economics at the Ohio State University and Research Associate at the NBER. I am grateful to Warren Bailey, Steve Buser, Harry DeAngelo, Linda DeAngelo, Henrik Cronqvist, Craig Doidge, Vihang Errunza, Mara Faccio, Eugene Fama, Rudi Fahlenbrach, Peter Henry, David Hirshleifer, Steve Kaplan, Andrew Karolyi, Ravi Kumar, Anil Makhija, John Persons, Patricia Reagan, Andrei Shleifer, Frank Warnock, Ingrid Werner, Randy Westerfield, Rohan Williamson, Ishay Yafeh, and Luigi Zingales for comments and discussions. I also thank Kuan-Hui Lee and Carrie Pan for research assistance and Sandra Sizer for editorial assistance.