Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro effect of synthetic pyocyanine on neutrophil superoxide production

Pyocyanine, a low-molecular-weight phenazine pigment produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, has previously been shown to strongly inhibit human lymphocyte blastogenesis. We now report that synthetic pyocyanine can also affect the generation of superoxide by human peripheral blood polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) in a dose-dependent manner. Superoxide production by PMNs stimulated with phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) was measured in the presence and absence of pyocyanine, phenazine, and trifluoperazine, a phenothiazine of similar chemical structure to the phenazine pigments. Pyocyanine at 50 microM inhibited superoxide production to 28.9 +/- 2.8% of PMA control values, whereas at the lower concentration of 1 microM, the production of superoxide was significantly enhanced (203 +/- 31.7% of PMA control values). Phenazine, the tricyclic parent compound of pyocyanine, had only a minor effect. Trifluoperazine had a marked inhibitory effect on superoxide generation at concentrations above 1 microM. None of the compounds induced superoxide generation in the absence of PMA. Pyocyanine at all concentrations, unlike phenothiazines, had very little effect on the release of neutrophil granule enzymes. The effect of P. aeruginosa phenazine pigments on polymorphonuclear phagocytes is of significance, since inhibition of host PMN function at sites of infection could result in ineffective bacterial killing, whereas enhanced PMN function could lead to greater tissue damage. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive and may coexist depending on local pyocyanine concentrations.
Another avenue of action: an examination of climate change countermovement industries’ use of PAC donations and their relationship to Congressional voting over time

ABSTRACT The political mobilization of American business elites in the 1970s and 1980s has been well studied by political scientists. Environmental sociologists have explored how industries in this elite countermovement have organized to prevent environmental legislation. The literature often focuses on the efforts of this movement to shape public opinion on climate change. However, political scientists argue business elites are running several parallel strategies simultaneously in order to protect their interests. FEC data are utilized in multilevel logit models to examine how donations from industrial Political Action Committees (PACs) relate to Congressional representative’s environmental voting behavior over a 20-year period. Industries associated with the environmental countermovement have increasingly used PAC donations over time, and every additional $10,000 a representative received from countermovement industries significantly decreased odds of their taking the pro-environmental stance even when controlling for representatives’ demographics, districts, Congressional polarization and time-period.
Auswirkungen des gesetzlichen Mindestlohns auf Betriebe und Unternehmen

In this research report, we analyze various effects of the German minimum wage introduction for 2015 and 2016, using establishment-level data from the IAB-Establishment Panel. The outcomes of interest are several aspects of labor demand, establishments' productivity and profitability, as well as investments in physical and human capital. In the analyses concerning establishment-level adjustments in bordering regions of eastern Germany, we observe a slight increase in the incidence of working time and price adjustments among affected establishments. Looking at establishment-level employment adjustments, we estimate effects from differences-in-differences and observe that 46.000 to 59.000 additional jobs would have been created in the absence of the minimum wage. We also find some weak evidence for a reduction in employee turnover and a slight lagged increase in the use of freelancers in 2016. Descriptive time series show a reduction in the number of internships, which could be explained by the minimum wage but also by improving labor market conditions. We do not observe any effects on labor productivity or the employers' perceived competitive pressure. However, the difference-in-difference estimation shows a small reduction in the affected employers' expected transaction volume in 2015. Additionally, we find a slight increase in the likelihood of losses, but barely any hints for effects on establishment closure. When we analyze effects of the minimum wage on profits, we observe a reduction, although imprecisely estimated. This reduction can be fully explained by the minimum wage induced increase in wage costs. We do not observe an effect on investments in physical capital. When we look at investments in human capital, we neither observe effects on the number of apprentice positions nor the number of hired apprentices. However, when we look at further training, some of our regressions point to a slight reduction, especially when the training is financed by the employer.
Glasgow Coma Scale score, mortality, and functional outcome in head-injured patients.

