Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The percutaneous greenfield filter: outcomes and practice patterns.

OBJECTIVE The percutaneous steel Greenfield filter (PSGF) is similar in appearance to the titanium Greenfield filter (TGF) but differs in the length and orientation of the attachment hooks and in the over-the-wire delivery system. Because these differences improve ease of insertion and attachment, they may affect patient outcomes and physician practices. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of the PSGF relative to the TGF and to determine whether there had been a change in physician practices. METHODS The Michigan Filter Registry contains data for a prospective cohort of 2188 patients with Greenfield filters. Procedural and long-term outcomes for patients with a PSGF were abstracted. These events were compared with rates for Registry patients who had a TGF. Trends for indication for placement, delivery route, and filter location were also compared with published series. RESULTS Since 1995, 600 PSGFs have been placed in 599 patients. A 1-year mortality rate of 42% left 349 patients available for annual follow-up, and studies were completed for 231 (66%). Periprocedural events occurred in 2.5% of cases with associated morbidity in 1.5%. The rate of new pulmonary embolism was 2.6%, and vena caval patency was 98.3%. The combined rate of new venous thromboembolic events was 12.5%. Left-sided femoral vein placements increased to 20%, and the major indication for filter placement has become prophylaxis (46%). CONCLUSIONS The PSGF is similar to the TGF with respect to patient outcomes, and it provides decreased rates of asymmetry along with excellent fixation. The flexible carrier system has allowed more frequent access through the left femoral vein. The ease of use and favorable patient outcomes have resulted in more frequent placement for prophylactic indications.
Genetic diversity of avian and mammalian Chlamydia psittaci strains and relation to host origin

Genetic relationships were reported for Chlamydia psittaci derived from psittacine birds, pigeons, turkeys, humans, cats, muskrats, cattle, and sheep and for C. trachomatis, including representative strains of the three biovars, through physical analysis of genomic DNA including DNA fingerprinting with restriction endonuclease SalI, DNA-DNA hybridization in solution with S1 nuclease, and Southern analysis with genomic DNA probes. A total of 26 strains were divided into four groups of C. psittaci and two groups of C. trachomatis, on the basis of DNA fingerprints. The six groups of Chlamydia spp. were related to host origin: two avian groups (Av1 and Av2), one feline and muskrat group (Fe1), one ruminant group (Ru1), one C. trachomatis biovars trachoma and lymphogranuloma group (CtHu), and one C. trachomatis mouse biovar group (CtMo), although an ovine abortion strain belonged to the avian group Av2. DNA-DNA hybridization assay and Southern analysis with genomic DNA probes indicated three DNA homology groups in the genus Chlamydia: an avian-feline group (groups Av1, Av2, and Fe1), a ruminant group (group Ru1), and a C. trachomatis group (groups CtHu and CtMo). Furthermore, the Southern analysis indicated that the homologous sequences (DNA homology of at least 14%) within the avian-feline group were distributed along the whole genome, whereas the homologous sequences (DNA homology of less than 24%) among the three DNA homology groups were localized in distinct regions of the genome DNA. These results suggest that Chlamydia spp. are derived from a common ancestor and have diverged into various groups showing restricted host ranges as a natural characteristic and that the species C. psittaci should be differentiated into groups related to host origin and DNA homology.
Best squirrels trade a long life for an early reproduction

Age at primiparity plays a crucial role in population dynamics and life-history evolution. Long-term data on female North American red squirrels were analysed to study the fitness consequences of delaying first reproduction. Early breeders were born earlier, had a higher breeding success and achieved a higher lifetime reproductive success than females who delayed their first reproduction, which suggests a higher quality of early breeders. However, early breeders had similar mass when tagged, and similar number of food caches available at one year of age as late breeders. Nevertheless, we found evidence of survival costs of early primiparity. Early breeders had a lower survival between one and two years of age than late breeders and a lower lifespan. Our study points out that two reproductive tactics co-occurred in this population: a tactic based on early maturity at the cost of a lower survival versus a tactic based on delayed maturity and long lifespan. High quality individuals express the most profitable tactic by breeding early whereas low quality individuals do the best of a bad job by delaying their first reproduction.
Training in the Workplace : A Longitudinal Investigation of the Effect of Mood Viswanath

How does a person’s mood during technology training influence motivation, intentions, and, ultimately, usage of the new technology? Do these mood effects dissipate or are they sustainable over time? A repeated-measures field study (n 5 316) investigated the effect of mood on employee motivation and intentions toward using a specific computer technology at two points in time: immediately after training and 6 weeks after training. Actual usage behavior was assessed for 12 weeks after training. Each individual was assigned to one of three mood treatments: positive, negative, or control. Results indicated that there were only short-term boosts in intrinsic motivation and intention to use the technology among individuals in the positive mood intervention. However, a long-term lowering of intrinsic motivation and intention was observed among those in the negative mood condition. q 1999
Calretinin and calretinin-22k increase resistance toward sodium butyrate-induced differentiation in CaCo-2 colon adenocarcinoma cells.

