Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of activities aimed at preventing microbiological risks in dental practice.

BACKGROUND Microbiological contamination of water in dental unit waterlines (DUWL) creates a risk of cross-infections, and is a source of biological risk factors in the work environment of a dentist. The aim of the study was to evaluate dentists' knowledge on DUWL microbiological contamination and the scope of activities/procedures they undertake to monitor it. MATERIALS AND METHOD The questionnaire survey was conducted in 2010 among 107 Polish dentists using dental units in everyday clinical practice. RESULTS It has been found that in their daily practice, dentists do not follow procedures leading to reduction or elimination of microbiological contamination of dental unit reservoir water. They are not aware of microbiological contamination of DUWL that supply working handpieces with water. They are unaware of the principles of dealing with dental water and water supply systems or the health risk posed by microbiological contamination of unit water for a dental team and patients. CONCLUSIONS It is necessary to provide dentists with information on microbiological contamination of water in dental units, on the correct procedures of handling water and waterlines that supply working handpieces with water.
Comparison of Markers and Functional Attributes of Human Adipose-Derived Stem Cells and Dedifferentiated Adipocyte Cells from Subcutaneous Fat of an Obese Diabetic Donor.

Objective: Adipose tissue is a robust source of adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) that may be able to provide secreted factors that promote the ability of wounded tissue to heal. However, adipocytes also have the potential to dedifferentiate in culture to cells with stem cell-like properties that may improve their behavior and functionality for certain applications. Approach: ADSCs are adult mesenchymal stem cells that are cultured from the stromal vascular fraction of adipose tissue. However, adipocytes are capable of dedifferentiating into cells with stem cell properties. In this case study, we compare ADSC and dedifferentiated fat (DFAT) cells from the same patient and fat depot for mesenchymal cell markers, embryonic stem cell markers, ability to differentiate to adipocytes and osteoblasts, senescence and telomerase levels, and ability of conditioned media (CM) to stimulate migration of human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs). Innovation and Conclusions: ADSCs and DFAT cells displayed identical levels of CD90, CD44, CD105, and were CD34- and CD45-negative. They also expressed similar levels of Oct4, BMI1, KLF4, and SALL4. DFAT cells, however, showed higher efficiency in adipogenic and osteogenic capacity. Telomerase levels of DFAT cells were double those of ADSCs, and senescence declined in DFAT cells. CM from both cell types altered the migration of fibroblasts. Despite reports of ADSCs from a number of human depots, there have been no comparisons of the ability of dedifferentiated DFAT cells from the same donor and depot to differentiate or modulate migration of HDFs. Since ADSCs were from an obese diabetic donor, reprogramming of DFAT cells may help improve a patient's cells for regenerative medicine applications.
Online versus Face-to-Face Peer Team Reviews

Peer-reviewing is gaining importance as didactic technique in computer science courses. Through reviewing their peers, students develop evaluation skills, increase their reflection ability, and develop awareness of their own work's quality. This paper presents an experimental study exploring communication and collaboration aspects of the peer-reviewing task. In particular, the study analyzes differences between the face-to-face and the online setting. Both settings were implemented and investigated with respect to communication and collaboration in and among teams as well as workload distribution. The results show that students highly appreciated many aspects of the online reviewing tool but found themselves constrained by the lack of discussion, which they experienced and valued in the face-to-face process. The paper discusses further results regarding team communication and collaboration and their implications on the specific didactical use of online and face-to-face peer-reviewing
Relationship-Specific Assets and the Pricing of Underwriter Services

This paper investigates the effect of setup costs on the pricing of investment banking services. The existence of setup costs is predicted to result in lower underwriter spreads in initial public offerings for firms that are expected to issue again. Consistent with this prediction, the author finds significantly lower spreads for firms that make subsequent issues. He also finds that a firm's likelihood of changing underwriters in a subsequent offer is related to the time between offerings and the underwriter's pricing performance in the initial public offerings. These results suggest that the deviations from optimal initial public offerings pricing carry a penalty for the underwriter. Copyright 1992 by American Finance Association.
Management accounting within world class manufacturing: a case study

