Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financial Globalization, Governance, and the Evolution of the Home Bias

Despite the disappearance of formal barriers to international investment across countries, we find that the average home bias of US investors towards the 46 countries with the largest equity markets did not fall from 1994 to 2004 when countries are equally weighted but fell when countries are weighted by market capitalisation. This evidence is inconsistent with portfolio theory explanations of the home bias, but is consistent with what we call the optimal insider ownership theory of the home bias. Since foreign investors can only own shares not held by insiders, there will be a large home bias towards countries in which insiders own large stakes in corporations. Consequently, for the home bias to fall substantially, insider ownership has to fall in countries where it is high. Poor governance leads to concentrated insider ownership, so that governance improvements make it possible for corporate ownership to become more dispersed and for the home bias to fall. We find that the home bias of US investors decreased the most towards countries in which the ownership by corporate insiders is low and countries in which ownership by corporate insiders fell. Using firm-level data for Korea, we find that portfolio equity investment by foreign investors in Korean firms is inversely related to insider ownership and that the firms that attract the most foreign portfolio equity investment are large firms with dispersed ownership.
Annarosa Leri , Jan Kajstura and Piero Anversa

[PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , August 1, 2009; 297 (2): H785-H791. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol Natividad, R. N. Kitsis, D. E. Vatner and S. F. Vatner M. Park, Y. -T. Shen, V. Gaussin, G. R. Heyndrickx, J. Bartunek, R. R. G. Resuello, F. F. Apoptosis predominates in nonmyocytes in heart failure [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , August 22, 2009; 0 (2009): ehp342v1-ehp342. Eur. Heart J. de Jalon, M. Mazo, A. Macias, I. Garcia-Bolao, B. Pelacho, D. Martinez-Caro and F. Prosper J. J. Gavira, E. Nasarre, G. Abizanda, M. Perez-Ilzarbe, A. de Martino-Rodriguez, J. A. Garcia infarction Repeated implantation of skeletal myoblast in a swine model of chronic myocardial [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , September 8, 2009; 120 (10): 876-887. Circulation Urbanek, T. Hosoda, M. Rota, P. Anversa, A. Leri, R. T. Lee and J. Kajstura M. E. Padin-Iruegas, Y. Misao, M. E. Davis, V. F.M. Segers, G. Esposito, T. Tokunou, K. Improve Endogenous and Exogenous Myocardial Regeneration After Infarction Cardiac Progenitor Cells and Biotinylated Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1 Nanofibers [PDF] [Full Text] , December 22, 2009; 120 (25): 2515-2518. Circulation A. Leri Human Cardiac Stem Cells: The Heart of a Truth [PDF] [Full Text] , January 8, 2010; 106 (1): 7-9. Circ. Res. R. Kishore, P. Krishnamurthy and D. W. Losordo Efficiently Redifferentiate Into Parental Phenotype Career Moves: Induced Pluripotent Cells From Human Aortic Smooth Muscle Cells Can
Angiogenesis of the uterus and chorioallantois in the eastern water skink Eulamprus quoyii

SUMMARY We have discovered a modification of the uterus that appears to facilitate maternal-fetal communication during pregnancy in the scincid lizard Eulamprus quoyii. A vessel-dense elliptical area (VDE) on the mesometrial side of the uterus expands as the embryo grows, providing a large vascular area for physiological exchange between mother and embryo. The VDE is already developed in females with newly ovulated eggs, and is situated directly adjacent to the chorioallantois of the embryo when it develops. It is likely that signals from the early developing embryo determine the position of the VDE, as the VDE is off-centre in cases where the embryo sits obliquely in the uterus. The VDE is not a modification of the uterus over the entire chorioallantoic placenta, as the VDE is smaller than the chorioallantois after embryonic stage 33, but expansion of the VDE and growth of the chorioallantois during pregnancy are strongly correlated. The expansion of the VDE is also strongly correlated with embryonic growth and increasing embryonic oxygen demand (). We propose that angiogenic stimuli are exchanged between the VDE and the chorioallantois in E. quoyii, allowing the simultaneous growth of both tissues.
Effects of Fluoxetine and Dothiepin on 24-Hour Activity in Depressed Patients

Psychomotor retardation is a recognised symptom of depressive illness, and improvement in psychomotor function is associated with the amelioration of the severity of depressive symptoms. Actigraphy permits behavioural activity to be continuously assessed, allowing changes in psychomotor activity to be monitored over time. A randomised, parallel-group, double-blind study was conducted in 14 general practice patients with a diagnosis of major depression. This pilot study was designed to investigate the utility of actigraphy in this patient population and to investigate possible differences between fluoxetine and dothiepin in their effects on 24-hour behavioural activity monitored for the first 10 days of treatment. Patients taking dothiepin (75 mg rising to 150 mg in the second week, nocte) were found to be significantly (p < 0.05) less active over the course of the day compared to those treated with fluoxetine (20 mg, mane). This lower level of behavioural activity in the dothiepin group was particularly noticeable in the early morning (06:00–08:00 h).
Influence of the Quality of Consumer Headphones in the Perception of Spatial Audio

