Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alterations in CD4+, CD8+, Vγ3, Vγδ, and/or Vα βT-Lymphocyte Expression in Lymphoid Tissues of Progeny After In Utero Exposure to Benzo(α)pyrene

That benzo〈 α)pyrene (Bα P) decreases both humoral and cell-mediated immunity, and leads to increases in progeny tumor development after in utero insult, suggests that T- and B-lymphocytes are made defective in exposed offspring. In the study here, C3H mice were injected once with Bα P (150 μ g/g BW) at day 12 of pregnancy and progeny lymphoid tissues were excised during gestation (day 18; GD18) or at 1 or 6 weeks post-partum. The isolated lymphoid cells were analyzed by flow cytometry/immunofluorescence or assessed for function. In Bα P-exposed fetuses, thymic Thy1+ cell levels were decreased (relative to levels in organs of corn oil-exposed dam progeny). In addition, for up to 6 weeks post-birth, CD4+CD8+ (double positive; DP) cells were virtually absent and levels of CD4−CD8− (double negative; DN) cells were consistently at ε 90%. With regard to single positive (SP) cells, CD4+ cell levels were also decreased in tissues at GD18 up through 6 weeks post-birth; CD8+ cell levels were increased, but only in pups at 1-week and 6-weeks post-birth. In 1-week-old progeny, spleen CD8+ cell levels were quantitatively unchanged, though CD4+ levels were reduced 2–4-fold and CD4−CD8− DN levels significantly increased. With respect to TCRs, fetal levels of thymic CD3Vγ3+ and CD3Vγ δ+ cells were decreased; levels of CD3Vαβ cells were only slightly depressed. The latter results contrast sharply with a strong reduction in CD3Vαβ cells in the fetal livers of Bα P-exposed progeny. Interestingly, these livers also strongly evidenced a presence of BαP-7,8-dihydrodiol-9,10-epoxide metabolite. When assessed for any change in function, the CD4+, Thy1+ cells isolated from Bα P-exposed progeny tissues responded weakly (relative to controls) to ConA and in an allogeneic MLR. Taken in totality, the results here strengthen our original hypothesis that BαP can create a favorable milieu for tumor growth progression in progeny of exposed mothers by affecting development of sufficient numbers of functional lymphocytes in the offspring.
Distinct Prognostic Role of Serum Uric Acid Levels for Predicting All-Cause Mortality Among Chinese Adults Aged 45~75 Years With and Without Diabetes

Introduction The current study sought to explore the effect of baseline serum uric acid (SUA) on the risk of all-cause mortality among Chinese adults aged 45~75 years and to determine its interaction relationship with diabetes. Methods The study was designed as a community-based cohort of 4467 adults aged between 45~75 years included in a 6-years follow-up period from 2009 to 2015 years by the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Baseline SUA levels were grouped into quartiles and its association on all-cause mortality was explored using multivariate Cox proportional hazards models. Stratified analyses were performed to explore the associations of SUA quartiles with all-cause mortality among diabetic and non-diabetic individuals. Results A total of 141 deaths (5.3 per 1000 person-years) were recorded During a follow-up of 26431 person-years. Out of the 141 deaths, 28 deaths (10.1 per 1000 person-years) were reported in the diabetic groups and 113 deaths (4.8 per 1000 person-years) were recorded in the non-diabetic group. An increased risk of all-cause mortality was observed for participants in the first and fourth quartiles compared with the second SUA quartile, (Q1 SUA: aHR=2.1, 95% CI 1.1~4.1; Q4 SUA: aHR=2.1, 95% CI 1.1~4.0). Stratification of participants by diabetes status showed a U-shaped association for non-diabetic individuals. Whereas, declined eGFR, rather than SUA, was an independent risk factor for all-cause mortality in diabetic individuals (aHR=0.7, 95% CI 0.6~1.0). Conclusion Our study proved that the prognostic role of SUA for predicting all-cause death might be regulated by diabetes. Both low and high SUA levels were associated with increased mortality, supporting a U-shaped association only in non-diabetic individuals. Whereas, renal dysfunction rather than SUA was an independent risk factor for all-cause mortality. Further studies should be conducted to determine the SUA levels at which intervention should be conducted and explore target follow-up strategies to prevent progression leading to poor prognosis.
Geographic Concentration and Establishment Scale: An Extension Using Panel Data