This is a case study of a UK chemical company implementing a World Class Manufacturing (WCM). In the late 1980s the company encountered serious problems due to the rapid contraction of major customers. It embarked on a programme of improving manufacturing introducing, inter alia, new quality programmes and computerised production controls including MRPII. Whilst these programmes were successful they failed to produce the turnaround sought. Faced with impending extinction, the managers sought external advice from consultants during a WCM workshop organised by government development agencies. Following this the company embarked on a benchmarking and strategic assessment exercise which diagnosed the company as unruly manufacturing oriented, poor on new product development and marketing, and insufficiently responsive to consumer needs. They adopted WCM principles embracing six broad objectives: customer responsiveness, employee involvement, quality, reduced lead-times, continuous improvement, and shop floor training for flexibility and problem solving skills. The implementation of WCM was successful: there was objective recorded evidence of improved performance against targets set in the WCM programme. Management accounting superficially appeared unaffected by WCM. The budgetary control system run by the accounting department remained intact. Product costing systems were not changed to incorporate Activity-Based drivers, as predicted in the literature. However, there was a marked decline in the influence of the accounting department, partly due to the cost module within MRPII. The accountant became dependent on production for cost data. Whilst his responsibilities continued to include the preparation of financial accounts and periodic budgets, cost management in terms of cost reduction, target setting, diagnosis and problem-solving came to lie with production. The suggestion of the case is that financial improvement may lie more with programmes of employee development and involvement, making the company more quality conscious, flexible and adaptive rather than in any redsign of costing systems. The implications of the research upon management accounting change debates are discussed in the concluding section.
The Economic Benefits of Public Investment in Transportation

This article reviews the recent literature on the long-term economic benefits of public investments in transportation. It organizes the literature into six groups according to the type of benefit being measured, namely, output; productivity; production costs; income, property values, employment, and real wages; rate of return; and noncommercial travel time. The central question addressed by the papers reviewed is whether public investments in transportation yield long-term economic benefits. While the different studies arrive at different numerical answers, most of them do indicate a positive and statistically significant relationship between such investments and economic benefit measures. Transportation planners engaged in the effort to win funding for the best of competing projects would gain by an awareness of that economic benefit literature and by applying the methods to measuring benefits of their projects.
Family-friendly policies in the workplace and their effect on work–life conflicts in Hong Kong

As in many other big cities, employees in Hong Kong face competing demands from their work and family and are under a tremendous conflict between work and life. Recently, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government has put a lot of effort into promoting family-friendly policies, but the availability and effectiveness of these policies are largely unknown. The social distribution of work–life conflicts across social status and the dimensions of stratification in Hong Kong have already been documented. This paper examines these issues by way of a telephone survey of over 1000 employees in Hong Kong. We argue that certain groups of workers are particularly vulnerable to work–life conflicts, and target interventions must be devised to address their needs. Moreover, we also suggest that a regulatory approach to implementing family-friendly policies must be undertaken once implementation on a voluntary basis has failed, owing to the low availability of family-friendly policies in the Hong Kong workplace. Lastly, we show the effectiveness of three measures – namely flexible work time, a five-day work week and career breaks – in reducing both work–life conflicts and their negative consequences. We argue that more rigorous randomized intervention must be undertaken to provide more conclusive evidence so as to convince employers to implement these policies in their enterprises.
Exchange Rate Pass-Through in Transition Economies: The Case of the Republic of Macedonia

This paper investigates the relative costs and benefits associated with introducing a different exchange rate regime in the Republic of Macedonia. In this finding, all econometrics results, using different methodologies (SVAR and VECM), show that introducing a different strategy of the exchange rate targeting in order to promote rapid economic growth could easy disturb macroeconomic stability (after having achieved it at a substantial cost) without any significant economic benefits. In the long term, the coefficient of exchange rate reveals that a one percent change in the exchange rate will generate an increase in the prices level of 0.52 percent, indicating that 52 percent of changes in the exchange rate feed into the prices level. The investigation suggests that introducing a different strategy of the exchange rate regime is likely to incur more costs than benefits.
Standard and Poor’s depository receipts and the performance of the S&P 500 index futures market

