Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Paediatric parenting stress in inflammatory bowel disease: application of the Pediatric Inventory for Parents.

BACKGROUND The psychosocial functioning of caregivers of adolescents managing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been understudied; yet, poor caregiver functioning can place youth at risk for compromised disease management. The current study addressed this limitation by examining a sample of caregivers of adolescents with IBD. Study aims included (1) documenting rates of paediatric parenting stress; (2) identifying associated sociodemographic predictors of parenting stress; and (3) comparing previously published rates of parenting stress to those within other paediatric chronic conditions, including cancer, type 1 diabetes, obesity, sickle cell disease, bladder exstrophy. METHODS Caregivers of adolescents with an IBD diagnosis (M(age) = 15.4 ± 1.4, 44.4% female, 88.7% Caucasian) and receiving tertiary care within a gastroenterology clinic (n = 62) completed the Pediatric Inventory for Parents (PIP) as a measure of paediatric parenting stress with frequency and difficulty as PIP subscales. Paediatric gastroenterologists provided disease severity assessments. RESULTS Adolescents with IBD were experiencing relatively mild disease activity. Bivariate correlations revealed that PIP-difficulty was positively associated with Crohn's disease severity (r = 0.38, P < 0.01). Caregiver age was negatively associated with the frequency of parenting stress total (r = -0.25, P = 0.05) and communication scores (r = -0.25, P < 0.05). The frequency and difficulty of parenting stressors within the IBD sample were similar to rates within type 1 diabetes, but were significantly lower than rates identified in other paediatric chronic conditions. CONCLUSIONS Caregivers of adolescents with IBD seem to experience low rates of parenting stress when their adolescents are receiving outpatient care and during phases of IBD relative inactivity. The sociodemographic characteristics of IBD families (i.e. primarily Caucasian, well-educated and higher socio-economic status) likely encourage greater access to financial and psychosocial resources, which may aid in promoting more optimal stress management.
Pericardial effusion in AIDS. Incidence and survival.

BACKGROUND Although pericardial effusion is known to be common among patients infected with HIV, the incidence of pericardial effusion and its relation to survival have never been described. METHODS AND RESULTS To evaluate the incidence of pericardial effusion and its relation to mortality in HIV-positive subjects, 601 echocardiograms were performed on 231 subjects recruited over a 5-year period (inception cohort: 59 subjects with asymptomatic HIV, 62 subjects with AIDS-related complex, and 74 subjects with AIDS; 21 HIV-negative healthy gay men; and 15 subjects with non-HIV end-stage medical illness). Echocardiograms were performed every 3 to 6 months (82% had follow-up studies). Sixteen subjects were diagnosed with effusions (prevalence of effusion for AIDS subjects entering the study was 5%). Thirteen subjects developed effusions during follow-up; 12 of these were subjects with AIDS (incidence, 11%/y). The majority of effusions (80%) were small and asymptomatic. The survival of AIDS subjects with effusions was significantly shorter (36% at 6 months) than survival for AIDS subjects without effusions (93% at 6 months). This shortened survival remained significant (relative risk, 2.2, P = .01) after adjustment for lead time bias and was independent of CD4 count and albumin level. CONCLUSIONS There is a high incidence of pericardial effusion in patients with AIDS, and the presence of an effusion is associated with shortened survival. The development of an effusion in the setting of HIV infection suggests end-stage HIV disease (AIDS).
Three Essays in Financial Economics

of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Henrik Cronqvist. No. of pages in text. (150) My dissertation examines economic determinants of household financial decisions and investor behaviors. It contains three essays. The first essay investigates whether gender norms shape intra-household financial decision making. Analyzing microdata covering more than 30 million U.S. households, I document that families with a financially sophisticated husband are more likely to participate in the stock market than those with a wife of equal financial sophistication. Consistent with the gender norm hypothesis, the baseline effect is attenuated among individuals brought up by working mothers, but becomes stronger among descendants of pre-industrial societies in which women specialized in activities within the home and households with a husband born and raised in a southern state. A randomized controlled experiment further reveals that female identity hinders idea contribution by the wife. In contrast, male identity causes men to be less open to an opposing viewpoint of their wife, even if her proposition in optimal. These things suggest that gender identity norms can have real consequences for household financial well-being. The second essay explores the impact of local agglomeration economies on stock market participation. We find that when the industry in which individuals work is locally agglomerated, they are more likely to participate in the stock market. Further, we show that this relationship is especially strong among skilled workers. We find that the local agglomeration effect is not explained by risk tolerance, worker inertia, or a preference for stocks of firms that are in the same industry as the worker. Instead, our findings are consistent with local agglomeration enhancing human capital and in turn, raising workers’ optimal allocations to risky assets. More generally, our analysis underscores the role of geography in shaping human capital and household financial decisions. The third essay examines whether momentum in stock prices is induced by changes in the political environment. We find that momentum profits are concentrated among politically sensitive firms and industries. A trading strategy with a long position in winner portfolios that are politically unfavored and a short position in losers that are politically favored eliminates all momentum profits. Further, our political sensitivity based factor explains 25% (40%) of monthly stock (industry) momentum alphas. Collectively, our results suggest that investor underreaction to political information generates momentum in stock and industry returns. Dedicated to my family, for everything.
Toward a cyclical model of resource alteration

