Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Salmonella enterica serovars Typhimurium and Enteritidis causing mixed infections in febrile children in Mozambique

Background and purpose Invasive nontyphoidal salmonellosis, mostly caused by serovars Typhimurium and Enteritidis of Salmonella enterica, has emerged as a major public health problem in sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of this study was the clinical and microbiological characterization of nontyphoidal salmonellosis episodes affecting febrile children in Mozambique. Patients and methods The clinical records of the patients were evaluated, and S. enterica isolates were characterized with regard to serovar, phage type, antimicrobial resistance (phenotype/responsible genes), plasmid content, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, and multilocus sequence typing. Results Fifteen S. Typhimurium and 21 S. Enteritidis isolates were recovered from blood samples of 25 children, the majority with underlying risk factors. With regard to phage typing, most isolates were either untypeable or reacted but did not conform, revealing that a number of previously unrecognized patterns are circulating in Mozambique. Most isolates were multidrug-resistant, with nearly all of the responsible genes located on derivatives of serovar-specific virulence plasmids. ST313 and ST11 were the predominant sequence types associated with S. Typhimurium and S. Enteritidis, respectively, and the uncommon ST1479 was also detected in S. Enteritidis. A distinct XbaI fragment of ~350 kb was associated with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis patterns of multidrug-resistant isolates of S. Enteritidis. Nearly half of the children were coinfected with both serovars, a fact expected to aggravate the disease and hamper the treatment. However, particularly poor outcomes were not observed for the coinfected patients. Conclusion Mixed Salmonella infections could frequently occur in febrile children in Mozambique. Additional studies are required to determine their actual impact and consequences, not only in this country, but also in other African countries.
Social Ties and Earnings Management

We detect a significant presence of social ties between the CEO and audit committee members and our results suggest that these informal ties play a material role in audit-committee oversight. In particular, we find a substantially stronger, positive relation between abnormal (i.e., discretionary) accruals and the extent of an audit committee’s connection to the CEO when we consider social ties in addition to the conventional ties. Moreover, we find that an audit committee’s social affiliation is associated with an increased discontinuity in the earnings distribution surrounding earnings targets. Together, our findings suggest that informal ties play a material role in facilitating creative accounting practices.
Information Frictions in Securitization Markets : Investor Sophistication or Asset Opacity ?

Because diversification is the key tenet of securitization, default correlation is a key risk to the holder of a security subject to default risk. Using loan performance data to infer beliefs about the deal probability of default, loss given default and prepayment speed, this study estimates a single factor Gaussian copula model to imply default correlations from the market price of collateralized mortgage obligations. Default correlations implied from bond prices are predictive of bond outcomes, even controlling for bond rating. Not all transactions convey information about posterior downgrades: while AAA tranches (sometimes characterized as a niche for unsophisticated investors) tend to convey less information than other tranches, informativeness is ultimately driven by the quality of documentation on the underlying assets. A deal level index is computed to summarize how complete the documentation on the underlying loans is. Ranking deals along this index reveals that low predictive power is driven by “low-doc” deals. This suggests that asset opacity is the main driver of price informativeness, regardless of the bond seniority. The deficiency in information is manifested through the subordination structure more than through prices. The evidence suggests subordination levels are lower in low-doc deals, suggesting ratings are more likely to be inflated when assets are opaque. JEL classification: G21, G24
Segmenting the Nature-Based Tourists Based on Travel Mode Choice

ABSTRACT This paper examines the diverse nature tourism market in terms of two broad segments: package and independent types. Based on a number of theoretical assumptions obtained from the general tourism literature, four research models (main hypotheses) were developed to assess the relationship between the travel mode choice of nature tourists and a series of socio-demographic characteristics, trip features, travel activities and travel motives. The necessary data for the study were subsequently collected from 162 visitors at two separate nature-based attractions (wilderness centres) located in Northern Norway that played host to independent and package tour visitors. To test the proposed hypotheses, four separate logistic regression analyses were carried out. Results indicated that independent and package nature tourists differed significantly in terms of gender, age, annual household income, trip expenditure and trip length as well as for most of the travel activities and some of the travel motivations.
Dividend Policy on Shareholders Wealth – Evidences from Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

