Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of cardiac arrest on the long-term wellbeing and caregiver burden of family caregivers: a prospective cohort study

Objective: The purpose was to gain insight in the functioning of caregivers of cardiac arrest survivors at 12 months after a cardiac arrest. Secondly, the course of the wellbeing of the caregivers during the first year was studied. Finally, factors that are associated with a higher care burden at 12 months after the cardiac arrest were investigated. Subjects: A total of 195 family caregivers of cardiac arrest survivors were included. Main measures: Quality of life (SF-36, EuroQol-VAS), caregiver strain (CSI) and emotional functioning (HADS, IES) were measured at two weeks, three months and one year after the cardiac arrest. Thereby, the caregiver was asked to fill out the cognitive failure questionnaire (CFQ) to evaluate their view on the cognitive status of the patient. Results: Caregiver strain was high in 16 (15%) of the caregivers at 12 months. Anxiety was present in 33 (25%) caregivers and depression in 18 (14%) caregivers at 12 months. The repeated measures MANOVA showed that during the first year the following variables improved significantly: SF-36 domains social and mental health, role physical, role emotional and vitality, caregiver strain, HADS and IES (P<0.001). At 12 months caregiver strain correlated significantly (explained variance 63%, P=0.03) with caregiver HADS (P=0.01), EuroQol-VAS (P=0.02), and the CFQ (P<0.001), all measured at 12 months after the cardiac arrest. Conclusions: Overall wellbeing of the caregivers improves during the first year up to normal levels, but caregivers with emotional problems or perceived cognitive problems at 12 months are at risk for developing a higher care burden.
Analysis of TP53 germline mutations in pediatric tumor patients using DNA microarray-based sequencing technology.

BACKGROUND Whereas in sporadic human malignancies mutations of the TP53 tumor-suppressor gene occur in cancers of almost every organ and histologic subtype, patients with an inborn TP53 defect are at high risk to develop, in particular, soft tissue and bone sarcomas, brain tumors, leukaemias, adrenocortical tumors, and breast cancer. To demonstrate the usefulness of microarray technology applied to TP53 sequencing in pediatric tumors, we investigated young patients suffering from tumors typical of the Li-Fraumeni context who were, therefore, candidates for harboring inborn defects in tumor-suppressor genes. PROCEDURE Six individuals were studied, including typical Li-Fraumeni patients as well as patients without any family history of cancer. DNA samples were independently analyzed for TP53 mutations by GeneChip and standard automated laser fluorescence (ALF) sequencing technology. RESULTS The tumor and corresponding constitutional DNA samples clearly showed identical mutations which were confirmed by ALF sequencing. All coding exons (exons 2-11) of TP53 were analyzed simultaneously. The entire sequencing procedure and data analysis was carried out within 24 hr. CONCLUSIONS The GeneChip TP53-sequencing assay may be feasible for routine molecular genetic diagnostics in determining the TP53 status of childhood-tumor patients and in enabling a disease management based on the genetic background of the individual.
Adverse Childhood Experiences and Cervical Cancer Screening.

BACKGROUND Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been associated with an increased risk of a variety of diseases, including cancer. However, research has largely ignored how ACEs impact cancer screening, a potential intermediate outcome. As such, the present study examined the association between ACEs and ever and recent use of Papanicolaou (Pap) test, among women aged 21 and older. MATERIALS AND METHODS Analyses used the 2009 Tennessee Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (n = 1527) to model odds of ever and recently (within the last 3 years) engaging in Pap tests screening from nine different adversities. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models were run to accomplish this. RESULTS In bivariate and multivariate models, living in a household in which adults treated each other violently increased odds of ever receiving a Pap test. In bivariate models, physical and sexual abuse was associated with decreased odds of receiving a recent Pap test. After accounting for confounders, only the latter association remained significant. CONCLUSIONS Results highlight a potential mechanism by which early childhood experiences can impact the development of cervical cancer. Providers of care should consider modifications to their screening practices, including screening for child abuse, to better serve all women.
Metastatic spinal cord compression from pancreatic cancer.

BACKGROUND/AIM Pancreatic cancer is an extremely rare entity in patients with metastatic epidural spinal cord compression (MESCC). This study aimed to identify prognostic factors for functional outcome and survival following irradiation. PATIENTS AND METHODS Ten variables were investigated in 15 patients: age, gender, performance score, time from diagnosis of pancreatic cancer to MESCC, number of involved vertebrae, ambulatory status, bone metastases, organ metastases, time developing motor deficits, and the radiation schedule (1×8 Gy vs. fractionated radiotherapy schedules). RESULTS Better post-treatment motor function was significantly associated with absence of organ metastases (p=0.025). Better survival was also significantly associated with absence of organ metastases: 6-month survival rates were 100% and 9%, respectively (p=0.006). The radiation schedule had no significant impact on treatment outcomes. CONCLUSION Patients with organ metastases have a very limited life expectancy and are good candidates for irradiation with 1×8 Gy instead of fractionated schedules.
Transcriptional profiling of melanocytes from patients with vitiligo vulgaris

