Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of the estrogen receptor α gene polymorphisms with osteoporosis in the Mexican population

The estrogen receptor gene (ERα) has been implicated in the development of osteoporosis. In this study, the association of two ERα gene polymorphic markers (a TA dinucleotide repeat and a single nucleotide polymorphism, G2014A) with osteoporosis was tested in 70 osteoporotic women, 70 non‐osteoporotic women and 500 subjects from the Mexican population. According to the genetic analysis of the Mexican population using eight unlinked polymorphic markers, we found that our population is structured into three subpopulations; therefore, the allele–phenotype relationship was analyzed with a statistical method that considered population stratification. We found that the G2014A polymorphism is associated with the presence of osteoporosis while the TA dinucleotide repeat is not. The G allele and the GG genotype frequencies of the G2014A marker were significantly higher in osteoporotic than in non‐osteoporotic women. Likewise, subjects bearing the G allele in heterozygous or homozygous displayed lower values for lumbar bone mineral density and T score than those who did not present any G allele. The effect of confounders for osteoporosis on the association of G allele–osteoporosis was ruled out. In summary, we conclude that the G2014 polymorphism may become a useful marker for genetic studies of osteoporosis in the Mexican population.
Survival of Salmonella enterica in Freshwater and Sediments and Transmission by the Aquatic Midge Chironomus tentans (Chironomidae: Diptera)

ABSTRACT Survival of a nalidixic acid-resistant strain of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium mr-DT-104 in water and sediments was tested using artificially contaminated aquaria. Water samples remained culture positive for salmonella for up to 54 days. Sediment samples were culture positive up to 119 days. In addition, potential mechanisms for spreading salmonella in the environments by chironomid larvae and adults were tested. We evaluated the acquisition of mr-DT-104 by chironomids from contaminated aquatic sediments and subsequent spread to uncontaminated sediments. Larval chironomids raised in contaminated sediments became culture positive, and the bacteria were carried over to adults after emergence. Contamination of clean sediments by chironomid larvae was not demonstrated. These findings clearly suggest that mr-DT-104 serovar organisms can survive in aquatic sediments for at least several months. Uptake of salmonellae by chironomid larvae and adults suggests that they are possible vectors of mr-DT-104 in both aquatic and terrestrial environments, although the role of larval defecation in movement of bacteria to new sediments was not demonstrated.
Inequality in Child Academic Achievement in Single Parent Households: Evidence from Brazil

In this paper we compare the intra-household dispersion of childreni? ½s education achievement in single female-parent households with two-parent households. We find significantly more dispersion across children in householdsi? ½ headed by females after controlling for household per-capita permanent income and other anticipated correlates. These results are robust and suggest that single-female parents are forced to alter the distribution as well as the level of household investment in children. Our empirical analysis is preceded by development of a theoretical model that suggests the correlation between the intra-household dispersion of academic achievement and single-parenthood may be general; i.e., not specific to Brazil. These results may have important policy implications for the interventions and incentives that target single parent households.
The relationship between people’s attitude and willingness to pay for river conservation

This research advances the understanding of people’s attitude towards water resources valuation. Specifically, it aims to improve confidence in the interpretation of people’s willingness to pay (WTP) for water resources protection by enhancing understanding of value relationships. Primary data were obtained from a sample of 510 people living in and visiting the Pinios River in the eastern part of Central Greece. Respondents’ behavior was explored by measuring and comparing use and non-use values with the help of a proposed constructed scale for measuring the dimensions of Total Economic Value of a water resource. For this purpose, a combination of applied methodological research techniques like Principal Component and Cluster Analyses together with logistic regression was used. The results indicated the relative importance of particular value components in determining water resources conservation preferences, as well as individuals’ WTP for protecting them. We have extracted four factors and explored their influence on respondents’ WTP and the general attitude towards the area. There were high associations between WTP of individuals towards river protection in relation to their characteristics (like education, income and origin).
Numerical simulation of the insertion process of an uncemented hip prosthesis in order to evaluate the influence of residual stress and contact distribution on the stem initial stability

