Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Secukinumab, a human anti-IL-17A monoclonal antibody, for moderate to severe Crohn's disease: unexpected results of a randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled trial

Objective The authors tested whether the anti-interleukin (IL)-17A monoclonal antibody secukinumab was safe and effective for the treatment of active Crohn's disease. Design In a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled proof-of-concept study, 59 patients with moderate to severe Crohn's disease (Crohn's Disease Activity Index (CDAI) ≥220 to ≤450) were assigned in a 2:1 ratio to 2×10 mg/kg intravenous secukinumab or placebo. The primary end point, addressed by Bayesian statistics augmented with historical placebo information, was the probability that secukinumab reduces the CDAI by ≥50 points more than placebo at week 6. Ancillary analyses explored associations of 35 candidate genetic polymorphisms and faecal calprotectin response. Results 59 patients (39 secukinumab, 20 placebo, mean baseline CDAI 307 and 301, respectively) were recruited. 18/59 (31%) patients discontinued prematurely (12/39 (31%) secukinumab, 6/20 (30%) placebo), 10/59 (17%) due to insufficient therapeutic effect (8/39 (21%) secukinumab, 2/20 (10%) placebo). Fourteen serious adverse events occurred in 10 patients (seven secukinumab, three placebo); 20 infections, including four local fungal infections, were seen on secukinumab versus none on placebo. Primary end point analysis estimated <0.1% probability (∆CDAI (SD) =33.9 (19.7), 95% credible interval −4.9 to 72.9) that secukinumab reduces CDAI by ≥50 points more than placebo. Secondary area under the curve analysis (weeks 4–10) showed a significant difference (mean ΔCDAI=49; 95% CI (2 to 96), p=0.043) in favour of placebo. Post hoc subgroup analysis showed that unfavourable responses on secukinumab were driven by patients with elevated inflammatory markers (CRP≥10 mg/l and/or faecal calprotectin≥200 ng/ml; mean ΔCDAI=62; 95% CI (−1 to 125), p=0.054 in favour of placebo). Absence of the minor allele of tumour necrosis factor-like ligand 1A was strongly associated with lack of response measured by baseline-adjusted changes in calprotectin at week 6 (p=0.00035 Bonferroni-corrected). Conclusions Blockade of IL-17A was ineffective and higher rates of adverse events were noted compared with placebo. Clinical trial registration This trial was registered at ClinicalTrial.gov with the number NCT01009281.
Marital Rape

Despite the increased recognition that the topic of marital rape has generated in the past 2 decades, the literature in this area remains sparse. This article provides a comprehensive review of the current state of the marital rape literature. First, the lengthy history of legal, cultural, and professional invalidation of marital rape victims, and the resulting negative treatment implications, is discussed. Second, marital rape research is reviewed, including prevalence, descriptive, and comparison studies. This review highlights the seriousness of marital rape, in terms of prevalence and posttrauma distress, as well as the limitations of extant research. Finally, barriers to treatment and recommendations for professionals are discussed.
Comparing open source ASR toolkits on Italian children speech

In this paper, we consider two different aspects of the automatic speech recognition task: the effectiveness of using open-source ASR toolkits and the quite problematic recognition of children speech. On this difficult task, we compare three well established and widely available ASR toolkits and we finally demonstrate the feasibility of applying these results to speech recognition and spoken dialogue system design. Even if various open source ASR toolkits are now available, we were mainly interested in evaluate the usability of the relatively new BAVIECA system in comparison to two systems (SONIC and SPHINX) for which we had already various results in past experiments on children speech. This paper is intended to provide the reader with a simple overview of the solutions adopted by the three different systems under investigation and with the demonstration of their effectiveness on children speech. Furthermore, the paper provides suggestions for future research directions in the field.
Disability and Depressive Symptoms in Later Life: The Stress-Buffering Role of Informal and Formal Support

Background: Despite the increasing utilization of formal services by older adults in many nations, there is a paucity of research that has examined the relationships between disability, formal support and depressive symptoms in later life. Objective: We investigated whether support received for daily activities, either from formal and/or informal sources, weakened the deleterious relationship between disability and depression symptoms in later life and whether these stress-buffering effects were stronger in later years of older adulthood. Methods: Participants were 1,359 community-dwelling older adults drawn from Wave 1 of the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Hierarchical multiple regression was used. Results: Individuals receiving support from (1) informal sources only and (2) both informal and formal sources had weaker relationships between disability and depressive symptoms, relative to those receiving no support. The interaction between informal and formal support and disability also revealed that for individuals with above average functional limitations, receipt of this support type was associated with fewer depressive symptoms. However, for individuals with no functional limitations, receipt of both informal and formal support was not associated with depressive symptoms. The stress-buffer age variation hypothesis received no support. Conclusions: Findings suggest that receiving a combination of informal and formal support may be sufficient to offset the harmful association between disability and depressive symptoms in later life. In addition, findings further emphasized the importance of informal support in later life. In contrast, formal support in isolation may not be sufficient to confer a protective effect. Given the expected increase in utilization of formal services among older adults in the coming decades, it is essential that future research investigates the possible factors that underlie this null result.
SPINAL MENINGIOMA SURGERY IN ELDERLY PATIENTS WITH PARAPLEGIA OR SEVERE PARAPARESIS: A MULTICENTER STUDY

