Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Passive Suicide Ideation Among Older Adults in Europe: A Multilevel Regression Analysis of Individual and Societal Determinants in 12 Countries (SHARE).

OBJECTIVES Passive suicide ideation (PSI) is common among older adults, but prevalences have been reported to vary considerably across European countries. The goal of this study was to assess the role of individual-level risk factors and societal contextual factors associated with PSI in old age. METHOD We analyzed longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) on 6,791 community-dwelling respondents (75+) from 12 countries. Bayesian logistic multilevel regression models were used to assess variance components, individual-level and country-level risk factors. RESULTS About 4% of the total variance of PSI was located at the country level, a third of which was attributable to compositional effects of individual-level predictors. Predictors for the development of PSI at the individual level were female gender, depression, older age, poor health, smaller social network size, loneliness, nonreligiosity, and low perceived control (R (2) = 25.8%). At the country level, cultural acceptance of suicide, religiosity, and intergenerational cohabitation were associated with the rates of PSI. DISCUSSION Cross-national variation in old-age PSI is mostly attributable to individual-level determinants and compositional differences, but there is also evidence for contextual effects of country-level characteristics. Suicide prevention programs should be intensified in high-risk countries and attitudes toward suicide should be addressed in information campaigns.
Quantitative Detection of Mycoplasma genitalium from First-Pass Urine of Men with Urethritis and Asymptomatic Men by Real-Time PCR

ABSTRACT We developed a TaqMan-based real-time PCR assay for quantifying Mycoplasma genitalium. This assay is able to specifically quantify concentrations of the M. genitalium 16S rRNA gene ranging from 107 to 10 copies/reaction. Using the TaqMan assay, we quantified the M. genitalium 16S rRNA gene in first-pass urine of men with urethritis and asymptomatic men who were positive for M. genitalium by PCR- and phylogeny-based assay. Of 130 men with gonococcal urethritis (GU), five were positive for M. genitalium. The mycoplasma load for each specimen was <5 × 10 copies/ml. Of 84 men with chlamydial non-GU (CNGU), seven were positive for M. genitalium. One man had an M. genitalium load of <5 × 10 copies/ml, and six men had loads ranging from 1.1 × 107 to 2.7 × 102 copies/ml. Of 86 men with nonchlamydial NGU (NCNGU), 17 were positive for M. genitalium. The mycoplasma loads for these men ranged from 3.3 × 106 to 2.3 × 102 copies/ml. Of 76 asymptomatic men, only two were positive for M. genitalium. For these men, the loads were 2 × 102 and <5 × 10 copies/ml. The patients with NGU had significantly higher concentrations of M. genitalium in their first-pass urine than did men with GU (P < 0.01) or asymptomatic men (P < 0.05). In addition, M. genitalium loads were significantly higher in men with NCNGU than those in asymptomatic men (P < 0.05). The quantitative assessment of M. genitalium loads by the TaqMan assay will provide useful information for understanding the pathogenicity of this mycoplasma in the urogenital tract.
Factors Contributing to Diabetes Patients Not Receiving Annual Dilated Eye Examinations

Abstract Purpose: Early detection of diabetic eye disease by dilated eye exam can limit potential vision loss from diabetic retinopathy. The purpose of this study was to examine what variables contribute to diabetes patients not receiving annual dilated eye examinations. Methods: This study used national 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey data. Variables used in the analysis included sociodemographics, insurance status, mentally unhealthy days, receipt of annual dilated eye exams, insulin dependence, a history of diabetes education classes, timely annual diabetic foot exams, and history of cardiovascular disease. Survey proportions were calculated, and survey logistic regression was performed with the consideration of survey strata and weight to correct for biases. Results: The likelihood of receiving annual dilated eye exams was correlated with eight statistically significant variables. These variables included age category, income level, education level, health insurance status, mentally unhealthy days within the past month, insulin dependence, a history of diabetic education classes, and timeliness of annual diabetic foot examinations. Conclusions: This study provides a snapshot of variables that may have a bearing on diabetes patients seeking annual dilated retinal examinations. Eight variables were statistically significant in affecting the timeliness of diabetic eye examinations. Thus, resolutions for these factors could be implemented for future improvement of comprehensive health care provided to those with diabetes.
Poland’s anti-tobacco advocacy – a historical outline