Background/Objectives: This topic on the impact of dividend policy on shareholders wealth of the companies is one of the most researched topics in finance. The main objective of this paper is to find out the dividend policy’s impact on shareholders wealth. Method/Statistical Analysis: The ten companies listed in NIFTY PHARMA of NSE have been considered for the study. Fifteen years data have been used (2001 to 2015). With the help of previous literature, MPS (Market Price Per Share) used to measure Shareholders wealth and the predictor variables are Price Earnings Ratio (PER), Dividend Per Share (DPS), Earnings Per Share (EPS), Total Assets (TA) and Cash and Bank Balance by Total Assets (CABBBYTA) were used by representing Dividend, Risk, Earnings, Firm Size and Liquidity of the companies. The Descriptive statistics and Normality test (Jarque - Bera) test found that the data were normally distributed. The conditions for regression like viz., Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey Heteroskedasticity Test, Breusch-Godfrey Serial Correlation LM Test, VIF for Multicollinearity, Augmented Dickey-Fuller test for unit root were used and found that the data were homogenous, free from auto correlation, multicollinearity and unit root. Eviews 7 Econometrics software package was used. Findings: Regression results show that the dividend, risk and liquidity of the companies impact shareholders wealth. Size and Earnings of the companies were insignificant with the shareholders wealth.
Role of the Endoplasmic Reticulum Chaperone BiP, SUN Domain Proteins, and Dynein in Altering Nuclear Morphology during Human Cytomegalovirus Infection

ABSTRACT The process of assembly and egress of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) virions requires significant morphological alterations of the nuclear and cytoplasmic architecture. In the studies presented we show that the nuclear periphery is dramatically altered, especially near the cytoplasmic assembly compartment, where the nuclear lamina is specifically rearranged, the outer nuclear membrane is altered, and the nucleus becomes permeable to large molecules. In addition, the tethering of the inner and outer nuclear membranes is lost during infection due to a decrease in levels of the SUN domain proteins. We previously demonstrated that the endoplasmic reticulum protein BiP functions as a component of the assembly compartment and disruption of BiP causes the loss of assembly compartment integrity. In this study we show that the depletion of BiP, and the loss of assembly compartment integrity, results in the loss of virally induced lamina rearrangement and morphology of the nucleus that is characteristic of HCMV infection. BiP functions in lamina rearrangement through its ability to affect lamin phosphorylation. Depletion of BiP and disruption of the assembly compartment result in the loss of lamin phosphorylation. The dependency of lamin phosphorylation on BiP correlates with an interaction between BiP and UL50. Finally, we confirm previous data (S. V. Indran, M. E. Ballestas, and W. J. Britt, J. Virol. 84:3162-3177, 2010) suggesting an involvement of dynein in assembly compartment formation and extend this observation by showing that when dynein is inhibited, the nuclear morphology characteristic of an HCMV infection is lost. Our data suggest a highly integrated assembly-egress continuum.
What factors influence customer‐oriented prosocial behavior of customer‐contact employees?

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to analyze the structural relationship between empowerment, service training, service reward, job attitudes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and customer‐oriented prosocial behavior of employees.Design/methodology/approach – The research question is examined using a sample of Korean hotel employees. Structural equation analysis is used to test various research hypotheses and examine the extent to which job satisfaction and organizational commitment mediate the effect of empowerment, service training, and service reward on customer‐oriented prosocial behavior.Findings – First, the greater the job satisfaction, the greater is the role‐prescribed customer service of employees. Second, the greater the job satisfaction, the greater is the organizational commitment. Third, empowerment has a significant effect on organizational commitment and extra‐role customer service. Fourth, service training has a significant effect on job satisfaction, but it has.
Long-Term Ensemble Learning of Visual Place Classifiers

This paper addresses the problem of cross-season visual place classification (VPC) from a novel perspective of long-term map learning. Our goal is to enable transfer learning efficiently from one season to the next, at a small constant cost, and without wasting the robot's available long-term-memory by memorizing very large amounts of training data. To realize a good tradeoff between generalization and specialization abilities, we employ an ensemble of convolutional neural network (DCN) classifiers and consider the task of scheduling (when and which classifiers to retrain), given a previous season's DCN classifiers as the sole prior knowledge. We present a unified framework for retraining scheduling and discuss practical implementation strategies. Furthermore, we address the task of partitioning a robot's workspace into places to define place classes in an unsupervised manner, rather than using uniform partitioning, so as to maximize VPC performance. Experiments using the publicly available NCLT dataset revealed that retraining scheduling of a DCN classifier ensemble is crucial and performance is significantly increased by using planned scheduling.
Attributing the probability of South African weather extremes to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions: Spatial characteristics

