Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Internal Finance and Investment: Evidence from the Undistributed Profits Tax of 1936-1937

Recent theoretical approaches have linked shifts in firms' internal funds and investment spending, holding constant underlying investment opportunities. An important impediment to convincing tests of these models is the lack of firm-level data on the relative costs of internal and external funds. We use a tax experiment, the Surtax on Undistributed Profits (SUP) in the 1930s, to identify firms' relative cost of internal and external funds and analyze its effect on firms' investment decisions. Finns' responses to the surtax on retained earnings permit estimation of shadow price differentials between internal and external finance, and measurement of the link between access to capital markets and investment. Almost one-fourth of the 273 publicly-traded manufacturing firms in our sample retained in excess of 40 percent of their earnings in spite of the surtax, paying the highest marginal rates of surtax. The investment spending of these firms was sensitive to shifts in cash flow, holding constant investment opportunities (measured by the ratio of market-to-book value). No sensitivity of investment to internal funds could be detected for firms with higher dividend payout and lower surtax liability. In addition, many firms with high marginal rates of surtax were in the growth industries of the day. The sensitivity of investment spending to internal funds for firms with high marginal surtax rates appears mainly to reflect information-related capital-market frictions as opposed to the waste of corporate cash flows by entrenched managers.
Inflammatory Mass Lesions Associated with Intrathecal Drug Infusion Catheters: Report and Observations on 41 Patients

OBJECTIVE Several reports have described inflammatory mass lesions at the tip of intraspinal drug administration catheters. We evaluated the number of patients reported with this condition and whether data support hypotheses that have been put forth regarding the cause of these lesions. METHODS Information that was reported in the medical literature, and by Medtronic, Inc., to the United States Food and Drug Administration as of November 30, 2000, was reviewed. RESULTS Forty-one cases were identified, including 16 from the literature and 25 that were not published previously in the literature. Because of voluntary reporting and other methodological limitations, the actual number of cases must be higher than reported. All of the patients had chronic pain. The mean duration of therapy was 24.5 months. Most masses were located in the thoracic region. Intrathecal drugs included morphine or hydromorphone, either alone or mixed with other drugs, in 39 of 41 cases. No masses were reported in patients who received baclofen as the only intrathecal medication. Thirty patients underwent surgery to relieve spinal cord or cauda equina compression. Eleven patients were nonambulatory at last follow-up, and one died of a pulmonary embolus. Surgical specimens revealed noninfectious chronic inflammation, granuloma formation, and fibrosis or necrosis. DISCUSSION The most plausible hypothesis with regard to the cause of intrathecal catheter tip mass lesions implicates the administration of relatively high-concentration or high-dose opiate drugs or the use of drugs and admixtures that are not labeled for intrathecal use. CONCLUSION Patients who require high-dose intraspinal opioid therapy and those who receive drugs or admixtures that are not approved for intrathecal use should be monitored closely for signs of an extra-axial mass or catheter malfunction. Prompt diagnosis and treatment may preserve neurological function.
Mycophenolate mofetil for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus: an open pilot trial

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness and safety of mycophenolate mofetil in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus who were inadequately controlled with corticosteroids, antimalarials, and other immunosuppresive agents. Methods: Ten patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) were treated with 1500-2000 mg mycophenolae mofetil (MMF) daily for a median observation time of 11.2 ± 2.4 (8-16) months in an open clinical trial. The effectiveness and safety of treatment were analyzed using an established disease activity score, clinical status, and laboratory parameters. Results: All patients improved under treatment with no or only minor side effects. The disease activity score (SLAM) decreased statistically significantly from a median of 15.6 ± 5.5 to 9.9 ± 4.1 after three months (P < 0.01) and to 8.0 ± 3.3 after six months (P < 0.01). Hematologic parameters did not change significantly whereas a reduction of inflammatory markers was observed. Four patients with SLE-nephritis already treated with cyclophosphamide pulse therapy continuously showed a slight improvement of renal function. Prednisolone dosages could be reduced significantly from a median level of 10.0+ 5.1 mg/d before treatment to 4.6 ±3.5 mg/d after six months (P < 0.01). Conclusion: Mycophenolate mofetil is a promising option in immunosuppressive treatment of patients with moderate and severe systemic lupus erythematosus who did not show a satisfactory response to other immunosuppressives.
Efficacy and quality-of-life impact of adult tonsillectomy.