In response to the need for a simple financial instrument that enables retail investors to participate easily and quickly in the U.S. equity market and that facilitates basket trading by institutions, the American Stock Exchange introduced Standard and Poor’s Depository Receipts (SPDRs) on January 29, 1993. The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of the introduction of SPDRs on the pricing efficiency of the S&P futures market. Using a measure of efficiency that is based on the difference between the observed futures price and the theoretical futures price based on the Cost of Carry Model, as well as daily and intradaily data for the period January 2, 1990 through June 3, 1996, we found that some positive mispricing was reduced when SPDR’s were introduced. While dividend yield and time‐to‐maturity biases remained, SPDRs trading was shown to mitigate the extent of pricing errors that prevailed, and reduced the effects of dividend yield and time‐to‐maturity biases found for these contracts. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 20:705–716, 2000
Impaired expression of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha during hepatitis C virus infection.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Liver inflammation, fibrosis, and dyslipidemia are common features in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Because peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARalpha) is highly expressed in the liver and is involved in the regulation of lipid metabolism and inflammation, we sought to determine whether HCV infection may locally impair PPARalpha expression and activity. METHODS PPARalpha expression was investigated in liver biopsy specimens of 86 untreated patients with HCV infection and controls, by using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Western blot analysis, and immunohistochemistry. PPARalpha activity was assessed by quantification of the key gene target carnitine palmitoyl acyl-CoA transferase 1 (CPT1A) messenger RNA (mRNA). The influence of HCV core protein on PPARalpha mRNA expression was analyzed in vitro by real-time PCR in HCV core-expressing HepG2 cells activated with the PPARalpha ligand fenofibric acid. RESULTS Hepatic concentrations of PPARalpha and CPT1A expressed by hepatocytes were impaired profoundly in the livers of untreated patients with HCV infection compared with controls. A mean decrease of 85% in PPARalpha mRNA expression paralleled with a lack of CPT1A mRNA induction also were observed in HCV core-expressing HepG2 cells compared with controls. CONCLUSIONS HCV infection is related to altered expression and function of the anti-inflammatory nuclear receptor PPARalpha. These results identify hepatic PPARalpha as one mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of HCV infection, and as a new therapeutic target in traditional treatment of HCV-induced liver injury.
Effects of the combination of ketamine and medetomidine anaesthesia on haematological parameters in Sahel goats

The effects of the combination of ketamine and medetomidine intravenous (IV) anaesthesia on haematological parameters were evaluated in six sahel goats comprising of 5 females and 1 male with mean body weight of 19 ± 1.4kg. Each goat was given a recommended dose of the drugs combination: medetomidine at 0.01mg/kg and ketamine at 5mg/kg body weight IV. Pre injection blood samples were obtained and at 15 minutes interval during anaesthesia in EDTA bottles and later analyzed. The parameters evaluated were packed cell volume (PCV), haemoglobin concentration (Hb), red blood cells (RBC), white blood cells (WBC), and differential leucocytes (neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, lymphocytes and monocytes). The ketamine-medetomidine combination produced a significant decrease in PCV values from 30 minutes (24.00±1.23%) to 90 minutes (25.00±2.55%) compared with baseline value (29.50±1.52%); Hb also decreased significantly at 45mins. RBC and WBC values showed no significant difference compared with baseline values. Neutrophils decreased significantly at 45mins (35.17±3.25) compared to baseline value (41.50±3.67). There were no significant differences in lymphocytes, monocytes, and eosinophils values from baseline. The ketamine and medetomidine combination produced decreases in PCV, Hb and neutrophils. The goats recovered from anaesthesia uneventfully.
Oxytocin Selectively Facilitates Recognition of Positive Sex and Relationship Words

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has a crucial role in social behavior (Bartz & Hollander, 2006). Oxytocin improves trust (Kosfeld, Heinrichs, Zak, Fischbacher, & Fehr, 2005), emotion perception (Domes, Henrichs, Michel, Berger, & Herpertz, 2007), eye-gaze (Guastella, Mitchell, & Dadds, 2008), and the encoding of happy faces (Guastella, Mitchell, & Mathews, 2008). However, the mechanisms underlying these observations are not fully understood. One explanation, from evolutionarybiological perspectives (Heinrichs, Meinlschmidt, Wippich, Ehlert, & Hellhammer, 2004), is that OT selectively facilitates the processing of positive social cues that are important for bonding and reproductive behavior. This study is the first to investigate whether OT produces a selective recognition advantage for identifying such positive social stimuli. We used a constructive recognition task in which a gradually disappearing mask slowly reveals the target stimulus. This methodology is ideally suited to assess top-down influences on cognition and was successfully used to demonstrate mood congruency effects (Fiedler, Nickel, Muehlfriedel, & Unkelbach, 2001; Forgas, 1995). We predicted that OT selectively enhances the recognition and categorization speed of positive sexually-themed and relationship words, but OT should not alter the processing of positive stimuli in general.
Association of TCF4 gene polymorphisms with Fuchs' corneal dystrophy in the Chinese.

