Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
When Do Interlocks Matter?: Alternate Sources of Information and Interlock Influence

We would like to thank Jeff Pfeffer, Joel Podolny, and seminar participants at Stanford University, UCLA, and the Johnson School at Cornell for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The purpose of this study was to investigate when director interlocks affect corporate behavior, and how much influence they exert, by studying the conditions under which their influence varies. Existing theory supports the view that interlocks provide information, which affects firms' adoption of strategies and structures. If interlocks provide information, their influence should diminish to the extent that alternate sources of information are available. We measured the effect of alternate sources of information on the relationship between interlocks and corporate acquisitions. Results show that most alternate sources (e.g., CEO membership in the Business Roundtable) reduce the impact of the interlock, but one source (business press coverage) increases it. Also, information from similar interlock partners is more influential than information from dissimilar interlock partners. Our findings suggest a theory of interorganizational information: the substitutability and complementarity of multiple information sources affect their influence. The implications of our study for interlock and information theories are discussed. '
ProTaper rotary root canal preparation: assessment of torque and force in relation to canal anatomy.

AIM To investigate physical parameters for ProTaper nickel-titanium (NiTi) rotary instruments whilst preparing curved canals in maxillary molars in vitro. METHODOLOGY A novel torque-testing platform was used to prepare root canals in 15 extracted human maxillary molars with ProTaper rotary instruments. Peak torque and force was registered along with numbers of rotations required to shape the canals. Canals were divided into 'wide' and 'constricted' groups depending on canal volumes assessed by micro computed tomography. Mean scores for each instrument type were calculated and statistically compared using anova and Scheffé posthoc tests. RESULTS Mean torque varied between 0.8 +/- 0.5 and 2.2 +/- 1.4 N cm whilst mean force ranged from 4.6 +/- 2.6 to 6.2 +/- 2.7 N. Mean numbers of rotations totalled up to 21. All three variables registered were significantly correlated to preoperative canal volumes (P < 0.001) and differed significantly between 'wide' and 'constricted' canals (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Whilst high forces were used in some cases, no ProTaper instrument fractured when a patent glide path was present. There were significant positive correlations between canal geometry and physical parameters during shaping.
The Occupational Prestige of Women Immigrants: A Comparison of Cubans and Mexicans 1

This study analyzes the occupational prestige of women workers born in Cuba or Mexico who were at least 25 years of age at the time of their immigration to the U.S. The dependent variable is NORC prestige scores; independent variables are age, U.S. experience, South residence, weeks worked, and schooling. Predicted prestige scores, controlled for social class, narrow the prestige score gap between Cuban and Mexican women, but increase the gap between immigrant men and women. The data suggest that the social mobility process for female immigrants differs from the process for males, perhaps because cultural barriers to “pink collar” jobs of nominally higher status restrict women's mobility.
The Asch Conformity Effect: A study in Kuwait

This study aimed at investigating whether conformity in the experimental setting suggested by Asch was particularly related to American culture and less likely to be replicable elsewhere - e.g. in Kuwait - as has been suggested recently. An experimental and control group of Kuwait Ss were used in replicating the original experiment. An "Asch effect" of a comparable magnitude to that of Asch was obtained. Individual differences in conformity were evident. Further experimental manipulation of relevant variables were suggested.
The PPARδ Ligand GW501516 Reduces Growth but Not Apoptosis in Mouse Inner Medullary Collecting Duct Cells

The collecting duct (CD) expresses considerable amounts of PPARδ. While its role is unknown in the CD, in other renal cells it has been shown to regulate both growth and apoptosis. We thus hypothesized that PPARδ reduces apoptotic responses and stimulates cell growth in the mouse CD, and examined the effect of GW501516, a synthetic PPARδ ligand, on these responses in mouse IMCD-K2 cells. High doses of GW501516 decreased both DNA and protein synthesis in these cells by 80%, but had no overall effect on cell viability. Although anisomycin treatment resulted in an increase of caspase-3 levels of about 2.59-fold of control, GW501516 did not affect anisomycin-induced changes in active caspase-3 levels. These results show that a PPARδ ligand inhibits growth but does not affect anisomycin-apoptosis in a mouse IMCD cell line. This could have therapeutic implications for renal diseases associated with increased CD growth responses.
The ‘stages of change’ model in health promotion: Science and Ideology