BACKGROUND Preresuscitation Glasgow Coma Scale (P-GCS) score is frequently obtained in injured patients and incorporated into mortality prediction. Data on functional outcome in head injury is sparse. A large group of patients with head injuries was analyzed to assess relationships between P-GCS score, mortality, and functional outcome as measured by the Functional Independence Measure (FIM). METHODS Records for patients with International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision diagnosis codes indicating head injury in a statewide trauma registry between 1994 and 2002 were selected. P-GCS score, mortality, and FIM score at hospital discharge were integrated and analyzed. RESULTS Of 138,750 patients, 22,924 patients were used for the mortality study and 7,150 patients for the FIM study. A good correlation exists between P-GCS score and FIM, as determined by rank correlation coefficients, whereas mortality falls steeply between a P-GCS score of 3 and a P-GCS score of 7 followed by a shallow fall. Although P-GCS score is related to mortality in head-injured patients, its relationship is nonlinear, which casts doubt on its use as a continuous measure or an equivalent set of categorical measures incorporated into outcome prediction models. The average FIM scores indicate substantial likelihood of good outcomes in survivors with low P-GCS scores, further complicating the use of the P-GCS score in the prediction of poor outcome at the time of initial patient evaluation. CONCLUSION Although the P-GCS score is related to functional outcome as measured by the FIM score and mortality in head injury, current mortality prediction models may need to be modified to account for the nonlinear relationship between P-GCS score and mortality. The P-GCS score is not a good clinical tool for outcome prediction in individual head-injured patients, given the variability in mortality rates and functional outcomes at all scores.
INVESTMENT COMPONENTS OF FINANCIAL SECURITY

Today's Ukraine needs an optimum investment model, as those that exist are incapable of providing any restructuring of the national economy, or of solving local problems of the socio–economic crisis. Losing the bitter struggle for foreign investment will lead to Ukraine being displaced to the periphery of world capital markets and, consequently, to the economic reform program being curtailed. The level of investment security in Ukraine is still rather low. The investment climate prevailing in our country is failing to stimulate or attract direct and portfolio investment which is needed for a variety of functions, such as improve the investment climate in Ukraine, to increase investment activity and thus the level of investment security through the establishment of appropriate financial, economic, legal and methodological frameworks, and to concentrate resources on implementing an improved investment policy. This paper discusses the need to develop investment processes in Ukraine, taking into account its investment security. It characterizes national interests in the field of investment security and emphasizes that developing theoretical and methodological foundations for investment security is predicated on defining principles for investments in general. The paper also deals with the main thrusts of research into investment security, the approaches taken to determine the nature and content of the authors' hypothesis regarding the definition of "investment security" and its various classifications. Finally, the characteristics of the relationship between and interdependence of the components of investment security are addressed.
The Influence of Multiple Primes on Bottom-up and Top-down Regulation during Meaning Retrieval: Evidence for Two Distinct Neural Networks

Meaning retrieval of a word can proceed fast and effortlessly or can be characterized by a controlled search for candidate lexical items and a subsequent selection process. In the current study, we facilitated meaning retrieval by increasing the number of words that were related to the final target word in a triplet (e.g., lion-stripes-tiger). To induce higher search and selection demands, we presented ambiguous words as targets (i.e., homonyms like ball) in half of the trials. Hereby, the dominant (game), low-frequent (dance), or both meanings of the homonym were primed. Participants performed a relatedness judgment during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Activation in a bilateral network (angular gyrus, rostromedial prefrontal cortex) increased linearly with multiple related primes, whereas the posterior left inferior prefrontal cortex (pLIPC) showed the reverse activation pattern for unambiguous trials. When homonyms served as targets, pLIPC responded strongest when both meanings or low-frequent concepts were addressed. Additional anterior left inferior prefrontal cortex activation was observed for the latter trials only. The data support an interaction between 2 distinct cerebral networks that can be linked to automatic bottom-up support and top-down control during meaning retrieval. They further imply a functional specialization of the LIPC along an anterior-posterior dimension.
The disposition effect in shares trading

Most economists and some investors assumed people behaved rationally when it came to their money. Economic theory assumed investors to be rational. Which means, they would make good, even optimal decisions in terms of maximizing their wealth when their money was at stake. People are expected to do the thing that earned them the most. Psychologists who study the behaviour of people and how they make decisions were under no such illusions. They identified the irrational impulses, gut instincts, and the way our brains process information, through experimental studies and were not very pleased with the cold rationality embedded in economic models. When the researchers in finance stopped arguing about theory and studied how investors actually make decisions, they found that investors behave the way psychologists predicted, not the way economists predicted. The clearest and startling finding came from Odean (1998). Odean's research is like a pioneer study of the behavioral finance literature, considering that the field is very young. Odean studied the stock-selection decisions of individual investors. He found we do everything wrong: We trade too often for no economic gain. We are undiversified, holding only a few stocks that get our attention. We easily sell off stocks that have done well, but we have trouble letting go of stocks that have performed badly, holding onto them in the hope they will come back. One of the important theories in behavioral economics, the Prospect Theory of Kahneman and Tversky (1979) suggests that in choosing alternatives that involve risk, subjects behave in an ‘S’ shaped value function that is convex in the loss region and concave in the gain region. This implies that they seek risk when faced with losses and are risk averse when encountering gains. Shefrin and Statman (1985) applied it to investor behavior and suggested that investors have a tendency to sell assets that have gained value (winners) and keep assets that have lost value (losers) which behavior they termed as ‘disposition effect’. Disposition effect was first introduced by Shefrin and Statman (1985) to describe the dominant tendency of investors to keep loser stocks for a long-term but to sell winner stocks too early. They employed a model to explain why investors tend to sell winner stocks too early and to hold loser stocks for a long time. Investors may expect that the prices will return, sooner or later, to their previous status, that is to say, existing loser stocks may change into winner stocks and vice versa. To decide to keep the stocks or to sell them, investors can examine the value function. This implies that risk aversion concerns profit. In other words, investors are willing to identify profit. As a result, they sell profitable stock quickly. Barber and Odean (2002) use prospect Abstract
Strategic Dilemmas: How Managers Use Hr Practices to Meet Multiple Goals

