Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Photodynamic treatment versus photodynamic treatment associated with systemic steroids for idiopathic choroidal neovascularisation

Aim: To compare photodynamic therapy (PDT) with PDT associated with systemic steroids (SS) for the control of juxta/subfoveal idiopathic choroidal neovascularisation (ICNV). Methods: Patients with juxta/subfoveal ICNV were randomised and then treated. Visual gain and loss were defined as improvement in or worsening for two or more lines of best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), respectively. Choroidal neovascularisation size after treatment was classified as “increased” and “reduced” if it was increased or reduced by >200 μm2, respectively. Results: 10 patients were treated with PDT, 10 with SS followed by PDT. The median follow-up time was 22 and 21 months for the “steroid+PDT group” and the “PDT group”, respectively. At 1 year, in the PDT group, five patients had stable/improved BCVA, and five became worse; the mean number of PDT was 2.3; in the steroid+PDT group, all patients were stable/improved and the mean number of PDT was 1.2. The difference between the two groups was significant (p<0.05). At 1 year, the ICNV size after treatment was better in the steroid+PDT group than in the PDT group (p<0.05). Conclusion: The use of SS before PDT has shown better BCVA outcome than PDT alone (p<0.05), reducing the mean number of PDT applications (1.2 vs 2.3, respectively), with smaller scar size.
Characteristics of the Metal-Tissue Interface of Stimulation Electrodes

The success of chronic stimulation with implanted metal electrodes depends in part on an understanding of the electrochemical mechanisms controlling charge transfer across the metal-tissue interface. Time-and frequency-domain impedance behavior of metal electrodes are briefly reviewed, and a model of the physical structure of the interface and an equivalent circuit reflecting electrochemical mechanisms are outlined. Some theories dealing with the observed changes in electrode resistance and capacitance under various experimental conditions are described. Charge-transfer mechanisms at high stimulation intensities, including surface gas adsorption and desorption, are considered. The relation of electrode and tissue damage to faradaic and capacitive stimulus current components, and the relevance of this to stimulus waveforms and the underlying electrochemistry are discussed.
Changes in Multiunit Restaurant Compensation Packages

Competition among all industries to recruit and retain the same talented employees is fierce. Thus, prospective and current employees have gained leverage in securing jobs and may be expected to demand better working conditions and compensation packages than in the past. The restaurant industry has responded by enhancing its compensation and benefits packages for existing unit-level GMs and those being recruited. Attraction and retention of managers were the highest-rated reasons for making changes to managerial compensation and incentive packages. Forty-two of this study's 49 firms had modified their GM compensation and incentive packages within the past five years—chiefly through enhanced salary packages. Signing bonuses were not prevalent and few firms offered new GMs a choice among geographic locations in which to work. Even fewer firms made any changes regarding the daily hours, weekly schedules, or vacation days for their GMs, or regarding retirement-savings plans.
Comparison of the Washing Efficiencies of a Laboratory Washing Device (Launder-Ometer) and of Automatic Household Washing Machines with Horizontal Drums

The objective of this study was to compare the cleaning result of a laboratory washing machine Launder-Ometer (LOM) with that of drum-type household washing machines, using detergent without bleaching agent, standard soiled fabrics and a colorimeter for assessing the washing result. The mechanical effect applied to the laundry in the household washers was not obtained in the LOM by increasing mechanical impact or the number of metal balls. Extended washing time did not improve removal of blood soil in the LOM, although it did increase removal of mayonnaise soil containing chlorophyll. However, in practice a washing time of 6085min is relatively long for a laboratory device considering the claimed time-saving nature of these devices. None of the examined parameters affected removal of a red wine soil containing tannins, which was poor in all test combinations both in the household machines and in the laboratory washing machine. Bleaching agent is recommended for removal of this type of soil. In conclusion, conformity between washing results of the laboratory washing machine and the drum-type household washing machines depends on the type of soiled test fabrics and other parameters in the washing process. Removal of blood soil differed most between the household machines and the LOM.
Japan's Bubble, the USA's Bubble and China's Bubble

This paper compares the three recent episodes of boom and bust cycles in asset prices: Japan in the late 1980s to the 1990s; the USA since the mid-1990s; and China during the past decade. Although we have not yet seen a collapse of Chinese property prices, their increases so far are comparable to those in the other two episodes and a careful comparative study is warranted. The present paper first examines the behavior of asset prices, of property prices in particular, in the three cases, and highlights some similarities. The paper emphasizes the role played by extremely easy monetary policy in generating bubble-like asset price behavior in the three cases. The reason for easy monetary policies is investigated. In the US case, the monetary authority was concerned about the risk of deflation in the early to mid-2000s. The experiences of Japan and China are quite similar in that the monetary authorities of both countries were seriously concerned about the possible deflationary effects of exchange rate appreciation on the economy. The implications of such a finding for the future of Chinese macroeconomic policy are discussed.
Governance in Higher Education Corporations: A Consideration of the Constitution Created by the 1992 Act

