Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wafer bonded 1.55 μm vertical-cavity lasers with continuous-wave operation up to 105 °C

We report 105 °C continuous-wave, electrically pumped operation of a 1526 nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser. An InP/InGaAsP active region was wafer bonded to GaAs/AlGaAs mirrors, with a superlattice barrier to reduce the number of nonradiative recombination centers in the bonded active region.
Monoclonal antibodies to αVβ3 (7E3 and LM609) inhibit sickle red blood cell–endothelium interactions induced by platelet-activating factor

Abnormal interaction of sickle red blood cells (SS RBC) with the vascular endothelium has been implicated as a factor in the initiation of vasoocclusion in sickle cell anemia. Both von Willebrand factor (vWf) and thrombospondin (TSP) play important roles in mediating SS RBC-endothelium interaction and can bind to the endothelium via alphaVbeta3 receptors. We have used monoclonal antibodies (MoAb) directed against alphaVbeta3 and alphaIIbbeta3 (GPIIb/IIIa) integrins to dissect the role of these integrins in SS RBC adhesion. The murine MoAb 7E3 inhibits both alphaVbeta3 and alphaIIbbeta3 (GPIIb/IIIa), whereas MoAb LM609 selectively inhibits alphaVbeta3, and MoAb 10E5 binds only to alphaIIbbeta3. In this study, we have tested the capacity of these MoAbs to block platelet-activating factor (PAF)-induced SS RBC adhesion in the ex vivo mesocecum vasculature of the rat. Infusion of washed SS RBC in preparations treated with PAF (200 pg/mL), with or without a control antibody, resulted in extensive adhesion of these cells in venules, accompanied by frequent postcapillary blockage and increased peripheral resistance units (PRU). PAF also caused increased endothelial surface and interendothelial expression of endothelial vWf. Importantly, pretreatment ofthe vasculature with either MoAb 7E3 F(ab')(2) or LM609, but not 10E5 F(ab')(2), after PAF almost completely inhibited SS RBC adhesion in postcapillary venules, the sites of maximal adhesion and frequent blockage. The inhibition of adhesion with 7E3 or LM609 was accompanied by smaller increases in PRU and shorter pressure-flow recovery times. Thus, blockade of alphaVbeta3 may constitute a potential therapeutic approach to prevent SS RBC-endothelium interactions under flow conditions. (Blood. 2000;95:368-374)
Are Transitional Vertebra and Spina Bifida Occulta Related with Lumbar Disc Herniation and Clinical Parameters in Young Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain?

OBJECTIVE Lumbosacral transitional vertebra (LSTV) and spina bifida occulta (SBO) are widespread within the lumbosacral spine. Their connection to lumbar disc herniation (LDH) and/or lower back pain has been debated in the current literature; however, there is no consensus. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between the frequency of LSTV and SBO with that of LDH among young patients with chronic lower back pain. STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 1094 patients with lower back pain, aged between 20 and 40 years, with lower back pain history persisting for longer than 12 weeks were studied. All the patients in the study were evaluated with standard pelvic radiographs and lumbar vertebra magnetic resonance imaging. The severity of pain was measured using the visual analog scale, and the effect of lower back pain on daily life activities was measured using the Oswestry disability index. The patients were separated into two groups: Group 1 consisted of patients without LDH, and Group 2 consisted of patients with LDH. Additionally, these two groups were separated into three subgroups: Non-LSTV-SBO, LSTV, and SBO. RESULTS It was determined that LSTV frequency was significantly higher (p=0.004) in the lumbar disc herniation group 2. In addition, the existence of LSTV increased the risk of lower back pain (p<0.001, p<0.001) and disability (p<0.001, p<0.001) in young patients with and without LDH or not. However, the presence of SBO did not increase lower back pain (p=0.251, p=0.200) and disability (p=0.134, p=0.161) in both groups. CONCLUSION A relationship was detected between the frequency of LDH and LSTV in young patients with chronic lower back pain between the ages of 20 and 40 years. Also, the presence of LSTV was found to increase the risk of lower back pain and disability.
An evidence based hypothesis on the existence of two pathways of mitochondrial crista formation

Metabolic function and architecture of mitochondria are intimately linked. More than 60 years ago, cristae were discovered as characteristic elements of mitochondria that harbor the protein complexes of oxidative phosphorylation, but how cristae are formed, remained an open question. Here we present experimental results obtained with yeast that support a novel hypothesis on the existence of two molecular pathways that lead to the generation of lamellar and tubular cristae. Formation of lamellar cristae depends on the mitochondrial fusion machinery through a pathway that is required also for homeostasis of mitochondria and mitochondrial DNA. Tubular cristae are formed via invaginations of the inner boundary membrane by a pathway independent of the fusion machinery. Dimerization of the F1FO-ATP synthase and the presence of the MICOS complex are necessary for both pathways. The proposed hypothesis is suggested to apply also to higher eukaryotes, since the key components are conserved in structure and function throughout evolution. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.18853. 001
Integrity Culture and Analyst Forecast Quality

