Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognostic significance of tumor‐enhancement and angiogenesis in oligodendroglioma

Objective– To study the prognostic significance of angiogenesis and enhancement on contrast‐enhanced computerized tomography (CT) in oligodendrogliomas. Material and methods– CD34 immunostaining was employed in samples of 26 low‐grade oligodendrogliomas from patients treated by extensive resection and radiotherapy to determine the tumor angiogenesis index (TAI), calculated by measuring the immunostained endothelial surface area, in μm2, per 1000 tumor cells. Preoperative CT scan was evaluated in each case, and the absence or presence of tumor enhancement after contrast administration was recorded. Survival was analyzed and statistically compared for subgroups of patients with lesions in which the TAI was less than or greater than 15, and for subgroups of patients having tumors showing presence or absence of enhancement on contrast‐enhanced CT. Results– Survival of patients with tumors showing a TAI of less than 15 was 100% and 71% at 5 and 10 years, respectively, vs a survival of 50% and 0% for patients showing a TAI of more than 15 (P < 0.05). The 14 patients whose tumors showed enhancement in preoperative contrast‐enhanced CT had 5‐ and 10‐year survival rates of 57% and 14%, respectively, vs 100% and 83% for the 12 patients whose tumors presented no enhancement (P < 0.05). Moreover, 79% of the tumors showing contrast enhancement had a TAI greater than 15, while 92% of those exhibiting no enhancement had a TAI of less than 15. Conclusion– These findings indicate a relationship between enhancement on preoperative CT scan and endothelial surface area in oligodendrogliomas, and suggest that this enhancement and the TAI may be considered angiogenesis‐related factors with similar prognostic significance in terms of survival.
Serum albumin and survival in CAPD patients: the implications of concentration trends over time.

HYPOTHESIS Trends in serum albumin concentration over time provide a better prediction of clinical outcome in CAPD patients than a single mean value. METHODS This was a retrospective review of outcome at 36 months in 225 adult CAPD patients. Mean serum albumin was determined for the first (SA1) and second (SA2) 6 months of treatment and patients grouped according to SA1 (group I, > 37; group II, 34-37; group III, < 34 g/l) and according to the change in serum albumin (delta SA) between the first and second 6 months (increased/static or decreased). Patient (PS) and technique (TS) survival were determined by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. The effect of SA1 and delta SA on survival were determined in a multivariate Cox regression analysis model that included age and presence or absence of a systemic disease. RESULTS By SA1 group, PS and TS survival at 36 months were 94 and 76% (group I), 64 and 53% (group II) and 70 and 52% (group III). If delta SA increased/remained static, then SA1 did not predict PS (group I, 100%; group II, 96%; group III, 74%; P = n.s.) or TS (group I, 72%; group II, 63%; group III, 65%; P = n.s.). If delta SA decreased, PS was worse in groups II and III, both as compared to group I (PS group I, 88%; group II, 52%; group III, 34%; P = 0.02) and as compared to the groups II and III when delta SA increased (PS group II, 74 vs 52%, P = 0.05; group III, 82 vs 34%, P = 0.005) The same trend was seen for TS. In the multivariate Cox regression model, age, direction of change in serum albumin, and presence of a multisystem disease were significant predictors of survival, whereas SA1 was not. CONCLUSION Early hypoalbuminaemia in CAPD only predicts a worse patient and technique survival if mean serum albumin decreases further from the first to second 6 months of dialysis therapy. Change in serum albumin between the first and second 6 months of CAPD and the mean serum albumin over the first 6 months together offer better discrimination of outcome than either alone.
PROPERTIES OF LOW-PH CEMENT GROUT AS A SEALING MATERIAL FOR THE GEOLOGICAL DISPOSAL OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE

The current solution to the problem of using cementitious material for sealing purposes in a final radioactive waste repository is to develop a low-pH cement grout. In this study, the material properties of a low-pH cement grout based on a recipe used at ONKALO are investigated by considering such factors as pH variation, compressive strength, dynamic modulus, and hydraulic conductivity by using silica fume and micro-cement. From the pH measurements of the hardened cement grout, the required pH (＜ pH 11) is obtained after 130 days of curing. Although the engineering properties of the low-pH cement grout used in this study are inferior to those of conventional high-pH cement grout, the utilization of silica fume and micro-cement effectively meets the long-term environmental and durability requirements for cement grout in a radioactive waste repository.
Changes in Bone Mineral Density in Response to 24 Weeks of Resistance Training in College-Age Men and Women

Almstedt, HC, Canepa, JA, Ramirez, DA, and Shoepe, TC. Changes in bone mineral density in response to 24 weeks of resistance training in college-age men and women. J Strength Cond Res 25(4): 1098-1103, 2011-Osteoporosis is a chronic disease of major public health concern. Characterized by low bone mass and increasing risk for fracture, osteoporosis occurs to a greater extent in women. Resistance training is a mode of exercise that can be used to build peak bone mass during youth, thereby preventing osteoporosis later in life. Our aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of a resistance training protocol designed to apply loads to the hip and spine in men and women. We recruited recreationally active men (n = 12) and women (n = 12), ages of 18-23. An additional 10 participants (5 men, 5 women) served as controls. Volunteers completed questionnaires to assess health history, physical activity, dietary intake, and menstrual history. The training program was performed for 24 weeks, on 3 nonconsecutive days per week, including exercises for the upper, lower, and core musculature, marked by an undulating periodization varying between 67 and 95% of 1 repetition maximum (1RM) on the multijoint exercises of bench press, squats, and deadlifts. Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (Hologic Explorer, Waltham, MA, USA) was used to assess bone mineral density (BMD, g·cm−2). A 2-tailed analysis of covariance, controlling for body mass index, revealed that in comparison to women, men had significantly greater increases in BMD at the lateral spine and femoral neck. Male exercisers were found to increase BMD by 2.7-7.7%, whereas percent change in women ranged from −0.8 to 1.5%, depending on the bone site. Both male and female controls demonstrated about 1% change at any bone site. Results indicate that 24 weeks of resistance training, including squat and deadlift exercises, is effective in increasing BMD in young healthy men. Similar benefits were not derived by women who followed the same protocol.
Tricyclic antidepressants, quinacrine and a novel, synthetic chimera thereof clear prions by destabilizing detergent‐resistant membrane compartments

Prion diseases are invariably fatal, neurodegenerative diseases transmitted by an infectious agent, PrPSc, a pathogenic, conformational isoform of the normal prion protein (PrPC). Heterocyclic compounds such as acridine derivatives like quinacrine abolish prion infectivity in a cell culture model of prion disease. Here, we report that these compounds execute their antiprion activity by redistributing cholesterol from the plasma membrane to intracellular compartments, thereby destabilizing membrane domains. Our findings are supported by the fact that structurally unrelated compounds with known cholesterol‐redistributing effects – U18666A, amiodarone, and progesterone – also possessed high antiprion potency. We show that tricyclic antidepressants (e.g. desipramine), another class of heterocyclic compounds, displayed structure‐dependent antiprion effects and enhanced the antiprion effects of quinacrine, allowing lower doses of both drugs to be used in combination. Treatment of ScN2a cells with quinacrine or desipramine induced different ultrastructural and morphological changes in endosomal compartments. We synthesized a novel drug from quinacrine and desipramine, termed quinpramine, that led to a fivefold increase in antiprion activity compared to quinacrine with an EC50 of 85 nm. Furthermore, simvastatin, an inhibitor of cholesterol biosynthesis, acted synergistically with both heterocyclic compounds to clear PrPSc. Our data suggest that a cocktail of drugs targeting the lipid metabolism that controls PrP conversion may be the most efficient in treating Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease.
Management Competence, Firm-level Institutions, Human Resource Management Bundles and Performance of Companies Listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange

xiii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Background of the Study . 1 1.1.1 Management Competence . 2 1.1.2 Firm-Level Institutions . 5 1.1.3 Human Resource Management Bundles . 12 1.1.4 Company Performance . 14 1.1.5 Companies Listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange . 15 1.2 Research Problem . 16 1.3 Research Objectives . 18 1.4 Value of the Study . 18 1.5 Organization of the Study . 19 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW . 21 2.
The Impact of Motivation for Attendance on Destination Loyalty via the Mediating Effect of Tourist Satisfaction