Calretinin (CR) and the alternatively spliced form calretinin-22k (CR-22k) are members of the EF-hand family of Ca(2+)-binding proteins (CaBPs). CR is expressed in more than 60% of poorly differentiated human colon tumors and both isoforms are present in several colon carcinoma cell lines (e.g., WiDr). They are absent in normal enterocytes and in well-differentiated adenocarcinoma cell lines such as CaCo-2. Calretinins are thought to act as Ca(2+) buffers and to be involved in the regulation of Ca(2+)-dependent processes. Down-regulation of calretinins in WiDr cells by antisense oligonucleotides leads to growth inhibition and treatment with sodium butyrate (NaBt, an inducer of differentiation) leads to a blockage of the cell cycle and, in parallel, to down-regulation of CR. It has been proposed that CR and/or CR-22k may be involved in maintaining the undifferentiated phenotype of WiDr cells and contributing to the transformation of enterocytes. Expression levels and distribution of CR-22k were investigated in WiDr cells. CR-22k was down-regulated in NaBt-treated cells and the normally cytoplasmic protein was preferentially localized in the nucleus either as a result of translocation or selective nuclear maintenance, a process more pronounced than in the case of CR. To compare functional differences of calretinins, CR-negative Caco-2 cells were stably transfected with cDNAs encoding CR or CR-22k. Cell growth of CR-transfected cells was increased, an effect that was not observed in CR-22k-transfected ones. The CR-expressing clones were almost completely resistant to treatment with 0.5 mM NaBt, a concentration significantly reducing cell growth in control cells. The same effect was obtained in the CR-22k-expressing clones, although to a lesser extent. This implicates that expression of CR and/or CR-22k in colon tumor cells may contribute to tumorigenesis by blocking differentiation-promoting signals.
Ozone depletion and climate change: impacts on UV radiation

We assess the importance of factors that determine the intensity of UV radiation at the Earth’s surface. Among these, atmospheric ozone, which absorbs UV radiation, is of considerable importance, but other constituents of the atmosphere, as well as certain consequences of climate change, can also be major influences. Further, we assess the variations of UV radiation observed in the past and present, and provide projections for the future. Of particular interest are methods to measure or estimate UV radiation at the Earth’s surface. These are needed for scientific understanding and, when they are sufficiently sensitive, they can serve as monitors of the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol and its amendments. Also assessed are several aspects of UV radiation related to biological effects and health. The implications for ozone and UV radiation from two types of geoengineering methods that have been proposed to combat climate change are also discussed. In addition to ozone effects, the UV changes in the last two decades, derived from measurements, have been influenced by changes in aerosols, clouds, surface reflectivity, and, possibly, by solar activity. The positive trends of UV radiation observed after the mid-1990s over northern mid-latitudes are mainly due to decreases in clouds and aerosols. Despite some indications from measurements at a few stations, no statistically significant decreases in UV-B radiation attributable to the beginning of the ozone recovery have yet been detected. Projections for erythemal irradiance (UV_ery) suggest the following changes by the end of the 21^st century (2090–2100) relative to the present time (2010–2020): (1) Ozone recovery (due to decreasing ozone-depleting substances and increasing greenhouse gases) would cause decreases in UV_ery, which will be highest (up to 40%) over Antarctica. Decreases would be small (less than 10%) outside the southern Polar Regions. A possible decline of solar activity during the 21^st century might affect UV-B radiation at the surface indirectly through changes induced in stratospheric ozone. (2) The projected changes in cloud cover would lead to relatively small effects (less than 3%), except at northern high latitudes where increases in cloud cover could lead to decreases in UV_ery by up to 7%. (3) Reductions in reflectivity due to the melting of sea-ice in the Arctic would lead to decreases of UV_ery by up to 10%, while at the margins of the Antarctic the decreases would be smaller (2–3%). The melting of the sea-ice would expose the ocean surface formerly covered by ice to UV-B radiation up to 10 times stronger than before. (4) The expected improvement of air-quality and reductions of aerosols over the most populated areas of the northern hemisphere may result in 10–20% increases in UV_ery, except over China where even larger increases are projected. The projected aerosol effect for the southern hemisphere is generally very small. Aerosols are possibly the most important factor for future UV levels over heavily populated areas, but their projected effects are the most uncertain.
THE PRODUCTION SECTOR CREDIT AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA, A COINTEGRATION ANALYSIS

