Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting Distress in European Banks 1 Frank Betz European Investment Bank Silviu Opric ă European Central Bank Tuomas A . Peltonen European Central Bank

The paper develops an early-warning model for predicting vulnerabilities leading to distress in European banks using both bank and country-level data. As outright bank failures have been rare in Europe, we introduce a novel dataset that complements bankruptcies and defaults with state interventions and mergers in distress. The signals of the early-warning model are calibrated not only according to the policymaker’s preferences between type I and II errors, but also to take into account the potential systemic relevance of each individual financial institution. The key findings of the paper are that complementing bank-specific vulnerabilities with indicators for macrofinancial imbalances improves model performance and yields useful out-of-sample predictions of bank distress during the current financial crisis. JEL Codes: E44, E58, F01, F37, G01.
The cost of antiretroviral treatment service for patients with HiV/aiDS in a central outpatient clinic in Vietnam

pay for this service. Methods: Patients (n = 315) receiving ART in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Bach Mai Hospital, Hanoi, Vietnam, were interviewed. Patient records and expenses were reviewed. Results: The total cost of ART per patient was US$611 (75% from health care providers, 25% from patients or their families). The cost of a second-line regimen was found to be 2.7 times higher than the first-line regimen cost. Most outpatients (73.3%) were able to completely pay for all of their ART expenses. Capacity to pay for ART was influenced by five factors, including marital status, distance from house to clinic, patient’s monthly income, household economic condition, and health insurance status. Most of the patients (84.8%) would have been willing to pay for health insurance if a copayment scheme for ART were to be introduced. Conclusion: This study provides evidence on payment capacity of HIV/AIDS patients in Vietnam and supplies information on ART costs from both provider and patient perspectives. In particular, results from this study suggest that earlier access to ART after HIV infection could dramatically reduce the overall cost of treatment.
Impact of Packaging Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) on Consumer Buying Behaviour-A Review of Literature

The stiff competition in business environment today requires marketers to fully understand the factors that influence consumer behaviour. Packaging is one of the important factors influencing consumer buying decisions and encompasses almost every product category-from FMCG, food and beverages to pharmaceuticals and personal care. It is now crucial to understand more about the packaging attributes that best influences the consumer and to also understand more about how consumers perceive and respond to changes in product packaging. This paper is aimed at examining the impact of packaging on consumer buying behaviour while purchasing FMCG products. The paper relies heavily on textbooks, magazines, newspapers, journals, internet and other relevant materials as sources of data. Based on the extant literature it was found that packaging elements represent a good means of marketing communications and helps to attract the consumers’ attention. The paper also recommends that retailers and marketers should invest on research to understand the packaging attributes that their consumers would be more interested in so as to meet their preference.
Multistage Triaxial Tests on Laboratory‐Formed Methane Hydrate‐Bearing Sediments

A sound understanding of the geomechanical behavior of hydrate‐bearing sediments (HBSs) is essential not only for assessing reservoir and wellbore stability during methane gas production but also for projecting the impact of global warming on the stability of geological settings that contain hydrates. This study experimentally investigated the geomechanical responses of laboratory‐formed methane‐HBS to triaxial shearing under drained conditions. The hydrate pore habit formed in the sediments is noncontact‐cementing, which is different from contact‐cementing or grain‐coating hydrate pore habits formed when the excessive gas method is used. The multistage triaxial test method, which shears a single specimen under different confinements, was employed to examine its applicability in measuring geomechanical properties of the HBS. Conventional single‐stage triaxial tests were also performed to serve as baselines. The results show that both the strength and stiffness of HBS increase with increased hydrate saturation and confining stress. Shear dilatancy increases with increased hydrate saturation and decreased confining stress. The peak strength and peak/postpeak shear dilation measured using the multistage tests are comparable to those using the single‐stage tests. However, the stiffness measured in later stress stages in the multistage tests was enhanced by the stress‐strain history of earlier stages. Therefore, the multistage test offers an efficient way of measuring the strength and volumetric response of the HBS with a much smaller number of specimens than the single‐stage test. This benefits the geomechanical characterization of the HBS, as obtaining the pressure cores is extremely costly and preparing lab samples is usually sophisticated and time consuming.
Advancing understanding in data-limited conditions: estimating contributions to streamflow across Tanzania’s rapidly developing Kilombero Valley

ABSTRACT Large seasonal variability in precipitation patterns may help overcome data limitations and difficult conditions when characterizing hydrological flow pathways. We used a limited amount of weekly water chemistry as well as stable water isotope data to perform end-member mixing analysis (EMMA) in a generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) framework in a sub-catchment of the Kilombero Valley, Tanzania. While there were considerable uncertainties related to the characterization and mixing of end-members, some robust estimates could be made on contributions to seasonal streamflow variability. For example, there is a low connectivity between the deep groundwater and the stream system throughout the year. Also, a considerable wetting-up period is required before overland flow occurs. Thus, in spite of large uncertainties, our results highlight how improved system understanding of hydrological flows can be obtained even when working in difficult environments.
The importance of mothers: The social transmission of COVID-19 vaccination attitudes and uptake