This study examines the relationship between financial institutions’ integrity culture and analysts’ forecast accuracy. Integrity culture represents the extent to which norms and values within a financial institution promote high ethical standards and honesty. Using data collected from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), I measure the weakness of integrity culture in financial institutions based on security code violations arising in business areas unrelated to equity research. I find that FINRA violations are associated with lower quality forecasts, and that these results are robust to a host of alternative explanations, including poor internal controls, weak governance, and other cultural forces. Specifically, violations are associated with less accurate, more strategically biased and less informative earnings forecasts. This study sheds light on how cultural forces can influence the behavior of security analysts.
Robotic trans‐axillary and retro‐auricular thyroid surgery

Remote access approaches for thyroid surgery using surgical incisions placed outside the neck, including the axillary, chest and the retro‐auricular region have gained interest due to the social stigmatization of young females with a visible neck scar. These novel approaches have been reported to be safe and feasible approaches for thyroid surgery in a select group of patients. Herein, we will discuss different aspects of the current robotic approaches. J. Surg. Oncol. 2015; 112:243–249. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Dependence of Outage Probability of Cooperative Systems with Single Relay Selection on Channel Correlation

The relay selection method is a promising technique for improving the performance of cooperative systems. Most of the existing studies assume that wireless channels are statistically independent. However, in reality, channel correlation is more likely to be non-negligible. In this study, we investigate the dependence of the performance of cooperative systems with single relay selection in equally correlated environments. A tight upper bound of the system outage probability is given as a function of the channel correlation coefficients. We show that even though the system performance is considerably degraded in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region when the channel correlations are sufficiently large, yet less than one, the system still achieves a diversity order equal to the number of available relays.
PENGARUH PERPUTARAN KAS, PIUTANG, PERSEDIAAN TERHADAP PROFITABILITAS PADA PERUSAHAAN SEMEN DI BEI

The purpose research is to examine cash turnover, account receivable turnover and inventory turnover has significant influence to the profitability to the cement companies which are listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange. The population is all cement companies which are listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange. 3 companies which have been selected by the researcher are: PT. Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa, PT.Ssemen Gresik (Persero) Tbk and PT Holcim Indonesia Tbk. The sample collection technique is performed by using probability sampling with cluster sampling technique. The analysis technique uses multiple linear regressions. The examination result of analysis of variance gains f value 4.733 with significant level 0.021, thus the model which has been generated is good and can be used for the following analysis. While partially the result of t test shows that the significant level which has been obtained from independent variable is for cash turnover is 0.004, account receivable turnover 0.096, and inventory turnover 0.870. This is shown by cash turnover has significant influence to the profitability; while account receivable turnover and inventory turnover has no significant influence to the profitability. Keywords: cash turnover, account receivable turnover, inventory turnover and profitability
Intensive therapy with peripheral blood progenitor cell transplantation in 60 patients with poor-prognosis follicular lymphoma.

Intensive therapy, mainly with purged autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT), has been proposed in recent years as consolidation treatment in young patients with follicular lymphoma. Reported experience with transplantation of peripheral blood progenitor cells (PBPC) is, so far, limited. The feasibility and the therapeutic efficacy of intensive therapy followed by unpurged autologous PBPC reinfusion were evaluated in 60 patients with poor-prognosis follicular lymphoma. Twelve patients were in first partial remission (PR), 34 were in second partial or complete remission (CR), and 14 were in subsequent progression. At the time of the procedure, 39 patients (65%) had persistent bone marrow involvement, 49 patients (82%) were in PR, and 16 patients had presented with a histologic transformation (HT). PBPC were collected after chemotherapy followed by granulocyte (G) colony-stimulating factor (CSF) or granulocyte-macrophage (GM)-CSF in 50 patients. Conditioning regimens included high-dose chemotherapy alone (14 patients); mainly the BCNU, etoposide, aracytine, melphalan [BEAM] regimen), or cyclophosphamide with or without etoposide plus total body irradiation (46 patients). The median time to reach a neutrophil count greater than 0.5 x 10(9)/L was 13 days. There were five treatment-related deaths, with four being associated with a delayed engraftment and all occurring in patients in third or subsequent progression. At a median follow-up of 21 months, 48 patients were still alive, 18 relapsed, and seven died of lymphomas progression. Estimated 2-year overall survival (OS) and failure-free survival (FFS) rates were 86% and 53%, respectively, without or plateau. Patients treated in PR1 or PR2/CR2 had a significantly longer rate of OS and FFS than those treated in subsequent progression (P = .002 and P = .001, respectively), whereas age, response to salvage treatment, presence or absence of residual bone marrow involvement, or conditioning regimen had no influence on outcome. Patients with HT tended to have a worse FFS rate (P = .04) without an OS difference. Along with an unusual rate of engraftment failure, the poor FFS observed in heavily pretreated patients suggests that intensive therapy should be performed early in the course of the disease. Given the high percentage of patients intensified in PR with residual bone marrow involvement, our results are comparable with those achieved with ABMT published to date. Prospective trials are warranted to compare this strategy with standard therapy in patients with relapsing or PR follicular lymphoma.
Alcohol’s Effect on Lactation

