Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
False-Positive 1-Hour Glucose Challenge Test and Adverse Perinatal Outcomes

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a false-positive 1-hour glucose challenge test (GCT) is associated with perinatal complications. METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study of 1825 eligible pregnant women among a cohort of 1998 patients. Patients were screened for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) with the 1-hour 50-g GCT at 24–28 gestational weeks. A false-positive GCT was defined as a result greater than or equal to 135 mg/dL followed by a normal 3-hour glucose tolerance test (GTT). We compared the negative GCT and false-positive GCT cohorts for a composite perinatal outcome variable that included fetal macrosomia, antenatal death, shoulder dystocia, chorioamnionitis, preeclampsia, intensive care nursery admission, and postpartum endometritis. Secondary outcomes included cesarean delivery and each component variable of the composite. Unadjusted, stratified, and multiple logistic regression analyses were used to investigate the association between a false-positive GCT and the development of perinatal complications. RESULTS: We identified 164 patients with a false-positive GCT and 50 patients with GDM. The false-positive GCT cohort on average was older, of higher parity, had a higher body mass index, and more frequently had chronic hypertension, sickle cell trait, and elevated midtrimester human chorionic gonadotropin levels. The false-positive GCT cohort more frequently had adverse perinatal outcomes, including the composite perinatal outcome (odds ratio [OR] 5.96, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.47, 24.16), macrosomia greater than 4500 g (OR 3.66, 95% CI 1.30, 10.32), antenatal death (OR 4.61, 95% CI 0.77, 27.48), shoulder dystocia (OR 2.85, 95% CI 1.25, 6.51), endometritis (OR 2.18, 95% CI 1.03, 4.63), and cesarean delivery (OR 1.76, 95% CI 0.99, 3.14). CONCLUSION: A false-positive GCT is an independent risk factor for adverse perinatal outcomes. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II-2
Lactoferricin mediates anti‐inflammatory and anti‐catabolic effects via inhibition of IL‐1 and LPS activity in the intervertebral disc

The catabolic cytokine interleukin‐1 (IL‐1) and endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) are well‐known inflammatory mediators involved in degenerative disc disease, and inhibitors of IL‐1 and LPS may potentially be used to slow or prevent disc degeneration in vivo. Here, we elucidate the striking anti‐catabolic and anti‐inflammatory effects of bovine lactoferricin (LfcinB) in the intervertebral disc (IVD) via antagonism of both IL‐1 and LPS‐mediated catabolic activity using in vitro and ex vivo analyses. Specifically, we demonstrate the biological counteraction of LfcinB against IL‐1 and LPS‐mediated proteoglycan (PG) depletion, matrix‐degrading enzyme production, and enzyme activity in long‐term (alginate beads) and short‐term (monolayer) culture models using bovine and human nucleus pulposus (NP) cells. LfcinB significantly attenuates the IL‐1 and LPS‐mediated suppression of PG production and synthesis, and thus restores PG accumulation and pericellular matrix formation. Simultaneously, LfcinB antagonizes catabolic factor mediated induction of multiple cartilage‐degrading enzymes, including MMP‐1, MMP‐3, MMP‐13, ADAMTS‐4, and ADAMTS‐5, in bovine NP cells at both mRNA and protein levels. LfcinB also suppresses the catabolic factor‐induced stimulation of oxidative and inflammatory factors such as iNOS, IL‐6, and toll‐like receptor‐2 (TLR‐2) and TLR‐4. Finally, the ability of LfcinB to antagonize IL‐1 and LPS‐mediated suppression of PG is upheld in an en bloc intradiscal microinjection model followed by ex vivo organ culture using both mouse and rabbit IVD tissue, suggesting a potential therapeutic benefit of LfcinB on degenerative disc disease in the future. J. Cell. Physiol. 228: 1884–1896, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Long-Term Effects of a Recession at Labor Market Entry in Japan and the United States

We examine effects of entering the labor market during a recession on subsequent employment and earnings for Japanese and American men, using comparable household labor force surveys. We find persistent negative effects of the unemployment rate at graduation for less-educated Japanese men, in contrast to temporary effects for less-educated American men. The school-based hiring system and the dismissal regulation prolong the initial loss of employment opportunities for less-educated Japanese men. The effect on earnings for more-educated groups is also stronger in Japan, although the difference between the two countries is smaller than for less-educated groups.
The Impact of Immigration on Four Low-Wage Industries in the 1990s

