Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Relationship Between the Self-Report BASC-2 Validity Indicators and Performance Validity Test Failure After Pediatric Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

In adult populations, research on methodologies to identify noncredible performance and exaggerated symptoms during neuropsychological evaluations has grown exponentially in the past two decades. Far less work has focused on methods appropriate for children. Although several recent studies have used stand-alone performance validity tests with younger populations, a near absence of pediatric work has investigated other indices to identify response bias. The present study examined the relationship between the validity scales from the self-report Behavior Assessment System for Children, Second Edition (BASC-2) and performance on the Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT), a stand-alone performance validity test. The sample consisted of 274 clinically referred patients with mild traumatic brain injuries aged 8 through 17 years. Fifty patients failed the MSVT based on actuarial criteria. The majority of these patients (92%) provided valid self-report BASC-2 profiles, with only three patients (6%) producing an invalid profile due to an elevated F index. Analysis of valid/invalid self-report BASC-2 profiles and MSVT pass/fail did not reveal a significant relationship (p = 0.471, two-tailed Fisher’s exact test). These findings suggest that performance validity tests like the MSVT provide substantively different information about the validity of a neuropsychological profile than that provided by the self-report validity scales of the BASC-2.
Innovations, wages, and profits

This paper investigates the dynamics of wages and profits and the influence innovation strategies have on them. The relationships between innovation, productivity, and distribution are modeled and estimated by employing panel data techniques. Two European innovation surveys (1994-96 and 1998-2000) are used with data at both the country and industry levels. Innovation is found to have positive effects on income dynamics beyond the role it has on productivity gains; it may weaken the distribution constraint posed by the competition between profits and wages. Profits are driven by both the Schumpeterian effects of new products and the diffusion effects of new technologies and production processes. Wages tend to grow faster in sectors where innovation expenditure is higher, but the factors affecting wages are different for high- and low-innovation sectors, suggesting that two contrasting models of technological and price competitiveness have important distributional implications.
Wireless sensor network simulation frameworks: A tutorial review: MATLAB/Simulink bests the rest

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a distributed set of sensors deployed to work together for collective sensing and possible data processing. A WSN can be used to monitor environmental behavior and structural integrity in a variety of application fields, thus becoming an integral part of the consumer electronics of smart buildings in smart cities. Due to ever-increasing population growth, along with limited natural resources, smart cities are expected to be the wave of the future. For instance, WSNs are widely used in industrial settings with machine monitoring and play an important role in monitoring the structural integrity of large buildings and bridges. This article focuses on existing WSN simulation frameworks that could be integrated with realtime hardware prototypes. We analyze and compare various such simulation frameworks, and we determine a suitable simulation environment that supports specific software packages.
Productivity Effects of Foreign Acquisitions in Swedish Manufacturing: The FDI Productivity Issue Revisited

Abstract This study analyzes the difference between foreign and domestic ownership of firms with respect to productivity. Recent literature has shown that it is important to study the counter‐factual outcome, i.e. what would the outcome be had the domestic firm never been acquired? The analysis is based on a panel of Swedish firm level data. In order to isolate the casual effects due to a takeover a propensity score matching estimator is applied to compare similar treated and untreated firms. The difference‐in‐difference estimations show that there is a positive effect of foreign acquisition on productivity. Foreign acquisitions increase the productivity in the acquired Swedish firms by between 3 and 11% depending on the estimator chosen. Moreover, this productivity difference does not occur immediately but starts between 1–5 years post acquisition.
Who's Missing the Point? A Commentary on Claims that Autistic Persons Have a Specific Deficit in Figurative Language Comprehension

