Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Orbital aspergillosis in immunocompetent patients

Purpose To describe clinical, ultrasonographic, radiological and histopathological features of orbital aspergillosis in immunocompetent patients. Methods Medical records of immunocompetant individuals with orbital aspergillosis between November 1995 and November 2010 were reviewed. Results Thirty-five cases (27 males, 8 females) were reviewed. Mean age at presentation was 37.63 (8–73) years and mean duration of symptoms was 12.03 (0.5–84) months. Proptosis (22.63%) and mass lesion (13.37%) were the commonest presenting complaints. Presenting visual acuity was better than 6/9 in 21 (60%) and no perception of light in 3 (8%). Ocular motility restriction was noted in 25 (71%). The commonest clinical differential diagnosis was non-specific orbital inflammatory disease (NSOID) (10.29%) followed by malignancy (7.20%). CT showed infiltrative lesions with bone destruction in 22 (63%), contiguous paranasal sinus involvement in 22 (63%) and intracranial extension in 10 (29%). Diagnosis was by histopathology and microbiological evaluation. Fungal cultures revealed Aspergillus flavus in 30 (86%) and Aspergillus fumigatus in 5 (14%). Treatment included conservative medical management in 18 (51%) and surgical debulking in 17 (49%). Average follow-up was 37.6 (3–183) months, and patient survival was 33/35 (94%). Conclusions Though orbital aspergillosis is commonly seen in immunocompromised patients, it should be suspected in young immunocompetent individuals presenting with proptosis of insidious onset and infiltrating lesions involving the paranasal sinuses. Definitive diagnosis is achieved by histopathological and microbiological evaluation. Systemic steroids should be avoided prior to definitive diagnosis. Prolonged systemic antifungal therapy with an option of additional debulking of lesions provides good disease control with improved survival.
The Heat Is On

Qualification in track and field events involves runners competing against individuals within their heat and runners in other heats. Given that the heats are run sequentially, runners in each heat have different information about their competitors. Using data on track and field events from 2001-2011, this article examines whether an individual’s placement in a specific heat and their peers affect their performance and qualification probability. Results indicate that runners’ times and qualification are correlated with the abilities of their peers as well as heat-specific fixed effects. In addition, these effects differ according to runner ability.
Effects of sinusoidal electromagnetic fields on histopathology and structures of brains of preincubated white leghorn chicken embryos

There are several reports indicating linkages between exposures to 50–60 Hz electromagnetic fields and abnormalities in the early stages of chicken embryonic development. Based on our previous published research carried out at the Department of Animal Sciences, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, effects of sinusoidal electromagnetic fields on histopathology and structures of brains of preincubated white leghorn hen eggs were investigated. Three hundred healthy fresh fertilized eggs (55–65 gr) were divided into three groups of experimental (n = 50), control (n = 75), and sham (n = 75). Experimental eggs (inside the coil) were exposed to 3 different intensities of 1.33, 2.66, and 7.32 mT and sham groups were located inside the same coil with no exposure, for 24 h before incubation. Control, sham, and experimental groups were all incubated in an incubator (38 ± 0.5°C, 60% humidity) for 14 days. 14-day old chicken embryos were removed by C-sections, and the brains of all embryos of all groups were fixed in formalin(10%), stained with H&E and TUNEL assay, for studying the histopatholog and process of apoptosis. The brains of other embryos were prepared for Scanning Electeron Microscope. Results showed electromagnetic fields have toxic effects on brain cells by increasing the number of apoptotic cells and degeneration of brains' tissues of exposed chicken embryos. These findings suggest that the electromagnetic fields induce brain damages at different levels.
Teaching Online: Discovering Teacher Concerns

Abstract Little is known about the degree to which teachers are interested in or value online K–12 education. This is an unfortunate gap in the literature, as online education has been and continues to be a swiftly growing component of the K–12 learning community. This exploratory study sought to measure K–12 preservice and inservice teacher concerns about teaching online in order to gain insight about teachers' personal interest in teaching online and what concerns they hold regarding online education. The results indicated via their concerns profile that this group of current and future teachers participants did not value online education and participants were reluctant to pursue online instructional opportunities. Responses to an open-ended question indicated that these respondents require more specific information regarding the differences in online and face-to-face instruction and how to deal with those differences. The results suggest that in order to recruit teachers to meet the needs of the growing community of online K–12 learners, new efforts are needed to address the teachers' needs and concerns. (Keywords: online K–12 education, online teaching, teacher concerns)
Comparative Productivity in British and American Manufacturing during the Nineteenth Century

