Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Malnutrition in hospitalized patients receiving nutritionally complete menus: prevalence and outcomes.

BACKGROUND The prevalence of malnutrition in hospitals ranges from 20 to 50% and the hospital diet could be a potential risk factor. The aim of the study was to determine the overall and per services prevalence of hospital malnutrition, and assess its impact on clinical outcomes in patients receiving nutritionally complete menus. METHODOLOGY Cross-sectional study in a university hospital. Nutritional status was assessed using Subjective Global Assessment (SGA), anthropometry, and biochemical parameters. For the assessment of outcomes during hospitalization, length of stay, rate of deaths, and readmissions were collected. RESULTS 201 patients were evaluated. The median age was 71.59 (IQR 21.43) years old, and 51.20% were women. According to the results obtained by SGA, 37.8% of individuals were well nourished (WN), 50.2% were at nutritional risk (NR), and 11.9% were malnourished (MN). The prevalence of malnourished (NR+MN) was higher in oncology-hematology and medical wards (80.0% and 70.5%) than in surgical ones (52.4%) (p = 0.047). The worse nutritional status was, the longer the length of stay [WN: 8.0 (IQR 8.0) days; NR: 12.0 (IQR 13.5) days; MN: 18.5 (IQR 18.5) days, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of malnutrition in the evaluated hospital was very high, being particularly striking in medical services, and doubling length of stay.
Activated neu Induces Rapid Tumor Progression (*)

Expression of the activated neu oncogene in transgenic mice has been associated with both the synchronous (single-step) and the stochastic (multistep) transformation of the mammary epithelium. To determine the basis for these conflicting observations, additional strains of transgenic mice carrying the activated neu oncogene under the transcriptional control of the mouse mammary tumor virus promoter/enhancer were produced. Activated neu transgene expression, as measured by in situ hybridization and ribonuclease protection assays, resulted in rapid conversion of the normal mammary epithelium to malignant phenotype in three independent strains of mice. Expression of the transgene in male mice led to epithelial hyperplasia of the epididymis and male infertility but not malignancy. These results indicate that tissue context is an important parameter in malignant progression and that expression of appropriate levels of activated neu is sufficient for rapid production of mammary tumors in transgenic mice.
Alterations in outer membrane proteins of Pseudomonas aeruginosa associated with selective resistance to quinolones

Electrophoresis of outer membrane proteins in three ciprofloxacin-resistant strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated during therapy and their in vitro revertants indicated that diminution or loss of a 31- to 32-kilodalton outer membrane protein correlated with resistance in two of the three isolates. Resistance was unstable and caused no cross-resistance with other antibiotics.
Adult tethered cord syndrome in patients with postrepair myelomeningocele: an evidence-based outcome study.

OBJECT As patients with myelomeningocele age, tethered cord syndrome (TCS) in adults with postrepair myelomeningocele has become more common. The authors have structured an evidence-based review of the literature for the purpose of addressing the following questions. (1) How is the diagnosis made? (2) What is the natural history that occurs in adults with postrepair myelomeningocele and TCS? (3) What are the criteria for operative intervention? (4) What is the functional outcome for patients with postrepair myelomeningocele? METHODS A computerized search of the National Library of Medicine of the English-language literature published from 1966 to 2003 was performed. Articles pertaining to the clinical aspects and management of postrepair myelomeningocele in adults, TCS in adults resulting from closed defects, and pediatric patients with postrepair myelomeningocele were reviewed. No Level 1 or 2 data were located; however, the search yielded Level 3 and 4 evidence in the literature in which the clinical syndrome, underlying pathology, and the imaging and electrophysiological evaluation for TCS in adults are discussed. CONCLUSIONS Analysis of the available data indicates the following. (1) A lower lesion level predisposes patients to symptomatic tethering; moreover, orthopedic and urological deterioration will occur in the majority of these patients. (2) Tethered cord release should be considered for adult patients with postrepair myelomeningocele when clinical symptoms, imaging studies, urodynamics, and somatosensory evoked potentials are consistent with TCS. (3) Prompt, aggressive untethering surgery within 5 years of symptom onset, along with long-term follow up to check for delayed retethering, is recommended. The overall outcome for patients with postrepair myelomeningocele may not be as good as the outcome for adults with closed dysraphism.
Trends in poisoning in children: experience at a large referral teaching hospital.

