Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epidemiology of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: trends, readmissions, and subsequent knee surgery.

BACKGROUND Anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction is widely accepted as the treatment of choice for individuals with functional instability due to anterior cruciate deficiency. There remains little information on the epidemiology of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction with regard to adverse outcomes such as hospital readmission and subsequent knee surgery. We sought to identify the frequency of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, the rates of subsequent operations and readmissions, and potential predictors of these outcomes. METHODS The Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) database, a census of all hospital admissions and ambulatory surgery in New York State, was used to identify anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions performed between 1997 and 2006. Patients with concomitant pathological conditions of the knee were included. The patients were tracked for hospital readmission within ninety days after the surgery and for subsequent surgery on either knee within one year. The risks of these outcomes were modeled with use of age, sex, comorbidity, hospital and surgeon volume, and inpatient or outpatient surgery as potential risk factors. RESULTS We identified 70,547 anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions, with an increase from 6178 in 1997 to 7507 in 2006. Readmission within ninety days after the surgery was infrequent (a 2.3% rate), but subsequent surgery on either knee within one year was much more common (a 6.5% rate). Patients were at increased risk for readmission within ninety days if they were over forty years of age, sicker (e.g., had a preexisting comorbidity), male, and operated on by a lower-volume surgeon. Predictors of subsequent knee surgery included being female, having concomitant knee surgery, and being operated on by a lower-volume surgeon. Predictors of a subsequent anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction included an age of less than forty years, concomitant meniscectomy or other knee surgery, and surgery in a lower-volume hospital. CONCLUSIONS The rate of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction has increased in frequency. Also, while anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction appears to be a safe procedure, the risk of a subsequent operation on either knee is increased among younger patients and those treated by a lower-volume surgeon or at a lower-volume hospital.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Financial Literacy Programs in Ghana

This paper explores the effectiveness of financial literacy programs. It further seeks to establish the relationship between financial literacy and certain demographic characteristics. This study adopted a correlational research design as the framework to examine the relationship between variables without determining cause and effect. Data were randomly collected from 235 petty traders in Kumasi central market, Ghana. The paper found that promoting and preserving public confidence in the financial sector would take much longer time than envisioned by Bank of Ghana (BoG) if the challenge posed by inadequate financial literacy is not tackled. Age and work experience were positively related to financial literacy. Also, mother's education was positively correlated with respondents' financial literacy. The findings also indicate that traders with high level of education display higher financial literacy level than non-educated ones. The study recommends that policy makers should also make sure that customers easily get access to the bank's activities related to financial education as the study has indicated that the banks' activities are not accessible.
The Political Economy of Budget Deficits in the European Union

This article tries to evaluate the impact of domestic and international factors on both deficits and deficit reduction in the European Union. Based on data covering 14 countries and 20 fiscal years (1978-97) we test the major hypotheses in the political economy literature. Beyond the investigation of the causes of cross-sectional variations in budget outcomes, we are also interested in changing patterns of influences over time, resulting from so-called `structural breaks'. On the one hand, our pooled time-series analyses show that very few political and institutional factors influenced the budget outcomes of the EU member states during this period. On the other hand, our estimation results provide suggestive support for our assumption that `Maastricht' amounted to a decisive structural break.
The Limited Value of Sequencing Cases Based on Their Probability of Cancellation