OBJECTIVE To determine the quality-of-life impact and overall efficacy of adult tonsillectomy for chronic tonsillitis. DESIGN Cross-sectional survey analysis of patients at least 1 year after undergoing adult tonsillectomy. INTERVENTIONS AND OUTCOME MEASURES The Glasgow Benefit Inventory was used to quantify the health benefit of tonsillectomy. Data were collected for demographics and antibiotic use, physician visits, and workdays missed due to chronic tonsillitis for the 12 months before and after tonsillectomy. RESULTS Sixty-five patients returned completed surveys. Mean age was 27.3 years, and mean follow-up was 42.6 months. The improvements in the total score (+27.1), general health subscore (+34.7), social functioning subscore subscore (+14.4), and physical functioning subscore (+9.5) of the Glasgow Benefit Inventory were each statistically significant (P<.001), indicating a significant health benefit of tonsillectomy. Statistically significant decreases in mean weeks receiving antibiotics (-7.8 weeks), mean physician visits (-5.4), and mean workdays missed (-6.3 days) were noted after tonsillectomy (P<.001). CONCLUSIONS Adult tonsillectomy provides a significant quality-of-life improvement for patients with chronic tonsillitis. Tonsillectomy also affords decreases in medical resource utilization and missed workdays after tonsillectomy. Such factors should be incorporated into decision making when considering tonsillectomy.
A Full-Wave 2.5D Volume Integral Equation Solver for 3D Millimeter-Wave Scattering by Large Inhomogeneous 2D Objects

A two-and-a-half dimensional full-wave forward solver to compute the three-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic field scattered by an infinitely long inhomogeneous (lossy) dielectric cylinder with arbitrary cross-sectional shape under a given 3D time-harmonic illumination is presented. The relevant set of linear equations, obtained after performing a spatial Fourier transform of the fields along the axial direction and applying a method of moments discretization to the two-dimensional contrast source volume integral equation, is solved iteratively with a stabilized biconjugate gradient fast Fourier transform method. In this way, objects with cross-sectional dimensions of several to many wavelengths can be handled in a very fast way. Furthermore, a vectorial 3D Gaussian beam illumination, usually employed in active millimeter-wave (mm-wave) imaging systems, is implemented using a complex source Gaussian beam formulation. The validity of the method is proved by comparison with analytic results and with the results from a full-wave 3D solver. Finally, the method is applied to a millimeter-wave imaging example, showing the scattering from an object hidden under clothing on a human body.
Auditory ERP response to successive stimuli in infancy

Background. Auditory Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are useful for understanding early auditory development among infants, as it allows the collection of a relatively large amount of data in a short time. So far, studies that have investigated development in auditory ERPs in infancy have mainly used single sounds as stimuli. Yet in real life, infants must decode successive rather than single acoustic events. In the present study, we tested 4-, 8-, and 12-month-old infants’ auditory ERPs to musical melodies comprising three piano notes, and examined ERPs to each individual note in the melody. Methods. Infants were presented with 360 repetitions of a three-note melody while EEG was recorded from 128 channels on the scalp through a Geodesic Sensor Net. For each infant, both latency and amplitude of auditory components P1 and N2 were measured from averaged ERPs for each individual note. Results. Analysis was restricted to response collected at frontal central site. For all three notes, there was an overall reduction in latency for both P1 and N2 over age. For P1, latency reduction was significant from 4 to 8 months, but not from 8 to 12 months. N2 latency, on the other hand, decreased significantly from 4 to 8 to 12 months. With regard to amplitude, no significant change was found for either P1 or N2. Nevertheless, the waveforms of the three age groups were qualitatively different: for the 4-month-olds, the P1–N2 deflection was attenuated for the second and the third notes; for the 8-month-olds, such attenuation was observed only for the middle note; for the 12-month-olds, the P1 and N2 peaks show relatively equivalent amplitude and peak width across all three notes. Conclusion. Our findings indicate that the infant brain is able to register successive acoustic events in a stream, and ERPs become better time-locked to each composite event over age. Younger infants may have difficulties in responding to late occurring events in a stream, and the onset response to the late events may overlap with the incomplete response to preceding events.
Maternal rubella and the rubella syndrome in infants. Epidemiologic, clinical, and virologic observations.