Vitiligo is a complex, polygenic disorder characterized by patchy loss of skin pigmentation due to abnormal melanocyte function. Both genetic and environmental etiological factors have been proposed for vitiligo and lack of molecular markers renders difficulties to predict development and progression of the disease. Identification of dysregulated genes has the potential to unravel biological pathways involved in vitiligo pathogenesis, facilitating discovery of potential biomarkers and novel therapeutic approaches. In this study, we characterized the transcriptional profile of melanocytes from vitiligo patients. Oligonucleotide microarrays containing ∼16 000 unique genes were used to analyse mRNA expression in melanocytes from vitiligo patients and age‐matched healthy controls. In total, 859 genes were identified as differentially expressed. A substantial number of these genes were involved in (i) melanocyte development, (ii) intracellular processing and trafficking of tyrosinase gene family proteins, (iii) packing and transportation of melanosomes, (iv) cell adhesion and (v) antigen processing and presentation. In conclusion, our results show a significantly different transcription profile in melanocytes from vitiligo patients compared with controls. Several genes of potential importance for the pathogenesis and development of vitiligo were identified. Our data indicate that autoimmunity involving melanocytes may be a secondary event in vitiligo patients caused by abnormal melanocyte function.
[Outcome of pregnancies in lupus: experience at one center].

We determined the outcome of all pregnancies in SLE patients in our lupus cohort between 1991 and 1997. The women were advised that pregnancy was acceptable if the disease had been inactive for 6 months (SLEDAI < or = (4 at 2 serial examinations) and daily prednisone dose was below 10 mg. Patients were advised against pregnancy in case of active nephritis or neurolupus. In case of antiphospholipid antibodies, patients were treated with aspirin or heparin if previous fetal losses were documented. In case of anti-SSA ab, patients were monitored with ultrasound and given dexamethasone in case of atrioventricular block. Fifty-nine pregnancies were registered among 31 women: mean age at diagnosis of SLE was 25.3 +/- 3.7 years (range: 17-31); mean disease duration before pregnancy 4.4 +/- 3 years (0-14); mean ACR score 5.4 +/- 1.5 (4-9). Seven patients had ACL ab, 8 had anti-SSA ab. Pregnancies ended in: 13 early spontaneous abortions (9 not related to disease flare up, 4 related to SAPL); 7 elective abortions (patient decision in 5 cases, severe lupus flare up in 2); one in utero death; 19 full term births (> 38 weeks); and 19 preterm births. Cesarean section was performed in 11 cases (6 for fetal distress, dystocia and previous ceasarian; 5 for active lupus). Severe sepsis occurred in one premature infant who died at the age of 1 week. Intrauterine growth retardation was observed in 11 cases, mean APGAR score was 8.9 +/- 1.43. Child development was normal in all cases except one child with mild mental retardation. Severe lupus flare ups occurred in 6 cases, of which 4 were pregnancies in unadvised situations. Six mild flare ups were documented in the post partum. One fatal case of neonatal lupus with AVB was observed. In conclusion, in our experience, the live birth rate is similar to the general population and the risk of lupus flare up is low when the above mentioned criteria are applied. Systematic increase of steroid dose at pregnancy onset does not seem to be necessary. The high rate of prematurity remains a problem to be solved.
LONG‐TERM EXPOSURE TO EXTREMELY LOW‐FREQUENCY MAGNETIC FIELDS IMPAIRS SPATIAL RECOGNITION MEMORY IN MICE

1 In the present study, we investigated the short‐ and long‐term effects of extremely low‐frequency (ELF) magnetic fields on spatial recognition memory in mice by using a two‐trial recognition Y‐maze that is based on the innate tendency of rodents to explore novel environments. 2 Mice were exposed to 25 or 50 Hz electromagnetic fields for either 7 (short term) or 25 days (long term) and then tested in the Y‐maze. 3 The results indicated that neither short‐ nor long‐term exposure to magnetic fields affected the locomotor activity of mice in the Y‐maze. However, long‐term exposure to 50 Hz fields reduced recognition of the novel arm. 4 Our findings suggest that ELF magnetic fields impair spatial recognition memory in the Y‐maze depending on the field strength and/or duration of exposure.
A national conference to determine research priorities in pediatric solid organ transplantation

