Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protein C −1641 AA is associated with decreased survival and more organ dysfunction in severe sepsis*

Objective: Protein C contains an A/G polymorphism at position −1641 and a C/T polymorphism at −1654 associated with risk of deep venous thrombosis. We tested the hypothesis that these polymorphisms are associated with altered outcome in patients having severe sepsis, in which protein C is a central molecule. Design: Prospective cohorts, gene‐association study. Setting: Tertiary care medical/surgical intensive care unit. Patients: We first recruited a derivation cohort of patients having severe sepsis (n = 62). A second replication cohort was similarly defined but larger (n = 402). We tested for biological plausibility in a third cohort of post–cardiopulmonary bypass patients (n = 61). Interventions: Patients were genotyped at protein C −1641 and −1654. Measurements and Main Results: The primary outcome variable was survival in cohorts 1 and 2 and postoperative serum interleukin‐6 concentration in cohort 3. Severity of individual organ dysfunctions and systemic inflammation were secondary outcome variables. In the first derivation cohort, the protein C −1641 AA genotype was associated with decreased 28‐day survival (p < .05). This finding was confirmed in the much larger replication cohort of patients having severe sepsis (p = .028). In addition, the protein C −1641 AA genotype was associated with significantly more organ dysfunction and more clinical evidence of systemic inflammation (p < .05). Furthermore, the −1641 AA genotype was associated with increased serum interleukin‐6 at 4 and 24 hrs after cardiopulmonary bypass (p = .024). There was no association of −1654 A/G with phenotype in any cohort. Conclusions: Protein C −1641 AA genotype is associated with decreased survival, more organ dysfunction, and more systemic inflammation in patients having severe sepsis and with increased interleukin‐6 levels after cardiopulmonary bypass surgery.
Competition, Choice and Pupil Achievement

Competition and choice in education have found growing support from both policy makers and academics over the past decades. Yet, evidence on the actual benefits of market-oriented reforms is at best mixed. Moreover, while the economic rationale for choice and competition is clear, there is rarely an attempt to distinguish between the two concepts. In this paper, we study whether primary schools in England facing more competition perform better than those in a more monopolistic situation, and whether pupils with wider range of choices achieve more than those whose choice is more limited. In simple least squares regression models, we find little evidence of a link between choice and attainment, but find a small positive association between competition and school performance. Yet, this could be related to endogenous school location or pupil sorting. In fact, our instrumental variable strategy, based on discontinuities generated by admissions district boundaries, suggests that the performance gains from greater pupil choice and school competition are limited. Only when we restrict our attention to religious schools and their competitive position in relation to other faith schools do we find evidence of a causal link between competition and pupil achievement.
Determinants of Capital Structure in Emerging European Economies: Evidence from Slovenian Firms

Although empirical research has shown that some capital structure differences can be explained by modern capital structure theory in mature market economies, the forces behind capital structure decisions in emerging European economies remain a puzzle. We assume that, in these countries, the change in economic system, and therefore corporate governance, has been only gradual; other forces must be at work when firms decide on their capital structures compared to those of mature market economies. After identifying possible relevant factors in Slovenian firms, we show that throughout the period from 1999 to 2006, these factors explained the greatest part of capital structure differences. However, the explanatory power of the proposed factors is changing, which implies changing corporate governance and financial behavior of Slovenian firms during transition.
Political Incentives to Suppress Negative Information: Evidence from Chinese Listed Firms

ABSTRACT This paper tests the proposition that politicians and their affiliated firms (i.e., firms operating in their province) temporarily suppress negative information in response to political incentives. We examine the stock price behavior of Chinese listed firms around two visible political events—meetings of the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and promotions of high‐level provincial politicians—that are expected to asymmetrically increase the costs of releasing bad news. The costs create an incentive for local politicians and their affiliated firms to temporarily restrict the flow of negative information about the companies. The result will be fewer stock price crashes for the affiliated firms during these event windows, followed by an increase in crashes after the event. Consistent with these predictions, we find that the affiliated firms experience a reduction (an increase) in negative stock return skewness before (after) the event. These effects are strongest in the three‐month period directly preceding the event, among firms that are more politically connected, and when the province is dominated by faction politics and cronyism. Additional tests document a significant reduction in published newspaper articles about affected firms in advance of these political events, suggestive of a link between our observed stock price behavior and temporary shifts in the listed firms’ information environment.
Podocyte Changes after Induction of Acute Albuminuria in Mice by Anti-Aminopeptidase A mAb