Strategy work is principally about resource alteration. As managers attempt to alter their organizational resources, they need to ask two questions: “What are our resources? ” and “How can we use these resources? ” Managers will probably have little difficulty answering these questions in the case of tangible resources, e.g., tools, money, and facilities. However, in the case of intangible resources e.g., intellectual property, brands, and goodwill, these questions become more difficult to answer. And in the case of abstract resources, e.g., attention, creativity, and culture, the answers become even more elusive. The mainstream advice to managers is that they should accurately assess their organizational resource base and unambiguously understand how these resources link to performance before they attempt to alter resources. This dissertation investigates how resource assessments actually take place in practice, how resource understandings shape resource alteration choices, and how resource alteration, in turn, shapes how managers understand their organizational resources. Three fine-grained studies highlight the contentious aspects of resource alteration. The studies show how managers try to find advantageous uses of resources they do not yet possess in order to solve problems that they often do not fully understand. The studies show also how managers, depending on their hierarchical and functional area memberships, come up with different answers to what resources they have and how these resources can be used. Not more or less accurate, just different. A theoretical model is proposed that depicts resource alteration as a perpetual cycle. By combining cognitive theory and practice theory, the model attempts to capture how activity configurations shape both practical and conceptual resource understandings and how these resource understandings predispose actors to certain resource alteration choices. The model also proposes that the resulting feedback on these resource alteration proposals, in turn, alter activity configurations. On the basis of the dissertation’s findings and the theoretical model, managers are advised to consider three dimensions of resources—asset characteristics, coordinated activities, and enacted rules—when they attempt to answer resource related questions.
The impact of ECB policies on Euro area investment

We analyze the reasons for which the very accommodative policy led by the ECB has not triggered a rebound of investment. After examining the evolutions of investment in the euro area, we observe a large heterogeneity both across sectors and countries. Consequently, it is questionable that the ECB’s monetary policy can increase investment in the whole area. Therefore, we study the extent to which monetary policy impacts investment. We use a counterfactual analysis and compute the level of investment had the ECB’s decisions been different. We observe the importance of the ECB in support to investment. Indeed, the investment in the euro area would have sunk without accommodative – first conventional, then unconventional – monetary policy. Finally, we lay the emphasis on the role of credit demand as one of the main determinants of investment since the 2008 crisis, which has depended among others on the impact of deleveraging and fiscal consolidation.
Adversarial Attribute-Image Person Re-identification

While attributes have been widely used for person re-identification (Re-ID) which aims at matching the same person images across disjoint camera views, they are used either as extra features or for performing multi-task learning to assist the image-image matching task. However, how to find a set of person images according to a given attribute description, which is very practical in many surveillance applications, remains a rarely investigated cross-modality matching problem in person Re-ID. In this work, we present this challenge and leverage adversarial learning to formulate the attribute-image cross-modality person Re-ID model. By imposing a semantic consistency constraint across modalities as a regularization, the adversarial learning enables to generate image-analogous concepts of query attributes for matching the corresponding images at both global level and semantic ID level. We conducted extensive experiments on three attribute datasets and demonstrated that the regularized adversarial modelling is so far the most effective method for the attribute-image cross-modality person Re-ID problem.
THE INFLUENCE OF PERCEIVED FAIRNESS AND RELATIONAL LEADERSHIP ON NURSING SAFETY CLIMATE AND WORK ENVIRONMENT

The Influence of Perceived Fairness and Relational Leadership on Nursing Safety Climate and Work Environment Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Mae Ellen Squires Graduate Department of the Lawrence S Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto Canadian statistics on patient safety in acute care hospitals are alarming. Hospital safety concerns are not isolated to patient safety. Occupational safety is also important. With increasing shortages of nurses, stress in the work place is growing. Nurses report high levels of absenteeism of 14.5 days per year. The importance of a just and fair culture and the role of nurse leaders have been emphasized in safety literature. Although deemed important, studies of nurse leaders and patient outcomes are limited. The influence of interactional justice in the workplace on nurse and patient safety has not been studied. The purpose of this study was to test and refine a model developed from the literature which explains the impact of perceived interactional justice, relational leadership, and quality of nurse manager – clinical nurse relationships on the nursing work environment and ultimately patient and nurse safety outcomes. The model was tested on a random sample of 266 Ontario acute care registered nurses. Findings indicated the model reasonably fit the observed data, however could benefit from further refinement. The addition of 2 pathways (span of control to nurses‟ intent to leave and number of medication errors to nurse emotional exhaustion) and trimming of the insignificant paths improved the overall model fit. The resulting model indicates that resonant leadership style and interactional justice improves the quality of nurse leader-nurse relationships which in turn improves quality of the nurses‟ work environment and safety climate. A positive safety climate led to a decrease in the number medication errors and nurses‟ intentions to leave their unit. A higher quality work environment predicted lower nurse emotional exhaustion. Additionally, higher
BRICS New Development Bank: Its Birth & Major Implications to International Political Economy