High quality headphones can generate a realistic sound immersion reproducing binaural recordings. However, most people commonly use consumer headphones of inferior quality, as the ones provided with smartphones or music players. Factors, such as weak frequency response, distortion and the sensitivity disparity between the left and right transducers could be some of the degrading factors. In this work, we are studying how these factors affect spatial perception. To this purpose, a series or perceptual tests have been carried out with a virtual headphone listening test methodology. The first experiment focuses on the analysis of how the disparity of sensitivity between the two transducers affects the final result. The second test studies the influence of the frequency response relating quality and spatial impression. The third test analyzes the effects of distortion using a Volterra kernels scheme for the simulation of the distortion using convolutions. Finally, the fourth tries to relate the quality of the frequency response with the accuracy on azimuth localization. The conclusions of the experiments are: the disparity between both transducers can affect the localization of the source; the perception of quality and spatial impression has a high correlation; the distortion produced by the range of headphones tested at a fixed level does not affect the perception of binaural sound; and that some frequency bands have an important role in the front-back confusions.
Genome-Wide Identification and Expression Analysis of NBS-Encoding Genes in Malus x domestica and Expansion of NBS Genes Family in Rosaceae

Nucleotide binding site leucine-rich repeats (NBS-LRR) disease resistance proteins play an important role in plant defense against pathogen attack. A number of recent studies have been carried out to identify and characterize NBS-LRR gene families in many important plant species. In this study, we identified NBS-LRR gene family comprising of 1015 NBS-LRRs using highly stringent computational methods. These NBS-LRRs were characterized on the basis of conserved protein motifs, gene duplication events, chromosomal locations, phylogenetic relationships and digital gene expression analysis. Surprisingly, equal distribution of Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) and coiled coil (CC) (1∶1) was detected in apple while the unequal distribution was reported in majority of all other known plant genome studies. Prediction of gene duplication events intriguingly revealed that not only tandem duplication but also segmental duplication may equally be responsible for the expansion of the apple NBS-LRR gene family. Gene expression profiling using expressed sequence tags database of apple and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) revealed the expression of these genes in wide range of tissues and disease conditions, respectively. Taken together, this study will provide a blueprint for future efforts towards improvement of disease resistance in apple.
Evaluating the Impact of the Online Sales Channel on Customer Profitability

The objective of this paper is to identify the sources of profitability differences between offline and online customers in order to allow for the development of efficient and effective multi-channel management strategies. Therefore, we distinguish between the profit contribution due to the self-selection effect and due to the channel effect. The former occurs if online customers have always been the more profitable customers, whereas the latter arises if online customers are more profitable because they started to use the online channel. The distinction between those two effects allows us to evaluate the impact of the online channel on the customer profitability and to derive profit enhancing multi-channel strategies. A large empirical study indicates that selection bias is a serious issue when measuring channel performance. We contribute to the existing multi-channel research by evaluating the impact of online channel usage on customer profitability while accounting for self-selection bias.
A quantile–quantile adjustment of the EURO‐CORDEX projections for temperatures and precipitation

Projections of climate change impacts over Europe are derived using a new quantile–quantile adjustment method. E‐OBS high‐resolution gridded data sets of daily observed precipitation and 2‐m surface minimum and maximum temperatures have been used as the current climate baseline. For projections, the same meteorological variables have been obtained from a set of regional climate models (RCMs) integrated in the EURO‐CORDEX project, and by considering the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 future emissions scenarios. To enhance the reliability of RCM data at local scale, new developments of a previous quantile–quantile adjustment have been applied to the simulated regional scenarios. This method focuses not only on the bulk spectrum of the cumulative distribution functions but also on its tails. Results show an overall improvement in reproducing the present climate baseline when using calibrated series instead of raw RCM outputs. Next, we have used these locally adjusted series to quantify the climate change signal through a number of annual and seasonal indicators. A significant increase of the minimum and maximum temperatures in all seasons is projected over Europe, being more marked in the Mediterranean for summer and autumn. Prospects on future seasonal and annual changes in precipitation are more diverse, showing an overall decrease in southern Europe and the Mediterranean, while precipitation is expected to increase towards the north of the continent. With these sources of information at hand, including and accounting for the identification of the most vulnerable geographical areas, policy makers and stakeholders can respond more effectively to the future challenges imposed by climate change.
Lessons From a Community-Based mHealth Diabetes Self-Management Program: “It's Not Just About the Cell Phone”

