Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arbitrage in Closed-end Funds: New Evidence

Arbitrage pressures that could equalize closed-end fund share prices with fund portfolio values appear to be largely absent in an extensive data set. Observed fund behavior violates the static arbitrage bounds of Gemmill and Thomas (2002) and is inconsistent with the dynamic arbitrage bounds of Pontiff (1996). Furthermore, Fama and French (1992) regressions run on arbitrage portfolios designed to profit from closed-end fund mispricings generate excess returns that are either significantly negative or insignificantly different from zero, suggesting that arbitrageurs lack a profit incentive. If arbitrage is absent, observed fund pricing behavior likely reflects changing investor sentiment about fund prospects.
Management strategies in geriatric depression by primary care physicians and factors associated with the use of psychiatric services: A naturalistic study

Approximately 10% of elderly patients in primary care have depression yet it is often under-diagnosed and under-treated. It is unclear exactly how patients are being managed in primary care or what factors are associated with referral to psychiatric services. This study aimed to establish in a naturalistic setting how older depressed patients are managed in primary care; to determine which patients are referred to psychiatric services and the differences between patients referred and those not; in terms of primary care consultation rate and degree of co-morbid illness. Computerised records and referral letters were read for 1089 elderly patients in a large practice in central Manchester, UK. Of the 9% identified as depressed, 90% were managed in primary care alone, a third without antidepressants. More than half of those prescribed antidepressants received tricyclic antidepressants. Suicidal ideation and treatment failure were the principle reasons for referral. Patients referred had a greater psychiatric co-morbidity and had consulted their GP more frequently in the past year. Management of depression in the elderly may be conservative and older antidepressants may be over-prescribed. Increased primary care consultation rate and a greater psychiatric co-morbidity may be associated with referral to psychiatric services.
Biology and ethology of Triatoma dimidiata (Latreille, 1811). II. Life span of adults and fecundity and fertility of females.

Mean egg production by Triatoma dimidiata females fed every 2 weeks varied from 1025.2 to 1301.1. A single female laid up to 31 eggs per day (mean between 15.4 and 18.5) and up to 2054 during the entire period of life. Mean life span of females ranged from 629.8 to 789.4 and for the males from 566.9 to 688.5. In both cases there were great individual variations; maximum life span reached 3 years. Mean values for egg hatching were between 88.1 and 91.1%. All these properties do not seem to be affected by an infection of the insect with Schizotrypanum cruzi , but egg production is apparently decreased when the intervals between blood meals are longer. Comparative experiments on egg production and fertility, and life span of adults between T. dimidiata and the South American T. infestans gave much lower figures for the latter species. A group of 4 T. dimidiata females in which fertility was observed after death of the male still laid from 7 to 641 fertile eggs. Unfed adults laid eggs that occasionally were fertile. Virgin females with a previous blood meal laid infertile eggs and females mated only once and fed regularly laid up to 279 fertile eggs (mean 77.9). Transmission of S. cruzi by coitus between infected males and clean females or vice versa does not occur. The extremely high fecundity and egg fertility of T. dimidiata suggest a compensatory mechanism for a very long nymphal cycle and rather low agressiveness of the nymphal instars of this species.
Scorpionate-type coordination in MFU-4l metal-organic frameworks: small-molecule binding and activation upon the thermally activated formation of open metal sites.

Postsynthetic metal and ligand exchange is a versatile approach towards functionalized MFU-4l frameworks. Upon thermal treatment of MFU-4l formates, coordinatively strongly unsaturated metal centers, such as zinc(II) hydride or copper(I) species, are generated selectively. Cu(I)-MFU-4l prepared in this way was stable under ambient conditions and showed fully reversible chemisorption of small molecules, such as O2, N2, and H2, with corresponding isosteric heats of adsorption of 53, 42, and 32 kJ mol(-1), respectively, as determined by gas-sorption measurements and confirmed by DFT calculations. Moreover, Cu(I)-MFU-4l formed stable complexes with C2H4 and CO. These complexes were characterized by FTIR spectroscopy. The demonstrated hydride transfer to electrophiles and strong binding of small gas molecules suggests these novel, yet robust, metal-organic frameworks with open metal sites as promising catalytic materials comprising earth-abundant metal elements.
The roles of insulin and glucagon in the regulation of hepatic glycogen synthesis and turnover in humans.

