Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Islamic calendar anomalies: Pakistani practitioners’ perspective

Purpose Studies on Islamic calendar anomalies in financial markets tend to apply quantitative analysis to historic share prices. Surprisingly, there is a lack of research investigating whether the participants of such markets are aware of these anomalies and whether these anomalies affect their investment practice. Or is it a case that these practitioners are completely unaware of the anomalies present in these markets and are missing out on profitable opportunities? The purpose of this paper is to analyse the views of influential participants within the Pakistani Stock Market. Design/methodology/approach The study documents the findings for 19 face-to-face semi-structured interviews conducted with brokers, regulators and high-net-worth individual investors in Karachi. Findings The paper’s major findings indicate that the participants believed that anomalies were present in the stock market and market participants were actively attempting to exploit these anomalies for abnormal gains. Interviewees suggested that predictable patterns can be identified in certain Islamic months (Muharram, Safar, Ramadan and Zil Hajj). The most common pattern highlighted by the interviews related to the month of Ramadan. Furthermore, interviewees mentioned the influence of the “Memon” community in the Pakistani Stock Market. Respondents also suggested that investor sentiment played an important role in influencing the stock market prices and trading patterns. Originality/value Because all the prior studies investigating Islamic calendar anomalies in Muslim-majority countries adopted quantitative method using secondary data, the current investigation is of particular value, as it focuses on the qualitative analyses and reports the views of market participants. This allows to fully explore the topic under investigation and to draw robust conclusions.
Engineering axially vascularized bone in the sheep arteriovenous‐loop model

Treatment of complex bone defects in which vascular supply is insufficient is still a challenge. To overcome the limitations from autologous grafts, a sheep model has been established recently, which is characterized by the development of an independent axial vascularization of a bioartificial construct, permitting microsurgical transplantation. To engineer independently axially vascularized bone tissue in the sheep arteriovenous (AV)‐loop model, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), without and in combination with recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein‐2 (rhBMP‐2), were harvested and directly autotransplanted in combination with β‐tricalcium phosphate–hydroxyapatite (β‐TCP–HA) granules into sheep in this study. After explantation after 12 weeks, histological and immunohistochemical evaluation revealed newly formed bone in both groups. An increased amount of bone area was obtained using directly autotransplanted MSCs with rhBMP‐2 stimulation. Osteoblastic and osteoclastic cells were detected adjacent to the newly formed bone, revealing an active bone remodelling process. Directly autotransplanted MSCs can be found close to the β‐TCP–HA granules and are contributing to bone formation. Over time, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and micro‐computed tomography (μCT) imaging confirmed the dense vascularization arising from the AV‐loop. This study shows de novo engineering of independently axially vascularized transplantable bone tissue in clinically significant amounts, using directly autotransplanted MSCs and rhBMP‐2 stimulation in about 12 weeks in the sheep AV‐loop model. This strategy of engineering vascularized transplantable bone tissue could be possibly transferred to the clinic in the future in order to augment current reconstructive strategies. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Increasing procoagulant activity of circulating microparticles in patients with Philadelphia-negative myeloproliferative neoplasms: a single-centre experience

Microparticles are small membrane fragments with dimension between 0.1 and 1 &mgr;m, which are released during cell activation or apoptosis, exposing the phospholipid phosphatidylserine and membrane antigens typical for cellular origin. Philadelphia-negative myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) are characterized by an increased risk of thrombosis. Data from literature suggest an association between thrombosis and the procoagulant activity of microparticles. Association between the procoagulant activity of microparticles and the incidence of thrombosis was assesed in a group of 126 patients with Philadelphia-negative MPNs. Measurement of microparticles procoagulant activity was performed using a functional assay, namely the Zymuphen MP-activity (Hyphen Biomed, Neuville-sur-oise, France). A total of 539 samples were analysed within this group of patients, regardless of patients’ state of health. A significantly higher circulating microparticles procoagulant activity was found in MPN patients as compared with the control group (P < 0.001). A pathological level of procoagulant activity was observed more frequently in patients with polycythaemia vera (88%, P = 0.002) than groups of patients with essential thrombocythaemia (73.2%) and primary myelofibrosis (68.3%); the same result was confirmed in patients with a history of venous thrombosis in comparison with patients without thrombosis (84.7 vs. 73.2%, P = 0.029). Patients without cytoreductive treatment had a higher activity of microparticles (P = 0.010). Furthermore, presence of JAK2 V617F mutation was associated with an increased procoagulant activity (P = 0.007), as well as the higher JAK2 V617F allele burden (P = 0.001). Further prospective clinical studies will be necessary to evaluate the clinical relevance of microparticles in the prediction hypercoagulable state in these patients.
Therapeutic effects of 10 mg/day rabeprazole administration on reflux esophagitis was not influenced by the CYP2C19 polymorphism