Administration of a specific combination of anti-aminopeptidase A (APA) mAb (ASD-37/41) in mice induces an acute albuminuria which is independent of angiotensin II, a well-known substrate of APA. In the present experiments, we examined whether binding of the mAb initiated changes in the podocytic expression of cytoskeleton (-associated), adhesion and slit-diaphragm proteins in relation to the time course of albuminuria. In addition, we measured ultrastructurally the extent of foot process retraction (the number of foot processes per µm GBM) and the width of the slit pore between the podocytes by morphometric methods. An injection of the mAb combination ASD-37/41 induced a massive but transient albuminuria that started at 6 h, and peaked at 8 h, after which it declined. However, even at day 7 after injection of the mAbs some albuminuria was present. Injection of the combination ASD-3/41 or saline did not induce an albuminuria. Notably, we observed changes in the staining of CD2AP and podocin, two slit-pore-associated proteins that coincided with the start of the albuminuria. Nephrin staining was reduced and podocytic actin staining became more granular only at a time albuminuria was declining (24 h). The number of foot processes per µm GBM was already decreased at 4 h with a further reduction thereafter. The width of the slit pore was unchanged at the time of peak albuminuria and gradually decreased thereafter. At day 7, podocytic foot process effacement was even more prominent although albuminuria was only slightly abnormal. Expression of CD2AP was still granular. We observed however a change toward normal in the expression of podocin. Injection of saline or ASD-3/41 had no effect on the expression of podocytic proteins, the number of foot processes or width of the slit pore. Our data show that the onset of albuminuria in the anti-APA model is related to alterations in CD2AP and podocin, proteins that are important for maintaining slit-diaphragm structure and podocytic function. Extended studies at day 7 demonstrated uncoupling of albuminuria, podocytic foot process effacement and CD2AP staining. Changes in podocin more closely paralleled changes in albuminuria.
The issue of income redistribution

The issue of trade off efficiency and equity, which is represented by income redistribution, becomes increasingly debated not only in economic and social, but also in political dimension. Solution of this trade-off is virtually projected into the implementation of social policy and results achieved in macro economics policy, with the goal to define the optimal scope and character of the income redistribution processes. The submitted empirical study responds to this problem through the solution of research question concerning the existence of a relationship between the extent of selected classes of social protection expenditure (expenditure on policy of family, old age and unemployment) and the achieved level of economics development, quantified by Human Development Index (HDI). The existence of this relationship is statistically tested in the sample of 15 countries of the world economy. The research sample is heterogeneous in relation to the analysed indicators and it concerns countries with a different attained level of economics development and income redistribution policy. In most surveyed countries, based on the results of quantitative analysis was confirmed the impact of social protection expenditure on the reached level of economic development. In the area of family policy and old-age pensions this impact was positive and in the area of employment policy this impact was negative. A high level of heterogeneity of selected countries with respect to the observed aspects proves a markedly different extent and nature of redistribution processes. The findings of the research should therefore be analysed more deeply through the redistribution theory of defined compromise “trade off” between efficiency and equity. The compromise in each country depends on the character of the subparts and the models of social policy. From our perspective, these are models of family policy, labour market policy and concepts of pension policy.
Corporate Campaign Contributions, Repeat Giving, and the Rewards to Legislator Reputation*

Are politicians who follow a strategy of reputational development rewarded with high levels of corporate campaign contributions? Reputational clarity could help to reduce uncertainty about a candidate and lead to greater campaign contributions from favored interests. Alternatively, such clarity could alienate those who disagree and prevent the politician from obtaining contributions from groups on both sides of an issue. We outline an approach that considers conditions under which a politician would or would not prefer reputational development and policy‐stance clarity and consistency in the context of repeat dealing with special interests. Our proxy for reputational development is the percentage of repeat givers to a legislator. Using data on corporate political action committee (PAC) contributions to members of the U.S. House during the seven electoral cycles from 1983/84 to 1995/96, we explore a variety of alternative hypotheses and find that greater reputational development is rewarded with greater PAC contributions.
Early Discontinuance of Borderline Patients from Psychotherapy

Sixty newly hospitalized patients with borderline personality disorder who began psychotherapy were followed for 6 months. Thirty-six discontinued their therapy—most often (N =26) this was due to covert opposition, familial resistance, or angry dissatisfaction with treatment. The dropouts were healthier on some baseline measures than those who continued in therapy. Clinical implications that may diminish dropouts are discussed.
Significance of natural elicitation in developing simulated full blown speech emotion databases