The aim of this research is to explore the associations among motivation for attendance to Aqaba city, destination satisfaction, and destination loyalty. The research surveyed samples of 200 and used Structural Equation Model for research analysis and testing. The results show that motivation for attendance to Aqaba city positively affects tourists’ destination loyalty. The motivation for attendance positively affects destination satisfaction; and tourists’ destination satisfaction affects tourists’ destination loyalty. Furthermore, the coefficient of determination (R²) for the research endogenous variables for tourists’ destination satisfaction, and tourists’ destination loyalty were 0.46, and 0.66 respectively, which indicates that the model does moderately account for the variation of the proposed model; however, opens the gate for further research.
Revisiting Managerial 'Style': The Replicability and Falsifiability of Manager Fixed Effects for Firm Policies

A growing literature studies the importance of top managers for firm policies and performance. We revisit the foundations of this literature by replicating and extending the analysis of Bertrand and Schoar (2003), who used manager fixed effects to provide evidence for the existence of managerial “style” in the form of financial statement metrics like leverage, R&D spending, and Tobin’s Q. We find that the statistical and economic significance of manager fixed effects is notably lower in our results than in theirs, although sometimes we obtain stronger results. There is no obvious pattern to the discrepancies. These discrepant findings motivated us to conduct placebo tests using data in which we randomize managers’ spells at their firms. The results with the randomized data are effectively indistinguishable from those with the real data, suggesting (a) that the apparent explanatory power of manager fixed effects is a statistical artifact and (b) that managerial “style” may manifest itself in more complex ways than can be ascertained from examining financial statement metrics.
A Strategy to Predict Association Football Players’ Passing Skills

Transfers are big business in association football. This paper develops a generalized additive mixed model that aids managers in predicting how a football player is expected to perform in a new team. It does so by using event-level data from the Spanish and the Colombian football leagues. Using passes as a performance proxy, the model exploits the richness of the data to account for the difficulty of each pass attempt performed by each player over an entire season. The model estimates are then used to determine how a player transferred from the Colombian league should perform in the Spanish league, taking into account that teammates and rivals’ abilities are different in the latter.
In vivo studies of upstream regulatory cis‐acting elements of the alcR gene encoding the transactivator of the ethanol regulon in Aspergillus nidulans

The alcR gene of Aspergillus nidulans, which encodes the specific transactivator of the ethanol utilization pathway, is positively autoregulated and carbon catabolite repressed. Regulation by these two circuits occurs at the transcriptional level via the binding of the two regulators, AlcR and CreA, to their cognate targets respectively. We demonstrate here that out of two clustered putative AlcR repeated consensus sequences, only the palindromic target is functional in vivo. Hence, it is solely responsible for the alcR positive autogenous activation loop. Transcript mapping of the alcR gene showed that transcription initiation can occur at 553 bp and at or near 86 bp upstream of the start codon. These transcription start sites yield a transcript of 3.0 kb, which appears only under induced growth conditions, and of 2.6 kb, which is present under both induced and non‐induced growth conditions respectively. Nine CreA consensus sites are present in the alcR promoter but only two pairs of two sites are functional in vivo. One of them is located in close proximity to the AlcR functional target. Within this pair, both sites are necessary to mediate a partial repression of alcR transcription. Disruption of either site results in an overexpression of alcR due to the absence of direct competition between AlcR and CreA for the same DNA region. The second functional pair of CreA sites is located between the two transcription initiation sites. Disruption of either of the two sites results in a totally derepressed alcR transcription, showing that they work as a pair constituting the more efficient repression mechanism. Thus, CreA acts by two different mechanisms: by competing with AlcR for the same DNA region and by an efficient direct repression. The latter mechanism presumably interfers with the general transcriptional machinery.
The effect of zinc and potassium on the quality yield of wheat under drought stress conditions