THE EPIDEMIC of rubella which occurred in 1964 was the largest which the United States has experienced in more than 20 years.1In Connecticut a record number of cases was reported, more than 40,000 in a population of some 2,500,000, and the actual number was probably greatly in excess of this figure. Inevitably, in such a large outbreak, many young women were infected in the first trimester of pregnancy, and many infants with stigmata characteristic of the rubella syndrome have been born subsequently. We have investigated several aspects of the rubella problem, including a questionnaire survey to determine the incidence of the disease in pregnant women in the New Haven, Conn, area. Clinical observations have been made on infants with the rubella syndrome, and virologic studies have been carried out on products of conception obtained at induced abortion, on various specimens collected from babies born with congenital malformations characteristic
Appropriateness of Surgical Antibiotic Prophylaxis in Pediatric Patients in Italy

OBJECTIVES Appropriate use of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis (SAP) reduces intraoperative wound contamination in pediatric surgery, thus minimizing the risk of surgical site infection (SSIs). Conversely, inappropriate use of SAP exposes patients to the risk of antibiotic side effects and contributes to the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. Our aims were to describe SAP administration and to analyze factors associated with nonadherence in pediatric patients. DESIGN Descriptive study. SETTING Overall, 955 pediatric patients underwent 1,038 surgical procedures. METHODS We assessed adherence to SAP international guidelines for surgical procedures performed on children aged <18 years in 2015 in 4 randomly selected hospitals in Calabria (Italy). The clinical records of these patients were retrospectively reviewed. RESULTS Appropriate SAP administration or nonadministration pertained to 754 surgical procedures (72.6%). Surgical antibiotic prophylaxis was administered in 88.5% of 358 procedures with an SAP indication. Adherence to guidelines for appropriate drug choice were followed in 5.7% of cases, for route of administration in 76.7% of cases, for timing in 48.6% of cases, for duration in 14.5% of cases, and for dose in 91.5% of cases, and for all components in only 5 cases (1.6%). Among 680 procedures without SAP indication, 35.7% case patients received antibiotics. Inappropriate administration of antibiotics in procedures without SAP indication was associated with surgical specialty wards (P=.008), ordinary admission (P<.001), head and neck surgical procedures (P=.020), clean surgery (P=.017), and surgical duration (P=.010). CONCLUSIONS Discrepancies between SAP guidelines and actual practice behavior more frequently indicate excessive use of antibiotics than underuse. Increased awareness of SAP guidelines is required. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2017;38:823–831
During Lipreading Training With Sentence Stimuli, Feedback Controls Learning and Generalization to Audiovisual Speech in Noise.

