Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synchronized Maternal-Infant Elevations of Primate CSF CRF Concentrations in Response to Variable Foraging Demand

BACKGROUND The study of environment-gene interactions during neurodevelopment may facilitate our understanding of the origins of psychiatric disorders. Environmental contribution to the neurobiology of psychopathology is perhaps most relevant during infancy, where vulnerability to early-life stressors is particularly evident. OBJECTIVES In the current study, we wished to examine if central corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) would provide a plausible biological vehicle for synchronized increases in mothers and their infant. METHODS Twenty-four mother-infant bonnet macaques (Macaca radiata) dyads, of known age and weight served as subjects. The subjects were group-housed in four pens of 5-7 dyads each, stabilized for several weeks prior to the study period. Although adequate food was always available, mothers faced uncertainty of food availability for 16 weeks within the first year of infant life, through a procedure dubbed "variable foraging demand" (VFD). Pre- and post-VFD cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples were obtained simultaneously on mothers and infants. RESULTS Maternal CSF CRF concentrations exhibited a significant mean elevation of 26% from pre-VFD to post-VFD; there was no effect of number of days postpartum on maternal pre-VFD CSF CRF levels. There was a significant mean increase (45%) in infant CSF CRF concentrations over the 16-week period of the VFD paradigm. No infant sex differences were evident. Post-VFD minus pre-VFD differences in infant CSF CRF concentrations were positively correlated (r = .52; N = 16; P = .0384) with the magnitude of maternal CRF response to VFD, providing evidence of synchronized CSF CRF expression by the dyad. CONCLUSION This parallel response within the dyad suggests, as one testable hypothesis, that maternal responsivity to the stress of the VFD condition is "communicated" between mother and infant via a CRF-mediated mechanism. The VFD stressor produces a parallel activation of the central CRF system in both mothers and their infants.
Dynamics of family buying decision and mediation of conflict resolution

This study aims at developing a comprehensive theoretical framework for dynamics of family buying decision (FBD) based with mediation of conflict resolution. The basic purpose is to build a conceptual model including the spousal involvement in family purchase decision and their conflict that arise in decision which lead to either joint or autonomous decision and finally arriving at a final decision with the help of conflict resolution strategies. Based on the theoretical evidences, it was concluded that the main factors influencing the family buying decision about purchasing household durable goods is spouses’ involvement in the family buying decision making process. While in buying decision there is a mediating role of conflict resolution strategies which influence the family member involvement and ultimately the family buying decision. Key words: Family, buying decision, conflict resolution, joint decision, spousal involvement.
A chromosome 12 coding region is juxtaposed to the MYC protooncogene locus in a t(8; 12)(q24;q22) translocation in a case of B‐cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia

We performed molecular cloning and sequencing of the breakpoints of a new chromosomal translocation involving the MYC protooncogene locus. This secondary t(8; 12)(q24;q22) was associated with a primary t( I I; 14)(q I 3;q32) translocation in a case of B‐cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in blastic transformation. In this leukemia, Northern blot and nuclease analyses SI showed that MYC was strongly expressed with initiation of the transcription at both the 5′ and 3′ promoters as observed in Burkitt's lymphomas; no coding change was observed in MYC putative regulatory sequences. The breakpoint on chromosome 8 mapped to the 3′ end of the MYC locus, in a region containing a potential Z‐DNA tract, and where we identified two DNase I hypersensitive sites. A rearranged MYC gene fragment was cloned and shown to contain chromosome 12 information by Southern blot analysis and by in situ hybridization. A genomic probe subcloned from the isolated region of the chromosome 12 recognized a 1.8 kb transcript in virtually all the tissues tested but a preferential expression of this new gene, which we termed BTGI (for B‐cell translocation gene I) was observed in the CLL cells and in tissues of lymphoid origin. This chromosome 12 coding sequence is conserved in evolution and a transcript of similar size is present in murine tissues.
Tourist Flow and Earnings Benchmarks

This study examines the relationship between meeting earnings benchmarks and regional factors related to the hospitality industry. Our hypothesis assumes that the tourist flow in which a hotel is located influences the hotel’s performance, but it is not the same for all firms. Specifically, firms meeting earnings benchmarks, when it is documented that managers have strong incentives to engage in earnings management strategy, present a different relationship with regional tourist flow. The evidence suggests that regional tourist flow is associated with the corporate performance of firms but that there is an inflexion point for firms meeting earnings benchmarks.
The economic impacts of tourism in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa: Is poverty subsiding?