OBJECTIVEIn a multicenter study, 102 patients aged 70 years or older with paraplegia or severe paraparesis, and who underwent operation for spinal meningiomas, are presented to correlate surgery and outcome and to determine the most influential factors that affected this outcome. METHODSFive French neurosurgical centers participated in this retrospective study between 1990 and 2007. Pre- and postoperative neurological status were assessed using a grading system. All patients underwent operation, and neurological evaluations were conducted 3 months and 1 year after surgery. The median follow-up period was 49.5 months (range, 12–169 months). Data were analyzed using a multiple logistic regression model. RESULTSTwenty-six patients were paraplegic (Grade 4). Complete tumor removal was obtained in 93 patients. There was no surgical mortality, and morbidity was 9%. Three months after surgery, 7 of the patients were unchanged, 87 patients had improved, and 8 were not evaluated. One year after surgery, 7 of the 100 surviving patients were clinically unchanged and 93 had improved. Of those who had improved, 49 patients experienced complete recovery. CONCLUSIONAdvanced age did not seem to contraindicate surgery, even in patients with severe preoperative neurological deficits and/or an American Society of Anesthesiologists class of III. Quality of life can be improved in most cases.
Multiracial Coalitions in City Elections Involving Minority Candidates

In this research I examine the electoral coalitions of minority candidates elected citywide. The focus is on the election of a Hispanic as mayor and a black as city auditor of Denver. Although the coalitions that elected the two minority candidates are similar in many respects, there are some notable differences. Perhaps most interesting are the levels of black support for the Hispanic candidate as compared to the Hispanic support for the black candidate. And the level of nonminority support for the black auditor candidate is somewhat higher than that for the Hispanic mayoral candidate. These findings are integrally important but there are also broader implications.
Performance-related pay in Chinese professional sports

There have been numerous research studies and discussions of performance-related pay (PRP) in the human resource management literature, but very little research on PRP has included samples from non-Western societies. Moreover, few have studied PRP in the sport sector. The present study supports an expectancy model framework for PRP for professional athletes in China. The findings indicate the importance of the valence for monetary incentives, the instrumentality of performance for these incentives and clear individual and group objectives for improving performance. Comparisons for individual versus team and for females versus males yield important differences in the perception of the components of PRP programmes.
Debt Financing, Soft Budget Constraints, and Government Ownership: Evidence from China

Debt financing is expected to improve the quality of corporate governance, but we find, using a large sample of public listed companies (PLCs) from China, that an increase in bank loans increases the size of managerial perks and free cash flows and decreases corporate efficiency. We find that bank lending facilitates managerial exploitation of corporate wealth in government-controlled firms, but constrains managerial agency costs in firms controlled by private owners. We argue that the failure of corporate governance may derive from the shared government ownership of lenders and borrowers, which nurtures soft budget constraints.
Educational Expansion and Its Consequences for Vertical and Horizontal Inequalities in Access to Higher Education in West Germany

For scholars of social stratification one of the key questions regarding educational expansion is whether it diminishes or magnifies existing inequalities in educational attainment. The effect of expansion on educational inequality in tertiary education is of particular importance, as tertiary education has become increasingly relevant for labour market prospects and life course opportunities. Our article studies the access to tertiary education of students with different social origins in light of educational expansion in Germany. First, we examine inequalities in access to four vertical alternatives of postsecondary education by means of multinomial regression with national data from four school-leaver surveys from 1983, 1990, 1994, and 1999. Second, for those students who enrol at a tertiary institution, effects of social origin on horizontal choices of fields of study are analysed. Results show that unequal opportunities to access postsecondary and tertiary institutions remain constant at a high level. Likewise, social background effects have not changed over time for the choice of field of study. Thus, students from different social backgrounds did not change their educational strategies irrespective of the ongoing expansion of secondary and tertiary education.
Bone Mineral Density in the Lumbar Spine as Determined by Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry

Purpose: To compare bone mineral in the lumbar spine as measured by either consecutive regional or whole-body dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and to develop models that predict regional results from whole-body results. Material and Methods: In 180 children and young adults, bone mineral in the lumbar spine was measured by a Hologic QDR-1000/W DXA scanner, using either whole-body software (which can give data for the lumbar spine subregion) or dedicated lumbar spine software. Data on 139 persons were used to compare the two methods and to develop models that predict the result of a regional scan from the result of a whole-body scan. Data on the remaining 41 persons were used to control these models. Results: Bone mineral content, bone area, and bone mineral areal density (BMDA) of the lumbar spine were measured significantly lower by whole-body scans than by regional scans (p<0.0001). the difference was larger for the lower values of bone area and BMDA. We developed models that predicted lumbar spine BMDA from whole-body results. When these models were controlled in another group, the mean error between the methods was non-significant and the error was unrelated to the BMDA value. However, the variance of the error was only minimally reduced. Conclusions: Lumbar spine bone mineral was measured significantly lower by whole-body DXA than by regional DXA. Based on local data, models were developed that removed the significant difference between the methods.
Discovering the nature and extent of human capital disclosure, and investigating the drivers of reporting: evidence from an emerging market

The main purpose of this study is to: 1) discover the nature and extent of human capital (HC) reporting practices of manufacturing companies listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE), Turkey; 2) identify the factors associated with HC reporting. The study was conducted by analysing the contents of annual reports for the year 2010. The findings provide evidence of a positive association between HC disclosure level and the variables such as type of industry, firm size, auditing firm size, listing age. However, profitability, leverage, proportion of independent directors on the board, and ownership diffusion were found to have insignificant association with the extent of HC disclosure. The paper contributes to the HC disclosure literature by providing empirical evidence of the nature and extent of HC reporting in an emerging market context, and its drivers.
A model for student mentoring in business schools

Purpose – The essence of management education lies in preparing and enabling the students to evolve cognitively, affectively and behaviorally into capable ones equipped to meet and manage challenges from within and outside their organisations or workplaces. Mentoring, as pedagogy, results in enhancing effectiveness of B‐schools (Institutions offering MBA program) in ensuring the transformation of students into professionals. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and evaluate the formal and teacher‐initiated student mentoring in B‐schools in Kerala in terms of the designated activities, to establish effectiveness of mentoring as outcomes of faculty‐related antecedents and mentoring activities, and to demonstrate the effectiveness in terms of the psycho‐social changes of students.Design/methodology/approach – This research employed a conclusive approach that combined the features of descriptive and explanatory research designs. The respondents of the study comprised 141 permanent teachers, 327 first‐year .
An EM Algorithm for Conditionally Heteroscedastic Factor Models

This article discusses the application of the EM algorithm to factor models with dynamic heteroscedasticity in the common factors. It demonstrates that the EM algorithm reduces the computational burden so much that researchers can estimate such models with many series. Two empirical applications with 11 and 266 stock returns are presented, confirming that the EM algorithm yields significant speed gains and that it makes unnecessary the computation of good initial values. Near the optimum, however, it slows down significantly. Then, the best practical strategy is to switch to a first-derivative-based method.
Comparison of postoperative stump management: plaster vs. soft dressings.

A study of 182 diabetic, largely geriatric, amputees has been presented to compare three different methods of postoperative care. In random selected groups, a standard soft dressing was compared with a rigid plaster dressing and both were then compared with plaster rigid dressing with an ambulatory pylon attached. The patient population was relatively homogeneous in that they all bore the diagnosis of diabetes. When rigid dressings were applied, they were provided by prosthetists trained specifically for this method of care. The results of this study support the view that the rigid dressing and ambulation do not deter wound healing and probably are a positive factor in achieving a healed wound and a physical and mental attitude able to accept the prosthetic use. However, additional evidence supports the idea that immediate ambulation may be an early deterrent factor to healing and should be delayed for several weeks. The rate of prosthetic use in this study has been greatly improved when compared with previous experience with essentially the same type of patient population ten years ago. Two major reasons for this improvement are the more frequent use of the below-the-knee amputation and the early use of temporary, total-contact prosthetic devices.
Current practices and needs in primary schools in Ireland and an exploration of whether there is need for a whole-school positive behaviour support programme