The post-war anti-tobacco movement in Poland was founded in 1960 in the form of the Interministerial Committee for Limiting Smoking at the Ministry of Internal Trade, which by 1964 was transformed into the Social Committee for Limiting Smoking. In 1974 the Committee was instrumental in convincing the Minister of Health to issue a decree banning smoking in healthcare facilities and in Ministry of Health offices. However, both the decree and the broader work of the Committee brought few results, as tobacco consumption in Poland increased almost fourfold, from 1000 cigarettes per adult in 1949, to 3600 cigarettes in 1979. In 1979 the Committee was transformed into the PTP – Polish Anti-tobac-co Society. This energized the movement – the system of monitoring smoking trends in Poland was improved, collaboration with healthcare, educational and religious organisations was improved, and more the engagement with the media became more pronounced. However, the PTP was unsuccessful in convincing politicians to introduce comprehensive anti-tobacco legislative measures. In the 1990s the anti-tobacco movement in Poland coalesced around the Health Promotion Foundation. The Foundation ran a very successful health promotion action, The Great Polish Smoke-out, and lobbied politicians for a comprehensive anti-tobacco law. This succeeded in 1995, when the first Polish Anti-tobacco Law was passed by the Parliament, and amended in the following years. The Polish anti-tobacco legislation which, among other provisions, limited smoking in public places, and introduced the largest health warnings on cigarette packaging in the world, was called by the World Health Organisation an “example to the rest of the world”. The success of Polish anti-tobacco efforts can provide a useful blueprint for developing countries which today face similar challenges to Poland 25 years ago.
Effects of polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid and adoptive transfer of immune cells in the LEW.1AR1-iddm rat and in its coisogenic LEW.1AR1 background strain

The importance of the cellular immune system for the development of T1DM in the LEW.1AR1-iddm rat was investigated by use of polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid (Poly I:C) and by adoptive transfer of concanavalin A (Con A) activated lymphocytes from diabetic LEW.1AR1-iddm rats and the coisogenic LEW.1AR1 background strain. Poly I:C treatment induced diabetes, characterized morphologically by a diffuse infiltration of the pancreas, in up to 20% of the animals of the coisogenic LEW.1AR1 background strain. It did not increase the diabetes incidence of 30% of the LEW.1AR1-iddm strain. In contrast Poly I:C treatment induced diabetes in up to 80% of the animals of the Mhc congenic LEW.1WR1 strain. Adoptive transfer of lymphocytes activated by the T-cell mitogen Con A from diabetic donors doubled the incidence of diabetes, characterized morphologically by a focal insulitis, in diabetes prone LEW.1AR1-iddm recipients. In contrast, animals of the LEW.1AR1 background strain did not develop diabetes after adoptive transfer. Moreover, adoptive transfer of Con A activated lymphocytes from LEW.1AR1 rats to LEW.1AR1-iddm rats with 30 or 60% diabetes incidence, significantly decreased the incidence of diabetes in LEW.1AR1-iddm rats with 60% diabetes incidence. The results show that autoreactive lymphocytes induce beta cell destruction in the LEW.1AR1-iddm rat, while the LEW.1AR1 background strain apparently contains regulatory potential, which is able to counteract the autoimmune response.
Diagnosing Greek debt sustainability: : Why is it so hard?

