Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Encoding the position of a flashed visual target after passive body rotations

&NA; The capacity of the central nervous system (CNS) for processing vestibular signals during passive whole‐body rotations to update the internal representation of a visual target position in relation to the body was assessed. Results showed that subjects mislocalized previously presented visual targets after body rotations in complete darkness. Detailed analysis of the results suggested that the large target mislocalization stemmed not only from a systematic underestimation of rotation magnitude but also from the incapacity of the CNS to use the vestibular signals to accurately update the internal representation of the target position in relation to the body after passive rotations.
Intellectual capital disclosure practices and effects on the cost of equity capital: UK evidence

In a knowledge intensive economy, a company’s intellectual capital, whether it is derived from its employees, customer databases or brands, undoubtedly contribute to a company’s success and its ultimate value. Most of these intangible assets can not be included within a company’s balance sheet and intellectual capital disclosures in the annual report and financial statements have been largely voluntary.
Assessment of Copper, Zinc and nitric oxide status in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Objectives: disturbances in oxidant and anti-oxidant trace elements is known to cause caricinogenesis and increase tumor invasiveness.This study aimed to assess serum copper (Cu), zinc (Zn) and nitric oxide (NO) level in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Methods: Cu and Zn concentrations in the serum of 25 patients CLL and 15 healthy individuals were measured by atomic absorption spectrometry and Serum NO level was assayed by enzymatic one-step method. Results: We found a significant decrease in the mean serum Zn and increase in the mean serum level of Cu and NO. Zn level in CLL patients as compared with the control group (46.4 ±19.8 vs.82.8±9.6 μg/dl) . Cu level was 125.7±36.3 vs 80.4±48.8 . NO level in CLL patients was 161.2±86.8 vs 19.8±16.7 in control subjects. We found significant negative correlation between serum Zn and the disease stage. After chemotherapy serum Zn increased and Cu level decreased significantly while NO level remained elevated. Serum Cu was higher in CLL patients with positive expression of CD38 compared with CLL patients with negative expression of CD38, however, no significant difference was found in serum levels of Zn and NO according to CD38 expression. Serum Zn level correlated negatively with serum NO level. Serum Cu correlated negatively with hemoglobin level and reticulocytic count, and positively with LDH and B2-microglobulin. Non-responsive CLL patients had lower serum Zn and higher serum Cu levels compared to responsive patients; NO level was not statistically different in both groups. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that imbalance in Cu and Zn trace element and NO level is associated with CLL and might play a role in disease pathogenesis and intervention therapeutic trials are needed to investigate their role as an adjuvant therapy in treatment of CLL.
Brain Functional Plasticity Driven by Career Experience: A Resting-State fMRI Study of the Seafarer

The functional connectome derived from BOLD resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data represents meaningful functional organizations and a shift between distinct cognitive states. However, the body of knowledge on how the long-term career experience affects the brain’s functional plasticity is still very limited. In this study, we used a dynamic functional connectome characterization (DBFCC) model with the automatic target generation process K-Means clustering to explore the functional reorganization property of resting brain states, driven by long-term career experience. Taking sailors as an example, DBFCC generated seventeen reproducibly common atomic connectome patterns (ACP) and one reproducibly distinct ACP, i.e., ACP14. The common ACPs indicating the same functional topology of the resting brain state transitions were shared by two control groups, while the distinct ACP, which mainly represented functional plasticity and only existed in the sailors, showed close relationships with the long-term career experience of sailors. More specifically, the distinct ACP14 of the sailors was made up of four specific sub-networks, such as the auditory network, visual network, executive control network, and vestibular function-related network, which were most likely linked to sailing experience, i.e., continuously suffering auditory noise, maintaining balance, locating one’s position in three-dimensional space at sea, obeying orders, etc. Our results demonstrated DBFCC’s effectiveness in revealing the specifically functional alterations modulated by sailing experience and particularly provided the evidence that functional plasticity was beneficial in reorganizing brain’s functional topology, which could be driven by career experience.
Ectrodactyly-Ectodermal Dysplasia-Clefting Syndrome Associated with p63 Mutation and an Uncommon Phenotype

Ectrodactyly-ectodermal dysplasia-clefting syndrome is an uncommon disorder that includes a clinical spectrum of limb, facial, ocular, internal ear, and urogenital malformations. The disease is caused by heterozygous mutations in the 3q27–29 located p63 gene. In this paper we describe a 17-year-old girl affected by ectrodactyly-ectodermal dysplasia-clefting syndrome with a de novo p63 mutation that predicts a heterozygous missense substitution (arginine to tryptophan substitution caused by a cytosine to thymine transition) at the amino acid 304 (R304W) of the p63 DNA-binding domain. Scattered freckles on face, legs, and abdominal region, an uncommon feature associated with this syndrome, were recognized in our patient. The clinical features and genotype-phenotype correlation with previous p63 mutations related to the syndrome are discussed and compared with those observed in our patient. This case expands the phenotypic spectrum of ectrodactyly-ectodermal dysplasia-clefting syndrome.
Medical Waste Management and Control

