Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Follicular and endocrine dose responses according to anti‐Müllerian hormone levels in IVF patients treated with a novel human recombinant FSH (FE 999049)

To study the association between serum anti‐Müllerian hormone (AMH) levels and follicular development and endocrine responses induced by increasing doses (5·2–12·1μg/day) of a novel recombinant human FSH (rhFSH, FE 999049) in patients undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF)/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in a GnRH antagonist protocol.
Models of Decision Making and Residential Energy Use

Research traditions across the social sciences have explored the drivers of individual behavior and proposed different models of decision making. Four diverse perspectives are reviewed here: conventional and behavioral economics, technology adoption theory and attitude-based decision making, social and environmental psychology, and sociology. The individual decision models in these traditions differ axiomatically. Some are founded on informed rationality or psychological variables, and others emphasize physical or contextual factors from individual to social scales. Each perspective suggests particular lessons for designing interventions to change behavior. Throughout the review, these lessons are applied to decisions affecting residential energy use. Examples are drawn from both intuitive and reasoning-based types of decision as well as from a range of decision contexts that include capital investments in weatherization and repetitive behaviors such as appliance use. Areas of difference and similarity be.
Dynamic Insurance Contracts and Adverse Selection

We take a dynamic perspective on insurance markets under adverse selection and study a dynamic version of the Rothschild and Stiglitz model. We investigate the nature of dynamic insurance contracts by considering both conditional and unconditional dynamic contracts. An unconditional dynamic contract has insurance companies offering contracts where the terms of the contract depend on time, but not on the occurrence of past accidents. Conditional dynamic contracts make the actual contract also depend on individual past performance (such as in car insurances). We show that dynamic insurance contracts yield a welfare improvement only if they are conditional on past performance. With conditional contracts, the first-best can be approximated if the contract lasts long. Moreover, this is true for any fraction of low-risk agents in the population.
Association of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 -2518 polymorphism with metabolic syndrome in a South Indian cohort.

BACKGROUND Previous reports have indicated an association of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) with risk factors for atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease (CAD). Because some of these risk factors form components of metabolic syndrome, in the present study, we investigated the association of an important promoter region polymorphism of MCP-1, A-2518G, and its serum levels with metabolic syndrome in a South Indian cohort. METHODS The study comprised of 126 healthy subjects aged 30-59 years from South India. Subjects were classified on the basis of presence or absence of metabolic syndrome and metabolic syndrome components as per the International Diabetes Federation definition. MCP-1 genotyping was done by polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment-length polymorphism, and serum levels were estimated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS The MCP-1 -2518G allele frequency in the study population was 32.9% and the mean MCP-1 serum levels were 523 +/- 272.3 pg/mL. Subjects with metabolic syndrome showed an increased presence of the MCP-1 -2518G allele in comparison to those without metabolic syndrome (odds ratio [OR] = 5.03, P = 0.02). The association was related to a higher proportion of this allele in subjects with increased waist circumference (OR = 3.78, P = 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The MCP-1 -2518G allele may be contributing to atherosclerosis and CAD by conferring an increased risk to metabolic syndrome and/or obesity.
A General-Purpose Tagger with Convolutional Neural Networks

We present a general-purpose tagger based on convolutional neural networks (CNN), used for both composing word vectors and encoding context information. The CNN tagger is robust across different tagging tasks: without task-specific tuning of hyper-parameters, it achieves state-of-the-art results in part-of-speech tagging, morphological tagging and supertagging. The CNN tagger is also robust against the out-of-vocabulary problem; it performs well on artificially unnormalized texts.
Share Repurchases, Dividends and Executive Options: The Effect of Dividend Protection

We study the determinants of share repurchases and dividends in Finland. We find that higher foreign ownership serves as a determinant of share repurchases and suggest that this is explained by the different tax treatment of foreign and domestic investors. Further, we also find support for the signalling and agency cost hypotheses for cash distributions. The fact that 41% of the option programmes in our sample are dividend protected allows us to test more directly the ‘substitution/managerial wealth’ hypothesis for the choice of distribution method. When options are dividend protected, the relationship between dividend distributions and the scope of the options programme turns to a significantly positive one instead of the negative one documented in US data.
The elusive marginal q