In a recent study, Holmes and Stevens (2002) identify for the first time the positive relationship that exists between establishment scale and local industry concentration using a large cross-sectional plant-level data set for the United States. Using an exhaustive plant-level panel data set for Irish manufacturing covering nearly three decades, we are able to extend their analysis in two ways. First, we show that failing to control for fixed effects biases the relationship upward, although the essence of the result still remains after fixed effects are included. Second, the link is substantially weaker when plants locate for the first time in an area, but strengthens with age for those that survive in the long run. We link our results to recent contributions on the dynamics of geographic concentration.
Australian Workplace Agreements: An Employer Response

There is considerable political and industrial relations debate in Australia concerning the value and merit of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). However, formalised individual agreements are a relatively new phenomenon in the Australian industrial relations landscape. Consequently, to date, there has been limited assessment of employer strategies and the perceived organisational outcomes involved in making and negotiating such agreements. The paper presented here attempts to fill this gap by reviewing responses from 688 employers who approved AWAs with the Office of the Employment Advocate (OEA) before February 2000. There are a number of issues that can be identified from this exploratory study. AWA employers were likely to be ‘individualistic’ employers with more individual employee consultation and human resource practices. In addition, the majority of AWAs were introduced to change working time arrangements and simplify existing employment arrangements. According to the survey respondents, employers who have drafted AWAs have generally been able to achieve some positive organisational outcomes and they have generally met the objectives of employers. The survey findings showed that the majority of respondents intended to increase their use of AWAs in the future, citing increased flexibility and some suggesting the benefit of all employees being under one type of industrial relations instrument as the primary reasons for their introduction.
Work‐based learning and continuing professional development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the key features of a work‐based, competency‐led curriculum model of continuing professional development for social workers and to present a revised model, which addresses the issues that arise for learners pursuing continuing professional and academic development (CPD) within a work‐based curriculum.Design/methodology/approach – Reflections on and evaluation of both undergraduate and post graduate, work‐based curricula with employers, tutors and learners led to significant revisions to further models of work‐based learning for CPD. These changes are presented in the form of a revised model, which addresses the tensions between work‐based, competency‐led curricula and the issues that arise for learners pursuing continuing professional and academic development in full‐time employment.Findings – The paper makes explicit the struggle in developing and delivering work‐based, competency‐led curricula while also trying to address the pragmatic i.
Food consumption patterns of female undergraduate students in the United Arab Emirates.

BACKGROUND Studies on food intake in the UAE especially in relation to the student life are lacking. OBJECTIVE To investigate eating habits of undergraduate students. METHODS A cohort of 146 undergraduate students studying Physiology at Zayed University completed a semi-structured questionnaire. A student response was accepted for analysis only those weeks with adequate responses not more than six. RESULTS The mean student age was 19.28 (1.22) years with a minimum-maximum 18-23 years. The mean weight was 56.67(13.31) with a minimum-maximum of 40-89 kg. Of 1,250 United Arab Emirates Dirham; 10 indicated they worked but did not specify income; and three were married. More foods were consumed seven times in a week. Amongst the principal foods consumed were: bread, cereal, starch; white bread, cornflakes and rice; fruits-apple, banana and orange; vegetables -cucumber, tomato and lettuce; meat-fish, chicken and beef; and eggs and dairy-(milk, cheese and yoghurt). CONCLUSION Dubai female undergraduates have a height intake of milk and fruits and less fanciful breads. Further studies should measure the exact quantity/mass of foods consumed per week.
Mental Precursors of Myocardial Infarction

