Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hypertonic saline solution increases cerebral perfusion pressure during clinical orthotopic liver transplantation for fulminant hepatic failure: preliminary results.

UNLABELLED During orthotopic liver transplantation for fulminant hepatic failure, some patients may develop sudden deterioration of cerebral perfusion and oxygenation, mainly due to increased intracranial pressure and hypotension, which are likely responsible for postoperative neurological morbidity and mortality. In the present study, we hypothesized that the favorable effects of hypertonic saline solution (NaCl 7.5%, 4 mL/kg) infusion on both systemic and cerebral hemodynamics, demonstrated in laboratory and clinical settings of intracranial hypertension and hemorrhagic shock resuscitation, may attenuate the decrease in cerebral perfusion pressure that often occurs during orthotopic liver transplantation for fulminant hepatic failure. METHODS 10 patients with fulminant hepatic failure in grade IV encephalopathy undergoing orthotopic liver transplantation with intracranial pressure monitoring were included in this study. The effect on cerebral and systemic hemodynamics in 3 patients who received hypertonic saline solution during anhepatic phase (HSS group) was examined, comparing their data with historical controls obtained from surgical procedure recordings in 7 patients (Control group). The maximal intracranial pressure and the corresponding mean arterial pressure values were collected in 4 time periods: (T1) the last 10 min of the dissection phase, (T2) the first 10 minutes at the beginning of anhepatic phase, (T3) at the end of the anhepatic phase, and (T4) the first 5 minutes after graft reperfusion. RESULTS Immediately after hypertonic saline solution infusion, intracranial pressure decreased 50.4%. During the first 5 min of reperfusion, the intracranial pressure remained stable in the HSS group, and all these patients presented an intracranial pressure lower than 20 mm Hg, while in the Control group, the intracranial pressure increased 46.5% (P < 0.001). The HSS group was the most hemodynamically stable; the mean arterial pressure during the first 5 min of reperfusion increased 21.1% in the HSS group and decreased 11.1% in the Control group (P < 0.001). During the first 5 min of reperfusion, cerebral perfusion pressure increased 28.3% in the HSS group while in the Control group the cerebral perfusion pressure decreased 28.5% (P < 0.001). Serum sodium at the end of the anhepatic phase and 3 hours after reperfusion was significantly higher in the HSS group (153.00 +/- 2.66 and 149.00 +/- 1.73 mEq/L) than in the Control group (143.71 +/- 3.30 and 142.43 +/- 1.72 mEq/L), P = 0.003 and P < 0.001 respectively. CONCLUSION Hypertonic saline solution can be successfully used as an adjunct in the neuroprotective strategy during orthotopic liver transplantation for fulminant hepatic failure, reducing intracranial pressure while restoring arterial blood pressure, promoting sustained increase in the cerebral perfusion pressure.
Ageing in Malaysia: A Review of National Policies

Introduction Malaysia's population is not currently particularly elderly, although this will change over the next two decades or so. The 2000 Census showed that 6.2 per cent, 1.452 million people, were aged 60 or over, but demographic ageing is occurring and, by the year 2020, 9.5 per cent of the country's population will be aged 60 years and over. In accordance with the United Nations World Assembly on Ageing held in Vienna in 1982, at which the age of 60 years and over was adopted for deliberating issues on ageing, Malaysia has also adopted this demarcation in formulating and implementing plans for its senior citizens. However, the present retirement age of 56 seems to suggest that the threshold for ageing locally is felt to begin at 56 years of age. Malaysia has been experiencing improved health, longer life expectancy, low mortality as well as declining fertility. The combination of all of these has brought about a change in the demographic profile of the country's population. The age structure for the past four censuses (in 1970, 1980, 1991 and 2000) shows that the proportion of younger age groups (15 years and below) is decreasing, while the proportion of elderly is on the rise. The median age was 17.4 in 1970, 21.9 in 1991, 23.6 in 2000 and is projected to increase to 27.1 in the year 2020. Within a period of thirty years (from 1991 to 2020), the median age will have increased on average by 1.7 per decade. The old-age dependency ratio is expected to increase to 15.7 in 2020 from 10.5 in 1970. This is high compared to other ASEAN countries such as Indonesia (10.1), Thailand (13.4), and the Philippines (9.0), although Singapore has a dependency rate of 23.9 (and Japan's ratio of 41.5). Over a period of 50 years, the median age of the Malaysian population will increase by 10, and the old-age dependency ratio by 5 (Department of Statistics, Malaysia 1998). By the year 2020, Malaysia will be a mature society with 9.5 per cent of its population aged 60 and above.
Determinants of Dividend Policy: Controlling for Political Stability in Pre-crisis, Crisis and Post-Crisis Periods

