Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The use of stent retrievers in acute ischemic stroke

ABSTRACT Introduction: Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is one of the leading causes of mortality and adult disability worldwide. For two decades, the preferred approach for AIS was intravenous recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (IV tPA). However, IV tPA cannot be given to many AIS patients who do not meet strict criteria for its use. IV tPA has also had lesser benefit in patients with large clot burden in the context of large vessel occlusion (LVO). Areas covered: Endovascular stroke therapy had been an ‘unproven’ therapy despite numerous trials of intra-arterial pharmacologic thrombolysis and mechanical thrombectomy. With the advent of stent-retriever devices, there has been a paradigm shift in the utilization of endovascular therapies for AIS. Our review discusses cerebrovascular hemodynamics, the basis of the recanalization models in AIS, aspects of intravenous thrombolysis, prior generations of endovascular therapy, and the recent successful AIS stent retriever trials. Expert commentary: Recently ‘stent-retrievers’, a new generation of mechanical thrombectomy devices, were shown to be associated with improved functional outcomes in AIS secondary to proximal intracranial anterior circulation LVO. Stent retrievers are a major advance in AIS care and will have significant impact on the evolution of stroke systems of care.
A new injury prevention programme for children’s football – FIFA 11+ Kids – can improve motor performance: a cluster-randomised controlled trial

ABSTRACT The present study evaluated the effects of a newly developed injury prevention programme for children’s football (“FIFA 11+ Kids”) on motor performance in 7–12-year-old children. We stratified 12 football teams (under-9/-11/-13 age categories) into intervention (INT, N = 56 players) and control groups (CON, N = 67). INT conducted the 15-min warm-up programme “FIFA 11+ Kids” twice a week for 10 weeks. CON followed a standard warm-up (sham treatment). Pre- and post-tests were conducted using: single leg stance; Y-balance test; drop and countermovement jump; standing long jump; 20-m sprint; agility run; slalom dribble; and wall volley test. We used magnitude-based inferences and linear mixed-effects models to analyse performance test results. We observed likely beneficial effects favouring INT in Y-balance (right leg; +3.2%; standardised mean difference (SMD) = 0.34; P = 0.58) and agility run (+3.6%; SMD = 0.45; P = 0.008). Possibly beneficial effects were found in Y-balance, drop jump reactive strength index, drop jump height, countermovement jump, standing long jump, slalom dribble and wall volley test. At least possibly beneficial improvements in favour of “FIFA 11+ Kids” were observed in nearly all parameters. Most effects were small, but slight improvements in motor performance may potentially contribute to a reduction of injury risk.
Analysis of Fish Demand in Ilorin-West Local Government Area, Kwara State, Nigeria

This study examined fish demand in Ilorin-west LGA, Kwara State, Nigeria. Primary and secondary data were used for the study. Data was collected from one hundred (100) respondents randomly selected through administration of questionnaire and oral interview. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The result showed that majority (65%) of the respondents were male. The mean age was 37.5 years with most of the respondents (95%) having formal education. It was further observed that majority of the respondents were married with most of them (71%) having a house-hold size of 1-5 persons. Most of the respondents (51%) were non-salary earners with majority of them (50%) belonging to the low income group. It was further observed from the regression result that the price of fish, income, price of substitutes were significant at 1% while age was significant at 5%. The findings also indicated that fish was price inelastic with coefficient-0.21, income elastic with coefficient 14.46, cross-inelastic with coefficient 0.0005 and age was elastic with coefficient 18.52. Based on the findings, government should educate people on the importance of fish on their health, efforts should also be made to reduce the price of fish and provide income opportunities by creating jobs. All of these will increase the demand for fish in the area.
Hormonal Responses to Resistance Exercise after Ingestion of Carnosine and Anserine

Goto, K, Maemura, H, Takamatsu, K, and Ishii, N. Hormonal responses to resistance exercise after ingestion of carnosine and anserine. J Strength Cond Res 25(2): 398-405, 2011-Intramuscular carnosine buffers protons (H+) in skeletal muscle. We examined the effects of supplementation with chicken breast meat extract (CBEX) containing carnosine and anserine on hormonal responses to resistance exercise. Twenty-two men were assigned to a CBEX drink group (CBEX containing total 2 g of carnosine and anserine) (n = 14) or a placebo drink group (n = 8). The subjects ingested the prescribed drink (100 mL) twice daily for 30 days without physical training. Before and after the supplementation period, the subjects completed 5 sets of bilateral knee extension exercises (with a 90-s rest between sets). The magnitude of the increase in exercise-induced free testosterone did not change significantly after supplementation in either group. The blood lactate response to exercise was attenuated after supplementation in both groups (p < 0.05). In the CBEX group, the plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine concentrations after exercise were significantly lower after supplementation (p < 0.05). The serum growth hormone response to exercise was also reduced in the CBEX group after supplementation (delta value: 5.4 ± 1.9 ng/mL [pre] vs. 1.6 ± 0.5 ng/mL [post], p = 0.05). No significant differences in exercise-induced strength reduction (fatigue index) were observed in the 2 groups after supplementation. These results suggest that short-term supplementation with CBEX attenuates the exercise-induced epinephrine, norepinephrine, and growth hormone responses.
Openness to Globalization and Regional Growth Patterns in CEE Countries: From the EU Accession to the Economic Crisis

