Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-term efficacy and safety of once-daily treatment with beclomethasone dipropionate nasal aerosol.

Beclomethasone dipropionate (BDP) nasal aerosol has an established efficacy and safety profile for short-term allergic rhinitis (AR) treatment. However, managing perennial AR (PAR) symptoms often requires long-term treatment. This study evaluates efficacy and safety of long-term treatment with BDP nasal aerosol in PAR patients. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled study, patients (≥12 years [n = 529]) were randomized 4:1 to once-daily treatment with BDP nasal aerosol at 320 μg or placebo. The primary efficacy end point was change from baseline in weekly averages of patient-reported 24-hour reflective total nasal symptom score (rTNSS) over 30 weeks. Safety and tolerability of BDP nasal aerosol were also assessed. Ocular safety, including changes in intraocular pressure and severity of lens opacities (nuclear opalescence, nuclear color, cortical lens opacity, and posterior subcapsular lens opacity), was measured for patients who completed 52 weeks of treatment (n = 245). Across 30 and 52 weeks, BDP nasal aerosol significantly improved rTNSS and instantaneous TNSS (iTNSS) versus placebo (least-squares mean treatment difference, rTNSS, -0.97 for 30 weeks and -1.09 for 52 weeks, p < 0.001 for both; iTNSS, -0.96 for 30 weeks and -1.10 for 52 weeks], p < 0.001 for both). BDP nasal aerosol was well tolerated. Incidence of most adverse events with BDP nasal aerosol was similar to that with placebo, except for epistaxis, which occurred more frequently with active treatment. Severity of changes from baseline in ocular lens opacities was comparable between treatments. BDP nasal aerosol at 320 μg once daily was safe and effective for long-term PAR treatment, with no evidence of clinically adverse systemic safety events. This study was a part of the clinical trial NCT00988247 registered at www.ClinicalTrials. gov.
1 Property Economics of Agency Problems

This paper assesses the practical relevance of the agency theory; that is to say, determines to what extent agency models allows us to better understand real-world contracts as well as the economic-policy conclusions that we could derive from positive analysis of these models. This paper will show that agency theory lacks practical relevance. We identify such a limit in its failure to engage in a comparative institutional analysis. Finally, we propose a counterfactual theory of agency problems which present counterfactual laws relating expropriation and agency problems and we argue that such laws can only be grasped in the light of counterfactual laws of property economics.
Rad52 promotes second-end DNA capture in double-stranded break repair to form complement-stabilized joint molecules

Saccharomyces cerevisiae Rad52 performs multiple functions during the recombinational repair of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) breaks (DSBs). It mediates assembly of Rad51 onto single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) that is complexed with replication protein A (RPA); the resulting nucleoprotein filament pairs with homologous dsDNA to form joint molecules. Rad52 also catalyzes the annealing of complementary strands of ssDNA, even when they are complexed with RPA. Both Rad51 and Rad52 can be envisioned to promote “second-end capture,” a step that pairs the ssDNA generated by processing of the second end of a DSB to the joint molecule formed by invasion of the target dsDNA by the first processed end. Here, we show that Rad52 promotes annealing of complementary ssDNA that is complexed with RPA to the displaced strand of a joint molecule, to form a complement-stabilized joint molecule. RecO, a prokaryotic homolog of Rad52, cannot form complement-stabilized joint molecules with RPA–ssDNA complexes, nor can Rad52 promote second-end capture when the ssDNA is bound with either human RPA or the prokaryotic ssDNA-binding protein, SSB, indicating a species-specific process. We conclude that Rad52 participates in second-end capture by annealing a resected DNA break, complexed with RPA, to the joint molecule product of single-end invasion event. These studies support a role for Rad52-promoted annealing in the formation of Holliday junctions in DSB repair.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Blood pressure and body mass index in an ethnically diverse sample of adolescents in Paramaribo