The paper examines the factors that influence the dividend policy of Nigerian Deposit Money Banks in the presence of political violence that affects the business environment for the period 2006 to 2015. Correlational research design was adopted. The population of the study comprises all the Deposit Money Banks functioning in Nigeria as at 31 December, 2015 with sample size of 15 Deposit Money Banks listed at the Nigerian Stock Exchange as at 31st December 2015. The data were extracted from the audited financial reports of the banks and the World Bank Development Indicator within the period of the study. The data were analysed through panel data regression. We found that board independence, board size, earnings per share, and non-executive director do not significantly affect dividend per share (DPS) in pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis periods. The study however revealed that both firm size and political stability significantly affect dividend per share in both pre-crisis and crisis periods but not in the post-crisis period. Political stability has positive effect on DPS in crisis period while a negative effect in pre-crisis period. We also document that the contributing effect of firm size on DPS is higher in crisis period than pre-crisis period. The study documents the dividend policy pattern in the presence of political stability during crisis and non-crisis periods. The study recommended that the management team needs to strive for higher profitability, larger firm size, higher risk premium to satisfy the shareholders’ goal of wealth maximization in the form of higher dividends.
Membranous Cells in Nasal-Associated Lymphoid Tissue: A Portal of Entry for the Respiratory Mucosal Pathogen Group A Streptococcus 1

Human tonsils are suspected to be an antibiotic-impervious human reservoir for group A streptococcus. An intranasal infection model in mice and a bioluminescent-tagged strain were used to investigate this possibility. Viable streptococci were predominantly found both intra- and extracellularly in nasal-associated lymphoid tissue (NALT), a human tonsil homologue. Ulex europaeus-1, a membranous (M) cell-specific lectin, identified cells harboring streptococci at the epithelial surface of NALT and blocked bacterial colonization of this tissue. These results suggest that M cells in NALT transport this Gram-positive pathogen across the epithelial layers in a manner similar to those in Peyer’s patches, which permit enteric pathogens to invade deeper tissues from the gastrointestinal tract.
The Impacts of Website Characteristics and Customer Participation on Citizenship Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Co-Creation Experience in Virtual Brand Communities

More and more enterprises organize co-creation activities in virtual brand community to allow customers to participate in new products or new service development process. Involved in those activities, customers obtain experience value, which can make them have sense of achievement. Does this co-creation experience promote the formation of loyalty, such as customer citizenship behaviors? Dowebsite characteristics influence the co-creation experience? The study examines the relationship between co-creation experience to citizenship behaviors and the impact of website characteristics as well as customer participation to co-creation experience. Based previous research, the study builds structural equation model and conducts empirical analysis. The results show that the affection-relevant clues of the site characteristics and customer participation have a positive impact on three dimensions of the experience, and the task-relevant clues have a positive influence on the hedonic experience and social experience. The two dimensions of co-creation experience have a significant positive impact on citizenship behaviors and have a mediating effect.
Is 'Fintech' Good for Small Business Borrowers? Impacts on Firm Growth and Customer Satisfaction

“Fintech” is a rapidly expanding segment of the financial market that is receiving much attention from investors and increasing regulatory scrutiny. While the attention is rising, very little is known about the performance of these lending sources on the outcomes of small businesses that make use of them. The Federal Reserve’s 2015 Small Business Credit Survey has data on the experiences of business owners with this new funding source and can provide some useful insights into this expanding sector, if compositional differences among the businesses that get bank loans, those that get fintech loans, and those that are denied credit are accounted for. We apply an inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment and inverse-probability weighting from the treatment effects literature to adjust for compositional difference. We find: (1) online borrowers have characteristics that make them very much like the businesses who were denied credit, (2) the results for online lenders are hard to distinguish from either receiving no financing or receiving a bank loan, and (3) bank borrowers are more satisfied than online borrowers who are more satisfied than businesses who were denied credit. These results should inform the policy discussion on fintech and point to the need for clearer results on the effectiveness of online lenders to small businesses.
Web-based Activities and SLA: A Conversation Analysis Research Approach