This research examines current practices and needs in relation to behaviour support in selected primary schools in the Republic of Ireland and examines whether practices and needs differ depending on location, school gender and perspectives of respondents. It seeks to determine whether the needs could be met with a whole-school positive behaviour support programme. Whole-school positive behaviour support is underpinned by two psychological theories, namely Behaviourism and Systems Change. The three-staged methodological approach involved Department of Education and Science (DES) Primary School Directory for eligible schools, qualitative and quantitative data, with a combination of questionnaires, interviews and focus-group interviews with principals, teachers and pupils. The majority of respondents agreed that current practices in behaviour support at school-level included the following: behaviour rules are enforced consistently, staff roles are clear and school behaviour rules are fair. On whether current practices differed between location, school gender and perspective, no significant differences were found in relation to location but significant differences were found in school gender on two variables and on perspective of respondents on all three variables. The most important needs according to principals and teachers were consistency between school staff and rules systematically taught. Principals also chose behaviour management training for school personnel while teachers chose rewards and consequences. Pupils chose respect between pupils and teachers, social skills taught, rewards and consequences, and consistency between school staff. On whether needs differed depending on location, school gender and perspective, no significant difference was noted by respondents in relation to location on the most important needs. No significant difference in school gender was noted except on the offer of a school behaviour programme. However, significant differences were found depending on perspective of respondents on rules systematically taught, consistency between school staff, rewards and consequences and respect between pupils and teachers. The research concluded that a Whole-School Positive Behaviour Support Programme would be a good fit for Irish primary schools as it answered the needs highlighted by respondents. Additionally, it is flexible and can accommodate each school‟s unique ethos and culture. The research concluded with recommendations at macro and micro levels.
Is the Pro-Network Bias Justified?

The academic literature, policy makers, and international organizations often emphasize the value of networks that, allegedly, may contribute to subcontractor upgrading, innovation, and economic welfare. By contrast, it is difficult to assess whether engagement in production outsourcing networks also accrues some advantages to outsourcers (contractors). To research differences between these organizations and vertically integrated organizations, we analyzed a sample of 1,031 industrial plants, statistically representative of firms with more than 50 employees in Spain’s manufacturing industry. We used t-tests, nonparametric tests, and chi-square tests, and hypotheses were tested for three subsets of companies, classified by the R&D intensity of the industry. In each set of industries, subcontracting is systematically associated with small batch production. By contrast, vertically integrated plants are more inclined to use mass production. In every type of industry, subcontracting is a form of governance especially efficient for the diffusion of new technology. Plants that subcontract production are more likely than integrated plants to adopt advanced manufacturing technology, whatever the R&D intensity of the industry. We conclude that outsourcers seem better prepared than vertically integrated organizations to meet customers’ requirements but employment of subcontracting do not lower necessarily their technology needs—a widespread “pro-network” argument.
Signaling Quality by Selling Through a Reputable Retailer: An Example of Renting the Reputation of Another Agent

This paper gives an example of renting the reputation of another agent to signal quality. We show that in a "maximally" separating equilibrium, manufacturers of high quality products distribute through retailers with strong reputation reputable retailers, while manufacturers of low quality products distribute through retailers with no reputation discounters. In this way, even if high quality manufacturers have no reputation of their own to post as bond, they can signal quality by posting the reputation of the retailers. In equilibrium, reputable retailers never default on their reputation. We also show that it pays the retailers to invest in reputation, as reputable retailers earn profits bounded away from zero under endogenous sequential entry, while the discounters' profits are zero.
Secondary metabolites of Centaurea calolepis and evaluation of cnicin for anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and cytotoxic activities

Context: Centaurea L. (Astreaceae) species are used as herbal remedies in Turkey. Centaurea calolepis Boiss. is an endemic species of Anatolia that has not been subjected to phytochemical studies except essential oil analysis. Objective: Secondary metabolite determination, isolation and structure elucidation of pure compounds were performed on C. calolepis. Cnicin, which is the main component of several Centaurea species, was tested for its in vitro anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and cytotoxic activities. Materials and methods: Chloroform and methanol extracts of the aerial parts of C. calolepis were subjected to isolation process using column chromatography. The structures of the compounds were characterized by 1D- and 2D-NMR experiments. Thin–layer chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography were used in determination of phenolics. Cnicin was subjected to a panel of cellular assays to test for inhibition of nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), reactive oxygen species and cytotoxicity. Results: Cnicin, lucenin-2, schaftoside and 3-O-feruloylquinic acid were isolated from C. calolepis extracts. Vicenin-2, vitexin, isovitexin, homoorientin, rutin, orientin, luteolin-7-O-glycoside and chlorogenic acid were determined in fractions. Cnicin showed inhibition of NF-κB and inhibition of iNOS activity with IC50 Values of 1.8 and 6.5 µM, respectively. Cytotoxic activity of cnicin was observed toward pig kidney epithelial (LLC-PK11), human malignant melanoma (SK-MEL) and human ductal carcinoma (BT-549) cells with IC50 values of 23.3, 14.0 and 18.3 µM, respectively. Discussion and conclusion: This is the first detailed report of secondary metabolites of C. calolepis. Evaluation of biological activity of cnicin establishes the potential of this compound as an anti-inflammatory and cytotoxic agent.