Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Pathologic bacterial distribution and antibiotic resistance in induced sputum of infants aged from 1 to 3 months with lower respiratory tract infection].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the pathologic bacterial distribution and their antibiotic resistance in infants aged from 1 to 3 months with lower respiratory tract infection, so as to provide instructions for clinical application of antibiotics. METHODS Induced sputum was extracted from 622 cases of hospitalized infants aged from 1 to 3 months with lower respiratory tract infection between January 2013 and December 2013, and microbial sensitivity test was performed with agar diffusion sensitivity test. RESULTS A total of 379 (60.9%) strains of bacteria were isolated from induced sputum in the 622 infants. The Gram-negative strains were detected in 325 strains (85.8%), and the Gram-positive strains were found in 50 strains (13.2%) in the 379 strains. The others were Fungal strains (4 strains, 1.1%). The Gram-negative bacteria included Escherichia coli (31.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (18.2%), with extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs) production of 48.3% and 52.2% respectively. The average rate of antibiotic resistance for ESBLs-producing bacteria was 53%. ESBLs-producing bacteria were highly resistant (100%) to ampicillin and cefotaxime, but sensitive to carbapenems. Staphylococcus aureus (10.0%) was the dominant bacteria in Gram-positive bacteria. A lower proportion of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (1.8%) was observed, however the resistance rate of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus to β-lactam antibiotics were 100%. CONCLUSIONS Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae are the main pathogenic bacteria causing lower respiratory tract infection in infants aged from 1 to 3 months. ESBLs-producing bacteria accounted for over 48%, and the antibiotic resistance rate were more than 53% in these infants. These results provide a basis for the first empirical clinical use of antimicrobial in infants with lower respiratory tract infection.
Market Reactions to Tangible and Intangible Information

We decompose stock returns into components attributable to tangible and intangible information. A firm's tangible return is the component of its return attributable to fundamental accounting-performance information, and its intangible return is the component which is orthogonal to this information. Our evidence indicates that intangible information reliably predicts future stock returns. However, in contrast to previous research, we find that tangible returns have no forecasting power. The premia associated with intangible information pose challenges for both traditional asset pricing models and models based on psychological factors.
Promoting destinations: An exploratory study of publicity programmes used by national tourism organisations

To date, research into the marketing management practices of destination management organisations (DMOs) has typically focused on topics such as destination image studies, marketing strategy, conversion studies and advertising research. A promotional method that has been largely ignored in research conducted so far is the use of publicity. While much publicity concerning a place (destination) is unplanned and incidental, and occurs in the general course of ‘news’, the publicity programmes conducted by destinations are often quite deliberate, planned, methodical and coordinated with a clear set of objectives. Indeed, some DMOs report receiving a greater annual value (as measured in terms of equivalent commercial advertising expenditure) from their publicity programmes than from their entire annual budgets. This paper reports on research undertaken to gather information on the extent, nature and conduct of efforts by national tourism organisations (NTOs) to generate publicity for the purpose of stimulating tourist demand, and to compare and contrast the different approaches and outcomes.
Measuring entrepreneurship at the country level: A review and research agenda

The measurement of entrepreneurial activity across national contexts is a relatively recent and under-represented area of study. There was very little research carried out for comparable indicators of entrepreneurship until the end of the 1990s, when the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Consortium launched its annual surveys. In the last decade, other indexes and databases have been created, such as the EIM COMPENDIA database and the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey dataset. The first objective of this paper is to review and analyse the existing entrepreneurship indexes with respect to their conceptual and methodological dimensions. This review shows that the conceptual foundations of most of the indexes are insufficiently developed. The second objective is to integrate and compare the indexes on 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for which complete data is available. Strong convergence was found between the indicators of venture creation, business ownership and growth, while noticeable divergences were observed between these indicators and those concerning innovation. This was further explored through cluster analysis, which indicated that the 21 sampled countries could be classified into three distinct entrepreneurial profiles. The paper concludes by offering research directions and debating the use of unitary or composite measures of entrepreneurship in comparison to the analysis of multiple dimensions as exemplified in this paper.
Voluntary‐Threat Approaches to Reduce Ambient Water Pollution

This article considers the regulation of nonpoint source water pollution through the use of a voluntary-threat approach, which allows a polluter group to meet a standard voluntarily but imposes an ambient tax upon noncompliance. In particular, we develop an "endogenous" voluntary-threat approach that can be parameterized to induce compliance as a unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium and eliminate zero-abatement equilibria. Experimental evidence on the proposed approach as well as the "exogenous" approach of Segerson and Wu (2006) suggests that the severity of the threatened tax and the opportunity for communication are critical in determining policy outcomes. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.
How dentition status and masticatory function affect nutrient intake.

