Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gender determination by odontometric method

Context: Gender determination is central in establishing personal identification from human skeletal remains. The study was conducted to find out the accuracy with which gender can be determined by odontometric methods. Aims: To investigate the mesiodistal (MD) and buccolingual (BL) dimensions of all the teeth of permanent dentition to find new parameters to differentiate between male and female teeth and to assess whether each type of linear measurement can be used independently in odontometric sex differentiation. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at a dental college on a composite group of 500 individuals comprising 250 males and 250 females. Impressions of upper and lower jaws were made with alginate impression material and casts prepared with dental stone. A digital Vernier calliper was used to measure the BL and MD dimensions of all the upper teeth except the third molars. Statistical Analysis Used: The results were subjected to statistical analysis using univariate analysis and linear stepwise discriminant function analysis to find the variables which discriminate gender significantly. Results: The MD and BL dimensions between males and females were statistically significant. The predicted value for correct classification of gender was also statistically significant. Conclusions: The ability to differentiate gender in the population using stepwise discriminant functions was found to be very high with 99.8% accuracy with males showing statistically larger teeth than females. This is similar to the near 100% success in gender determination using pelvic and skull bones.
Knowledge and practice of hypertensive patients as seen in a tertiary hospital in the middle belt of Nigeria.

BACKGROUND Hypertension remains the commonest non-communicable disease in Nigeria and a leading cause of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Knowledge and practice among hypertensive patients were therefore assessed as a prelude towards attaining better blood pressure control. MATERIALS AND METHOD 224 consecutive hypertensive patients were prospectively studied using a pre-tested questionnaire. RESULTS Majority of the hypertensive patients attending University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital were either traders or business men/women (44.5%). Only 35.8% had their blood pressure well controlled and about 61% were diagnosed for the first time to be hypertensive in the teaching hospital. 34% of the patients commuted a distance of more than 5 km to the hospital to receive antihypertensive care. 52% and 25% of the patients checked their blood pressure monthly and three-monthly respectively. One patient volunteered history of smoking. 48% and 51.8% knew that smoking increases the propensity to develop complications and that exercise is beneficial for the control of blood pressure respectively. Knowledge of the possible complications of hypertension was very poor as 58.9% of the patients scored less than average. Only 41.1% and 1.8% of the patients were aware that excessive salt and fat intake could adversely affect the control of hypertension respectively. CONCLUSION Blood pressure control is still unacceptably poor among hypertensive Nigerians. This may not be unconnected with the poor knowledge of hypertension and adverse practices by the patients.
Dissolved Organic Radiocarbon in the Central Pacific Ocean

We report marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations, and DOC ∆14C and δ13C values in seawater collected from the central Pacific. Surface ∆14C values are low in equatorial and polar regions where upwelling occurs and high in subtropical regions dominated by downwelling. A core feature of these data is that 14C aging of DOC (682 ± 86 14C years) and dissolved inorganic carbon (643 ± 40 14C years) in Antarctic Bottom Water between 54.0°S and 53.5°N are similar. These estimates of aging are minimum values due to mixing with deep waters. We also observe minimum ∆14C values (−550‰ to −570‰) between the depths of 2,000 and 3,500 m in the North Pacific, though the source of the low values cannot be determined at this time.
The great divide: from viscometer to vasculature.