This article discusses problems with proposed methods to estimate firm specific marginal q-ratios, where marginal q measures the value impact of new investment. The article concludes that suggested methods are likely to produce biased estimates since they fail to separate fluctuations in the value of assets in place, from the ex-post value increase specifically caused by the undertaken new investment. The usefulness of attempts to separate efficiency of new investments from efficiency of managing the firm's assets in place is questioned.
Urban Planning and Urban Reality Under Chinese Economic Reforms

Economic reforms in China have significantly changed both the processes of urban development and the practice of urban spatial planning. Changes in these aspects of urbanization, however, have not occurred in concert. The reassertion of planning as a profession has resulted in a reintroduction of a form of master planning, while the state's virtual monopoly over urban investment and decision making has steadily eroded. In Chinese cities, the practice of urban planning may have passed from irrelevance under the command economy of the past to gross ineffectiveness in the socialist market economy of today. In this paper I review major urban trends arising from Chinese economic reforms and discuss the problems and prospects of a planning response to these trends.
Regional Economic Resilience, Hysteresis and Recessionary Shocks

The notion of 'resilience' has recently risen to prominence in several disciplines, and has also entered policy discourse. Yet the meaning and relevance of the concept are far from settled matters. This paper develops the idea of resilience and examines its usefulness as an aid to understanding the reaction of regional economies to major recessionary shocks. But in so doing, it is also argued that the notion of resilience can usefully be combined with that of hysteresis in order to more fully capture the possible reactions of regional economies to major recessions. These ideas are then used as the basis for a preliminary empirical analysis of the UK regions.
Endogenous IL-17 Does Not Play a Significant Role in the Development of Experimental Murine Allergic Conjunctivitis

Background: Endogenous IL-17 is needed for the Ag sensitization that results in murine allergic asthma, a Th2-mediated disease. Here, we aimed to investigate the role IL-17 plays in the development of murine experimental allergic conjunctivitis (EC) which is also a Th2-mediated disease.Methods:To induce EC, wild-type (WT) and IL-17-deficient (IL-17 KO) mice on the BALB/c and C57BL/6 backgrounds were immunized with ragweed (RW) in alum and challenged with RW in eye drops. Alternatively, EC was induced by adoptively transferring RW-primed splenocytes followed by challenge with RW-containing eye drops. Twenty-four hours after the RW challenge, the conjunctivas and spleens were harvested for histological analyses and cytokine assays, respectively. Results: The WT and IL-17 KO mice on both backgrounds did not differ in terms of the severity of actively induced EC, as evaluated by the conjunctival eosinophil infiltration. They also did not differ with regard to the phenotypes of the inflammatory cells infiltrating the conjunctivas, although primed IL-17 KO splenocytes stimulated in vitro with RW extract did produce significantly higher amounts of IL-4, IL-13 and IFN-γ than WT splenocytes. Reciprocal adoptive transfer experiments also demonstrated that the IL-17 from both the donor splenocytes and the recipient mice is not involved in the development of EC. Conclusions: Endogenous IL-17 does not appear to play a significant role in the development of EC.
Unusual 4-arsonoanilinium cationic species in the hydrochloride salt of (4-aminophenyl)arsonic acid and formed in the reaction of the acid with copper(II) sulfate, copper(II) chloride and cadmium chloride.