Abstract: The need for evidence‐based practice guidelines requires high quality, carefully controlled clinical research trials. This multidisciplinary conference attempted to: identify urgent clinical and research issues, identify obstacles to performing clinical trials, develop concepts for organ‐specific and all‐organ research and generate a report that would serve as a blueprint for future research initiatives. A few themes became evident. First, young children present a unique immunologic environment which may lead to tolerance, therefore, including young children in immunosuppression withdrawal and tolerance trials may increase the potential benefits of these studies. Second, adolescence poses significant barriers to successful transplantation. Non‐adherence may be insufficient to explain poorer outcomes. More studies focused on identification and prevention of non‐adherence, and the potential effects of puberty are required. Third, the relatively naive immune system of the child presents a unique opportunity to study primary infections and alloimmune responses. Finally, relatively small numbers of transplants performed in pediatric centers mandate multicenter collaboration. Investment in registries, tissue and DNA repositories will enhance productivity. The past decade has proven that outcomes after pediatric transplantation can be comparable to adults. The pediatric community now has the opportunity to design and complete studies that enhance outcomes for all transplant recipients.
Evaluation of BAT-26 as an indicator of microsatellite instability in gallbladder carcinomas.

BACKGROUND/AIMS The genetic pathways of gallbladder cancer are not yet well defined, since the contribution of genetic abnormalities, clarified in other organs, remains questionable. Our aim was to evaluate the role of microsatellite instability in this organs carcinogenesis. METHODOLOGY We investigated a group of 20 gallbladder carcinomas from Greek patients with regard to alterations in length of the BAT-26 mononucleotide marker--as an indicator of microsatellite instability. The findings were correlated with the presence of p53 and ras mutations, alterations of the bax and TGF-beta RII genes and tumors' clinicopathological features. Polymerase chain reaction and electrophoretic analysis in a non-denaturating 25% polyacrylamide gel was performed for the detection of BAT-26 size variations. RESULTS None of our specimens showed microsatellite instability at the BAT-26 marker. CONCLUSIONS BAT-26, an indicator of high-level microsatellite instability, may not be sufficient, when used alone, for determining the microsatellite instability status of gallbladder carcinomas, since these may be characterized by low-level instability. Bax and TGF-beta RII genes may not also be targets of instability in this type of tumors.
Behavioral Assessment and Treatment of Social Phobia

This article provides an empirically derived description of social phobia, including onset, prevalence, comorbidity, and issues of differential diagnosis. Assessment and behavioral treatment strategies for social phobia are reviewed. It was not until the past few years that structured clinical interviews and self-report inventories have been developed with adequate reliability and validity to specifically assess social phobia. Thus much of the treatment outcome research is confounded with heterogeneous samples that make generalization of results difficult to interpret. Heterogeneity of samples, lack of controlled comparisons with adequate statistical power to detect treatment differences, and inconsistent findings do not permit the drawing of any definitive conclusions concerning the efficacy of behavioral treatment procedures at this time. More treatment comparison studies for social phobia need to be perfonmed using structured clinical interviews and standardized assessment devices specific for use with social phobia. Pre hoc power analyses should be performed to determine the number of subjects deemed adequate to detect differences when performing comparison studies. Assessment and treatment of social phobia with children is conspicuously nonexistent. Assessment and treatment procedures for social phobia need to be developed and standardized with children.
Sorption and dialysis experiments to assess the binding of phenolic xenobiotics to dissolved organic matter in soil

The binding of two phenolic compounds, nonylphenol (NP) and bisphenol A (BPA), and the herbicide metabolite hydroxydesethyl terbuthylazine (HDT) to dissolved organic matter (DOM) as well as its impact on the environmental fate of the compounds in soil have been investigated. In sorption studies with an acidic silty loam soil and a neutral loam soil, no impact of added DOM on adsorption and desorption coefficients was observed. Adsorption coefficients normalized to soil organic carbon (Koc) of the compounds on the loamy silt soil spanned three orders of magnitude: 90, 890, and 9,140 L/kg for HDT, BPA, and NP, respectively. Significantly lower Koc values for HDT on the neutral loam soil as compared to the acidic loamy silt soil indicated additional polar interactions between the latter and the basic herbicide metabolite. In dialysis experiments with fulvic acid from silty loam soil (FA) and peat humic acid (HA), a formation of analyte‐DOM associates was observed only for HA. The degree of association was characterized by distribution coefficients normalized to the dissolved organic carbon concentration (KDOC). Values for NP (8,970 L/kg) and BPA (860 L/kg) corresponded with the respective soil sorption coefficients, suggesting similar binding mechanisms in both cases.
Predicting protein complex geometries with a neural network