It is traditional at the Fahraeus Award Ceremony for the previous winner to give the laudatio to the new one. This meant that my dear friend, Michel Boisseau, should have given it this year but, for personal reasons, he was unable to attend the meeting. This was sad but we all wished him well. However, it is an ill wind. and the result was that I was twice blessed in having a double laudatio, from my very old friends Dirk Seiffge and Herb Meiselman and I thank them both for their kindness. When I heard from Professor Jung that I had won the Medal I was, of course, extremely moved. I spent the bulk of my active research life involved in the field of haemorheology. It has given me immense pleasure over those years and allowed me to meet and make friends with some of the finest people that I know. It is an enormous honour, in the early stages of my retirement, to be recognised by my peer group and awarded the Medal so that I can join the previous winners (Table 1) all of whose work I greatly respect and many of whom I class as good friends. I am deeply grateful to all who have participated in honouring me this way. My only worry is that I am number thirteen; I just hope that that is not portentous! Now to the lecture; as I am recently retired from active research this is likely to be the last time that I shall write up a serious lecture given to my haemorheological friends. So I intend too indulge myself, to reminisce a little and to ride one or two of my haemorheological hobby-horses.
Municipality Budget Rules and Debt: Is the Italian Regulation Effective?

In this paper we investigate the Italian regulation on local government budget related to the European fiscal rules (the so-called Domestic Stability Pact), the Constitutional golden rule, and the pre-existing ceilings on new borrowing, with the intent to study the overall effect on local debt and investment expenditure. Our focus is on the municipality level of government. We use a dataset encompassing the main budget items of virtually all municipalities for the period 1999-2009 to perform panel estimation of the efficacy of local fiscal rules in terms of debt reduction and to detect possible unintended effects on investment spending. Empirical evidence supports the conclusion that the Italian system suffers from a lack of coordination between budget constraints and borrowing limits. Our main conclusion is that the decentralization process in Italy has not found an adequate solution yet: on the one hand, local administrations are not equipped to deal with the increased financial responsibility and the progressive sophistication of financial markets; on the other hand, central government has been inconsistent in devolving fiscal powers to municipalities while at the same time adopting multi-layered regulations to restrain local fiscal autonomy in order to pursue the overall public finance control.
Adjusted Factor-Based Performance Attribution

Factor-based performance attribution is frequently used in the asset management industry in both understanding and assessing the management of a portfolio. Unfortunately, in many cases the inferences from a standard attribution report can be misleading. One cause of this is the misclassification of factor contributions as asset-specific contributions or vice versa, due to missing factors or biased factor exposure estimates. The authors propose an adjusted factor-based performance attribution methodology that corrects for some types of biases by shifting the portion of the asset-specific contribution that is correlated with the factor contributions back into the factor portion. The authors find that, from a practical perspective, the proposed methodology results in more intuitive attributions that provide stronger support of factor-based investment mandates.
What Is the Correct Depth of Chest Compression for Infants and Children? A Radiological Study

OBJECTIVE: For infant and child resuscitation, current basic life support guidelines recommend a compression depth of one third to one half of the anteroposterior chest diameter. This study was conducted to assess the actual compression depths in infants and children when current guidelines are strictly followed. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Chest computed tomography scans of 36 infants (<1 year old) and 38 children (1–8 years old) were reviewed. Patient demographic data were collected from medical records. Measurements of the anteroposterior diameter from chest computed tomography scans were taken from the anterior skin at either the internipple line or the middle of the lower half of the sternum, perpendicular to the skin on the posterior thorax. RESULTS: In the infant group (25 boys, 11 girls), the mean age was 3.6 months. In the child-age group (21 boys, 17 girls), the mean age was 4.0 years. Compression depths were 3.4 to 5.1 cm in the infant group and 4.4 to 6.6 cm in the child group when current guidelines were followed. There was no difference in compression depths measured at internipple line versus in the lower half of the sternum. The intrathoracic structures observed beneath these 2 suggested that compression landmarks were similar. CONCLUSIONS: Radiological assessment of infants' and children's chests indicates similar or higher compression depths for infants and children versus the recommended compression depths for adults (3.8–5.1 cm) according to current guidelines. More evidence is needed to guide the proper depth of chest compression in pediatric populations.
Source apportionment of volatile organic compounds in the north-west Indo-Gangetic Plain using positive matrix factorisation model

