Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study on the effect of black cumin (Nigella sativa Linn.) on experimental renal ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats.

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of Black cumin (Nigella sativa Linn.) pre-treatment on renal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) induced injury in the rats. METHODS A total of 40 male Wistar rats were randomly allocated into five equal groups including Sham, I/R model and three I/R+ Black cumin (0.5, 1 and 2%)-treated groups. I/R groups' kidneys were subjected to 60 min of global ischemia at 37°C followed by 24 h of reperfusion. At the end of reperfusion period, the rats were euthanized. Superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione peroxidase activities as well as reduced glutathione and renal malondialdehyde contents were determined in renal tissues. Kidney function tests and histopathological examination were also performed. RESULTS High serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen and uric acid as well as malondialhehyde (MDA) levels, and low antioxidant enzyme activities were observed in I/R rats compared to the sham rats. Pre-treatment with Black cumin for three weeks prior to IR operation improved renal function and reduced I/R induced renal inflammation and oxidative injury. These biochemical observations were supported by histopathological test of kidney sections. CONCLUSION Black cumin significantly prevented renal ischemia/reperfusion induced functional and histological injuries.
Diagnostic Yield of Transbronchial Needle Aspiration in Intrathoracic Lymphadenopathy

Background: Transbronchial needle aspiration (TBNA) is a safe and effective technique for the diagnosis of mediastinal lesions. The aim of this study was to evaluate diagnostic yield of TBNA in patients with benign and malignant lesions involving mediastinal and hilar lymph nodes. Materials and Methods: TBNA procedures were performed using a flexible bronchoscope and a 22-gauge cytologic needle in 22 patients with mediastinal or hilar adenopathy identified on CT of the chest. Based on the clinical diagnosis or presence of endobronchial lesions, other procedures such as bronchoalveolar lavage, bronchial biopsy, and transbronchial lung biopsy were performed. Results: Among 22 patients with a mean age of 50±18 years, 13 were males (59%) and 9 were females (41%). Adequate lymph node samples were obtained in 16 patients (72.7%). Among 9 patients with malignancy, TBNA provided diagnostic results in 5 patients (55.5%). TBNA provided adequate specimen in 10 out of 13 patients with sarcoidosis, but in 2 patients (15.4%) diagnosis was made by TBNA. Overall, TBNA yield was 31.8%. There was no complication during TBNA procedures. Conclusion: TBNA is a minimally invasive technique for diagnosis of intrathoracic lymphadenopathy, especially in malignant diseases. The procedure also can be used as a diagnostic tool in patients with sarcoidosis, although the yield is low.
Quantifying Controversy on Social Media

Which topics spark the most heated debates on social media? Identifying those topics is not only interesting from a societal point of view but also allows the filtering and aggregation of social media content for disseminating news stories. In this article, we perform a systematic methodological study of controversy detection by using the content and the network structure of social media. Unlike previous work, rather than studying controversy in a single hand-picked topic and using domain-specific knowledge, we take a general approach to study topics in any domain. Our approach to quantifying controversy is based on a graph-based three-stage pipeline, which involves (i) building a conversation graph about a topic, (ii) partitioning the conversation graph to identify potential sides of the controversy, and (iii) measuring the amount of controversy from characteristics of the graph. We perform an extensive comparison of controversy measures, different graph-building approaches, and data sources. We use both controversial and non-controversial topics on Twitter, as well as other external datasets. We find that our new random-walk-based measure outperforms existing ones in capturing the intuitive notion of controversy and show that content features are vastly less helpful in this task.
On Obtaining Effort Based Judgements for Information Retrieval

Document relevance has been the primary focus in the design, optimization and evaluation of retrieval systems. Traditional testcollections are constructed by asking judges the relevance grade for a document with respect to an input query. Recent work of Yilmaz et al. found an evidence that effort is another important factor in determining document utility, suggesting that more thought should be given into incorporating effort into information retrieval. However, that work did not ask judges to directly assess the level of effort required to consume a document or analyse how effort judgements relate to traditional relevance judgements. In this work, focusing on three aspects associated with effort, we show that it is possible to get judgements of effort from the assessors. We further show that given documents of the same relevance grade, effort needed to find the portion of the document relevant to the query is a significant factor in determining user satisfaction as well as user preference between these documents. Our results suggest that if the end goal is to build retrieval systems that optimize user satisfaction, effort should be included as an additional factor to relevance in building and evaluating retrieval systems. We further show that new retrieval features are needed if the goal is to build retrieval systems that jointly optimize relevance and effort and propose a set of such features. Finally, we focus on the evaluation of retrieval systems and show that incorporating effort into retrieval evaluation could lead to significant differences regarding the performance of retrieval systems.
Corporate Postretirement Benefit Plans and Real Investment