It's become a caricature of autistic persons that they don't understand figurative language. Despite empirical evidence to the contrary, three of the four contributions to this special issue endorse this stereotype without question. And all four contributions attribute this supposed deficit to even shakier fallacies, such as the controversial claim that autistic people lack empathy or a “theory of mind. ” In this commentary, we begin by reviewing the literature more exhaustively than the other contributions, and we highlight a point that they missed: Autistic persons are likely to have difficulty comprehending figurative language if they also have difficulty comprehending language in general. There doesn't seem to be a specific deficit in figurative language unique to autism. We also tackle the claim that autistic people lack empathy. And we question the existence of a “theory of mind area” while demonstrating the pitfalls that ensnarl researchers when they strain to interpret differences between autistic and non-autistic brain activity as solely autistic deficits.
Exposure to chronic stress and ethnic differences in rates of bacterial vaginosis among pregnant women.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to assess the contribution of chronic social stressors to race/ethnic differences in the rate of bacterial vaginosis among pregnant women in the inner-city area. STUDY DESIGN We conducted a cross-sectional clinical prevalence study in a sample of 2304 women at the first prenatal visit (14.8 +/- 0.2 weeks of gestation). Bacterial vaginosis was diagnosed by Nugent's method. Stress was measured at the individual and community levels with the use of interviews and administrative records. Logistic regression was used to assess the effects of stress on the odds of bacterial vaginosis occurrence, after adjustment for demographic and behavioral risk. RESULTS Black women had significantly higher rates of bacterial vaginosis (64%) compared with white women (35%). Exposure to chronic stressors at the individual level differed by race (eg, 32% of the black women reported threats to personal safety compared with 13% of white women). There were significant racial differences in exposure to stress at the community level (eg, 63% of the black women lived in neighborhoods with aggravated assault rates that were above the citywide mean compared with 25% of the white women). After the adjustment for sociodemographic, behavioral risk, and perceived stress, the odds of the occurrence of bacterial vaginosis that was associated with the community level stressor of "homelessness" was significant (odds ratio, 6.7; 95% CI, 1.6-27.8). Inclusion of both individual and community level stressors reduced the black/white bacterial vaginosis odds ratio by 27%. CONCLUSION Stressful exposures are associated positively with bacterial vaginosis in pregnancy in a sample of women of low income in the inner city. The measurement of stressors at multiple levels explained a significant proportion of the racial disparity in the rates of occurrence of bacterial vaginosis.
Falls, fractures and bone density in Parkinson's disease – a cross-sectional study

Aim: Evidence suggests that falls and associated bone fractures are more frequent in patients suffering from Parkinson's disease (PD) than in the general population. In this cross-sectional study we evaluated the clinical and biochemical characteristics that are associated to falls, fractures and bone health in a population of PD subjects. Materials and methods: Forty-two consecutive subjects suffering from idiopathic PD (mild-to-moderate severity) with/without falls in the previous year were included. They were characterized as regards functional independence, balance, fear of falling, bone density (ultrasound densitometry) and plasma levels of vitamin D. Twenty-one age- and sex-matched healthy subjects were evaluated as controls. Results: We detected a greater degree of osteoporosis in PD subjects as compared to controls, more pronounced in males than in females (Z-score: M −3.8 ± 1.6, F −2.28 ± 0.92, p = 0.0006). A positive correlation was found between independence levels and bone density or vitamin D levels. Twenty seven patients (64%) reported falls in the previous year. These were associated to post-traumatic fractures in 16 subjects (59% of fallers). Women fell more than men (fallers: 20 F/7 M; non fallers: 4 F/11 M, χ² test p = 0.02), although the occurrence of post-traumatic fractures among fallers did not differ between sexes (F 11/9, M 5/2, χ² test p > 0.05). Fallers with post-traumatic fractures showed higher degrees of motor impairment. Conclusions: These findings confirm that falls and osteoporosis represent major health issues in PD, already in the middle stages of disease.
Long-horizon yield curve projections: comparison of semi-parametric and parametric approaches

Two methods for evolving forward the yield curve are evaluated and contrasted within a Monte Carlo experiment: one is originally presented by Rebonato et al. (2005) and the other by Bernadell et al. (2005). A detailed account for how to implement the models is also presented. Results suggest that the two techniques are complementary and able to capture important cross-sectional and time-series properties of observed yield curve data. Our results are of interest to practitioners in the financial markets as well as central banks who need accountable and history consistent procedures for generating long-term yield curve forecasts.
Cryogenian Glaciation and the Onset of Carbon-Isotope Decoupling