This paper analyses the serial misdiagnosis of Greek debt sustainability in the official sector lending framework. The standard debt sustainability analysis frameworks of the IMF and ESM have become inappropriate for Greece since they ignore the highly concessional terms of Greek debt. We show that two thirds of Greek debt contains grant elements of about 54%, and the present value of outstanding Greek debt is now about 100% of GDP, rising to about 120% under the new program. In spite of the exceptionally high debt relief already granted, these number still breach the thresholds of debt sustainability and suggest that further restructuring will be required. However, the main problem lies in the repayment flow over the medium term and in the question of burden sharing within the group of official creditors (European institutions and IMF). We also show that the lending policies of the IMF as well as the ESM have been adapted repeatedly to accommodate Greece, leaving the overall lending framework weakened.
How children build their morphosyntax: the case of French

Early morphosyntax is very rich and uniform in young French-speaking children. The present study aims to give a thorough analysis of the morphosyntax produced at the outset of multi-word speech, with a classification of free language produced at 2;0 by 27 French-speaking children. The corpus was fully tagged by an automatic part-of-speech tagger. A classification performed with words taken in isolation shows a clear difference between the categories used in single-word utterances and those used in multi-word utterances. A classification performed with word sequences reveals surprisingly adult-like sequences of syntactic categories and words; the non-adult combinations are few in a French child's language. The very successful use of the tagger demonstrates the morphosyntactic coherence of the child's speech. When compared with adult language, the quantitative results, and more precisely the data concerning regularity and error types, contribute to the documentation of all the specificities of the emerging morphosyntax in normally developing French children.
Essays on Marketing Strategies in the Context of Interdependent Consumption

This dissertation consists of two essays in which I study the impact of two interdependent consumer behaviors, fairness concerns and exclusivity seeking, on a companys marketing strategies and profits specifically in a context where it tries to expand its clientele with the objective of generating repeat purchases, for example by running deals on daily deal platforms. In the first essay, I examine the impact of customers fairness concerns on the profitability of a company running promotions on daily deal platforms. With the prevalence of social media and the internet, information about such targeted promotions can become available to all consumers including those who did not have access to the platform and paid a full-price. Conducting a laboratory experiment, I demonstrate that knowledge about targeted promotions often leads to post-promotional fairness concerns among these consumers resulting in an increased tendency to switch providers. Incorporating the results of the experiment in a two-period game-theoretic model I analyze the impact of customers post-promotional fairness concerns on the profits of quality differentiated companies who compete by running targeted promotions. I find that the low quality provider always suffers from consumers sensitivity to unfairness. Contrary, I show that the high quality provider can counterintuitively benefit from consumers fairness concerns as long as its quality advantage is not too large. Furthermore, I analyze how profits are impacted when information about the targeted deals leaks to non-targeted customers who would have bought at the regular price. I find that, counterintuitively, competing firms profits increase with leakage. In the second essay of this dissertation, I start with the observation that many platform members are new customers and are uncertain about the quality of the companys product or service until they consume it. In such a context, I examine a high quality sellers optimal signaling strategy in a market where consumers prefer to purchase a scarce product due to desire for exclusivity or to receive a service in a non-crowded environment due to better experience and service delivery. Utilizing a repeat purchase signaling model I show
The potential of orange-fleshed sweet potato to prevent vitamin A deficiency in Africa.

PURPOSE Vitamin A deficiency is among major health problems worldwide that leads to blindness, retarded growth and death, particularly in developing countries. In these countries, vitamin A deficiency largely affects pre-school children, pregnant and lactating mothers, and the rural poor. For instance, the predicted prevalence of vitamin A deficiency for 36 sub-Saharan African countries is 19.1%. METHODS Different strategies, including vitamin A supplementation, food fortification and dietary diversification, have been used to combat this problem. However, these strategies are not sustainable due to their high costs. RESULTS Orange-fleshed sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L. Lam) is a low priced crop, which is part of staple foods in most of sub-Saharan Africa that can be a year-round source of vitamin A. Most of the orange-fleshed sweet potato varieties contain 3000-16000 μg 100 g(-1) of β-carotene and this contributes to 250 to 1300 μg 100 g(-1) Retinol Activity Equivalents (RAE). Therefore, by using orange-fleshed sweet potato, it is possible to improve vitamin A status, increase the bio-availability of different micro-nutrients such as Fe, Zn, Ca and Mg, reduce vitamin A deficiency and hence reduce child mortality rates by 23 to 30%. CONCLUSION The article highlights the significance of vitamin A for human nutrition, the effect of vitamin A deficiency, the different prevention methods and the potential of orange- fleshed sweet potato as a food crop to prevent vitamin A deficiency.
Role of the actin cytoskeleton during influenza virus internalization into polarized epithelial cells