The authors examined nutrient intake in relation to the number of teeth, denture type and masticatory function among 638 men in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Dental Longitudinal Study. They found that calorie-adjusted nutrient intakes decreased with progressively impaired dentition status, independently of age, smoking status and alcohol use. Intakes of fiber and most vitamins and minerals were inversely correlated with masticatory function. The findings suggest that prevention of tooth loss and prosthodontic replacement of missing teeth could improve diets of older adults.
Scaling‐up interventions to improve infant and young child feeding in India: What will it take?

Abstract We assessed India's readiness to deliver infant and young child feeding (IYCF) interventions by examining elements related to policy, implementation, financing, and evidence. We based our analysis on review of (a) nutrition policy guidance and program platforms, (b) published literature on interventions to improve IYCF in India, and (c) IYCF program models implemented between 2007 and 2012. We find that Indian policies are well aligned with global technical guidance on counselling interventions. However, guidelines for complementary food supplements (CFS) need to be reexamined. Two national programs with the operational infrastructure to deliver IYCF interventions offer great potential for scale, but more operational guidance, capacity, and monitoring are needed to actively support delivery of IYCF counselling at scale by available frontline workers. Many IYCF implementation efforts to date have experimented with approaches to improve breastfeeding and initiation of complementary feeding but not with improving diet diversity or the quality of food supplements. Financing is currently inadequate to deliver CFS at scale, and governance issues affect the quality and reach of CFS. Available evidence from Indian studies supports the use of counselling strategies to improve breastfeeding practices and initiation of complementary feeding, but limited evidence exists on improving full spectrum of IYCF practices and the impact and operational aspects of CFS in India. We conclude that India is well positioned to support the full spectrum of IYCF using existing policies and delivery platforms, but capacity, financing, and evidence gaps on critical areas of programming can limit impact at scale.
Home Care Nurses’ Perceptions of Control Over Cancer Pain

This qualitative study examined home care nurses’ perceptions of control over cancer pain. Four major themes emerged: Being heard, feeling invisible in the pain management process; not knowing, a need for pain education; control through advocacy; and patient-related barriers to optimal pain management. This study documents the need for continued education in pain management and communication skills for home care nurses.
Measures of Perceived Risk

Based on our previous work on the standard measure of risk, this paper presents two classes of measures for perceived risk by decomposing a lottery into its mean and standard risk. One of the classes of our risk measures presumes that there is no risk when there is no uncertainty involved, and the other allows different degenerate lotteries to be evaluated with different values of "risk. " The former has more prescriptive appeal in risky decision making, but the latter may have more descriptive power for subjective risk judgments. Our risk measures can also take into account the asymmetric effects of losses and gains on perceived risk based on an appropriate choice of the standard measure of risk. The perceived risk models we propose unify a large body of empirical evidence regarding risk judgments, and provide sufficient flexibility to better capture people's perceptions of risk than previously developed risk models. In particular, our risk measures provide clear ways to accommodate financial measures of risk and psychological measures of risk, and they can be incorporated into preference models in an appealing form based on mean-risk tradeoffs.
Glucose Toxicity for Human Endothelial Cells in Culture: Delayed Replication, Disturbed Cell Cycle, and Accelerated Death

Functional and anatomical abnormalities of endothelium may represent a pathway to the increased vascular permeability and accelerated atherosclerosis characteristic of diabetes. To identify whether and how hyperglycemia may compromise the endothelial barrier, we have employed an in vitro system of human endothelial cells obtained from umbilical veins and cultured in elevated glucose concentrations (20 mM). Under these conditions, the achievement of saturation density was substantially delayed, with cell counts throughout most of the growth curve being 70–80% of control (P < 0.002). More profound suppression of cell number was present in cultures exposed to 40 mM glucose. Similar, albeit slightly lesser, effects were observed in cultures exposed to 20 mM mannitol, mimicking the hypertonicity of the high glucose media. The effect of elevated glucose and mannitol was primarily mediated by a decrease in overall rate of replication of the endothelium as documented by the lower mitotic index (P < 0.025). Analysis of the distribution of cells along phases of the cell cycle uncovered in the high glucose cultures a decreased proportion of cells in G0-G1 (70.5 ± 5% versus 73.2 ± 4% in controls, P < 0.05) and an increased proportion of cells in S phase (16.5 ± 2.7% versus 13.5 ± 2.2% in controls, P < 0.01), suggesting that the replicative delay is likely to occur between the phase of DNA synthesis and mitosis. Increased cellular death was specifically observed in the cultures exposed to elevated glucose concentrations (P < 0.05), but it could account for only a minor portion of the deficit in cell number. The mechanism(s) underlying the described ill effects of high glucose/hypertonicity on endothelium and the relevance of such abnormalities to diabetic angiopathy are currently under investigation.
Are Cover Stories Effective Contrarian Indicators?