The transtheoretical or ‘stages of change’ model has greatly influenced health promotion practice in the USA, Australia and the UK since the late 1980s. Application of the model has shaped service planning, provision and implementation. ‘Stages of change’ also has impacted on training agendas at local, regional and national levels. Associated areas of motivational interviewing and brief intervention have led health promotion initiatives in areas such as smoking cessation and alcohol-reduction policies. A number of critiques have recently challenged the ‘stages of change’ model and health promotion orthodoxy. This review examines these critiques, with a focus on the ‘scientific’ status of ‘stages of change’. The review also examines a data-based approach to stages of change, model adequacy, the social and ideological context of change theories in health promotion contexts, levels of explanation and prediction in the ‘stages of change’ framework. Some reasons are offered for the apparent popularity of the model amongst health promotion workers. Recommendations are made about alternative conceptual frameworks.
Lightweight Certificateless and Provably-Secure Signcryptosystem for the Internet of Things

In this paper, we propose an elliptic curve-based signcryption scheme derived from the standardized signature KCDSA (Korean Certificate-based Digital Signature Algorithm) in the context of the Internet of Things. Our solution has several advantages. First, the scheme is provably secure in the random oracle model. Second, it provides the following security properties: outsider/insider confidentiality and unforgeability, non-repudiation and public verifiability, while being efficient in terms of communication and computation costs. Third, the scheme offers the certificateless feature, so certificates are not needed to verify the user's public keys. For illustration, we conducted experimental evaluation based on a sensor Wismote platform and compared the performance of the proposed scheme to concurrent schemes. We wish these experimental results be helpful at a larger extent to the scientific community usually prone to work with realistic performance figures.
Functional purification of a bacterial ATP-binding cassette transporter protein (MalK) from the cytoplasmic fraction of an overproducing strain.

The malK gene of Salmonella typhimurium encoding the ATP-hydrolyzing subunit of the ATP-Binding Cassette (ABC) transporter for maltose was subcloned into the pRSET5d expression vector. Subsequently, the resulting plasmid (pES67) was introduced into Escherichia coli strain BL21(DE3)/pLysS. When strain BL21-(DE3)/pLysS/pES67 was grown at 30 degrees C in a tryptone-phosphate medium (J.T. Moore, A. Uppal, F. Maley, and G. F. Maley, Protein Expression Purif. 4, 160-163, 1993), the addition of isopropyl beta-thiogalactoside resulted in the synthesis of large amounts of MalK protein. After cell disrupture about 60% of MalK was recovered with the soluble (cytoplasmic) fraction. The protein was purified by ion exchange chromatography and dye ligand affinity chromatography. The purified MalK protein displayed enzymatic properties similar to those of a preparation purified and renatured from inclusion bodies (S. Morbach, S. Tebbe, and E. Schneider, J. Biol. Chem. 268, 18617-18621, 1993). Thus, our results disprove the view that the biochemical properties of a protein renatured from inclusion bodies might be artefactual. In addition, we provide further evidence that the modification of growth conditions and the use of a T7 expression system can be a useful approach to overcome at least in part the formation of inclusion bodies.
OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING ALVEOLAR DUST CLEARANCE *