Medical centers including hospitals, clinics and places where diagnosis and treatment are conducted generate wastes that are highly hazardous and put people under risk of fatal diseases. Although the understanding of medical waste management and control techniques is important, technical elective courses that are offered in undergraduate chemical, civil or environmental engineering place less emphasis on this area of education. In this paper, the meaning of medical waste, the risks of exposure, medical waste management regulatory acts, medical waste management procedures and control techniques are presented. The contents presented in this paper served as a supplementary material in an undergraduate elective course on waste management and as an educational guide for medical staff training on waste handling.
Randomized Trial of prophylactic granulocyte colony-stimulating factor during rapid COJEC induction in pediatric patients with high-risk neuroblastoma: the European HR-NBL1/SIOPEN study.

PURPOSE To reduce the incidence of febrile neutropenia during rapid COJEC (cisplatin, vincristine, carboplatin, etoposide, and cyclophosphamide given in a rapid delivery schedule) induction. In the High-Risk Neuroblastoma-1 (HR-NBL1) trial, the International Society of Paediatric Oncology European Neuroblastoma Group (SIOPEN) randomly assigned patients to primary prophylactic (PP) versus symptom-triggered granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (GCSF; filgrastim). PATIENTS AND METHODS From May 2002 to November 2005, 239 patients in 16 countries were randomly assigned to receive or not receive PPGCSF. There were 144 boys with a median age of 3.1 years (range, 1 to 17 years) of whom 217 had International Neuroblastoma Staging System (INSS) stage 4 and 22 had stage 2 or 3 MYCN-amplified disease. The prophylactic arm received a single daily dose of 5 microg/kg GCSF, starting after each of the eight COJEC chemotherapy cycles and stopping 24 hours before the next cycle. Chemotherapy was administered every 10 days regardless of hematologic recovery, provided that infection was controlled. RESULTS The PPGCSF arm had significantly fewer febrile neutropenic episodes (P = .002), days with fever (P = .004), hospital days (P = .017), and antibiotic days (P = .001). Reported Common Toxicity Criteria (CTC) graded toxicity was also significantly reduced: infections per cycle (P = .002), fever (P < .001), severe leucopenia (P < .001), neutropenia (P < .001), mucositis (P = .002), nausea/vomiting (P = .045), and constipation (P = .008). Severe weight loss was reduced significantly by 50% (P = .013). Protocol compliance with the rapid induction schedule was also significantly better in the PPGCSF arm shown by shorter time to completion (P = .005). PPGCSF did not adversely affect response rates or success of peripheral-blood stem-cell harvest. CONCLUSION Following these results, PPG-GSF was advised for all patients on rapid COJEC induction.
Determinant of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Low Participation in Public Procurement in Lagos, Nigeria

It is an established fact that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are crucial to economic development of any nation. SMEs participation in every sphere of economic activities including public procurement is one of the ways the sector can promote economic development of the country. However, SMEs sometimes are usually reluctant to sell to government. This study identified and classified into eight themes factors responsible for the low participation of SMEs in public procurement in Lagos Nigeria. Data were collected with questionnaires from 193 SMEs Chief executives. Data generated were analyzed using ranking method. The study revealed that perceived lack of transparency in public procurement proceedings, disproportionate eligibilty criteria and burdensome nature of public procurement are the major reasons SMEs are reluctant to participate in public procurement in Lagos, Nigeria. It was concluded that transparency is vital in public procurement for SMEs to adequately participate in the process. The study recommended that in order to boost SMEs participation in public procurement transparent procurement management must be guaranteed.
Evaluation of welding residual stress levels through shot peening and heat treating

The welding process induces residual tensile stress that is detrimental to fatigue life. Tensile stresses act to stretch or pull apart the surface of the material. With enough load cycles at a high enough tensile stress, a metal surface will initiate a crack. Significant improvements in fatigue life can be obtained by modifying the residual stress levels in the material. Two methods of performing this are through heat treating and shot peening. Both will be thoroughly analyzed in this paper through the use of x-ray diffraction. X-ray diffraction is the most accurate and best-developed method to characterize the residual stress in polycrystalline material.
Highly Diversified Pandoraea pulmonicola Population during Chronic Colonization in Cystic Fibrosis