The in vivo site of influenza virus infection is a polarized epithelium, and it is well established that the virus preferentially enters from the apical surface of polarized epithelial cells; however, many of the molecular events involved during the endocytosis of the virus into polarized epithelia remain unclear. Here we examined the role of actin microfilaments and the myosin VI motor protein during influenza entry into a panel of polarized and non‐polarized cells. By treatment of cells with cytochalasin D and jasplakinolide, we show that influenza virus entry into all the polarized epithelial cells tested requires actin dynamics, with a specific role for the actin cytoskeleton in the process of virus internalization from the plasma membrane. In contrast, influenza could still could efficiently enter and infect all non‐polarized cells tested after disruption or stabilization of the actin cytoskeleton. To examine the role of the actin motor protein, myosin VI, we expressed a dominant‐negative construct in both polarized and non‐polarized cells. Influenza virus infectivity in myosin VI tail mutant‐transfected cells was significantly decreased in polarized epithelial cells, but not in non‐polarized cells. As a whole, our data suggest indispensable roles of a dynamic actin cytoskeleton for influenza virus entry into polarized epithelial cells, a feature not shared with non‐polarized cells.
Do Managers Face a Performance Trade-Off? Correlations Between Production and Process Performance

ABSTRACT The existence of multiple goals in public organizations inevitably raises the concern that managers face performance trade-offs. In particular, scholars have expressed the fear that public managers, in order to secure high production performance, are forced to sacrifice performance on goals like equity, accountability, and procedural justice. However, our knowledge of whether such trade-offs exist is scarce. Using an administrative 10-year panel data set of Danish public schools and principals, this article analyzes trade-offs between production performance (measured by student performance and student pass rate) and process performance (measured by equity, accountability, and procedural justice). Results show no evidence of trade-offs. In contrast, principals who succeed in raising student performance generally also succeed in securing high pass rates, high equity, high accountability, and high procedural justice. These results suggest that managers who are able to secure high performance on one dimension of performance will likely also be high-performing on other performance dimensions.
Rough clustering

Traditional clustering partitions a group of objects into a number of nonoverlapping sets based on a similarity measure. In real world, the boundaries of these sets or clusters may not be clearly defined. Some of the objects may be almost equidistant from the center of multiple clusters. Traditional set theory mandates that these objects be assigned to a single cluster. Rough set theory can be used to represent the overlapping clusters. Rough sets provide more flexible representation than conventional sets, at the same time they are less descriptive than the fuzzy sets. This paper describes the basic concept of rough clustering based on k‐means, genetic algorithms, Kohonen self‐organizing maps, and support vector clustering. The discussion also includes a review of rough cluster validity measures, and applications of rough clustering to such diverse areas as forestry, medicine, medical imaging, web mining, super markets, and traffic engineering. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2011 1 64‐72 DOI: 10.1002/widm.16
Cross-linking localization of a HIV-1 reverse transcriptase peptide involved in the binding of primer tRNALys3.

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcriptase (RT) initiates the synthesis of DNA from the 3' end of its specific primer, tRNALys3. The regions of tRNALys3 in close contact with RT are well known, while a precise knowledge of the RT regions interacting with tRNALys3 is not yet available. To address this question we cross-linked the heterodimeric p66/p51 RT to tRNALys3 using cis-aquahydroxydiammino-platinum. Ribonucleoprotein complexes of molecular masses higher than the p66 subunit were obtained. After RNase A digestion of the RT-tRNA complex, a labeled oligoribonucleotide (ORN) was mainly found associated to the p66 subunit. This labeled p66-ORN complex was then proteolyzed with Staphylococcus aureus V8 protease. A highly purified radioactive peptide was obtained after two chromatographic purification steps. Its N-terminal sequence corresponded with amino acid residues 241VQPI244. Using the crystallographic structure of HIV-1 RT, this peptide was localized at the beta14-sheet end, near to the hairpin formed by beta12 and beta13-sheets ("primer grip") and the alphaH-helix. The so called "VQPI peptide" is in the border of the thumb and the palm subdomains of the p66 subunit. This study palliates the absence of a three- dimensional structure of the RT-tRNA complex and led to a peptide in interaction with tRNALys3 present in all HIV-1 RT isolates.
Food-specific IgG4 antibody-guided exclusion diet improves symptoms and rectal compliance in irritable bowel syndrome

