Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Soft tissue response to zirconia and titanium implant abutments: an in vivo within-subject comparison.

AIM To compare the health of the soft tissues towards zirconia and titanium abutments in man, as observed using histological data. MATERIAL AND METHODS Twenty patients received two mandibular implants with either a zirconia or titanium abutment (split mouth study design, left-right randomization). After 3 months soft tissue biopsies were prepared for histological evaluation. They were subjected to blind evaluation. The number of blood vessels per surface unit and an inflammation grading scale score ranging from 1 to 4 were determined. RESULTS Paired samples from 17 patients were suitable for analysis, 3 with unsevered implant-abutment connections and 14 solely containing soft tissue. All showed a well-keratinized stratified squamous epithelium which was continuous with the barrier (junctional) epithelium that faced the abutment surface. The normal epithelial build-up could be recognized with little signs of inflammation. No statistically significant difference in tissues adjacent to zirconia and titanium abutment surfaces were seen with respect to vascular density (20.5 SD 4.4 and 20.7 SD 3.2) or inflammation grading scale scores (3.2 SD 0.7 versus 3.1 SD 0.7). CONCLUSION No differences in soft tissue health were seen in peri-implant mucosa adjacent to zirconia and titanium abutment surfaces.
From diffusion to defusion: the roots and effects of environmental innovation in New Zealand

In recent years, the diffusion of environmental policy innovations has become a topic of considerable interest. Often, studies of diffusion portray it in positive terms, as a process of ‘policy learning’ or the spread of environmental ‘best practice’. Such portrayals, which tend to ignore the political-ideological roots of environmental policy innovation and diffusion, contribute to the depoliticisation of environmental (and sustainable development) decision-making. In particular, the spread of neo-liberal ideology has provided a basis for environmental policy innovations that, under the guise of ‘objectivity’, tilt the ‘playing field’ further to the advantage of dominant interests. Thus, the challenging political, economic and social issues generated by the environmental policy and sustainable development debates, which have the potential to re-politicise economic policy (the ‘Washington Consensus’), are side-stepped. As environmental decision-making is devolved to ‘the market’, local government, experts, and the courts, the environmental ‘threat’ is defused. It is this effect that makes the New Zealand innovations attractive to the governments of other countries, especially those with an adversarial political system. The article analyses the neoliberal roots, and effects, of New Zealand's environmental innovations to demonstrate the argument.
Fiscal Policy Tracking Design in the Time Frequency Domain Using Wavelet Analysis

In this paper discrete wavelet filtering techniques are applied to decompose macroeconomic data so that they can be simultaneously analyzed in both the time and frequency domains. The MODWT (Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform) is applied to U.S. quarterly GDP data from 1947–2012 to obtain the underlying cyclical structure of the GDP components. A MATLAB program is then used to design optimal fiscal policy within a LQ-tracking model with wavelet decomposition, and the results are compared with an aggregate model with no frequency decomposition. The results show that fiscal policy is more active under the wavelet-based model, and that the consumption and investment trajectories under the aggregate model are misaligned. We also simulate FHEC (Frequency Harmonizing Emphasis Control) strategies that allow policymakers to concentrate the policy thrust on tracking frequencies that are optimally aligned with policy goals under different targeting priorities. These strategies are only available by using time-frequency analysis. This research is the first to construct fiscal policy in an applied optimal control model on the short and cyclical lag structures obtained from wavelet analysis. Our wavelet-based optimal control procedure allows the policymaker to construct a pragmatic tracking policy, avoid suboptimal policies gleaned from an aggregate model, and reduce the potential for destabilization that might otherwise result due to improper thrust and timing. Keywords: LQ tracking, macroeconomics, optimal control, discrete wavelet analysis, fiscal policy
The effects of common peroneal stimulation on the effort and speed of walking: a randomized controlled trial with chronic hemiplegic patients

Objective: To measure the effect of the Odstock Dropped Foot Stimulator (ODFS), a common peroneal stimulator, on the effort and speed of walking. Design: A randomized controlled trial. Subjects: Hemiplegic patients who had suffered a single stroke at least six months prior to the start of the trial whose walking was impaired by a drop-foot. Interventions: The treatment, functional electrical stimulation (FES) group, used the stimulator and received a course of physiotherapy; the control group received physiotherapy alone. Main outcome measures: Changes in walking speed measured over 10 m and the effort of walking measured by physiological cost index (PCI). Results: Thirty-two subjects completed the trial, 16 in the FES group and 16 in the control group. Mean increase in walking speed between the beginning and end of the trial was 20.5% in the FES group (when the stimulator was used), and 5.2% in the control group. Improvement was also measured in PCI with a reduction of 24.9% in the FES group (when the stimulator was used) and 1 % in the control group. No improvement in these parameters was measured in the FES group when the stimulator was not used. Conclusion: Walking was statistically significantly improved when the ODFS was worn but no 'carry-over' was measured. Physiotherapy alone, in this group of subjects with established stroke, did not improve walking.
Vehicle-Assist Resilient Information and Network System for Disaster Management