The work presented in this paper investigates the significance of natural elicitation of emotions during the development of simulated full blown emotion speech databases emotion analysis. A subset of primary emotions such as anger, happy and sad emotions along with neutral utterances are used in the present work. The first part of the work discusses the development of a simulated full blown emotion database by selecting 50 emotionally biased prompts for the recording the emotional speech data in Tamil language. For the comparative study, another simulated emotion database is developed by recording 50 neutral utterances for recording the emotion speech from the same speakers. The second part of the work is the comparison of emotion recognition performance of the simulated emotion speech databases using the basic Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based system with mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC). A significant variations in the recognition rates of different emotions are observed for both the databases with emotionally biased utterances and emotionally neutral emotion utterances. Where the emotionally biased utterances observed to be more effective in discriminating emotions than emotionally neutral simulated emotion database. Also, the emotion recognition rates obtained for the simulated emotionally neutral emotion utterances follow the same trend as that of the classical German full blown simulated emotion database.
Recovering Stockkeeping-Unit-Level Preferences and Response Sensitivities from Market Share Models Estimated on Item Aggregates

The authors propose a new approach to obtaining stockkeeping-unit (SKU)-level preferences and response sensitivities. The authors distinguish an attribute-level model, in which the unit of analysis is the market share for an alternative created by aggregation (e.g., Colgate toothpaste), from a truly disaggregate SKU-level model, and they establish an analytical relationship between parameters that they obtain from the two models. The authors show that SKU-level parameters can be recovered by calculation from estimated attribute-level parameters, circumventing the need for direct estimation of the more complex SKU-level model. They calibrate the store data market share model using 98 weeks of data for ten brands and 168 SKUs of toothpaste. Rather than estimate 168 preference parameters (when there is an “outside” alternative in addition to the 168 “inside” ones), it is only necessary to estimate ten brand-preference parameters from which the 168 parameters can be computed, as long as share and marketing-mix data are available at the SKU level. Covariate effects, such as marketing-mix response parameters, can be recovered in a similar fashion. Holdout tests demonstrate superior predictive performance, and the authors discuss implications for the derivation of elasticities for new SKU introductions.
Micro Approaches to Foreign Exchange Determination

Micro-based exchange-rate research examines the determination and behavior of spot exchange rates in an environment that replicates the key features of trading in the foreign exchange (FX) market. Traditional macro exchange-rate models play little attention to how trading in the FX market actually takes place. The implicit assumption is that the details of trading are unimportant for the behavior of exchange rates over months, quarters or longer. Micro-based models, by contrast, examine how information relevant to the pricing of FX becomes reflected in the spot exchange rate via the trading process. According to this view, trading is not an ancillary market activity that can be ignored when considering exchange-rate behavior. Rather, trading is an integral part of the process through which spot rates are determined and evolve. The past decade of micro-based research has uncovered a robust and strong empirical relation between exchange rates and measures of FX trading activity. One measure in particular, order flow (i.e., the net of buyer- and seller-initiated FX trades) appears as the proximate driver of exchange-rate changes over horizons ranging from a few minutes to a few months. This finding supports the view that trading is an integral part of exchange-rate determination. It also stands in stark contrast to the well-known deficiencies of macro models in accounting for exchange-rate variations over horizons shorter than a couple of years. In this paper we provide an overview of micro-based research on exchange-rate determination. We survey both models focusing on partial equilibrium, the traditional domain of microstructure research, and recent research that focuses on the link between currency trading and macroeconomic conditions in the general equilibrium setting of modern macroeconomic models. We believe micro-based research is making some progress towards understanding the links between macroeconomic conditions and the behavior of exchange rates over macro- and policy-relevant horizons.
Graft Tensioning During Knee Ligament Reconstruction: Principles and Practice