In this study we undertook quantitative source apportionment for 32 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) measured at a suburban site in the densely populated North-West Indo-Gangetic Plain using the US EPA PMF 5.0 Model. Six sources were resolved by the PMF model namely “biofuel use and waste disposal”, “wheat-residue burning”, “industrial emissions and solvent use”, “cars”, “two-wheelers” and “mixed daytime sources”. The biofuel and waste disposal, wheat residue burning, industrial emissions and solvent use, combined traffic sources, mixed daytime sources accounted for 23.2 %, 22.4 %, 11.8 %, 5 25.1 %, and 15.7 % of the total VOC mass concentration respectively; 18.1 %, 32.4 %, 7.3 %, 21.9 %, and 20.3 % of the total O3 formation potential respectively; and 14.9 %, 13.9 %, 10.1 %, 59.0 %, and 2.2 % of the SOA formation potential, respectively. Further the factors contributed 24.6 %, 8.5 %, 20.1 %, 46.8 %, and 0 %, respectively, to the human class I carcinogen benzene and 18.4 %, 25.4 %, 5.9 %, 13.3 %, and 36.9 %, respectively, to the toxic emerging contaminant isocyanic acid. Evaluation of emission inventories using the in-situ data derived PMF solution revealed that among EDGARv4.2, REASv2.1 and 10 GAINSv5.0, the GAINSv5.0 emission inventory for year 2010, best agreed with the in-situ data derived PMF results for May 2012.
Long‐lasting allergic patch test reactions to nickel sulfate: analysis by nickel quantification and immunocytochemistry

We previously showed the median duration of positive patch test reactions to nickel sulfate(5% pet) was 9 days, and defined as long‐lasting (LLAPTR) the 14.3% of reactions that persisted for 17 Days or longer. The pathomechanisms of LLAPTR are unclear, but may involve either localized antigen persistence or abnormal down regulation of the cellular immune response. In this study, we compared (a) the nickel concentration and (b) the immunocytochemical nature of the local immune reaction, between biopsies from LLAPTR (n= 8) and normally resolving allergic patch lest reactions (NRAPTR) (n= 8) to nickel sulfate. The concentration of nickel in LLAPTR (median 0.8μg/g, μg/g, range 0.25–3.87 μg/g, mean 0.83μg/g, 95% CI 0 35–1.31) and NRAPTR (median 0.58 μg/g, range 0.2 1.85 μg/g, mean 0.88 μg/g, 95% CI 0.02 1.74) was similar. Activated T lymphocytes, expressing surface IL‐2 receptor, HLA DR, DR alpha 1, DP, DQ, and CD2>CD8>CD4 antigens, were seen throughout the dermis and occasionally infiltrating the suprabasal layer of the epidermis in all biopsies. CDI and HLA DR, DR alpha 1, DP, and DQ‐expressing Langerhans cells were present throughout the epidermis and occasionally seen in the papillary dermis. HLA DR, DR alpha 1, DP, and DQ antigen expression were also seen on the surface of non‐dendritic cells in the epidermis (probably either keratinocytes or T lymphocytes) and vascular endothelial cells in the papillary dermis. There were no significant qualitative or quantitative differences in the immuno‐cytochemical nature of the localized immune reaction between LLAPTR and NRAPTR. These findings suggest that the pathomechanism of LLAPTR to nickel sulfate is unlikely to be explained simply on the basis of nickel concentration or the nature of the localized immune reaction at the patch test site.
Feeding during dialysis—risks and uncertainties