BACKGROUND Poisoning is a major problem in the paediatric population. The offending substances used vary from place to place. Information on poisoning trends in India is meagre and there is an impression among clinicians that there has been a change in the commonly used poisons over the years. This retrospective study aimed to determine the pattern of poisoning in children and to study the nationwide trend over the past five decades. METHODS Case records of children (age group: 1 month and above) admitted to the Department of Paediatrics, King George's Medical College, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh in three alternate calendar years, i.e. 1989, 1991 and 1993 were screened. All children were grouped into three categories based on the poison: (i) bites and stings, (ii) medicinal compounds, and (iii) non-medicinal compounds. The Indian literature on poisoning in children was reviewed and decade-wise data from a total of 22 studies (including the present study) were used to determine the changing trend. RESULTS Childhood poisoning constituted 2.1% of the total paediatric admissions and 1.2% of total deaths. Non-medicinal compounds were the largest contributors (69.2%), of which kerosene alone was responsible for 47% of cases. Medicinal compounds, and bites and stings accounted for 21.6% and 9.2% of these cases, respectively. The case-fatality rate was 9.2%. Comparison of our data, after excluding bites and stings, with a previous study (1977-79) from our institution showed that kerosene poisoning continues to be responsible for a substantial part of the morbidity (51.8% v. 31.5%). Also, poisoning due to insecticides and pesticides has increased (13.7% v. 2.1%) while that due to plant poisons (primarily dhatura) has reduced markedly (4.8% v. 19.2%). CONCLUSION Mortality due to poisoning in children has remained high over the last five decades (2.9%-4.7%). Kerosene has remained the single largest contributor to childhood poisoning (51.5% in the 1960s v. 52.8% in the 1990s).
Interleukin-20 antibody is a potential therapeutic agent for experimental arthritis.

OBJECTIVE Interleukin-20 (IL-20) is a proinflammatory cytokine involved in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We investigated whether anti-IL-20 antibody treatment would modulate the severity of the disease in a collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) rat model. METHODS We generated a CIA model by immunizing rats with bovine type II collagen. Rats with CIA were treated subcutaneously with anti-IL-20 antibody 7E, with the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blocker etanercept, or with 7E in combination with etanercept. Arthritis severity was determined according to the hind paw thickness, arthritis severity score, degree of cartilage damage, bone mineral density, and cytokine production, which were evaluated using radiologic scans, microfocal computed tomography, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. To analyze gene regulation by IL-20, rat synovial fibroblasts (SFs) were isolated and analyzed for the expression of RANKL, IL-17, and TNFα. We also used real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis and flow cytometry to determine IL-20-regulated RANKL in mouse osteoblastic MC3T3-E1 cells and Th17 cells. RESULTS In vivo, treatment with 7E alone or in combination with etanercept significantly reduced the severity of arthritis by decreasing the hind paw thickness and swelling, preventing cartilage damage and bone loss, and reducing the expression of IL-20, IL-1β, IL-6, RANKL, and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) in synovial tissue. In vitro, IL-20 induced TNFα expression in SFs from rats with CIA. IL-20 markedly induced RANKL production in SFs, osteoblasts, and Th17 cells. CONCLUSION Selectively blocking IL-20 inhibited inflammation and bone loss in rats with CIA. Treatment with 7E combined with etanercept protected rats from CIA better than treatment with etanercept alone. Our findings provide evidence that IL-20 is a novel target and that 7E may be a potential therapeutic agent for RA.
Related party transactions and earnings management

This study examines the association between related party transactions and earnings man-agement, based on a sample of 50 Indonesian publicly listed companies for the periods ending 2004 and 2005. The hypothesis developed in this study draw on past literature and the tenets of agency theory which suggest that the existence of related party transactions represent potential conflict of interest which may results in earnings management and appropriation by controlling shareholder to minority shareholders. The empirical findings of the study suggest that there is no statistically significant evidence of the association between related party transactions and earnings manage-ment attributes. Additional sensitivity analysis conducted with alternative measures of earnings management and related party transactions confirm the initial regression results. The results of this study suggest that the mere presence of related party transactions in Indonesian companies does not necessarily indicate that management engage in greater earnings management. This study pro-vides a valuable starting point for similar research in other developing countries. Keywords: Earnings management; Related party transactions; Indonesia
Strategic Management in the Public Sector

Part I: Introduction 1.Introducing strategic planning and management Part II: Strategic Decision-Making 2.Different national experiences of planning 3.International case studies 4.Strategic Policy-Making 5.How to do strategic planning 6.Theories and Research: Inspired by the Private Sector 7.Theories and Research: Practice, Politics and Managing Part III: The Strategic State 8.Politics and planning in the UK 9.Strategic planning as a tool for reforming public services 10.The strategic state Part IV: Conclusions 11.Developments, a map and taking stock
The Role of Organ Vascularization and Lipoplex-Serum Initial Contact in Intravenous Murine Lipofection*

