Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Raising Copayment and/or Reducing Reimbursement Benefits on Healthcare according to "Disequilibrium Bivariate Distribution"

Healthcare is a significant part of every country’s economy. In 2011, the healthcare industry consumed about 9.3 percent of the US gross domestic product (GDP), 10 percent of the Canada’s GDP, and 11 percent of the France’s as well as in Germany’s GDP. Based on a random sample of 337 sex offenders, who received treatment in the Ontario region, Canada, during the years 1993 to 1998, Mailloux et al. [1] reported an increase of risk to die due to over-prescription. Ding et al. [2] stated that China’s health reforms in 2009 resulted in significant changes in the prescribing patterns. He [3] warned that over-prescription increased the threats of malpractice/litigation lawsuits. Sacarny et al. [4] announced that over-prescribing threatened Medicare benefits. Based on a study examining 230,800 prescriptions written during the period 2007 and 2009 in 784 community hospitals over 28 cities across China, Parveen et al. [5] mentioned that over-prescribing caused incorrect, ineffective and insecure treatment, exacerbation or continuation of illness, and increased the healthcare cost. Li et al. [6] proved the existence of a substantial overprescribing against the recommendation by the World Health Organization. The German’s healthcare reform of the year 1997 resulted in a significant reduction of the number of visits by the patients [7,8]. They wondered whether the extra reimbursement possibility from the insurance coverage induce the physicians to write more prescriptions? In December 2011, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that about 30% of the healthcare spending is waste. According to an administrator, the first cause for the waste was identified to be over-prescription/overtreatment of the patients. To minimize the waste, would raising the copayment and/or reducing the reimbursement benefits help? The tendencies for overprescription and frequent visit to physician is the central theme of this article.
Developing an explanatory model for the firm investments in submarine optic telecommunication cables: A case study of the investment behavior to the Netherlands and Spain

Interconnection with the internet is important for the business climate in a country. Therefore it is relevant for governments to understand the factors that influence the investments in submarine communication cables. However there is no singly comprehensive theory that explains the investments in this industry. Therefore the research question in this paper is: What factors explain the investment decisions in submarine communication cables? A pluralistic research framework is create based on three theories; resource-based view, transaction cost economics and transaction cost regulation. Analysis with help of this framework results in a list of factors that can explain the investments in submarine cables. These factors are used in a comparative qualitative case study between the Netherlands and Spain. In this way a first step is made to develop and validate an explanatory model for firm investment behaviour in submarine communication cables. Outcome of the analysis show that content and application providers and telecom operators have different investment strategies. Content and application providers invest in diverse connections between their datacentres as part of a vertical integration. Telecom providers connect regions which have high data transit demands.
PIOPED II : Is Spiral CT the Best and Only Test for Suspected Pulmonary Embolism ?

Pulmonary embolism (PE) and deep venous thrombosis (DVT) share risk factors and treatment. [1] These 2 separate entities form the spectrum of the same disease process known as venous thromboembolism (VTE) because PE is a complication of DVT. [2] VTE is relatively common and remains a diagnostic challenge in clinical medicine reflecting ongoing difficulties with clinical and laboratory diagnosis. The need for an accurate diagnosis is crucial because untreated PE is potentially fatal and the therapy itself for VTE can produce significant complications. Conventional pulmonary angiography is generally considered the "gold standard" in the diagnosis of PE, but this procedure is invasive and is occasionally associated with major complications. A variety of noninvasive imaging modalities are available, but each has its own limitations.
Mechanism of Dynamitin-mediated Disruption of Dynactin*

Dynamitin is a commonly used inhibitor of cytoplasmic dynein-based motility in living cells. Dynamitin does not inhibit dynein directly but instead acts by causing disassembly of dynactin, a multiprotein complex required for dynein-based movement. In dynactin, dynamitin is closely associated with the subunits p150Glued and p24, which together form the shoulder and projecting arm structures of the dynactin molecule. In this study, we explore the way in which exogenous dynamitin effects dynactin disruption. We find that pure, recombinant dynamitin is an elongated protein with a strong propensity for self-assembly. Titration experiments reveal that free dynamitin binds dynactin before it causes release of subunits. When dynamitin is added to dynactin at an equimolar ratio of exogenous dynamitin subunits to endogenous dynamitin subunits (1×= 4 mol of exogenous dynamitin per mole of dynactin), exogenous dynamitin exchanges with endogenous dynamitin, and partial release of p150Glued is observed. When added in vast excess (≥25×; 100 mol of exogenous dynamitin per mole of dynactin), recombinant dynamitin causes complete release of both p150Glued subunits, two dynamitins and one p24, but not other dynactin subunits. Our data suggest that dynamitin mediates disruption of dynactin by binding to endogenous dynamitin subunits. This binding destabilizes the shoulder structure that links the p150Glued arm to the Arp1 filament and leads to subunit release.
Ultrasonographic evaluation of gastrocnemius muscle in a rat model of N-methyl-N-nitrosourea-induced mammary tumor.