Abstract Conventional accounts of comparative Anglo-American economic performance, based on national accounts data, see Britain as the labor productivity leader until the 1890s. However, figures for the manufacturing sector suggest that U.S. labor productivity was already substantially higher than that in Britain by the early nineteenth century. The U.S. rise to overall productivity leadership was thus due to a combination of trends in nonmanufacturing sectors and distributional shifts into the high-productivity manufacturing sector rather than due to trends within manufacturing. Although in agriculture Britain had higher labor productivity than that in America, Britain still had a comparative advantage in manufacturing on account of resource endowments.
The Life Cycle of Regulatory Agencies: Dynamic Capture and Transaction Costs

The dynamics of regulation is analysed in a model where regulatory capture comes from the repeated interaction between an interest group and a regulatory agency. Regulatory institutions offer a framework for this dynamic process. They put constraints on the interest group's influence. The dynamics of regulation and its long-run outcome depend on the political principal's, the regulator's and the regulated firm's time preferences and their information. Some foundations for the transaction costs of side-contracting used in the standard literature on collusion are provided. Those transaction costs are linked to the precise nature of regulatory institutions.
Engagement of the Lephalale Local Municipality and its community on water services : a preliminary analysis

The apartheid government of prior 1994 prioritised community needs and service provision on a racial basis. The subsequent post-1994 regime has made attempts to introduce new policies and laws which geared towards correcting the legacy of apartheid system. In particular, sections 26 and 27 of the South African Constitution, 1996 introduced changes and improvements which emphasises on "the rights of citizens to basic services such as health care, food, social security, housing, education, water, sanitation and information in an equitable manner". Accordingly, municipalities are required to work closely with the local communities, in order to identify the community needs and the current state of resources and infrastructure. In complying with this legislative mandate, Lephalale Local Municipality as a Water Service Authority has developed a Water Services Development Plan (WSDP) which was adopted by the Council in 2009. The purpose for the development of this WSDP is to guide all the planning and implementation of water services within the municipal area. This means that issues, objectives and projects developed during the IDP process formed part of the WSDP. According to Integrated Development Plan (IDP), 2013 - 2016, Lephalale Local Municipality has a duty to provide water to its population estimated at 115 746 living within urban, peri-urban and rural areas of jurisdiction and also as Water Service Authority has a duty to all customers and potential customers within its area of jurisdiction to progressively ensure efficient, affordable, economic and sustainable access to water in terms of section 11 of the Water Services Act 108 of 1997. The IDP process also provides a platform for the citizens to engage regarding services rendered to them including water services. The question that this paper raises is whether those IDP processes for community engagement are effective and that participation of the citizens is achieved. In order to address this question, the paper maintains a conceptual analysis of the Lephalale Local Municipality engagement processes. Further, several of the municipal official documents are analysed to understand the conception and practice of how engagement is viewed. This methodological approach is undertaken as an attempt to understand the methods of engagement between Lephalale Local Municipality and its local community. The paper finally argues that since municipalities have a responsibility to promote social and economic development for its people, evidence of effective and continuous engagement activities with its local communities should be accounted for.
Self-employment in the era of the new economic model in Latin America: a case study from Nicaragua

Using data from the 1993 and 1998 Nicaraguan Living Standards Measurement Survey, this paper analyses the desirability of self-employment for Nicaraguan men and women over two points in time in a changing economic environment characterized by market-based reforms called the New Economic Model. Switching regressions of the self-employed and waged and salaried sectoral choice suggest that experience is the major determinant of self-employment for both Nicaraguan men and women. Mixed findings are reported for sectoral selection suggesting that the self-employed men, depending upon current economic conditions, may alternate back and forth between the sector (self-employment or waged and salaried employment) with the highest returns. For women, improvement in economic conditions reflected negative selection in both sectors suggesting that much of the economic gains in the 1990s accrued to men.
Who are active? An in-depth measurement on user activity characteristics in sina microblogging