This article argues that the constitutions of higher education corporations created by the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act are flawed. It argues that the constitutions were created with insufficient regard both for precedents for the creation of universities and also for emerging problems and principles of corporate governance. This resulted in a model of governance which maximised the role of the vice-chancellor or chief executive and ‘independent members’ of governing bodies, limited the participation of staff and students, and allocated a restricted role to academic boards. This article examines a number of the problems arising from inadequacies in governance in a number of post-1992 universities and their similarity with problems arising in further education colleges who shared common governance arrangements from the 1992 Act. This article compares these problems with governance problems in Australian universities and concludes that there is a need to reform the governance arrangements created by the 1992 Act. Pre-and post-1992 universities have different governance structures. The question of different forms of governance for pre-and post-1992 universities was considered by the Nolan Committee, which concluded that ‘Many of the institutions have evolved systems of governance over many years and it would require evidence of substantial misconduct to justify sweeping changes. We received no such evidence’ (Committee On Standards In Public Life, 1996, p. 3). The conclusions of Nolan were noted and re-affirmed by the Dearing Committee (Dearing, 1997, para. 15.35). The model of governance that Dearing favoured was indeed very much closer to the post- rather than the pre-1992 model.
The New Bureaucracies of Virtue or When Form Fails to Follow Function

As the prospective review of research protocols has expanded to include ethnography, researchers have responded with a mixture of bewilderment, irritation, and formal complaint. These responses typically center on how poorly a process modeled on the randomized clinical trial fits the realities of the more dynamic, evolving methods that are used to conduct ethnographic research. However warranted these complaints are, those voicing them have not analyzed adequately the logic in use that allowed the system of review to extend with so little resistance. This paper locates the expansion in the goal displacement that Merton identified as part of bureaucratic organization and identifies the tensions between researchers and administrators as a consequence of an inversion of the normal status hierarchy found in universities. Social scientists need to do more than complain about the regulatory process; they also need to make that apparatus an object for study. Only recently have social scientists taken up the task in earnest. This paper contributes to emerging efforts to understand how prospective review of research protocols presents challenges to ethnographers and how ethnographic proposals do the same for IRBs (Institutional Research Boards). This essay extends three themes that are already prominent in the literature discussing IRBs and ethnography: (1) the separation of bureaucratic regulations,policies,and procedures from the everyday questions of research ethics that are most likely to trouble ethnographers; (2) the goal displacement that occurs when the entire domain of research ethics is reduced to compliance with a set of federal regulations as interpreted by local committees; and (3) the difficulties of sense making when ethnographers and IRB administrators or panel members respond each to the other's concerns.
Stochastic Processes in Finance

Stochastic processes arising in the description of the risk-neutral evolution of equity prices are reviewed. Starting with Brownian motion, I review extensions to Levy and Sato processes. These processes have independent increments; the former are homogeneous in time, whereas the latter are inhomogeneous. One-dimensional Markov processes such as local volatility and local Levy are discussed next. Finally, I take up two forms of stochastic volatility that are due to either space scaling or time changing. An encompassing discrete-time model closes the presentation.
How Much Do Investors Care About Macroeconomic Risk? Evidence from Scheduled Economic Announcements

Abstract Stock market average returns and Sharpe ratios are significantly higher on days when important macroeconomic news about inflation, unemployment, or interest rates is scheduled for announcement. The average announcement-day excess return from 1958 to 2009 is 11.4 basis points (bp) versus 1.1 bp for all the other days, suggesting that over 60% of the cumulative annual equity risk premium is earned on announcement days. The Sharpe ratio is 10 times higher. In contrast, the risk-free rate is detectably lower on announcement days, consistent with a precautionary saving motive. Our results demonstrate a trade-off between macroeconomic risk and asset returns, and provide an estimate of the premium investors demand to bear this risk.
Role of Stroke in Dementia

AS THE AVERAGE life span increases throughout the world, the medical and social problems of the presenile and senile dementias increase apace. Knowledge about these dementing diseases of middle and late life has lagged, however, and in its absence, speculation about their etiology has grown and even perhaps attained the cachet of reliability. The most attractive hypothesis to both physician and lay person alike has been that most dementia results from disease of the cerebral vasculature. So accepted was this theory that in medical terminology dementia became virtually synonymous with "arteriosclerotic cerebral vascular disease," and in lay terms, with "hardening of the [cerebral] arteries. " Several factors prompted the rather general acceptance of this theory. First, as everyone knows, strokes can cause severe disintegration of the highest cerebral functions. Further, every physician knows that atherosclerotic changes are unavoidable with age and thus might conceivably be important in causing the dementias of advancing years. Lastly, progress in understanding and treating vascular diseases has advanced spectacularly in the past quarter century, understandably creating hope that these advances might afford relief to patients with dementia. There is no doubt that cerebral infarction or hemorrhage, single or multiple, can destroy enough brain tissue to impair the higher cerebral functions. The specific question is whether or not it is justifiable to ascribe mostly to strokes those disorders marked chiefly by gradual deterioration in the highest (especially the cognitive) functions, i.e., the dementias. The answer is that the facts do not support this ascription. Evidence to the contrary comes from both clinical and pathological studies.
Core techniques and cross-cutting issues