Before beginning my observations on alveolar dust clearance, some of the problems inherent in studies of this subject should be mentioned. In their excellent book, Pulmonary Deposition and Retention of Inhaled Aerosols, Hatch and Gross state, “Owing to the wide difference in experimental results reported by the various investigators, it is not possible to draw firm conclusions with respect to pulmonary clearance characteristics. ” In 1970 Kilburn commented further in his paper “Alveolar Microenvironment”: 2 “Because no one has even seen or placed a tracer into a living alveolus this paper must be deductive, hypothetical, and speculative. ” After this conciliatory introduction, let me mention a further weak point. In reviewing basic attributes of alveolar clearance, one has to rely on data which very often lead only indirectly to the description of the processes under discussion. One example is the technique used in the quantitative determination of lung clearance. The amount of particles cleared in a certain period of time after exposure is estimated indirectly, by subtracting the amount retained in the lung after a given period from the amount deposited during exposure. Although a number of questions remain to be answered, the mechanism of particle clearance from the respiratory system has been broken down into at least two basic components. The first, called rapid or early, is connected mostly with clearance of particles deposited from the inhaled air at the respiratory airways. The second, called slow or long-term, is associated with all the remaining possibilities, e.g., alveolar and lymphatic clearance. The terms used to describe the components are related to clearance velocity and time, the anatomy of the lung, or the mechanisms involved. The Task Group on Lung Dynamics 3 proposed a dust clearance model that enumerated ten different absorption and translocation processes associated with the clearance of three lung compartments. The model defines two clearance phases from the pulmonary region-the compartment consisting of the respiratory bronchioles and all the structures connected with the alveoli-phases that depend on macrophages coupled to the ciliary-mucous transport process. It is to this part of the lung clearance process that the present paper is addressed.
Altered negative priming in older subjects: first evidence from behavioral and neural level

The impact of aging on the negative priming (NP) effect has been subject of many studies using behavioral measures. Results are inconsistent and corresponding neural data do not exist. We were interested in, whether or not processing of NP is altered in older in comparison to young adults (YA) on behavioral and neural level. Eighteen young and eighteen older healthy adults performed a location-based NP paradigm during fMRI. YA behaviorally showed a NP effect and NP associated fronto-striatal activation, which is in accordance with the inhibitory model of NP. In older subjects no significant behavioral NP effect and no NP-related activation in predefined brain regions could be found. This is discussed in context of the “loss of efficiency” hypothesis. One possible source for the lack of NP-related activation is a reduction of gray matter (GM) volume in older subjects as shown using voxel based morphometry (VBM).
Iodine and selenium contents in skeletal muscles of red deer (Cervus elaphus), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and wild boar (Sus scrofa) in the Czech Republic

The objective of this study was to examine iodine and selenium contents in skeletal muscles of selected species of game animals living in regions with low iodine and selenium contents in the soil and water. Iodine content was determined in 66 samples of skeletal muscles of red deer cut out of the musculus gracilis, 32 samples and 27 samples from the same muscle of roe deer and wild boar, respectively. The shot game animals came from hunting grounds in western and southern regions of the Czech Republic and in Protected Landscape Area Sumava. In red deer muscles the average iodine content was 44.9 ± 15.2 μg I·kg -1 wet weight with the range of 6.9 to 82.0 μg I·kg-1. The lower concentration in roe deer meat with the average 39.3 ± 14.1 μg I·kg-1 and the range from 18.3 to 84.4 μg I·kg -1 may be due to differences between biotopes and food. The average iodine concentration in the musculus gracilis of wild boars was 55.9± 27.0 μg·kg-1 wet weight. Selenium content was determined in 22 samples of red deer, 51 samples of roe deer and 27 samples of wild boar skeletal muscles. The average values of selenium content in the meat of red deer, roe deer and wild boars were 16.2 ± 8.4, 36.9 ± 16.6 and 27.6 ± 19.8 μg Se·kg -1 wet weight, respectively. All three species of game animals are characterised by low content and high variability of selenium concentration in meat with the minimum value 3.9 µg and maximum value 83.3 μg·kg-1 wet weight. The study brings new data on iodine and selenium content in the muscle of game animals in the Czech Republic.
The suicidal process in male prisoners making near-lethal suicide attempts