Although pregnant women are discouraged from drinking alcohol because of alcohol’s detrimental effect on fetal development, the lore of many cultures encourages lactating women to drink alcohol to optimize breast milk production and infant nutrition. In contrast to this folklore, however, studies demonstrate that maternal alcohol consumption may slightly reduce milk production. Furthermore, some of the alcohol consumed by a lactating woman is transferred to her milk and thus consumed by the infant. This alcohol consumption may adversely affect the infant’s sleep and gross motor development and influence early learning about alcohol. Based on this science, it would seem that the recommendation for a nursing mother to drink a glass of beer or wine shortly before nursing may actually be counterproductive.
Corporate Goverance Attributes and Earnings Management : A Study of Listed Companies in Nigeria

This study examines the relationship between corporate governance attributes and earnings management, using some selected listed companies at the Nigerian Stock Market (NSE) as a reference point. In particular, this study seeks to examine the effectiveness of three attributes of corporate governance in constraining earnings management practices in Nigeria. These attributes include CEO duality, board composition/independence and board size. Earnings management proxied by discretionary accruals was quantified using Modified Cross Sectional Jones Model. Control variables such as firm’s size and return on assets were introduced into the model to reduce any bias of the explanatory variables. Based on a sample 60 non-financial listed Nigerian companies for the year 2014, the results of the multivariate regression revealed that while CEO duality and board size variables exert a significant negative impact on earnings management, board composition/independence had a significant positive impact on earnings management. The paper concludes that smaller boards are most appropriate to reduce earnings management because they promote prompt decision making and they make effort to reduce earnings management and agency conflicts. We therefore recommend that the compensation package of the executives should be less aggressively linked to performance so that it does not induce managers to manipulate reported earnings in order to improve those packages.
Corporate income tax compliance costs of small and medium enterprises in Thailand

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . v CONFERENCE PAPERS/PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED FROM THESIS . vi TABLE OF CONTENTS . viii LIST OF APPENDICES . xvi LIST OF TABLES . xvii LIST OF FIGURES . xxi KEY GLOSSARY . xxii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . xxv CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION . 1 1.
Gastronomic festivals: attitude, motivation and satisfaction of the tourist

Purpose The purpose of this paper is the segmentation of the tourists who visit a gastronomic festival in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, in accordance with their perceptions with respect to gastronomy. Design/methodology/approach To achieve this objective, the methodology used in this research has been the application of a multivariate technique of grouping items and the realisation of a post hoc single variate ANOVA analysis. Findings The principal conclusions resulting from this research are focussed on the segmentation of the tourists in three different groups and how the travellers’ interest in gastronomy leads to greater satisfaction with the destination. Practical implications The main practical implications are centred on better understanding of the key factors of how gastronomy can reinforce a tourist destination and produce greater satisfaction for the traveller. Originality/value Gastronomy is used as a source of inspiration in tourist destinations. This research reinforces this theme, taking on the study of a gastronomic festival in an important business destination, such as the city of Guayaquil, in a geographic area, Latin America, characterised by a recognised gastronomy but still little studied in the scientific literature.
Appalachian women's perceptions of their community's health threats.