To study the effect of potassium sulfate and zinc fertilizers on wheat drought resistance under water stress conditions, an experiment was conducted in the fall of 2011 in Dehloran region. In this test, a split factorial in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Factors examined include the normal irrigation and supplemental irrigation in main plots were performed and potassium fertilizers concentrations of zero, 60, 120 and 180 kg ha potassium sulfate source and zinc concentrations zero and 25 kg ha of zinc sulfate source factorial subplots were performed. At the end of the experiment seed yield, number of grains per spike, number of spikelets per spike, 1000 seed weight and the amount of protein, potassium, zinc and nitrogen on grain measured. Results showed that the effect of irrigation on most traits were significant in laboratory and field and normal irrigation had a positive impact on these traits. The results showed that potash fertilizer had a positive effect on most traits. Of field and laboratory traits, height, number of grains per spike, grain weight, grain yield and zinc concentration were affected seedling fresh weight. Interaction of irrigation and potassium sulfate on grain yield was significant, The highest and lowest grain yield in treatment of 120 kg potassium sulfate+ water treated normal and non- application of potassium sulfate+ normal irrigation the amount of 4938 and 3144 Kg/ha, respectively. In the case of the effect of three interaction treatments, the highest and the lowest yield, in Supplementary irrigation +120 kg potassium sulfate +25 kg zinc sulfate and normal irrigation+ non- application of potassium sulfate+25 kg zinc sulfate the amount of 5047 and 3061 kg/ ha of zinc sulfate was. Finally, the amount of 120 kg and 25 kg of potassium sulfate, zinc sulfate for the cultivation of this plant is recommended.
Virtual brand community engagement practices: a refined typology and model

Purpose Despite Schau et al.’s (2009) pioneering research addressing consumers’ community engagement practices, scholarly understanding of the nature and dynamics characterizing consumers’ engagement practices in virtual (online) brand communities, and their inter-relationships, is limited to date. Building on these authors’ study, this paper aims to develop a refined typology and process model of virtual brand community engagement practices (VBCEPs). Design/methodology/approach Using the netnographic methodology, the authors analyze 20 luxury handbag community members’ entries posted on the brand’s particular section of The Purse Forum. Findings The authors develop an eight-component VBCEP typology that refines Schau et al.’s (2009) four-component model of brand community engagement practices. The model comprises “greeting”, “regulating”, “assisting”, “celebrating”, “appreciating”, “empathizing”, “mingling” and “ranking”. These practices contribute to and maintain the community’s vision and identity, and strengthen shared community consciousness. Research limitations/implications A key limitation of this research lies in its findings being generated from a single, luxury virtual brand community. Future research may thus wish to validate the VBCEP typology and model across different contexts. Practical implications The authors provide strategic managerial recommendations designed to leverage virtual brand community performance, which center predominantly on the social (altruistic) and achievement-based VBCEP sub-processes. Originality/value The eight-component VBCEP typology refines Schau et al.’s four-component model of brand community engagement practices with particular applicability to virtual brand communities.
Devising a Research Model to Examine Adoption of Mobile Commerce Affected by Huxiang Culture

Whilst the adoption of mobile commerce has been studied in several contexts, none of the existing research has attempted to systematical analyses of the influence by region culture. Huxiang culture is considered to be the unique southern culture, therefore, this paper sought to extend an appropriate model of adoption which was influenced by Huxiang culture with theoretically grounded constructs. As TAM has previously been used by mobile commerce adoption research, and it was concluded that TAM would be the most appropriate to employ. Based on current research findings on m-commerce, TAM was extended with trust and perceived enjoyment.
Gender Diversity, R&D Teams and Patents: An Application to Spanish Firms