The global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the critical importance of widespread vaccination to mitigate the impact of the virus on public health. The current study aimed to investigate which social influences might be most important for predicting attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake among young students in the UK. We focused on the cultural evolution and social transmission aspects, i.e., parent-to-child versus peer-to-peer, of attitudes and vaccine uptake during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 192 UK students (aged 18 to 35 years old) filled in an online survey including measures for attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake and/or intention, age, and gender. Participants were also asked about their mothers, fathers, and best friends attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake. Finally, they provided a subjective measure of the quality relationship with their parents. Overall, our results suggest that both parents and very close friends are important agents in understanding the students attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake. More specifically, our findings suggest the mothers vaccine uptake as the most salient predictor of students attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine uptake, particularly when the students disclose having a positive relationship with their parents. In cases where students experience negative relationship with their parents, the best friends vaccine uptake may supersede the mothers influence. Despite these nuances, a general trend emerges from our data suggesting that vaccine uptake could be primarily guided by vertical transmission (i.e., parent to child). Our results have the potential to influence public health strategies, communication campaigns, and targeted interventions to enhance vaccination uptake. Identifying key social predictors can enable policymakers and health authorities to tailor vaccination promotion efforts towards mothers and peers vaccine uptake to increase overall positive attitudes and vaccine uptake among young people.
Nanopore sequencing of 1000 Genomes Project samples to build a comprehensive catalog of human genetic variation

Less than half of individuals with a suspected Mendelian condition receive a precise molecular diagnosis after comprehensive clinical genetic testing. Improvements in data quality and costs have heightened interest in using long-read sequencing (LRS) to streamline clinical genomic testing, but the absence of control datasets for variant filtering and prioritization has made tertiary analysis of LRS data challenging. To address this, the 1000 Genomes Project ONT Sequencing Consortium aims to generate LRS data from at least 800 of the 1000 Genomes Project samples. Our goal is to use LRS to identify a broader spectrum of variation so we may improve our understanding of normal patterns of human variation. Here, we present data from analysis of the first 100 samples, representing all 5 superpopulations and 19 subpopulations. These samples, sequenced to an average depth of coverage of 37x and sequence read N50 of 54 kbp, have high concordance with previous studies for identifying single nucleotide and indel variants outside of homopolymer regions. Using multiple structural variant (SV) callers, we identify an average of 24,543 high-confidence SVs per genome, including shared and private SVs likely to disrupt gene function as well as pathogenic expansions within disease-associated repeats that were not detected using short reads. Evaluation of methylation signatures revealed expected patterns at known imprinted loci, samples with skewed X-inactivation patterns, and novel differentially methylated regions. All raw sequencing data, processed data, and summary statistics are publicly available, providing a valuable resource for the clinical genetics community to discover pathogenic SVs.
Community level variability in Bronx COVID-19 hospitalizations associated with differing viral variant adaptive strategies during the second year of the pandemic.

The Bronx, New York, exhibited unique peaks in the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations compared to national trends. To determine which features of the SARS-CoV-2 virus might underpin this local disease epidemiology, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of the genomic epidemiology of the four dominant strains of SARS-CoV-2 (Alpha, Iota, Delta and Omicron) responsible for COVID-19 cases in the Bronx between March 2020 and January 2023. Genomic analysis revealed similar viral fitness for Alpha and Iota variants in the Bronx compared to nationwide data. However, Delta and Omicron variants had increased fitness within the borough. While the transmission dynamics of most variants in the Bronx corresponded with mutational fitness-based predictions of transmissibility, the Delta variant presented as an exception. Epidemiological modeling confirms Delta's advantages of higher transmissibility, and suggested pre-existing immunity within the community counteracted Delta virulence, contributing to unexpectedly low Bronx hospitalizations compared to preceding strains. There were few novel T-cell epitope mutations in Delta compared to Iota which suggests Delta had fewer immune escape mechanisms to subvert pre-existing immunity within the Bronx. The combination of epidemiological models and quantifying amino acid changes in T-cell and antibody epitopes also revealed an evolutionary trade-off between Alphas higher transmissibility and Iotas immune evasion, potentially explaining why the Bronx Iota variant remained dominant despite the introduction of the nationwide dominant Alpha variant. Together, our study demonstrates that localized analyses and integration of orthogonal community-level datasets can provide key insights into the mechanisms of transmission and immunity patterns associated with regional COVID-19 incidence and disease severity that may be missed when analyzing broader datasets.
Roles of gender and smoking in the associations between urinary phytoestrogens and asthma/wheeze and lung function: evidence from a cross-sectional study