In the last decades a deep process of institutional reforms and economic reorganization took place in central and eastern EU countries (CEE). These changes occurred in a context of general economic integration. On the one hand, the European Union enlargement programme was launched and all CEE countries applied to become EU member between 1994 and 1996. On the other hand, the globalization of the world economy characterized this historical phase. This article explores to what extent openness to global markets mediated the impact of EU integration on the economic performance of CEE regions in different periods. The periods examined are defined by the main institutional changes that occurred on the road towards EU integration. Results show that globally open regions performed better than the others, at least in the first two periods analyzed.
Cost Analysis for Water Distribution in Agriculture

This paper uses a Translog form to estimate the water distribution cost for an irrigation consortium. The consortium operates under conditions of the under-utilization of facilities; thus, to achieve full cost recovery, water charges must be set at a higher level than efficiency. As a consequence, farmers may decide to reduce their use of the public irrigation service and instead exploit groundwater. The estimated Translog function explains the costs of water services throughout the irrigated area, and identifies items for which pricing does not accentuate the competition between the use of surface water and groundwater. Based on the estimated coefficients, a hypothesis is hence presented for pricing water provided by the consortium.
Determinants of Internet Financial Reporting Practices: Evidence from the UAE

The objective of this paper is to undertake an in-depth study of the Internet financial reporting (IFR) practices of UAE-listed companies. The survey is aimed at identifying IFR versus non-IFR companies, and the nature and extent of their IFR practices. Logistic regression analysis was undertaken to establish the determinants of IFR by the companies. The findings of this study identify the size, the leverage, industry sector, and profitability as the most important predictors of IFR adoption by UAE listed-companies. Larger companies with greater leverage are more likely to set up a website and use it for IFR than smaller less leveraged ones. It was noticed that 62% of IFR companies is from banking, investment & finance sector and from insurance sector as well. This study is expected to inform monetary authorities on this subject and give more support to these two industries, as they were peers for other sectors in the UAE. Furthermore, the outcome of this paper will provide policy-makers with insight into the factors that motivate IFR among corporate organizations.
Examination of Faculty Expectations of Technical College Administrators as an Important Factor in High Performing Environments.

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Recombinant Viral-Vectored Vaccines Expressing Plasmodium chabaudi AS Apical Membrane Antigen 1: Mechanisms of Vaccine-Induced Blood-Stage Protection

Apical membrane Ag 1 (AMA1) is one of the leading candidate Ags for inclusion in a subunit vaccine against blood-stage malaria. However, the efficacy of Ab-inducing recombinant AMA1 protein vaccines in phase IIa/b clinical trials remains disappointing. In this article, we describe the development of recombinant human adenovirus serotype 5 and modified vaccinia virus Ankara vectors encoding AMA1 from the Plasmodium chabaudi chabaudi strain AS. These vectors, when used in a heterologous prime-boost regimen in BALB/c mice, are capable of inducing strong transgene-specific humoral and cellular immune responses. We show that this vaccination regimen is protective against a nonlethal P. chabaudi chabaudi strain AS blood-stage challenge, resulting in reduced peak parasitemias. The role of vaccine-induced, AMA1-specific Abs and T cells in mediating the antiparasite effect was investigated by in vivo depletion of CD4+ T cells and adoptive-transfer studies into naive and immunodeficient mice. Depletion of CD4+ T cells led to a loss of vaccine-induced protection. Adoptive-transfer studies confirmed that efficacy is mediated by both CD4+ T cells and Abs functioning in the context of an intact immune system. Unlike previous studies, these results confirm that Ag-specific CD4+ T cells, induced by a clinically relevant vaccine-delivery platform, can make a significant contribution to vaccine blood-stage efficacy in the P. chabaudi model. Given that cell-mediated immunity may also contribute to parasite control in human malaria, these data support the clinical development of viral-vectored vaccines that induce both T cell and Abs against Plasmodium falciparum blood-stage malaria Ags like AMA1.
Local Government Performance Indicators in Europe: an Exploration

