Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative Detection of Disseminated Free Cancer Cells in Peritoneal Washes With Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase–Polymerase Chain Reaction: A Sensitive Predictor of Outcome for Patients With Gastric Carcinoma

ObjectiveTo evaluate the feasibility of real-time reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) detection of free cancer cells in the peritoneal washes as a prognostic indicator for patients with gastric carcinoma. Summary Background DataPeritoneal lavage cytology (CY) is an excellent prognostic determinant but lacks sensitivity. This can be improved by using RT-PCR to quantitate carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) mRNA in peritoneal washes. MethodsPeritoneal washes were obtained from 189 patients with gastric carcinoma during laparotomy. CEA mRNA levels and CEA/GAPDH mRNA ratios were quantified using a real-time PCR system with fluorescent hybridization probes. Receiver-operating characteristic plots were used to determine which of these parameters should be used as a marker for the intraperitoneal cancer cells. The prognostic significance of its positivity was then evaluated by Kaplan-Meier curves, and its value as an independent prognostic factor was evaluated by multivariate analysis. ResultsThe sensitivity and specificity of real-time RT-PCR with an optimal cutoff value were 80% and 94%; those for conventional cytology were 56% and 91%. The survival of 16 patients who were CY-PCR+ was poor and approached that of 35 CY+ patients. Recurrence as peritoneal carcinomatosis was frequent among PCR+ patients but rare for their PCR- counterparts. PCR+ was a significant independent prognostic factor, along with the presence of node metastasis and serosal invasion, but CY+ was not. ConclusionsQuantitative RT-PCR of peritoneal washes can replace cytologic examination as a tool for the sensitive evaluation of the risk of intraperitoneal recurrence in patients with gastric carcinoma.
The impact of demand fluctuation on the quality of service: a tourism industry example

The focus of this paper is to examine the appropriateness of the use of “service packaging”, a concept capable of being adopted by tourism organisations to assist them in their ongoing effort to match capacity with demand, and the quality of services offered with that of tourists’ expectations. It is proposed here that adoption of the concept of packaging renders it possible for service organisations to manage demand fluctuation while, simultaniously, offering services which will consistently meet customer expectations. This paper concludes that customer satisfaction can be enhanced if tourists’ needs and expectations are considered during the design of the tourism packages offered. A tourism organisation’s strategic decision to adopt customer oriented concepts will ensure the effective management of resources.
Approaches to reporting grade uncertainty in high nugget gold veins

High nugget effect gold veins are generally considered to be one of the most challenging of deposit types to evaluate and exploit. To potential investors and mining companies, they are viewed as high risk because of the associated uncertainties in the grade estimate and general paucity of reserves at production start-up. Despite the well-known risks, these deposits are often high grade and have a grade upside which makes them potentially attractive. The reporting of resource grade is of importance and perhaps even more so is the reporting of the associated uncertainty attached to the grade estimate. The quoting of the estimated grade within a grade range is recommended to achieve more complete and useful disclosure. The definition of the grade range can be somewhat subjective, ranging from opinion-based through to data-based estimates and geostatistical conditional simulation. Whichever approach is used, the over-riding issue must be the provision of enough data of appropriate quality and full disclosure to the public of relevant uncertainties.
The Mathematics of Idiosyncratic Volatility and the Small Firm Effect: Australian Evidence

In the context of Australian stockmarkets, we examine the relationship between a stock’s return performance, the stock idiosyncratic volatility, and the firm’s market capitalization. The paper’s main conclusions may be summarized as follows. The stocks of the smallest firms markedly outperform the largest capitalized stocks, and for such small capitalized stocks, those with greater idiosyncratic volatility have markedly superior returns. It appears that the relationship of higher returns with higher idiosyncratic volatility is consistent with the mathematics of idiosyncratic volatility. In which case, the small size effect may also be interpreted as the mathematical outcome of idiosyncratic volatility. The paper further examines the condition on which the higher returns reported for either small firm size or high idiosyncratic volatility are likely to be wealth-forming. Finally, we observe that the high performances of the stocks of the smallest firms are likely irrelevant to the class of firms that are of interest to the institutional investor.
Environmental (waste) compliance control systems for UK SMEs

While the ‘environment’ is often perceived as a heavily regulated area of business, in reality, directly regulated businesses represent a small proportion of the business community. This study aimed to evaluate and outline potential improvements to compliance controls for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly those involved in the waste sector. In total, 44 SMEs in England were interviewed/audited between April and September 2008. Using a UK-based system as a case-in-point, the Environment Agency's (EA) operational risk appraisal (Opra)/compliance assessment report (CAR) system was analysed. Environmental compliance performance indicators and an initial assessment methodology for SMEs were developed. The study showed: compliance with permitting legislation was poor in many areas; regulatory authorities are either unable/failing to implement their enforcement policies or are unable/failing to identify non-compliances due to the infrequency or limited nature of their inspections; improveme.
The effect of the financial crisis on the value of corporate diversification in Spanish firms