Several environmental bacteria are considered as opportunistic pathogens in cystic fibrosis (CF) and are able to persistently colonize the CF respiratory tract (CFRT). Beside Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Burkholderia cepacia complex, Pandoraea spp. are defined as pathogenic. During chronic colonization, adaptive evolution and diversified population have been demonstrated, notably for P. aeruginosa. However, the persistence of Pandoraea in the CFRT remains largely unexplored. We studied genomic and phenotypic traits of Pandoraea pulmonicola isolates successively recovered from the airways of a single CF patient and relate the results to qualitative and quantitative evolution of other cultivable pathogens and to patient clinical status. A total of 31 isolates recovered from 18 sputum samples over a 7-year period in a single CF patient were studied. Genome dynamics was assessed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, ERIC-PCR fingerprinting and 16S rRNA gene PCR-temporal temperature gel electrophoresis. Phenotypic features included antimicrobial susceptibility, motility, biofilm production, and virulence in Caenorhabditis elegans model. Variability was observed for all the characteristics studied leading to highly diversified patterns (24 patterns) for the 31 clonally related isolates. Some of these modifications, mainly genomic events were concomitantly observed with CFRT microbiota composition shifts and with severe exacerbations. The diversity of P. pulmonicola population studied, observed for isolates recovered from successive samples but also within a sample suggested that existence of a diversified population may represent a patho-adaptive strategy for host persistence in the heterogeneous and fluctuating CFRT environment.
Effect of L‐dopa and 6‐hydroxydopamine lesioning on [11C]raclopride binding in rat striatum, quantified using PET

A positron emission tomograph (PET) was used to image D2 dopamine receptor function in rat striata and to obtain regional time‐radioactivity curves from individual rat brains following i.v. injection of carbon‐11‐labelled raclopride. Despite the limited resolution of the camera, together with associated spillover and partial volume effects, the kinetic data obtained from striata were such that specific binding of the radioligand could be quantified unilaterally, using a reference tissue compartmental model, with cerebellum data as an indirect input function. With the exception that the rat is anaesthetised, the experimental system is analogous to the acquisition and collection of clinical PET data and, by using animal models of disease, can be used to aid the interpretation of clinical studies. Using 6‐hydroxydopamine (6‐OHDA) lesioning of the substantia nigra pars compacta to produce a rat hemiparkinsonian model, the present results confirm that deafferentation causes a supersensitivity of post‐synaptic D, dopamine receptors. Saturation studies indicated that the measured 23% increase in [11C]raclopride binding potential reflected a change in receptor affinity. Modulation of extracellular dopamine concentration, monitored by in vivo microdialysis, demonstrated that the increased binding was unlikely to be due to a reduction in receptor occupancy by endogenous dopamine. Acute administration of L‐3, 4‐dihydroxyphenylalanine (L‐dopa) also caused an increase in [11C]raclopride binding potential, confirming the suggestion that L‐dopa plays a more complex role than that of dopamine precursor in the nigrostriatal pathway. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Efficiencies Brewed: Pricing and Consolidation in the U.S. Beer Industry

type="main"> Merger efficiencies provide the primary justification for why mergers of competitors may benefit consumers. Surprisingly, there is little evidence that efficiencies can offset incentives to raise prices following mergers. We estimate the effects of increased concentration and efficiencies on pricing by using panel scanner data and geographic variation in how the merger of the brewers Miller and Coors was expected to increase concentration and reduce costs. All else equal, the average predicted increase in concentration led to price increases of 2%, but at the mean this was offset by a nearly equal and opposite efficiency effect.
Prospects of DNA-based systems for differentiation and classification of phytoplasmas

During the last two decades, over 800 phytoplasma strains have been reported in association with several hundred plant diseases and numerous insect vectors. Research has yielded new knowledge about phytoplasma ecology and phylogenetic relationships. A taxonomic system has emerged, and perspectives on phytoplasma speciation have changed. Guidelines for naming new ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma’ species have been proposed; the16S rRNA gene was employed as the sole phylogenetic marker for species delineation. To date, 26 ‘Ca. Phytoplasma’ species have been named, forming the core framework of the emerging phytoplasma taxonomy. A classification system based on restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences provides a simple, reliable, and rapid means to classify phytoplasmas on a large scale without a need to sequence the gene. The capacity of this classification system has been recently upgraded by the development of a computer-simulated RFLP analysis method. This approach has led to construction of the most comprehensive classification system for phytoplasmas to date. The concept of multi-gene sequence analysis for distinguishing phytoplasma species has emerged with the aim of overcoming deficiencies of the highly conserved 16S rRNA gene for delineating closely related phytoplasma species. Less conserved genes, such as ribosomal protein or secY, serve as phylogenetic markers for finer distinctions among phytoplasmas.
Micro-Finance Institutions : A Vehicle for Empowerment of Rural Women and Urban Poor in Nigeria