A Dip in the Carbon Pool Before the diversity of animal life exploded in the Cambrian, Earth's carbon cycle was apparently strongly altered by multiple glaciation events across the globe. Carbon isotope signatures from rocks in Australia measured by Swanson-Hysell et al. (p. 608) suggest that an organic carbon reservoir formed between two global glaciations, or “snowball Earth,” several hundred million years earlier than expected. Anoxic sulfate-limited waters, caused by increased river outputs from melting glaciers, may have prohibited bacterial respiration, allowing for the accumulation of organic carbon. As organic carbon levels dropped, CO2 was released, allowing the atmosphere to warm, preventing further glaciations, and permitting the eventual accumulation of oxygen in the oceans that led to the Cambrian explosion. A large oceanic organic carbon reservoir developed in the period between two global glaciations. Global carbon cycle perturbations throughout Earth history are frequently linked to changing paleogeography, glaciation, ocean oxygenation, and biological innovation. A pronounced carbonate carbon-isotope excursion during the Ediacaran Period (635 to 542 million years ago), accompanied by invariant or decoupled organic carbon-isotope values, has been explained with a model that relies on a large oceanic reservoir of organic carbon. We present carbonate and organic matter carbon-isotope data that demonstrate no decoupling from approximately 820 to 760 million years ago and complete decoupling between the Sturtian and Marinoan glacial events of the Cryogenian Period (approximately 720 to 635 million years ago). Growth of the organic carbon pool may be related to iron-rich and sulfate-poor deep-ocean conditions facilitated by an increase in the Fe:S ratio of the riverine flux after Sturtian glacial removal of a long-lived continental regolith.
Bundling and Entrenchment

Because corporate charters can be amended only with shareholder approval, it is widely believed that new charter provisions appear in midstream only if shareholders favor them. However, the approval requirement may fail to prevent the adoption of charter provisions disfavored by shareholders if management bundles them with measures enjoying shareholder support. This Article provides the first systematic evidence that managements have been using bundling to introduce antitakeover defenses that shareholders would likely reject if they were to vote on them separately. We study a hand-collected dataset of 393 public mergers announced during the period from 1995 through 2007. While shareholders were strongly opposed to staggered boards during this period and generally unwilling to approve charter amendments introducing a staggered board on a stand-alone basis, the deal planners often bundled the mergers we study with a move to a staggered-board structure. In mergers in which the combined firm was one of the parties, a party’s odds of being chosen to survive as the combined firm were significantly higher if it had a staggered board and the other party did not. Similarly, in mergers that combined the parties into a new firm, the new firm was significantly more likely to have a staggered board than the merging parties. Overall, we demonstrate that management has the practical ability to use bundling to obtain shareholder approval for pro-management arrangements that shareholders would not support on a stand-alone basis. We discuss the significant implications our findings have for corporate law theory and policy.
Budget emphasis, participation, task difficulty and performance: the effect of diversity within culture

Abstract Recent research on the impact of national culture on control systems had overlooked two important aspects. First, while cross-cultural studies have saturated mainly Anglo-American and Asian nations, other important cultural regions, such as the Nordic cultural group, have largely been overlooked. More importantly, the impact of the diversity within national culture, brought about by the diversity of the population, in terms of ethnic background, religion, language and egalitarianism, has also not been considered. With a low power distance and moderate individualism culture, and relatively centralised and formalised industrial relations systems which emphasise democratic work environment, Norwegian managers' budgetary participation is expected to be high. More importantly, as the Norwegian culture is old and the society homogeneous in terms of ethnic background, religion and egalitarianism, the diversity within the Norwegian culture is likely to be much lower than those of the newer, and much more ethnically diverse, societies.such as Australia and Singapore. Consequently, Norwegian managers' participation is expected to range from medium to high, rather than from low to high. Since high participation situations are common in Norway, prior studies' findings pertaining to high participation situations are expected to be supported in Norway. In contrast, since low participation situations are rare in Norway, prior studies' findings pertaining to low participation are unlikely to be supported in Norway. These expectations are supported by the results of this study.
Capitalism and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe : assessing the legacy of Communist rule

About the contributors Acknowledgments Introduction Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson Part I. Postcommunist Transformations and the Role of Historical Legacies: 1. Time, space and institutional change in central and eastern Europe Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson 2. Accounting for postcommunist regime diversity: what counts as a good cause? Herbert Kitschelt Part II. Postcommunist Europe: Continuity and Change in Regional Patterns: 3. Patterns of postcommunist transformation in central and eastern Europe Grzegorz Ekiert 4. Postcommunist spaces: a political geography approach to explaining postcommunist outcomes Jeffrey S. Kopstein and David A. Reilly Part III. Institutional Redesign and Historical Legacies: Case Studies: 5. Redeeming the past: communist successor parties after 1989 Anna Grzymala-Busse 6. Leninist legacies and legacies of state socialism in postcommunist central Europe's constitutional development Allison Stanger 7. Historical legacies, institutions and the politics of social policy in Hungary and Poland, 1989-99 Tomasz Inglot 8. Postcommunist unemployment politics: historical legacies and the curious acceptance of job loss Phineas Baxandall 9. 'Past' dependence or path contingency? Institutional design in postcommunist financial systems Juliet Johnson 10. Cultural legacies of state socialism: history making and cultural-political entrepreneurship in postcommunist Poland and Russia Jan Kubik Epilogue: from area studies to contextualized comparisons Paul Pierson Index.
The influence of intraoperative homologous blood transfusion on prognosis after liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma.