The long-term success of a cementless total hip arthroplasty depends on the implant geometry and interface bonding characteristics (fit, coating and ingrowth) and on stem stiffness. This study evaluates the influence of stem geometry and fitting conditions on the evolution and distribution of the bone–stem contact, stress and strain during and after the hip stem insertion, by means of dynamic finite element techniques. Next, the influence of the mechanical state (bone–stem contact, stress and strain) resulted from the insertion process on the stem initial resistance to subsidence is investigated. In addition, a study on the influence of bone–stem interface conditions (friction) on the insertion process and on the initial stem stability under physiological loading is performed. The results indicate that for a stem with tapered shape the contact in the proximal part of the stem was improved, but contact in the calcar region was achieved only when extra press-fit conditions were considered. Changes in stem geometry towards a more tapered shape and extra press fit and variation in the bone–stem interface conditions (contact amount and high friction) led to a raise in the total insertion force. A direct positive relationship was found between the stem resistance to subsidence and stem geometry (tapering and press fit), bone–stem interface conditions (bone–stem contact and friction interface) and the mechanical status at the end of the insertion (residual stress and strain). Therefore, further studies on evaluating the initial performance of different stem types should consider the parameters describing the bone–stem interface conditions and the mechanical state resulted from the insertion process.
The European Parliament's strategy in EU economic and financial reform

ABSTRACT This article investigates the bargaining strategy of the European Parliament (EP) as a co-legislator in the field of economic and financial governance on the basis of two prominent case studies – the legislative packages for financial supervision and economic governance. It analyses the impact the internal cohesion of the EP had on its bargaining strategy in informal trilogue negotiations with the Council and the Commission at first reading. The article argues that the degree of internal cohesion had a very limited impact on the EP's external bargaining strategy in the trilogues. This is visible both in the substance of the EP position – the issues the EP chose to promote – as well as in the form – the negotiation tactics. Thus, while the internal functioning of the EP is increasingly dominated by ideological and majoritarian features, externally the EP insists on promoting issues where a strong consensus exists to maximize its bargaining power.
The roles of cathelicidin LL-37 in immune defences and novel clinical applications

Purpose of reviewLL-37 is the only member of the cathelicidin family of host defence peptides expressed in humans. It is primarily produced by phagocytic leucocytes and epithelial cells, and mediates a wide range of biological responses: direct killing of microorganisms, chemotaxis and chemokine induction, regulation of inflammatory responses, as well as adjuvant, angiogenic and wound healing effects. In this review we will cover the recent advances in the understanding of LL-37 biology: its activities, the mechanisms of its induction and roles in immune defence. Recent findingsRecent studies advanced our understanding of the mechanisms controlling LL-37 expression, demonstrating the key involvement of the vitamin D3 and the hypoxia response pathways, and the impacts of commensal and pathogenic microorganisms on its production. The synergistic and antagonistic interactions between LL-37 and other immune mediators have been further elucidated. Furthermore, studies in animal models and human patients further characterized the roles of cathelicidins in immunity, with roles in infectious and inflammatory conditions. The underlying properties of LL-37 have been exploited to create innate defence regulator peptides that represent a novel immunomodulatory approach to treating infections. SummaryThe understanding of the biological properties and functions of LL-37 and other host defence peptides advances our knowledge of innate immunity, the interactions of the host with pathogens and the microflora, as well as the pathology of infectious and inflammatory diseases, creating many strategies and opportunities for therapeutic intervention.
Influence of Sex and Previous Concussion History on Postconcussive Recovery in Young Athletes.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether concussed female athletes with a previous history of concussion have longer postconcussive recovery than that of male counterparts. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study. SETTING Outpatient sports medicine clinic in an academic practice. PARTICIPANTS Male and female youth, high school, and collegiate athletes (n = 431; ages = 10-21 years) who sustained a sport-related concussion (SRC). INTERVENTIONS The clinical courses of young athletes treated for concussion by 1 provider at an outpatient sports medicine clinic were retrospectively reviewed. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Recovery time was compared after an SRC with relationship to sex and previous concussion history. RESULTS When comparing male and female athletes with a previous history of concussion, there were no differences found (P = 0.820) in SRC recovery time. Regardless of previous concussion history, males recovered faster from an SRC compared with their female counterparts (P = 0.0002). Without regard to sex, those with no previous history of concussion recovered faster than those with a previous concussion history, although the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.668). Athletes with a previous history of concussion were more likely to require neuropsychology referral than those with no previous concussion history (P = 0.021), and females, without regard to concussion history, were more likely to require neuropsychology referral than males (P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS A previous concussion history does not appear to significantly influence postconcussive recovery time in young athletes, although it does increase the probability of neuropsychological referral. Without regard to a previous concussion history, young female athletes recover slower than males from concussion and are also more likely to require neuropsychological referral.
A multi-level graph coloring approach for the Bus driver's timetables: A real case study of the public transport of Sfax