Different Internet technologies foster the acquisition of different language skills. In the case of synchronous interaction tools, such as Webchat, the concern is to evaluate whether and how this communication context affects the process of acquiring a second langauge. A collection of Webchat interaction data among English non-native speakers (NNS) and native speakers (NS) is the basis for a microanalytic investigation conducted form a Conversation Analysis (CA) perspective. The main purpose is to discover patterns and conversational strategies used by participatns in this on-line context. A CA research approach was chosen since it investigates the machinery and the structure of social action in language, avoiding preformulated theoretic categories. This is important since CMC represents a new SLA context, forcing both NS and NNS to produce different structures and strategies. The study analyzes, in particular, whether Webchat implies a reduction of the range in interactional practices, actions performance, sense making, and meaning negotiation, thus affecting the SLA process. Finally, the researcher considers the reliability and validity of this type of qualitative research in this new technological area. Using some research methodologies taken from CA literature, an analysis of the data focuses first on the overall structure of interaction and sequence organization in connection with the on-line communicaiton setting features. It then passes to turn-taking organization, with attention to recurrent structures and patterns as in openings and closings; turn design (or packaging of actions); expression of paralinguistic features in this on-line context; and some (interlanguage) pragmatic variables. The conclusion resolves the findings and underlines NNS versus NS behaviour, offering hypotheses about SLA through Webchat and synchronous CMC in general, encouraging further investigation.
Exploring the effects of service climate on organizational citizenship behaviors in tourism industry

Abstract The tourism competitiveness of Taiwan has not showed positive growth with the tourist attendance, revealing the growth space for the tourist attendance and the output value in Taiwan. The Taiwan government therefore promotes six major emerging industries, and tourism is one of the administrative strategies. The internal climate of an organization in tourism industry would reflect the contact result between the employees and customers to the customers. When customers present positive feedback, the employees would provide the similar services or better service quality at the next service. To have customers perceive excellent services, a service climate aiming at service characteristics needs to be created and maintained in a tourism organization. By distributing and collecting questionnaires on-site, the employees in Landis Hotels & Resorts are sampled for the investigation. Total 500 copies of questionnaires are distributed, and 273 effective copies are retrieved, with the effective rate 55%. The empirical analyses reveal the following results. 1. Service Climate presents significantly positive effects on Loyalty in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors. 2. Service Climate reveals remarkably positive effects on Participation in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors. 3. Service Climate shows notably positive effects on Service Delivery in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors. 4. The correlation between Service Climate and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors appear significant difference on demographic variables.
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and Mental Health: A Review

Although physical symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are increasingly recognized by practicing clinicians, little attention has focused on psychological correlates of this frequent endocrine disorder. This review of medical and psychological literature indicates that PCOS is associated with several mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, diminished sexual satisfaction, and lowered health-related quality of life. Although the causal direction of these relationships has not been established, it is clear that effective and comprehensive treatment of women with PCOS must encompass careful attention to psychological symptomatology. Recommendations for the assessment of specific mental health problems, management of related physical concerns, and treatment of obesity among women with PCOS are presented. Target Audience: Obstetricians & Gynecologists, Family Physicians Learning Objectives: After completion of this article, the reader should be able to explain that, in addition to physiologic changes, women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have various mental health problems and lowered health-related quality of life issues and state that treatment must address these concerns.
Factors Affecting Survival in Breast Cancer Patients following Bone Metastasis

Aims and background The purpose of the study was to identify prognostic factors that affect survival following bone metastasis in breast cancer patients with first metastases in the skeletal system. Methods and study design We analyzed retrospectively the data of 248 metastatic breast cancer patients whose first distant metastasis was in the skeleton. Results The median age of the patients at diagnosis was 46 years (range, 23–76). Nearly half of the patients were premenopausal (52.4%). The median disease-free survival was 24 months. For most of the patients (221), bone was the sole first metastatic site, and the disease remained confined to the bone in 99 of them. The remaining patients (n = 27) had both bone and visceral metastasis at the time of first relapse. One hundred and fourteen of the patients (46%) had died by the time of analysis. With the median follow-up of 50.5 months from diagnosis, median survival after bone metastasis was 32 months. In univariate analyses, statistically significant predictors for survival after bone metastasis were axillary lymph node status, T stage of disease, hormone receptor status of the primary tumor, the presence of lymphovascular invasion, involvement of skin, the presence of additional nonosseous metastatic sites at the time of bone relapse, and disease-free interval. In multivariate analyses, the presence of additional non-osseous metastatic sites at the time of bone relapse, T stage of disease, hormone receptor status of the primary tumor, and the presence of lymphovascular invasion were found to be significant independent prognostic factors. Conclusions In the result of study, for patients with breast cancer, survival following bone metastasis is affected by secondary prognostic factors such as disease-free interval and extent of metastasis besides primary prognostic factors related to the primary tumor.
Iterative block-DFE techniques for single-carrier-based broadband communications with transmit/receive space diversity