BACKGROUND: Case cancellations on the day of surgery reduce operating room (OR) and anesthesia group productivity. One strategy to reduce the impact of case cancellations on productivity is to assign high-risk cases to start last in the OR workday. To evaluate the utility of this intervention, we used a database of canceled cases to model the process of identifying high-risk cases and resequencing them to be the surgeons' last cases of the day. METHODS: Descriptive information was prospectively collected on 1 year of canceled cases. A comparison group of completed cases served as controls. Predictors of case cancellation were identified and used to calculate the number of cases that would require resequencing for 1 cancellation to occur at the end of the day. The proportion of total OR hours relevant to each predictor was assessed. To assess the desirability of this strategy, surgeons were surveyed regarding their scheduling preferences for patients at high risk for cancellation. RESULTS: During the study period, 946 of 12,253 cases were canceled. Strong predictors of cancellation included percentage of missed clinic appointments (number of cases requiring resequencing = 5.27) and insurance status (number of cases requiring resequencing = 8.87 for Medicaid). The predictor accounting for the most scheduled time was residence in Chicago (5.1% of total hours). No predictor both required the resequencing of 5 or fewer cases to prevent 1 cancellation in the middle of the day and accounted for >4% of scheduled time. Survey results demonstrated that in addition to cancellation probability, factors such as case complexity also influenced surgeons' sequencing preferences. CONCLUSION: Highly sensitive predictors of case cancellation are impractical for sequencing purposes because they account for too few hours of scheduled OR time. Effort invested in identifying and resequencing cases at high risk for cancellation likely has limited value.
Adapted preparation technique for screw-type implants: explorative in vitro pilot study in a porcine bone model.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to quantify the effect of adapted preparation on the insertion torque of self-tapping implants in cancellous bone. In adapted preparation, bone condensation - and thus, insertion torque - is controlled by changing the diameter of the drilling. MATERIAL AND METHODS After preparation of cancellous porcine vertebral bone with drills of 2.85, 3, 3.15 or 3.35 mm final diameters, Brånemark sytem Mk III implants (3.75 x 11.5 mm) were inserted in 141 sites. During implantation, the insertion torque was recorded. Prior to implant insertion, bone mineralization (bone mineral density (BMD)) was measured with dental quantative computed tomography. The BMD values measured at the implant position were correlated with insertion torque for varying bone condensation. RESULTS Based on the average torque recorded during implant insertion into the pre-drilled canals with a diameter of 3 mm, torque increased by approximately 17% on reducing the diameter of the drill by 5% (to 2.85 mm). On increasing the diameter of the osteotomy to 3.15 mm (5%) or 3.35 mm (12%), torque values decreased by approximately 21% and 50%, respectively. CONCLUSION The results demonstrate a correlation between primary stability (average insertion torque) and the diameter of the implant bed on using a screw-shaped implant. Thus, using an individualized bone mineralization-dependent drilling technique, optimized torque values could be achieved in all tested bone qualities with BMDs ranging from 330 to 500 mg/cm(3). The results indicate that using a bone-dependent drilling technique, higher torque values can also be achieved in poor bone using an individualized drilling resulting in higher bone condensation. As immediate function is dependent on primary stability (high insertion torque), this indicates that primary stability can be increased using a modified drilling technique in lesser mineralized bone.
Scapegoating Rent Control: Masking the Causes of Homelessness

Abstract While many analysts contend that a shortage of affordable housing is a principal cause of homelessness, one recent well-publicized study argues that housing shortages themselves—and hence homelessness—are ultimately the result of ill-conceived local rent controls. This study, conducted by William Tucker, has been widely cited by opponents of rent control as a justification for limiting the ability of localities to regulate rents. The research presented in this article is a re-analysis of Tucker's data that corrects for methodological shortcomings in the original analysis. The research shows that there is no evidence to support Tucker's conclusion that rent control causes homelessness.
Aggression and violence towards staff working with older patients.

Aim To investigate the incidence of violence and aggression towards staff working in elderly care wards and to consider the factors that influence the risk of experiencing such an incident. Method Questionnaires were administered to 287 nursing and therapy staff within a community health NHS trust in the West Midlands. A response rate of 34% (96) was achieved. Results Fifty one per cent (49) of staff had experienced an incident of violence or aggression. There was a significant difference between the probability of experiencing violence and the occupation of the participant (χ2 =0.035), with 65% (31 of 48) of nurses having experienced an incident, compared to only 42% (10 of 24) of occupational therapists and 27% (4 of 15) of physiotherapists. Conclusion This study should be replicated in a wider geographicalarea and apparent anomalies in frequency of assault by occupationneed to be considered in future research.
High School English Language Learners of Latin American Descent Living in Rural Midwestern Communities

A phenomenological study was conducted to examine the experiences of adolescent English Language Learners (ELL) of Latin American descent living in rural Midwestern communities. Participants experienced psychological and social responses related to the major life change of immigrating to a new country and adapting to an alien culture. Challenges experienced by adolescent immigrants involved a chronological and simultaneous process of adaptation, as evidenced by the following stages: (1) apprehension about coming to a new country and fitting in with friends when they started school; (2) adjustment to the new culture and alien environment; (3) cultural bereavement and ambiguous loss. Learning English served as a means of communicating and a key factor in helping the participants adapt to a new culture. Recommendations to address the issues regarding academic and social challenges faced by immigrant students of Latino origin with limited English proficiency included providing a support person such as a home liaison or advocate for the student to increase communication between the school and family, initiating a mentor-tutor program in the school and community, and providing professional development for teachers working with ELL and immigrant students. Recommendations include further research on factors contributing to the academic success of students adjusting to major life changes may help address concerns relating to low academic achievement and high dropout rates among Latino students.
Buying Frenzies and Seller-Induced Excess Demand