Structures having the unusual protonated 4-arsonoanilinium species, namely in the hydrochloride salt, C6H9AsNO3+·Cl-, (I), and the complex salts formed from the reaction of (4-aminophenyl)arsonic acid (p-arsanilic acid) with copper(II) sulfate, i.e. hexaaquacopper(II) bis(4-arsonoanilinium) disulfate dihydrate, (C6H9AsNO3)2[Cu(H2O)6](SO4)2·2H2O, (II), with copper(II) chloride, i.e. poly[bis(4-arsonoanilinium) [tetra-μ-chlorido-cuprate(II)]], {(C6H9AsNO3)2[CuCl4]}n, (III), and with cadmium chloride, i.e. poly[bis(4-arsonoanilinium) [tetra-μ-chlorido-cadmate(II)]], {(C6H9AsNO3)2[CdCl4]}n, (IV), have been determined. In (II), the two 4-arsonoanilinium cations are accompanied by [Cu(H2O)6]2+ cations with sulfate anions. In the isotypic complex salts (III) and (IV), they act as counter-cations to the {[CuCl4]2-}n or {[CdCl4]2-}n anionic polymer sheets, respectively. In (II), the [Cu(H2O)6]2+ ion sits on a crystallographic centre of symmetry and displays a slightly distorted octahedral coordination geometry. The asymmetric unit for (II) contains, in addition to half the [Cu(H2O)6]2+ ion, one 4-arsonoanilinium cation, a sulfate dianion and a solvent water molecule. Extensive O-H.O and N-H.O hydrogen bonds link all the species, giving an overall three-dimensional structure. In (III), four of the chloride ligands are related by inversion [Cu-Cl = 2.2826 (8) and 2.2990 (9) Å], with the other two sites of the tetragonally distorted octahedral CuCl6 unit occupied by symmetry-generated Cl-atom donors [Cu-Cl = 2.9833 (9) Å], forming a two-dimensional coordination polymer network substructure lying parallel to (001). In the crystal, the polymer layers are linked across [001] by a number of bridging hydrogen bonds involving N-H.Cl interactions from head-to-head-linked As-O-H.O 4-arsonoanilinium cations. A three-dimensional network structure is formed. CdII compound (IV) is isotypic with CuII complex (III), but with the central CdCl6 complex repeat unit having a more regular M-Cl bond-length range [2.5232 (12)-2.6931 (10) Å] compared to that in (III). This series of compounds represents the first reported crystal structures having the protonated 4-arsonoanilinium species.
The Demand for Insurance with an Upper Limit on Coverage

The demand for insurance is examined when the indemnity schedule is subject to an upper limit. The optimal contract is shown to display full insurance above a deductible up to the cap. Some results derived in the standard model with no upper limit on coverage turn out to be invalid; the optimal deductible of an actuarially fair policy is positive and insurance may be a normal good under decreasing absolute risk aversion. An increase in the upper limit would induce the policyholder with constant absolute risk aversion to reduce his or her optimal deductible and therefore this would increase the demand for insurance against small losses.
Size-Specific Predation on Marine Invertebrate Larvae

Predation on planktonic larval stages is frequently a major source of mortality for the offspring of benthic marine invertebrates. Mortality rate likely varies with larval size and developmental stage, but few experiments have measured how these factors affect predation rates. I used experimental reductions in egg size to test how variation in larval size affects the likelihood of predation during planktonic development. Blastomeres of the sand dollar Dendraster excentricus were separated at the two-cell stage to produce half-sized zygotes. Larvae resulting from this manipulation were tested for their susceptibility to predation relative to whole-sized siblings at four ages. Individuals from each size class were simultaneously presented as prey items to five predators (crab zoeae, crab megalopae, chaetognaths, solitary tunicates, and postlarval fish) in the laboratory. Four predators consumed significantly more half-sized larvae than whole-sized larvae, but one predator type (postlarval fish) consumed more whole-sized larvae. Predators that consumed more half-sized larvae also preferentially consumed younger larvae. In contrast, postlarval fish showed no significant prey preference based on larval age. These results suggest that assumptions of constant mortality rates during development should be modified to account for the effects of larval size and age.
Antiplasmodial constituents of Cajanus cajan

Bioactivity‐guided fractionation of extracts of roots and leaves of Cajanus cajan afforded 8 compounds: betulinic acid, biochanin A, cajanol, genistein and 2′‐hydroxygenistein, longistylin A and C, and pinostrobin. The two stilbenes, longistylin A and C, and betulinic acid showed a moderately high in vitro activity against the chloroquine‐sensitive Plasmodium falciparum strain 3D7. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Optimal Monetary Policy and Social Insurance in a Small Open Economy