A major challenge of the protein docking problem is to define scoring functions that can distinguish near‐native protein complex geometries from a large number of non‐native geometries (decoys) generated with noncomplexed protein structures (unbound docking). In this study, we have constructed a neural network that employs the information from atom‐pair distance distributions of a large number of decoys to predict protein complex geometries. We found that docking prediction can be significantly improved using two different types of polar hydrogen atoms. To train the neural network, 2000 near‐native decoys of even distance distribution were used for each of the 185 considered protein complexes. The neural network normalizes the information from different protein complexes using an additional protein complex identity input neuron for each complex. The parameters of the neural network were determined such that they mimic a scoring funnel in the neighborhood of the native complex structure. The neural network approach avoids the reference state problem, which occurs in deriving knowledge‐based energy functions for scoring. We show that a distance‐dependent atom pair potential performs much better than a simple atom‐pair contact potential. We have compared the performance of our scoring function with other empirical and knowledge‐based scoring functions such as ZDOCK 3.0, ZRANK, ITScore‐PP, EMPIRE, and RosettaDock. In spite of the simplicity of the method and its functional form, our neural network‐based scoring function achieves a reasonable performance in rigid‐body unbound docking of proteins. Proteins 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Governments and Corporate Social Responsibility: Public Policies Beyond Regulation and Voluntary Compliance

Introduction Governments and corporate social responsibility: context, aim and perspectives A relational governance approach to analysing public policies on corporate social responsibility European Union: from the Green Paper to the European Alliance on CSR The Partnership model: Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden The Business in the Community model: the UK and Ireland The Sustainability and Citizenship model: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg The Agora model: Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, The role of international and intermediary organisations Conclusion
Adaptive optoelectronic filter for improved optical single sideband generation

An optoelectronic filter to generate optical single sideband (OSSB) signals from carrier-unsuppressed modulations is experimentally shown. Sideband suppression is achieved by applying a phase modulation to the optical input signal, resulting in null intensity distortion on the filtered signal and suppression of one of the sidebands. Additionally, the proposed filter ability to generate OSSB signals is wavelength independent. These properties are experimentally shown at 10 Gb/s. Sideband suppression above 18 dB is obtained at 5 GHz apart the optical carrier, with variations not exceeding 2 dB along a wavelength band of more than 25 nm. An eye opening penalty of 4 dB is obtained after transmission along 160 km of standard single-mode fiber.
Standing apart together? Common traits of (new) challenger parties in the Italian parliament

Following the 2018 election and a long phase of negotiations, Lega and the Five Star Movement (FSM) appointed the first cabinet in Western Europe that does not include any mainstream party family. The ‘elective affinities’ between the electorates of these two challenger parties had been quite evident for some time, but in the present work we argue that there are further traits that the two parties had shared well before 2018 that could help to further prove their proximity. We propose a new dimension of analysis that should be taken into consideration when studying (new) challenger parties: their relationship vis-a-vis the other opposition parties. We would expect them to enter parliament for the first time with both the goals usually related to the two different opposition status (temporary vs. permanent) in mind: leaving the opposition and exploiting the opposition. Furthermore, we would expect them to stand apart from the other parties, no matter whether the latter are in government or in opposition. This is, in fact, one of the main reasons for their electoral success and, in the end, their essence. We will test these expectations by employing Social Network Analysis methods and analysing and comparing the cooperation attitudes of the Lega and FSM with the other opposition parties, using as an indicator the amount of legislative co-sponsorship during their first term in parliament (respectively 1992-1994 and 2013-2018) and the amount passed together while in opposition (2013-2018).
Non-interest income and bank performance during the financial crisis

ABSTRACT This article investigates how the non-interest income influences risk and return of U.S. bank holding companies during the financial crisis of 2007–2009, based on the bank-level panel data. Our analysis shows that the non-interest incomes have a positive impact on bank risk and return during the crisis period. Furthermore, non-interest incomes related to nontraditional activities such as trading and investment banking activities have an insignificant impact on bank risk and returns. This study suggests that non-interest income is not the source of bank instability and low returns during the financial crisis.
A classification scheme for productivity management in e-commerce services

ABSTRACT This paper investigates service classification schemes in order to understand how to increase productivity in services. A useful model for this purpose is the one proposed by Schmenner in 2004. However, this model is limited to traditional services, and it does not consider the unique characteristics of e-commerce business, which create new trends in productivity management. Accordingly, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to develop a classification scheme, which would be suitable for e-commerce services. Based on this research, a multidimensional model is proposed splitting the Schmenner’s ‘degree of variation’ dimension into two axes: degree of interaction with customers and degree of customisation for customers. In addition to these theoretical contributions to Schmenner’s matrix, the SLR complements the previous reviews presented by authors such as Cook, D. P., Goh, C. , & Chung, C. H. (1999. Service typologies : A state of the art survey. Production and Operations Management, 8(3), 318–338) and Van der Valk, W. , & Axelsson, B. (2015. Towards a managerially useful approach to classifying services. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 21(2), 113–124). The value of this paper to managers is the recognition of differences in productivity management between these two types of services: managers can overcome the traditional trade-off cost versus customisation and explore e-commerce to increase their profits while increasing customisation for their customers. Moreover, the model proposed in this paper can be used to assist organisations in strategic planning and service portfolio management.