PURPOSE To test the association between TCF4, a gene recently found to confer susceptibility to Fuchs' corneal dystrophy (FCD) in Caucasian populations, and Chinese patients with FCD. METHODS Fifty-seven Chinese subjects with clinically diagnosed FCD and 121 normal control subjects were recruited. Genomic DNA was extracted and the 18 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within TCF4 were genotyped (Sequenom MassArray primer extension system; Sequenom, Inc., San Diego, CA). Statistical association between individual SNPs and FCD was evaluated using 1 df additive genetic models, and verified with 2 df unguided genotype tests of association. P < 0.002 was considered statistically significant after accounting for the 18 SNPs. RESULTS The affected individuals ranged in age from 48 to 87 years, with an average age of 67 years. There was no statistical difference in the demographic information between the FCD and the control group (mean age of 65.1 years; range, 39-85, P = 0.12). Two SNPs within TCF4 (rs17089887 and rs17089925) were significant experiment-wide (P = 7.34 × 10(-5) and P = 0.00045 respectively) with an increase in disease risk of >2.3-fold per copy of the risk allele compared with individuals who were wild type. However, the most significantly associated SNP from the original report (rs613872) was not found to be present in Chinese FCD subjects. CONCLUSIONS Polymorphisms within TCF4, a gene which has been implicated in FCD susceptibility among Europeans, was also found to be strongly associated with FCD in Chinese.
The Determinants of Entry: A Sudy of the Canadian Manufacturing Industries

ENTRY plays a crucial role in microecoIJi nomic models of market structure and performance. However there has been very little direct empirical investigation of entry and its determinants over a broad cross section of industries. In this paper we construct and estimate a model which assumes entry is a function of the incentives to enter relative to the level of entry barriers. The subject of the analysis is the cross-section differences in entry between the three-digit industries of the Canadian manufacturing sector. Previous studies of entry have either concentrated on only several industries or have attempted to make conclusions about entry conditions by regressing profit rates on variables representing entry barriers. Bain (1956) examined 20 (mostly four-digit) United States manufacturing industries and concluded that the most significant barriers to entry were product differentiation, economies of scale in plant or firm and control of patents or scarce resources, respectively. Mann's study (1966), which was limited to 30 of the United States manufacturing industries, did not examine the relative importance of the various barriers to entry. Mansfield's (1962) sample was limited to four industries. Capital requirements was the only barrier he considered. Most econometric investigations of entry barriers have been indirect tests. They have regressed the profit rate, rather than entry, on those structural characteristics considered to be barriers to entry (Comanor and Wilson 1967, Miller 1969). Unfortunately this specification does not permit reliable conclusions regarding the effectiveness of these variables in deterring entry. There are theoretical reasons for questioning the often assumed strong positive relationship between entry barriers and the true profit rate. Additionally of course, there is the infamous gap between true and measured profits. This paper's treatment of entry barriers has several important advantages over previous work. Those variables considered to be entry barriers are introduced directly as determinants of entry rather than the profit rate. This is a direct rather than indirect test of the propensity of these factors to deter entrants. A most important result is that our conclusions are less sensitive to those unavoidable measurement errors in the profit rate. Our estimating equations consider a more extensive list of entry barriers over a larger (71) sample, covering all types of manufacturing.
Academic Development and Support Lessons from Council on Higher Education Audit Reports

The offering of academic development and support services to academics and students is on rise as universities battle to meet higher education transformation agenda. Special focus is here given on what the audit reports of the South African Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council on Higher Education established on the relationship between academic development and teaching and learning. Audit reports from five South African universities were randomly selected for this literature review paper. The centrality of academic development and support initiatives focusing on university teaching staff came to the fore. The need for educational practitioners to assume strategic roles in curriculum design, design of university teaching and learning agenda, induction and academic support, defining the relevant institutional scope of academic development, policy clarity and implementation, teaching excellence, structural and manpower constrains were foregrounded. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014. v5n11p29
European Silk Road Tourists' and Their Tour Guides' Perceptions of Product and Service Quality

Abstract The development potential of the China Silk Road tour has been recognised by international organisations. In a preliminary survey product and service quality perceptions of 78 European Silk Road tourists and of 20 guides were assessed. The tourists were quite critical of food served outside their hotels, the interest created by the attractions, the friendliness of locals and the price and quality of souvenirs. In nearly all these aspects tour guides' assessment differed substantially from their clients'. These results indicate a need for product and service quality improvements, including tour guides' training, to realise the undoubted potential of China Silk Road tours.