Headlines from featured stories in Business Week,Fortune, and Forbes were collected for a 20-year period to determine whether positive stories are associated with superior future performance and negative stories are associated with inferior future performance for the featured company. “Superior” and “inferior” were determined in comparison with an index or another company in the same industry and of the same size. Statistical testing implied that positive stories generally indicate the end of superior performance and negative news generally indicates the end of poor performance. For this study, we identified feature stories from the cover headlines inBusiness Week, Fortune, andForbes for a 20-year period (1983–2002) to determine whether positive cover stories are associated with superior future performance and whether negative cover stories are associated with inferior future performance (where “superior” and “inferior” were defined in comparison with an index or with another company in the same industry and of the same size). The feature stories were categorized according to a five-point scale (1 = very positive, 2 = optimistic, 3 = neutral, 4 = pessimistic past but a better future predicted, and 5 = pessimistic with the potential for management turnover and/or litigation). Our statistical testing implies, as expected, that positive business magazine cover stories follow significantly positive performance and negative stories follow significantly negative performance. In both cases, however, the appearance of a company on a cover apparently signals the end of the extreme performance. We found for these companies going forward weak evidence that optimistic (Category 2) cover headlines are an indicator for momentum on a six-month horizon after publication. Negative cover headlines do not provide a good signal for momentum or contrarian strategies when performance is measured against an index or on a size/industry-adjusted basis, despite a popular belief that such cover headlines are a contrarian signal. Indeed, we found that companies that were the subject of negative cover headlines tended to have positive holding-period returns after publication of the magazine, but the positive returns were not abnormally positive when adjusted for an index or for size and industry. Consequently, if an investor is short the stock that is the subject of a negative cover story, the investor should consider covering the short position because the stock has hit “bottom. ”
Influences on Strategic Planning Processes among Irish SMEs

In this study we argue that the approach to strategy formation reflects organizational and individual influences. The study, based on questionnaire responses from 359 firms, examines a number of organizational and individual factors influencing the type of strategy formation process adopted. The constructs of strategic posture, organization structure, management ownership, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) experience are measured. Three models predicting strategy formation approaches are explored. First, an organizational model emphasizing the impact of strategic posture and organization structure is analyzed. Second, a model is tested dealing with CEO and top management team characteristics reflecting the effects of agency costs and experience base. Finally, an integrative model combining both organizational and individual factors is evaluated. The results highlight the importance of organizational factors and show, for instance, that entrepreneurial firms tend to adopt more formal strategic planning approaches, while conservative firms adopt more incremental approaches. In addition, both management shareholding and CEO experience are negatively related to formal strategic planning activities.
Translational frameshifting at the gag-pol junction of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 is not increased in infected T-lymphoid cells

A frameshift event is necessary for expression of the products of the pol gene in a number of retroviruses, including human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). The basic signals necessary for frameshifting consist of a shifty sequence in which the ribosome slips and a downstream stimulatory structure which can be either a stem-loop or a pseudoknot. In HIV-1, much attention has been paid to the frameshift site itself, and only recently has the role of the downstream structure been examined. Here we used a luciferase-based experimental system to analyze in vivo the cis and trans factors potentially involved in controlling frameshifting efficiency at the gag-pol junction of HIV-1. We demonstrated that high-level frameshifting is dependent on the presence of a palindromic region located downstream of the site where the frameshift event takes place. Frameshifting efficiencies were found to be identical in mouse fibroblasts and the natural host cells of the virus, i.e., CD4+ human lymphoid cells. Furthermore, no increase in frameshifting was observed upon virus infection. Previous observations have shown that viral infection leads to specific alteration of tRNAs involved in translation of shifty sites (D. Hatfield, Y.-X. Feng, B.J. Lee, A. Rein, J.G. Levin, and S. Oroszlan, Virology 173:736-742, 1989). The results presented here strongly suggest that these modifications do not affect frameshifting efficiency.
The [Re]-Emergence of Family Businesses in the Transforming Soviet Bloc: Family Contributions to Entrepreneurship Development in Romania

