Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preadipocytes in the human subcutaneous adipose tissue display distinct features from the adult mesenchymal and hematopoietic stem cells

The stroma‐vascular fraction (SVF) of human adipose tissue has recently been described to be composed of endothelial cells identified as CD34+/CD31+ cells, infiltrated/resident macrophages defined as CD14+/CD31+ cells, and a new cell population characterized as CD34+/CD31− cells. To elucidate the cell identity of the adipocyte precursor cells, fluorescent activating cell sorter (FACS) analyses were performed on crude SVF cultured under adipogenic conditions, i.e., serum‐deprived medium containing insulin, cortisol, triiodothyronine, and supplemented with a PPARγ agonist for the first 3 days. The progressive accumulation of lipid droplets was associated with a selective enrichment of the CD34+/CD31− cell population whereas control experiments performed in medium supplemented with 10% serum showed an overall downregulation of the three cell markers without adipogenesis. Among the different cell subsets, the CD34+/CD31− subset was the unique cell fraction able to answer to adipogenic culture conditions. Indeed, a time‐dependent expression of adipocyte markers as well as acquisition of adipocyte‐typical metabolic activities were observed. In parallel, the gene expression of lipogenic and lipolytic enzymes increased. The ability to differentiate into adipocytes was restricted to cells that did not express the mesenchymal stem cell marker CD105. Furthermore, the CD34+/CD31− cells did not respond to culture conditions used for hematopoietic colony assays. Taken together, the present study demonstrates that adipocyte progenitor cells, i.e., the preadipocytes, are included in the CD34+/CD31− cell fraction, which displays distinct features from the adult mesenchymal and hematopoietic stem cells. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Neuroendocrine carcinoma of the larynx ‐ an extraordinary malignancy with high recurrence rates and long survival: Our experience in 11 patients

Dear Editor, Laryngeal neuroendocrine carcinoma are rare tumours that are believed to originate from pluripotential stem cells located in the submucosa of the larynx. Constituting <1% of all tumours originating from the larynx, they still form the second most common group of neoplasms at this location, after laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma. The World Health Organization classification divides laryngeal neuroendocrine carcinomas into four groups; typical carcinoid, atypical carcinoid, small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma and paragangliomas. Recently an aggressive subtype of the atypical carcinoid group was identified as a separate entity, the large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma. Identification of the right tumour type is of importance as tumour behaviour and response to therapy are closely related to the histological diagnosis. There are several pitfalls in the diagnostic and staging process of laryngeal neuroendocrine carcinoma. The different subtypes show considerable overlap in histological and immunohistochemical features, and neuroendocrine tumours can be a part of composite tumours, consisting of both a neuroendocrine neoplasm and a squamous cell carcinoma, impeding or delaying appropriate treatment. Owing to the rarity of these tumours, only small series have been published. Therefore, it remains important that institutions report on their experience with these neoplasms. The aim of this study was to increase the understanding of the clinicopathological behaviour by reviewing the medical files of patients diagnosed with a laryngeal neuroendocrine carcinoma at our institution. Materials and methods
Determinants of Dividend Policy: A Sectoral Analysis from Pakistan

The present study is an endeavour to evaluate the determinants of dividend policy. The study has been conducted on non-financial sector of Pakistan. There are five important determinants identified in this study i.e. profitability, size, tax, investment opportunities and life cycle stage of firm. A sample of 174 non-financial firms listed on Karachi Stock Exchange for the period of 2005 to 2010 has been chosen for this study. The researcher has analyzed the relationships of variables firstly for overall non-financial sector and further for sub sectors of non-financial sector. Over all sector analysis has been performed through panel data analysis. Further to check sectoral differences, sector wise regression analysis has been performed. The results have identified profitability, tax, size and investment opportunities as most influential determinants of dividend policy. However, there is a lack of stable dividend policy in the market.
The antigen specificity of thymus-derived helper cells.