CONTEXT Decades of behavioral research suggest that awareness of health threats is a necessary precursor to engage in health promotion and disease prevention, findings that can be extended to the community level. PURPOSE We sought to better understand local perspectives on the main health concerns of rural Appalachian communities in order to identify the key health priorities. While Kentucky Appalachian communities are often described as suffering from substandard health, resource, and socioeconomic indicators, strong traditions of community mobilization make possible positive, home-grown change. METHODS To assess what women, the key health gatekeepers, perceive as the most significant health threats to their rural communities, 10 focus groups were held with 52 Appalachian women from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Tape-recorded narratives were content analyzed and a codebook was developed. Measures designed to increase data trustworthiness included member checks, negative case evidence, and multiple coding. FINDINGS The following rank-ordered conditions emerged as posing the greatest threat to the health of rural Appalachian communities: (1) drug abuse/medication dependence; (2) cancer; (3) heart disease and diabetes (tied); (4) smoking; (5) poor diet/overweight; (6) lack of exercise; and (7) communicable diseases. These health threats were described as specific to the local environment, deriving from broad ecological problems and were connected to one another. CONCLUSION Drawing on participants' community-relevant suggestions, we suggest ways in which rural communities may begin to confront these health concerns. These suggestions range from modest, individual-level changes to broader structural-level recommendations.
Facing a dilemma: Cooperative behavior and beauty

This paper investigates the influence of physical attractiveness on cooperative behavior. We survey data from 211 episodes of a television game show and combine it with independent facial attractiveness ratings of the show’s contestants. The final of the show represents a simultaneous one-shot modified prisoner’s dilemma. Our results show that facially attractive contestants provoke cooperative behavior from their counterparts, but attractive contestants themselves do not behave differently from unattractive ones. This preferential treatment or “beauty premium” rewards attractive contestants with substantially higher monetary gains of up to £2 153. This finding applies to both sexes. But, the attractiveness effect is limited to mixed-gender interactions. Contestants are only more cooperative when facing an attractive fellow player of the opposite sex. Attractiveness also has no effect in group-decisions made by the contestants prior to the prisoner’s dilemma. Therefore people seem to show a preference to cooperate with someone towards whom they are personally attracted; and this preference reaches full effect when people lack other information on which to base their decision.
Neighborhood-Based Stopping Criterion for Contrastive Divergence

Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs) are general unsupervised learning devices to ascertain generative models of data distributions. RBMs are often trained using the Contrastive Divergence (CD) learning algorithm, an approximation to the gradient of the data log-likelihood (logL). A simple reconstruction error is often used as a stopping criterion for CD, although several authors have raised doubts concerning the feasibility of this procedure. In many cases, the evolution curve of the reconstruction error is monotonic, while the logL is not, thus indicating that the former is not a good estimator of the optimal stopping point for learning. However, not many alternatives to the reconstruction error have been discussed in the literature. An estimation of the logL of the training data based on annealed importance sampling is feasible but computationally very expensive. In this manuscript, we present a simple and cheap alternative, based on the inclusion of information contained in neighboring states to the training set, as a stopping criterion for CD learning.
Frailty as a predictor of disabilities among community-dwelling older people: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract Background: Frailty has been shown to be associated with disability in the previous studies. However, it is not clear how consistently or to how much degree frailty is actually associated with the future disability risks. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted using Embase, MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and the Cochrane Library for any prospective studies published from 2010 to September 2015 examining associations between baseline frailty status and subsequent risk of developing or worsening disabilities among community-dwelling older people. A meta-analysis was performed to synthesize pooled estimates. Results: Of 7012 studies identified through the systematic review, 20 studies were included in the meta-analysis. Twelve studies examined activities of daily living (ADL) disability risks, two studies examined instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) disability risks, and six studies examined both ADL and IADL disability risks. Overall, frail older people were more likely to develop or worsen disabilities in ADL (12 studies, pooled OR = 2.76, 95% CI = 2.23–3.44, p < 0.00001; 5 studies, pooled HR = 2.23, 95% CI = 1.42–3.49, p < 0.00001) and IADL (6 studies, pooled OR = 3.62, 95% CI = 2.32–5.64, p < 0.00001; 2 studies, pooled HR = 4.24, 95% CI = 0.85–21.28, p = 0.08). Prefrailty was also associated with incident or worsening disability risks to a lesser degree in most pooled analyses. High heterogeneity observed among 12 studies with OR of ADL disability risks for frailty was explored using subgroup analyses, which suggested methodological quality and mean age of the cohort were the possible causes. Conclusion: This systematic review meta-analysis quantitatively showed that frail older people are at higher risks of disabilities. These results are important for all related parties given population aging worldwide. Interventions for frailty are important to prevent disability and preserve physical functions, autonomy, and quality of life. Implications for Rehabilitation Although frailty has been shown to be associated with disability and considered as a precursor of disability, it is not clear how consistently or to how much degree frailty is actually associated with the future disability risks. This systematic review and meta-analysis quantitatively shows frailty is a significant predictor of incident and worsening ADL and IADL disabilities. It is a pressing priority to develop interventions for frailty to prevent disability and preserve older people’s physical functions, autonomy, and quality of life.