Background The role of phytoestrogens in asthma/wheeze and lung function remains controversial. Thus, we aimed to examine whether phytoestrogens have beneficial effects on asthma/wheeze, lung function for subgroups and mortality. Methods Participants in this study were individuals aged 20 years or older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Multivariate logistic regression models were fitted to examine the associations of urinary phytoestrogens with the risk of asthma/wheeze and lung function in individuals with and without asthma/wheeze. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine the relationship between urinary phytoestrogens and all-cause mortality. Stratified analyses were conducted based on gender and smoking status. Results We included 2465 individuals in this study. Enterolactone levels in the highest quartile were associated with a lower risk of asthma than those in the lowest quartile. As compared with the lowest quartile, the highest quartile of enterodiol and enterolactone was associated with a lower risk of wheeze. Significant associations were observed between subtypes of phytoestrogens (equol and enterolactone) and lung function (forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume in 1 s). Besides, FVC was higher in individuals with higher levels of enterodiol. The results were consistent in subpopulations without asthma/wheeze, while the significant difference was not observed in individuals with asthma/wheeze. The stratified analyses revealed that the associations between phytoestrogens and lung function differed by gender and smoking status among subgroups. No significant association was found between urinary phytoestrogens and all-cause mortality. Conclusion In summary, subtypes of phytoestrogens were associated with lower risk of asthma/wheeze and beneficial for lung function improvement in individuals without asthma/wheeze. Furthermore, gender and smoking may interact in the relationship between phytoestrogens and asthma/wheeze, and lung function. Further researches are needed to confirm these associations and explain the results of stratified analyses.
Ligation of the Intersphincteric Fistula Tract as an Emergency Treatment for Cryptoglandular Anal Fistula

Introduction Ligation of the intersphincteric fistula tract (LIFT) is a sphincter-preserving procedure for treating anal fistula of cryptoglandular origin. Our prospective study aimed to determine the postoperative outcomes of patients undergoing LIFT in emergency and elective settings. Methods This was a single-centre prospective observational study of the LIFT procedure for the treatment of anal fistulas. The differences in the 6-month postoperative outcomes between the emergency and elective procedures were analysed, including the healing rate, healing time, recurrence rate, recurrence time, postoperative complications and length of hospital stay. Results Twenty-two patients were recruited for this study: 11 patients underwent LIFT as an emergency procedure (EM-LIFT), while the others underwent LIFT as an elective procedure (EL-LIFT). The healing rate for the EM-LIFT group was 90.9% (n = 10), with a median healing time of 2 months (range 0.5–4). For the EL-LIFT group, the healing rate was 100% (n = 11), with the same median healing time of 2 months (range 0.5–4). Two of the patients in the EM-LIFT group developed recurrence, with a median recurrence time of 5 months (range 4–6) and three developed recurrence in the EL-LIFT group, with the same median recurrence time of 5 months (range 4–6). There were minor postoperative complications of pain and subcutaneous infection, with no faecal incontinence. There was no statistically significant difference in postoperative outcomes between the groups. Conclusion EM-LIFT is a feasible and safe primary procedure for active cryptoglandular-type anal fistulas.
Bacterial communities in a Northeast Ohio stream: effects of substrate size, environmental features and temporal changes

A limited number of studies have documented temporal changes in multiple habitats in streams. In this yearlong study of the West Branch of the Mahoning River in Northeast Ohio, USA, bacterial assemblages in water, leaves, and sediments were examined. Bacteria were enumerated using 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) using taxon-specific probes for the Domain Bacteria and Burkholderia cepacia. Physical and chemical variables were also monitored. Total bacterial abundance in water (based on DAPI staining) peaked during October 2000 and July 2001; while on leaves, total abundance peaked in January then declined through April with a second June peak. The peak in sediments was during October 2000 and numbers did not differ significantly between the pool and riffle. Domain Bacteria numbers also exhibited significant temporal changes but the seasonal patterns tended to differ from those based on DAPI staining. Abundance of B. cepacia exhibited significant temporal changes on leaves but not in water and sediments. ____________________________ Submitted to Hydrobiologia by Judith A. Santmire and Laura G. Leff
Dietary Patterns and Lifestyle Factors Associated with the Risk of Colorectal Cancer: A Hospital-Based Case-Control Study among Malaysians