Cell phone–assisted self-management of diabetes offers a new approach to improving chronic care; however, introducing this new technology presents many challenges to a health care team. The George Washington University–District of Columbia Cell Phone Diabetes Project enrolled 32 patients with Type 2 diabetes from a community clinic using patients' cell phones connected to the Well Doc Diabetes Manager System with monitoring by case managers and monthly reports to primary care providers. Despite monetary incentives (cell phone rebates), dropout rate was high (50%), because of lack of use or inability to afford low-cost cell phone service. Active patients had sustained system use with improved diabetes standard-of-care goals and reduced hospitalizations and emergency department visits. On the basis of this pilot program, the authors assessed the multiple links in the chain (patients, case managers, primary care providers, support staff, medical record systems, disease management software, cell phones) that affect the success of a mHealth chronic care strategy.
A computational model of the emergence of early constructions

In this thesis I explore and formalize the view that grammar learning is driven by meaningful language use in context. On this view, the goal of a first language learner is to become a better language user—in particular, by acquiring linguistic constructions (structured mappings between form and meaning) that facilitate successful communication. I present a computational model in which all aspects of the language learning problem are reformulated in line with these assumptions. The representational basis of the model is a construction grammar formalism that captures constituent structure and relational constraints, both within and across the domains of form and meaning. This formalism plays a central role in two processes: language understanding, which uses constuctions to interpret utterances in context; and language learning, which seeks to improve comprehension by making judicious changes to the current set of constructions. The resulting integrated model of language structure, use and acquisition provides a cognitively motivated and computationally precise account of how children acquire their earliest multi-word constructions. I define a set of operations for proposing new constructions, either to capture contextually available mappings not predicted by the current grammar, or to reorganize existing constructions. Candidate constructions are evaluated using a minimum description length criterion that balances a structural bias toward simpler grammars against a data-driven bias toward more specific grammars. When trained with a corpus of child-directed utterances annotated with situation descriptions, the model gradually acquires the concrete word combinations and item-based constructions that constitute the first steps toward adult language.
Routine Pneumococcal Vaccination of Children Provokes New Patterns of Serotypes Causing Invasive Pneumococcal Disease in Adults and Children

Introduction:Routine vaccination of infants with protein-conjugated 7-valent pneumococcal vaccine (PCV7) begun in 2000 initiated a sea change of prevalent serotypes (STs) in invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). The authors investigated in 1 community all STs causing IPD during 5 years before (PRE) and 2, 5-year periods after (POST1 and POST2) its initiation and found that PCV7 adversely affected ST coverage of 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV23) among adults. Methods:From 1996–2010, 620 consecutive Streptococcus pneumoniae IPD strains from adults (521) and children (99) hospitalized with IPD in Huntington, WV, were collected. Each strain was typed by Quellung reaction. The Marshall University Institutional Review Board approved this study. Results:By 6 to 10 years after the initiation of PCV7, IPD in children decreased significantly, whereas IPD in adults increased significantly. In both adults and children, IPD due to PCV7 STs decreased significantly. In adults with IPD, PCV7 STs were replaced by several non-PCV7 STs including STs contained in PPV23 but not in PCV7 and STs not contained in either vaccine. IPD due to 4 nonsusceptible STs included in PCV7 decreased from PRE to POST1 and POST2. IPD due to nonsusceptible STs not included in PCV7 increased from PRE to POST1 and POST2. Conclusions:Routine PCV7 decreased IPD in children but not in adults. Predominant STs changed—children exhibited fewer PCV7 STs and adults exhibited fewer PCV7 and PPV23 STs—reducing vaccine coverage and increasing the risk of replacement STs causing IPD in adults.
Modeling Short‐Term Interval‐Force Relations in Cardiac Muscle

Modeling short-term interval-force relations in cardiac muscle. J. Physiol. Physiol. H913–H931, 2000. —This study employs two modeling ap-proaches to investigate short-term interval-force relations. The ﬁrst approach is to develop a low-order, discrete-time model of excitation-contraction coupling to determine which parameter combinations produce the degree of postextrasystolic potentiation seen experimentally. Potentiation is found to increase 1 ) for low recirculation fraction, 2 ) for high releasable fraction, i.e., the maximum fraction of Ca 2 1 released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) given full restitution, and 3 ) for strong negative feedback of the SR release on sarcolemmal Ca 2 1 inﬂux. The second modeling approach is to develop a more detailed single ventricular cell model that simulates action potentials, Ca 2 1 -handling mechanisms, and isometric force generation by the myoﬁlaments. Aslow transition from the adapted state of the ryanodine receptor produces a gradual recovery of the SR release and restitution behavior. For potentiation, a small extrasystolic release leaves more Ca 2 1 in the SR but also increases the SR loading by two mechanisms: 1 ) less Ca 2 1 -induced inactivation of L-type channels and 2 ) reduction of action potential height by residual activation of the time-dependent delayed rectiﬁer K 1 current, which increases Ca 2 1 inﬂux. The cooperativity of the myoﬁlaments ampliﬁes the relatively small changes in the Ca 2 1 transient amplitude to produce larger changes in isometric force. These ﬁndings suggest that short-term interval-force relations result mainly from the interplay of the ryanodine receptor adaptation and the SR Ca 2 1 loading, with additional contributions from membrane currents and myoﬁlament activation. 100 mA with a 0.5-ms duration. Similar to the experimental work of Wier and Yue (42), a priming period of 30 s is sufficient to bring the detailed model to approximately steady state. The priming beats are deliv- ered at a ﬁxed interval of 1,500 ms in the simulations, unless otherwise noted in RESULTS . The ESI is varied between 236.6 and 2,842.1 ms in 236.6-ms increments. The PESI is ﬁxed at 3,000 ms. It is emphasized that the detailed model simulation involves only changes in the stimulus pattern, and otherwise no parameters are varied to alter the restitution/postextrasys- tolic behavior.
Predicting Target Displacements Using Ultrasound Elastography and Finite Element Modeling