Background: High blood pressure (BP) is now an important public health problem in nonindustrialised countries. The limited evidence suggests ethnic inequalities in BP in adults in some non-industrialised countries. However, it is unclear whether these ethnic inequalities in BP patterns in adults reflect on adolescents. Hence, we assessed ethnic differences in BP, and the association of BP with body mass index (BMI) among adolescents aged 12–17 years in Paramaribo, Suriname. Methods: Cross-sectional study with anthropometric and blood pressure measurements. A random sample of 855 adolescents (167 Hindustanis, 169 Creoles, 128 Javanese, 91 Maroons and 300 mixed-ethnicities) were studied. Ethnicity was based on self-reported ethnic origin. Results: Among boys, Maroons had a lower ageand height-adjusted systolic BP than Creoles, and a lower diastolic BP than other ethnic groups. However, after further adjustment for BMI, only diastolic BP in Maroons was significantly lower than in Javanese (67.1 versus 70.9 mmHg). Creole boys had a lower diastolic BP than Hindustani (67.3 versus 70.2 mmHg) and Javanese boys after adjustment for age, height and BMI. Among girls, there were no significant differences in systolic BP between the ethnic groups. Maroon girls, however, had a lower diastolic BP (65.6 mmHg) than Hindustani (69.1 mmHg), Javanese (71.2 mmHg) and Mixed-ethnic (68.3 mmHg) girls, but only after differences in BMI had been adjusted for. Javanese had a higher diastolic BP than Creoles (71.2 versus 66.8 mmHg) and Mixed-ethnicity girls. BMI was positively associated with BP in all the ethnic groups, except for diastolic BP in Maroon girls. Conclusion: The study findings indicate higher mean BP levels among Javanese and Hindustani adolescents compared with their African descent peers. These findings contrast the relatively low BP reported in Javanese and Hindustani adult populations in Suriname and underscore the need for public health measures early in life to prevent high BP and its sequelae in later life. Published: 21 May 2009 BMC Cardiovascular Disorders 2009, 9:19 doi:10.1186/1471-2261-9-19 Received: 2 October 2008 Accepted: 21 May 2009 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral. com/1471-2261/9/19 © 2009 Agyemang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. BMC Cardiovascular Disorders 2009, 9:19 http://www.biomedcentral. com/1471-2261/9/19
Medical Ethics Education: Where Are We? Where Should We Be Going? A Review

Purpose The authors’ primary goal was to provide a comprehensive and current review of the literature surrounding ethics education for medical students. Following this review, the authors summarize the deficits in the current literature and provide recommendations for future inquiries on medical ethics education. Method In 2004, the authors searched MEDLINE and PubMed using the following search terms: ethics, ethics education, medical ethics education, curriculum, undergraduate medical education, virtue, role model, philosophy of medicine, and outcomes research. No limit was placed on dates for this literature search. Articles whose primary focus was professionalism were excluded because the professionalism literature tends to focus on competencies and postgraduate education, whereas the primary focus of this study was on undergraduate education. Literature on physicians as role models to medical students as a form of teaching medical ethical ethics was excluded as well because the current discussion examines the formal undergraduate medical ethics curricula. Also excluded were reports from foreign countries (unless there were no equivalent studies in the United States). The authors found almost no literature exploring students’ backgrounds (cultural, religious, socioeconomic, etc.) and the teaching of medical ethics in medical schools. Otherwise, the authors reviewed everything they could find, regardless of imperfections in individual reports such as small sample size or poor research methodology. Results The review, which encompassed articles from 1978 to 2004, revealed that deep shortcomings exist in the literature on medical ethics education. Deficits exist in all areas of the literature: (1) theoretical work done on the overall goals of medical ethics education; (2) empirical studies that attempt to examine outcomes for students; (3) studies examining teaching methods in medical ethics education, and (4) studies evaluating the effectiveness of various teaching methods. Conclusions There are substantial opportunities for contribution to the literature on medical ethics education in all of the areas where deficits exist. The literature suggests that two points of view exist regarding the purpose of teaching medical ethics: (1) that it is a means of creating virtuous physicians; and (2) that it is a means of providing physicians with a skill set for analyzing and resolving ethical dilemmas. This dichotomy made it difficult to arrive at a consensus regarding the goals of medical ethics education. The field would benefit from further theoretical work aimed at better delineating the core content, core processes, and core skills relevant to the ethical practice of medicine. The time has come to organize an effort to improve and validate medical ethics education. In the end, effective medical ethics education will further the goals of medicine in dramatic and tangible ways.
Mitochondrial Injury and Caspase Activation by the Local Anesthetic Lidocaine

