Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wire Mesh Allows More Revascularization Than a Strut in Impaction Bone Grafting: An Animal Study in Goats

Segmental defects can be reconstructed with a cortical strut or a metal wire mesh when using bone impaction grafting in the femur. We hypothesized that structural grafts would negatively influence revascularization of the underlying impacted grafts compared with an open wire mesh. A standardized large medial wall defect was reconstructed with a strut or a mesh in six goats per group. In all femurs impaction grafting was done in combination with a cemented collarless double-tapered highly polished Exeter stem. After 6 weeks the femurs were harvested. A high rate of periprosthetic fractures was observed (three of seven and two of six for the strut and mesh groups, respectively). Histologic analysis showed different revascularization and tissue ingrowth patterns for both reconstruction techniques. In the strut group, fibrous tissue ingrowth was limited to the edges of the defect. Medially behind the strut no or limited fibrous tissue ingrowth was found. In the mesh group, fibrous tissue and blood vessels penetrated the mesh and a superficial zone of revascularized grafts was observed. Although revascularization, concomitant graft resorption and bone incorporation may compromise the short-term stability of the stem after surgery, the long-term stability of the stem probably is best guaranteed by graft incorporation.
A new Trimerocephalus species (Trilobita, Phacopidae) from the Late Devonian (Early Famennian) of Poland.

This study presents a detailed morphological analysis of a new species belonging to the blind trilobite Trimerocephalus McCoy, 1849, T. chopini n. sp. , based on exceptionally well preserved articulated specimens from the Late Devonian (Early Famennian) of the Holy Cross Mountains in central Poland. The occurrence of this taxon in Kowala Quarry near Kielce has been reported previously, with specimens often found in single-file queues representing migratory behaviour that was followed by a mass mortality event that preserved these assemblages. The new taxon is compared with other species of Trimerocephalus and is interpreted as being most closely related to a clade consisting of T. caecus, T. lelievrei, T, inimbi, T. shotoriensis and T. tardispinosus.
Can we afford to grow older? : a perspective on the economics of aging

The United States Social Security fund is huge and in trouble. The United Kingdom has experimented with the voluntary contracting out of pensions to the private sector. Chile has privatized its public pension system. Australia has adopted a means-tested public pension system. Japan has the earliest retirement age of any advanced economy; it also has the highest rate of labor force participation by elderly men. Can We Afford to Grow Older? provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of the implications of population aging in these and other OECD countries relative to a range of specific interrelated issues -- Social Security schemes, employer pensions, educational attainment, wage growth and distribution, economic productivity, consumption, savings, retirement, and health care -- all within a realistic framework for modeling and discussing policy. International in scope, filled with rich institutional detail, and built on a solid technical foundation, this will be a standard reference on the economic consequences of aging.Richard Disney adopts a "life-cycle" view of the world which recognizes that individuals often make plans with a forward-looking perspective across the stages of childhood, the peak of economic productivity, and retirement. He stresses the existence of overlapping generations and the reality of generational transactions (which include tax and transfer systems, bequests, and charity to the elderly). And he assumes intertemporal optimization as a useful unifying basis for analyzing social security, private pension schemes, lifetime labor-supply decisions, consumption, and saving.Among the surprising conclusions that emerge is that there is no "crisis of aging" -- no adverse effect of aging on productivity. And although there are serious crises in pay-as-you-go social insurance programs and in health care, these have little to do with aging. Moreover, the shift in private provision plans away from traditional defined- benefit plans will continue, along with an interest in privatized pensions instead of social security.
New in vitro studies of estradiol binding in castrated rat uterus.

Interaction of estradiol with rat uterus “receptors” has been studied using tissue incubation. The reversibility of estradiol binding has been confirmed and 2 types of binders have been observed. The first have great affinity, limited capacity and high specificity. The other, having smaller affinity and nonlimited capacity in the range of concentration used (up to 1 × 10-5 M), can be treated as a “partition” system. Nontarget organs, such as muscle or fat, also incorporate estradiol as a partition system, but with acoefficient smaller than that of the uterus. Different estrogen derivatives have been studied and there is some correlation between their affinity for limited capacity receptors and their uterotrophic activity. After incubation at 37 C, there is no “8 S” cytoplasmic estrogen binder, whereas there is more estradiol incorporated into nuclei than after 2 C incubation when the “8 S receptor” is preserved. (Endocrinology 84: 108, 1969)
Rational Choice and Patterns of Growth