Scheduling and human resources management have an important role in the productivity and competitiveness of a company. Timetabling is an essential task in such filed to compete in many sectors. The conventional method which is traditionally done manually for solving timetabling problem is often inaccurate. This paper move toward automated software to solve the timetabling problem for the SORETRAS Company, which is a public transport company in Sfax city, TUNISIA, to affect all their travel services into groups, called also classes. Each group represents the daily work for a driver. A graph coloring approach is presented. Then, a heuristic based this approach is applied to solve the problem. This approach replaces the intuitive procedure currently used by the SORETRAS decision makers. This procedure consists in solving manually this relevant problem. Hence, with the proposed procedure, the obtained groups were greatly improved in quality of service compared to the current practice.
Azithromycin-containing intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy affects gestational weight gain, an important predictor of birthweight in Papua New Guinea - an exploratory analysis.

In Papua New Guinea, intermittent preventive treatment with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine and azithromycin (SPAZ-IPTp) increased birthweight despite limited impact on malaria and sexually transmitted infections. To explore possible nutrition-related mechanisms, we evaluated associations between gestational weight gain (GWG), enrolment body mass index (BMI) and mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC), and birthweight. We investigated whether the increase in birthweight associated with SPAZ-IPTp may partly be driven by a treatment effect on GWG. The mean GWG rate was 393 g/week (SD 250; n = 948). A 100 g/week increase in GWG was associated with a 14 g (95% CI 2.6, 25.4) increase in birthweight (P = 0.016). Enrolment BMI and MUAC also positively correlated with birthweight. SPAZ-IPTp was associated with increased GWG [58 g/week (26, 900), P < 0.001, n = 948] and with increased birthweight [48 g, 95% CI (8, 880), P = 0.019] when all eligible women were considered (n = 1947). Inclusion of GWG reduced the birthweight coefficient associated with SPAZ-IPTp by 18% from 44 to 36 g (n = 948), although SPAZ-IPTp was not significantly associated with birthweight among women for whom GWG data were available (P = 0.13, n = 948). One month post-partum, fewer women who had received SPAZ-IPTp had a low post-partum BMI (<18.5 kg m(-2) ) [adjusted risk ratio: 0.55 (95% CI 0.36, 0.82), P = 0.004] and their babies had a reduced risk of wasting [risk ratio 0.39 (95% CI 0.21, 0.72), P = 0.003]. SPAZ-IPTp increased GWG, which could explain its impact on birthweight and maternal post-partum BMI. Future trials of SPAZ-IPTp must incorporate detailed anthropometric evaluations to investigate mechanisms of effects on maternal and child health.
Action learning in management education

Provides a definition of the purpose and role of action learning (AL) in management education. Gives examples of programmes in a university business school strongly committed to action learning and outlines some of the benefits of this approach for individuals. Acknowledges that AL is less straightforward and more demanding than a traditional taught programme but potentially could achieve a much wider range of learning outcomes.
Advanced Simulation of Quantum Computations

Quantum computation is a promising emerging technology which, compared to conventional computation, allows for substantial speed-ups, e.g., for integer factorization or database search. However, since physical realizations of quantum computers are in their infancy, a significant amount of research in this domain still relies on simulations of quantum computations on conventional machines. This causes a significant complexity which current state-of-the-art simulators try to tackle with a rather straight forward array-based representation and by applying massive hardware power. There also exist solutions based on decision diagrams (i.e., graph-based approaches) that try to tackle the exponential complexity by exploiting redundancies in quantum states and operations. However, these existing approaches do not fully exploit redundancies that are actually present. In this paper, we revisit the basics of quantum computation, investigate how corresponding quantum states and quantum operations can be represented even more compactly, and, eventually, simulated in a more efficient fashion. This leads to a new graph-based simulation approach which outperforms state-of-the-art simulators (array-based as well as graph-based). Experimental evaluations show that the proposed solution is capable of simulating quantum computations for more qubits than before, and in significantly less run-time (several magnitudes faster compared to previously proposed simulators). An implementation of the proposed simulator is publicly available online at http://iic.jku. at/eda/research/quantum_simulation.
Beyond a Code of Professional Ethics: A Holistic Model of Ethical Decision-Making for Accountants

Most accountants do not realize—until it is perhaps too late—that virtually all aspects of their work have an ethical dimension. They often lack the knowledge and skills to analyse issues effectively, and when confronted with conflicting ethical problems cannot choose the way to move forward that is consistent with their own values and/or the profession's code of professional conduct. This article proposes that the accounting profession worldwide has simply attempted to prescribe simplistic solutions to often complex ethical problems. It endeavours to provide an alternative approach based on the process of ‘ethical knowing’ (Melchin, 1998). Such an approach turns the acquisition of understanding away from a focus on the external world of rules, concepts and exemplars, to the interior world of how accountants, as people, arrive at an understanding that is consistently ethical. To achieve this, the article relies on Lonergan's seminal (1957) examination of the internal processes of decision‐making and the critical roles played by developing skills in data retrieval and insight in the exercise of judgment.
Target Distribution Guided Network Sampling