This paper examines the impact of the financial crisis on the value of corporate diversification in a civil law country such as Spain. The financial crisis offers a natural research experiment to test the effect of a credit-constrained environment on benefits and costs emerging from internal capital markets. Using a panel of Spanish listed firms over the 1997–2012 period and controlling for endogeneity, we find that the financial crisis negatively moderates the impact of industrial diversification on a firm’s value. This result supports the idea that financial constraints are likely to exacerbate agency costs within internal capital markets in civil law countries over financial benefits, due to a weaker protection of investors’ rights.
Age related changes in gene expression within the cochlea of C57BL/6J mice

Background and aims: Hearing loss as a unique symptom is highly prevalent in the elderly and while there exists several pathologies that would result in age related hearing loss (ARHL), most agree it is multifactorial with environmental, metabolic and genetic components. However, no research to date has discovered a definitive genetic cause. This paper describes the use of microarray to address this issue. Methods: The left cochlea of laboratory aged C57BL6J mice at 4, 15 and 45 weeks was extracted from pooled, agematched animals and the RNA extracted for use in microarray analysis. The contralateral cochlea was also removed and used for immunohistochemical analysis. Results: Microarray revealed 116 genes to be up or down regulated between young and old animals, the most prominent being prolactin (108.2 fold increase) and growth hormone (43.94 fold increase). The prolactin inhibitor calcitonin was also down regulated over 2 fold. Immunohistochemistry revealed prolactin to be weakly expressed within the spiral ganglion, whilst its receptor was widely distributed throughout the cochlea. Conclusion: This is the first study demonstrating the cochlea as a site for extrapituitary prolactin expression and that this expression is related to age. Combined with the widespread distribution of prolactin receptor, there may be implications for prolactin’s role in ARHL.
Improving Email Response in a Permission Marketing Context

Obtaining a reasonable level of response from email surveys and direct marketing via email is usually seen as notoriously difficult. This paper argues that ‘response’ is a complex concept and reports the results of an email survey in Norway into the effects on a range of response characteristics of email use patterns, perceptions about technology, campaign elements and seeking different levels of permission from potential responders. The results challenge many of the assumptions about email response characteristics.
Medication use for pediatric upper respiratory tract infections

The present study monitored medication prescribing patterns to patients treated for upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) in the pediatric outpatient department (OPD) at Central Referral Hospital (CRH), Gangtok, Sikkim. A total of 562 URTI prescriptions of children, aged 0–12 years attending pediatric OPD at CRH, Sikkim were collected by a random once‐weekly survey between May 2002 and April 2003. Males numbered 284 (50.5%), and females 278 (49.5%). Most of the patients in our study were aged 2–5 years (preschool children) (44.8%). The average number of medications prescribed per encounter was 2.37; 59.2% (789) of medicines were fixed‐dose combination (FDC) products and two‐thirds of FDCs were respiratory medicines (521). The most commonly prescribed medicines were respiratory medicines (47% of the total medicines prescribed). Others were antimicrobials (30.7%) and analgesic‐antipyretics (18.8%). Among respiratory medicines, cough and cold preparations (prescribed in 13 different FDC products in 25 brand names) were prescribed most frequently (62%) followed by nasal preparations (21%) and β2 adrenergic agonist inhalers (9.2%). Ninety‐eight percent of nasal preparations were isotonic saline drops (129). Antihistaminics (41.8%), non‐opioid antitussives (13.5%), alpha agonist oral decongestants (42.3%), expectorants (32.2%), mucolytics (18.7%), paracetamol (14.7%), and β2 agonists (17.2%) were common ingredients of respiratory medicine combinations. Antihistamines (2.5%) and β2 agonists (9.2%) were used alone. The most commonly prescribed antimicrobial was amoxicillin with clavulanate (28.4%) followed by cefadroxil (20%), cotrimoxazole (9.5%) and amoxicillin alone (9.3%). Average number of antimicrobials prescribed was 0.7 (409/562). The most commonly prescribed analgesic‐antipyretic was paracetamol (81.3%) followed by combination of ibuprofen and paracetamol (12.4%) and nimesulide (5.6%). Medication selection was rational in few cases. Various anomalies were observed in various aspects of drug use in children for URTI's. The main aim of the initiative is the need for more rational medicine use in URTIs in children for improvement of clinical effectiveness, cost effectiveness and reduction of potential useless risk of side effects.
WHICH RESOURCES MATTER? A FINE-GRAINED TEST OF THE RESOURCE-BASED VIEW OF THE FIRM.