This study sought to investigate microfinance institutions (MFIs) as a vehicle for empowerment of the rural women and the urban poor. Part of the efforts of most governments seems to be geared towards narrowing the income gap between the urban and the rural sectors through breaking the cycle of unemployment, economic stagnation and poverty The specific objectives of the study sought to: (i) determine how rural women and the urban poor could be organized to benefit from microcredit of the microfinance institutions and (ii) examine how to reduce or eliminate the inherent challenges associated with accessing microcredit from microfinance institutions. The study is a survey study comprised rural women of Nachi and Amokwe towns both in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State, while the urban poor were drawn from Achara Layout and Maryland towns in Enugu South Local Government Area, also of Enugu State. Data used in the study was collected through primary and secondary sources. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistical techniques. The findings of the study revealed that organization of the rural women and the urban poor into membership-based organizations such as street vendors, garment makers, shoe makers, waste pickers, construction day labourers etc could facilitate access to micro credits. The researchers recommended that the “decent work for all” campaign by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through special initiatives on the economic empowerment of working poor women in the informal sector of the economy should form an alliance with growing international movement of working poor women. This should be seen as dependable ally of decent work for all campaign. It is concluded that there is need for advocacy so that the playing ground can be level even for the poorest of the poor women.
Net economic costs of dementia in Canada.

OBJECTIVE To estimate the net economic costs of dementia in Canada in 1991 by comparing costs related to elderly patients with dementia with those related to elderly people without dementia. DESIGN Cost-of-illness study. DATA SOURCES Most of the data analysed in this study were from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging (CSHA), in which 10,263 Canadians aged 65 years and over were randomly selected, surveyed and, when appropriate, given clinical examinations. Data on patients with dementia and on people without cognitive impairment (control subjects) were used for this analysis. Data on activities of daily living (ADLs) were taken from a separate study under the CSHA, in which the principal caregivers of the subjects in the prevalence study were interviewed. SETTING Community and institutional settings in Canada, excluding those in the territories. PATIENTS All patients with dementia 65 years and older as determined from the CSHA. Patients with dementia under 65 were also considered. OUTCOME MEASURES Costs of paid and unpaid services in the community, care in long-term care institutions, drugs, hospitalization, diagnosis and research. RESULTS The total annual net cost of dementia was estimated to be over $3.9 billion. Costs associated with elderly patients in the community were estimated to be $1.25 billion ($615 million for paid services, $636 million for unpaid services), whereas costs for patients in long-term care institutions were $2.18 billion. Costs were about $74 million for drugs, hospitalization and diagnosis, $10 million for research and $389 million related to patients under age 65. CONCLUSION The annual net economic cost of dementia in Canada is at least $3.9 billion. The most significant component of the total cost was for care in long-term care institutions and for assistance with ADLs by professionals, family and friends in the community. The economic burden of dementia is significant not only for patients, their families and friends, but also for society.
Brain reward in the absence of alpha-synuclein

Alpha-synuclein has been implicated in the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease. Recent studies revealed its role as a negative regulator of dopamine release in the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system. Alpha-synuclein may, however, play a more universal role in dopaminergic neurotransmission. It may represent an endogenous modulator in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, and be involved in brain reward. We show here that the absence of &agr;-synuclein resulting from spontaneous mutation in a subline of C57BL/6J mice greatly increased the rate of operant behavior during intracranial self-stimulation. The present work demonstrates that a lack of &agr;-synuclein sensitized the brain reward system, implying that the levels of &agr;-synuclein expression may predispose an individual to drug abuse or to a number of psychiatric diseases.
New Bounds for Approximating Extremal Distances in Undirected Graphs

We provide new bounds for the approximation of extremal distances (the diameter, the radius, and the eccentricities of all nodes) of an undirected graph with n nodes and m edges. First, we show under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) of Impagliazzo, Paturi and Zane [JCSS01] that it is impossible to get a (3/2 -- e)-approximation of the diameter or a (5/3 -- e)-approximation of all the eccentricities in O(m2--Δ) time for any e, Δ > 0, even allowing for a constant additive term in the approximation. Second, we present an algorithmic scheme that gives a (2 -- 1/2k)-approximation of the diameter and the radius and a (3 -- 4/(2k + 1))-approximation of all eccentricities in O(mn1/k+1) expected time for any k ≥ 0. For k ≥ 2, this gives a family of previously unknown bounds, and approaches near-linear running time as k grows. Third, we observe a connection between the approximation of the diameter and the h-dominating sets, which are subsets of nodes at distance ≤ h from every other node. We give bounds for the size of these sets, related with the diameter.
The Tagliacozzi Flap as a Method of Nasal and Palatal Reconstruction

A random flap of upper arm skin has been successfully used to reconstruct large nasal (seven patients) and palatal (three patients) defects. This method is an attractive alternative for nasal reconstruction in patients whose foreheads cannot be used. Problems of color match can be managed by subsequent resurfacing of the nose with a single-piece full-thickness graft taken from the supraclavicular area. Pedicle flaps can be transected 9 to 12 days after inset, thus shortening the immobilization period.