Studying public users' data on social networks to provide service and prediction for the society has been a widespread and effective way thanks to the rapid raise of social networks. However, users' population structure online is usually different from that of physical world, which may influence the researches significantly. Thus it may become an essential limitation for studies conducted by revealing knowledge from social media data owing to the biased network population structure. Tradition sample approaches are either resources-intensive or data-biased. In this paper, we proposed a target distribution guided sample process to solve the problem of imbalanced user data in the virtual space. We make intervention to the sampling procedure according to the real-time divergence of the collected sample set against the target distribution, apply theory of homophily to discover the users with matched features and refine the samples with recursive sampling. Experiments show this method is able to successfully constrain samples' overall structure according to the given distribution within a given JS divergence of 0.1 while leaving the unrelated features distributed randomly. Moreover, it takes less times of access to collect a certain number of samples for the method proposed in this paper and thus save time and computer resources.
Order imbalances from after-hours trading

The purpose of this research is to examine the information content of order imbalances, an important variable in representing trading activity. The Taiwan Stock Exchange launched limited after-hours trading, in which investors can only trade at the closing price of the normal trading hours. Using the data set in Taiwan after-hours market, this article obtains the order imbalances through calculations using the fixed price of the orders, and could compare whose information content with that of other trading variables. The results of this study show when the prices are fixed, the trading price and volume contain less information, however, the excess demand or supply, namely, order imbalance, can provide more information.
Why Information Technology Inspired but Cannot Deliver Knowledge Management

Recent developments in information technology have inspired many companies to imagine a new way for staff to share knowledge and insights. Instead of storing documents in personal files and sharing personal insights with a small circle of colleagues, they can store documents in a common information base and use electronic networks to share insights with their whole community, even people scattered across the globe. However, most companies soon discover that leveraging knowledge is actually very hard and is more dependent on community building than information technology. This is not because people are reluctant to use information technology, rather it is because they often need to share knowledge that is neither obvious nor easy to document, knowledge that requires a human relationship to think about, understand, share, and appropriately apply. Ironically, while information technology has inspired the "knowledge revolution," it takes building human communities to realize it.
The Relative Merits of Alternative Investments in Passive Portfolios

Should optimal passive portfolios include allocations to commodities, volatility, hedge funds and private equity? What is the most attractive path to an investment in hedge funds: single manager hedge funds, fund of hedge funds (FoHF) or investable hedge fund indices (IHF)? This article addresses these questions using a methodology similar to Black-Litterman that combines views on the performance of various alternative investments with the market implied forecast for three traditional assets: bonds, equities and real estate. Assuming persistence of recent performance of alternative investments, the results indicate that it would be optimal to tilt the global market portfolio towards single manager hedge funds, commodities and private equity and away from traditional assets. The extent of the tilt depends on the degree of credibility assigned to one's views. From a methodological viewpoint, the empirical findings are dependent on both the choice of consideration set for alternative investments and the views expressed about its future performance.
A comparison among approaches for recommending learning objects through collaborative filtering algorithms

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a comparison among three different approaches for recommending learning objects (LO) inside a repository. The comparison focuses not only on prediction errors but also on the coverage of each tested configuration. Design/methodology/approach The authors compared the offline evaluation by using pure collaborative filtering (CF) algorithms with two other different combinations of pre-processed data. The first approach for pre-processing data consisted of clustering users according to their disciplines resemblance, while the second approach consisted of clustering LO according to their textual similarity regarding title and description. The three methods were compared with respect to the mean average error between predicted values and real values. Moreover, we evaluated the impact of the number of clusters and neighborhood size on the user-coverage. Findings Clustering LO has improved the prediction error measure with a small loss on user-coverage when compared to the pure CF approach. On the other hand, the approach of clustering users failed in both the error and in user-space coverage. It also became clear that the neighborhood size is the most relevant parameter to determine how large the coverage will be. Research limitations The methods proposed here were not yet evaluated in a real-world scenario, with real users opinions about the recommendations and their respective learning goals. Future work is still required to evaluate users opinions. Originality/value This research provides evidence toward new recommendation methods directed toward LO repositories.