Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multicenter macular ganglion cell analysis: normative paediatric reference range

Editor, W e have read with great interest the article by Mansouri et al. (2013) published in your journal. The authors reported marked reduction in intra-ocular pressure (IOP) in a female patient during sexual activity with the timing of the largest drop of the IOP corresponding to the recorded moment of orgasm. They hypothesized that the rapid increase in prolactin and dopamine levels occurring during orgasm (Kruger et al. 2005) may have an IOPlowering effect resulting in immediate reduction in the IOP in this distinct patient. Actually, previous studies have already reported the IOP-lowering effect of dopamine in vivo, while low IOP values have been correlated with low prolactin levels in the plasma of women with seasonal affective disorder (Mekki & Turner 1985; Stojek et al. 1991). Hereby, we would like to share our experience of IOP measurements in patients with hyperprolactinaemia, but without any documented ocular pathology. In a prospective case series of five patients, data were collected for healthy eyes in patients with hyperprolactinaemia. Data included IOP and blood prolactin levels. Mean IOP for the right eyes (OD) was 8.4 mmHg and for the left eyes (OS) 8 mmHg, which is significantly lower than the mean IOP of the normal population (Leydhecker 1976). Mean prolactin blood level was 432.4 ng/ml, while the normal range is 2–18 ng/ml in males and 2–29 ng/ml in (non-pregnant) females. Significant negative correlation was found between IOP and prolactin blood levels for both eyes (OD: Pearson’s correlation coefficient, r = 0.9368, p = 0.019; OS: Pearson’s correlation coefficient, r = 0.922, p = 0.026) suggesting that the higher the levels of blood prolactin the lower the IOP. Detailed status of patients is depicted in Table 1. These preliminary data are in agreement with the clinical hypothesis of Mansouri et al., indicating that sex hormones such as prolactin, may have an important role in the physiology of IOP regulation. Of course, it should be interesting to investigate IOP changes in these patients after establishing normal levels of blood prolactin. Larger studies are required to delineate the exact nature of the IOP effects induced by sex hormones such as prolactin.
Relationship Marketing Model – The Practice of Relationship between Hoteliers and Loyal Customers of Five Star Hotels in Bangladesh

This study develops a model of relationship marketing to empirically investigate: (1) the effect of relational bonds (financial, social and structural) on customer emotions; (2) emotions on relationship quality; and (3) the ultimate effect of both relationship quality and emotions on customer loyalty. Data were collected from a survey of 284 loyal guests at five-star hotels in Bangladesh and examined their perspectives as end users using structural equation modeling (AMOS 21). The emotion, which is considered to be an important construct here is used never before to investigate the loyalty of the customers in five star hotels in Bangladesh. Findings imply the need of relational bonds in service firms especially in hotels business, to increase the positive emotions of customers which in turn increase the relationship quality between the hoteliers and the customers so that more loyal customers are introduce in the five star hotels in Bangladesh and make the hotels pursuit more competitive advantage, and long-term profit.
Sensor Transformation Attention Networks

Recent work on encoder-decoder models for sequence-to-sequence mapping has shown that integrating both temporal and spatial attentional mechanisms into neural networks increases the performance of the system substantially. We report on a new modular network architecture that applies an attentional mechanism not on temporal and spatial regions of the input, but on sensor selection for multi-sensor setups. This network called the sensor transformation attention network (STAN) is evaluated in scenarios which include the presence of natural noise or synthetic dynamic noise. We demonstrate how the attentional signal responds dynamically to changing noise levels and sensor-specific noise, leading to reduced word error rates (WERs) on both audio and visual tasks using TIDIGITS and GRID; and also on CHiME-3, a multi-microphone real-world noisy dataset. The improvement grows as more channels are corrupted as demonstrated on the CHiME-3 dataset. Moreover, the proposed STAN architecture naturally introduces a number of advantages including ease of removing sensors from existing architectures, attentional interpretability, and increased robustness to a variety of noise environments.
Activity of minocycline against Nocardia asteroides: comparison with tetracycline in agar-dilution and standard disc-diffusion tests and with sulfadiazine in an experimental infection of mice.