After big disasters, a damaged area can be out of contact because of severe damage of existing network infrastructures. Meanwhile, high demands for network connections to the disaster area will arise to collect damage information and disseminate rescue instructions. In this paper, we design a vehicle-assist resilient information and network system for disaster management, despite of the Internet unavailability. It contains three main components: (1) smartphone apps that provide functions of SOS reporting, life and medical resources request/provision, and safe road navigation; (2) mobile stations that assist data exchange between smartphone apps and servers; (3) geo-distributed servers that collect user data, conduct distributed data analysis, and make disaster management decisions. Since the vehicle-assist network is critical to connect isolated smartphones and servers, we continue to study the scheduling problem of mobile stations. Given a number of disaster management tasks, such as sensing, information collection, and message dissemination, we propose online algorithms that schedules mobile stations for disaster management tasks with the objective of maximizing the total weight of finished tasks, without any knowledge of future task arrivals. We derive the competitive ratio of our proposed algorithms and conduct extensive simulations for performance evaluation.
Criteria for diagnosing Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease evolves slowly, and there is current interest in exploring the earliest stages of the disorder, because of new approaches to studying pathogenesis and developing potential neuroprotective treatment. Recognizing early Parkinson's disease is not easy. The certainty of diagnosis increases as the disease advances. To address the problem of identifying Parkinson's disease in its initial phases of clinical expression, we propose the following designated levels of confidence for the diagnosis: (1) clinically possible, (2) clinically probable, and (3) clinically definite. Laboratory support for the diagnosis may be applied to each category. Criteria are provided as a framework underpinning this classification.
The Doctor Might See You Now: The Supply Side Effects of Public Health Insurance Expansions

In the United States, public health insurance programs cover over 90 million individuals. Changes in the scope of these programs, such as the Medicaid expansions under the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, may have large effects on physician behavior. This study finds that following the implementation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, physicians decreased the number of hours spent with patients, but increased their participation in the expanded program. Suggestive evidence is found that this decrease in hours was a result of shorter office visits. These findings are consistent with the predictions from a mixed-economy model of physician behavior with public and private payers and also provide evidence of crowd out resulting from the creation of SCHIP.
The utilisation of the Internet to market small tourism businesses

The tourism sector has been identified as an industry that has the potential to make a substantial contribution to the growth of the South African economy. The majority of tourism ventures are, however, small businesses, which differ from their larger counterparts not only in terms of size, but also in regard to access to resources and marketing expertise. Not surprisingly, one of the issues identified as preventing this sector from reaching its full potential is access to markets. The Internet has been identified as tool which may assist small businesses in both their global and domestic marketing. The focus of this study was to identify the factors specific to the Internet (rather than the technology per se or organisational factors) driving the success of the use of the Internet for marketing purposes in small businesses operating in the tourism sector in South Africa. If these factors can be identified and their relative influence on Internet marketing success be determined, it will allow small tourism businesses utilise the capabilities of the Internet more effectively. The results indicate that having a product champion in the business, having a network of effective alliances, a high level of owner-manager involvement in the Internet marketing strategy as well as a clear owner-manager vision are important to the successful use of the Internet for the marketing of small tourism businesses in South Africa.
Personalized medicine for high blood pressure.