Soft tissue displacements during minimally invasive surgical procedures may cause target motion and subsequent misplacement of the surgical tool. A technique is presented to predict target displacements using a combination of ultrasound elastography and finite element (FE) modeling. A cubic gelatin/agar phantom with stiff targets was manufactured to obtain pre- and post-loading ultrasound radio frequency (RF) data from a linear array transducer. The RF data were used to compute displacement and strain images, from which the distribution of elasticity was reconstructed using an inverse FE-based approach. The FE model was subsequently used to predict target displacements upon application of different boundary and loading conditions to the phantom. The influence of geometry was investigated by application of the technique to a breast-shaped phantom. The distribution of elasticity in the phantoms as determined from the strain distribution agreed well with results from mechanical testing. Upon application of different boundary and loading conditions to the cubic phantom, the FE model-predicted target motion were consistent with ultrasound measurements. The FE-based approach could also accurately predict the displacement of the target upon compression and indentation of the breast-shaped phantom. This study provides experimental evidence that organ geometry and boundary conditions surrounding the organ are important factors influencing target motion. In future work, the technique presented in this paper could be used for preoperative planning of minimally invasive surgical interventions.
Survival impact of delayed treatment in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma undergoing locoregional therapy: Is there a lead-time bias?

Objective. Many reports indicate the importance of active treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but there are few studies available that address the impact of delayed therapy on survival or take the lead-time bias into account. The objective of this study was to investigate whether patients with delayed locoregional therapy for HCC truly have a shortened survival from the time of diagnosis. Material and methods. Survival rates were compared between 48 HCC patients with treatment delay and 96 age- and gender-matched controls without delay. All patients underwent transarterial chemoembolization or percutaneous ethanol or acetic acid injection for HCC. Treatment delay was defined as a >2 months’ time interval between diagnosis and treatment. Results. Baseline comparison showed that patients with treatment delay had higher scores in the model for endstage liver disease compared with those of patients without delay (12.3±1.8 versus 11.1±2.5, p=0.01). In the Cox multivariate model, advanced cancer stage (relative risk (RR): 2.66, p=0.001), Child-Turcotte-Pugh class B (RR: 3.81, p<0.001), tumor size >5 cm (RR: 2.02, p=0.011) and treatment delay (RR: 2.91, p=0.001) were independent poor prognostic predictors. Among patients with treatment delay, disease progression was registered in 30 (63%) patients. Patients with prolonged treatment delay (>3 months) were more likely to have tumor progression (p=0.013). In the Cox model, a treatment delay of >3 months independently predicted a poor rate of survival (RR: 3.67, p=0.002). Conclusions. Delayed HCC treatment is linked with shortened overall survival unrelated to the lead-time bias in patients undergoing locoregional therapy. Prolonged treatment delay of more than 3 months in these patients may worsen the long-term outcome.
Nash equilibrium in nonzero-sum games of optimal stopping for Brownian motion

Abstract We present solutions to nonzero-sum games of optimal stopping for Brownian motion in [0, 1] absorbed at either 0 or 1. The approach used is based on the double partial superharmonic characterisation of the value functions derived in Attard (2015). In this setting the characterisation of the value functions has a transparent geometrical interpretation of 'pulling two ropes' above 'two obstacles' which must, however, be constrained to pass through certain regions. This is an extension of the analogous result derived by Peskir (2009), (2012) (semiharmonic characterisation) for the value function in zero-sum games of optimal stopping. To derive the value functions we transform the game into a free-boundary problem. The latter is then solved by making use of the double smooth fit principle which was also observed in Attard (2015). Martingale arguments based on the Itô–Tanaka formula will then be used to verify that the solution to the free-boundary problem coincides with the value functions of the game and this will establish the Nash equilibrium.