Contrary to the classic assumptions in the business and human resource (HR) strategy literatures, real‐world organizations often pursue multiple and potentially contradictory performance goals. They may adopt ‘hybrid’ strategies to maximize both differentiation and low cost — leading middle managers to face dilemmas in how to achieve different goals using the same HR practices. We link employee‐level surveys of HR practices to establishment‐level data on service quality, labour efficiency and profitability to examine the effects of HR practices on these outcomes. We find that establishments with greater use of high involvement practices have significantly higher service quality, which mediates the relationship between HR practices and profitability. Findings for labour efficiency are positive, but generally not significant. These findings also have implications for the quality of jobs.
Comparison of major depressive disorder and subthreshold depression among older adults in community long-term care

Objectives: This study extends existing knowledge regarding the continuum between major depression (MD) and subthreshold depression (SD) by examining differences in symptomology and associative factors for a subpopulation of older adults with functional disability. Method: Our sample consisted of clients age 60 and above entering public community long term care derived from the baseline survey of a longitudinal study (315 non-depressed, 74 MD, and 221 SD). We used the Diagnostic Interview Schedule to establish diagnoses of MD, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) to assess SD, and other self-report measures to explore potential associative factors of demographics, comorbidity, social support, and stressors. Results: No differences in CES-D identified symptoms occurred between the two groups. MD and SD were both associated with lower education, poorer social support, more severe medical conditions, and higher stress when compared to non-depressed older adults. Younger age and being female were associated solely with MD; whereas, worse perceived health and more trouble affording food were associated solely with SD. The only associative factor significantly different between MD and SD was age. Those with MD were more likely to be younger than those with SD. Conclusion: Our findings of symptom profiles and associative factors lend support to the continuum notion of depression. Identification of only older adults within the community long-term care service system who meet criteria for MD would leave many older adults, who also face multiple comorbidities, high levels of stress and social isolation, and substantial depressive symptoms undiagnosed and untreated.
Toxicologic studies with swine fed corn grown on municipal sewage sludge-amended soil.

Over a 3-yr period 336 MT/ha of dried sewage sludge, from a municipal waste treatment plant, was applied in liquid form to land subsequently used to grow corn. The sludge contained 115 mg Cd, 4,200 mg Zn and 538 mg Ni/kg dry matter and comprised the solids remaining after treatment of the waste waters of approximately 260 industries as well as domestic users. Corn grain harvested from the plot amended with sewage sludge (SA corn) or corn grown on a plot without sludge addition (control corn) was fed to a total of 56 pigs to determine the effect on growth performance and parameters indicative of toxicity. Each treatment consisted of seven pens of four pigs each with an average initial weight of 17.6 kg. The growth trial was terminated when pigs weighed approximately 90 kg. No differences were observed between treatment groups for average daily gain, feed: gain ratio or daily feed intake. Higher (P less than .01) concentrations of Cd, Ni and Zn were found in SA corn compared with the control corn. This resulted in higher (P less than .01) concentrations of Cd in kidney and liver and Ni in kidney of pigs fed SA corn as compared with pigs fed control corn. No significant differences were observed in Cd or Ni concentrations in muscle or in hepatic microsomal mixed-function oxidase (MFO) activity and liver:body weight ratios, which is indicative of the absence or low levels of organic toxicants in SA corn. In addition, no significant treatment effects were observed when corn, feces and urine samples were evaluated for the presence of mutagenic substances. Histopathologic analysis of various tissues for lesions demonstrated that pigs fed SA corn were not adversely affected.
Cyclical Implications of Changing Bank Capital Requirements in a Macroeconomic Framework