To determine the respective roles of insulin and glucagon for hepatic glycogen synthesis and turnover, hyperglycemic clamps were performed with somatostatin [0.1 micrograms/(kg.min)] in healthy young men under conditions of: (I) basal fasting) portal vein insulinemia-hypoglucagonemia, (II) basal portal vein insulinemia-basal glucagonemia, and (III) basal peripheral insulinemia-hypoglucagonemia. Synthetic rates, pathway (direct versus indirect) contributions, and percent turnover of hepatic glycogen were assessed by in vivo 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy during [1-13C]glucose infusion followed by a natural abundance glucose chase in conjunction with acetaminophen to noninvasively sample the hepatic UDP-glucose pool. In the presence of hyperglycemia (10.4 +/- 0.1 mM) and basal portal vein insulinemia (192 +/- 6 pM), suppression of glucagon secretion (plasma glucagon, I:31 +/- 4, II: 63 +/- 8 pg/ml) doubled the hepatic accumulation of glycogen (Vsyn) compared with conditions of basal glucagonemia [I: 0.40 +/- 0.06, II: 0.19 +/- 0.03 mumol/(liter.min): P < 0.0025]. Glycogen turnover was markedly reduced (I: 19 +/- 7%, II: 69 +/- 12%; P < 0.005), so that net rate of glycogen synthesis increased approximately fivefold (P < 0.001) by inhibition of glucagon secretion. The relative contribution of gluconeogenesis (indirect pathway) to glycogen synthesis was lower during hypoglucagonemia (42 +/- 6%) than during basal glucagonemia (54 +/- 5%; P < 0.005). Under conditions of basal peripheral insulinemia (54 +/- 2 pM) and hypoglucagonemia (III) there was negligible hepatic glycogen synthesis and turnover. In conclusion, small changes in portal vein concentrations of insulin and glucagon independently affect hepatic glycogen synthesis and turnover. Inhibition of glucagon secretion under conditions of hyperglycemia and basal concentrations of insulin results in: (a) twofold increase in rate of hepatic glycogen synthesis, (b) reduction of glycogen turnover by approximately 73%, and (c) augmented percent contribution of the direct pathway to glycogen synthesis compared with conditions of basal glucagonemia.
Retinoic Acid Exacerbates Experimental Radiation Nephropathy

Abstract Moulder, J. E. , Fish, B. L. , Regner, K. R. , Cohen, E. P. and Raife, T. J. Retinoic Acid Exacerbates Experimental Radiation Nephropathy. Radiat. Res. 157, 199–203 (2002). Studies have shown that angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and an angiotensin II receptor blocker can delay, but cannot reverse, the progression of experimentally induced radiation nephropathy. In an effort to find a method for reversing injury, three agents were tested in a rat model of radiation nephropathy. Pirfenidone (a phenyl-pyridone antifibrotic) and thiaproline (an inhibitor of collagen deposition) were not capable of retarding the development of radiation nephropathy. However, all-trans retinoic acid (an anti-inflammatory agent) exacerbated radiation nephropathy. We speculated that the detrimental effects of retinoic acid might be the result of stimulation of renal cell proliferation. However, retinoic acid had no effect on tubular or glomerular cell proliferation in normal animals and did not enhance radiation-induced proliferation. A recent report that retinoic acids inhibit nitric oxide production suggested an alternative mechanism, since inhibition of production of nitric oxide is known to exacerbate radiation nephropathy. Experiments demonstrated that retinoic acid exacerbated the radiation-induced drop in renal production of nitric oxide, suggesting that the detrimental effect of all-trans retinoic acid might be explained by inhibition of renal nitric oxide activity. Particularly in view of the recent clinical report of enhancement of radiation nephropathy by retinoic acid in patients receiving bone marrow transplantation, the combination of retinoic acid and renal irradiation should be carried out with great caution.
Maintenance treatment in metastatic breast cancer

Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) occurs in 20–30% of women with breast cancer and is an incurable disease. Treatment is palliative and directed to prolong survival, decrease symptoms and improve patients’ quality of life. For patients with hormone receptor-negative disease or for hormone receptor-positive disease that has become resistant to endocrine therapy, or is progessing rapidly and life threatening, cytotoxic chemotherapy is indicated. However, the optimal duration of chemotherapy treatment for MBC is still a matter of debate. Studies using maintenance chemotherapy regimens standard in the 1990s showed a consistent benefit with a more prolonged time to progression, although an improvement in survival was only demonstrated in one study. Two recent trials with newer cytotoxic agents showed controversial results; whereas one study concluded that the policy of prolonging treatment in chemotherapy-sensitive patients, after aggressive, modern combination chemotherapy, cannot be recommended for women with MBC, the other study showed that maintenance therapy with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin significantly prolonged time to progression in MBC patients after first-line chemotherapy without significant clinical toxicity. Initial data regarding metronomic chemotherapy indicate that continuously low-dose cyclophosphamide and methotrexate is minimally toxic and effective in heavily pretreated breast cancer patients. In daily practice, maintenance chemotherapy is a reasonable strategy that prolongs time to progression in patients with MBC who did not show progression after first-line chemotherapy. However, this benefit should be considered together with toxicities of treatment and the patient’s preference.
Final Report of a Prospective Study of Children whose Mothers had Rubella in Early Pregnancy

Skin Disinfection-Lowbury et al. to Berk Pharmaceuticals Ltd. for supplies of povidone-iodine; and to Messrs. Allen & Hanburys for supplies of laurolinium acetate. A controlled prospective inquiry regarding the effects of rubella and other virus infections in pregnancy, beginning early in 1950 and ending in December 1952, and sponsored by the Ministry of Health, was fully reported by Manson, Logan, and Loy (1960). The total number of pregnancies complicated by rubella available for analysis was 578. The controls numbered 5,717. Follow-up of the infants showed that when rubella occurred during the first 16 weeks of pregnancy the incidence of congenital abnormalities in the children was significantly raised. When the infection occurred after the 16th week the incidence of abnormalities in the children of the rubella mothers was no higher than in the controls. The number of pregnancies complicated by rubella in the first 16 weeks was 279. Of these, 11 ended in abortion and 11 in stillbirth, and 16 cfildren died before 2 years of age, leaving 241 in the original group. A number of medical officers of health continued to send in records of children born in 1953 whose mothers had been notified for rubella before the end of 1952. Since these cases fulfilled the criteria laid down by Logan (1951), a further 18 infants whose mothers had rubella in the first 16 weeks of pregnancy were added to the original group. This gave a final total of 259 children available for assessment at 2 years, by which age it had been anticipated that all major abnormalities would have been diagnosed. This examination is designated No. 1 in Table I. In order to check the possibility of hitherto unidentified defects, however, full paediatric and otological examination of 57 "early rubella" children and 57 controls living in the London and Middlesex areas was undertaken in 1956-7 by Jackson and Fisch (1958), the children concerned being then between the ages of 3 and 6 years. The results of their inquiry indicated that the proportion of children suffering from significant hearing loss had been underestimated at the original examination. It was therefore considered advisable to extend the inquiry to " early rubella " children living in the rest of the country. Reports for 237 children were received and the results were included in the report of Manson et al. (1960). This examination Is designated No. 2 in Table I. Finally, in order …
Addressing the effects of Salmonella internalization in host cell signaling on a reverse‐phase protein array

