Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disentangling the Theories of Firm Boundaries: A Path Model and Empirical Test

Theories on the motivation underlying firm boundaries have recently sparked renewed debate. What best explains whether a firm relies on market control or hierarchical control to secure required resources? How do the characteristics of the resources come into play? In this study, we consider a comprehensive path model of the governance mode decision for sourcing technological know-how. By integrating different perspectives on firm boundaries, including transaction cost economics, a resource-based view, and an options perspective, we link characteristics of the technology (i.e., uniqueness, barriers to imitation, commercial uncertainty, technological dynamism) to the perceived threat of opportunism, the potential for sustainable advantage, and the pursuit of a licensing agreement vis-A -vis the outright acquisition of the firm that possesses the desired know-how. We use structural equation modeling to analyze 127 sourcing arrangements. Our results show that technological dynamism and barriers to imitation indirectly influence the governance mode decision by increasing the perceived threat of opportunism. Commercial uncertainty directly influences the governance mode and decreases the likelihood of an acquisition vis-A -vis a licensing agreement. Although uniqueness and barriers to imitation are also positively associated with the perceived potential for sustainable advantage, the potential for sustainable advantage had no direct effect on governance mode. Implications and suggestions for further research are offered.
Alliance and symptom improvement in inpatient treatment for eating disorder patients: A study of within-patient processes.

OBJECTIVE This study examined the reciprocal relationship between alliance and symptoms during treatment for patients with eating disorders (ED). METHODS Ninety one patients with EDs received inpatient cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment over 14 weeks. The study used repeated measurements during treatment and collected alliance and symptom measures. The analysis separated the effects of alliance and symptoms into between- and within-patient effects in a multilevel analysis. RESULTS The results show a reciprocal relationship with between-patient alliance predicting ED symptoms and between-patient ED symptoms predicting alliance the subsequent weeks. However, for within-patient effects only alliance predicted ED symptoms the subsequent week. DISCUSSION The results nuance the effect of the alliance in this patient group, and paint a complex picture of alliance in the psychotherapy process.
Effect of Angiotensin‐Converting Enzyme Inhibitors on Arterial Stiffness in Hypertension: Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis

Arterial stiffness is an independent cardiovascular prognostic factor and is modulated by angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs). The authors performed a meta‐analysis of clinical trials investigating the effects of ACEIs on pulse wave velocity (PWV) or augmentation index. The search included randomized clinical trials as well as uncontrolled studies that measured in‐treatment changes in arterial stiffness. The authors performed separate analyses for carotid‐femoral PWV, brachioradial PWV, and augmentation index. Average absolute and relative reduction in mean arterial pressure and PWV were −15.4 mm Hg and −13.04% and −1.15 mis and ‐9.74% for carotid‐femoral PWV studies; and −11.2 mm Hg and ‐9.3% and −1.9 mis and −16.7% for brachioradial PWV studies. There was a greater reduction in augmentation index by ACEIs when compared with controls (—1.0% to −5.3%). The authors conclude that ACEIs have modest beneficial effects on arterial stiffness measured as PWV and augmentation index, and this effect is at least partly independent of changes in blood pressure.
Ureteral Stent-Associated Pain: A Review.

PURPOSE Ureteral stent-related pain is a well-known side effect of stent placement. To date, there is a paucity of resources that address this topic. Herein, we present theories on stent pain pathophysiology, summarize available pain outcome data for different stent designs, and provide an overview of the management of stent pain, including preplacement modifiers, medical management, and other considerations. MATERIALS AND METHODS This narrative review focused primarily on articles indexed in the PubMed(®), Google Scholar™, and EMBASE databases. No formal search strategy was used and no meta-analysis of data was performed. RESULTS Stent pain pathophysiology is multifactorial and likely a result of mucosal irritation along with retrograde reflux of urine. While there is a consensus on the lack of association between stent length, diameter, and stent-related flank pain, stents should be properly sized so as to prevent dislodgement. Insufficient data exist comparing stent materials and durometry. Multiple drug-eluting stents are in development and have demonstrated promising early results. Alpha-blockers have shown efficacious results and should be considered along with or in combination with anticholinergics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in the treatment of ureteral stent-related symptoms, with judicious consideration of their side effect profiles. Periureteral botulinum toxin A injections are a promising, novel treatment modality. CONCLUSIONS Ureteral stent pain is common and multiple modalities have been studied and are in clinical use for its treatment. Care should be taken to avoid placement of stents if possible, with continual reassessment of indications to maintain stents in patients. Relative heterogeneity among studies and small sample sizes make creating specific evidence-based pain management recommendations challenging. Alpha-blockers, antimuscarinics, and NSAIDs are all generally well tolerated and effectively reduce symptoms, but patient-specific factors must be the paramount consideration when choosing monotherapy or combination therapy. Future studies are needed to better define ideal material characteristics and pharmacologic treatments.
Keep calm and carry on: Maintaining self-control when intoxicated, upset, or depleted