Background: The acid suppressive effects of omeprazole (OPZ) and lansoprazole (LPZ) are influenced by the CYP2C19 polymorphism. On the other hand, some investigators have reported that acid suppressive effect of rabeprazole (RPZ) was not significantly affected by CYP2C19. The present study was designed to investigate whether the CYP2C19 genotype is related to the healing of reflux esophagitis (RE) in treatment with RPZ 10 mg.
Noninvasive ventilation in the pediatric intensive care unit for children with acute respiratory failure

Noninvasive ventilation, a novel treatment to increase alveolar ventilation, is accomplished with either subatmospheric or positive pressure administered via an external interface. In adults with acute respiratory failure, noninvasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV) is superior to standard therapy in preventing intubation and reducing mortality. The role of NPPV in pediatric‐age patients with acute respiratory distress is not as well established. Early case reports showed that NPPV treatment does acutely improve both the clinical manifestations of respiratory distress and respiratory gas exchange in children with respiratory distress. However, it is not clear whether NPPV in this setting can prevent vs. delay endotracheal intubation. Other uses of NPPV in the pediatric intensive care unit include the treatment of upper airway obstruction, atelectasis, and exacerbations of neuromuscular disorders, and to facilitate weaning from invasive mechanical ventilation. Successful use of NPPV in young infants with respiratory distress is impeded by the lack of suitable size interfaces, and the response characteristics of commercially available bilevel ventilators. Despite these challenges, NPPV is a promising alternate to standard therapies in the treatment of acute respiratory distress in the pediatric‐age patient. Pediatr Pulmonol. 2003; 35:418–426. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Teacher professional development and social networking : a case study of a professional learning experience

The generation of social capital, viewed in terms of social capacity building, can have a learning dimension. Teachers’ staff development is one area which can contribute towards social capacity building and socially committed teachers have an important part to play in generating social capital. This paper provides a critical review of current professional development processes in Malta with a focus on how different provisions are successful, or limited, in generating social capital and social empowerment. It also discusses the need for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) which capitalizes on practitioners’ experiences, realities and the knowledge of the social context of learning. Research data, in the form of teacher narratives and one longitudinal case study, reveals the importance of the social dimension in CPD. The involvement of teachers in the Let Me Learn Professional Learning Process marks a proactive stance in teacher professional development and transformation through its emphasis on teacher networks, partnerships and externalizing teachers’ knowledge base. It also demonstrates that social capital can be fostered when teachers learn together and collaborate.
Inactivation of Hantaan Virus-Containing Samples for Subsequent Investigations outside Biosafety Level 3 Facilities

Objectives: The potential risk of accidental infection by hantaviruses in a clinical or research laboratory necessitates special precautionary measures. A biosafety program must address handling and disposal of infectious materials as well as appropriate virus inactivation or depletion procedures to permit necessary further processing of specimens outside the biosafety level 3 laboratory. Methods: To study the elimination of hantavirus infectivity, the effects of different chemical and physical inactivation and depletion procedures were investigated on Hantaan virus-containing materials. An infectivity assay for hantaviruses was utilised to verify these procedures which are commonly preceding investigations such as ELISA, flow cytometry analysis, Western blot or immunofluorescence assay. Results: Chemical inactivation with methanol, paraformaldehyde, acetone/methanol and detergent-containing lysis buffer as well as physical forces such as UV irradiation and filtration efficiently reduced viral infectivity in infected cells and their supernatants below the detection limit. Conclusion: The virus inactivation and depletion methods described herein are suitable to prepare non-infectious samples for further use in immunological, virological and cell-biological assays.
Does FDI moderate the role of public R&D in accelerating agricultural production in Africa?

Purpose The agriculture sector in Africa is a major employer, but production levels have fallen short of demand. To match future demand, public investment in research and development (R&D) is required. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how foreign direct investments (FDIs) moderate the effects of public R&D on Africa’s agricultural production. Design/methodology/approach This study estimates an unbalanced panel fixed effect model that consists of 28 African countries covering the period 1980–2014. Findings Public R&D increases production in the agriculture sector, however, the effects reverse after ten years. Though FDIs have direct positive effects on production, indirectly, it reduces the productivity potential of public R&D due to the possible dependency syndrome associated with FDIs. Traditional inputs like land, capital, and labour and good political institutions positively drive production, but adverse changes in the weather reduce production. Practical implications There should be a frequent update of R&D and improvement in maintenance culture. FDIs should be seen as complementary efforts, and not as substitute efforts to domestic investment efforts in R&D. Originality/value Insufficient domestic investment has increased the dependence on FDIs. In this regard, FDIs effect on production could be tricky since it increases the volatility in agricultural R&D. This paper contributes to the literature by examining how FDIs moderate the effects of public R&D on output.
The Western Australian wage structure and gender wage gap: A post-mining boom analysis