I explain why a monopolist would knowingly create excess demand. Suppose customers initially do not know their valuation for a good but over time become informed. Although customers prefer purchasing after becoming informed, a monopolist prefers selling to customers while uninformed, because a group of uninformed customers has a more homogeneous (expected) valuation for the good than do informed customers. Selling fewer units than the number of customers induces customers to purchase while uninformed, because anyone waiting to purchase until becoming informed finds no units available. This "buying frenzy" behavior allows the monopolist to set price above the "informed" market-clearing price.
Optimising non-real time frame handling in real time ethernet nodes

Modern Real Time Ethernet technologies rely on well-described hardware acceleration techniques to ensure that hard real-time deadlines are met. Real Time Ethernet is also often used in situations where appreciable non real-time bandwidth is used and where throughput is important. In this paper, using the example of PROFINET, we examine the performance of various communication controller architectures in non-real-time data handling. Finding the performance not up to industry requirements we propose a multiprocessor architecture and describe an implementation and measurement results. This architecture allows better partitioning of communication and application processing whilst supporting maximum bandwidth utilization for non-real-time traffic.
Immigration and Its Impact on the Incidence of Training in Australia

Critics of immigration often argue that by providing a cheap alternative to training, immigration acts as a disincentive for employers to invest in training. Immigration, therefore, may be partly responsible for Australia's poor record in the area of industry training. This article evaluates this argument using data recently collected by the ABS. Probit models explaining the determinants of three types of training—in-house, external and on-the-job—are estimated for the Australian-born workforce. These models are then augmented with a variable representing the impact of skilled immigration. Initial estimates indicated that immigration was significantly and inversely associated with the probability of Australian-born workers receiving in-house training. This inverse association, however, may result not because employers hire skilled immigrants in preference to providing training, but because skilled immigrants are over-represented in low training industries. A two-step procedure, involving first identifying the size of industry fixed effects on training and then isolating the impact of immigration on these fixed effects, confirms that it is industry-specific effects which are of most importance. It is concluded, therefore, that immigration is currently not displacing any training activities in Australia.
Customer Orientation in Chinese Industrial Firms and Global Marketing Implications

Abstract The study focuses on the moderating role of environmental context (demand unpredictability and technological turbulence) and technological context (production technology routineness and product complexity) on the relationship of customer orientation with market performance relative to the industry in Chinese state-owned industrial firms. The results show significant moderating effects of technological turbulence and production technology routineness: the greater the technological turbulence and the more routine the production technology, the stronger the customer orientation-market performance relative to the industry relationship. The results also show that market performance relative to the industry is positively affected by customer orientation, but inversely affected by demand unpredictability. The findings have implications for global marketing as well as for theory development.
Comparing creative industries in Europe

Creative industries are increasingly understood to contribute to localised innovation and dynamism. This paper provides a methodologically consistent comparison of creative industries across France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. We map spatial agglomerations of creative activities showing evidence of urban concentration, which for Britain and France coincides with the dominance of capital cities, whilst for Spain and Italy, significant concentrations can also be found in secondary cities. The four countries also differ in the specialisation profiles and in the role played by policy makers. A lack of dove-tailing with the European Union smart agenda is argued to be a cause of concern.
Coronary and Abdominal Aorta Calcification in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Relationships with Traditional Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Disease Characteristics, and Concomitant Treatments

Objective. To assess the influence of traditional cardiovascular (CV) risk factors, disease characteristics, and concomitant treatments in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) on coronary artery calcification (CAC) and abdominal aorta calcification (AAC). Methods. In our cross-sectional study, 75 patients with RA were compared with 75 age-matched and sex-matched control participants. The CAC and AAC scores were measured by computed tomography in patients with no clinical evidence of coronary artery disease. The relationships between the presence or absence of CAC and AAC and traditional CV risk factors, disease characteristics, and concomitant treatments in patients with RA were assessed in a multiple logistic regression analysis. Results. The RA and control groups did not differ significantly in terms of age, sex composition, or the prevalence of traditional CV risk factors. AAC and CAC were more prevalent and severe in patients with RA than in controls. Older age (OR = 1.15, p < 0.01) and hypertension (OR = 3.77, p = 0.04) were found to be independently associated with CAC, whereas current use of methotrexate (MTX; OR = 0.12, p = 0.01) was found to be associated with the absence of CAC. Older age (OR per yr = 1.17, p < 0.001) and erosive arthritis (OR = 3.78, p = 0.03) were found to be independently associated with AAC. Conclusion. Our study demonstrates that in patients with RA, (1) CAC and AAC are more prevalent and more severe compared with age-matched and sex-matched control participants, (2) current use of MTX is a major determinant of the absence of CAC, and (3) erosive arthritis is a major determinant of AAC.
survival in locoregional recurrence and distant disease of breast cancer in premenopausal women treated with breast-conserving therapy or mastectomy