BACKGROUND/AIMS We investigated the influence of intraoperative homologous blood transfusion on prognosis after liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma. METHODOLOGY Between February 1999 and December 2006, 153 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma underwent living donor liver transplantation at our center. Recurrence-free and overall survival was compared between patients with blood transfusion and those without transfusion in red blood cells, fresh frozen plasma, or platelet concentrate. RESULTS Recurrence-free survival was significantly higher in the platelet concentrate transfused group than in the group without platelet concentrate transfusion (P=0.003), although there were no significant differences between the three transfused groups and the non-transfused groups in overall survival. The platelet concentrate transfused group had more patients within the preoperative Milan criteria (P=0.014) and more patients with Child-Pugh C classification (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS Recurrence-free survival after liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma was significantly higher in the platelet concentrate transfused group than the group without platelet concentrate transfusion.
Mechanisms of Protection against Clostridium difficile Infection by the Monoclonal Antitoxin Antibodies Actoxumab and Bezlotoxumab

ABSTRACT Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) represents the most prevalent cause of antibiotic-associated gastrointestinal infections in health care facilities in the developed world. Disease symptoms are caused by the two homologous exotoxins, TcdA and TcdB. Standard therapy for CDI involves administration of antibiotics that are associated with a high rate of disease recurrence, highlighting the need for novel treatment paradigms that target the toxins rather than the organism itself. A combination of human monoclonal antibodies, actoxumab and bezlotoxumab, directed against TcdA and TcdB, respectively, has been shown to decrease the rate of recurrence in patients treated with standard-of-care antibiotics. However, the exact mechanism of antibody-mediated protection is poorly understood. In this study, we show that the antitoxin antibodies are protective in multiple murine models of CDI, including systemic and local (gut) toxin challenge models, as well as primary and recurrent models of infection in mice. Systemically administered actoxumab-bezlotoxumab prevents both the damage to the gut wall and the inflammatory response, which are associated with C. difficile in these models, including in mice challenged with a strain of the hypervirulent ribotype 027. Furthermore, mutant antibodies (N297Q) that do not bind to Fcγ receptors provide a level of protection similar to that of wild-type antibodies, demonstrating that the mechanism of protection is through direct neutralization of the toxins and does not involve host effector functions. These data provide a mechanistic basis for the prevention of recurrent disease observed in CDI patients in clinical trials.
Partnerships in International Travel and Tourism Marketing: A Systems-Oriented Approach Between Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the United Kingdom

Abstract Little empirical research has been conducted about international partnerships between travel and tourism organisations, airlines and their intermediaries such as wholesalers and travel agents. Nevertheless, these partnerships are important because tourism is becoming more international and most destinations have to compete at a global level. Moreover, both producers and intermediaries are increasingly using information technology to increase their knowledge and relationship with customers. Thus this research set out to develop and empirically confirm a systemic model of these partnerships and four related research objectives. The methodology involved multiple case studies based on in-depth interviews with key players in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Germany. The first outcome is a confirmation of the systemic model. In addition, the findings show the reasons for engaging in partnerships and the scope for further partnerships among the industry players. As well, the findings show that while ‘disintermediation’ may occur because of the advancement of communication technology, the linkages between travel and tourism organisations, airlines and intermediaries are still significant. Our framework can assist public and private travel and tourism organisations to mutually develop and manage marketing strategies and tactics for overseas markets.
The Incremental Information-Content Of Earnings, Working Capital From Operations, And Cash Flows

Prior studies have documented the information content of earnings for share prices but have not provided conclusive evidence on the incremental information content of working capital and cash flows from operations. ' These studies assume linear relations between abnormal returns and accounting information. In this paper, I extend prior research by allowing for nonlinear relations between returns and each of three performance variables (earnings, working capital from operations [WCFO], and cash flows). Freeman and Tse [1992a] document a nonlinear relation between abnormal returns and unexpected earnings. They argue that as the absolute value of unexpected earnings increases, the "persistence" of earnings declines (Brooks and Buckmaster [1976] and Freeman, Ohlson,