“One important characteristic of biology is its diversity, its variation. It’s why personalized medicine is so important. ”1 Personalized medicine refers to the use of diagnostic and screening methods that exploit knowledge of the patient’s unique molecular or risk profile to achieve optimal health and medical outcome through improved management of the patient’s disease or predisposition toward a disease. High blood pressure (hypertension) is the most common modifiable risk factor for vascular disease,2 which in turn accounts for more morbidity and mortality than any other category of disease. This invited review attempts to explain why individualized approaches are imperative to improve the detection, evaluation, treatment, and prevention of hypertension; to recount the history of the pursuit of this “holy grail”; and to propose approaches to overcoming the many obstacles to realization of personalized medicine for hypertension. Ischemia of vital organs, especially the brain, heart, and kidneys, causes most of the morbidity and mortality associated with hypertension. Arteriosclerosis is the disease process, encompassing two main patterns, atherosclerosis and arteriolosclerosis, that contribute to thickening of arterial walls, reduction of lumen diameters, and impairment of blood supply leading to ischemia, dysfunction, and ultimately failure of target organs. Because increased resistance to blood flow, ie, the primary vascular disorder of hypertension, involves medial thickening and consequent luminal narrowing in small, muscular arteries and end-arterioles, hypertension emerges as the strongest risk factor, after age, for arteriolosclerotic manifestations of target organ complications3 (Table). View this table: Shift From Atherosclerotic To Arteriolosclerotic Disease Burden in an Aging Population Whereas mortality attributable to heart attack and stroke are declining, the incidence and prevalence of heart failure and kidney failure are rising.3 Diabetes and hypertension are the two disorders that account for most of the increase in kidney failure, mainly through consequences of arteriolosclerosis. Likewise, coronary arteriolosclerosis may play …
P1 plasmid replication: measurement of initiator protein concentration in vivo

To study the functions of the mini-P1 replication initiation protein RepA quantitatively, we have developed a method to measure RepA concentration by using immunoblotting. In vivo, there are about 20 RepA dimers per unit-copy plasmid DNA. RepA was deduced to be a dimer from gel filtration of the purified protein. Since there are 14 binding sites of the protein per replicon, the physiological concentration of the protein appears to be sufficiently low to be a rate-limiting factor for replication. Autoregulation is apparently responsible for the low protein level; at the physiological concentration of the protein, the repA promoter retains only 0.1% of its full activity as determined by gene fusions to lacZ. When the concentration is further decreased by a factor of 3 or increased by a factor of 40, replication is no longer detectable.
Gene expression, dose-response, and phenotypic anchoring: applications for toxicogenomics in risk assessment.

There are a number of ways in which global analysis of gene expression may be useful in improving the way we assess the risk of chemical agents, especially at the concentrations to which people are likely to be exposed. The methodology for assessing changes in gene expression is quite sensitive: most of the methods in use today have attomolar or even sub-attomolar sensitivity. That sensitivity, coupled with the observation that virtually all toxic responses are accompanied by changes in gene expression, suggests that it is possible to use gene expression analysis to determine whether responses at the molecular level continue to occur at dose levels below those that produce frankly adverse effects. This kind of information will be extremely important in addressing controversies about the likelihood of occurrence of those adverse effects at ambient exposure levels.
Effects of Pulmonary Vein Ablation on Regional Atrial Vagal Innervation and Vulnerability to Atrial Fibrillation in Dogs

Introduction: Pulmonary vein (PV) isolation has proven to be an effective therapy for atrial fibrillation (AF). However, clinical evidence suggests that suppression of AF after PV isolation could not be fully attributed to the interruption of electrical conduction in and out of the PVs. Furthermore, little is known regarding the effects of ablation around the PVs on the atrial electrophysiological properties. We aimed to study the changes in atrial response to vagal stimulation (VS) after PV ablation (PVA).
Auctions versus Negotiations

Which is the more profitable way to sell a company: an auction with no reserve price or an optimally structured negotiation with one less bidder? The authors show, under reasonable assumptions, that the auction is always preferable when bidders' signals are independent. For affiliated signals, the result holds under certain restrictions on the seller's choice of negotiating mechanism. The result suggests that the value of negotiating skill is small relative to the value of additional competition. The paper also shows how the analogies between monopoly theory and auction theory can help derive new results in auction theory. Copyright 1996 by American Economic Association.
Employer size–wage effects: evidence from matched employer–employee survey data in the UK

This paper employs a random sample of matched employer–employee data from the UK to test seven possible explanations for the positive relationship between employer size and pay. Individual wage equations show a large employer size–wage premium. We then control for a range of establishment-level variables, based on seven hypotheses typically advanced to explain this premium. Each establishment-level factor reduces the wage premium, but a sizeable premium nonetheless remains. In adjudicating on these hypotheses, we find a strong association between the internal labour market and the employer size–wage premium. This finding supports the theory that the employer size–wage effect may be due to the higher costs of turnover or monitoring in larger firms. However, we find contrasting effects for public versus private sector establishments.
One‐stop shops: Increasing employability and overcoming welfare state fragmentation?