Tourism in southern Africa is based on the region's wildlife and nature assets and is generally environmentally sustainable, but the extent to which it contributes to other aspects of sustainable development — overall income generation or poverty eradication — is less well explored. In this paper, we use social accounting matrices to compare the economic impacts of foreign tourism in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. Overall impacts on GDP range from 6% (South Africa) to 9% (Namibia). However, South Africa's economy is more diversified than its neighbours' and more of the goods and services used by tourists and by the tourism industry are supplied domestically. Consequently, the impact per Rand spent is considerably larger for South Africa than for Botswana or Namibia. The poorer segments of the population appear to receive shares of tourism income that are smaller than their share of overall income in all three countries.
Comment on ‘New confidence bounds for QT studies’ by Dennis D. Boos, David Hoffman, Robert Kringle and Ji Zhang, Statistics in Medicine 2007; 26:3801–3817

The regulatory concern of QTc prolongation of a test drug can be addressed by comparing the onesided 95 per cent (or two-sided 90 per cent) upper confidence bound for the largest time-matched baseline adjusted mean QTc difference between the test drug and placebo against 10ms. Let T Rk and PLk be the mean change from baseline for the drug and placebo at time k, in the hypothesis testing setting, the recommendation is equivalent to testing the following hypothesis:
From past to present: Effect of lifecourse on mortality, and social class differences in mortality in middle adulthood

Social class differences in mortality are larger in middle adulthood than at any other time of life. Circumstances over the lifecourse may contribute to these adult social class differences. However, it is only rarely that the lifecourse approach has been applied to mortality studies among persons in their middle adulthood. The aim of this thesis is to disentangle the effects of the living conditions in the parental home and major transition in youth on social class differences in mortality from various causes of death among women and men aged 31-42 at death, and to evaluate whether the effect of the past circumstances on mortality is through latency, accumulation or pathway mechanisms. This thesis (papers II-V) is based on the 1990 census data for all Finnish persons born in 1956-60 linked with death records (4369 deaths) for 1991-98 and with information on lifecourse circumstances from the 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985 censuses. These aggregated cross-tables are analysed by means of Poisson regression. Parental home had an association with disease mortality from age 20 onwards, indicating a latency effect. However, the direct effect of the parental home on mortality was minor, and therefore the contribution of latency model to differential mortality remained small. An indication for the accumulative effect of disadvantageous social class was found for cardiovascular diseases and alcohol-related causes. The living conditions in the parental home, i.e. the manual class and one-parent family, had an effect on the transitions a person experienced in youth, and thus contributed to the effect youth paths exerted on adult social class differences in mortality from various causes of death. Youth paths had a substantial effect (about 60-90%) over and above the preceding effect of living conditions in the parental home on mortality. The higher mortality in the lower social classes was mainly attributable to disadvantageous educational path. Moreover, both family formation, particularly early marriage in women and staying single in men, and experience of unemployment in youth, had independent effects on class differences in mortality. These results strongly suggest that youth is a ‘sensitive period’ affecting social class differences in mortality in middle adulthood.
PERSPECTIVE - How Does Religion Matter and Why? Religion and the Organizational Sciences

Religion is becoming increasingly salient in and around, but not confined to, the American workplace. The rise of openly faith-based organizations and discourse surrounding the role and importance of spirituality are just a couple of the indicators that religion, in its various guises, is playing a role in organizational life. With few exceptions, however, scholarly research has sidestepped the issue of religion, and, perhaps unwittingly, discourse surrounding spirituality seems to imply that religion is a benign and positive force. Rather than implicitly or explicitly assuming that religion is a benign, positive force in organizations, in this paper, we suggest that organizational scholars need to rigorously address the potential consequences of religion at work in a dispassionate manner that acknowledges both the benefits/adaptive outcomes and the challenges/maladaptive outcomes. Specifically, adopting primarily a psychological approach, we theorize about two fundamental tensions produced by contemplations about religion and the concept of God at work and the conditions under which benefits versus challenges may prevail. These exemplary tensions, virtuousness versus “more-virtuous-than-thou” and prosociality and ethicality versus egocentrism, highlight the fact that religion has the potential to result in both adaptive and maladaptive outcomes for organizations and their members. Importantly, for each tension, we theorize about the initial conditions under which beneficial/adaptive or challenging/maladaptive outcomes will prevail. We also explore the critical role that the wider context plays in understanding these tensions and how religion affects organizational life.
A re-examination of the antecedents and impact of customer participation in service

Customer participation has been argued to be a critical influence on customer satisfaction with the service received, but empirical studies are relatively lacking. This study proposes a theoretical model of the antecedents and impact of customer participation in service and re-examines the relationships among organizational support, socialization, customer participation, and customer satisfaction. Findings of a questionnaire completed by tourists of a Taiwanese theme park indicated that: (1) customer perceptions of support and socialization significantly and positively influence customer participation; (2) perceived support and socialization have a significant and positive influence on customer satisfaction; (3) the directly positive relationship between customer participation and satisfaction is not supported in this study.
A Review of Empirical Research on the Design and Impact of Regulation in the Banking Sector