BACKGROUND/AIM Ultrasonography is frequently used to study body tissues. Our aim was to evaluate by ultrasonography, gastrocnemius muscle wasting induced by cancer in a rat model of chemically-induced mammary tumor, muscular response to exercise. MATERIALS AND METHODS Female Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into as well as four groups. Groups I and II were injected with N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU). Groups I and III performed endurance training on a treadmill. Gastrocnemius muscles were palpated for tonus evaluation. Gastrocnemius muscle and fibrous tissue between muscle and tibia were examined by ultrasonography. At necropsy, muscle was collected and weighed. Myostatin was assessed by immunoblotting. RESULTS The final body weight, gastrocnemius weight, length and width were similar among groups. Tone of muscle was higher in exercised animals. Myostatin was higher in MNU-treated groups. Echogenicity of muscle and fibrous tissue in group IV was higher than in other groups (p<0.05). Echogenicity of fibrous tissue was higher than echogenicity of muscle in all groups. CONCLUSION Our results showed that muscle ultrasonography is a useful tool to identify alterations in muscle structure. More studies are necessary for researchers to understand the influence of fat location in muscle ultrasonographic imaging.
An Integration Platform for Private Assisted Houses

A Private Assisted House aims to define a novel care model focusing on the changing needs of people to promote active life expectancy. This raises the need of personalization in the design and development of Smart Home, so starting from users requirements we stress the need of integration suitable to support such changing requirements. In this paper we discuss Private Assisted House integration platform focusing on its conceptual model and reference architecture. The platform is defined around a set of smart objects managed by a home gateway that communicate with a Cloud Center. This organization provide two kinds of processing: (i) local to the house, and (ii) remote. The local processing involves events, triggers, commands and automations managed directly for the gateway. The remote processing implies communication from the house to the Cloud Center that can provide intelligence to the house using high-level applications that use data correlation to perform specific tasks.
Towards automated HPC scheduler configuration tuning

High performance computing (HPC) systems allow researchers and businesses to harness large amounts of computing power needed for solving complex problems. In such systems a job scheduler prioritizes the execution of jobs belonging to users of the system in a manner that allows the system to satisfy performance objectives for various groups of users while simultaneously making efficient use of available resources. Typically, system administrators have the responsibility of manually configuring or tuning the job scheduler such that the performance objectives of user groups as well as system‐level performance objectives are met. Modern job schedulers used in production systems are quite complex. Through detailed trace‐driven simulations, we show that manually tuning the configuration of production schedulers in an environment characterized by multiple performance objectives is very challenging and may not be feasible. To alleviate this problem, this paper describes a toolset that can help a system administrator to automatically configure a scheduler such that the performance objectives for various classes of users in the system as well as other system‐level performance objectives can be satisfied. A unique aspect of this work that differentiates it from the existing work on scheduler tuning is that it has been implemented to work with a widely used production scheduler. Furthermore, in contrast to the existing work it considers the challenging real‐world problem of delivering different levels of performance to different classes of users. System administrators can exploit the toolset to react quickly to changes in performance objectives and workload conditions. Case studies using synthetic and real HPC workloads demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Metabolic and hepatic effects of liraglutide, obeticholic acid and elafibranor in diet-induced obese mouse models of biopsy-confirmed nonalcoholic steatohepatitis