Abstract Failure to correctly tension grafts may overconstrain or underconstrain the knee, potentially predisposing the patient to deteriorating clinical and/or radiographic results over time. Knee ligament reconstruction requires a fundamental understanding of native anatomy, ligament biomechanics, and principles of graft tensioning. A successful strategy for graft tensioning takes into account the specific biomechanics of the ligament or ligaments in question, the mechanical properties of the graft selected, the chosen fixation method, the selected tensioning method (ie, manual or mechanical), and the overall goal of the reconstruction (ie, isometry versus anisometry).
Relational capabilities for value co‐creation and innovation in SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relational capabilities developed by small and medium‐sized suppliers in relationships with larger customers and to explore the influences of these relational capabilities on value co‐creation and innovation.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a framework to evaluate the types of relational capabilities developed by small and medium‐sized suppliers that enable them to manage in relationships with larger customers in the context of changing relationship requirements in the organic food sector. The methodology employed involves in‐depth case studies of small and medium‐sized UK organic food suppliers working in relationships with large retail supermarket customers.Findings – The findings suggest that the identified set of relational capabilities may be employed by small and medium‐sized suppliers to enable them to inform and support innovation and the implementation of initiatives to create value in the eyes of their current and potential cu.
Customer satisfaction, corporate image, and service quality in professional services

This study explores the impact of corporate image and service quality on customer satisfaction in the professional service industries. Data were collected on audit firms, sending a questionnaire to financial executives of leading Italian companies. The results show that the most important variable explaining customer satisfaction was the apparent effectiveness of the audit firm. In relation to service quality, managers' satisfaction was primarily driven by their perception of audit firm's work as a useful value-adding service. The length of audit firm–auditee relation, the location of the auditor's office, and the financial executive's personal characteristics were also significant drivers of customer satisfaction.
C ROSSMODAL AGNOSIA FOR FAMILIAR PEOPLE AS A CONSEQUENCE OF RIGHT INFERO POLAR TEMPORAL ATROPHY

A 60-year-old, right-handed woman, with no focal brain lesions, suffered from a progressive impairment in recognising people of personal relevance and public figures familiar to her in the premorbid period. The patient did not suffer from general cognitive deterioration. There was no ecological or clear psychometric evidence of visuoperceptual or visuospatial deficits. Her defective person recognition was not overcome by extra-facial (e.g., observing animated people in their usual surroundings) or extra-visual information (e.g., listening to the voice). Moreover, presenting the correct name in the presence of an unrecognised familiar person failed to prompt her familiarity judgement, or retrieval of the relevant biographical knowledge. The patient also had some recognition difficulties with famous buildings and songs as well as with some common objects. It is argued that the patient's difficulty in identifying familiar people was the consequence of progressive loss of stored exemplars of familiar persons and perhaps also of some other “unique items” (famous songs and monuments) in an independent subsystem of semantics that we term “exemplar semantics. ” We discuss the associative (semantic) nature and specificity of the deficit in person knowledge, the possible top-down negative influences of the loss of exemplars in the person recognition system, and the link between the disorders and the right/left temporal lobe.
The Legislative Impact of Divided Government

Theory: The best test of the impact of divided government on legislative gridlock is to examine seriously considered, potentially important legislation that failed to pass under conditions of divided and unified government. To do so requires separate analyses of legislation the president opposes and supports. Hypotheses: Divided government will be associated with the president opposing more legislation and with more legislation the president opposes failing to pass. It will not be associated with the president supporting less legislation or with more legislation the president supports failing to pass. Important legislation is more likely to fail to pass under divided government. Methods: We used regression analysis of the failure of legislation to pass and the relative success of legislation over the 1947-92 period. Results: Presidents oppose significant legislation more often under divided government, and much more important legislation fails to pass under divided government than under unified government. Furthermore, the odds of important legislation failing to pass are considerably greater under divided government. However, there seems to be no relationship between divided government and the amount of significant legislation the administration supports or that passes.
Have leveraged and traditional ETFs impacted the volatility of real estate stock prices?

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), including the innovative leveraged (long and inverse) types, and the ever more creative traditional versions, are accelerating in popularity as preferred investment and trading vehicles. Real estate, a major investment sector, has been made more accessible through these tools. This study investigates if the introduction of real estate ETFs is impacting the volatility of their underlying real estate stocks. Tests conclude that the introduction of leveraged (long and inverse) and traditional real estate and real estate related ETFs, linked to the Dow Jones US Real Estate and Financial Indices and the leveraged (long and inverse) ETFs, benchmarked to the Russell 1000 Financial Services Index, significantly increased the volatility in their component real estate stock prices. The leveraged ETFs tied to the Dow Jones US Real Estate and Financial Indices caused the highest volatility, approximately tripling the volatility in the underlying real estate securities. Traditional ETFs were second, causing slightly more than a 70% increase in volatility, while the leveraged ETFs linked to the Russell 1000 Financial Services Index, having induced a 50% increase in volatility, were third. The increased volatility could not be attributed to any other external event.