Background This study aimed to examine the association between dietary patterns, lifestyle factors, and colorectal cancer (CRC) risk among the Malaysian population. Methods We recruited 100 patients and 100 controls from two selected government hospitals. Principal component analysis was used to identify dietary patterns using a 123-item semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire. Tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption questionnaires were modified from the WHO STEPS Survey questionnaire. Physical activity levels were assessed using the revised Global Physical Activity questionnaire. Associations between dietary patterns, lifestyle factors and CRC risk were assessed using logistic regression with SPSS version 24.0. Results Three dietary patterns were derived from factor analysis: i) vegetables; ii) meat, seafood and processed food; and iii) grains and legumes. High vegetable diet intake was independently and significantly associated with an 81% decreased risk of CRC (odds ratio [OR]: 0.19; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.08, 0.46). Both recreational-related physical activity (OR: 2.04; 95% CI: 1.14, 3.64) and vigorous physical activity (OR: 2.06; 95% CI: 1.13, 3.74) are significantly associated with decreased risk of CRC. Increasing the number of cigarettes smoked (≥ 16 cigarettes) per day significantly increased the odds of developing CRC (OR: 2.58; 95% CI: 1.95, 6.75). The duration of alcohol consumption cessation was inversely associated with CRC risk (OR: 2.52; 95% CI: 2.30, 10.57). Conclusion The protective effects of a fruit and vegetable diet, and a healthy lifestyle can be used to develop interventions that help reduce the risk of CRC in the Malaysian population.
The synergistic effects of a leaf mixture on decomposition change with a period of terrestrial exposure prior to immersion in a stream

Abstract The effect of mixing litter on decomposition has received considerable attention in terrestrial and aquatic (but rarely in both) ecosystems, with a striking lack of consensus in the obtained results. We studied the decomposition of a mixture of poplar and alder in three terrestrial: aquatic exposures to determine (1) if the effect of mixing litter on mass loss, associated decomposers (fungal biomass, sporulation rates, and richness), and detritivores (abundance, biomass, and richness of invertebrate shredders) differs between the stream (fully aquatic exposure) and when litter is exposed to a period of terrestrial exposure prior to immersion and (2) the effect of the mixture across exposure scenarios. The effect of the mixture was additive on mass loss and synergistic on decomposers and detritivores across exposure scenarios. Within scenarios, mass loss and decomposers showed synergistic effects only in the fully aquatic exposure, detritivores showed synergistic effects only when the period of terrestrial was shorter than the period of aquatic exposure, and when the period of terrestrial was equal to the period of aquatic exposure the effect of the mixture was additive on mass loss, decomposers, and detritivores. The species‐specific effects also differed among exposure scenarios. Alder affected poplar only when there was a period of terrestrial exposure, with increased sporulation rates and fungal richness in exposure 25:75, and increased mass loss in exposure 50:50. Poplar affected alder only under fully aquatic exposure, with increased mass loss. In conclusion, the synergistic effects of the mixture changed with a period of terrestrial exposure prior to immersion. These results provide a cross‐boundary perspective on the effect of mixing litter, showing a legacy effect of exposure to terrestrial decomposition on the fate of plant litter in aquatic ecosystems and highlighting the importance of also assessing the effect of mixing litter on the associated biota and not only on mass loss.
Intermediate Outcomes of Medial Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction Using Gracilis Allograft in Adolescent Patients

Background: Autograft palmaris has been the primary choice for the reconstruction of the medial ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in the elbow. Agenesis of the palmaris tendon is not rare, and outcomes of allograft reconstruction in the breadth of athlete types found in the adolescent population are lacking. Hypothesis: Allograft tendon reconstruction of the medial UCL in the young elbow would have low failure rates and satisfactory outcome scores. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: The records of patients who underwent allograft medial UCL reconstruction (UCLR) by a single surgeon between 2009 and 2019 were reviewed. Patient-reported outcome scores in adolescent patients obtained at a minimum 4-year follow-up (for intermediate assessment) were recorded, with no exclusion according to sex or sport type. Outcomes included the Timmerman-Andrews score, the Single Assessment Numeric Evaluation (SANE), and the Conway-Jobe score. Results: Of 29 patients who underwent allograft UCLR, 10 adolescents (40% women; mean age at surgery, 15.8 years [age range, 15-17 years]) met the inclusion criteria and were included in the study. The mean follow-up was 8 years (range, 4.3-11.9 years). There were 4 overhead athletes (baseball, water polo) and 6 impact sports athletes (motocross, gymnastics, wrestling, and soccer). The mean SANE score was 86.3, and the mean subjective Timmerman-Andrews score was 92.5. The Conway-Jobe score was “excellent” in 7 of 10 participants; nonetheless, 3 elected not to return to sport (2 for reasons unrelated to the elbow). No patients experienced loss of range of motion, contracture, or ulnar nerve neuropathy. There was 1 patient with early failure (10%) who required revision reconstruction . Conclusion: Allograft reconstruction for medial UCL instability in adolescent patients from sport and trauma mechanisms demonstrated excellent patient-reported functional scores in this study. If the patient and surgeon desire to avoid autograft morbidity or agenesis of the palmaris longus, allograft tendon UCLR appears viable for both the throwing and the high-impact adolescent athlete, regardless of sex.