We review existing empirical research on the design and impact of regulation in the banking sector. The impact of each individual piece of regulation may inexorably depend on the set of regulations already in place, the characteristics of the banks involved (from their size or ownership structure to operational idiosyncrasies in terms of capitalization levels or risk-taking behavior), and the institutional development of the country where the regulation is introduced. This complexity is challenging for the econometrician, who relies either on single-country data to identify challenges for regulation or on cross-country data to assess the overall effects of regulation. It is also troubling for the policy maker, who has to optimally design regulation to avoid any unintended consequences, especially those that vary over the credit cycle such as the currently developing macroprudential frameworks.
Role of Gender in Morbidity and Mortality of Extremely Premature Neonates

Abstract We investigated the effect of gender on survival and short-term outcomes of extremely premature infants (≤27 weeks) born in Canada. The records of infants admitted between 2000 and 2005 to a neonatal intensive care unit participating in the Canadian Neonatal Network were reviewed for infant gender, birth weight, gestational age, outborn status, Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology II, and antenatal corticosteroid exposure. The following outcomes were recorded: survival at final discharge, necrotizing enterocolitis, bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), intraventricular hemorrhage grade ≥3, retinopathy grade ≥3, days on ventilation, and length of hospital stay. Among 2744 extremely premature infants, 1480 (54%) were male and 1264 (46%) were female. Mean birth weight of female neonates was significantly lower at each week of gestational age. Although no significant difference in survival at discharge was found between genders overall, the prevalence of BPD, combined adverse outcomes, and mortality for infants born between 24 and 26 weeks were significantly higher in males. This study suggests that, in the postsurfactant era, males remain at higher risk of respiratory complications and may have higher mortality when born between 24 and 26 weeks of gestation.
Depression, hippocampal volume changes, and cognitive decline in a clinical sample of older depressed outpatients and non-depressed controls

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop and test a model of depression, hippocampal changes, and cognitive decline. Method: Participants were 248 community-dwelling, depressed patients and 147 healthy, non-depressed individuals 60 years and older. Participants received a structured interview assessing current depressive symptoms and past depressive episodes, completed cognitive testing with the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), and underwent structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the brain. For up to 10 years, assessment of depressive symptoms and MMSE administration was repeated at least annually, and MRI was repeated every two years. Results: Regression analyses demonstrated that depression diagnosis at baseline predicted decrease in right (but not left) hippocampal volume over a four-year period. Analyses using structural equation modeling demonstrated that a decrease in left and right hippocampal volumes predicted decrease in MMSE score over four years. Conclusion: Results provide some evidence for relationships between depression and decrease in right hippocampal volume, and between hippocampal volume and MMSE score. This would be consistent with depression as a causal factor in subsequent cognitive decline. Plausible biological mechanisms include a glucocorticoid cascade or a facilitating effect of depression on amyloid-beta plaque formation. Future studies should examine the relationship between hippocampal volume and specialized memory measures, as well as between depression diagnosis and volume of other brain structures.
Are surface properties integrated into visuohaptic object representations?

Object recognition studies have almost exclusively involved vision, focusing on shape rather than surface properties such as color. Visual object representations are thought to integrate shape and color information because changing the color of studied objects impairs their subsequent recognition. However, little is known about integration of surface properties into visuohaptic multisensory representations. Here, participants studied objects with distinct patterns of surface properties (color in Experiment 1, texture in Experiments 2 and 3) and had to discriminate between object shapes when color or texture schemes were altered in within‐modal (visual and haptic) and cross‐modal (visual study followed by haptic test and vice versa) conditions. In Experiment 1, color changes impaired within‐modal visual recognition but had no effect on cross‐modal recognition, suggesting that the multisensory representation was not influenced by modality‐specific surface properties. In Experiment 2, texture changes impaired recognition in all conditions, suggesting that both unisensory and multisensory representations integrated modality‐independent surface properties. However, the cross‐modal impairment might have reflected either the texture change or a failure to form the multisensory representation. Experiment 3 attempted to distinguish between these possibilities by combining changes in texture with changes in orientation, taking advantage of the known view‐independence of the multisensory representation, but the results were not conclusive owing to the overwhelming effect of texture change. The simplest account is that the multisensory representation integrates shape and modality‐independent surface properties. However, more work is required to investigate this and the conditions under which multisensory integration of structural and surface properties occurs.
Bridging the Research–Practice Gap