Following intravenous administration of cationic lipid-DNA complexes (lipoplexes) into mice, transfection (lipofection) occurs predominantly in the lungs. This was attributed to high entrapment of lipoplexes in the extended lung vascular tree. To determine whether lipofection in other organs could be enhanced by increasing the degree of vascularization, we used a transgenic mouse model with tissue-specific angiogenesis in liver. Tail vein injection of N-(1-(2,3-dioleoyloxy)propyl)-N,N,N-trimethylammonium chloride (DOTAP)/cholesterol lipoplexes resulted in increased lipoplex entrapment in hypervascularized liver but did not boost luciferase expression, suggesting that lipoplex delivery is not a sufficient condition for efficient organ lipofection. Because the intravenously injected lipoplexes migrated within seconds to lungs, we checked whether the effects of immediate contact with serum correlate with lung lipofection efficiency of different DOTAP-based formulations. Under conditions mimicking the injection environment, the lipoplex-serum interaction was strongly dependent on helper lipid and ionic strength: lipoplexes prepared in 150 mm NaCl or lipoplexes with high (>33 mol%) cholesterol were found to aggregate immediately. This aggregation process was irreversible and was inversely correlated with the percentage of lung cells that took up lipoplexes and with the efficiency of lipofection. No other structural changes in serum were observed for cholesterol-based lipoplexes. Dioleoyl phosphatidylethanolamine-based lipoplexes were found to give low expression, apparently because of an immediate loss of integrity in serum, without lipid-DNA dissociation. Our study suggests that efficient in vivo lipofection is the result of cross-talk between lipoplex composition, interaction with serum, hemodynamics, and target tissue “susceptibility” to transfection.
[A new case of familial Caroli's disease].

La dilatation polykystique segmentaire congenitale des voies biliaires intra-hepatiques ou maladie de Caroli est une pathologie rare dont l'incidence est estimee a 1/10 6 . Quelques cas familiaux ont ete decrits. En rapportant un nouveau cas familial nous rappelons la physiopathologie et les donnees concernant les modes de transmission de la maladie de Caroli.
Corporate Governance, Credit Risk and Bondholder Wealth

My dissertation explores the importance of corporate governance from the perspective of bondholders of samples of US financial and industrial firms. It consists of three related essays which collectively cohere to represent my understanding of the topic. The conflicts of interest between creditors and shareholders and between corporate insiders and outside capital providers are addressed to explain the impact of a comprehensive governance mechanisms on bondholder wealth, which is measured either by the default probability implied by the structure credit model or by Credit Default Swap (CDS) spread. I consider both the non-crisis and crisis periods through different essays, which provide the ideal setting to examine the effectiveness of governance on bondholder wealth for different market conditions. Specifically, I explain how important governance provisions affect a manager’s opportunistic behavior, a firm’s investment decision and risk-taking behavior, and information environment, which in turn affect bondholder wealth. Such governance provisions include internal governance mechanism, such as the role played by the board of directors and a firm’s equity ownership structure, and external governance provisions through the market for corporate control and the trading activities of institutional investors. My dissertation serves to advance the governance literature in several dimensions: a) it re-examines the usefulness of shareholder favorable governance provisions from a different angle through the eye of creditors, and tries to explain why some shareholder governance provisions turn out to be ineffective; b) it compares the riskiness of financial and non-financial firms, and how creditors view governance factors differently for two types of firms; c) it emphasizes the role of institutional investors and tests how their investment horizons and ownership levels affect industrial firms’ riskiness, and how such an impact varies across different market conditions. My general results show that governance attributes have a significant impact on a firm’s credit risk, and this impact varies across the type of the firm. Ownership structure and takeover vulnerability are more important for non-financial firms than for financial firms. Board structure and accounting transparency have greater impact on financial firms. When I restrict to a sample of banks and use the credit risk model to estimate default risk, the impact of board structure remains. Given the important governance role of equity ownership structure for non-financial firms and the importance of institutional investors in the U.S. capital markets, I specifically look at institutional monitoring on industrial firms’ credit risk. My results show that institutional investment horizon, ownership structure, trading behavior and market conditions are all important determinants of industrial firms’ credit risk.
An incremental and interactive affective posture recognition system

Date: 24-29 July 2005 Abstract: The role of body posture in affect recognition, and the importance of emotion in the development and support of intelligent and social behavior have been accepted and researched within several fields. While posture is considered important, much research has focused on extracting emotion information from dance sequences. Instead, our focus is on creating an affective posture recognition system that incrementally learns to recognize and react to people's affective behaviors. In this paper, we examine a set of requirements for creating this system, and our proposed solutions. The first requirement is that the system is general and non-situation specific. Secondly, it should be able to handle explicit and implicit feedback. Finally, it must be able to incrementally learn the emotion categories without predefining them. We tested and compared the performance of our system using 182 standing postures described as a combination of form features and motion low level features, across several emotion categories, with a typical algorithm used for recognition, back-propagation, and with human observers in an aim to show the generalizability of the system. This initial testing showed positive results.
Innovation Management and Marketing in the High-Tech Sector: A Content Analysis of Advertisements