Through acute enteric infection, Salmonella invades host enterocytes and reproduces intracellularly into specialized vacuolae. This involves changes in host cell signaling elicited by bacterial proteins delivered via type III secretion systems (TTSS). One of the two TTSSs of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium encoded by the Salmonella pathogenicity island‐1, triggers bacterial internalization. Among the effector proteins translocated by this TTSS, the GTPase modulator SopE/E2 and the phosphoinositide phosphatase SigD are known to play key roles in these processes. To better understand their contribution to re‐programming host cell pathways, we used ZeptoMARK reverse‐phase protein array technology, which allows printing 32‐sample lysate arrays that can be analyzed with phospho‐specific antibodies to evaluate the phosphorylation of signaling proteins. Lysates were obtained at different times after infection of HeLa cells with WT, TTSS‐deficient, sopE/E2 and sigD single and double deletants, as well as different sigD Salmonella mutants. Our analysis detected activation of p38, JNK and ERK mitogen‐activated protein kinases, mainly dependent on SopE/E2, as well as SigD‐dependent phosphorylation of PKB/Akt and its targets GSK‐3β and FKHR/FoxO. This is the first time that reverse‐phase protein array technology is used in the cellular microbiology field, demonstrating its value to screen for host signaling events through bacterial infection.
The effects of infant media usage: what do we know and what should we learn?

The rise of infant TV viewing began in the late 1990s and has become an increasingly common occurrence. Today, over 90% of children begin watching TV regularly before the age of 2 years in spite of recommendations to the contrary. This article reviews what is known about the effects of infant TV viewing on multiple domains of child development including language, cognition and attentional capacity as well as directions for future research.
Distant Labour Supply, Skills and Induced Technical Change

To analyze the consequences of new technologies, which make it possible to employ distant labour, we model a developed country with high and medium-skilled labour interacting with an emerging market economy (EME) with medium and low-skilled labour. Expansion in labour supply induces medium-skill biased technical change, which raises the demand for such labour. As a result, inequalities tend to fall in the developed country, skill premiums rise marginally in the EME, but equality rises because labour employed in the low-skilled sector shrinks. Inequality falls across the countries since average wages, information and access rise in the EME.
Model-based survival estimates of female breast cancer data.

BACKGROUND Statistical methods are very important to precisely measure breast cancer patient survival times for healthcare management. Previous studies considered basic statistics to measure survival times without incorporating statistical modeling strategies. The objective of this study was to develop a data-based statistical probability model from the female breast cancer patients' survival times by using the Bayesian approach to predict future inferences of survival times. MATERIALS AND METHODS A random sample of 500 female patients was selected from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results cancer registry database. For goodness of fit, the standard model building criteria were used. The Bayesian approach is used to obtain the predictive survival times from the data-based Exponentiated Exponential Model. Markov Chain Monte Carlo method was used to obtain the summary results for predictive inference. RESULTS The highest number of female breast cancer patients was found in California and the lowest in New Mexico. The majority of them were married. The mean (SD) age at diagnosis (in years) was 60.92 (14.92). The mean (SD) survival time (in months) for female patients was 90.33 (83.10). The Exponentiated Exponential Model found better fits for the female survival times compared to the Exponentiated Weibull Model. The Bayesian method is used to obtain predictive inference for future survival times. CONCLUSIONS The findings with the proposed modeling strategy will assist healthcare researchers and providers to precisely predict future survival estimates as the recent growing challenges of analyzing healthcare data have created new demand for model-based survival estimates. The application of Bayesian will produce precise estimates of future survival times.
Within‐Brood Competition and the Optimal Partitioning of Parental Investment

In this article, we introduce a simple within‐brood competitive growth model that maximizes parental fitness in unpredictable food conditions in species that exhibit parental care, progressive provisioning, and an initial brood overproduction. We argue that competition between siblings may provide a proximate mechanism for parents to adjust the number of surviving offspring or the social organization of the group in social species to food conditions.
Duration of the pre‐diagnostic interval in medulloblastoma is subgroup dependent

Children presenting with medulloblastoma have a wide range of initial presenting symptoms. However, the influence of underlying tumor biology on the initial presentation of medulloblastoma is currently unknown. In light of the recent discovery of distinct medulloblastoma subgroups, we sought to define the initial presentation of childhood medulloblastoma in a subgroup specific manner.
An Empirical Study on the Influence of Non-Debt Tax Shield on the Choice of Corporate Debt Levels----Based On the Tax Preference Policy