In a previous study, Howland and Nguyen showed that cities that attracted Asian immigrants experienced slower declines in computer employment than did cities without immigration. This article continues this exploration of the role that immigrants play in labor supply and regional growth by applying a similar framework to four additional low-wage manufacturing industries. Results show that job retention and creation in three low-skilled industries—fruit and vegetable processing, apparel manufacturing, and leather and leather products manufacturing—respond to the influx of Hispanic immigrants in metropolitan areas. Asian immigration had no impact on these three industries, and neither Hispanic nor Asian immigrants affected metropolitan employment growth in the meat-processing industry.
Wars, Inflation and Stock Market Returns in France, 1870-1945

This article undertakes a comparative study of the effects of three wars upon the French stock market. Periods of war are highly turbulent financial times and trigger multiple factors to act upon stock prices. The article presents evidence suggesting that stock price behaviour is influenced by the specific way each war is financed. Financed solely by regular long-term debt, the Franco-Prussian War exhibited stock prices that only reflected real activity. On the other hand, both world wars were partially financed by monetary creation but differed with regard to the extent of financial repression. In the case of World War II, monetary creation within a closed repressed economy led to a paradoxical, short-lived increase in stock prices. The article also examines how war affected the characteristics of the market. The Franco-Prussian War caused a durable high interest rate; World War I smoothed out most of the public services firms and increased volatility; whilst World War II affected the components of the stock market. Overall, mainly due to market values being destroyed during the world wars, the importance of the stock market in the economy decreased.
Biochemical Mechanisms of Enhanced Inhibition of Fluoride on the Anaerobic Sugar Metabolism by Streptococcus sanguis

The effect of fluoride on acid production by Streptococcus sanguis ATCC 10556 was compared under anaerobic and aerobic conditions. The rate of acid production under constant-pH and pH-free-fall conditions was determined during glucose metabolism by resting cells. Anaerobic glycolysis was inhibited more strongly by fluoride than was aerobic glycolysis. Intracellular levels of 3-phosphoglyceric, 2-phosphoglyceric, and phosphoenolpyruvic acids were lower under anaerobic conditions than under aerobic conditions. Thus, S. sanguis had a low phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) potential under anaerobic conditions. This low PEP potential was suggested to account for the more effective fluoride inhibition of enolase and, consequently, the reduced transport of sugar by the PEP-dependent phosphotransferase system of this micro-organism.
Multi-Level Trust Game with "Insider" Communication *

This experiment studies the internal and external effects of communication in a multilevel trust game. In this trust game, the first player can send any part of his endowment to the second player. The amount sent gets tripled. The second player decides how much to send to the third player. The amount is again tripled, and the third player then decides the allocation among the three players. The baseline treatment with no communication shows that the first and second players send significant amounts and the third player reciprocates. When we allow communication only between the second and third players, the amounts sent and returned between these two increase. The new interesting finding is that there are external effects of communication: the first player who is outside communication sends 60% more and receives 140% more than in the no communication treatment. As a result, social welfare and efficiency increase from 48% to 73%.
Document Title: Megan's Law: Assessing the Practical and Monetary Efficacy

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally-funded grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. The research that follows concerns the various impacts of community notification and registration laws (Megan's Law) in New Jersey. Although this report includes a variety of interesting findings and many ideas that will be explored upon post grant period, this research was embarked upon, in general, to investigate: 1) the effect of Megan's Law on the overall rate of sexual offending over time; 2) its specific deterrence effect on re-offending, including the level of general and sexual offense recidivism, the nature of sexual re-offenses, and time to first re-arrest for sexual and non-sexual re-offenses (i.e., community tenure); and 3) the costs of implementation and annual expenditures of Megan's Law. These three primary foci were investigated using three different methodologies and samples. Phase One was a 21-year (10 years prior and 10 years after implementation, and the year of implementation) trend study of sex offenses in each of New Jersey's counties and of the state as a whole. In Phase Two, data on 550 sexual offenders released during the years 1990 to 2000 were collected, and outcomes of interest were analyzed. Finally, Phase Three collected implementation and ongoing costs of administering Megan's Law. The following points highlight the major findings of the three phases of the study.  New Jersey, as a whole, has experienced a consistent downward trend of sexual offense rates with a significant change in the trend in 1994.  In all but two counties, sexual offense rates were highest prior to 1994 and were lowest after 1995.  County trends exhibit substantial variation and do not reflect the statewide trend, suggesting that the statewide change point in 1994 is an artifact of aggregation.  In the offender release sample, there is a consistent downward trend in re-arrests, reconvictions and re-incarcerations over time similar to that observed in the trend study, except in 1995 when all measures spiked to a high for that period.  Re-arrests for violent crime (whether sexual or not) also declined steadily over the same period, resulting in a significant difference between cohorts (i.e., those released prior to and after Megan's Law was implemented).  Megan's Law has no …
Public Funding for “Private” Education: The Equity Challenge of Enhanced Choice