AIM To evaluate the pharmacodynamics of compounds in clinical development for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) in obese mouse models of biopsy-confirmed NASH. METHODS Male wild-type C57BL/6J mice (DIO-NASH) and Lepob/ob (ob/ob-NASH) mice were fed a diet high in trans-fat (40%), fructose (20%) and cholesterol (2%) for 30 and 21 wk, respectively. Prior to treatment, all mice underwent liver biopsy for confirmation and stratification of liver steatosis and fibrosis, using the nonalcoholic fatty liver disease activity score (NAS) and fibrosis staging system. The mice were kept on the diet and received vehicle, liraglutide (0.2 mg/kg, SC, BID), obeticholic acid (OCA, 30 mg/kg PO, QD), or elafibranor (30 mg/kg PO, QD) for eight weeks. Within-subject comparisons were performed on changes in steatosis, inflammation, ballooning degeneration, and fibrosis scores. In addition, compound effects were evaluated by quantitative liver histology, including percent fractional area of liver fat, galectin-3, and collagen 1a1. RESULTS Liraglutide and elafibranor, but not OCA, reduced body weight in both models. Liraglutide improved steatosis scores in DIO-NASH mice only. Elafibranor and OCA reduced histopathological scores of hepatic steatosis and inflammation in both models, but only elafibranor reduced fibrosis severity. Liraglutide and OCA reduced total liver fat, collagen 1a1, and galectin-3 content, driven by significant reductions in liver weight. The individual drug effects on NASH histological endpoints were supported by global gene expression (RNA sequencing) and liver lipid biochemistry. CONCLUSION DIO-NASH and ob/ob-NASH mouse models show distinct treatment effects of liraglutide, OCA, and elafibranor, being in general agreement with corresponding findings in clinical trials for NASH. The present data therefore further supports the clinical translatability and utility of DIO-NASH and ob/ob-NASH mouse models of NASH for probing the therapeutic efficacy of compounds in preclinical drug development for NASH.
Parallel Voronoi Diagram Construction Method with MapReduce

Voronoi diagram has been widely used as a spatial index in spatial queries which can be frequently seen in the applications such as decision support systems, profile-based marketing and GIS. Focused on the problem of Voronoi diagram construction for cloud computing environment, a parallel construction method with MapReduce is proposed. This method uses the incremental insertion algorithm to construct the Delaunay triangulation mesh rapidly, and then transforms it to the Voronoi diagram with Quad-Edge structure. In addition, the MapReduce framework and SpatialHadoop for processing the big spatial data are also used to construct the Voronoi diagram in parallel. Experimental results show that the proposed parallel construction method can improve the Voronoi diagram construction effectively, it can meet the requirement of indexing large-scale spatial data.
A Novel Method for the Visualization of Deformation Data

SUMMARY Modern deformation monitoring systems, such as laser scanner or image based tacheometer are producing a vast number of object points. One of the main problems concerning the analysis and interpretation of high density deformation measurements is the visualization of the data respectively of the underlying deformation. Most existing geodetic deformation visualization techniques are based on plotted displacement vectors or on a colour coded representation. A visualization of displacement vectors is unsuitable for high density point clouds; colour coded representation is more apprporiated with some limitions regarding the interpretation (e.g. direction of movements or deformations can represented restriced only). In this paper a novel technique for the visualization of deformation data is presented – we call this technique exaggerated visualization. The exaggeration of the deformation accents subtle deviations and supports the viewer in correctly interpretating of the underlying deformation. The paper at hand presents the new method for the visualization of deformation data, as well as some examples.
A video game for an upper limb rehabilitation robotic system for children with cerebral palsy

This paper describes a video game for the rehabilitation of the pronation and supination movements of children with cerebral palsy. It is used as an interface for a robot that is currently under development. The game was programmed in LabVIEW and MATLAB is used for analyzing the results. It simulates a formula one racecar on a racetrack. Its objective is to keep the car inside the racetrack's limits. The pronation and supination movements control the car's horizontal position on the screen. A first preliminary test was done with a healthy 11-year-old right-handed child. The same racetrack was played 5 times with each arm. The results showed that the child had an average difference of 3.32% against the expected path when she used her right arm and an average difference of 3.86% against the expected path when the left arm was used. Future improvements will be taken into account, for example, the use of the robot's motor in order to give assistance or resistance to the arm movements of the patient.
IS COAL DESULFURIZATION WORTHWHILE ? EVIDENCE FROM THE MARKET * Short title : Market Evidence on Desulfurized Coal

The paper develops a forward-looking way to estimate the economic benefits of research and development on coal desulfurization. The methodology makes use of survey-based techniques pioneered in environmental economics. The empirical results illustrate the difficulty of configuring desulfurized coal to meet the requirements of existing electricity generating plants. The contributions of the paper are in extending survey-based valuation to meet the needs of R&D investors for intelligence about the prospective value of their investments and using robust estimation techniques to reduce the influence of outliers, as well as in estimating the returns to investment in coal desulfurization.
Changes in psychosocial health during a 7‐week paediatric weight management program