Both cardiologists and psychiatrists have observed that the onset of myocardial infarction is often preceded by feelings of decreasing energy, general malaise, and minor depression. This paper describes these observations and tries to integrate the findings. It is proposed that the mental state preceding myocardial infarction can be best described as ‘vital exhaustion’.
Public Opinion and Attitude toward the Military and Democratic Consolidation in Turkey

The political influence of the Turkish military has substantially declined in the last decade, triggered by the European Union’s decision during the Helsinki Summit in 1999 to grant candidacy status to Turkey. This study illuminates Turkey’s democratization process in the post-Helsinki period by empirically analyzing a relatively underinvestigated aspect of civil–military relations: public opinion and attitude toward the military and civil–military issues. Empirical analyses, based on original and comprehensive public opinion data, indicate that despite impressive reforms and improvements in the legal and institutional structures in Turkish civil–military relations in the past ten years, democratic transformation in the political culture has been lagging behind. This gap is likely to complicate democratization process in Turkey. The article also provides a discussion of broader theoretical and practical implications of empirical findings.
Do Peers and Perceived Risk Mediate the Association of Religiosity With the Likelihood and Extent of Recent Substance Use Among Venezuelan Youth

Michigan State UniversityA robust literature suggests religiosity protects against substance use by youth. Lessclear is how religiosity insuences substance use. This study uses a cross-sectionaldesign with a sample of 1,815 Venezuelan youth to examine whether associations withdeviant peers or the perceived risk of harm from using drugs mediates the effect ofreligiosity on both the likelihood of using, and the extent of use of alcohol, cigarettes,and illicit drugs during the past 12 months. Perceived risk mediated the likelihood ofusing cigarettes and illicit drugs and the extent of alcohol use. It also mediated theunexpected tendency for religiosity to be associated with a greater extent of illicit druguse among users. Deviant peer afÞliations mediated the extent of alcohol use and thelikelihood of cigarette use. Implications for prevention interventions are presented.Keywords:
Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University

With the popularity of smartphones and mobile devices, mobile application (a.k.a. “app”) markets have been growing exponentially in terms of number of users and download-s. App developers spend considerable eﬀort on collecting and exploiting user feedback to improve user satisfaction, but suﬀer from the absence of eﬀective user review analytics tools. To facilitate mobile app developers discover the most “informative” user reviews from a large and rapidly increasing pool of user reviews, we present “AR-Miner” — a novel computational framework for App Review Mining, which performs comprehensive analytics from raw user reviews by (i) ﬁrst extracting informative user reviews by ﬁltering noisy and irrelevant ones, (ii) then grouping the informative reviews automatically using topic modeling, (iii) further prioritizing the informative reviews by an eﬀective review ranking scheme, (iv) and ﬁnally presenting the groups of most“informative”reviews via an intuitive visualization approach. We conduct extensive experiments and case studies on four popular Android apps to evaluate AR-Miner, from which the encouraging results indicate that AR-Miner is eﬀective, eﬃcient and promising for app developers.
INTERACTION OF TEXTILES WITH THE SKIN – FROM PERCEPTION TO IRRITATION

The majority of textile interaction with the human body is by skin contact of clothing. The human skin is the largest organ of the body with a multitude of functions and the largest representation in the brain. This presentation presents first results of a neurophysiological study on subconscious textile perception and the influence of friction on perception as well as on mechanical skin irritation. Additionally, the influence of textiles on the physiological human skin flora was investigated in order to get a closer look on the influence of textiles with the microbiological aspect of a healthy human skin.
Information Asymmetry and the Dealer's Bid-Ask Spread: A Case Study of Earnings and Dividend Announcements