Whilst there is a large literature on the determinant of wages in Australia, relatively few studies have examined the determinants of wages at a state level. In this article, we present a study of the determinants of earnings in Western Australia, a state that experienced rapid growth during the mining boom of 2003–2013. We show that the relatively stronger wage growth in Western Australia since 2001 is the product of both compositional and price effects. We also report on the Western Australia and rest of Australia gender wage gaps. Our decomposition analysis of the mean gender wage gap shows that industry effects (as a result of gender segmentation across industry) account for a much larger share of the Western Australia gender wage gap than they do elsewhere in Australia, with the mining, construction and transport sectors driving the industry effects. Using quantile analysis we show that, relative to the rest of Australia, the Western Australia gender wage gaps are larger at both the bottom and the top of the wage distribution. At the median the Western Australia gender wage gap, at 2014–2016, is on par with that prevailing elsewhere in Australia, with women in both groups earning 10% less than their male counterparts, all else held equal.
Serum elastase and antithrombin-3 levels after umbilical cord blood transplantation or bone marrow transplantation

Abstract The severity of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) was compared after cord blood transplantation (CBT) and bone marrow transplantation (BMT). The severity of GVHD was also analyzed in relation to serum elastase and antithrombin-3 (AT-3) levels. There was no significant difference in the average grade of acute GVHD between 49 BMT patients and 20 CBT patients (X2-test). However, there was a lower incidence of patients without acute GVHD (grade 0) or patients with severe acute GVHD (grade 3 or 4) in CBT compared with BMT group. Linear regression analysis found no significant correlation between the serum elastase level and the grade of acute GVHD, between the serum AT-3 level and the grade of acute GVHD, or between the serum levels of elastase and AT-3 before conditioning and after engraftment. The AT-3 level after engraftment was significantly higher in the CBT group than in the BMT group and it did not fail along with the elevation of elastase in the CBT group (p < 0.01 by the Mann–Whitney U-test vs. the BMT group). In conclusion, the lower risk of severe acute GVHD in the CBT group may have been related to the smaller decrease of AT-3 after transplantation.
Postoperative analgesia with ketorolac is associated with decreased mortality after isolated coronary artery bypass graft surgery in patients already receiving aspirin: a propensity-matched study.

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to determine the effect of ketorolac on mortality after cardiac surgery. DESIGN A retrospective multivariable analysis with propensity matching and propensity scoring. SETTING A tertiary care university-affiliated medical center. PARTICIPANT Eleven hundred eighty-six patients undergoing isolated coronary artery bypass surgery. MAIN RESULTS Between January 1, 2002, and November 1, 2004, 168 patients undergoing isolated coronary artery bypass surgery received ketorolac, whereas 1,018 patients did not. There were 2 deaths (1%) in the ketorolac group compared with 104 (10%) in the nonketorolac group (p < 0.001). Within 90 days of surgery, there was 1 death (1%) in the ketorolac group compared with 51 (5%) in the nonketorolac group (p = 0.01). By Cox modeling, ketorolac use was associated with a 7-fold lower risk of death (p = 0.02). In the patients who survived at least 90 days, there was 1 death (1%) in the ketorolac group compared with 53 (5%) in the nonketorolac group (p = 0.01). By Cox modeling, ketorolac use was associated with a 2.4-fold lower risk of death (p = 0.03) in the late hazard period. In the propensity-matched groups, Kaplan-Meier survival was better in patients who received ketorolac (p = 0.02). CONCLUSION The use of ketorolac was associated with a statistically significant decrease in mortality at follow-up.
First-exit times and their applications in default risk management

Over the last two decades, default rates and market risk have increased substantially. A consequence of the growing global interlacing is a strong dependence between both individual stock returns and credit events. Risk management (especially risk diversification) is much more challenging, since. Quantitative models that assist firms to better analyse, measure, and comprehend the risks they face are required. This thesis contributes to the literature on the modeling of default risks and their dependence. As exemplary application the pricing of financial derivatives is discussed.
Identification of a new nuclear gene (CEM1) encoding a protein homologous to a β‐keto‐acyl synthase which is essential for mitochondrial respiration in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