The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) has just begun its operation on infrastructure financing. While long-term speculation on its activities in the uncertain context is hazardously conjectural, it is possible to discuss its short-term implications. If the egalitarian principle – with an equal capital contribution among the BRICS members – should be firmly upheld, the growth of its financing will be determined by its weakest member (South Africa) and by new members (particularly non-borrowers). The former case will hinder the NDB from becoming a major institution and the latter case will dilute the founders’ pivotal position in the institutoin. If China, the only founding member with financial clout, should be allowed to raise its own capital base, the NDB’s financial capacity will be augmented, but its institutionalized egalitarianism will be compromised. Moreover, if intra-BRICS talks on the capital base and new membership should reveal serious acrimony, they will not only dampen global support but also discourage others to join the NDB. The paucity of creditworthy track record will also oblige the NDB to co-finance with other institutions, which, in turn, will prevent it from lending in a radically different fashion from the conventional practices. If the NDB should appear to fail bringing about major changes in the global financial architecture, many observers will question the merits of reinventing the wheel. Even worse, the NDB will be seen as a smokescreen to hide the exploitation of Southern countries at the best advantage of the BRICS members. At any rate, it is likely that the NDB will expand its operation, but its growth path will be slow and unsteady. At least, in the foreseeable future its effects will not be as significant as many observers have hoped. 1 This paper was prepared for presentation at the 4th International Conference of BICAS (BRICS Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies), held at China Agricultural University, Beijing, China (28-30 November 2016). The author wishes to express his appreciation to constructive comments provided by Eri Ikeda, Benjamin Jesse Pacho, Brandon Sommer, Johan Spamer and Robert Christiaan Thomassen on earlier versions of the paper. The 4th International Conference of BICAS, November 28‐30, 2016 China Agricultural University, Beijing
Excess aldosterone is a critical danger signal for inflammasome activation in the development of renal fibrosis in mice

High levels of aldosterone impair renal function by activating proinflammatory and profibrotic pathways. However, the molecular mechanism underlying aldosterone‐induced inflammation and fibrosis is unknown. Inflammasome activation contributes to chronic kidney disease. We hypothesized that aldosterone induces renal tubulointerstitial inflammation and fibrosis by activating the inflammasome. Infusing wild‐type mice with aldosterone (0.25 mg/kg/d) caused tubulointerstitial damage, increased expression of inflammasome components, caspase 1 activation, and overproduction of IL‐1β and IL‐18. These changes were suppressed by eplerenone treatment (100 mg/kg/d) in wild‐type mice or in mice deficient in apoptosis‐associated speck‐like protein with a caspase‐recruitment domain (ASC). Caspase 1‐positive and F4/80‐positive cells colocalized in the interstitium. Bone marrow transplantation using ASC‐deficient mice indicated that inflammasome activation in macrophages mediated aldosterone‐induced renal fibrosis. IL‐18 was detected in culture supernatants of macrophages treated with aldosterone, and mitochondria‐derived reactive oxygen species activated the inflammasome in these macrophages. Our results indicate that exposure of macrophages to high levels of aldosterone resulted in the activation of inflammasomes via the mitochondria‐derived reactive oxygen species. Thus, inflammasome activation in macrophages may serve as a new therapeutic target for chronic kidney disease. —Kadoya, H. , Satoh, M. , Sasaki, T. , Taniguchi, S. , Takahashi, M. , Kashihara, N. Excess aldosterone is a critical danger signal for inflammasome activation in the development of renal fibrosis in mice. FASEB J. 29, 3899‐3910 (2015). www.fasebj. org
Preserved Endocrine Function in a Pancreas Transplant Recipient with Pancreatic Panniculitis and Antibody‐Mediated Rejection