This paper shows that the real investment by nonfinancial firms is systematically related to the size of their defined-benefit plan. In particular, these plans allow research and development (R&D)-intensive firms to retain and borrow from their employees, which is attractive since they have high adjustment costs, require a stable cash flow, have less collateral, have assets that are harder to value, and have high asymmetric information and agency costs. By contrast, capital expenditures benefit from credit multiplier effects with regard to regular debt, which substitutes for postretirement obligations. As a result, firms with defined-benefit plans have 12% more R&D and 5% less capital expenditure compared with otherwise similar firms, and they vary contributions as a function of cash flow and real investment. The role of postretirement plans is attenuated in countries with available alternative funding sources. The results are robust to controlling for other dimensions of financial policy—cash holdings, d.
Soropositividade para doença celíaca em crianças e adolescentes com baixa estatura

OBJETIVO: Avaliar a frequencia da positividade do marcador sorologico para doenca celiaca em criancas e adolescentes com baixa estatura, utilizando-se o anticorpo anti-transglutaminase humana como teste de triagem. METODOS: Estudo descritivo com amostra obtida por conveniencia. Foi realizado no periodo de abril a setembro de 2004 no Ambulatorio Geral de Pediatria do Instituto Materno Infantil Professor Fernando Figueira e no Ambulatorio de Crescimento e Desenvolvimento do Hospital das Clinicas. Foram considerados casos as criancas e os adolescentes portadores de baixa estatura, definida como aquela abaixo do percentil 3 para idade e sexo, utilizando como referencia o grafico de altura/idade do National Center for Health Statistics, 2000. Foi pesquisado o anticorpo anti-transglutaminase humana (AATGh), considerado positivo se concentracao >20U/mL e, nos positivos, o anticorpo antiendomisio (AAE). RESULTADOS: Foram avaliados 78 pacientes, sendo 41 (53%) do sexo feminino. O AATGh foi positivo em 3/78 (3,8%) dos pacientes. O AAE foi positivo em um paciente, naquele com concentracao mais elevada do AATGh. Considerando-se a positividade para os dois testes, a soropositividade foi de 1,3%. CONCLUSOES: A presenca de marcador sorologico para doenca celiaca em criancas e adolescentes portadoras de baixa-estatura e pertencentes a familias de baixa-renda aponta para a necessidade de investigacao sistematica da doenca celiaca nesses pacientes.
Distilling the Wisdom of Crowds: Prediction Markets vs. Prediction Polls

We report the results of the first large-scale, long-term, experimental test between two crowd sourcing methods – prediction markets and prediction polls. More than 2,400 participants made forecasts on 261 events over two seasons of a geopolitical prediction tournament. Some forecasters traded in a continuous double auction market and were ranked based on earnings. Others submitted probability judgments, independently or in teams, and were ranked based on Brier scores. In both seasons of the tournament, last day prices from the prediction market were more accurate than the simple mean of forecasts from prediction polls. However, team prediction polls outperformed prediction markets when poll forecasts were aggregated with algorithms using temporal decay, performance weighting and recalibration. The biggest advantage of prediction polls occurred at the start of long-duration questions. Prediction polls with proper scoring, algorithmic aggregation and teaming offer an attractive alternative to prediction markets for distilling the wisdom of crowds.
Is Operating Flexibility Harmful under Debt?