Youth with obesity are at increased risk of psychosocial symptoms; however, little is known regarding the impact of paediatric weight management (PWM) on psychosocial health. The aim of the study was to investigate changes in psychosocial health among children who completed a 7‐week PWM program. Participants aged 5 to 16 years with a BMI ≥85th percentile completed a 7‐week, family‐centred PWM program focused on health behaviour education, exercise and mentored goal setting. The Paediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) was assessed via parent report to evaluate psychosocial symptoms before and after the program, and subscales were calculated for internalizing (PSC‐IS), externalizing (PSC‐ES) and attention symptoms (PSC‐AS). At baseline, positive screen rates for psychosocial symptoms among the 317 patients included 16.1% for PSC, 14.1% for PSC‐ES, 18.6% for PSC‐IS and 12.3% for PSC‐AS. Among program completers, total PSC scores improved in those with normal (p = 0.010) and elevated p < . 001 psychosocial symptoms at baseline. Youth with positive screens for elevated PSC subscales improved their subscale scores, on average, and the majority reduced scores to below elevated levels for PSC (54.2%), PSC‐ES (64.7%), PSC‐IS (78.3%) and PSC‐AS (64.7%). Improvements in PSC remained significant after adjusting for BMI changes during treatment, but BMI differed across PSC‐change groups, including BMI increases among participants with PSC deterioration (0.33 ± 0.64 kg m−2) (P = 0.035) and BMI decreases among patients with no reliable PSC change (−0.26 ± 1.04 kg m−2) (P = 0.038) or reliable PSC improvement (−0.22 ± 0.74 kg m−2) (P = 0.025). Youth with positive screens for psychosocial symptoms can improve emotional and behavioural functioning during short‐term PWM. Future research is needed to elucidate mechanisms and long‐term outcome durability.
Getting Port Governance Right

This chapter discusses the relevance of ports for economic development and next identifies port governance as a critical determinant of a well-functioning port industry. While in the past decades privately owned terminal operating companies have emerged and contributed to more efficient supply chains, in most ports a government-owned port authority continues to play a key role. However, there is a widespread understanding that the governance structure and capabilities of the port authority often are not adequate. This chapter discusses the emergence of a governance model in which the port authority operates as a landlord port development company, within an appropriate regulatory framework. The characteristics and economic rationale of this emerging governance model are discussed in detail, and key issues in the transition towards this model are discussed.
The Preservation of Leucocytes for Cytogenetic and Cytochemical Studies

The development of cytochemical and cytogenetic techniques in clinical pathology has now reached the point where standardization is necessary if comparable results are to be obtained. There is, therefore, an urgent need for methods of storing cells of abnormal cytochemical constitution and karyotype for reference purposes. Techniques for the low temperature storage of bone marrow and peripheral blood leucocytes have been published by Ashwood‐Smith (1961, 1964) and other workers, and thus it was decided to study the possible application of these techniques to the storage of reference cells.
Effects of the GASB No. 34 infrastructure reporting standards on state highway infrastructure quality

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether the additional infrastructure information in US state financial statements improves infrastructure quality. Design/methodology/approach Based on institutional theory, the authors developed six models and estimated them on a state panel data set. Findings The authors found that the implementation of the Government Accounting Standard Board (GASB) Statement No. 34 improved state highway infrastructure quality, and the states using the modified approach had a larger effect compared to the states using depreciation accounting. The authors further used a two-step path analysis and found that the implementation of GASB 34 indirectly improved highway quality through increasing state highway maintenance expenditures. From the empirical results, the authors conclude that the exercise of collecting and developing systems to track the additional data has provided the opportunity for officials to use the information to prioritize limited funding and improve their asset management practices. Practical implications Future research may extend this research by exploring the detailed micro-mechanisms of how decision makers use infrastructure information in their asset management practices, as well as by increasing the number of years in the panel data set to fully capture changes in behavior. Social implications In addition, governments currently using depreciation should be encouraged to move to the modified approach. Originality/value This is the first attempt to empirically examine the effects of GASB 34 on infrastructure condition.
Impact of Information Security Initiatives on Supply Chain Performance

Purpose: Study aims to: 1. Develop a comprehensive framework for the effective application of information security encompassing the internal and external technical environment, formal and informal management, and includes several aspects from an organizational perspective and between organizations in the context of the supply chain. 2. Exploring the potential outcomes and outcomes of the effective application of internal and external information security initiatives to supply chain performance. 3. Study the impact of effective application of internal and external information security initiatives on supply chain operations from the internal and inter-organizational perspective. 4. Study the impact of supply chain operations on supply chain performance. Design/ Methodology/ Approach Based on extant information security management and supply chain security management literature, a conceptual model was developed and validated. A questionnaire survey instrument was developed and administered among supply chain managers to collect data.