The fragmentation of social security systems has emerged as a policy problem in Western Europe, resulting in the emergence of integrated service models, for example so-called one-stop shops. Bridging several policy domains, integrated services can be assumed to affect the institutional structure of benefits and services, such as entitlement criteria, target groups or governance processes. This article focuses on integrated service models that provide benefits and services to unemployed people who are receiving either social assistance or unemployment compensation. Recent reforms in Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK are analysed from both an organisational and a labour market perspective. The analysis shows that integrated service provision entails the risk of introducing stricter work conditionality for broad and vulnerable groups without fulfilling the promises of seamless services.
How to Govern Business Services Exchanges: Contractual and Relational Issues

With firms concentrating on core competencies, more emphasis has been placed on outsourcing and the dealing with external sourcing agents. This has lead to a stronger academic focus on buyer-seller exchanges and the corresponding mechanisms for governing these exchanges. This paper gives an overview of previous research investigating the exchange governance phenomenon based on transaction cost theory or cooperative interorganizational relationships. The results reveal that few research studies have investigated the overall picture of exchange governance, including both contractual and relational governance and taking into account antecedents as well as performance outcomes of the governance mechanisms involved. Moreover, despite the service-dominant logic shift, limited attention is given to specific service characteristics and their impact on exchange governance. In this paper, we attempt to meld economic and social related antecedents into a model with regard to exchange governance in business services settings. Contractual and relational governance issues and their impact on performance outcomes are also considered. The resulting model indicates that to efficiently govern business services exchanges, more emphasis should be placed on behavioral uncertainty, human and process asset specificity and contractual governance. We conclude the paper by discussing several directions for future research.
Why do students study abroad? Exploring motivations beyond earning academic credits.

The purpose of this study was to examine motivations of college students' participation in study abroad programs. The study is based on surveys conducted with a group of university students who participated in a study abroad program to either the South Pacific (Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji) or Europe (Austria and the Netherlands). The study results suggested four motivation domains: international travel, escape, social, and academic. Of the four motivational dimensions, the strongest was international travel, followed by academic, social, and escape. The implications of the findings to the student travel industry and study abroad programs are discussed.
Organizational Ambidexterity and Performance: A Meta-Analysis

A growing number of studies argue that organizational ambidexterity is increasingly important for the sustained competitive advantage of firms. However, organizational ambidexterity studies have been conducted in a wide variety of industries and methodological settings, and the empirical results have been mixed. The purpose of this article is to systematically examine the organizational ambidexterity–performance relationship to reconcile the mixed results of prior research. By conducting a meta-analysis of prior studies on organizational ambidexterity and performance, we find that positive and significant Organizational ambidexterity–performance relationships are to a large extent moderated by contextual factors and methodological choices: Organizational ambidexterity is particularly important for performance in nonmanufacturing industries and at higher levels of analysis. Also, the performance effects are stronger when “combined” measures of organizational ambidexterity and perceptual performance are use.
Microsurgical Correction of Facial Contour in Congenital Craniofacial Malformations: The Marriage of Hard and Soft Tissue

&NA; The correction of facial asymmetry in complex craniofacial malformations presents a challenging problem for reconstructive surgeons. Deficiencies of both the facial skeleton and the overlying soft tissue must be addressed to achieve the optimal reconstructive result. We present our experience with a minimum of 1‐year follow‐up over a 5‐year period with 19 patients who initially underwent standard facial skeletal reconstruction and subsequently required microsurgical soft‐tissue reconstructions for final correction of facial contour. From July of 1989 to June of 1994, 19 patients with craniofacial malformations underwent microsurgical correction of facial contour using 21 free flaps. The underlying malformations included 15 hemifacial microsomias, 2 orbitofacial clefts, 1 congenital temporomandibular joint ankylosis with micrognathia, and 1 Tessier no. 30 (lower midline mandibular) cleft. Sixteen patients had previous facial skeletal correction using craniofacial techniques. Age at operation ranged from 6 to 27 years. Twenty‐one microvascular flaps were used on the 19 patients: 19 deepithelialized parascapular flaps, 1 superficial inferior epigastric flap, and 1 fibula with soleus muscle and large skin paddle for a severe Tessier no. 30 facial cleft with severe micrognathia. Of the 15 patients with hemifacial microsomia, 10 were treated with parascapular fasciocutaneous flaps, 3 with parascapular flaps with bone, 1 with a parascapular flap with teres major muscle for additional bulk, and 1 with a superficial inferior epigastric flap. Complications were two limited hematomas drained at the bedside and a partial skin paddle slough of the fibula flap. Correction of facial contour in complex craniofacial malformations is possible using microsurgical techniques. These free flaps “camouflage” the underlying skeletal deformity that persists despite traditional skeletal reconstruction while restoring symmetrical facial contour. We recommend the marriage of both skeletal and microsurgical soft‐tissue reconstructions to achieve the optimal aesthetic result for craniofacial contouring in these challenging patients.