Heterologous erythrocytes have long been in general use as multideterminant antigens. The development of the hemolytic plaque assay has allowed the enumeration of individual cells producing antibody directed against an erythrocyte determinant (1). In the response of mouse spleen cells, it has been shown in vitro (2) and in vivo (3) that a portion of the plaque-forming cells (PFC) which arise to the sheep erythrocyte (SRBC) antigen also yields plaques or “cross-reacts” with the erythrocytes of the closely related species, goat (GRBC), but not with those of the phylogenetically more distant species, burro (BRBC). It is assumed that the extent of cross-reactivity of these PFC reflects to some degree the extent of cross-reactivity of the receptors on their bone marrow-derived precursors (B-cells). Immunization of mice with heterologous erythrocytes also leads to a rapid increase in the spleen in the number of thymus-derived lymphocytes (T-cells) with receptors specific for erythrocyte determinants (4, 5).
Salmonella Dublin infection in Queensland dairy cattle.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the presence of Salmonella Dublin in Queensland cattle. DESIGN An epidemiological study using diagnostic laboratory information and farm records. PROCEDURE Outbreaks of gastroenteritis or pneumonia in calves, and abortions and enteritis in cows were routinely investigated for the presence of salmonellae. Where S Dublin was isolated, attempts were made to gather further epidemiological information. RESULTS Prior to 1983 only two outbreaks of S Dublin have been recorded in Queensland dairy cattle. In 1983 S Dublin abortions were diagnosed in dairy heifers introduced from southern Australia to south-east Queensland. Sampling indicated that at least 10% of the 500 introduced heifers were faecal excretors of S Dublin. On 3 of the 7 farms from which S Dublin was recorded, infection spread to other cattle that were in contact. From February 1985 to February 1996, 29 outbreaks of S Dublin in cattle occurred on 29 farms (28 in south east Queensland and 1 in north Queensland). Calves were primarily affected. Continuing outbreaks were confirmed on only 4 of these 29 farms. On 15 farms S Dublin infections were associated with the purchase of infected calves or cows, while another farm adjoined 2 previously infected farms. No source of S Dublin was evident for the other 13 farms, where histories were often inadequate. CONCLUSION There has been a marked increase in S Dublin outbreaks in Queensland dairy cattle since 1983. Introduction of S Dublin carrier and aborting dairy heifers from southern Australia, where S Dublin is not uncommon, was associated with the initial outbreaks.
Are Expectations of Polish Industrial Enterprises Rational? Evidence From Business Tendency Surveys

Expectations of economic agents exert unąuestionable influence on their decisions. Not surprisingly, analysis of properties of expectations formation processes often provides valuable insight for both explanation and prediction of economic behavior. The paper proposes to test whether expectations of Polish industrial enterprises are rational. Analysis of the rationality of expectations is based on direct tests of unbiasedness and orthogonality (in respect to selected elements of information set) within the framework of the Rational Expectations Hypothesis introduced by J. F. Muth. Both properties are necessary (though not sufficient) conditions for the expectations to be considered rational. Empirical analysis is based on firm-level data collected by the Research Institute for Economic Development of the Warsaw School of Economics through business tendency surveys. In monthly surveys of industrial enterprises, respondents evaluate changes in selected areas of economic activity by assigning these changes to three categories: inerease, decrease, or no change. Use of qualitative survey data makes it necessary to employ ąuantification methods in order to compare expectations series with observed changes in variables. In the paper, regression method is used. Questions of expectations measurement and quality of expectations measures are also briefly addressed. Empirical results of rational expectations tests for Polish industrial enterprises exhibit dependence on econometric tools used, such as quantification and estimation methods. Generally, expectations of Polish industrial enterprises show only limited rationality. Widely available information, such as previous forecasts and recently observed changes in forecasted variables, could be employed for the purpose of improving quality of predictions. Differences in the level of rationality of production, price, and employment expectations have been observed; we try to provide explanation for this variation.
Benefit sharing in REDD+ : exploring the implications for poor and vulnerable people

Reference emission level plus (REDD+) benefit sharing can take a wide variety of forms depending on the policies used to achieve REDD+ objectives. Some policies may more directly resemble cash transfer or payment for environmental service schemes which transfer revenues between different actors and at different scales. However, benefit sharing systems could be much more complex, especially for national REDD+ schemes in which relatively broad brush policy reforms may be implemented which change the economics of multiple sectors. This paper has focused more on the simpler cash transfer approaches. In order to understand the implications of benefit sharing systems in any approach, it is important to be very clear about the types of benefits that can accrue from REDD+, the actors that are both directly and indirectly involved in benefit sharing and particularly the rules that may affect benefit flows to these actors. There is still a tendency for debates about benefit sharing to stop at the level of communities. Whilst many of the general concerns about benefit sharing within communities are widely referenced (e.g., elite capture), relatively less is known about how benefits are actually shared within communities and the implications in terms of economic opportunities, empowerment and vulnerability. There is also surprisingly little empirical evidence on the implications of different benefit sharing approaches for the poor in the different examples reviewed; e.g., in terms of questions about whether benefits have actually compensated people adequately, helped lift people out of poverty or deal with temporary shocks. These issues need to be much better understood within emerging REDD+ projects and programs, if their objective is for REDD+ to benefit those affected.
A Novel Program-Verify Algorithm for Multi-Bit Operation in HfO2 RRAM