This study examines the effect of commercial bank credit to the production sector on economic development in Nigeria. Adopting the multiple regression model the commercial banks’ credit to each of the sub sectors of the production sector namely agriculture, forestry and fishery, manufacturing, mining and quarrying and real estate and construction were regressesd against the gross domestic product for the period 1960-2008 to reveal that a strong long-run relationship exists between credit to the production sector and the level of economic development in Nigeria. Also, there was a high evidence of a two-way causal relationship between two of the explanatory variables and the gross domestic product (GDP) with only the commercial banks’ credit through the mining and quarrying sub-sector appearing to be a significant contributor at 1% alpha level. Paper therefore, concludes that in general, the commercial banks’ lending to the production sector has not performed well in terms of contribution to Nigeria’s economic development and therefore there should be a critical monitoring of the facilities to ensure that the funds are not misappropriated.
It takes more than one measure. Capturing the multidimensionality of job quality with job types and multiple job quality outcomes

Employees spend a significant part of their lives at their job. Consequently, work and the time at work will have an important impact on the well-being of large parts of the population and job quality becomes a key issue. However, this concept is not definable with one measure. Following the use of the construction of job types to capture the complex and multidimensional nature of job quality, this study presents a typology of seven job types for employees in the EU-28 Member States in the period of 2010-2015. Next, some consistency is identified with and across the typologies of Holman (2012), Vandenbrande et al. (2012), Lamberts et al. (2016) and Eurofound (2016). In the second part, the relation between job types and job quality outcomes such as job satisfaction, health, job insecurity, e.g. is examined and trade-offs between the job characteristics impacting job quality are discussed. This report constitutes Milestone 21.12 ‘Characterisation of the groups at risk’, for Work Package 21 of the InGRID project.
A Comparative Study of Feature Extraction Methods Applied to Continuous Speech Recognition in Romanian Language

This paper describes continuous speech recognition experiments on a Romanian language speech database, by using hidden Markov models (EMM). We compare the recognition rates obtained in our ASR system realising front-ends based on features extracted by perceptual variants of cepstral analysis and linear prediction and by simple linear prediction. The best results obtained with 36 coefficients mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) are used as basis to rank the front-ends based on LPC. The second rank is very promising for the performance obtained with 5 perceptual linear prediction (PLP) coefficients, obviously better at the last ranked performance of the simple linear prediction coefficients (LPC). We reorganized the database as follows: one database for male speakers, one database for female speakers and one database for both male and female speakers
MEASUREMENT OF SERVICE QUALITY, CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, BEHAVIOURAL INTENTION AMONG THE ORGANIZED RETAIL STORES WITH REFERENCE TO SELECTED CITIES OF TAMIL NADU

This research aims at measuring the service quality among the organized retail stores in Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore cities of Tamilnadu State and identifying its relationship to customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. The study was conducted among 900 organized retail stores customer by using Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS) instrument with 27 items. Behavioral intention of the customers was measured by using the behavioral intention battery. The researcher has used a seven point likert scaling to measure the expected and perceived service quality (performance) and the behavioral intention of the customers. The RSQS instrument is selected as the most reliable device to measure the difference-score conceptualization. It is used to evaluate service gaps between expectation and perception of service quality. Modifications are made on the RSQS instrument to make it specific to the Retail Sector. The literature review was gathered enough from various sources and reflecting both Indian and foreign context. A number of hypotheses were proposed in the thesis and examined using Structural Equation Modeling. The hypotheses were tested with the software AMOS 21 and SPSS 21 to fulfill the research objectives. The data were examined using confirmatory factor analysis to confirm RSQS instrument reliability and validity of the retail industry performance and service quality dimensions. The resultant CFA model value shows good psychometric properties. This research is designed to address the literature gaps. Path analysis, Multiple regression, correlation, Paired„t‟ test, Chi-square test, Oneway ANOVA and descriptive statistics were applied to interpret the data. Structural Equation Model (SEM) is applied to study the relationship and impact between service quality, customer satisfaction and behavioural intention.
PLUTONIUM INHALATION STUDIES. VI. PATHOLOGIC EFFECTS OF INHALED PLUTONIUM PARTICLES IN DOGS.

Abstract The inhalation of Pu239O2 particles administered in an aerosol to beagle dogs caused spontaneous deaths in animals having a lung burden of from 2 to 27 microc. Deaths occurred 55–855 days post-exposure and were preceded by a progressive lymphopenia and respiratory distress. Deposition of the particles in the lungs was followed by substantial translocation to the bronchial and mediastinal lymph nodes. The pathologic effects observed in the lungs of these animals consisted primarily of severe fibrosis followed by alveolar cell, bronchiolar, and squamous types of metaplasia. In the bronchial and mediastinal lymph nodes, with increasing particle deposition and fibrosis with time, the germinal centers were gradually replaced by fibrous connective tissue and reticulum cells. Although primary lung carcinoma has not been found in the radiation damaged lungs of this continuing investigation, the blockage of lymphatic channels by scar tissue, together with the trapping of radioactive particles within the areas of severe parenchymal fibrosis, could possibly prove to be a potent source of carcinogenicity with time.
Supplier Development and Integration in Competitive Supply Chains