Pancreas transplantation is an effective treatment option for patients with complicated diabetes mellitus. Pancreas allograft recipients are followed with laboratory markers such as serum amylase, lipase and glucose levels. Hyperglycemia may indicate severe acute rejection and has recently been associated with antibody‐mediated (humoral) rejection. In this report, we describe a unique case of a pancreas‐after‐kidney (PAK) transplant recipient with the rare presentation of pancreatic panniculitis, biopsy‐proven severe acute cellular and antibody‐mediated pancreas allograft rejection and surprisingly well‐preserved endocrine function despite treatment with high dose steroids. We discuss the clinicopathologic features of antibody‐mediated pancreas rejection, including the importance of correlating pancreas allograft biopsy, C4d staining and donor specific antibodies, to diagnose antibody‐mediated rejection and initiate the correct treatment.
Toward earlier diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

We modified the World Federation of Neurology (WFN) diagnostic criteria for ALS to facilitate early diagnosis and used these criteria for enrollment of ALS patients in a clinical trial. The criteria developed required lower motor neuron (LMN) involvement in at least two limbs and upper motor neuron involvement in at least one region (bulbar, cervical, or lumbosacral). The EMG finding of fibrillation potentials was required for evidence of LMN involvement. Electrodiagnostic studies, neuroimaging, and laboratory studies were also used to exclude disorders that might mimic ALS. Using these criteria, the diagnosis of ALS was made at a mean time of 9.7 months from onset of symptoms, which compares favorably with the 12-month period cited in the literature. Using clinical assessment at completion of the trial, the diagnosis of ALS was believed to be accurate in those patients entered in the trial. However, pathologic confirmation of the diagnosis of ALS was not obtained. Based on our preliminary experience, we propose that these ALS diagnostic criteria will facilitate early diagnosis of ALS. Future studies should prospectively compare these criteria with the WFN criteria currently in use.
Understanding the economic contribution of tourism in Malta : a literature review

The paper presents a critical assessment of the key studies which present empirical estimates for the contribution of the tourism sector to the Maltese economy. The observed discrepancies in the estimates derived from these studies has in part led to a situation in which there is an effective widespread divergence relating to the specific economic contribution of tourism in Malta. The paper evaluates the estimates derived by these key studies in the context of both the strengths and weaknesses of their respective modelling frameworks, which range from the construction of tourism satellite accounts, to input-output models and computable general equilibrium modelling, as well as an evaluation of the overall quality of the data utilized. The paper therefore attempts to identify and clarify the main causes behind the observed variations in the resulting estimates and through a systematic comparative assessment also aid in the providing a further understanding of the potential economic contribution of tourism to the Maltese economy. On the basis of this assessment it is suggested that the contribution of tourism to the Maltese economy should account for approximately 5.7% of total gross value added when taking account solely direct effects, 12% once indirect effects are included and roughly 17% accounting also for the induced effects. Furthermore, on the basis of this assessment the paper highlights the need for further research in this area given the significance of the tourism sector to the small island economy of Malta. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016. v7n6p49
Evaluation of serum neural cell adhesion molecule as a prognostic marker in multiple myeloma.

Serum neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM), a possible prognostic marker for multiple myeloma (MM), was determined by means of an enzyme immunoassay, which showed good linearity and high precision. In 95% of healthy controls (n = 70), NCAM values were below 18.7 U/mL. In patients with monoclorlal gammopathies of undetermined significance (MGUS) (n = 31) or polyclonal gammopathies (n = 53) the cut off was 23.1 U/mL. MM in active stage (n = 52) showed significantly higher NCAM levels (p < 0.001) than in asymptomatic stage (n = 44). In active myeloma the sensitivity of serum markers were found to be: NCAM 40%, beta 2-microglobulin beta 2-M) 52% and serum thymidine-kinase (S-TK) 41% (cut off defined on MGUS). The combined sensitivities ranged between 55 and 60% (NCAM+ beta 2-M, beta 2-M+S-TK, NCAM+S-TK). No correlation with beta 2-M or S-TK could be demonstrated. However, NCAM values were correlated with the concentration of monoclonal immunoglobulin (IgG-paraprotein: r = 0.45; IgA-paraprotein: r = 0.58). In the follow-up of patients with myeloma, NCAM values decreased in response to chemotherapy and were low in smouldering myeloma. But in three patients with progression NCAM did not reflect the tumor activity. At the time of censor, 80% of patients (n = 80) with a pre-treatment NCAM of < 18.5 U/mL and 61% of patients with a NCAM of > 18.5 U/mL were still alive. NCAM showed a low prognostic significance (log-rank: p < 0.07). Seven of ten myeloma patients with CD56 expression on plasma cell surface, which was examined by flow cytometry, displayed a high concentration of NCAM in serum. All other non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (21 immunocytoma, 27 chronic lymphocytic leukemia, 16 centrocytic/centroblastic-centrocytic lymphoma, 24 high-grade lymphoma) had low NCAM concentrations in serum and did not significantly vary in follow-up. In conclusion, serum NCAM could be a marker for the staging and monitoring of MM. However, it seems, that NCAM did not provide additional prognostic information relating to beta 2-M, S-TK or paraprotein.