Background:Lidocaine, a local anesthetic, can be neurotoxic. However, the cellular mechanisms of its neurotoxicity at concentrations encountered during spinal anesthesia remain unclear. Methods:The authors examined the mechanisms of lidocaine neurotoxicity in the ND7 cell line derived from rat dorsal root ganglion. Individual neurons were assayed by flow cytometry or microscopy using fluorescent probes of plasma membrane integrity, mitochondrial membrane potential, caspase activity, phospholipid membrane asymmetry, and mitochondrial cytochrome c release. Results:In the ND7 cell line, lidocaine at 185 mm × 10 min to 2.3 mm × 24 h caused necrosis or late apoptosis. Equimolar Tris buffer and equipotent tetrodotoxin controls were not toxic, indicating that neither osmotic nor Na+-blocking effects explain lidocaine neurotoxicity. The earliest manifestation of lidocaine neurotoxicity was complete loss of mitochondrial membrane potential within 5 min after exposure to lidocaine at a concentration of 19 mm or greater. Consistent with these data, 37 mm lidocaine (1%) induced release of mitochondrial cytochrome c into the cytoplasm, as well as plasma membrane blebbing, loss of phosphatidylserine membrane asymmetry, and caspase activation, with release of mitochondrial cytochrome c to the cytoplasm within 2 h. Treatment with z-VAD-fmk, a specific inhibitor of caspases, prevented caspase activation and delayed but did not prevent neuronal death, but did not inhibit the other indicators of apoptosis. Conclusions:Collectively, these data indicate that lidocaine neurotoxicity involves mitochondrial dysfunction with activation of apoptotic pathways.
Effect of compost and bio-fertilizers on growth, yield and essential oil of sweet marjoram (Majorana hortensis) plant.

A pot experiment was conducted to determine the effect of compost and bio-fertilizers on the growth, yield and oil constituents of marjoram (Majorana hortensis L.). Forty five days old seedling were transplanted in soil treated with 15 and 30% aqueous extracts of compost and/or biofertilizers (mixture of Azospirillum brasilienses, Azotobacter chroococcum, Bacillus polymyxa & B. circulans) in addition to the recommended nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) doses as control. Use of combined treatment of bio-fertilizers gave better results for all studied traits than those obtained from either nitrogen fixers (Azos. brasiliense, Azot. chroococcum & B. polymyxa) or (B. circulans) alone. The oil percentage and yield per plant for three cuttings was almost twofold higher on fresh weight basis as a result of aqueous extracts of compost at low level + bio-fertilizers compared with control, indicating that combinations of low input system of integrated nutrient management could be beneficial to obtain relatively good yields of essential oil. Oil composition using GC/MS revealed that marjoram belongs to the cis-sabinene hydrate/terpinene-4-ol chemotype. The chemical composition of marjoram essential oil did not change due to the fertilization type or level; rather the relative percentages of certain constituents were affected. The highest level of cis-sabinene hydrate (18.47%) and terpinene-4-ol (24.24%) was obtained with aqueous extracts of compost at 30% + B. circulans and aqueous extracts of compost at 30% + (A. brasiliense + A. chroococcum + B. polymyxa), respectively. Other components showed different concentrations depending on treatment and level of compost.
Transient Analysis of Adaptive Affine Combinations