In this letter, we propose a dispersion-aware program-verify algorithm to enable reliable multi-bit operations in HfO2-based RRAM. The significant intrinsic dispersion of the resistive states, typically hindering multi-bit operations, is exploited to devise a program-verify scheme which enables the multi-bit operations with unique properties of failure resilience and adaptability to degradation. We show that an appropriate choice of the algorithm parameters can minimize the average number of cycles needed to program the cell, enabling fast and reliable multi-bit operation. This maximizes the bit/cell ratio and minimizes the dispersion of targeted resistive states.
Cortical Centres Underlying Auditory Temporal Processing in Humans: A PET Study

We have used positron emission tomography (PET) to test a specific hypothesis of a neural system subserving auditory temporal processing (acoustical stimulus duration discrimination). Maps of the cerebral blood flow distribution during specific stimulations weobtained from five normally-hearing and otherwise healthy subjects. The auditory stimuli consisted of sounds of varying duration and of auditorily presented words in which the duration of the initial phoneme was manipulated. All stimuli alternated with conditions of silence in a subtraction paradigm. The blood flow distribution was mapped with O-15-labelled water. The results demonstrated that stimuli requiring recognizing, memorizing, or attending to specific target sounds during temporal processing generally resulted in significant activation of both frontal lobes and the parietal lobe in the right hemisphere. Based on these results, we hypothesise that a network consisting of anterior and posterior auditory attention and short-term memory sites subserves acoustical stimulus duration perception and analysis (auditory temporal processing).
Dividend is a substitute or an outcome of Auditor Monitoring? Another Evidence

This study investigates the association between auditors monitoring and dividend payout policy. The previous literature illustrate that there are two ways to mitigate the agency concern; One is through dividend payments while other way of mitigating agency concern is to improve auditors monitoring, which reduces the information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders due to which the managers are forced to pay the dividends. The first way of mitigating the agency concern is called substitution model while the second way is called outcome model. In order to assess which of the model of mitigating agency concern is prevailing in Pakistan, study used the data of 140 listed firms from 2005 to 2010 and observed that there is a positive and significant association between auditor monitoring and dividend payouts. These results are indication of presence of outcome model. Moreover, these results are consistent with prior studies.
What kind of randomised trials do patients and clinicians need?

In 1967 Daniel Schwartz and Joseph Lellouch1 argued that there are 2 kinds of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) embodying radically different attitudes to evaluation of treatment. They named these trials “pragmatic” and “explanatory” and stated that these 2 attitudes require different approaches to the design of an RCT. The pragmatic attitude seeks to directly inform real-world decisions among alternative treatments, and Schwartz and Lellouch show that this purpose is satisfied in trials that test feasible interventions on typical patients in common settings, with usual care as the comparator, to widen real-world applicability. The explanatory attitude, in contrast, is directed to understanding a biological process by testing the hypothesis that the specified biological response is explained by exposure to a particular treatment. Tight restrictions on eligible participants, intense and closely monitored treatment, inactive control interventions (such as placebo), and an idealised healthcare setting maximise the comparison between intervention and control groups and increase the ability to test this kind of hypothesis. What attitude to RCT design is most useful for patients and clinicians? Clearly, the trial has to ask an important question that is relevant to some aspect of the care clinicians provide to their patients. The clinicians and patients in the trial should resemble the clinicians who are reading the trial report and the patients they typically treat. The intervention being evaluated in the trial should be deliverable by the clinician, and the outcome being used to judge whether the intervention is effective has to be something that the clinician and his or her patients recognise as being worth influencing. In short, the trial has to be applicable, or have what is often called external validity.2 Consider the NASCET trial.3 It asked the following question: among patients with symptomatic 70–99% stenosis of a carotid …
New Insights Into Mutual Funds: Performance and Family Strategies

New Insights into Mutual Funds is a bundle of four empirical studies on mutual funds. In the first two papers, we investigate persistence in risk-adjusted fund returns. We show that the returns of both equity and bond mutual funds are persistent. Funds that display strong (weak) performance over a past period continue to do so in future periods. More importantly, we demonstrate that some fund managers are able to outperform a strategy that invests in passive indexes for a short period of time. These results add new insights to long-running debates on the benefits of actively managed funds vis-a-vis passive portfolios. In the third paper, we test the cross-sectional explanatory power of multi-factor models to explain mutual fund returns. We find that performance estimates resulting from these models are biased because the factor proxies do not incorporate transaction costs and trading restrictions. We suggest that factor proxies based on mutual fund returns rather than stock returns provide better benchmarks to evaluate professional money managers. Finally, in the fourth paper we investigate the impact of fund marketing on investor flows to other funds in the family. We find that high-marketing funds generate spillovers, and enhance cash inflows to low-marketing funds in the family. An explanation of this observation is that funds with low marketing expenses are directly subsidized by family members with high marketing expenses. Our results indicate that at least part of the spillovers can be attributed to favoritism. These findings suggest that conflicts of interest between investors and fund families have been exacerbated by competition in the mutual fund industry.
Regulation of microphthalmia-associated transcription factor MITF protein levels by association with the ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme hUBC9.