The emergence of online social network has changed the Internet users' online behaviors dramatically. Microblog, as an emerging online social network service, has attracted hundreds of millions of users to produce and share all kinds of content since its foundation. How to improve the Quality of Experience of the service and keep the users' passions for participant has become one of the most important problems confronted by the quick development of microblogging services. On the other hand, the QoE of a service influences and is influenced by its users' activities. In this paper, we analyzed the users' activities in Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese microblog website which has a profound influence on Chinese netizens. With the aim to find possible ways to improve users' Quality of Experience, we conduct a research to gain an in-depth understanding of what kinds of users are more active and what kinds of content are favored most. When we compare the distributions of the degrees of followers, we find Sina Weibo is still younger than Twitter, a famous worldwide microblogging service. Based on the following analysis, we find that users with around 300 friends in SinaWeibo are the most active users, which we believe is consistent with the Dunbar number. Furthermore, we find users in Sina Weibo are very keen on the content embedded with images and videos, which make up the majority of retweeted tweets. Through the analysis results, we confirm that inspiring users to follow others and improving the renderings of images and videos are the basic ways to improve the Quality of Experience.
Mismeasurement in the Consumer Price Index: An Evaluation

A number of analysts have claimed recently that the Consumer Price Index overstates the annual increase in the cost of living. This paper develops a framework for studying measurement problems in the CPI and systematically analyzes the available evidence concerning the magnitude of these problems. The evidence suggests that the bias is centered on 1.0 percentage point per year. To take into account uncertainty about the extent of the bias, the paper presents a probability distribution for the bias rather than a point estimate or range. It is estimated that there is a 10% chance that the bias is less than 0.6 percentage point and a 10% chance that it is greater than 1.5 percentage points per year. CPI methodology overstates the price increase for medical procedures that are subject to technological improvement. To illustrate this point and to show how better to measure medical care prices, the paper presents a prototypical price index for cataract surgery. This index grows much more slowly than a price index for cataract surgery constructed using the CPI methodology.
An intensified seasonal transition in the Central U.S. that enhances summer drought

In the long term, precipitation in the Central U.S. decreases by 25% during the seasonal transition from June to July. This precipitation decrease has intensified since 1979 and such intensification could have enhanced spring drought occurrences in the Central U.S., in which conditions quickly evolve from being abnormally dry to exceptionally dry. Various atmospheric and land reanalysis data sets were analyzed to examine the trend in the June–July seasonal transition. The intensified deficit in precipitation is accompanied by increased downward shortwave radiation flux, tropospheric subsidence, enhanced evaporative fraction, and elevated planetary boundary layer height, all of which can lead to surface drying. The change in tropospheric circulation was characterized by an anomalous ridge over the western U.S. and a trough on either side—a pattern known to suppress rainfall in the Central U.S. This trending pattern shows similarity with the progression of the 2012 record drought.
The attribution of service failures: effects on consumer satisfaction

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of the attribution of service failures on consumer satisfaction. We analysed direct effects as well as indirect effects through cognitive processes and variables such as quality perceptions and overall quality evaluation. Basing the analysis on the attribution theories and information processing theories, four hypotheses are suggested. These are tested on a sample of 293 service encounters in which some type of failure is present (attributed to the firm or to some environmental factor). The results show that the attribution of the failure to the service firm causes a systematic reduction in all of the quality perceptions (even in service aspects not linked to the failure). But attribution also shows direct effects on satisfaction beyond the effect through perceptions. Attitude-based processes as well as attribute-based processes are affected by attribution.
The appearance of S-100 protein-positive dendritic cells and the distribution of lymphocyte subsets in idiopathic nonspecific interstitial pneumonia.

Idiopathic interstitial pneumonia (IIP) is a progressive interstitial lung disease of unknown etiology. We investigated dendritic cells in idiopathic nonspecific interstitial pneumonia (NSIP) immunohistochemically, using anti-S-100 protein antibody and anti-HLA-DR antibody and also evaluated the relationship between the distribution of S-100 protein-positive dendritic cells (S- 100 DCs) and the lymphocytic subsets in the lung tissue of NSIP. Fifteen patients with the pathological diagnosis of idiopathic NSIP and six patients with usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP) were recruited into this study. Many S-100 DCs were observed in all the cases of idiopathic NSIP but S-100 DCs were not recognized in UIP cases invariably. In the mirror section method, most S-100 DCs showed a positive reaction of anti-HLA-DR antibody but a negative reaction for anti-CD1a antibody. CD8 and CD4 positive lymphocytes were infiltrated diffusely around S-100 DCs. It was demonstrated that the infiltration of CD8 positive lymphocytes predominated in the fibrosing areas and lymphoid follicles around S-100 DCs more so than CD4 positive lymphocytes.We speculate that the pathogenesis of NSIP is different from UIP and that DC and T cell-mediated immune mechanisms may play a role in the development and perpetuation of NSIP.
The impact of prior performance on the risk-taking of mutual fund managers