This paper studies the issue of optimal monetary policy and social insurance in a small open economy model with sticky prices and segmented asset markets. We evaluate whether optimal monetary policy should stabilize inflation to correct distortions associated with price stickiness or if it should provide social insurance (i.e., stabilize consumption) to correct distortions related to segmented asset markets. For an empirically plausible parametrization of these frictions, the optimal monetary policy should focus on stabilizing the inflation rate. This result suggests that providing social insurance with monetary instruments could be highly distortionary in an economy with nominal rigidities.
Identification and Overexpression of a Bifunctional Aldehyde/Alcohol Dehydrogenase Responsible for Ethanol Production in Thermoanaerobacter mathranii

Thermoanaerobacter mathranii contains four genes, adhA, adhB, bdhA and adhE, predicted to code for alcohol dehydrogenases involved in ethanol metabolism. These alcohol dehydrogenases were characterized as NADP(H)-dependent primary alcohol dehydrogenase (AdhA), secondary alcohol dehydrogenase (AdhB), butanol dehydrogenase (BdhA) and NAD(H)-dependent bifunctional aldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenase (AdhE), respectively. Here we observed that AdhE is an important enzyme responsible for ethanol production in T. mathranii based on the constructed adh knockout strains. An adhE knockout strain fails to produce ethanol as a fermentation product, while other adh knockout strains showed no significant difference from the wild type. Further analysis revealed that the ΔadhE strain was defective in aldehyde dehydrogenase activity, but still maintained alcohol dehydrogenase activity. This showed that AdhE is the major aldehyde dehydrogenase in the cell and functions predominantly in the acetyl-CoA reduction to acetaldehyde in the ethanol formation pathway. Finally, AdhE was conditionally expressed from a xylose-induced promoter in a recombinant strain (BG1E1) with a concomitant deletion of a lactate dehydrogenase. Overexpressions of AdhE in strain BG1E1 with xylose as a substrate facilitate the production of ethanol at an increased yield.
Cost-Padding in Profit-Regulated Firms

When entry into an industry is restricted, economic regulation of that industry is often directed at preventing existing firms from monopoly pricing behaviour. One form of such regulation is to set prices so as to control the level of profits earned by these firms. This paper briefly reviews the relevant economic literature and presents a model of the regulated firm in which such price-setting procedures provide an incentive to inflate costs above minimum levels. The welfare cost of this form of regulation can then exceed that occurring at the unconstrained monopoly outcome. The setting of air fares under the Two-Airline Policy and the regulation of natural gas in NSW are discussed in the context of this analysis.
Paradoxical psoriasiform reactions to antitumour necrosis factor‐α drugs in hidradenitis suppurativa

Paradoxical psoriasiform reactions to anti-tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) agents occur with an incidence of 0.3 to 5.6% in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases and rheumatic diseases1. Various clinical features have been described while histopathological findings often show lichenoid infiltrate, spongiosis associated with a psoriasiform pattern and a “type I interferon (IFN) signature “ in immunohistochemistry2 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Histological methods for ex vivo axon tracing: A systematic review

Objectives: Axon tracers provide crucial insight into the development, connectivity, and function of neural pathways. A tracer can be characterized as a substance that allows for the visualization of a neuronal pathway. Axon tracers have previously been used exclusively with in vivo studies; however, newer methods of axon tracing can be applied to ex vivo studies. Ex vivo studies involve the examination of cells or tissues retrieved from an organism. These post mortem methods of axon tracing offer several advantages, such as reaching inaccessible tissues and avoiding survival surgeries. Methods: In order to evaluate the quality of the ex vivo tracing methods, we performed a systematic review of various experimental and comparison studies to discern the optimal method of axon tracing. Results: The most prominent methods for ex vivo tracing involve enzymatic techniques or various dyes. It appears that there are a variety of techniques and conditions that tend to give better fluorescent character, clarity, and distance traveled in the neuronal pathway. We found direct comparison studies that looked at variables such as the type of tracer, time required, effect of temperature, and presence of calcium, however, there are other variables that have not been compared directly. Discussion: We conclude there are a variety of promising tracing methods available depending on the experimental goals of the researcher, however, more direct comparison studies are needed to affirm the optimal method.
Hydroxyurea use in prevention of stroke recurrence in children with sickle cell disease in a developing country: A cost effectiveness analysis