Local governments need reliable information about the cities they are governing. However, an analysis of the availability of basic descriptive data (population data, information on household composition, unemployment, poverty, condition of the housing stock, homelessness, recorded crime and composition and size of local municipal income) in 55 European cities makes clear that these data are often not available because they have neither been collected nor disseminated. On average, 30 percent of simple local performance indicators is missing. National statistical traditions may help explaining the lack of data-gathering.
Risk Sharing and Incentives in the Principal and Agent Relationship

This article studies arrangements concerning the payment of a fee by a principal to his agent. For such an arrangement, or fee schedule, to be Pareto optimal, it must implicitly serve to allocate the risk attaching to the outcome of the agent's activity in a satisfactory way and to create appropriate incentives for the agent in his activity. Pareto-optimal fee schedules are described in two cases: when the principal has knowledge only of the outcome of the agent's activity and when he has as well (possibly imperfect) information about the agent's activity. In each case, characteristics of Pareto-optimal fee schedules are related to the attitudes toward risk of the principal and of the agent.
Social Media Use in Local Government: An Australian Perspective

Social media offers governments extensive opportunities to engage with citizens, particularly at the local level. This study investigates the issues that local governments face in implementing social media initiatives. It builds on existing literature by using an interpretive approach to examine the perceptions of public employees and elected officials of local councils in an Australian context. The article reports on the issues that inhibit a move to a more interactive use of social media and examines how these may be addressed. Implications for research and practice are given.
Oligopoly Limit Pricing

We expand Milgrom and Roberts' (1982) limit pricing model to allow for multiple incumbents. Each incumbent is informed as to the level of an industry cost parameter and selects a preentry price while a single entrant observes each incumbent's preentry price. We find that incumbents are unable to coordinate deception, which results in a separating equilibrium in which preentry prices are not distorted. Further, introducing the refinement of unprejudiced beliefs, we show that the no-distortion equilibrium is the only refined separating equilibrium. Plausible pooling equilibria fail to exist or involve downward distortions in preentry prices.
Chronic NF-{kappa}B blockade reduces cytosolic and mitochondrial oxidative stress and attenuates renal injury and hypertension in SHR.

Nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kappaB) plays an important role in hypertensive renal injury; however, its roles in perpetuating mitochondrial oxidative stress and renal dysfunction remain unclear. In this study, we assessed the effects of chronic NF-kappaB blockade with pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (PDTC) on renal dysfunction and mitochondrial redox status in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). PDTC (150 mg.kg body wt(-1). day(-1)) or vehicle was administered orally to 8-wk-old SHR and their respective controls for 15 wk. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) was measured by tail-cuff plethysmography at the start of and at every third week throughout the study. After 15 wk of treatment, anesthetized rats underwent acute renal experiments to determine renal blood flow and glomerular filtration rate using PAH and inulin clearance techniques, respectively. Following renal experiments, kidneys were excised from killed rats, and cortical mitochondria were isolated for reactive oxygen species (ROS) measurements using electron paramagnetic resonance. Tissue mRNA and protein levels of NF-kappaB and oxidative stress genes were determined using real-time PCR and immunofluorescence or Western blotting, respectively. PDTC treatment partially attenuated the increase in SBP (196.4 +/- 9.76 vs. 151.4 +/- 2.12; P < 0.05) and normalized renal hemodynamic and excretory parameters and ATP production rates in SHR. PDTC treatment also attenuated the higher levels of cytosolic and mitochondrial ROS generation and tissue mRNA and protein expression levels of NF-kappaB and oxidative stress genes in SHR without any comparable responses in control rats. These findings suggest that NF-kappaB activation by ROS induces the cytosolic and mitochondrial oxidative stress and tissue injury that contribute to renal dysfunction observed in SHR.
A Bermuda triangle of policy? ‘Bad jobs’, skills policy and incentives to learn at the bottom end of the labour market

A focus of Government policy has been the need to ensure that those at the lower end of the labour market invest in their human capital through re-engaging with learning, which has been assumed to enable progress into better-paid employment. This article explores the problems created by ‘bad jobs’ and the evidence for the existence of a set of mutually reinforcing factors that reduces the incentives acting on individuals in such work, and in many cases their employers, to participate and invest in education and training. Each of these factors, on their own, would be sufficient to cause problems at the lower end of the labour market. Acting in concert, as a mutually reinforcing matrix, they produce powerful reasons why many individuals perceive that the incentives to engage in work-related learning are weak. More broadly, our argument suggests that the fundamental causes of low pay and low-quality employment have been misdiagnosed and the subsequent public policy solution of up-skilling interventions is relatively ill-fitted to achieving the desired policy goals. Imaginative re-thinking on how policy might help those in low-wage, dead-end jobs is necessary.
Acquired hematopoietic stem cell defects determine B-cell repertoire changes associated with aging