Advertizing high-technology products is a tricky and critical task for every company, since it means operating in an environment with high market uncertainty. The work presents results of a content analysis of 110 adverts for consumer electronics products which examines how these products and the incorporated technology are communicated to the customer. Based on established coding schemes, the content and the appeals of the adverts are evaluated by coders. The results show that these adverts are very informative, mainly have rational appeals and feature products being in the early stage of their life cycles. Regarding the specific content, the ‘mother brand’ is shown to play a very important role. On the other hand, the results show that incorporated technology, its superiority and functionality do not play an important role in the advertisements.
Knockout of the prion protein (PrP)-like Sprn gene does not produce embryonic lethality in combination with PrPC-deficiency

The Sprn gene encodes Shadoo (Sho), a glycoprotein with biochemical properties similar to the unstructured region of cellular prion protein (PrPC). Sho has been considered a candidate for the hypothetical π protein that supplies a PrPC-like function to maintain the viability of Prnp0/0 mice lacking the PrPC protein. To understand these relationships more clearly we probed the cell biology of Sho and created knockout mice. Besides full-length and a “C1” C-terminal fragment, we describe a 6-kDa N-terminal Sho neuropeptide, “N1,” which is present in membrane-enriched subcellular fractions of wild-type mice. Sprn null alleles were produced that delete all protein coding sequences yet spare the Mtg1 gene transcription unit that overlaps the Sprn 3′ UTR; the resulting mice bred to homozygosity were viable and fertile, although Sprn0/0 mice maintained in two genetic backgrounds weighed less than wild-type mice. Lack of Sho protein did not affect prion incubation time. Contrasting with lethality reported for knockdown of expression in Prnp0/0 embryos using lentiviruses targeted against the Sprn 3′ UTR, we established that double-knockout mice deficient in both Sho and PrPC are fertile and viable up to 690 d of age. Our data reduce the impetus for equating Sho with the notional π protein and are not readily reconciled with hypotheses wherein expression of PrPC and Sho are both required for completion of embryogenesis. Alternatively, and in accord with some reports for PrPC, we infer that Sho’s activity will prove germane to the maintenance of neuronal viability in postnatal life.
Daily oscillation of glutathione redox cycle is dampened in the nutritional vitamin A deficiency

Examples of hormonal phase-shifting of circadian gene expression began to emerge a few years ago. Vitamin A fulfills a hormonal function by binding of retinoic acid to its nuclear receptors, RARs and RXRs. We found retinoid- as well as clock-responsive sites on regulatory regions of Glutathione reductase (GR) and Glutathione peroxidase (GPx) genes. Interestingly, we observed retinoid receptors, as well as GSH, GR, and GPx, display daily oscillating patterns in the rat liver. We also found that feeding animals with a vitamin A-free diet, dampened daily rhythms of RARα and RXRβ mRNA, GR expression and activity, GSH, BMAL1 protein levels, and locomotor activity. Differently, day–night oscillations of RXRα, GPx mRNA levels and activity and PER1 protein levels, were phase-shifted in the liver of vitamin A-deficient rats. These observations would emphasize the importance of micronutrient vitamin A in the modulation of biological rhythms of GSH and cellular redox state in liver.
Security Threats of Computerised Banking Systems (CBS): the managers' perception in Malaysia

Internal control system is an important pillar in an organisation. Considering the evidence from major accounting fraud cases that occurred consequence to weak internal control, such as Enron, it could also occur in a financial institution. Hence, the objective of this study is to investigate the bank managers’ opinion on the likelihood of security threats in the computerised banking systems (CBS) in Malaysia. Since most major financial institutions operate in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, questionnaires were sent to almost all bank branches in Kuala Lumpur. The findings are expected to provide a platform for bank managers to share their threats’ experience. Secondly, to assist them in designing and formulating a sound and effective internal control system that will provide reasonable assurance for achieving the bank’s mission. Findings are also expected to provide general insights of internal control system, as most information is very remote and confidential, thus generate a platform for promoting an efficient and effective internal control practice in financial institutions.
Employee turnover and employee performance: a comparative study among nurses

An organization’s success depends mainly on employee retention, which will help the organizations reduce employee’s job turnover and increasing organizational effectiveness [1]. Employee turnover which has attracted major attention in this current century, to some extent, is fundamentally needed for growth of any organization. Advancement and changes taking place very rapidly in life styles, culture, technology, economy and legal aspects have become the major causative factor of employee turnover. Off all these factors, economical changes in the country and increased needs and wants of money are the most important factors being responsible for employee turnover. Among the technical and middle level employees, need for career advancement remains a very challenging factor in these highly prevalent competitive and unemployment industries.