Through an intensive investigation of Romania, this study investigates various aspects of family businesses in the transforming Soviet Bloc. The study explores the relationships between entrepreneurship, family, and enterprise development. The objective of the paper is to probe societal elements impacting entrepreneurship, and to identify the level of family participation in the transforming economy of Romania. We find that family plays an important role in at least two ways: direct support of the business, and through the development of social, community, and economic networks.
The impact of remittances on economic growth in Nepal: an analysis of a significant basis of development

This study analyses the impact of remittances on economic growth in Nepal by assessing the effects of remittances on financial development, productivity, international trade, and human capital accumulation. Based on an analysis of relevant data, it finds that increasing inflows of remittances in Nepal have a positive association with financial development and human capital accumulation, but a negative association with international trade. In terms of two factors of productivity – entrepreneurship and manufacturing–which are potentially associated with inflows of remittances, it finds a positive association (though not very significant) of remittances with entrepreneurship, but a negative association with manufacturing. Overall, this indicates a mixed (both positive and negative) impact of remittance inflows on economic growth in Nepal.
The Urban Transition and Agricultural Development: Implications for International Assistance Policy1

Although ranid population growth and stagnating agriculture now offer the greatest challenges to development, in many countries rapid and highly concentrated urbanization also pose serious problems. By the end of the 1990s. not only will a majority of people in Northern and Southern Africa. Latin America. the Caribbean and South Asia he living in urban places. but many will be living in very large cities. The number of people living in urban places in Africa and South Asia is projected to triple, and in Latin America and East Asia to double, between 1975 and the year 2000. According to United Nations projections. many of these urban dwellers will be found in large metropolitan centres by the end of this century. In both Latin America and East Asia. nearly halfof the urban population will live in cities of two million or more. Similarly. more than -ie-third of Africa's and two-thirds of South Asia's urban population will be living in cities of more than a million. Not only will deveioping countries have h6 per cent of the world's urban population by the end of the century. but twenty-one of the world's thirty largest metropolises will be in poor countries (United Nations
Re-Examining the Determinants of Executive Compensation in the Restaurant Industry: A Quantile Regression Approach

This study investigates the determinants of executive compensation in the restaurant industry with selected variables from both the pay-for-performance rule and the managerial power approach, using a quantile regression method. The quantile regression method also provides an empirical illustration that different levels of executive compensation are related differently to the pay-for-performance and managerial power variables. The results of the quantile regression analysis support the hypotheses that executive corporate governance influences executive compensation and that the restaurant industry partially follows the pay-for-performance rule to determine executive compensation.
A New Clinically Relevant T-Score Standard to Interpret Bone Status in a Sheep Model

Background Osteoporosis is diagnosed by bone loss using a radiological parameter called T-score. Preclinical studies use DXA to evaluate bone status were the T-score is referenced on bone mineral density (BMD) values of the same animals before treatment. Clinically, the reference BMD represents values of an independent group of healthy patients around 30 years old. The present study established a clinically similar T-score standard to diagnose osteoporosis in a sheep model. Material/Methods We used 31 female merino land sheep (average 5.5 years old) to study osteoporosis. The following groups were compared using DXA measurement: 1) control; 2) ovariectomized (OVX); 3) OVX combined with a deficient diet (OVXD); and 4) OVXD combined with methylprednisolone administration (OVXDS). Further, an independent group of 32 healthy sheep (4–6 years old) were measured as an independent baseline. BMD was measured at 0 months, 3 months, and 8 months after treatment. Results The same significance pattern between the treated groups and either baseline groups was seen. However, using an independent baseline changed the “clinical” interpretation of the data from an osteoporotic bone status (T-score <−2.5) after 3 months of OXDS treatment into an osteopenic bone status (T-score <−1.5 to −2.4). Conclusions Using an independent baseline enhanced the statistical significance and showed the clinical relevance. Furthermore, an independent baseline is a reliable alternative to use of a new control group for future experiments and thus reduces the number of animals needed by eliminating the need for a control and corresponding to clinical practice.