The resource-based view of the firm (RBV) has come to dominate much of the strategy literature in recent years, yet the basic theory has undergone limited empirical testing as to which resources are most commonly linked to superior performance. To counter these limitations, this paper sets out to test the assertion that a firm's competitive advantage largely stems from intangible assets and capabilities as it is these resources that are most likely to be valuable, rare, inimitable and nonsubstitutable. The research utilized a field survey design, administered to 2000 businesses in Australia. The model includes both tangible and intangible resources and was empirically tested using hierarchical regression analysis. Overall, the main prescription of the RBV was verified with intangible resources offering additional and significant explanatory effects to firm performance, after factoring in the effects of tangible resources and a range of control variables. Surprisingly, capabilities, or the highest order re.
JUVENILE IDIOPATHIC ARTHRITIS

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) comprises a group of heterogenous disorders characterized by childhood-onset chronic joint inflammation. It is the most common rheumatologic disease in the pediatric population and an important cause of chronic illness in children. Early recognition and treatment are vital to prevent sequelae of uncontrolled inflammation on the developing skeleton. JIA can have significant complications that general pediatricians should be aware of, especially uveitis, which can be insidious and asymptomatic in very young children, and macrophage activation syndrome, which can be life-threatening if not recognized and appropriately treated. Although advances have been made in the past few decades, the etiology of JIA remains incompletely understood. Efforts are underway to refine the classification of JIA. The currently accepted classification scheme identifies subsets of JIA that are important clinically in terms of prognosis and tailoring treatment approaches. However, it is limited in identifying homogenous groups of children with early childhood onset and antinuclear antibody positivity, which may have different pathogenic mechanisms that could be important in developing more targeted and effective treatment approaches in the future. Treatment strategies for JIA have changed significantly in recent years with the availability of multiple newer targeted therapies, often modeled after medications used in adult-onset forms of arthritis. These treatments, and likely many others to come, have markedly improved symptom control and reduced complications in patients with JIA.
Earnings Management to Exceed Thresholds

Investors are keenly interested in financial reports of earnings because earnings provide important information for investment decisions. Thus, executives who are monitored by investors and directors face strong incentives to manage earnings. We introduce consideration of behavioural/institutional thresholds for earnings in this mix of incentives and governance. A model illustrates how thresholds induce specific types of earnings management. Empirical explorations find clear support for earnings management to exceed each of the three thresholds that we consider: positive profits, sustain-recent-performance, and meet-market-expectations. The thresholds are hierarchically ranked. The future performance of firms that possibly boost earnings to just cross a threshold appears to be poorer than that of less suspect control groups.
Research notes and communications strategic planning as competitive advantage

Since 1970, over forty empirical studies have examined the performance consequences of formal strategic planning. This line of research has drawn heavy criticism from reviewers on methodological grounds, and has produced confusing, apparently contradictory results. This article reevaluates the planning-performance relationship from a resource perspective, arguing that strategic planning does not satisfy the criteria for sustainable competitive advantage– although it may produce economic value, it is easily imitated and may be substitutable. The article suggests that previous studies produced inconsistent results because they did not account for the dissemination of strategic planning over time, or for industry differences in strategic planning factor markets. An empirical test in two industries finds that formal strategic planning and financial performance are unrelated in a ‘planning equilibrium’ industry, but positively related in an industry with strategic planning factor market imperfections.
Wiener filtering with a seismic underground array at the Sanford Underground Research Facility

A seismic array has been deployed at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the former Homestake mine, South Dakota, USA, to study the underground seismic environment. This includes exploring the advantages of constructing a third-generation gravitational-wave (GW) detector underground. A major noise source for these detectors would be Newtonian noise (NN), which is induced by fluctuations in the local gravitational field. The hope is that a combination of a low-noise seismic environment and coherent noise subtraction using seismometers in the vicinity of the detector could suppress the NN to below the projected noise floor for future GW detectors. In this paper, certain properties of the NN subtraction problem are studied by applying similar techniques to data of a seismic array. We use Wiener filtering techniques to subtract coherent noise in a seismic array in the frequency band 0.05–1 Hz. This achieves more than an order of magnitude noise cancellation over a majority of this band. The variation in the Wiener-filter coefficients over the course of the day, including how local activities impact the filter, is analyzed. We also study the variation in coefficients over the course of a month, showing the stability of the filter with time. How varying the filter order affects the subtraction performance is also explored. It is shown that optimizing filter order can significantly improve subtraction of seismic noise.
MEASURING GLOBAL STOCK MARKET EFFICIENCY