We analyze the impact of prior performance on the risk-taking behavior of mutual fund managers. We contribute to the existing literature by using different measures of risks, a larger data set, and an econometric approach capturing non-linear effects and assigning exact probabilities to the mutual fund managers’ adjustment of behavior. We find that prior performance in the first half of the year has, in general, a positive impact on the choice of the risk level in the second half of the year. Successful fund managers increase the volatility, the beta, and assign a higher proportion of their portfolio to value stocks, small firms, and momentum stocks in comparison to unsuccessful fund managers. Unsuccessful fund manager increase, on average, only the tracking error.
A Case for Developing Place-Based Fire Management Strategies from Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Sustainability science promotes place-based resource management because natural processes vary among ecosystems. When local science is limited, land managers may be forced to generalize from other ecosystems that function differently. One proposed solution is to draw upon the traditional ecological knowledge that indigenous groups have accumulated through resource use. Integrating traditional ecological knowledge with conventional resource management is difficult, especially when the two offer competing explanations of local environments. Although resource managers may discount traditional ecological knowledge that contradicts conventional resource management, we investigate the possibility that these disagreements can arise when nonlocal resource management generalizations displace place-based science. Specifically, we compare claims about wildfires made by Athabascan forest users residing in or near the Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge and in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fire management plan for that refuge. We focus on two aspects of fire ecology and management: the drivers of landscape flammability and the feasibility of using wildfires and prescribed burns to achieve resource management objectives. The results indicated that some disagreements came from reliance of the federal fire management plan on generalized national narratives at the expense of place-based science. We propose that in some cases, conflicts between traditional ecological knowledge and conventional resource management, rather than indicating a dead end, can identify topics requiring in-depth, place-based research.
Price transmission in the South African food market

Abstract This study investigated asymmetric price transmission between producer and retail markets in South Africa. The authors applied the traditional (Engle-Granger) and the standardised (Enders & Siklos) Dickey-Fuller procedures to test for cointegration and asymmetry in price transmission. Four competing models, namely the Engle-Granger (EG), Threshold Autoregressive (TAR), Momentum Threshold Autoregressive (M-TAR), and Momentum Consistent Threshold Autoregressive (MC-TAR) models, were fitted. Following the application of a standard model selection criterion, the MC-TAR was chosen as the best. The following results were obtained: price transmission between producer and retail prices is asymmetric; the direction of causation runs from producer to retail prices; retailers correct about 2 per cent of the negative and 4 per cent of positive disequilibria every month; and it takes fewer months for negative shocks than positive shocks to be eliminated. In general, the results suggest that retailers respond more quickly to shocks that stretch their market margin than to those that squeeze it. This is typical of positive asymmetric price transmission. We attribute this to the anticompetitive behaviour that characterises the food market chain.
Intergenerational literacy engagement : literacy intervention for teenage mothers and their children.

The language and literacy development of young children starts in the home, and is strongly influenced by the experiences and beliefs they are exposed to by their parents. Teenage mothers are reported to have an increased risk of low levels of educational attainment, with preliminary data suggesting literacy development is also impeded. Further, their potentially negative experiences with reading may influence their beliefs and perceptions of the activity. Children of teenage mothers are at greater risk of delayed language and literacy development, and their mothers may be less able to provide the enriched experiences required to facilitate optimal development. Therefore, interventions to support both the mother’s own literacy beliefs and skills, and the literacy environment in which they raise their children are a potentially useful way of optimising the developmental opportunities available. Despite the identified intergenerational nature of literacy learning, interventions targeting the literacy skills of teenage mothers and their children, particularly in the New Zealand context, are sparse. The experiments in this thesis addressed the need to better understand the language and literacy development of New Zealand teenage mothers and their children, and determine the effectiveness of interventions to target these important
The Myth of Small Firms as the Predominant Job Generators

The idea that small firms create the great majority of jobs in all industrialized economies has become part of the conventional wisdom, repeated by politicians, journalists, business lobbyists, and economic development planners. New or more complete data on the United States, Germany, and Japan, and other information on the OECD countries taken together, shows that this popular characterization is, at best, misleading, and in many respects, incorrect. Industrialized economies may proliferate large numbers of small companies and establishments, but the largest business organizations continue to account for the great majority of jobs, to pay the highest wages and benefits, and to dominate the coordination of production among networks of firms, the control of finance, and the adoption and implementation of new technology. The implication for policy is not that public support for small firms should be abandoned, but rather that a more balanced approach to economic development is needed, one which properly accounts for the continuing central role of the big firms and their strategic partners—even in what some have called this "age of flexibility. "