Aging is associated with an inability to mount protective antibody responses to vaccines and infectious agents. This decline is associated with acquisition of defects in multiple cellular compartments, including B cells. While peripheral B-cell numbers do not decline with aging, the composition of the compartment appears to change, with loss of naïve follicular B cells, accumulation of antigen-experienced cells, and alteration of the antibody repertoire. The underlying cause of this change is unknown. We tested the hypothesis that aging-associated repertoire changes can be attributed directly to decreased B lymphopoiesis. Using an Ig transgenic model to report changes in the B-cell repertoire, we show that the reduced B-cell generative capacity of “aged” long-term reconstituting hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs) alters the representation of antigen specificities in the peripheral B-cell repertoire. Further, we show that reconstitution using suboptimal numbers of fully functional LT-HSCs results in the generation of a similarly altered B-cell repertoire. This may be an important factor to consider when deciding the number of bone marrow cells to transplant in the clinical setting. In conclusion, when B lymphopoiesis is limited peripheral B-cell homeostasis is altered. This is reflected in reduced diversity of the B-cell repertoire, which likely reduces the protective quality of the immune response.
New challenges for women seeking an academic career: the hiring process in Portuguese higher education institutions

This paper provides an analysis of the potential impact of changes in recruitment and hiring processes in Portuguese higher education institutions – under the New Public Management framework – on the representation of women in academia. Based on official data from the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, two major conclusions emerge. First, Portuguese higher education institutions reproduce the same inequalities in career structures that are dominant in other occupational spheres, with the same phenomena of horizontal and vertical segregation both in universities and polytechnics careers. Second, recruitment and selection processes have an important influence on women in academia with the use of informal procedures emerging as an obstacle for women entrance into academic careers.
Job quality in Europe in the first decade of the 21st Century

This article presents an analysis of the evolution of job quality from 2000 to 2010 in the European Union 15, using a newly developed composite measure of job quality that is applied to the European Working Conditions Survey. After a careful study of the evolution of job quality across the different dimensions and components of our index, and a differentiation between changes in the composition and changes in the means, we do not detect any major decline during the period, even during the economic crisis. The most significant change is a small increase in job quality in peripheral European countries, suggesting some convergence. We discuss several hypotheses for explaining the remarkable stability of job quality during such turbulent times.
The SARALPS-2007 measurement campaign on Xand Ku-Band Backscatter of snow

The retrieval of snow parameters, and snow water equivalent in particular, are key parameters in hydrology and climate research. Theory, ground-based signature research and analysis of spaceborne scatterometry suggests that the high- frequency combination of Ku- and X-band active microwave sensors is an excellent tool for the retrieval of snow physical properties. In order to validate this, a snow measurement campaign was carried out with the University of Cranfield's portable Ground-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar (GB-SAR) System during the winter of 2006/7 at two test-sites in the Austrian Alps close to Innsbruck. Fully polarimetric X-and Ku-band backscatter signatures were acquired over a range of incidence angles (~20deg-70deg), with the active sensor operating predominately in SAR mode, but occasionally also in InSAR mode. Microwave signatures and snow properties were measured on seven different dates. Detailed complementary meteorological and snow metamorphic conditions were also recorded.
Effect of chronic treatment with bovine recombinant growth hormone on cardiac dysfunction and lesion progression in UM-X7.1 cardiomyopathic hamsters.

In view of the potentially beneficial effect of GH on ventricular function of humans suffering from idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, we undertook a study to evaluate the optimal time to initiate treatment with GH and its duration in UM-X7.1 cardiomyopathic hamsters (CMH). GH (1 mg/kg.d) therapy was initiated either in the early or late (30 and 160 d old, respectively) phases of the disease and continued until death at 240 d of age. Age- and sex-matched Golden Syrian hamsters (GSH) were used as controls. Basal IGF-1 levels in serum were reduced by nearly half in CMH compared with GSH but were increased within a physiological range in male hamsters. In contrast, female hamsters presented elevated basal serum IGF-1 levels that were not further elevated by GH administration, as reported in experimental models and humans. Accordingly, the present study will focus on the effects of GH therapy on cardiac performance in male hamsters. GH did not improve ventricular function when starting at a late stage of the disease compared with CMH controls. Maximum rate of left ventricular pressure development decreased by approximately 64% in CMH treated early with recombinant bovine GH. Ventricular dysfunction was associated with morphologic indices of hypertrophy, ventricular dilatation, and extensive fibrosis. Mortality was strikingly increased in GH-treated CMH for 210 d (four males and eight females), as opposed to four females (and no male) in the vehicle-treated group. These results suggest that chronic treatment with recombinant bovine GH in CMH, starting at an early stage of lesion development, is associated with a reduced cardiac performance at the terminal stage of the disease.