Concluding his excellent survey of recent monetary theory, Harry Johnson [4] suggested that future developments in this field should come from attempts "to break monetary theory loose from the mould of short-run equilibrium analyses, conducted in abstraction from the process of economic growth and accumulation, and to integrate it with the rapidly developing theoretical literature on economic growth. " This paper summarizes an attempt to deal with these issues. Like most theoretical work in rapidly growing fields, it is incomplete and the assumptions on which it is based are relatively crude abstractions. These abstractions, however, allow us to explore certain aspects of the interaction of the real and the monetary phenomena in a model of economic growth in which money, being government noninterest bearing debt, is introduced as an alternative asset to real capital. Most of the recent work in this field 1 has centered on the analysis of the patterns of growth of a monetary economy by postulating alternative plausible saving functions and demand functions for money. What differentiates this product is the fact that, in line with Patinkin's [6] presentation of the neoclassical theory of money, and with the classical Fisherian theory of saving [2], it is based on an explicit analysis of individuals' saving behavior, viewed as a process of wealth accumulation aimed at maximizing some intertemporal utility function. The first part of the paper describes the representative economic unit
The QoS Indicators Analysis of Integrated EUHT Wireless Communication System Based on Urban Rail Transit in High-Speed Scenario

Nowadays, in urban rail transit systems, train wayside communication system uses Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) as wireless technologies to achieve safety-related information exchange between trains and wayside equipment. However, according to the high speed mobility of trains and the limitations of frequency band, WLAN is unable to meet the demands of future intracity and intercity rail transit. And although the Time Division-Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) technology has high performance compared with WLAN, only 20 MHz bandwidth can be used at most. Moreover, in high-speed scenario over 300 km/h, TD-LTE can hardly meet the future requirement as well. The equipment based on Enhanced Ultra High Throughput (EUHT) technology can achieve a better performance in high-speed scenario compared with WLAN and TD-LTE. Furthermore, it allows using the frequency resource flexibly based on 5.8 GHz, such as 20 MHz, 40 MHz, and 80 MHz. In this paper, we set up an EUHT wireless communication system for urban rail transit in high-speed scenario integrated all the traffics of it. An outdoor testing environment in Beijing-Tianjin High-speed Railway is set up to measure the performance of integrated EUHT wireless communication system based on urban rail transit. The communication delay, handoff latency, and throughput of this system are analyzed. Extensive testing results show that the Quality of Service (QoS) of the designed integrated EUHT wireless communication system satisfies the requirements of urban rail transit system in high-speed scenario. Moreover, compared with testing results of TD-LTE which we got before, the maximum handoff latency of safety-critical traffics can be decreased from 225 ms to 150 ms. The performance of throughput-critical traffics can achieve 2-way 2 Mbps CCTV and 1-way 8 Mbps PIS which are much better than 2-way 1 Mbps CCTV and 1-way 2 Mbps PIS in TD-LTE.
Bacterial endophytes from wild and ancient maize are able to suppress the fungal pathogen Sclerotinia homoeocarpa

The aim of this study was to determine if endophytes from wild and ancient Zea plants (corn family) have anti‐fungal activities, specifically against the most important fungal pathogen (Sclerotinia homoeocarpa) of creeping bentgrass, a relative of Zea, used here as a model grass.
Method for predicting human intestinal first-pass metabolism of UGT substrate compounds

As intestinal glucuronidation has been suggested to generate the low oral bioavailability (F) of drugs, estimating its effects would be valuable for selecting drug candidates. Here, we investigated the absorption and intestinal availability (FaFg) in animals, and intrinsic clearance via UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) in intestinal microsomes (CLint,UGT) for three drug candidates possessing a carboxylic acid group, in an attempt to estimate the impact of intestinal glucuronidation on F and select potential drug candidates with high F in humans. The FaFg values of the three test compounds were low in rats and monkeys (0.16–0.51), and high in dogs (≥0.81). Correspondingly, the CLint,UGT values were high in rats and monkeys (101–731 µL/min/mg), and low in dogs (≤ 59.6 µL/min/mg). A good inverse correlation was observed between FaFg and CLint,UGT, suggesting that intestinal glucuronidation was a major factor influencing FaFg of these compounds. By applying this correlation to FaFg in humans using human CLint,UGT values (26.9–114 µL/min/mg), compounds 1–3 were predicted to have relatively high FaFg. Our approach is expected to be useful for estimating the impact of intestinal glucuronidation on F in animals and semiquantitatively predicting human F for drug candidates.
HAN: Hierarchical Association Network for Computing Semantic Relatedness

Measuring semantic relatedness between two words is a significant problem in many areas such as natural language processing. Existing approaches to the semantic relatedness problem mainly adopt the co-occurrence principle and regard two words as highly related if they appear in the same sentence frequently. However, such solutions suffer from low coverage and low precision because i) the two highly related words may not appear close to each other in the sentences, e.g., the synonyms; and ii) the co-occurrence of words may happen by chance rather than implying the closeness in their semantics. In this paper, we explore the latent semantics (i.e., concepts) of the words to identify highly related word pairs. We propose a hierarchical association network to specify the complex relationships among the words and the concepts, and quantify each relationship with appropriate measurements. Extensive experiments are conducted on real datasets and the results show that our proposed method improves correlation precision compared with the state-of-the-art approaches.
Validity of hospital discharge data in a prospective epidemiological study on stroke and myocardial infarction.