PURPOSE This study investigated the effects of external feedback on perceptual learning of visual speech during lipreading training with sentence stimuli. The goal was to improve visual-only (VO) speech recognition and increase accuracy of audiovisual (AV) speech recognition in noise. The rationale was that spoken word recognition depends on the accuracy of sublexical (phonemic/phonetic) speech perception; effective feedback during training must support sublexical perceptual learning. METHOD Normal-hearing (NH) adults were assigned to one of three types of feedback: Sentence feedback was the entire sentence printed after responding to the stimulus. Word feedback was the correct response words and perceptually near but incorrect response words. Consonant feedback was correct response words and consonants in incorrect but perceptually near response words. Six training sessions were given. Pre- and posttraining testing included an untrained control group. Test stimuli were disyllable nonsense words for forced-choice consonant identification, and isolated words and sentences for open-set identification. Words and sentences were VO, AV, and audio-only (AO) with the audio in speech-shaped noise. RESULTS Lipreading accuracy increased during training. Pre- and posttraining tests of consonant identification showed no improvement beyond test-retest increases obtained by untrained controls. Isolated word recognition with a talker not seen during training showed that the control group improved more than the sentence group. Tests of untrained sentences showed that the consonant group significantly improved in all of the stimulus conditions (VO, AO, and AV). Its mean words correct scores increased by 9.2 percentage points for VO, 3.4 percentage points for AO, and 9.8 percentage points for AV stimuli. CONCLUSIONS Consonant feedback during training with sentences stimuli significantly increased perceptual learning. The training generalized to untrained VO, AO, and AV sentence stimuli. Lipreading training has potential to significantly improve adults' face-to-face communication in noisy settings in which the talker can be seen.
Complete Genome Sequencing of Mosquito and Human Isolates of Ngari Virus

ABSTRACT Ngari virus (NRIV) is a recently described, naturally occurring reassortant between two other orthobunyaviruses, Bunyamwera virus (BUNV) and Batai virus (BATV). Intriguingly, this reassortment was associated with the acquisition of heightened virulence, although the molecular basis for this is not understood. Here we report the first complete genome sequences of Ngari virus. We include five isolates from various geographical locations, as well as samples isolated from both mosquitos and human cases. Based on an analysis of these sequence data, NRIVs are clearly genetically distinct from all known BUNV and BATV strains but are very closely related to one another regardless of their source.
Effect of genetic modification of acute inflammatory responsiveness on tumorigenesis in the mouse.

Two distinct bidirectional selective breedings for quantitative traits were initiated from identical genetically heterogeneous mouse populations. The resulting lines are characterized by maximal or minimal acute inflammatory responsiveness (AIR): AIRmax and AIRmin lines, respectively, and by resistance or susceptibility to chemical skin tumorigenesis: Car-R and Car-S lines, respectively. The AIR response to s.c. injection of polyacrylamide microbeads, measured by cell content in the local exudate, was 10 times higher in AIRmax than in AIRmin mice. The response to selection was asymmetrical: the realized heritability was 0.26 in AIRmax and 0.008 in AIRmin, and resulted from the additive effect of 7-11 quantitative trait loci (QTL). Low responsiveness was globally dominant in F1 and 48% of F2 segregant variance was found to be due to genetic factors. These findings are the first demonstration of innate regulation of AIR by germ line genes. Susceptibility to skin tumorigenesis induced by a two-stage initiation (DMBA)-promotion (TPA) protocol was lower in AIRmax mice than in AIRmin mice, a 6-fold difference in tumor induction rate. Intense AIR was found to be associated with resistance, and low AIR with susceptibility to tumorigenesis, in F2 segregants chosen for extreme AIR phenotypes. At least some of the AIR QTLs therefore contain genes controlling tumorigenesis. Tumor phenotypes differed more in Car-R and Car-S than in AIRmax and AIRmin lines, indicating that QTLs unrelated to AIR, contribute to the host response to tumorigenesis. The extreme phenotypes/genotypes of the four selected lines and the known genetic constitution of their foundation population, offer new possibilities to discriminate the genes/mechanisms controlling two important traits: AIR and response to chemical tumorigenesis. Collaborative projects will be favorably considered. The description of tumor resistance genes in AIRmax and Car-R mice may be helpful for epidemiology and therapy of human cancer.
Allogeneic lymphocytes induce tumor regression of advanced metastatic breast cancer.