The past two decades have generated numerous and varied experiments with the use of public resources to support “private” schools, which, in any case, become and behave more like public schools in proportion to their dependence on the public purse. From an equity point of view, however, no compelling moral necessity exists to use public funds to support private schools. In fact, the best available evidence suggests that, in general and on average, private schools are no more efficient or effective in fostering valued and measurable student outcomes than public schools. The most common methods proposed to channel public funds to private schools are unethical because they exclude society’s most vulnerable members, children from poor families, from any possibility of benefit—and furthermore, in nearly all jurisdictions they are, or would be, paid for from a revenue base that includes consumption taxes that all, even the poorest, must pay. Nonetheless, serious problems exist with equity of access to and benefit from public sector education. The most promising policy solution to the current perversely disequalizing tendencies of public education lies in public sector choice, however, not in public funding of private or quasi‐private schools.
Accumulation of Phosphatidic Acid Increases Vancomycin Resistance in Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT In Gram-negative bacteria, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) contributes to the robust permeability barrier of the outer membrane, preventing entry of toxic molecules such as antibiotics. Mutations in lptD, the beta-barrel component of the LPS transport and assembly machinery, compromise LPS assembly and result in increased antibiotic sensitivity. Here, we report rare vancomycin-resistant suppressors that improve barrier function of a subset of lptD mutations. We find that all seven suppressors analyzed mapped to the essential gene cdsA, which is responsible for the conversion of phosphatidic acid to CDP-diacylglycerol in phospholipid biosynthesis. These cdsA mutations cause a partial loss of function and, as expected, accumulate phosphatidic acid. We show that this suppression is not confined to mutations that cause defects in outer membrane biogenesis but rather that these cdsA mutations confer a general increase in vancomycin resistance, even in a wild-type cell. We use genetics and quadrupole time of flight (Q-TOF) liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to show that accumulation of phosphatidic acid by means other than cdsA mutations also increases resistance to vancomycin. We suggest that increased levels of phosphatidic acid change the physical properties of the outer membrane to impede entry of vancomycin into the periplasm, hindering access to its target, an intermediate required for the synthesis of the peptidoglycan cell wall.
Adult attachment style and parental responsiveness during a stressful event

Despite widespread use of self-report measures of adult attachment, relatively little research has explored the predictive utility of these measures in the domain of parent–child relationships. The present study examined the association between self-reported attachment style and parental responsiveness during a stressful event. Children and their parents were observed while children received an inoculation at a county immunization clinic. Children's reactions to the inoculation were rated and parents' responsiveness was assessed with the Emotional Availability Scales (EAS). Results revealed that children of parents scoring high on self-reported attachment avoidance were more distressed during the inoculation than children of parents scoring low on avoidance. Moreover, parents high on avoidance were less responsive when children were highly distressed, whereas this pattern was reversed among parents scoring low on avoidance. Finally, the influence of adult attachment on parental behavior and children's distress was found to be independent of children's temperament and parental personality. These findings suggest that self-report adult attachment measures may be useful in the domain of parent–child relationships.
Knowledge Recipients, Acquisition Mechanisms, and Knowledge Transfer at Japanese Subsidiaries: An Empirical Study in China

Although knowledge transfer contributes to a firm's competitive advantage, the effect of mechanisms used by a knowledge recipient on knowledge acquisition has been understudied. This article provides some insights on the interplay of knowledge recipients and transfer mechanisms between Japanese multinational corporations and their subsidiaries operating in China. Using structural equation methodology, this research proposes a knowledge transfer model that captures knowledge recipients’ characteristics and acquisition mechanisms, and empirically investigates the impact of knowledge recipients on mechanisms to test the applicability of specific mechanisms in knowledge acquisition. This article argues that knowledge recipients’ motivation and absorptive capacity have a positive impact on knowledge acquisition, and simultaneously provides evidence that mechanisms have mediating effects, which are vital to our understanding of knowledge transfer effectiveness. This study extends our understanding by adding knowledge transfer mechanisms as mediating factors in the relationship between knowledge recipients’ characteristics and knowledge acquisition, and quantifying the relationship. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Institutions Matter, But in Surprising Ways: New Evidence on Institutions in Africa