Abstract Forty-nine strains of Nocardia asteroides were tested simultaneously for susceptibility to minocycline and tetracycline by an inocula-replicating method and by a disc diffusion method using a standard disc containing 30 μg of tetracycline and a similar disc containing 30 μg of minocycline. The minimum inhibiting concentration of minocycline by the former method was 3.1 μg per milliliter or less for 88 per cent of the strains, and all of them were inhibited by 6.3 μg per milliliter. Tetracycline inhibited only 8 of the strains in a concentration of 12.5 μg per milliliter or less, and 50 or 100 μg per milliliter were required to inhibit 61 per cent of the strains. The 30 μg disc of minocycline produced a clear zone greater than 20 mm. in diameter with all the strains, whereas the zone diameters produced by the standard 30 μg tetracycline disc were less than 20 mm. for 26 (53 per cent) of the strains. The standard 30 μg tetracycline disc was therefore ineffective for demonstrating susceptibility of N. asteroides to minocycline. Both minocycline and sulfadiazine were effective in eliminating a large inoculum of a clinical strain of N. asteroides from mice and prolonging their survival after intraperitoneal injection of a suspension in mucin.
HTLV-2 infection in injection drug users in King County, Washington

Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 2 (HTLV-2) is endemic in injection drug users (IDU), and native American populations in the Americas. Transmission is associated with high-risk injection and sexual practices. A cohort of 2561 IDU in King County, Washington completed 2 study visits over 1 y. HTLV-2 infection was detected in 190 (7.4%) of 2561 IDU, and 13 (7.8 cases per 1000 person-y) incident infections occurred during the study. Prevalent infection was associated with female gender, non-white race, longer duration as IDU, having a tattoo, combined injection of heroin and cocaine, and with serologic evidence of hepatitis B and C infection. Seroconversion was more common in women, and was associated with African American race, heterosexual identity and longer duration as IDU. In conclusion, increased risk of HTLV-2 infection was associated with non-white race, and injection drug of choice, suggesting injection networks may play an important role in transmission of HTLV-2. The high correlation of HTLV-2 infection with HCV infection suggests the major route of transmission in IDU is via injection practices. Additional studies are needed to examine the clinical manifestations of HTLV-2 infection, as well as the clinical and virological manifestations of HTLV-2/HCV coinfection.
Culture and collateral requirements: Evidence from developing countries

We study the relationship between culture and the use of collateral in corporate borrow- ing. Using a dataset of over 14,000 firms from 70 transition and developing countries, we find evidence that the likelihood to pledge collateral is lower in countries with higher un- certainty avoidance and corporate ethical behavior. In contrast, long-term orientation and individualism enhance the likelihood to use collateral. These results hold when using sub- samples and further controls for various firm and country-specific attributes. Additional analysis reveals that culture influences not only the likelihood to pledge collateral but also its type (movable versus non-movable) and its value relative to the value of the loan.
Direct Ex Vivo Analyses of HLA-DR1 Transgenic Mice Reveal an Exceptionally Broad Pattern of Immunodominance in the Primary HLA-DR1-Restricted CD4 T-Cell Response to Influenza Virus Hemagglutinin

ABSTRACT The recent threat of an avian influenza pandemic has generated significant interest in enhancing our understanding of the events that dictate protective immunity to influenza and in generating vaccines that can induce heterosubtypic immunity. Although antigen-specific CD4 T cells are known to play a key role in protective immunity to influenza through the provision of help to B cells and CD8 T cells, little is known about the specificity and diversity of CD4 T cells elicited after infection, particularly those elicited in humans. In this study, we used HLA-DR transgenic mice to directly and comprehensively identify the specificities of hemagglutinin (HA)-specific CD4 T cells restricted to a human class II molecule that were elicited following intranasal infection with a strain of influenza virus that has been endemic in U.S. human populations for the last decade. Our results reveal a surprising degree of diversity among influenza virus-specific CD4 T cells. As many as 30 different peptides, spanning the entire HA protein, were recognized by CD4 T cells, including epitopes genetically conserved among H1, H2, and H5 influenza A viruses. We also compared three widely used major histocompatibility class II algorithms to predict HLA-DR binding peptides and found these as yet inadequate for identifying influenza virus-derived epitopes. The results of these studies offer key insights into the spectrum of peptides recognized by HLA-DR-restricted CD4 T cells that may be the focus of immune responses to infection or to experimental or clinical vaccines in humans.
Creating a Modified Monopoly Game for Promoting Students’ Higher-Order Thinking Skills and Knowledge Retention

This study modifies a popular business simulation game, Monopoly, to assess its effectiveness as a learning and teaching tool for helping high school accounting students acquire and apply foundational accounting concepts. The study compares an accounting-focused, Modified Monopoly with two other instructional methods. Using a quasi-experimental approach involving three learning groups, with random assignment of treatments based on school/class, a sample of 144 accounting students was obtained. This study found students using Modified Monopoly showed significantly greater improvement between their pre-test and the post-test scores than students in Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) but significantly less improvement than a paper-based extended accounting problem (EAP). However, students using Modified Monopoly, similar to the students in CAI, did not suffer the same significant decay in knowledge as students in EAP. These results offer evidence for the significant and more enduring learning benefits Modified Monopoly can produce in students’ higher order thinking skills.
Household Savings in Central Eastern and Southeastern Europe: How Do Poorer Households Save?