ABSTRACT This study tested within-person associations between intoxication, negative affect, and self-control demands and two forms of self-control failure, interpersonal conflict, and neglecting responsibilities. Effortful control was hypothesised to act as a buffer, reducing individual susceptibility to these within-person effects. In contrast, reactivity was hypothesised to potentiate the within-person associations. 274 young adults aged 18–27 (56% women, 93% white) completed experience sampling assessments for up to 49 days over the course of 1.3 years. Results indicated independent within-person effects of intoxication, negative affect, and self-control demands on the outcomes. Hypothesised moderating effects of reactivity were not supported. Effortful control did not moderate the effects of self-control demands as expected. However, effortful control exhibited a protective effect when individuals were intoxicated or upset to reduce the likelihood of maladaptive behavioural outcomes.
Surface charge inversion algorithm based on bilateral surface potential measurements of cone-type spacer

To study the surface charge distribution of high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) spacers for gas insulated lines (GIL), a surface charge inversion algorithm based on surface potential measurements is necessary. However, previous studies on inversion calculation of surface charge density only considered the surface potential of one side, neglecting the effect of residual surface charge on the other side of the spacer; this leads to an inaccurate inverted surface charge distribution. In this paper, the inversion algorithm methods used to determine surface charges over the past few decades were summarized, and their advantages and disadvantages were discussed. Based on the previous charge inversion algorithms, an improved surface charge inversion algorithm considering the surface potential of both sides of a cone-type model spacer was developed. The improved method was verified experimentally using a cone-type model spacer. Compared with that obtained by previous charge inversion algorithms, the charge distribution derived from the improved algorithm was closer to the situation determined from theoretical analysis. This work has practical relevance for the surface charge measurement of cone-type spacers and offers a new orientation in the surface charge analytical algorithm.
Visual field defect during therapy with valproic‐acid

Visual field defect because of antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment has been widely reported during the clinical application of vigabatrin. But other gamma‐aminobutyric acid (GABA)‐ergic and non‐GABA‐ergic AEDs could also affect the visual field with different mechanisms of action. Here we report a case of a 22‐year‐old female patient, who suffered from bilateral concentric visual field defect during the long‐term therapy with valproic‐acid (VPA). A VPA‐related metabolic dysfunction was found through blood and urine examination. Reduced B‐waves were shown by electroretinography and a bilateral concentric visual field defect was confirmed by both manual and automated perimetry. In conclusion, the concentric visual field defect related to VPA treatment is rare but possible.
Sex Differences in Intraindividual Tooth-Size Communalities

The teeth of males differ from the teeth of females in a great many developmental respects. Male teeth are larger, on the average,1, 2 particularly the canines. Male teeth begin to calcify later than those of females ;3 4 they emerge through the alveoli later ;5 they erupt through the gums later ;6, 7 and they attain final closure of the apices at a later age.8 There is a sex difference, moreover, in the relative frequency of the premolar-molar-formation sequence (5l, 71 and 7, 15) and in various eruption sequences,9 particularly those that involve the mandibular canines. '0 In addition to these sex differences in tooth size, tooth formation, and toothsequence polymorphism, there is a consistent sex difference in the extent of sibling resemblances in the timing of dental development. '1 In general, sisters are more alike in tooth-formation timing than are brothers or siblings of unlike sex. This generalization applies to tooth calcification, tooth movement, and apical closure as well. '2 13 The existence of such sex differences in the dentition, whether observed on a population basis or within sibships, necessarily raises the question of mechanisms. The simple fact that sisters are more alike than brothers in developmental timing suggests X-chromosomal mediation, since all sisters share one X chromosome in common. But if this is true, then females with their pair ofX chromosomes should be more consistent within themselves in various aspects of dental development and tooth morphology. This study is therefore concerned with the extent of intraindividual tooth-size similarities in males and females and constitutes a further test of the hypothesis of Xlinked mediation.
Use of Selective Cyclooxygenase-2 Inhibitors, Other Analgesics, and Risk of Glioma