Allowing dialysis patients to eat during the treatment is controversial. It is, therefore, no surprise that practices and policies with respect to intradialytic food consumption vary considerably from unit to unit and from country to country. Those who defend the position of feeding during dialysis reason that intradialytic meals offer a supervised and effective therapy for protein-energy wasting. Those who take the opposite view argue that intradialytic food intake should be avoided for the following three reasons. First, interventional studies show that eating during dialysis causes a clinically significant reduction in systemic blood pressure during the postprandial period and elevates the risk of symptomatic intradialytic hypotension; the latter is associated with increased mortality risk. Second, clinical studies have shown that eating during dialysis interferes with the adequacy of the delivered dialysis, whereas eating 2-3 h before the dialysis session has no impact on the efficiency of the subsequent dialysis treatment. And third, randomized studies show that eating during dialysis focus on the positive outcomes but do not adequately balance this potential benefit against the risk of intradialytic hemodynamic instability and poor quality of delivered dialysis. Even after half a century of providing long-term dialysis, definitive randomized trials that balance risks and benefits of eating during dialysis are missing. These knowledge gaps require randomized trials. Since there is a real possibility of harm with eating during dialysis, we caution that instead of encouraging the widespread use of intradialytic meals, practices and policies should focus on adequate nutrient intake during the interdialytic interval.
Linking Stakeholder Involvement to Policy Performance: Nonlinear Effects in Dutch Local Government Policy Making

Current research in public management generally hypothesizes that the involvement of external stakeholders by governments positively affects the performance of policies. Recent research, however, has demonstrated diminishing returns of involvement on performance, as well as different effects of involvement for different types of stakeholder organizations. The present article combines these insights. We distinguish between professional and client-interest stakeholder organizations, and assess the effect of their involvement on policy performance in terms of client outcomes. The hypotheses are tested using a combined longitudinal data set consisting of a representative sample of 69 Dutch local governments and 3,434 clients of the Social Support Act, which aims to increase the independent functioning of individuals with mental or physical impediments. Multilevel analyses show that only the involvement of professional stakeholder organizations is related to policy performance, with negative returns on policy performance at higher levels of involvement.
Association between dynamic cerebral autoregulation and mortality in severe head injury

The objective of the study was to test the hypothesis that dynamic cerebral pressure-autoregulation is associated with the outcome of patients with severe head injury and to derive optimal criteria for future studies on the predictive value of autoregulation indices. Repeated measurements were performed on 32 patients with severe head injury. Arterial blood pressure (ABP) was measured continuously with an intravascular catheter, intracranial pressure (ICP) was recorded with a subdural semiconductor transducer and cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) was measured with Doppler ultrasound in the middle cerebral artery. Transfer function analysis was performed on mean beat-to-beat values, using ABP or CBFV as input variables and CBFV or ICP as the output variables. A dynamic index of autoregulation (ARI) ranging between 0 and 9 was extracted from the CBFV step response for a change in ABP. No significant differences between survivors and non-survivors were found due to mean values of ICP, ABP, CPP, CBFV, pCO2, GCS, age or heart rate. The transfer functions between ABP-ICP and CBFV-ICP did not show any significant differences either. The median [lower, upper quartiles] ARI was significantly lower for non-survivors compared with survivors [4.8 (0.0, 5.9) v. 6.9 (5.9, 7.4), p = 0.004]. The correlation between ARI and GOS was also significant (r = 0.464, p = 0.011). Cohen's coefficient was optimal for a threshold of ARI = 5.86 (kappa = 0.51, p = 0.0036), leading to a sensitivity for death of 75%, specificity = 76.5%, odds ratio = 9.75 and overall precision = 75.8%. The difference in ARI values between survivors and non-survivors persisted when results were adjusted for GCS (p = 0.028). A similar analysis for the Marshall CT scale did not reach significance (p = 0.072). A logistic regression analysis confirmed that apart from the ARI, no other variables had a significant contribution to predict outcome. In this group of patients, death following severe head injury could not be explained by traditional indices of risk, but was strongly correlated to indices of dynamic cerebral pressure-autoregulation extracted by means of transfer function analysis. Future studies using a prospective design are needed to validate the predictive value of the ARI index, as estimated by transfer function analysis, in relation to death and other unfavourable outcomes.
Correction of severe anaemia using immuno‐regulated gene therapy is achieved by restoring the early erythroblast compartment