The validity and coverage of hospital records of stroke and myocardial infarction were evaluated in a Finnish epidemiological cohort consisting of 57000 men and women. Information on their hospitalizations after the baseline examination was obtained by record linkage to the National Hospital Discharge Register. As compared to data based on re-examination of survivors after five years, the discharge register covered 78.2% of hospital treatments. A specific diagnosis code had been recorded for 81.7% of the definite strokes and for 84.7% of the definite myocardial infarctions. The 5-year incidence rates based on both hospital records and deaths were clearly lower than the rates previously reported from local registers of stroke and myocardial infarction in Finland. Although hospital discharge information underestimates morbidity in the population, the data are sufficiently valid for many epidemiological purposes, e.g. research on predictors of diseases.
Comparative efficacy and safety of chloroquine and alternative antimalarial drugs: a meta-analysis from six African countries.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the safety and efficacy of the currently used antimalarial drugs in six African countries. DESIGN A meta-analysis. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The role of efficacy, safety and cost on the selection of antimalarial drugs. RESULTS The comparative efficacy study showed that amodiaquine (with > 90% cure rate) was superior to chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine at seven days schedule. The efficacy of amodiaquine was also observed to be comparable to that of mefloquine and halofantrine. The parasite clearance time (PCT) of these drugs ranged between two days and a week and the fever clearance time (FCT) was within 48 hours. The recrudescence rate at D14-D21 was found to be 12-17% in chloroquine and amodiaquine, while sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine showed a trend similar to halofantrine and mefloquine (0-12% recrudescence rate). Similarly, a big difference was also noted in the cost of the different antimalarial drugs. The pharmacokinetic data, however, showed that they are of similar profile, except in adverse features and contraindications, and values like their half-life (t1/2) where the long (t1/2) in drugs like sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine endows them with suppressive-cure feature, especially against recrudescent strains. Nevertheless, as these data are obtained from resident population in Africa, who however naive are exposed to few malaria challenges in their life, the results should not be directly extrapolated to total non immunes such as visitors from Europe. CONCLUSION The choice of alternative antimalarial drugs should be mainly based on their relative efficacy, safety and cost.
New frontiers in diagnosing and combating corruption

The World Bank has helped Albania, Georgia, and Latvia measure corruption and design strategies to combat it and improve governance. This note explains how empirical surveys can inform and transform the policy dialogue, so that a workable anticorruption agenda can be established. Early results are given as well as emerging conclusions. Also, challenges in performing these surveys are highlighted, as well as in translating survey results into institutional reform priorities.
The Combined Model: A Tool for Simulating Correlated Counts with Overdispersion

The combined model as introduced by Molenberghs et al. (2007, 2010) has been shown to be an appealing tool for modeling not only correlated or overdispersed data but also for data that exhibit both these features. Unlike techniques available in the literature prior to the combined model, which use a single random-effects vector to capture correlation and/or overdispersion, the combined model allows for the correlation and overdispersion features to be modeled by two sets of random effects. In the context of count data, for example, the combined model naturally reduces to the Poisson-normal model, an instance of the generalized linear mixed model in the absence of overdispersion and it also reduces to the negative-binomial model in the absence of correlation. Here, a Poisson model is specified as the parent distribution of the data conditional on a normally distributed random effect at the subject or cluster level and/or a gamma distribution at observation level. Importantly, the development of the combined model and surrounding derivations have relevance well beyond mere data analysis. It so happens that the combined model can also be used to simulate correlated data. If a researcher is interested in comparing marginal models via Monte Carlo simulations, a necessity to generate suitable correlated count data arises. One option is to induce correlation via random effects but calculation of such quantities as the bias is then not straightforward. Since overdispersion and correlation are simultaneous features of longitudinal count data, the combined model presents an appealing framework for generating data to evaluate statistical properties, through a pre-specification of the desired marginal mean (possibly in terms of the covariates and marginal parameters) and a marginal variance-covariance structure. By comparing the marginal mean and variance of the combined model to the desired or pre-specified marginal mean and variance, respectively, the implied hierarchical parameters and the variance-covariance matrices of the normal and Gamma random effects are then derived from which correlated Poisson data are generated. We explore data generation when a random intercept or random intercept and slope model is specified to induce correlation. The data generator, however, allows for any dimension of the random effects although an increase in the random-effects dimension increases the sensitivity of the derived random effects variance-covariance matrix to deviations from positive-definiteness. A simulation study is carried out for the random-intercept model and for the random intercept and slope model, with or without the normal and Gamma random effects. We also pay specific attention to the case of serial correlation.
Pica as a manifestation of iron deficiency