PURPOSE Allogeneic T lymphocytes can induce regression of metastatic breast cancer through an immune-mediated graft-versus-tumor (GVT) effect in murine models. To determine if a clinical GVT effect exists against metastatic breast cancer, allogeneic lymphocytes were used as adoptive cellular therapy after a reduced-intensity chemotherapy conditioning regimen and allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) from human leukocyte antigen-matched siblings. PATIENTS AND METHODS Sixteen patients with metastatic breast cancer that had progressed after treatment with anthracyclines, taxanes, hormonal agents, and trastuzumab, received allogeneic HSCT. The reduced-intensity transplant conditioning regimen consisted of cyclophosphamide and fludarabine. To distinguish an immunological GVT effect from any antitumor effect of cytotoxic chemotherapy in the transplant-conditioning regimen, allogeneic T lymphocytes were removed from the stem-cell graft and were subsequently administered late postallogeneic HSCT. Allogeneic lymphocytes containing 1 x 10(6), 5 x 10(6), and 10 x 10(6) CD3(+) cells/kg were infused on days +42, +70, and +98 post-allogeneic HSCT, respectively. RESULTS Objective tumor regressions occurred after day +28 post-allogeneic HSCT in six patients and were attributed to allogeneic lymphocyte infusions. Two of these responding patients had disease progression post-allogeneic HSCT before subsequent tumor regression. Tumor regressions occurred concomitantly with the establishment of complete donor T-lymphoid engraftment, were associated with the development of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), and were abrogated by subsequent systemic immunosuppression for GVHD. CONCLUSION Allogeneic lymphocytes can induce regression of advanced metastatic breast cancer. These results indicate that an immunological GVT effect from allogeneic lymphocytes exists against metastatic breast cancer and provide rationale for further development of allogeneic cellular therapy for this largely incurable disease.
Effects of air pollution from a nickel-copper industrial complex on boreal forest vegetation in the joint Russian-Norwegian-Finnish border area

The effect of air pollution from the Petchenganickel industrial complex, northwestern part of the Kola Peninsula, on forest vegetation was studied by combining three dormant monitoring networks in Finland, Russia and Norway, comprising a total of 21 plots that were revisited in 2004. Chemical composition of precipitation was monitored during 2004-2005, and indicated continuing high deposition of heavy metals and SO 2 in the border area. The cover of epiphytic lichens on the trunks of downy birch (Betula pubescens) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) was severely affected by pollution, and there was also a consistent negative effect on the abundance and richness of lichens and bryophytes on the forest floor in a more limited area. The effects of pollution on crown condition and stand growth were weak or absent. This study is an important reference for evaluating the effects of the planned renovation of the smelter in Nikel.
Transplantation in resource-limited setting: using HIV-positive donors for HIV-positive patients

Abstract. Background: A HIV positive-to-positive program was started in South Africa in 2008. The program was started because dialysis is not freely available to everyone, but severely limited and only available to a selected group of patients. Patients and Methods: Between September 2008 and March 2015, 29 patients were transplanted from HIV-positive brain-dead donors at Groote Schuur Hospital transplant team. Donors were either naïve to anti-retroviral therapy or on first line therapy. The recipients were selected to have undetectable plasma HIV type 1 RNA levels and be on a stable antiretroviral regimen. CD4+ T-cell counts of at least 200/mm3 in last 6 months prior to transplant, with no previous serious opportunistic infections. Results: Survivors in the study were followed for a median of 2.4 years. The rate of patient survival was 84% at 1 year and 74% at 5 years. The corresponding graft survival rate was 93% and 84%. Conclusion: Using HIV-positive donors might resolve some of the problems we are experiencing in getting enough donors for our patients wit ESRD. In the USA the HOPE act was accepted in 2014 and this might now also impact on the use of HIV positive donors elsewhere in the world.