Supplier development and supplier integration are two deeply interconnected strategic tools that manufacturers often employ to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of their supply chains. This paper studies the interaction of these two strategic decisions in a competitive environment. Specifically, we analyze a duopoly model where manufacturers source two (different) components from their suppliers to produce and sell substitutable products in the market. Each manufacturer has a distinct collaborative supplier whom it decides whether to integrate with and how much to invest on to help reduce the supplier’s cost. We consider two sourcing structures: dedicated sourcing (sourcing both components only from its collaborative supplier) and diversified sourcing (sourcing one component from its collaborative supplier and the other from its competitor’s). We find that in most cases supplier integration leads to a larger investment on supplier development; and at equilibrium both manufacturers integrate with their collaborative suppliers. However, when the heterogeneity of the manufacturers’ supplier development capabilities is high, under the dedicated sourcing, supplier integration may result in a lower supplier development level from the less capable manufacturer who, at equilibrium, prefers not to integrate with its supplier. Furthermore, we find that in most cases, the manufacturers invest more on supplier development under the dedicated sourcing, while both manufacturers prefer the diversified sourcing to the dedicated one. The exception occurs when the heterogeneity of the manufacturers’ supplier development capabilities is high: the less capable manufacturer may invest more on supplier development under the diversified sourcing and the more capable manufacturer is better-off under the dedicated sourcing. Finally, by comparing with the monopoly case, we show that the market competition is one important driver to many of the preceding results.
The Role of Complexity for Bank Risk during the Financial Crisis: Evidence from a Novel Dataset

We construct a novel dataset to measure banks' complexity and relate it to banks' riskiness. The sample covers stock listed Euro area banks from 2007 to 2014. Bank stability is significantly affected by complexity, whereas the direction of the effect differs across complexity measures. This heterogeneity advises against the use of a single complexity measure when evaluating the implications of bank complexity.
The influence of protein malnutrition on the production of GM-CSF and M-CSF by macrophages

It is well established that protein malnutrition (PM) impairs immune defenses and increases susceptibility to infection. Macrophages are cells that play a central role in innate immunity, constituting one of the first barriers against infections. Macrophages produce several soluble factors, including cytokines and growth factors, important to the immune response. Among those growth factors, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF). GM-CSF and M-CSF are important to monocyte and macrophage development and stimulation of the immune response process. Knowing the importance of GM-CSF and M-CSF, we sought to investigate the influence of PM on macrophage production of these growth factors. Two-month-old male BALB/c mice were subjected to PM with a low-protein diet (2%) and compared to a control diet (12%) mouse group. Nutritional status, hemogram and the number of peritoneal cells were evaluated. Additionally, peritoneal macrophages were cultured and the production of GM-CSF and M-CSF and mRNA expression were evaluated. To determine if PM altered macrophage production of GM-CSF and M-CSF, they were stimulated with TNF-α. The PM animals had anemia, leukopenia and a reduced number of peritoneal cells. The production of M-CSF was not different between groups; however, cells from PM animals, stimulated with or without TNF-α, presented reduced capability to produce GM-CSF. These data imply that PM interferes with the production of GM-CSF, and consequently would affect the production and maturation of hematopoietic cells and the immune response.
Parametric identification of concentration-dependent gene regulation networks

In mathematical modeling of genetic regulation networks, the classical assumption is that the direction of regulation by a regulator (activation or repression) on a specific target gene is fixed. However experimental studies have suggested that the direction of gene regulation might be concentration-dependent. Earlier modeling work assumed only specific transcription factors behave in this concentration-dependent manner. Nevertheless, based on our in vivo DNA occupancy measurements of transcription factors and target gene mRNA expressions, we propose that concentration-dependent activation or repression might be a more general phenomenon. More specifically, we assume a regulator is activating at low concentrations and repressing at high concentrations, and we use the regulation of even-skipped stripe 2 (eve2) during Stage 5 of Drosophila embryogenesis as a case study. Our general approach is to describe the dynamic evolution of target mRNA concentration using a set of parametric Ordinary Differential Equations, which incorporate target gene mRNA transcription and degradation, and transcription factor expression and in vivo DNA occupancies. We show our model is better at predicting regulator importance and the effect of transcription factor mutations than two commonly used monotone models, where each regulator either activates or represses the target gene, but not both. In addition, our model generates spatial-temporal maps of factor activity, highlighting the times and spatial locations at which different transcription factors might regulate target gene expression levels. Finally, we use our model to design mutation experiments that help us to verify our assumption of concentration-dependent regulation by determining whether transcription factors that are currently thought to either only activate or repress eve2 in fact act in a concentration-dependent manner.