Abstract Most investigations of factors contributing to prisoner suicide have focused on suicidal behaviour as a discrete event and used official records or ‘psychological autopsy’ methodology. A potentially more informative approach is to study survivors of near-lethal suicide attempts about their suicidal process. We have investigated the suicidal process in male prisoners through semi-structured interviews with 60 prisoners who made near-lethal suicide attempts. The suicide attempts often followed adverse life events (especially broken relationships or bereavement), criminal justice/prison-related factors (e.g. concerns about sentencing) and psychiatric or psychological factors (e.g. drug/alcohol withdrawal, depression/anxiety and hearing voices). The majority of prisoners said they intended to die (73%), although many acts had been impulsive (40%). Most described visual images about their suicidal acts (82%). Limited access to methods of suicide had clearly influenced method choice (most commonly hanging/ligaturing 67%), along with expectations about the anticipated speed, painfulness and lethality. Half the prisoners believed their acts could have been prevented, often with relatively simple solutions. The suicidal process in prisoners is a complex interplay of background factors, adverse life events, mental health and psychological problems and cognitive processes. Understanding and recognising these various aspects of the process is likely to improve suicide prevention in prisons.
Comparative Clinical Study of Tobramycin and Gentamicin

Gentamicin and tobramycin have been compared in vitro and as single-drug therapy in patients with a serious infection caused by gram-negative rods. In vitro, a slight advantage of tobramycin over gentamicin has been found against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Cross-resistance between gentamicin and tobramycin has been observed for gentamicin-resistant strains of P. aeruginosa and Providence but was not always present. The clinical effectiveness of gentamicin and tobramycin was similar: 14 (45.1%) out of the 31 patients in each series responded favorably. The clinical results were much better in urinary tract infections (66% of favorable responses) than in wound infections, pulmonary infections, septicemia, and meningitis (26% of favorable responses). The frequency of adverse reactions encountered in the present series was similar for both drugs.
Comparison of Arterial and Venous Blood Gases and the Effects of Analysis Delay and Air Contamination on Arterial Samples in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Healthy Controls

Background: Arterial blood gases (ABGs) are often sampled incorrectly, leading to a ‘mixed’ or venous sample. Delays in analysis and air contamination are common. Objectives: We measured the effects of these errors in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations and controls. Methods: Arterial and venous samples were analyzed from 30 patients with COPD exacerbation and 30 controls. Venous samples were analysed immediately and arterial samples separated into non-air-contaminated and air-contaminated specimens and analysed at 0, 30, 60, 90 and 180 min. Results: Mean venous pH was 7.371 and arterial pH was 7.407 (p < 0.0001). There was a correlation between venous and arterial pH (r = 0.5347, p < 0.0001). The regression equation to predict arterial pH was: arterial pH = 4.2289 + 0.43113 · venous pH. There were no clinically significant differences in arterial PO2 associated with analysis delay. A statistically significant decline in pH was detected at 30 min in patients with COPD exacerbation (p = 0.0042) and 90 min in controls (p < 0.0001). A clinically significant decline in pH emerged at 73 min in patients with COPD exacerbation and 87 min in controls. Air contamination was associated with a clinically significant increase in PO2 in all samples, including those that were immediately analyzed. Conclusions: Arterial and venous pH differ significantly. Venous pH cannot accurately replace arterial pH. Temporal delays in ABG analysis result in a significant decline in measured pH. ABGs should be analysed within 30 min. Air contamination leads to an immediate increase in measured PO2, indicating that air-contaminated ABGs should be discarded.
Discriminant and criterion validation of the US-Spanish version of the SF-36 Health Survey in a Cuban-American population with benign prostatic hyperplasia.