Patients with chronic renal failure usually require exogenous erythropoietin (epo) to alleviate anaemia resulting from inadequate epo production by the kidneys. We have recently shown that severe anaemia in genetically manipulated epo‐deficient mice (EpoTAg) can be corrected by adoptively transferred epo‐producing lymphocytes. The aim of this study was to investigate the precise effects of human epo administration by this route on erythropoietic development in epo‐deficient mice. The erythroblast compartments of untreated and treated EpoTAg mice were analysed in comparison with wild‐type mice. The early erythroblast population was reduced in the bone marrow of epo‐deficient mice, whilst the number of erythroid colony‐forming units (CFU‐E) was not significantly compromised. This paucity in marrow early erythroblasts was restored to normal values in treated mutant mice. In addition, the early erythroblast population was expanded in the spleens of treated animals. These findings show that the early erythroblasts are important targets of epo and that epo corrects anaemia of epo‐deficient mice by restoring marrow function and splenic erythropoiesis.
Properties of Yield Curves and Forward Curves for Affine Term Structure Models

The term structure of interest rates plays the key role in pricing of bonds. Therefore its properties are interesting for many financial analysts. However in literary sources usually a sketchy description of properties of term structure occurs. In this paper an attempt of detailed description of every possible shapes of term structure is made for the class of affine interest rate models because for these models the solutions in closed form are attainable. As basis the general model (GM) with arbitrary lower boundary for interest rate is taken. The results for well-known models the CIR model and the Vasicek model are obtained as particular cases. It is found that there is four modes for yield curve shapes. The empirical evidences are presents that are based on the parameter estimates for 13 different models of real time series of yield interest rates.
Parameterization of Applied General Equilibrium Models with Flexible Trade Specifications Based on the Armington, Krugman, and Melitz Models

This paper explains how the Armington-Krugman-Melitz supermodel developed by Dixon and Rimmer can be parameterized, and demonstrates that only two kinds of additional information are required in order to extend a standard trade model to include Melitz-type monopolistic competition and heterogeneous firms. Further, it is shown how specifying too much additional information leads to violations of the model constraints, necessitating adjustment and reconciliation of the data. Once a Melitz-type model is parameterized, a Krugman-type model can also be parameterized using the calibrated values in the Melitz-type model without any additional data. Sample code for the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) has also been prepared to promote the innovative supermodel in the AGE community.
Better Know a District: Competition, Demographics, Ideology and the Use of Pollsters in the 2010 U.S. House Elections

Why do some congressional candidates hire pollsters, while others do not? Prior work claims candidates hire them when they face close contests. This argument does not explain the selection of pollsters in uncompetitive races, especially by incumbents, who also use pollsters to monitor the ramifications of some demographic changes in their districts and ideological incongruity with the constituencies. These determinants should be evident for the use of the most prestigious pollsters, and I argue that candidates hold in higher demand those survey research specialists who have worked for party campaign committees than those without party ties. But while challengers in close races can attract the services of these firms, incumbents in some vulnerable contexts, such as facing experienced challengers, are less able to do so. This study shows that constituency conditions and voter attitudes beyond electoral competition alone shape candidate use of pollsters, who serve representational needs to the extent they are contractually tied to the party organization, which extends its influence over but does not control the political consulting industry.
Consumer Preferences for Olive-Oil Attributes: A Review of the Empirical Literature Using a Conjoint Approach

During the last decade, olive oil consumption has experienced a major breakthrough in the world, not only in producing countries but also among those who are not. Undoubtedly, this growth in consumption is a consequence of the consolidation of a cultural phenomenon established between the main producing countries (Spain, Italy and Greece), owing to the so-called Mediterranean diet1; a food concept that provides important health benefits and of which olive oil is one of the main components. The recent recognition of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) — it has declared to the Mediterranean diet ‘the intangible cultural heritage of humanity’— offers promising perspectives for the Mediterranean diet in the coming years.