Estimation of the effects of institutions on long-term growth is severely limited by the endogeneity of institutions to the choices of governments. I thus approach the model from the household level and estimate the effects of aggregate institutions on household wealth. Under the benign assumption that institutions are exogenous to household choices this model gives unbiased estimates of multiple institutional variables. Issues then arise of the basic concepts and measurements of institutional variables. I revisit these issues and present new regional level institutional variables that are representative of 151 regions in thirteen African countries and measure clear concepts of institutions. I find that regional level institutions have significant effects on household wealth in a nonlinear fashion. Fear of crime, expectations of law enforcement and corruption at multiple levels are all estimated to have significant nonlinear effects on household wealth.
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES HETEROGENEOUS IMPACT DYNAMICS OF A RURAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM IN NICARAGUA

We study the impacts of a rural development program designed to boost the income of the smallfarm sector in Nicaragua. Exploiting the random assignment of treatment, we find statistically and economically significant impacts on farm incomes and investment in farm capital. Using continuous treatment estimation techniques, we examine the evolution of program impacts over time and find that incomes in the activities targeted by the program as well as farm capital rise significantly over time, even after the expiration of the program. Because of the temporal pattern of impacts, shorter-term binary treatment estimators do not fully capture the impacts of the program. Additionally, panel quantile methods reveal striking heterogeneity of program impacts on both income and investment. We show that this heterogeneity is not random, and that there are some low-performing households that simply do not benefit from this program that tried to engage them as agricultural entrepreneurs. While the benefit-cost ratio of the program is on average highly positive, these findings on impact heterogeneity signal limitations of business development programs as a way to eliminate rural poverty.
Book-to-Market Equity, Financial Leverage and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

I propose a new dynamic model of the firm that links operating leverage to both value premium and book-leverage premium in stock returns. Value firms are low-productivity firms with either high operating leverage or high financial leverage. Firms with high operating leverage maintain low book leverage ratios. When operating leverage is economically significant, both value firms and low book-leverage firms can have high equity risk premiums. In particular, value premium becomes positive while book-leverage premium becomes negative. Without operating leverage, the signs of these premiums are reversed. The model captures quantitatively several important properties of the cross-section of stock returns. The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. , Oxford University Press.
In vivo determination of the anisotropic diffusion of water and the T1 and T2 times in the rabbit lens by high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging.

PURPOSE Several magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) "tools" for ophthalmologic research have recently been developed in this laboratory, including improved gradient and radiofrequency coils and pulse sequences for high-resolution and diffusion imaging (100-microns resolution). METHODS These tools have been applied to the in vivo measurement of the relaxation parameters (T1 and T2) and the water diffusion coefficients (Dx and Dy) in the rabbit eye lens, both normal and cataractous. Maps of these parameters in the lens have been computer generated. RESULTS In the normal lens, water diffusion is highly anisotropic and tends to be parallel to the surface. In the trauma-induced cataractous lens, an increase in spin-spin relaxation times (T2) consistent with edema and alteration of diffusion patterns was observed in a study conducted 2 weeks postsurgery. A partial reversal was observed 6 weeks postsurgery. The histologic data on the enucleated lens at 6 weeks showed a loss of normal lens architecture. Images are shown that display other small structures of the anterior segment with great clarity. CONCLUSIONS An extension of this work, now underway, is the study of the formation of various types of cataract in animal models. It is hypothesized that these methods can be extended to humans as a quantitative alternative for the assessment of cataracts.
Expression of the C3d-binding protein (CR2) from Candida albicans during experimental candidiasis as measured by lymphoblastogenesis

The complement C3d-binding protein (CR2) of Candida albicans has been purified by immunoaffinity chromatography, and its specificity has been characterized by immunoblotting with monoclonal antibodies to the C. albicans CR2 and the mammalian CR2. Recent studies with immunoelectron microscopy indicated that the CR2 was expressed during a systemic infection in a murine model of candidiasis. As a continuation of these observations, the immunogenicity of the C. albicans CR2 was investigated in a lymphoblastogenesis assay. Lymph node cells as well as splenic lymphocytes from mice infected subcutaneously with viable blastoconidia of C. albicans reacted to the C. albicans CR2 to a significantly greater extent than did lymphocytes from uninfected mice (P less than 0.01). The maximum stimulation of splenic lymphocytes by the purified receptor occurred at a concentration of 0.54 micrograms of protein per ml after 72 h of incubation of lymphocytes and receptor. Also, splenocytes from infected or CR2-immunized mice exhibited significantly reduced responses to the T-cell-dependent mitogen phytohemagglutinin (P less than 0.01). These data indicate that lymphocytes from infected mice respond to the C. albicans CR2 in a lymphoproliferation assay to a greater extent than do lymphocytes from uninfected mice, indicating that the CR2 is expressed in vivo.