Recent theoretical work on the bid-ask spread asserts that the dealer should widen the bid-ask spread when he or she suspects that the information advantage possessed by informed traders has increased. Thus, the dealer's spread can be employed to test for an increase in information asymmetry prior to an anticipated information event. In this paper, the method is applied to earnings and dividend announcements, which have been documented to be information events. The authors study three groups of announcements: (a) joint announcements-i.e., earnings and dividend announcements that are made on the same day, (b) initial (first) announcements-earnings or dividend announcements that were not preceded by another announcement in the prior thirty days, and (c) following (second) announcements-those announcements that follow the first announcement by at least ten days but by no more than thirty days. The authors find a strong increase in information asymmetry only before the second announcements and virtually no increase before the joint and first announcements. This is consistent with the hypothesis that there is, on average, normal information asymmetry before announcements, but that the dealer will suspect a nonroutine announcement (with an attendant increase in information asymmetry) when the second announcement is separated from the first by more than ten days. Other possible explanations for the results are discussed, and suggestions for future research are outlined. IT IS WIDELY ACCEPTED that some traders in securities markets may possess nonpublic information about future events that may affect security prices. ' The
Stock Market Volatility: Ten Years after the Crash

Stock volatility has been unusually low since the 1987 stock market crash. The large increase in stock prices since 1987 means that many days during 1996 and 1997 experienced near record changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, even though the volatility of stock returns has not been high by historical standards. I compare volatility of returns to U.S. stock indexes at monthly, daily, and intraday intervals, and I also show the volatility of returns to stock indexes implied by traded options contracts. Finally, I compare the volatility of U.S. stock market returns with the volatility of returns to stock markets in the United Kingdom Australia, and Canada. All of the evidence leads to the conclusion that volatility has been very low in the decade since the 1987 crash. The mini-crash of October 27 to reevaluate the current system of circuit breakers so that they are triggered less easily. Part of the problem is caused by trigger points that are expressed as absolute changes in market indexes.
Digital Divide between Indonesian Provincial Governance Based on Web Evaluation

All provinces in Indonesia have implemented websites as the information and communication media for public. The number of provinces involved as the samples in this research are 33 provinces. The URL name structure and minimal content of the websites have been in accordance with rules and policies stated by the government. The ideal numbers of features are 18 for each websites. However, based on the observation toward the ideal number of the features, it is found that most of the websites have not fulfilled the amount yet. Province websites are rarely accessed by visitors. They prefer visiting the websites of companies or education institutions. The popularity of the websites is measured based on Alexa Global Traffic Rank, the number of referring domain, and external back link. The research also reveals that there is a digital divide between provinces in Java island and other islands based on the discriminant analysis using four independent variables, namely feature index, total backlink, global traffic rank, and total
Old antihypertensives and new diabetes

Diuretic antihypertensive therapy is recommended as first choice by many guidelines, often in combination with β-blockers. However, such recommendations are based on relatively short-term trials, whereas treatment for hypertension is often a lifetime process. A meta-analysis of seven studies in 58 010 individuals, showed that the ‘new’ therapies, namely angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, angiotensin II type 1 receptor blockers (ARBs) and calcium channel blockers (CCBs) provoke less new diabetes than the conventional ‘old’ therapies (diuretics and β-blockers). ACE inhibitors/ARBs decreased new diabetes by 20% (P < 0.001), whereas CCBs decreased new diabetes by 16% (P < 0.001). The number needed to treat for approximately 4 years by new rather than old conventional therapy to avoid one case of new diabetes is about 60–70. Other factors contributing to increased coronary risk are increased metabolic syndrome, blood lipid changes and hypokalaemia. It is not certain whether it is the new therapy that provides protection against new diabetes or the conventional therapy that precipitates new diabetes. However, when compared with placebo, ACE inhibition by ramipril or by the ARB, candesartan, both decrease the incidence of new diabetes, raising the hypothesis that these agents actually prevent the changes leading to insulin resistance, possibly by lessening the adverse effects of angiotensin II on the endothelium. Conversely, lipid abnormalities with conventional treatment could exert adverse effects on the endothelium. Therefore endothelial changes could help to explain the benefits of ‘modern’ treatment compared with the defects of conventional therapy.
CEO Turnover and Ownership Structure: Evidence from the U.S. Property–Liability Insurance Industry