In this correspondence, we provide a transient analysis of an affinely constrained mixture method that adaptively combines the outputs of adaptive filters running in parallel on the same task. The affinely constrained mixture is adapted using a stochastic gradient update to minimize the square of the prediction error. Although we specifically carry out the transient analysis for a combination of two equal length adaptive filters trying to learn a linear model working on real valued data, we also provide the final equations and the necessary extensions in order to generalize the transient analysis to mixtures combining more than two filters; using Newton based updates to train the mixture weights; working on complex valued data; or unconstrained mixtures. The derivations are generic such that the constituent filters can be trained using unbiased updates including the least-mean squares or recursive least squares updates. This correspondence concludes with numerical examples and final remarks.
Increased spontaneous recombination in RNase H2-deficient cells arises from multiple contiguous rNMPs and not from single rNMP residues incorporated by DNA polymerase epsilon

Ribonucleotides can become embedded in DNA from insertion by DNA polymerases, failure to remove Okazaki fragment primers, R-loops that can prime replication, and RNA/cDNA-mediated recombination. RNA:DNA hybrids are removed by RNase H enzymes. Single rNMPs in DNA are removed by RNase H2 and if they remain on the leading strand, can lead to mutagenesis in a Top1-dependent pathway. rNMPs in DNA can also stimulate genome instability, among which are homologous recombination gene conversion events. We previously found that, similar to the rNMP-stimulated mutagenesis, rNMP-stimulated recombination was also Top1-dependent. However, in contrast to mutagenesis, we report here that recombination is not stimulated by rNMPs incorporated by the replicative polymerase epsilon. Instead, recombination seems to be stimulated by multiple contiguous rNMPs, which may arise from R-loops or replication priming events.
The behavioural and electrophysiological aspects of the temporal context of face processing

“I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet,” Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone. “You are so exactly like other people. ” “The face is what one goes by, generally,” Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone. That’s just what I complain of,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Your face is the same as everybody has – the two eyes, so – “ (marking their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance – or the mouth at the top – that would be some help. ” (Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland)
Success in Early Intervention: The Chicago Child-Parent Centers

This book is a valuable source of information on the long-term effects of early intervention programs on the education of children living in economically disadvantaged areas and in other contexts. Early intervention programs such as Head Start enjoy popular and legislative support, but until now, policymakers and practitioners have lacked hard data on the long-term consequences of such locally and federally mandated efforts. "Success in Early Intervention" focuses on the Child-Parent Center (CPC) program in Chicago, the second oldest (after Head Start) federally funded early childhood intervention program. Begun in 1967, the program currently operates out of twenty-four centers, which are located in proximity to the elementary schools they serve. The CPC program's unique features include mandatory parental involvement and a single, sustained educational system that spans preschool through the third grade. Central to this study is a 1986 cohort of nearly twelve hundred CPC children and a comparison group of low income children whose subsequent activities, challenges, and achievements are followed through the age of fifteen. The lives of these children amply demonstrate the positive long-term educational and social consequences of the CPC program. Arthur J. Reynolds is a professor of social work, educational psychology, and child and family studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Brazilian consensus of specialists on the diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in adults

Present difficulties in the diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in adults have prompted Brazilian specialists involved in research in this area to make a consensus to be used in the country. A non-systematic preliminary review was repeatedly evaluated by all authors, who added new material, commented and corrected parts of the text for 6 months through electronic mail and a further meeting sponsored by the Brazilian Association of Attention-Deficit Disorder. The preliminary version was publicly presented during the annual congress of the Associacao Brasileira de Psiquiatria (Brazilian Association for Psychiatry) for appraisal and suggestions from participants in order to prepare the final version.
Transition to fatherhood: New perspectives in the global context of changing men's identities