Background Selective cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors are analgesic, antipyretic, and anti-inflammatory drugs. They have been found to inhibit the development of glioma in laboratory investigations. Whether these drugs reduce the risk of glioma incidence in humans is unknown. Methods We conducted a matched case-control analysis using the U.K.-based Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD). We identified 2,469 cases matched to 24,690 controls on age, sex, calendar time, general practice, and number of years of active history in the CPRD prior to the index date. We conducted conditional logistic regression analyses to determine relative risks, estimated as odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of glioma in relation to use of selective COX-2 inhibitors, adjusted for several confounding variables. Results Use of selective COX-2 inhibitors was unrelated to risk of glioma (adjusted OR for 1–9 versus 0 prescriptions = 1.02; 95% CI = 0.92–1.13, 10–29 versus 0 prescriptions = 1.01; 95% CI = 0.80–1.28, ≥30 versus 0 prescriptions = 1.16; 95% CI = 0.86–1.55). Trends for increasing numbers of prescriptions for other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and non-NSAID analgesics were also not associated with glioma risk. Conclusion Further epidemiologic studies are needed to confirm the null relation of use of selective COX-2 inhibitors to glioma risk and to explain the discrepancy between laboratory investigations and our observational study. Impact: Use of selective COX-2 inhibitors is unrelated to glioma risk.
Recommender Searching Mechanism for Trust-Aware Recommender Systems in Internet of Things

Intelligent things are widely connected in Internet of Things (IoT) to enable ubiquitous service access. This may cause heavy service redundant. The trust-aware recommender system (TARS) is therefore proposed for IoT to help users finding reliable services. One fundamental requirement of TARS is to efficiently find as many recommenders as possible for the active users. To achieve this, existing approaches of TARS choose to search the entire trust network, which have very high computational cost. Though the trust network is the scale-free network, we show via experiments that TARS cannot find satisfactory number of recommenders by directly applying the classical searching mechanism. In this paper, we propose an efficient searching mechanism, named S_Searching: based on the scale-freeness of trust networks, choosing the global highest-degree nodes to construct a Skeleton, and searching the recommenders via this Skeleton. Benefiting from the superior outdegrees of the nodes in the Skeleton, S_Searching can find the recommenders very efficiently. Experimental results show that S_Searching can find almost the same number of recommenders as that of conducting full search, which is much more than that of applying the classical searching mechanism in the scale-free network, while the computational complexity and cost is much less.
Prevalence of obesity in Uruguay

Uruguay is a small South American country with a mild climate. The population is a little more than 3 million, predominantly Caucasian, mostly descendants of Spanish, Italian and central European immigrants. There are very few inhabitants of Indian and African–American descent. There is a predominant middle class, and 40% of the inhabitants live in the capital, Montevideo. About 50% of the population receive medical assistance at the public hospitals, 40% from the insurance organizations, and 10% at private physicians. As in most parts of the civilized world, the problems of excess weight are also very important in Uruguay. This paper presents recent epidemiological investigations made at the turn of the century, and tries to compare them with investigations made 10 years earlier.
Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Stastical Mechanics

The appearance of the article by N. Metropolis, A. W. Rosenbluth, M. N. Rosenbluth, A. H. Teller, and E. Teller marked the birth of the Monte Carlo method for the study of statistical-mechanical systems and of a specific form of “importance sampling”—namely, Markov chain Monte Carlo. After nearly 40 years of statistical usage, this technique has had a profound impact on statistical theory, on both Bayesian and classical statistics. Markov chain Monte Carlo is used essentially to estimate integrals in high dimensions. This article addresses the accuracy of such estimation. Through computer experiments performed on the two-dimensional Ising model, we compare the most common method for error estimates in statistical mechanics. It appears that the moving-block bootstrap outperforms other methods based on subseries values when the number of observations is relatively small and the time correlation between successive configurations decays slowly. Moreover, the moving-block bootstrap enables estimates of the standard error to be made not only for the averages of directly obtained data but also for estimates derived from sophisticated numerical procedures.
KHZ QUASIPERIODIC OSCILLATIONS IN LOW-MASS X-RAY BINARIES AS PROBES OF GENERAL RELATIVITY IN THE STRONG-FIELD REGIME

We consider the interpretation of a pair of kHz quasiperiodic oscillations (QPOs) in the Fourier spectra of two low-mass x-ray binaries, Sco X-1 and 4U1608-52, hosting an old accreting neutron star. The observed frequency difference of these QPOs decreases as their frequency increases, contrary to simple beat frequency models. We show that the behavior of these QPOs is instead well matched in terms of the fundamental frequencies for test particle motion in the gravitational field of the neutron star, for reasonable star masses, and nearly independent of the star spin. These results are not reproduced through the post\char21{}Newtonian approximation of general relativity. kHz QPOs from x-ray binaries likely provide an accurate laboratory for strong-field general relativity.
A Light-weight Data Replication for Cloud DataCenters Environment