This sourcebook was written to assist low-income countries with the development and strengthening of their poverty reduction strategies. This book has been designed as a resource for analysis and discourse on poverty reduction policies and programs at the country level. Each chapter adopts a layered approach, with a short summary providing overall assistance on issues, a detailed guide providing approaches to analysis and policy development along with supporting materials including country case studies, technical notes, and recommendations for further reading. The book is organized into two volumes. The first focuses on core techniques including poverty measurement and analysis, and monitoring and evaluation. Cross-cutting issues, such as participation, governance, and gender, are also discussed. Volume two concentrates on macroeconomic and sectoral approaches including: rural and urban poverty, human development, and the private sector and infrastructure.
Musculotopic organization of the hypoglossal nucleus in the cynomolgus monkey, Macaca fascicularis

The movements of the tongue in feeding and vocalization are enabled by a complex system of interdigitated muscle fibers in the tongue body. Because of this complexity, the detailed anatomical connections between individual intrinsic tongue muscles and corresponding motoneurons in the hypoglossal nucleus have not been described for any mammal. In this study we describe the distribution of retrogradely labeled neurons in the hypoglossal nucleus, following injections of wheat‐germ agglutinin‐horseradish peroxidase into different regions of the tongue of 21 cynomolgus monkeys. These experiments demonstrate a spatial organization of hypoglossal motoneurons that reflects the anatomical and functional organization of tongue body muscles: motoneurons innervating the transversus and verticalis muscles are located in medial hypoglossal nucleus regions, motoneurons innervating the genioglossus are located in intermediate hypoglossal nucleus regions, motoneurons innervating the hyoglossus and inferior longitudinalis are located in ventrolateral hypoglossal nucleus regions, and motoneurons innervating the styloglossus and superior longitudinalis are located in dorsolateral hypoglossal nucleus regions. Motoneurons innervating the suprahyoid muscle, the geniohyoid, are situated in a cell column separated ventrally from the main body of the hypoglossal nucleus. Motoneurons innervating the palatoglossus are located in the nucleus ambiguus and, possibly, in dorsolateral hypoglossal nucleus regions. Motoneurons of the medial divisions of the hypoglossal nucleus innervate tongue muscles that are oriented in planes transverse to the long axis of the tongue whereas motoneurons of the lateral divisions innervate tongue muscles that are oriented parallel to this axis. These results suggest that the segregation of motoneurons corresponds to the functional distinction between tongue protrusion and retrusion.
Online Homework versus Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Pedagogical Support for Transaction Analysis and Recording

ABSTRACT: Prior research demonstrates that students learn more from homework practice when using online homework or intelligent tutoring systems than a paper-and-pencil format. However, no accounting education research directly compares the learning effects of online homework systems with the learning effects of intelligent tutoring systems. This paper presents a quasi-experiment that compares the two systems and finds that students’ transaction analysis performance increased at a significantly faster rate when they used an intelligent tutoring system rather than an online homework system. Implications for accounting instructors and researchers are discussed.
Americans' health insurance coverage, 1980-91

The authors of this article have used Current Population Surveys to summarize public and private health insurance trends in the United States over the last 12 years. Key findings include the declining percentage of the non-elderly population with employer-sponsored coverage and increasing numbers of low- and middle-income uninsured. That is, in a period of fast-rising health care costs, the poor and the near-poor in working families have been losing coverage for health care and facing increasing risks of inadequate care and financial loss. These data highlight health care access and financing problems now facing the Nation.
International Dimensions of Obesity and Overweight Related Problems: An Economics Perspective