The basic helix-loop-helix/leucine zipper (bHLH/ZIP) microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF) regulates transcription of genes encoding enzymes essential for melanin biosynthesis in melanocytes and retinal pigmented epithelial cells. To determine how MITF activity is regulated, we used the yeast two-hybrid system to identify proteins expressed by human melanoma cells that interact with MITF. The majority of clones that showed positive interaction with a 158-amino-acid region of MITF containing the bHLH/ZIP domain (aa 168-325) encoded the ubiquitin conjugating enzyme hUBC9. The association of MITF with hUBC9 was further confirmed by an in vitro GST pull-down assay. Although hUBC9 is known to interact preferentially with SENTRIN/SUMO1, in vitro transcription/translation analysis demonstrated greater association of MITF with ubiquitin than with SENTRIN. Importantly, cotransfection of MITF and hUBC9 expression vectors resulted in MITF protein degradation. MITF protein was stabilized by the proteasome inhibitor MG132, indicating the role of the ubiquitin-proteasome system in MITF degradation. Serine 73, which is located in a region rich in proline, glutamic acid, serine, and threonine (PEST), regulates MITF protein stability, since a serine to alanine mutation prevented hUBC9-mediated MITF (S73A) degradation. Furthermore, we identified lysine 201 as a potential ubiquitination site. A lysine to arginine mutation abolished MITF (K201R) degradation by hUBC9 in vivo. Our experiments indicate that by targeting MITF for proteasome degradation, hUBC9 is a critical regulator of melanocyte differentiation.
Enhanced treatment for depression in primary care: long-term outcomes of a psycho-educational prevention program alone and enriched with psychiatric consultation or cognitive behavioral therapy

Background. The long-term outcome of major depression is often unfavorable, and because most cases of depression are managed by general practitioners (GPs), this places stress on the need to improve treatment in primary care. This study evaluated the long-term effects of enhancing the GP's usual care (UC) with three experimental interventions. Method. A randomized controlled trial was conducted from 1998 to 2003. The main inclusion criterion was receiving GP treatment for a depressive episode. We compared: (1) UC (n=72) with UC enhanced with: (2) a psycho-educational prevention (PEP) program (n=112); (3) psychiatrist-enhanced PEP (n=37); and (4) brief cognitive behavioral therapy followed by PEP (CBT-enhanced PEP) (n=44). We assessed depression status quarterly during a 3-year follow-up. Results. Pooled across groups, depressive disorder-free and symptom-free times during follow-up were 83% and 17% respectively. Almost 64% of the patients had a relapse or recurrence, the median time to recurrence was 96 weeks, and the mean Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) score over 12 follow-up assessments was 9·6. Unexpectedly, PEP patients had no better outcomes than UC patients. However, psychiatrist-enhanced PEP and CBT-enhanced PEP patients reported lower BDI severity during follow-up than UC patients [mean difference 2·07 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1·13–3·00) and 1·62 (95% CI 0·70–2·55) respectively] and PEP patients [2·37 (95% CI 1·35–3·39) and 1·93 (95% CI 0·92–2·94) respectively]. Conclusions. The PEP program had no extra benefit compared to UC and may even worsen outcome in severely depressed patients. Enhancing treatment of depression in primary care with psychiatric consultation or brief CBT seems to improve the long-term outcome, but findings need replication as the interventions were combined with the ineffective PEP program.
Perceptions of Illness, Coping, and Well-being in Persons With Mild Cognitive Impairment and Their Care Partners

Despite greater attention to mild cognitive impairment (MCI), little is known about reactions to this potentially threatening diagnosis among persons with MCI (PWMCI) and their care partners. Psychologic reactions, perceptions of illness, and coping responses of 46 individuals recently diagnosed with MCI and 29 care partners were assessed with questionnaires assessing psychologic well-being, illness perceptions, coping, and perceived needs for services. Care partners and PWMCI report normal levels of psychologic well-being, showing less distress than is commonly found in Alzheimer disease (AD) caregivers. Problem-focused (eg, active coping) and emotion-focused coping strategies (eg, acceptance) were used more often than dysfunctional coping strategies (eg, self-distraction) by PWMCI and care partners. Both groups tended to minimize the likelihood of conversion to AD, and endorsed mental and physical exercise, optimism, dietary changes, and stress reduction as strategies to prevent conversion. Although PWMCI minimized their impairment, care partners reported providing an average of 24 hours per week of caregiving and reported that the PWMCI did need significant help with complex activities. Respondents reported using few formal services but they anticipate substantial future need for services. Results suggest that PWMCI and care partners are likely to minimize the threat of AD and to perceive that conversion is controllable and preventable with health promotion activities. Study implications for the development of intervention programs for PWMCI and their care partners are discussed.