OBJECTIVES The study tested the validity of the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form (SF-36) Health Survey (originally validated in the Mexican-American population) in a different Spanish subgroup to determine whether the Spanish version is equally applicable to the Cuban-American population. METHODS Individuals with and without benign prostatic hyperplasia served as the study sample. The SF-36 scores of 264 individuals with benign prostatic hyperplasia were compared with those of 273 individuals without benign prostatic hyperplasia to determine discriminant and criterion validity. These individuals were assigned to one of the following groups: non-Hispanic subjects, Cuban subjects who took the English version, and Cuban subjects who took the Spanish version. MANOVA with planned comparisons was used for this analysis. RESULTS In all three culture/language groups, the quality-of-life scores of individuals without benign prostatic hyperplasia were significantly different than those of benign prostatic hyperplasia individuals. These results demonstrated that the English and Spanish versions can differentiate between individuals with and without benign prostatic hyperplasia. Moreover, the quality-of-life scores of Cuban subjects with and without benign prostatic hyperplasia who took the English version were statistically similar to those of their counterparts who took the Spanish version. CONCLUSIONS The US-Spanish version of the SF-36 appears to be valid when used to measure health status in Cuban-American subjects with benign prostatic hyperplasia. Further studies should be conducted to verify the validity of the US-Spanish version of the SF-36 for other health conditions.
Improving Arabic sentiment analysis with sentiment-specific embeddings

Many natural language processing tasks depend on the quality of word representations in order to achieve good results. To build good word vectors for Arabic sentiment analysis there are various factors to consider, such as the corpus choice, text preprocessing, and the choice of the training model. In this paper, we demonstrate how to achieve better sentiment analysis results by building sentiment-specific embeddings trained using the unsupervised fastText tool for both CBOW and skip-gram models. The results show that fastText embedding models are a valuable alternative to recover semantic and syntactic information of standard Arabic as well as a dialectal language. Indeed, fastText is more relevant to morphologically rich languages such as Arabic language. In order to further validate the effectiveness of the resulting word embeddings, we implemented polarity sentiment classifiers and compared their performance to 2 similar models reported in the literature on three different datasets. The performance evaluation results confirm that our approach outperforms counterpart ones on relevant datasets with an improvement margin of up to 5% using F1-score.
Xenopus oocyte maturation does not require new cyclin synthesis

Progesterone induces fully grown, stage VI, Xenopus oocytes to pass through meiosis I and arrest in metaphase of meiosis II. Protein synthesis is required twice in this process: in order to activate maturation promoting factor (MPF) which induces meiosis I, and then again after the completion of meiosis I to reactivate MPF in order to induce meiosis II. We have used antisense oligonucleotides to destroy maternal stores of cyclin mRNAs, and demonstrate that new cyclin synthesis is not required for entry into either meiosis I or II. This finding is consistent with the demonstration that stage VI oocytes contain a store of B-type cyclin polypeptides (Kobayashi, H., J. Minshull, C. Ford, R. Golsteyn, R. Poon, and T. Hunt. 1991. J. Cell Biol. 114:755-765). Although approximately 70% of cyclin B2 is destroyed at first meiosis, the surviving fraction, together with a larger pool of surviving cyclin B1, must be sufficient to allow the reactivation of MPF and induce entry into second meiotic metaphase. Since stage VI oocytes do not contain any cyclin A, our results show that cyclin A is not required for meiosis in Xenopus. We discuss the possible nature of the proteins whose synthesis is required to induce meiosis I and II.
Five-Factor Model and Difficulties in Career Decision Making

Meta-analysis was employed to investigate the relationship between personality constructs of the five-factor model (FFM) and difficulties in career decision making (DCDM). Twenty studies with one to five quantitative FFM constructs were selected for review. The present study found evidence that the traits of the FFM of personality can predict DCDM. There was a statistically significant positive relationship between Neuroticism and DCDM, and statistically significant negative relationships between Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Openness. Mean effect sizes were small (<.30) with Neuroticism being the highest, closely followed by Conscientiousness, and with Agreeableness being the lowest. Both age and nationality of sample were found to be significant moderators of FFM constructs and DCDM. The discussion includes implications for research and practice.