ABSTRACT Introduction: Pica is the compulsive eating of non-nutritive substances. It is often associated with iron deficiency but its pathophysiology is unknown. Areas covered: We searched the literature using the keywords listed below. Our aim was to describe the phenomenon in its various aspects, to touch briefly on the historical and cultural background, and to examine in more detail the studies that tried to analyze the relative roles of iron deficiency and pica. Expert commentary: Pica is an intriguing symptom known for centuries. Pregnant women and preadolescents are at the highest risk of pica. Iron absorption is reduced in the presence of non-nutritive substances. Iron therapy usually cures the pica behavior. There are different forms of pica, one caused directly by iron deficiency probably due to the lack of iron in some areas of the brain and one more culturally driven and including mostly geophagy.
The Complexity of Bribery in Network-Based Rating Systems

We study the complexity of bribery in a network-based rating system, where individuals are connected in a social network and an attacker, typically a service provider, can influence their rating and increase the overall profit. We derive a number of algorithmic properties of this framework, in particular we show that establishing the existence of an optimal manipulation strategy for the attacker is NP-complete, even with full knowledge of the underlying network structure.
Proteomic and Bioinformatic Studies for the Characterization of Response to Pemetrexed in Platinum Drug Resistant Ovarian Cancer

Proteomics and bioinformatics are a useful combined technology for the characterization of protein expression level and modulation associated with the response to a drug and with its mechanism of action. The folate pathway represents an important target in the anticancer drugs therapy. In the present study, a discovery proteomics approach was applied to tissue samples collected from ovarian cancer patients who relapsed after the first-line carboplatin-based chemotherapy and were treated with pemetrexed (PMX), a known folate pathway targeting drug. The aim of the work is to identify the proteomic profile that can be associated to the response to the PMX treatment in pre-treatement tissue. Statistical metrics of the experimental Mass Spectrometry (MS) data were combined with a knowledge-based approach that included bioinformatics and a literature review through ProteinQuest™ tool, to design a protein set of reference (PSR). The PSR provides feedback for the consistency of MS proteomic data because it includes known validated proteins. A panel of 24 proteins with levels that were significantly different in pre-treatment samples of patients who responded to the therapy vs. the non-responder ones, was identified. The differences of the identified proteins were explained for the patients with different outcomes and the known PMX targets were further validated. The protein panel herein identified is ready for further validation in retrospective clinical trials using a targeted proteomic approach. This study may have a general relevant impact on biomarker application for cancer patients therapy selection.
Evaluation of callable bonds: Finite difference methods, stability and accuracy

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate numerically the semi-American callable bond by means of finite difference methods. This study implies three results. First, the numerical error is greater for the callable bond price than for the straight bond price, and too large for real applications Secondly, the numerical accuracy of the callable bond price computed for the relevant range of interest rates depends entirely on the finite difference scheme which is chosen for the boundary points. Thirdly, the boundary scheme which yields the smallest numerical error with respect to the straight bond does not perform best with respect to the callable bond. Copyright 1995 by Royal Economic Society.
Comparison of three comorbidity measures for predicting health service use in patients with osteoarthritis.

OBJECTIVE To compare the ability of 3 database-derived comorbidity scores, the Charlson Score, Elixhauser method, and RxRisk-V, in predicting health service use among individuals with osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS The study population comprised 306 patients who were under care for OA in the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system. Comorbidity scores were calculated using 1 year of data from VA inpatient and outpatient databases (Charlson Score, Elixhauser method), as well as pharmacy data (RxRisk-V). Model selection was used to identify the best comorbidity index for predicting 3 health service use variables: number of physician visits, number of prescriptions used, and hospitalization probability. Specifically, Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) was used to determine the best model for each health service outcome variable. Model fit was also evaluated. RESULTS All 3 comorbidity indices were significant predictors of each health service outcome (P < 0.01). However, based on AIC values, models using the RxRisk-V and Elixhauser indices as predictor variables were better than models using the Charlson Score. The model using the RxRisk-V index as a predictor was the best for the outcome of prescription medication use, and the model with the Elixhauser index was the best for the outcome of physician visits. CONCLUSION The Rx-Risk-V and Elixhauser are suitable comorbidity measures for examining health services use among patients with OA. Both indices are derived from administrative databases and can efficiently capture comorbidity among large patient populations.