We undertook a cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) of hydroxyurea (HU) in preventing stroke recurrence and/or death. We followed 43 children with sickle cell disease from 2000 to 2009 after having a first clinical stroke, of whom 10 opted for HU therapy. HU use led to decreased stroke recurrence and death without significantly increasing the annual cost of care per patient (J$83,250 vs. J$76,901, P = 0.491). The incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) for prevention of stroke recurrence amounted to J$169,238 (US$1,900), while that for death prevention equalled J$635,843 (US$7,140). HU may be recommended when safe and affordable transfusion therapy is not feasible. Pediatr Blood Cancer 2015;62:1862–1864. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Factors Associated with U.S. Public Companies' Investment in Internal Auditing

Internal auditing has been the focus of much attention in recent years. This study examines factors associated with U.S. public companies' investment in internal auditing. Data from a survey administered to Chief Audit Executives of midsized U.S. public companies were supplemented with publicly available data. Based on data from 217 companies, the results indicate that total internal audit budgets (inhouse plus outsourced portions) are related to several factors associated with company risk, ability to pay for monitoring, and auditing characteristics. Specifically, we find evidence that internal audit budgets are positively related to company size, leverage, financial, service, and utility industries, relative amount of inventory, operating cash flows, and audit committee review of the internal audit budget. Total internal audit budgets are negatively related to the percentage of internal auditing that is outsourced. This study contributes to our understanding of internal audit services, and it allows com.
What Drives TBL Reporting: Good Governance or Threat to Legitimacy?

This paper provides two complementary explanations for the adoption of triple bottom line (TBL) reporting by Australian companies. The first explanation is that companies adopt TBL reporting to legitimise their relationship with society because of adverse publicity from the media. The second explanation is that TBL reporting is adopted because of the company's desire to achieve high-quality reporting and transparency inferred by strong corporate governance. Companies with TBL reporting had significantly more adverse media coverage before implementing TBL reporting than non-TBL companies. TBL reporting is also significantly and positively related to the existence of an environmental or sustainable development committee and the frequency of meetings of the audit committee.
Myths and Realities of Long-run Development: A Look at Deeper Determinants

It has long been realised that factor accumulation and technological development are only proximate causes of economic development, and focus has now shifted to investigating the ‘deeper determinants’ of economic growth. Two such forces are highlighted in literature: institutions and geography. However, it remains controversial as to which of these two is more important. The “Institutions school” assigns primal importance to institutions, whereas the “Geography school” considers geographical factors as the primary determinant of economic performance of countries. This paper reviews the debate surrounding the “deeper determinants” of economic performance. It reviews the work of the two schools of thought and their interpretation of the long-run development. The paper then examines the evidence provided by the respective schools in favour of their hypotheses. It concludes in favour of the Institutions hypothesis as the Geography school does not provide a consistent story of long-run development.
Social Needs, Political Representation, and Federal Outlays in the East North Central United States of America

The objectives of this paper are first, to examine whether the distribution of federal outlays in the USA are responsive to variation in social needs, and second, to establish whether areas with political representatives on key Congressional committees receive higher levels of federal outlays than might be expected given their needs and resources. The study region is the East North Central region, the observation units are counties, and the outlays examined are for the Departments of Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare (to investigate the effects of political representatives), as well as total outlay levels (for evaluating responsiveness to social needs). The study's conclusions are that total outlays are poorly related to social needs, although outlays for specific departments (Agriculture and Health, Education and Welfare) are strongly related, and that political representation has little impact on the distribution of Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare outlays in the study area.