We study the inefficiencies stemming from a firm’s operating flexibility under debt. We find that flexibility in replenishing or liquidating inventory, by providing risk-shifting incentives, could lead to borrowing costs that erase more than one-third of the firm’s value. In this context, we examine the effectiveness of practical and widely used covenants in restoring firm value by limiting such risk-shifting behavior. We find that simple financial covenants can fully restore value for a firm that possesses a midseason inventory liquidation option. In the presence of added flexibility in replenishing or partially liquidating inventory, financial covenants fail, but simple borrowing base covenants successfully restore firm value. Explicitly characterizing optimal covenant tightness for all these cases, we find that better market conditions, such as lower inventory depreciation rate, higher gross margins, or increased product demand, are typically associated with tighter covenants. Our results suggest that .
Social Labeling by Competing NGOs: A Model with Multiple Issues and Entry

In many settings firms rely on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to certify prosocial attributes embodied in their products. We provide a model of competition between NGOs in the provision of labeling services. Competition between a fixed number of NGOs features a “race to the top” in labeling standards, but entry of NGOs offering new labels pushes standards down. In a wide range of settings NGO entry and competition results in too many labels being adopted, with each label being too stringent. Compared to a setting in which firms can credibly communicate the social attributes of their products, labels demand greater prosocial behavior than is desired by firms, although with proliferation of the number of labels this discrepancy disappears. In contrast to existing models, firms may engage in excessive corporate social responsibility when they rely on an NGO as a certifying intermediary. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
Investigating Cross-Device Interaction Techniques: A Case of Card Playing on Handhelds and Tablets

Cross-device interaction is getting more and more common as mobile and handheld technologies surround us in almost every situation and context. HCI research has started to study various aspects of cross-device interaction including application areas and techniques, but we still need further studies on opportunities. We illustrate six cross-device interaction techniques. Using two different prototype systems that implement them for a card-playing context we evaluate them in two studies on usability and usefulness. Our findings suggest that some techniques were fast to perform (touch-and-hold and tap-tap) and some had a high number of errors (swipe). Also, our participants would sometimes mix up the techniques and make a wrong action while playing the game. Finally, we discuss and illustrate issues of cross-device interaction consistency and division of shared and personal devices.
Life Satisfaction Among Elders in Senior Residences: A Pilot Study

ABSTRACT Objective: This pilot study investigated predictors of life satisfaction among elders residing in senior residences with a focus on feeling valued and important (FVI), a seldom-studied predictor that has the potential for late-life changes through occupational therapy intervention. Method: Using existing data from an intervention study (N = 47), simultaneous multiple regression analysis was employed. Results: The regression model, which included predictors of self-rated health, education level, and FVI, was significant F(3,43) = 21.16, p < 0.001. Further, FVI was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction than the well-established predictor of self-rated health. Conclusion: FVI is a significant predictor of life satisfaction in older adults residing in senior residences. Practice implications include promoting participation in occupations that provide the opportunity for meaningful contributions to family and society.
Project Contracts and Payment Schedules: The Client's Problem

Contractual agreements have assumed significant complexity in recent times because of the emergence of strategies like outsourcing and partnering in the successful completion of large software development, manufacturing, and construction projects. A client and contractor enter into an agreement for a project either by bidding or negotiation. Effective and efficient bidding, negotiation, and subsequent monitoring are hindered by the lack of appropriate decision support tools for the management of project finances. Progress payments to the contractor are an important issue in project management because of their potential impact on project finances and activity schedules. In this paper, we consider the problem of simultaneously determining the amount, location, and timing of progress payments in projects from a client's perspective. We develop three mixed-integer linear programming models, based on some practical methods of determining payment schedules from different types of project contracts. We discuss properties of the models and draw insights about the characteristics of optimal payment schedules obtained with each model by an experimental study on a sample of 10 small projects. Our analysis shows that, contrary to current practice, the client obtains the greatest benefit by scheduling the project for early completion such that the payments are not made at regular intervals. It is also cost effective for the client to make payments either in the early stages of the project or toward the end, even though this causes considerable variation in the time gap between payments. We also evaluate the impact of the client's preferred payment schedules on the contractor's finances and activity schedules, and draw some conclusions on the interdependence of payment and project parameters on the objectives of both parties entering the contractual agreement.
Special Issue on Design and Development: The Idea Itself and the Circumstances of Its Emergence as Predictors of New Product Success

In view of the distressingly low rate of success in new product introduction, it is important to identify predictive guidelines early in the new product development process so that better choices can be made and unnecessary costs avoided. In this paper, we propose a framework for early analysis based on the success potential embodied in the product-idea itself and the circumstances of its emergence. Based on two studies reporting actual introductions, we identified several determinants such as how the ideas originated, their specific configurations, and the level of technology required for their implementation that significantly distinguish successful from unsuccessful new products in the marketplace. We suggest that these factors, together with already known factors of success/failure, may aid in the estimation of the potential of a concept early in its development.
Pricing Discrete Barrier and Hindsight Options with the Tridiagonal Probability Algorithm