This paper studies global stock market efficiency on the basis of Bernard and Thomas’s (1990) “delayed response” hypothesis, and Lee and Rui’s (2011) works on investor perceptions of earnings processes and post-announcement drift. With an application of the proxy for investor perception on the temporary and permanent earnings driven from Nelson’s decomposition techniques, the stock market efficiencies of 11 countries were estimated. By assuming that investors will put weights on each permanent and temporary earnings process as they expect future abnormal returns, this study uses the weight on the temporary earnings process as an estimation proxy for stock market efficiency. From La porta et al (2000), it is possible to think that market efficiency is closely related to investor protection and effectiveness of law enforcement. On the conjecture that good investor protection, effectiveness of law enforcement, and well established accounting standards lead markets to become more efficient, the market efficiency of 11 countries are estimated with a newly developed measure, and then compare the result to indices of La porta et al (2000) that show the degree of investor protection, the effectiveness of law enforcement, and accounting standards. The average market efficiency of Scandinavian civil law countries (Finland, Sweden) is 0.82, the highest score among the four legal origins examined, as the countries are well equipped with efficient legal systems to protect investors, and with the best accounting standards in La porta et al (2000). French (Italy, Spain) and German (Austria, Germany, Greece) civil law countries show little difference in average market efficiencies as they have a similar level of investor protection and legal enforcement efficiency in study of La porta et al (2000). All in all, estimation result of market efficiency is consistent to study of La porta et al (2000).
Compounds from Dryopteris Fragrans (L.) Schott with Cytotoxic Activity

One new coumarin, dryofracoumarin A (1), and eight known compounds 2–9 were isolated from Dryopteris fragrans (L.) Schott. Their structures were established on the basis of extensive spectroscopic data analyses and comparison with reported spectroscopic data. The new compound 1 was determined to be 8-hydroxyl-4-isopropyl-7-methyl-6-methyl-2H-benzopyran-2-one. Two dimers, trans- and cis-3-(3,4-dimethoxyphen-yl)-4-[(E)-3,4-dimethoxystyryl]cyclohex-1-ene (compounds 8 and 9), were isolated from the Dryopteris genus for the first time. The other six were esculetin (2), isoscopoletin (3), methylphlorbutyrophenone (4), aspidinol (5), albicanol (6) and (E)-4-(3,4-dimethoxyphen-yl)but-3-en-1-ol (7). All compounds were evaluated for their cytotoxic effects by the MTT assay. Compounds 2, 3, 8 and 9 showed significantly cytotoxic effects against three cell lines (A549, MCF7 and HepG2), 1 and 5 against two cell lines (A549 and MCF7), and 6 against one cell line (MCF7). Their IC50 values ranged between 2.73 ± 0.86 μM and 24.14 ± 3.12 μM. These active compounds might be promising lead compounds for the treatment of cancer.
Multiple-Shot Person Re-Identification by Pairwise Multiple Instance Learning

SUMMARY Learning an appearance model for person re-identiﬁcation from multiple images is challenging due to the corrupted images caused by occlusion or false detection. Furthermore, di ﬀ erent persons may wear similar clothes, making appearance feature less discriminative. In this paper, we ﬁrst introduce the concept of multiple instance to handle corrupted images. Then a novel pairwise comparison based multiple instance learning framework is proposed to deal with visual ambiguity, by selecting robust features through pairwise comparison. We demonstrate the e ﬀ ectiveness of our method on two public datasets.
From Unsustainability to MSC Certification: A Case Study of the Artisanal Chilean South Pacific Hake Fishery

ABSTRACT The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification is a market-based incentive program that recognizes sustainable fisheries through a third-party assessment. This study considers a potential project to MSC-certify the small-scale sector of the South Pacific hake (Merluccius gayi gayi) fishery in Chile. Using semi-structured interviews with fishery stakeholders and bibliographic review, the study surveys the technical, stakeholder, and market barriers to certification. Barriers included an over-exploited stock, lack of information about the ecosystem, and the currently-evolving management system. In addition, noncompliance of existing norms and social arrangements within the fishery are leading to a situation where illegal fishing occurs. Even though MSC certification is positively perceived by most stakeholders, it is considered to be neither achievable by the status of the fishery nor desirable, since it cannot offer economic benefits due to the domestic market features. At present, the most constructive actions for the fishery would be to implement strong management and effective enforcement, and break-down the currently unregulated market structure, as well as empower the fishermen. Long-term efforts in these areas may be executed using the MSC Standard as a diagnostic tool to identify the improvements required to move the fishery toward better performance.