Obesity is a growing concern. New World Health Organization (WHO) figures indicate that obesity is spreading around the world as a "global epidemic. " According to the WHO, there are more people suffering from overweight-related problems than malnutrition. Globally, there are more than 1 billion adults who are overweight and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese, while 800 million suffer from malnutrition (WHO 2004). The economic costs due to obesity can be burdensome. Currently in the United States, medical costs associated with obesity and smoking account for about 9% each of all health expenditures (Finkelstein, Fiebelkorn, and Wang). U.S. obesity-attributable medical expenditures reached $75 billion in 2003. Obesity, however, is important not only from an economic perspective, but also from a social perspective. The social consequences of obesity are serious, and multiple studies have shown that obesity affects, in a negative and statistically significant way, personal and working relations, earnings, and wages, particularly for females (Cawley). Overall, obesity is a complex phenomenon. Several recent economic studies have explored the role of different cultural and sociodemographic factors on obesity rates. Leaving genetics aside, obesity is caused by the consumption of too many calories and/or low expenditures of calories (i.e., low physical activity). Consequently, most published economic research provided a justification for the increased growth of obesity rates by analyzing several factors that may contribute to this imbalance of caloric consumption and usage (see Chou, Grossman, and Saffer; Cutler, Glaeser, and Shapiro; Lakdawalla and Philipson; Philipson and Posner). There are mainly two arguments that could justify the growth of overweight problems around the world: some researchers argue that obesity growth is mainly due to a higher intake of calories, while others state that obesity is mainly caused by a lower expenditure of caloies in daily activities. In line with the calorie consumption argument, Cutler, Glaeser, and Shapiro stated that Americans have become more obese over the past twenty-five years primarily due to the consumption of more calories. Analyzing changes in food consumption between the mid 1970s and the mid 1990s for
Virulence of Escherichia coli Clinical Isolates in a Murine Sepsis Model in Relation to Sequence Type ST131 Status, Fluoroquinolone Resistance, and Virulence Genotype

ABSTRACT Escherichia coli sequence type ST131 (O25b:H4) has emerged over the past decade as a globally disseminated, multidrug-resistant pathogen. Unlike traditional antimicrobial-resistant E. coli, ST131 derives from virulence-associated phylogenetic group B2 and exhibits extraintestinal virulence factors. This, plus preliminary evidence of virulence in experimental animals, has suggested that ST131's epidemic emergence may be due to high virulence potential, compared with other E. coli types. To test this hypothesis, we compared a large number of matched ST131 and non-ST131 E. coli clinical isolates, both fluoroquinolone resistant and susceptible, plus isolates from classic extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC) sequence types (STs) and case report ST131 household transmission isolates, for virulence in a mouse subcutaneous sepsis model. Overall, in mice, the study isolates produced a wide range of lethality and clinical illness. However, neither ST131 status nor fluoroquinolone phenotype correlated with this diversity of illness severity, which occurred within each of the 6 study groups. In contrast, multiple known or suspected ExPEC virulence genes, including pap (P fimbriae), vat (vacuolating toxin), kpsM II (group 2 capsule), ibeA (invasion of brain endothelium), and clbB/N (colibactin synthesis), plus molecularly defined ExPEC status, were significantly associated with virulence. These findings point away from ST131 isolates as having higher virulence potential compared with other E. coli types in causing invasive extraintestinal infections and suggest instead that ST131's epidemiological success may reflect enhanced fitness for upstream steps in pathogenesis or in colonization and transmission. Additionally, the extensive within-ST virulence diversity suggests an opportunity to compare closely related strains to identify the responsible genetic determinants.
The Impact of Accounting Variables on Stock Price: Evidence from the Colombo Stock Exchange, Sri Lanka

A number of empirical studies have been undertaken by the different countries to identify the factors that affectstock price. Past literature reveals that movements of stock price depend on internal and external factors. Amongthe internal factors, firm specific factors such as dividend per share (DPS), earnings per share (EPS) and bookvalue per share (BVPS) affect the determining of stock price. The present study examined the impact ofdividend per share, earnings per share and book value per share of stock price on a sample of 100 companieslisted in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) from 2008 to 2012. Using a single and multiple regressions modelthe results reveals that EPS, DPS, BVPS were positive and had a significant impact on the stock price in theCSE.
Social competence interview for assessing physiological reactivity in adolescents.

&NA; Difficulties in predicting “real life” physiological variation from responses to controlled stress tasks suggest the need for more ecologically valid laboratory challenges. The Social Competence Interview (SCI) measures physiological changes elicited by re‐experiencing a life situation in which a valued striving was unexpectedly hindered. The 14‐minute interview yields data on subjects' goals, skills, problem‐solving strategies, and social resources. We compared the SCI to video game (VG), mirror drawing (MD), and mental arithmetic (MA) in a racially balanced sample of 260 adolescents (age 14 to 15 years). Blood pressure changes during SCI exceeded those during the other tasks, and were unaffected by race or gender. Blood pressure responses to SCI correlated with responses to MA and MD but appeared to capture a unique domain of social reactivity. Test‐retest correlations over 6 months in a random subsample of 27 subjects showed that blood pressure reactivity to SCI and other tasks was reproducible. Intrasubject analyses of responses to the different tasks disclosed subgroups of consistently high and consistently low responders who may be at higher or lower risk. The SCI is not threatening and was rated by subjects as less frustrating or demanding than MD or MA. Its demonstrated effectiveness when administered by several different interviewers suggests the SCI is a promising technique for large scale studies of younger populations.