Based on a survey of households in 10 Central Eastern European and Western Balkan countries, this paper presents new and unique evidence on which households have savings and how they save. The paper shows that the percentage of savers is low, and savings are frequently informal. Formal savings are dominated by bank savings, and participation in contractual and capital market savings is very low in comparison to high-income countries. Poor households are significantly less likely to have any savings; income also has an effect, albeit smaller, on the choice of formal versus informal savings. With a high density of bank branches in Central Eastern European and Western Balkan countries lack of physical access to banks does not explain the lack of formal savings. Lack of trust in banks reduces the probability of formal savings, especially bank savings.
Audit Effects of Accounting Firm Organization Levels

Accounting firms are required by auditing standards to have control systems that ensure the quality of audits. These controls operate at three distinct levels of the organization. Firms develop firm-wide control systems. However, accounting firms are decentralized and the control systems are implemented by local practice offices and specific partners/audit teams working out of engagement offices. Our study examines the incremental importance of each of the three levels in explaining audit outcomes (quality of audit earnings, going concern reporting, and audit fees). The fixed effects of firms, offices, and partners are all significant, but the largest effect is inter-partner variation, and this finding holds for both Big 4 and non-Big 4 firms. An r-square decomposition analysis shows that partner fixed effects account for 31 to 51 percent of the explanatory power of models, far more than offices (11 to 18 percent) and firm-level effects (2 to 9 percent). Analysis of individual partner coefficients indicates the magnitudes are economically significant as well. Finally, a set of partner demographic variables explains relatively little compared to partner fixed effects, which suggests that publicly-available demographic data may be of relatively limited value in understanding the drivers of inter-partner differences and their effects on audit quality.
Low prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis in the urbanized Chinese of Hong Kong.

OBJECTIVE To establish the prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in the urbanized Chinese of Hong Kong. METHODS 2000 adults in 2 housing blocks were screened using a structured interview. Those who screened positive had an examination, rheumatoid factor analysis and radiographs taken. Subjects were classified using the Rome, New York and 1987 ACR criteria (modified and unmodified) for RA. RESULTS The prevalence of RA, using the modified 1987 ACR criteria, was 0.35%. This is significantly lower than published data for European Caucasians (standardized morbidity ratio = 0.27; 95% CI 0.09-0.63). CONCLUSION RA is rare in urbanized Chinese.
Technological Embeddedness and Organizational Change

While various theories have been proposed to explain how technology leads to organizational change, in general they have focused either on the technology and ignored the influence of human agency, or on social interaction and ignored the technology. In this paper, we propose a new theory of technology-mediated organizational change that bridges these two extremes. Using grounded theory methodology, we conducted a three-year study of an enterprise system implementation. From the data collected, we identified embeddedness as central to the process of change. When embedded in technology, organizational elements such as routines and roles acquire a material aspect, in addition to the ostensive and performative aspects identified by Feldman and Pentland (2003). Our new theory employs the lens of critical realism because in our view, common constructivist perspectives such as structuration theory or actor network theory have limited our understanding of technology as a mediator of organizational change. Using a critical realist perspective, our theory explains the process of change as a three-stage cycle in which the ostensive, performative, and material aspects of organizational elements interact differently in each stage.
Size and liquidity of government bond markets

shrinking the fastest in absolute terms, fiscal surpluses in such countries as Australia and Sweden would on present trends eliminate their central government debt ahead of those in the United States (Graph IV.1). At the other end of the spectrum, Japan’s fiscal deficits are producing the world’s biggest government bond market, while those of France and Spain are serving to maintain the size of the euro-denominated market. At the same time, some emerging market countries are having to increase their public sector debt to finance the recapitalisation of distressed banking systems. As different as their fiscal circumstances may be, most governments have revealed a common interest in fostering market liquidity. In pursuing this goal, policymakers have regarded various dimensions of the size of the market as key considerations. In several industrial countries, where budget surpluses are shrinking debt, the authorities are trying to preserve liquidity by maintaining gross issuance in specific securities even as net issuance in all securities declines. The finance ministries in emerging market countries view growing debt as providing an opportunity to develop domestic bond markets – private as well as government – to reduce not only the cost of borrowing but also reliance on overseas financing in foreign currency. After briefly describing the emergence of liquidity in some markets, this article takes up the question of the critical size for a liquid market. It then discusses one way of creating size: through lumping together different types of debt. Next it characterises the trade-off between size and crowding-out. Finally, it raises some issues concerning the transition in growing and shrinking markets.
Motives for online gaming questionnaire: Its psychometric properties and correlation with Internet gaming disorder symptoms among Chinese people