Objective Dietary modification improves symptoms in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Identification of offending foods by dietary elimination/re-challenge is cumbersome. IgG4 antibodies to common food antigens are elevated in IBS. The aim of this article was to evaluate the effect of exclusion diet based on IgG4 titres on IBS symptoms and rectal sensitivity and compliance. Material and methods The study comprised 25 patients with IBS (3 M, 22 F, mean age 43 years, Rome II criteria). IgG4 titres to 16 foods (milk, eggs, cheese, wheat, rice, potatoes, chicken, beef, pork, lamb, soya bean, fish, shrimps, yeast, tomatoes and peanuts) were measured. Foods with titres >250 µg/l were excluded for 6 months. Symptom severity was assessed with a previously validated questionnaire at baseline, at 3 months and at 6 months. Rectal compliance and sensitivity were measured in 12 patients at baseline and at 6 months. Results IgG4 antibodies to milk, eggs, wheat, beef, pork and lamb were commonly elevated. Significant improvement was reported in pain severity (p<0.001), pain frequency (p=0.034), bloating severity (p=0.001), satisfaction with bowel habits (p=0.004) and effect of IBS on life in general (p=0.008) at 3 months. Symptom improvement was maintained at 6 months. Rectal compliance was significantly increased (p=0.011) at 6 months but the thresholds for urge to defecate/discomfort were unchanged. Conclusions Food-specific IgG4 antibody-guided exclusion diet improves symptoms in IBS and is associated with an improvement in rectal compliance.
Wireless built-in self-repair architectures for embedded RAMs

In order to reduce test and repair cost in advanced system-on-chip products, wireless built-in self-repair (BISR) techniques for embedded memories are proposed in this paper. The redundant memory is divided into spare rows, spare column group blocks, and spare words which are used to replace faulty cells in the main memory. Based on this redundancy architecture, a BISR scheme suitable for built-in implementation is proposed. According to simulation results, our techniques have higher repair rates and lower hardware overhead as compared with previous works. Finally, we integrated the proposed memory with BISR circuitry into the HOY wireless test system. Experimental results show that the hardware overhead (including the wireless interface modules) is only 0.39% for a 16 M-bit SRAM.
Anomalies of tooth formation in hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia.

OBJECTIVE The X-linked hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia (HED) is the most common type of ectodermal dysplasia. The clinical identification of possible heterozygous females can be difficult because of the varying degrees of clinical signs caused by X-chromosome inactivation. This study is the first to elaborate on anomalies of tooth formation found in a group of hemizygous males and heterozygous females with known ED1 mutations. These tooth anomalies may be used as dental biomarkers for heterozygous females, enabling an earlier diagnosis, and therefore, better treatment and genetic counselling. METHODS Anomalies of tooth formation were examined using panoramic radiographs, dental casts and oral photographs in hemizygous males and heterozygous females who were identified by molecular genetic analysis. The results were compared to existing controls and normative data. RESULTS All affected males had multiple missing permanent teeth and tooth malformations. The heterozygous females had a significantly higher frequency of agenesis of permanent teeth compared to normative data. The heterozygous females had an increased prevalence of tooth malformations and reduced tooth size, especially in the mesiodistal dimension. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that observed anomalies of tooth formation may be used as dental biomarkers in the clinical identification of potentially heterozygous females.