We have analysed a new gene, CEM1, from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Inactivation of this gene leads to a respiratory‐deficient phenotype. The deduced protein sequence shows strong similarities with β‐keto‐acyl synthases or condensing enzymes. Typically, enzymes of this class are involved in the synthesis of fatty acids or similar molecules. An analysis of the mitochondrial lipids and fatty acids shows no major difference between the wild type and deleted strains. Implying that the CBM1 gene product is not involved in the synthesis of the bulk fatty acids. Thus it Is possible that the CEM1 protein is involved in the synthesis of a specialized molecule, probably related to a fatty acid, which is essential for mitochondrial respiration.
Evidence for Extensive Resistance Gene Transfer amongBacteroides spp. and among Bacteroides and Other Genera in the Human Colon

ABSTRACT Transfer of antibiotic resistance genes by conjugation is thought to play an important role in the spread of resistance. Yet virtually no information is available about the extent to which such horizontal transfers occur in natural settings. In this paper, we show that conjugal gene transfer has made a major contribution to increased antibiotic resistance in Bacteroides species, a numerically predominant group of human colonic bacteria. Over the past 3 decades, carriage of the tetracycline resistance gene, tetQ, has increased from about 30% to more than 80% of strains. Alleles oftetQ in different Bacteroides species, with one exception, were 96 to 100% identical at the DNA sequence level, as expected if horizontal gene transfer was responsible for their spread. Southern blot analyses showed further that transfer of tetQwas mediated by a conjugative transposon (CTn) of the CTnDOT type. Carriage of two erythromycin resistance genes, ermF andermG, rose from <2 to 23% and accounted for about 70% of the total erythromycin resistances observed. Carriage oftetQ and the erm genes was the same in isolates taken from healthy people with no recent history of antibiotic use as in isolates obtained from patients with Bacteroidesinfections. This finding indicates that resistance transfer is occurring in the community and not just in clinical environments. The high percentage of strains that are carrying these resistance genes in people who are not taking antibiotics is consistent with the hypothesis that once acquired, these resistance genes are stably maintained in the absence of antibiotic selection. Six recently isolated strains carriedermB genes. Two were identical to erm(B)-P fromClostridium perfringens, and the other four had only one to three mismatches. The nine strains with ermG genes had DNA sequences that were more than 99% identical to the ermG ofBacillus sphaericus. Evidently, there is a genetic conduit open between gram-positive bacteria, including bacteria that only pass through the human colon, and the gram-negative Bacteroidesspecies. Our results support the hypothesis that extensive gene transfer occurs among bacteria in the human colon, both within the genus Bacteroides and among Bacteroides species and gram-positive bacteria.
Comparison of single and deep long short-term memory for single object tracking

Long short-term memory (LSTM) is widely used for processing time sequence data like language and human skeletal data, and its importance is continuously increasing. In particular, recent studies have shown that higher performance can be obtained by using deep LSTM instead of single LSTM for language processing and action recognition tasks. In this paper, we compared the performance between single LSTM and deep LSTM for a different time sequence processing task, single object tracking. We verified that using deep LSTM can significantly improve the performance compared to single LSTM. This implies that deep LSTM is an effective model to overcome current technical limitations such as object deformation and occlusion. We expect this study will lead to the development of a stable tracker robust to object deformation and occlusion in the near future.
Collateral, mutual guarantees and the entrepreneurial orientation of SMEs

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether guarantees characterised by different degrees of relationship lending (particularly referring to collateral and guarantees provided by Mutual Loan Guarantee Institutions) are able to convey some entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions from firms to banks. Design/methodology/approach Exploiting data from a survey of Austrian and Italian SMEs, the empirical analysis is based on a sample of 328 small business firms. To test the signalling hypothesis, the authors used logistic regressions to assess the explanatory power of EO dimensions on the presence of several types of guarantees. Findings The analyses suggest that collateral cannot signal any EO dimension, even when controlling for the strength of the bank – firm relationship. Furthermore, SMEs are able to mitigate their financial risk through collateral only in a multiple bank – firm relationship. Lastly, innovativeness, competitive energy and aggressiveness allow SMEs to obtain external guarantees (mutual guarantees, bank guarantees and public guarantees, respectively), helpful in order to promote credit access. Research limitations/implications The mediation role of collateral and external guarantees on EO – credit access relation should be analysed in future research. Since the role of guarantees can change among different bank lending technologies, further studies should carefully consider lender’s characteristics. Lastly, the use of loan data in respect of the firm data can help to better separate the effect of loan and firm attributes on the collateral. Practical implications The study suggests how managers and entrepreneurs should manage the financial risk through collateral in different situations (one–to–one and multiple bank – firm relationship). Furthermore, depending on the level of innovativeness, competitive energy and aggressiveness, a firm should request a specific type of external guarantees in order to increment the credit availability, to maximise the possibility of success and to improve its performance. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to analyse whether EO affects the request for guarantees instead of credit access. This can be helpful especially when the banks involved in the relation apply a transaction lending technology.