The proposed thematic session aims to highlight the main challenges that the cultural and structural changes within the families and in gender relations and the changing social expectations about men's involvement in the care of children and about fatherhood pose to men's and fathers’ identity. Fathering in contemporary society requires men to be simultaneously provider, guide, household help and nurturer. The difficulties of these roles, and the tensions they sometimes produce, challenge men's relationships with their female partners, the meaning and place of work in their lives and their sense of self as competent adults. We will also explore the relationship between transitions to fatherhoods and the challenges of balancing work and family obligations. How to balance paid work, other interests and relationships with responsibilities, anxieties and pleasures of childrearing are today concerns for both men and women.
Wnt-7a Up-regulates Matrix Metalloproteinase-12 Expression and Promotes Cell Proliferation in Corneal Epithelial Cells during Wound Healing*

Corneal wound repair involves the rapid coverage of a denuded area by residual epithelial cells. During wound healing, there are different cell behaviors in different regions of the epithelium: cell proliferation in the peripheral epithelium and cell migration in the central epithelium. We found that Wnt-7a was rapidly induced in the wounded cornea, promoted the proliferation of corneal epithelial cells, and enhanced wound closure. Matrix metalloproteinase-12 (MMP-12) was detected in the peripheral epithelium, where cell proliferation was enhanced, but was diminished in the migrating central epithelium. Wnt-7a induced the accumulation of β-catenin and the activation of Rac and β-catenin, and Rac synergistically induced the transcription of MMP-12. Blocking the function of MMP-12 delayed wound closure induced by Wnt-7a. Our results also suggest that, in addition to the β-catenin pathway, Wnt-7a might induce a β-catenin-independent pathway. By regulating the proliferation of corneal epithelial cells, Wnt-7a and MMP-12 appear to contribute to corneal wound healing.
Piranha: a scalable architecture based on single-chip multiprocessing

This paper describes the Piranha system, a research prototype being developed at Compaq that aggressively exploits chip multiprocessing by integrating eight simple Alpha processor cores along with a two-level cache hierarchy onto a single chip. Piranha also integrates further on-chip functionality to allow for scalable multiprocessor configurations to be built in a glueless and modular fashion. The use of simple processor cores combined with an industry-standard ASIC design methodology allow us to complete our prototype within a short time-frame, with a team size and investment that are an order of magnitude smaller than that of a commercial microprocessor. Our detailed simulation results show that while each Piranha processor core is substantially slower than an aggressive next-generation processor, the integration of eight cores onto a single chip allows Piranha to outperform next-generation processors by up to 2.9 times (on a per chip basis) on important workloads such as OLTP. This performance advantage can approach a factor of five by using full-custom instead of ASIC logic. In addition to exploiting chip multiprocessing, the Piranha prototype incorporates several other unique design choices including a shared second-level cache with no inclusion, a highly optimized cache coherence protocol, and a novel I/O architecture.
“Pro‐Peace Entrepreneur” or “Conflict Profiteer”? Critical Perspective on the Private Sector and Peacebuilding in Nepal

Focusing on a case study from Nepal, this article argues that as the private sector is a heterogeneous constituency consisting of a variety of actors who can perform in favor of or against peace, generalizing the entire sector as either a builder or spoiler of peace can be deeply misleading. Instead, this article proposes an alternative approach that may help to understand the personal and structural dimensions that make up a business response to peace and conflict. These two dimensions, which can be better understood in terms of a business actor's self-interests, motivations, and the economic incentive structures and mechanisms, are central in shaping businesses' attitudes and responses toward peace and conflict. The personal and structural dimensions may provide an analytical framework that distinguishes between business actors who might want to benefit from political instability and conflict and those who may want to support peace initiatives. In this article, these two categories of the private sector are referred to as “conflict profiteers” and “pro˗peace entrepreneurs” respectively. While the business activities of a conflict profiteer may exacerbate conflict dynamics, by contrast a pro-peace entrepreneur can contribute to building peace in Nepal.