Background and aims Internet gaming disorder (IGD) imposes a potential public health threat worldwide. Gaming motives are potentially salient factors of IGD, but research on Chinese gaming motives is scarce. This study empirically evaluated the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (C-MOGQ), the first inventory that measures seven different gaming motives applicable to all type of online games. We also investigated the associations between various gaming motives and IGD symptoms among Chinese gamers. Methods Three hundred and eighty-three Chinese adult online gamers (Mean age = 23.7 years) voluntarily completed our online, anonymous survey in December 2015. Results The confirmatory factor analysis results supported a bi-factor model with a general factor subsuming all C-MOGQ items (General Motivation) and seven uncorrelated domain-specific factors (Escape, Coping, Fantasy, Skill Development, Recreation, Competition, and Social). High internal consistencies of the overall scale and subscales were observed. The criterion-related validity of this Chinese version was also supported by the positive correlations of C-MOGQ scale scores with psychological need satisfaction and time spent gaming. Furthermore, we found that high General Motivation (coupled with high Escape motive and low Skill Development motive) was associated with more IGD symptoms reported by our Chinese participants. Discussion and conclusions Our findings demonstrated the utility of C-MOGQ in measuring gaming motives of Chinese online gamers, and we recommend the consideration of both its total score and subscale scores in future studies.
Genetic testing is ready to change the diagnostic scenario of lactose malabsorption.

We write in response to the article by Swallow ( Gut 2006; 55 :131) in which a DNA test was considered premature for diagnosing hypolactasia. We would also like to comment on the diagnostic conclusions of Ransinpera et al 1 with regard to younger children. Recently, the C/T-13910 polymorphism on chromosome 2q21 in Northern European populations has been found to be completely associated with lactase activity2 and proposed as a new diagnostic tool in adult-type hypolactasia.1 Although in some African groups other polymorphisms can be present (Swallow et al ), the same polymorphism has also been found in non-Northern European populations.3–5 The lactose breath …
Role of Probiotics in Human and Animal Health Review

Probiotics as “Live microorganisms administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host". The use of probiotics is not a new invention but in fact it exists in our traditional food such as preparation of Dahi, Yoghurt, Koumis, Leben, different types of cheese, beverages, alcoholic products etc., since time immemorial. Several scientists proved their role in disease prevention, improvement in feed control, increase in growth, production, raising of immune mechanism etc. Since that time the list of probiotics and their role in human, birds and animal health is increasing day by day. This article explores some of the important aspects in the role of probiotics in human and animal health.
In vivo studies of increased incidence of sister chromatid exchanges in target cells of replication-component Friend murine leukemia virus.

The sister chromatid exchange (SCE) incidence in hemopoietic organs of mice infected with polycythemic or anemic strains of Friend leukemia virus was increased early after infection only in spleen and bone marrow cells of susceptible DBA/2 mice, but not in the same types of cells of genetically resistant BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice or in lymphoid cells of DBA/2 mice. Because a comparable increase of SCE incidence was observed in DBA/2 mice given either virus strain, the effect is seemingly due to the replication-competent leukemogenic component of the two strains of Friend leukemia virus (polycythemic or anemic, either identical of intimately cross-related) rather than to the defective spleen focus-forming virus that is not biologically active in the anemic strain used in this study. The increase of SCE was dependent upon virus dosage and viability, was short lasting, and was not detectable in mice with overt leukemia. The increased SCE values were accompanied by the detection of a small (10 to 15%) fraction of cells scoring “high” (5 to 20) for SCE. Statistical evaluation shows that this fraction contributes heavily to the significance of SCE increase. It is suggested that these cells may represent the target for the Friend murine leukemia virus component of the Friend leukemia virus complex.
The Impact of Supplier Sustainability Risk on Shareholder Value

Business scandals like sweatshop labor have received growing attention in the field of supply management. Yet little is known about how detrimental such scandals are to buying firms. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the magnitude of the consequences of what are termed as supplier sustainability risks (SSRs). To this end, we conduct an event study analysis followed by regression modeling based on a sample of 196 U.S. publicly traded firms’ SSRs. The results reveal that SSRs are associated with a 1.00 percent reduction in shareholder wealth. The market reacts negatively but not differently to the two types of SSR: process‐related risks and product‐related risks. Finally, a firm's moral capital does play a mitigating role for SSRs and process‐related risks; however, it does not provide insurance‐like protection for product‐related risks.
False Discoveries in the Performance of Canadian Equity Mutual Funds

This thesis assesses the performance of Canadian equity mutual funds over the period 1991-2016 using the False Discovery Rate (FDR) methodolody. We find that around 85% of the sampled funds are genuinely zero-alpha, and the majority of skilled funds lies in the extreme right tail. Overall, false positive rates in the studied population are found to be approximately 20% for gross returns, and 55% for net returns, and respectively 6% and 22% in the case of false negative rates across all factor models. Contrast to negative FDRs, positive FDRs exhibit abnormality among funds from before 2008, and greatly vary across fund groups. In addition, different bootstrap methods confirm the existence of manager stock-picking skill among the fund sample.