There is a widespread view that bank capital requirements should be loosened during recessions and tightened during expansions to avoid excessive credit and output swings. This view is based on a partial analysis that ignores the effects of capital requirement policies on the saving decisions of households, and, through this channel, on bank loans and output. We present an intertemporal general equilibrium framework that accounts for such effects and evaluate the optimal responses to loan supply and productivity (loan demand) shocks. In contrast to the standard view, we show that, when loan supply is reduced, increasing the capital requirement allows a faster recovery of households` savings, loans, and output than a flat capital requirement policy. When productivity (loan demand) is reduced, lowering the capital requirement facilitates households` dissaving and amplifies the output decline, but enhances welfare. Finally, we show that if productivity reductions are anticipatedrather than unanticipatedby regulators, lowering the capital requirement preemptively enhances welfare through greater intertemporal smoothing of households` consumption and deposit holdings.
Safety of metamizole: a systematic review of the literature

Metamizole was withdrawn from the market in the United States and several European countries following reports of fatal agranulocytosis among users, but is still available in many countries in Europe, South America and Asia. Over the past several decades, a number of epidemiologic studies have been conducted to quantify the risk of agranulocytosis and other adverse effects associated with metamizole and other non‐narcotic analgesics. The objective of this study was to perform a systematic review of the safety of metamizole.
Relationship between obstructive sleep apnea severity index and left ventricular function and volume

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) causes increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, including systemic arterial hypertension, coronary heart disease, heart rhythm and conduction disorders, heart failure and stroke. In our study, we aimed to assess left ventricular mass and myocardial performance index (MPI) in OSA patients. DESIGN AND SETTING A cross-sectional study conducted between May 2007 and August 2009 in a tertiary hospital in Istanbul, Turkey. PATIENTS AND METHODS Forty subjects without any cardiac or pulmonary disease referred for evaluation of OSA had overnight polysomnography and echocardiography. According to the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), subjects were classified into three groups; mild OSA (AHI: 5–14/h; n=7), moderate OSA (AHI: 15–29/h; n=13), and severe OSA (AHI: ≥30/h; n=20). The thickness of the interventricular septum (IVS) and left ventricular posterior wall (LVPW) were measured by M-mode along with left ventricular mass (LVM) and LVM index (LVMI). The left ventricular MPI was calculated as (isovolumic contraction time + isovolumic relaxation time)/aortic ejection time by Doppler echocardiography. RESULTS No differences were observed in age or body mass index among the groups, but blood pressures were higher in severe OSA compared with moderate and mild OSA. In severe OSA, the thickness of the IVS (11.6 [1.7 mm]), LVPW (10.7 [1.7 mm]), LVM (260.9 [50.5 g]), and LVMI (121.9 [21.1g/m2]) were higher than in moderate OSA (9.4 [1.3 mm]; 9.9 [1.6]; 196.4 [35.2]; 94.7 [13.2 g/m2], respectively) and mild OSA (9.8 [2.4 mm], 8.9 [2.0 mm], 187.6 [66.2 g], 95.8 [28.6 g/m2], respectively). In severe OSA, MPI (0.8 [0.2]) was significantly higher than in mild OSA (0.5 [P<.01]) but not significantly higher than moderate OSA (0.8 [0.1]). CONCLUSIONS OSA patients have demonstrable cardiac abnormalities that worsen with the severity of apnea. The MPI may have utility in subsequent OSA studies, possibly as a surrogate outcome measure.
Determination of genomic 5-hydroxymethyl-2’-deoxycytidine in human DNA by capillary electrophoresis with laser induced fluorescence

Recent studies reported the presence of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5 hmC) as an additional modification in mammalian genomic DNA. To date, 5 hmC has been detected only in mouse DNA isolated from embryonic stem cells, some adult tissues and in DNA from human bone marrow. Understanding its biological function will require the development of sensitive analytical methods that allow the detection and quantification of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine along with 5-methylcytosine and cytosine. Here we report the validation of a fast and sensitive method for the quantification of global 5-hydroxymethyl-2'-deoxycytidine (5 hmdC) in DNA. The method is based on a procedure consisting of fluorescence labeling of deoxyribonucleotides and analysis by capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence detection (CE-LIF). A double stranded DNA fragment containing a defined number of 5 hmdC residues was used for peak assignment, to establish separation conditions and to determine the limit of detection (LOD). The method yielded a LOD for 5 hmdC of 0.45 amol, which is equivalent to approximately to one 5 hmdC per 4,000 normal nucleotides (0.025%) using 1 μg of DNA as the matrix. By applying the calibrated assay to the analysis of various DNAs we show that 5 hmdC is present in human tissue and human cancer cell lines. We demonstrate that by using CE-LIF DNA can be analyzed in one run for both methylation and hydroxymethylation of cytosine with high sensitivity and accuracy.