Recent studies have examined the role of anthropogenic emissions in the probability of extreme weather events. These studies examine an event aggregated over a spatial domain, but the dependence on domain definition is unknown. Here we investigate this dependence for the frequency of daily weather extremes across South Africa using a climate model run under both a real‐world and a nongreenhouse gas world scenario. Attributable changes in extremely hot and cold days are dominated by large‐scale spatial structures, with sharp gradients at the 100 km scale arising for hot events because of the large magnitude of changes. The attributable probabilities of heavy precipitation events are spatially heterogeneous down to the 100 km resolution of the climate model. Therefore, while estimates of attributable probability for temperature events may often be considered valid within smaller and neighboring spatial domains, it appears that estimates for heavy daily precipitation events may be sensitive to the definition of the event.
Relationships Between Mood, Cohesion And Satisfaction With Performance Among Soccer Players

The aim of this study was to investigate relationships between pre-competition group cohesion, mood, and performance in a soccer team over the course of a season. A male soccer team in England played eight games and data were analyzed on a game-by-game basis. Participants completed the Group Environment Questionnaire (Carron, Brawley, & Widmeyer, 1985) and Brunel Mood Scale to assess Anger, Confusion, Depression, Fatigue, Tension, and Vigor (Terry, Lane, Lane, & Keohane, 1999) before each competition. Post-competition, participants rated the quality of performance on a two-item scale. Results indicated that GEQ scores related to Vigor, lending support to the notion that being part of a cohesive team is associated with positive mood states. Relationships showed that Vigor and AGTT were associated with perceiving performance to be successful. Depressed mood was shown to be associated with a poor perception of performance. We suggest that future research should investigate the efficacy of applied interventions designed to improve cohesion and mood.
Differences in in vitro invasive capacity induced by differences in Ki‐Ras protein mutations

The p21 proteins encoded by N‐, Ki‐, and H‐ras are small guanine nucleotide‐binding proteins that act as switches in several signal transduction pathways. Recently, evidence has been accumulating to suggest that valine‐12 mutation in the Ki‐Ras protein is associated with lung and colorectal tumours that are more aggressive than those carrying aspartate‐12 mutation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether cells transfected with different Ki‐ras codon‐12 mutants have different biological behaviours in vitro that could reflect the differences in behaviour in vivo. For that reason, Rat‐1 fibroblasts transfected with the valine‐12 or aspartate‐12 mutant or the wild‐type Ki‐ras gene were assessed in terms of in vitro invasion, transformation, and VEGF production. Both mutants demonstrated equal abilities to transform Rat‐1 cells and induce VEGF production, while cells transfected with wild‐type Ki‐Ras failed to do so. Most significantly, the valine‐12 mutants demonstrated a greater ability to invade Matrigel than cells expressing the aspartate‐12 mutant or wild‐type Ki‐Ras proteins. This study complements previous experimental data that specific Ras mutations differ in their effects in vivo and shows, for the first time, a significant difference in Matrigel invasion in vitro. The precise mechanisms behind these biological differences in vivo and in vitro should now be investigated. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Assembly of T-Antigen Double Hexamers on the Simian Virus 40 Core Origin Requires Only a Subset of the Available Binding Sites

ABSTRACT Initiation of simian virus 40 (SV40) DNA replication is dependent upon the assembly of two T-antigen (T-ag) hexamers on the SV40 core origin. To further define the oligomerization mechanism, the pentanucleotide requirements for T-ag assembly were investigated. Here, we demonstrate that individual pentanucleotides support hexamer formation, while particular pairs of pentanucleotides suffice for the assembly of T-ag double hexamers. Related studies demonstrate that T-ag double hexamers formed on “active pairs” of pentanucleotides catalyze a set of previously described structural distortions within the core origin. For the four-pentanucleotide-containing wild-type SV40 core origin, footprinting experiments indicate that T-ag double hexamers prefer to bind to pentanucleotides 1 and 3. Collectively, these experiments demonstrate that only two of the four pentanucleotides in the core origin are necessary for T-ag assembly and the induction of structural changes in the core origin. Since all four pentanucleotides in the wild-type origin are necessary for extensive DNA unwinding, we concluded that the second pair of pentanucleotides is required at a step subsequent to the initial assembly process.
Cyclosporine in the treatment of myasthenia gravis