This article examines the impact of ownership structure on the relation between firm performance and chief executive officer (CEO) turnover in the U.S. property–liability insurance industry. Theoretical implications of stock versus mutual ownership structures on the performance–turnover relation are ambiguous. Our empirical results indicate that CEO turnover is less responsive to firm underwriting performance in mutual insurers compared to stock insurers. In fact, we find that while CEO turnover for stock firms is negatively related to prior performance, no such relationship is found for mutual insurers. These results hold while controlling for board structure and other relevant factors.
The Hype and Hope of Interdisciplinary Management Studies

Demand for multi-, if not interdisciplinary, research is currently strong, especially from funding bodies. But it often leaves little more than a shrill echo within the corridors of management departments and business schools. Academic respectability still seems to remain with the single disciplinary approach of economics, finance, sociology, etc. and also increasingly with those management subjects such as marketing, human-resource management or operations research that depend upon other social sciences for their existence, although the latter have considerable difficulty in gaining recognition and respect from those in the disciplines from which they draw their theoretical inspiration. As academics struggle to find ways of bridging their separate and distinct disciplines, practitioner divisions are being questioned and eroded as they are increasingly regarded as dysfunctional in achieving the flexibility and speedy responses demanded of the modern corporation. This paper seeks to develop an analytical understanding of the obstacles to the development of interdisciplinary research and teaching in management.
Carcinogenic effects of hyperthermia

The purpose of this paper is to assess the evidence for and against the premise that hyperthermia is carcinogenic. The paper is one of several published in this issue of the International Journal of Hyperthermia on the subject of the health risks of hyperthermia. The motivation for this issue of the journal was the result of a World Health Organization workshop that dealt with this issue, as it relates to exposure of the population to RF fields. Since hyperthermia can be a natural consequence of such exposures, the health risks of hyperthermia are relevant in this context. Particularly in the case of carcinogenesis, it is necessary to provide a brief overview of the data that have been generated to examine the carcinogenic risks of RF exposure, so that these results can be compared with studies that have examined the carcinogenic risks of hyperthermia. For this reason, the paper is organized into three sections dealing with: (1) effects of heat on DNA damage/repair and mutations, (2) in vivo studies evaluating the carcinogenic potential of heat alone and combined with other carcinogens, and (3) in vivo studies involving RF exposures. The bulk of the data presented indicate that hyperthermia alone is not carcinogenic. If hyperthermia occurs in the presence of exposure to known carcinogens, such as radiation or chemical carcinogens there is the potential for modulation of carcinogenic effects of those agents. In some circumstances, hyperthermia can actually protect against tumour formation. In other instances, hyperthermia clearly increases incidence of tumour formation, but this occurs following thermal exposures (several °C temperature rise for up to 1 h or more) and radiation (therapeutic levels as for treatment of cancer) or chemical carcinogen doses higher than would be encountered by the general population. The extrapolation of these results to the general population, where radiation exposure levels would be at background and temperature rise from incidental RF exposure, such as cell phones (which are estimated to cause no more than 0.1°C temperature rise) is not recommended. Current evidence indicates that the temperature elevations resulting from RF exposure are not carcinogenic. Caution should be used in situations where exposure to known carcinogens is combined with thermal exposures high enough to cause tissue damage. A summary of thermal thresholds for tissue damage from hyperthermia is presented in another paper in this special issue (Dewhirst et al. ). No data exist that examine the carcinogenic risks of chronic thermal exposures below the threshold for detectable tissue damage, either alone or in combination with known carcinogens. This is an important goal for future research.