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a risk difference in survival in the first event of locoregional recurrence and distant disease in women who underwent breast-conserving therapy (BCT) compared with women who underwent mastectomy. Premenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer and positive lymph node/s make up this group. Methods: Retrospective cohort study was conducted to answer this study question by a chart review. Results: The results of the study demonstrated that women with breast cancer who underwent mastectomy had higher risk of distant disease compared with breastconserving therapy. Also women aged under 35 had an independent association with distant disease. In addition, the type of surgery did not have a significant result association with locoregional recurrence.
Split Share Structure Reform, corporate governance, and the foreign share discount puzzle in China

We examine the impact of the Split Share Structure Reform on the well-known foreign share discount puzzle in China. Existing literature confirms that foreign investors are more concerned about insider expropriation because of their information disadvantage relative to domestic investors. The split share structure of the ownership of Chinese listed firms created a conflict of interests between state and private shareholders. Since, before the reform, state shareholders held restricted shares that denied them any wealth effect from share price movements, they had a limited incentive to work with private shareholders to ensure that managers maximized the stock market value of the firm. By abolishing the trading restrictions for state shareholders, this reform has increased the incentive alignment between state and private shareholders, encouraging them to monitor managers. If foreign investors’ concerns over the corporate governance implications of the split share structure at least partly contributed to their discounting of Chinese listed firms, then this discount should be reduced following the reform. Indeed, our evidence confirms this prediction, especially among Chinese listed firms with more state ownership or restricted shares. Our findings imply that this significant institutional reform of the Chinese stock market has benefitted minority investors.
The impacts of network structures and network form on corporate innovative performance: evidence from high-tech sectors

Based on a survey from high-tech organizations in China, we empirically examine relationships among innovative network structures, network form, and organization performance. Our findings show that there are significant positive relationships among network sizes, network strength, network openness, network forms and organization performance. However, empirical results further show that network homogeneity does not reveal any significant impacts on organization performance. Our findings also identify theoretical and practical implications of innovative network research, in particular, the usefulness of innovative network structure.
Domestic Accounting Standards, International Accounting Standards, and the Predictability of Earnings

type="main" xml:lang="en"> We investigate (1) whether the variation in accounting standards across national boundaries relative to International Accounting Standards (IAS) has an impact on the ability of financial analysts to forecast non-U.S. firms’ earnings accurately, and (2) whether analyst forecast accuracy changes after firms adopt IAS. IAS are a set of financial reporting policies that typically require increased disclosure and restrict management’s choices of measurement methods relative to the accounting standards of our sample firms’ countries of domicile. We develop indexes of differences in countries’ accounting disclosure and measurement policies relative to IAS, and document that greater differences in accounting standards relative to IAS are significantly and positively associated with the absolute value of analyst earnings forecast errors. Further, we show that analyst forecast accuracy improves after firms adopt IAS. More specifically, after controlling for changes in the market value of equity, changes in analyst following, and changes in the number of news reports, we find that the convergence in firms’ accounting policies brought about by adopting IAS is positively associated with the reduction in analyst forecast errors.
Debt ownership structure and legal system: an international analysis

This paper is concerned with the ownership structure of corporate debt from an institutional perspective. An attempt is made to identify the factors affecting bank debt use from an international sample of companies from Austria, Germany, Japan, Belgium, France, Italy, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden and the USA. The results show that bank debt depends both on factors specific to each company and on institutional features of each country. More exactly, it is found that bank loans are related to firm size, to the quality and risk of the projects, and to the collateral. It is also found that a number of legal-institutional factors are impacting on the source of firms’ debt, such as creditor protection, firm disclosure requirements and law enforcement.