Executive Overview Management research often bears little resemblance to management practice. Although this research–practice gap is widely recognized and frequently lamented, there is little discussion about how it can be bridged. We partly remedy this problem in this paper by describing our experiences with the Network for Business Sustainability. Our experiences showed that the paradoxes underlying the relationship between research and practice make bridging this gap difficult. We argue that the reason why the research–practice gap endures is that bridging it is beyond the capabilities and scope of most individuals, and we call for the creation of intermediary organizations like the Network for Business Sustainability. We close by outlining some of the activities that can be undertaken by these boundary-spanning intermediary organizations, with the hopes of better aligning management research and practice.
Freezing the Master Production Schedule Under Rolling Planning Horizons

The stability of the Master Production Schedule MPS is a critical issue in managing production operations with a Material Requirements Planning System. One method of achieving stability is to freeze some portion or all of the MPS. While freezing the MPS can limit the number of schedule changes, it can also produce an increase in production and inventory costs. This paper examines three decision variables in freezing the MPS: the freezing method, the freeze interval length, and the planning horizon length. Simulation experiment results are reported which suggest that freezing up to 50% of the planning horizon has a marginal effect on production and inventory cost under a wide range of operating conditions. These results also suggest that an order based freezing method produces superior results in comparison with a period based method.
Hand-Assisted Laparoscopic Donor Nephrectomy is Safe and Results in Increased Kidney Donation

The impact of hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy on kidney allograft function, perioperative complications, and organ supply was evaluated by retrospective analysis of 41 hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy patients and their recipients between January and October 2003. Serum creatinine at discharge, length of stay, estimated blood loss, operative time, and perioperative complications were analyzed. The mean values for laparoscopic donors and their recipients were 1.2 ± 0.3 and 1.3 ± 0.8 mg/dL for creatinine, 3.3 ± 0.8 and 6.7 ± 3 days for length of stay, and 110.4 ± 76.9 and 111.6 ± 56 mL for estimated blood loss, respectively. No major complications occurred in the laparoscopic donors. The number of living kidney donors increased by 94% compared to the mean of the previous 4 years following implementation of the laparoscopic program. Hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy is safe, results in excellent allograft function, and significantly increases donation.
Hypersensitivity and idiosyncratic reactions to oxaliplatin

In their review of hypersensitivity and idiosyncratic reactions to oxaliplatin, Thomas et al. concluded that patients who develop severe hypersensitivity reactions (HSRs) to oxaliplatin are unlikely to tolerate further therapy. We wish to report a desensitization protocol developed at our institution that allowed successful retreatment of a patient who had experienced a severe HSR to oxaliplatin. A 50-year-old female with metastatic colon carcinoma had previously received 12 courses of oxaliplatin on a clinical trial without any allergic reactions. Although her tumor was responding to oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy, she had to be removed from the study because of persistent neutropenia. Subsequent treatments for her tumor proved ineffective. Approximately 18 months later, oxaliplatin became commercially available in the U.S. and we decided to reinstitute treatment with this agent. The patient began treatment with a combination of oxaliplatin and capecitabine and tolerated her first cycle well. Approximately 15 minutes after her second infusion of oxaliplatin, the patient reported palpitations and flushing and was found to be hypotensive (blood pressure reading of 70/40 mm Hg) with mild pulmonary wheezing. The oxaliplatin infusion was immediately withdrawn and she was treated with intravenous (i.v.) fluids, diphenhydramine at a dose of 50 mg i.v. , and hydrocortisone at a dose of 100 mg i.v. The patient also developed a diffuse macular rash over her body and rigors that were treated with meperidine at a dose of 25 mg i.v. Her symptoms resolved within 90 minutes. For her next cycle of treatment, the patient was premedicated with oral dexamethasone beginning 24 hours prior to chemotherapy and she also received i.v. dexamethasone and diphenhydramine 30 minutes prior to treatment. In addition, the rate of infusion of oxaliplatin was reduced by 50%. Despite these measures, the patient experienced a similar HSR approximately 20 minutes after the oxaliplatin infusion was initiated. Because the patient wanted to continue treatment with oxaliplatin, we devised a 4-hour desensitization protocol adapted from a previous report for anaphylaxis to carboplatin. Four serial dilutions of oxaliplatin were prepared based on the calculated total dose (1:10,000, 1:1000, 1:100, and 1:10), each in 100 mL of D5W. Starting with the lowest dilution, each bag of oxaliplatin was infused over 1 hour with careful monitoring of vital signs. The patient tolerated the desensitization well and the remainder of her dose was infused over 2 hours. During infusion of the final dose, she developed a faint macular rash with itching over her lower extremities, which responded to i.v. hydrocortisone. For her subsequent treatments, the length of the final infusion of oxaliplatin was prolonged to 4 hours and she was premedicated with hydrocortisone at a dose of 100 mg 211