Previous results show that gender diversity increases the probability that firms invest in R&D and engage in innovation. This paper explores the relationship between gender diversity of R&D departments and their capacity to patent. Based on the Spanish Community Innovation Survey between 2004 and 2014, we apply a two-step procedure in order to control for endogeneity. Although gender diversity affects OEPM patents negatively, its impact is non-significant for patents with international coverage (EPO, USPTO, or PCT). A relevant result is the fact that the generation of patents is positively affected by the diversity of categories in the R&D labs. Our results highlight that, gender diversity of R&D teams does not play a relevant impact on the capacity of the firm to register patents. However, the diversity according to the professional role in R&D teams exerts a positive influence. In sum, the key question is not the gender diversity per se but the gender diversity jointly with the professional status. JEL Code: O30, O31, J16. Keywords: gender diversity, patent generation
Broad-band lightwave synthesized frequency sweeper using synchronous filtering

We describe a broad-band lightwave synthesized frequency sweeper (LSFS) that uses synchronous filtering. We control the center frequency of the bandpass filter (BPF) in the LSFS so that it tracks the frequency of the circulating pulse. In the first half of this paper, we numerically simulate the accumulation of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise in the LSFS and confirm the effectiveness of synchronous filtering in suppressing the noise. We show that the frequency sweep span can be enlarged to cover the erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain bandwidth completely if ideal synchronous filtering is realized. We also describe the way in which the fluctuation of the BPF center frequency severely limits the number of pulse circulations and we estimate the accuracy required for the BPF center frequency control. In the second half, we report our experimental results. We confirmed the completion of more than 10 000 pulse circulations, which corresponded to a frequency sweep span of >1.2 THz. We also estimated the accuracy of the BPF center frequency control experimentally. As a result, the relationship between the accuracy and the number of pulse circulations was in good agreement with that obtained in the simulation.
Institutional Perspectives on Corporate Governance Reforms in Nigeria

Corporate governance in developing countries is becoming noticeable in the extant literature. In this chapter, we review the development of the corporate governance discourse in Nigeria, paying attention to the challenges of promoting good governance standards through reforms. Relying on institutional theory as against the widely-engaged agency framework, we account for the institutional determinants of corporate governance reforms in Nigeria. We analyse the intricacies of the institutional context in developing countries and their complementarity (or deviance) with the prevailing corporate governance regulatory system.
Ndfip1 Negatively Regulates RIG-I–Dependent Immune Signaling by Enhancing E3 Ligase Smurf1-Mediated MAVS Degradation

Ndfip1 functions as both a recruiter and an activator of multiple HECT domain E3 ubiquitin ligases of the Nedd4 family. In this study, we demonstrate that Ndfip1 is involved in the ubiquitin-mediated degradation of mitochondrial antiviral signaling (MAVS), which is a key adaptor protein in RIG-I–like receptor–mediated immune signaling. We found that overexpression of Ndfip1 severely impaired MAVS and Sendai virus–mediated activation of IFN-stimulated response element, NF-κB, IFN-β promoter, and polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid or influenza virus RNA–stimulated IRF-3 phosphorylation, as well as the transcription of IFN-β. This functional interaction was confirmed by knockdown of Ndfip1, which facilitated MAVS-mediated downstream signaling and elevated MAVS protein levels. Further analysis indicated that Ndfip1 enhances both self-ubiquitination of HECT domain-containing E3 ubiquitin ligase Smurf1 and its interaction with MAVS, and eventually promotes MAVS degradation. In addition, the activation of IFN-β by MAVS, influenza virus RNA, polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid, and Sendai virus was enhanced in Ndfip1 knockdown cells. These results reveal that Ndfip1 is a potent inhibitor of MAVS-mediated antiviral response.