Unlike traditional high performance computing environment, such as cluster and supercomputers, the cloud computing is a collection of interconnected and virtualized computing resources that are managed to be one unified highperformance computing power. However, the Cloud environment constitutes a heterogeneous and a highly dynamic environment. Failures on the data centers nodes are normal rather because of the large scale of physical resources and data. As a result, the cloud environment requires an efficient adaptive data replication management in order to cope with the inherent characteristic of the Cloud environment. In this paper, we propose a data replication strategy which adaptively selects the data files for replication in order to improve the overall reliability of the system and to meet the required quality of services. Further, the proposed strategy decides dynamically the number of replicas as well as the effective data nodes for replication. The popular data files are selected for replication based on employing a lightweight time-series technique, which analyzes the recent pattern of data files requests, and provides predictions for the future data requests.Experimental results show that the proposed strategy behaves effectively to improve the reliability of the Cloud system under study.
Standardization of Factor IX: Standards for "Purified" Factor IX Concentrates

Summary An international collaborative study was carried out to determine the suitability of the current WHO II-IX-X concentrate standard, 84/681, for assigning potency to the more highly purified factor IX concentrates. Three Coagulation Factor IX (Human) preparations and one Factor IX Complex preparation were assayed by the one stage method against WHO 84/681 following predilution to 1.0 u/ml in buffer, 1% albumin, or factor IX deficient plasma. There were no cases of non-parallelism between any of the preparations and the current WHO standard. Predilution of the Coagulation Factor IX (Human) preparations in 1% albumin or factor IX deficient plasma gave similar potency values. Predilution in buffer gave significantly lower (p <0.01) potency values. For the Factor IX Complex preparation, potency estimates were significantly different (p <0.01) with each prediluent. The overall precision was similar within each predilution for all preparations with predilution in buffer being less precise than predilution in albumin or in deficient plasma. WHO standard 84/681 appears to be a suitable standard for the potency determination of the more highly purified factor IX preparations. Predilution in 1% albumin or factor IX deficient plasma is recommended as they give equivalent results with the least variability.
Depleted communities and community business entrepreneurship: revaluing space through place

Depleted communities are a persistent feature of late capitalism. They can be seen as areas that have lost much of their economic rationale as space, while retaining high attachments and social relations of place. While conditions in depleted communities can limit possibilities for traditional development, entrepreneurial responses are not similarly constrained. It is argued here that depleted communities can act as hosts to a unique form of enterprise that combines good business practices with community goals. We refer to this as community business entrepreneurship and argue that it is similar to, but distinct from, the traditional entrepreneurial process. To illustrate these ideas three cases are examined. Within the setting of the depleted community, the entrepreneurial process can be modified to pursue community goals, thereby creating new opportunities and making new forms of development possible.
Personality predicts cognitive function over 7 years in older persons.

OBJECTIVES To determine whether Neuroticism as well as the less-studied dimensions the Five Factor Model of personality (Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) were associated with 7-year trajectories of cognitive functioning in older persons. DESIGN Primary analysis of existing clinical trial data. PARTICIPANTS 602 persons of average age 79 at baseline. MEASUREMENTS The NEO-Five Factor Inventory of personality, completed at baseline, and the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination measured every 6 months for 7 years. RESULTS Controlling for demographics, baseline morbidities including depression, health behaviors, apolipoprotein E4 genotype, and self-rated health, higher Neuroticism was associated with worse average cognitive functioning and a steeper rate of decline over follow-up. Higher Extraversion and lower Openness were both associated with worse average cognitive functioning prospectively, while persons higher in Conscientiousness showed a slower rate of cognitive decline. CONCLUSIONS In addition to Neuroticism, other dispositional tendencies appear prognostically relevant for cognitive functioning in older persons. More work is needed to understand the mechanisms by which traits operate, as well as whether mitigation of certain dispositional tendencies can facilitate a better course of cognitive function.
Statistical runtime verification of agent-based simulations

As a consequence of the growing adoption of agent-based simulations as decision making tools in various (potentially also critical) areas, questions of veracity and validity become increasingly important. In general software and hardware development, formal verification – particularly model checking – has been applied successfully to a wide range of problems; due to their immense complexity, however, agent-based simulations lend themselves to conventional formal verification only in very simple cases and at a disproportionately high cost. The purpose of this work is to address this problem and present a statistical runtime verification approach which focusses on the analysis of the temporal behaviour of large-scale probabilistic agent-based simulations. The approach is tailored to the particular mix of characteristics that agent-based simulations typically exhibit: large populations, randomness, heterogeneity, temporal boundedness and the existence of multiple observational levels. It combines the ideas of runtime verification and statistical model checking and allows for the temporal verification of simulations with hundreds or thousands of constituents and probabilistic state transitions. Instead of requiring a formal model, verification is performed upon traces of the original simulation obtained through repeated execution. Properties are checked on-the-fly, i.e. during the execution of the simulation, which is achieved by interleaving simulation and verification. Evaluation is lazy, i.e. a simulation step is performed only if the property has not already been satisfied or refuted. This reduces the amount of simulation to a minimum and restricts state space exploration to the smallest fragment necessary for finding a definite answer to the given property. Verification results are approximate, but the precision is clearly quantifiable and adjustable by varying the number of simulation runs.