Conventional SC (single-carrier) modulations have been shown to be suitable for block transmission schemes with cyclic prefix. When selected for broadband wireless communication systems, they allow better performances than the corresponding OFDM-based (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) block transmission schemes, while also offering a low complexity of implementation. In this paper, we propose an extension of the recently developed IB-DFE concept (iterative block decision feedback equalization), for SC-based block transmission, so that it can be adopted within transmit/receive space diversity implementations. The particular case where only one iteration is employed corresponds to a conventional, linear FDE scheme (frequency domain equalization); the subsequent iterations with the IB-DFE scheme are shown to provide increasingly improved performances.
At the Nexus

Abstract Effective HIV prevention requires the protection and empowerment of marginalized groups at high risk of infection. However, many policies persist that stigmatize these groups and hinder HIV prevention efforts, including HIV-related travel restrictions. In the Republic of Korea, which requires HIV tests for certain visa categories, these restrictions negatively affect the national HIV response and access to accurate information on effective HIV prevention. In addition, they violate migrants’ human rights to confidentiality and informed consent to testing and the rights of persons living with HIV (PLHIV) to privacy, work, medical care, bodily integrity, and freedom from discrimination. Furthermore, the discrimination and misconceptions perpetuated by this policy may be driving South Korea’s burgeoning infection rates.
Risk and the Media: A Comparison of Print and Televised News Stories of a Canadian Drinking Water Risk Event

This article explores the utility of using media analyses as a method for risk researchers to gain an initial understanding of how the public may perceive a risk issue or event based on how it is presented and communicated in news media stories. In the area of risk research, newspapers consistently provide coverage of both acute and chronic risk events, whereas televised news broadcasts report primarily acute risk events. There is no consensus in the literature about which news format (print vs. televised) may be better to study public conceptualizations of risk, or if one format (e.g., print) may be used as a surrogate measure for another format (e.g., televised). This study compares Canadian national televised and newspaper coverage of the same risk event: the E. coli contamination of a public drinking water supply. Using a content analysis, this study empirically demonstrates the overall similarity in story content coverage in both televised and print coverage, noting that televised coverage promotes primarily emotional story themes while print coverage tends to also include coverage of analysis and process. On this basis, the research draws two conclusions: 1) given its more comprehensive coverage, newspaper broadsheets may provide a better measure of media coverage of a risk event than televised coverage (if only one format can be studied); and 2) when the risk area of interest is chronic, and/or if the scale of analysis is at a community/local level (i.e., when it is unlikely that archived televised coverage is available), then a researcher may find the print media to be a more useful format to study.
Hormone Therapy and Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators for Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease in Postmenopausal Women: Estrogen Replacement from the Cardiologist's Perspective

Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in women older than the age of 50 in the United States today. Traditional cardiovascular risk factors (hyperlipidemia, glucose intolerance, and hypertension) are more clearly associated with significant cardiovascular risk after menopause. The increased incidence of cardiovascular events in postmenopausal women and the evidence that cardiovascular disease on average manifests a decade later in women compared with men suggests that estrogen deficiency may predispose women to a higher cardiovascular risk. Numerous biologic mechanisms have been proposed that relate use of hormone therapy (HT) to improved lipid profiles, insulin sensitivity, and vascular reactivity. Early observational trials in the last 2 decades showed a significant decrease in cardiovascular events. Recently published randomized clinical trial results, however, have led to uncertainty about the earlier established cardiovascular benefits of HT. To complicate issues further, alternative estrogenlike compounds, selective estrogen receptor modulators, are being introduced that appear to convey similar cardiovascular benefit and notably less cancer risk than HT. The newly released randomized trials on hormone and nonhormonal agents are reviewed.
Patchy and laminar terminations of medial geniculate axons in monkey auditory cortex

The object of this study was to identify the terminal distributions of thalamocortical axons arising in chemically characterized subdivisions of the medial geriiculate complex. Large injections of wheat germ agglutinin‐conjugated horseradish peroxidase or small injections of Phaseolus vulgaris leucoagglutinin were made in the medial geniculate complex of Macaca fuscata. The terminal distributions of labeled axons in the cortex were correlated with auditory cortical fields demonstrable by different intensities of immunoreactivity for parvalbumin.