This paper exploits the data from A- share listed corporations of China from 2008 to 2013, using the ratio of the sum of fixed assets depreciation and intangible assets amortization and R&D expenses and R&D expenses plus deduction to total assets as substitute variables of NDTS, attempts to check the impact of the non- debt tax shield on the choice of corporate debt levels, and further analyzes whether the effect of the non-debt tax shields is different in different nature of enterprise ownership or different industries. This study finds a negative and significant relationship between NDTS and corporate debt levels, which is consistent with the NDTS’s effect theory of capital structure. In addition, we further find that the effect of the non-debt tax shields has ownership nature and industry characteristics.
Throughput Analysis for the Cognitive Uplink Under Limited Primary Cooperation

This paper studies the achievable throughput performance of the cognitive uplink under a limited primary cooperation scenario wherein the primary base station cannot feed back all interference channel gains to the secondary base station. To cope with the limited primary cooperation, we propose a feedback protocol called K-out-of-N feedback protocol, in which the primary base station feeds back only the KN smallest interference channel gains, out of N of them, to the secondary base station. We characterize the throughput performance under the K-out-of-N feedback protocol by analyzing the achievable multiuser diversity gains (MDGs) in cognitive uplinks for three different network types. Our results show that the proposed feedback mechanism is asymptotically optimum for interference-limited (IL) and individual-power-and-interference-limited (IPIL) networks for a fixed positive KN. It is further shown that the secondary network throughput in the IL and IPIL networks (under both the full and limited cooperation scenarios) logarithmically scales with the number of users in the network. In total-power-and-interference-limited (TPIL) networks, on the other hand, the K-out-of-N feedback protocol is asymptotically optimum for KN = Nδ, where δ ∈ (0, 1). We also show that, in TPIL networks, the secondary network throughput under both the limited and full cooperation scales logarithmically double with the number of users in the network. These results indicate that the cognitive uplink can achieve the optimum MDG even with limited cooperation from the primary network. They also establish the dependence of pre-log throughput scaling factors on the distribution of fading channel gains for different network types.
The Managing Emergencies in Paediatric Anaesthesia global rating scale is a reliable tool for simulation‐based assessment in pediatric anesthesia crisis management

The use of simulation‐based assessments for high‐stakes physician examinations remains controversial. The Managing Emergencies in Paediatric Anaesthesia course uses simulation to teach evidence‐based management of anesthesia crises to trainee anesthetists in the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada. In this study, we investigated the feasibility and reliability of custom‐designed scenario‐specific performance checklists and a global rating scale (GRS) assessing readiness for independent practice.
Depressant Effects of Isoflurane and Halothane on Isolated Human Atrial Fibers

The present experiments were designed to study the cellular mechanism responsible for the depressant effects of halothane and isoflurane on human atrial tissues obtained at cardiac surgery. The fibers were superfused in Tyrode's solution, and transmembrane potentials were recorded with a microelectrode technique. In atrial fibers showing fast response action potential (maximum velocity of depolarization [&OV0312;max] > 100 V/s), halothane (0.75 vol%, 0.44 mM) and isoflurane (1.25 vol%, 0.53 mM) decreased slightly the upstroke velocity but depressed the plateau and twitch force significantly. In atrial fibers showing slow rate of phase-0 depolarization or when atrial fibers were depolarized in high [K]o, both halothane and isoflurane decreased the upstroke of slow response and the force. The depressant effects of anesthetics partially mimicked the actions of 1 μM tetrodotoxin and diltiazem and could be reversed by epinephrine or high [Ca]o. The delayed afterdepolarizations or aftercontractions and contracture induced by epinephrine or strophanthidin were also inhibited by both anesthetics. Halothane and isoflurane may depress normal electromechanical activity and arrhythmogenic triggered activity through a reduction of cation fluxes across the cell membrane.