This paper develops an algorithm to calculate the Brownian multivariate normal probability subject to any preset error tolerance criteria. The algorithm is founded upon the computational simplicity of the tridiagonal structure of the inverse of the Brownian correlation matrix. Compared with existing pricing technologies without the "barrier too close" problem, our calculation method can produce a more accurate and efficient analytic evaluation of barrier options monitored at discrete instants with well- or ill-behaved barrier levels, or discrete hindsight options, for a reasonably large number of monitorings.
Demand Heterogeneity and Technology Evolution: Implications for Product and Process Innovation

The evolution of technology has been a central issue in the strategy and organizations literature. However, the focus of much of this work has been on what is essentially the "supply side" of technical change--the evolution of firm capabilities. We present a demand-based view of technology evolution that is focused on the interaction between technology development and the demand environment in which the technology is ultimately evaluated. We develop a formal computer simulation model that explicitly considers the influence of heterogeneity in market demand--the presence of consumers with different needs and requirements--on firms' innovation choices. The model is used to examine the dynamics of product and process innovation (Utterback and Abernathy 1975). The analysis reveals that demand heterogeneity offers an alternative to supply-side explanations of the technology life cycle. Further, by considering the implications of decreasing marginal utility from performance improvements, the model highlights the role of "technologically satisfied" consumers in shaping innovation incentives, and suggests a rationale for a new stage in the technology life cycle characterized by increasing performance at a stable price. The stage has not yet been treated formally in the literature, but is widely observed, most prominently in digital and information-based technologies.
Students' Syntactic Mistakes in Writing Seven Different Types of SQL Queries and its Application to Predicting Students' Success

The computing education community has studied extensively the errors of novice programmers. In contrast, little attention has been given to student's mistake in writing SQL statements. This paper represents the first large scale quantitative analysis of the student's syntactic mistakes in writing different types of SQL queries. Over 160 thousand snapshots of SQL queries were collected from over 2000 students across eight years. We describe the most common types of syntactic errors that students make. We also describe our development of an automatic classifier with an overall accuracy of 0.78 for predicting student performance in writing SQL queries.
Food, Culture, and Diabetes in the United States

W hat do people in the United States eat? Is it meat and potatoes? Things have changed in the United States as the population has grown to include many different ethnic and cultural groups, and this has resulted in diverse food preferences and eating habits. Asian Indians are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the United States. African Americans are numerically the largest minority group, although the Latino population is expected to be larger than the African-American population by the middle of the next century.1 Culture is defined as the knowledge, beliefs, customs, and habits a group of people share. These are not inherited behaviors, but learned. Culture is passed on from generation to generation.1 Each ethnic group has its own culturally based foods and food habits. These traditions have been influenced and adapted through contact with the mainstream culture. Conversely, the foods of mainstream culture have been influenced by the presence of these ethnic cultures. Fast-food restaurants and other take-out restaurants now offer such wide-ranging selections as pizza, tacos, falafel, tandoori, egg rolls, and hamburgers.1 Thus, the American diet is a combination of many cultures and cuisines. To understand it, one must not only study the traditional foods and food habits of the many minority groups, but also the interaction between the majority culture and the cultures of these smaller groups. Seventeen million people in the United States have diabetes. Key to the increasing prevalence of diabetes is the rapid growth of the disease in high-risk populations such as African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The growth in obesity, as well as an aging population, have also contributed to this increase.2,3 This article examines the ethnic and regional food practices of three larges segments of the U.S. population: African …
Residential Treatment for Women Parolees Following Prison-Based Drug Treatment: Treatment Experiences, Needs and Services, Outcomes

This article reports on an evaluation of the community residential phase of a prison-based program for drug-using women, the Forever Free Substance Abuse Program at the California Institute for Women. Three groups were interviewed: graduates from Forever Free who entered residential treatment, graduates who did not enter residential treatment, and women who applied to Forever Free but were not able to enter. The study assessed treatment experiences, needs and services received, and drug use and parole outcomes 1 year after the women were released from prison. Briefly, findings indicate that the women's needs for relapse prevention training and drug treatment were not met, women often did not complete treatment, and women who participated in community residential treatment had lower self-reported drug use rates and higher levels of successful parole discharge than women in the other two groups. Multiple needs beyond drug treatment must be addressed to increase treatment entry and improve retention in programs.