Cyclosporine A (CsA) treatment was evaluated in 52 patients with severe generalized myasthenia gravis (MG) whose illness was not controlled by anticholinesterase drugs, thymectomy, corticosteroids, and azathioprine. The efficacy of CsA treatment was expressed by mean disability score quotient (MDSQ), which was obtained by comparing mean disability score (MDS) at the beginning of the treatment with the MDS at the end of the follow‐up period. For the entire group of patients MDSQ was 53.3%, indicating moderate improvement. Analyzing individual cases, eight patients (15%) did not improve, 17 (33%) showed moderate improvement, 20 (38%) showed remarkable improvement, and seven patients (14%) achieved complete remission. The most common side effects were rise of serum creatinine (seven), hypertension (two), gingival hyperplasia (two), hypertrichosis (six), myalgia (10), and ‘flu‐like’ symptoms (10 patients). The results of this study suggest that CsA is efficacious and safe treatment in severe and resistant forms of MG.
A Cultural Perspective on Wildlife Tourism in China

Abstract Wildlife tourism is based on interactions between humans and wildlife. Although it is well understood that differences exist in the relationship in different cultures, existing management models are often based on a scientific approach rather than a cultural approach or an approach that integrates these perspectives. This study concentrates on the social and cultural factors affecting wildlife tourism management through a case study of Monkey Island in Hainan Province, China. Various stakeholders were interviewed about their views on conservation and tourism management. The “differential mode of association” of Chinese culture is used to understand conflicts and harmony in nature conservation and tourism development. It is shown that Chinese people are accustomed to treat wildlife in aesthetic and moral ways. A conservation model that does not take account of these cultural factors is likely to be ineffective. The research establishes and demonstrates the need and potential to study wildlife tourism from a cultural approach.
Consumer Participation in Coproduction: “I Made it Myself” Effects on Consumers’ Sensory Perceptions and Evaluations of Outcome and Input Product

Consumers engage in self-production when they play an active role in the creation of end products, such as preparing a meal or assembling a piece of furniture. In three experimental studies of self-production involving a branded input product, the authors show that consumers’ active engagement in the value creation process (preparing a meal) positively biases their evaluations of an outcome (a dish) and an input product (a dinner kit). A positive evaluation bias for the input product occurs despite increased self-attribution due to self-production. In support of an associative self-anchoring explanation and the notion of self-generated validity, self-producing consumers bias their sensory perceptions (e.g., perceived level of saltiness and spiciness) so that they match a positive evaluation of the outcome. Mediation analyses show that perceived self-integration (perceived link between self and outcome) partly mediates the positive effect of self-production on outcome evaluation. The authors conclude that branded input products may benefit from the evaluation bias caused by self-production.
Related diversification, core competences and corporate performance

Despite nearly 30 years of academic research on the benefits of related diversification, there is still considerable disagreement about precisely how and when diversification can be used to build long-run competitive advantage. In this paper we argue that the disagreement exists for two main reasons: (a) the traditional way of measuring relatedness between two businesses is incomplete because it ignores the ‘strategic importance’ and similarity of the underlying assets residing in these businesses, and (b) the way researchers have traditionally thought of relatedness is limited, primarily because it has tended to equate the benefits of relatedness with the static exploitation of economies of scope (asset amortization), thus ignoring the main contribution of related diversification to long-run, competitive advantage; namely the potential for the firm to expand its stock of strategic assets and create new ones more rapidly and at lower cost than rivals who are not diversified across related businesses. An empirical test supports our view that ‘strategic’ relatedness is superior to market relatedness in predicting when related diversifies outperform unrelated ones.
Love flows downstream: mothers’ and children’s neural representation similarity in perceiving distress of self and family

Abstract The current study aimed to capture empathy processing in an interpersonal context. Mother–adolescent dyads (N = 22) each completed an empathy task during fMRI, in which they imagined the target person in distressing scenes as either themselves or their family (i.e. child for the mother, mother for the child). Using multi-voxel pattern approach, we compared neural pattern similarity for the self and family conditions and found that mothers showed greater perceptual similarity between self and child in the fusiform face area (FFA), representing high self–child overlap, whereas adolescents showed significantly less self–mother overlap. Adolescents’ pattern similarity was dependent upon family relationship quality, such that they showed greater self–mother overlap with higher relationship quality, whereas mothers’ pattern similarity was independent of relationship quality. Furthermore, adolescents’ perceptual similarity in the FFA was associated with increased social brain activation (e.g. temporal parietal junction). Mediation analyses indicated that high relationship quality was associated with greater social brain activation, which was mediated by greater self–mother overlap in the FFA. Our findings suggest that adolescents show more distinct neural patterns in perceiving their own vs their mother’s distress, and such distinction is sensitive to mother–child relationship quality. In contrast, mothers’ perception for their own and child’s distress is highly similar and unconditional.