Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognostic Value of Umbilical Artery Doppler Studies in Unselected Preterm Deliveries

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the prognostic value of umbilical artery Doppler studies in premature deliveries. METHODS: In this cohort study of 582 singleton pregnancies delivered between 24 and 35 weeks of gestation, we evaluated the ratio of peak-systolic to end-diastolic (S/D) blood flow velocities in the umbilical artery of all the patients. The correlations among the results of the Doppler studies, short-term neonatal complications, and the infants' neurodevelopmental outcome at 2 years were studied by univariable and multivariable methods. RESULTS: The prevalences of either neonatal death or cerebral palsy among the 266 (45.7%) growth restricted fetuses were 3.4% (3/88) in pregnancies with a S/D ratio below the 95th percentile, 4.9% (5/103) in pregnancies with a S/D at or above the 95th percentile, and 17.3% (13/75) in those with absent or reversed end-diastolic blood flow in the umbilical artery (P for trend = .001). The corresponding figures in the 316 pregnancies with adequate fetal growth were 6.4% (15/234) and 4.3% (3/69) among pregnancies with a S/D ratio below and at or above 95th percentile, respectively, whereas no cases of either neonatal death or cerebral palsy were recorded in the 13 pregnancies with adequate fetal growth and absent or reversed end-diastolic blood flow velocity (P for trend = .28; &khgr;2 for heterogeneity of linear trends compared with growth-restricted infants = 7.02, P = .008). In logistic regression, in pregnancies complicated by fetal growth restriction, absent or reversed end-diastolic blood flow in the umbilical artery was still associated with an increased risk of either neonatal death or cerebral palsy even after adjustment for gestational age and proportion of expected birth weight, (odds ratio 3.2, 95% confidence interval 1.18–8.66, P = .02). CONCLUSION: Absent or reversed end-diastolic flow in the umbilical artery is an independent predictor of either neonatal death or cerebral palsy in preterm growth-restricted fetuses. In the absence of fetal growth restriction, umbilical artery Doppler study was associated with none of the infant outcome parameters studied. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II-2
A Case-Based Reasoning approach to support web service composition

With the Internet development, lots of web services have been exposed increasingly on the Internet. These web services always are owned by different companies and organizations, and are geographically distributed. How to compose these web services together to fulfill a business process is usually a challenge issue. Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is a problem solving paradigm. It uses successful experiences in past to solve similar problems at present or/and in the future. In this paper, a set of approaches to support web service composition based on CBR is presented for case retrieval. The method of semantic-driven similarity assessment for web services is also described. The indexing technology is adopted to organize the case base to improve the retrieval efficiency. In addition, case adaptation strategy for web services is employed to make a CBR system more robust than usual. At last, the experiments and analysis processes are also addressed.
Choice and Competition in Education Markets

This paper presents a new approach for measuring the effects of competition on school performance. We use an equilibrium sorting model to generate an intuitive measure of the competition each school faces, captured by the slope of the school’s demand curve. We then show that this competition measure is positively related to school performance using rich Census data: a one standard-deviation increase in competitiveness leads to a 0.1 standard-deviation performance improvement, controlling for a host of other factors. This positive performance relationship is consistent with strong supply responsiveness, relevant to the school choice debate.
A meticulous approach towards contingency clustering in power system

Contingency analysis plays a key role in evaluating the performance of a system under stressed conditions. This paper proposes Trajectory Violation Integral (TVI) index as a measure to quantify the effect of contingency. Contingency clustering enables partitioning of the system into coherent and independent Voltage Control Areas. The data that is worked on during contingency clustering is of high dimensional nature and studies have shown that the algorithms that work on lower dimensional data may get impaired while handling higher dimensional data due to various reasons, one of them being the curse of dimensionality. This work emphasizes the problems associated while dealing with higher dimensional data and proposes a meticulous strategy to undermine the effects of higher dimensionality in the premises of contingency clustering for the formation of Dynamic Voltage Control Areas.
Technology sourcing – how biotechnology cooperation works

Using the resource-based view as theoretical background, the authors analyse the technology sourcing process of 77 cooperation projects in biotechnology. Trust and communication are found to be the most important factors in biotech cooperation. Interestingly, trust is significantly more important for European firms than for US companies. This indicates that the technology sourcing process in these countries is different. The authors also found that cooperation with universities does result in a similarly high rate of new products (of above 60%) than alliances with other firms. Furthermore, when cooperating with universities, the companies do not deem biotechnology to yield a great competitive advantage. Thus, the authors assume that the technology sourcing process is not as important for the generation of resources than the absorptive capacity.
Comparative analysis of AFLPs and SSRs efficiency in resolving population genetic structure of Mediterranean Solea vulgaris

The performance of different molecular markers in the assessment of population structure was tested using samples of Solea vulgaris collected in the Mediterranean within and outside the hypothetical dispersal ability of the species. A total of 172 individuals belonging to four population samples were analysed using 15 microsatellites [simple sequence repeats (SSRs)] and 153 amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs). Considering the global qualitative patterns, we found a correlation between SSRs and AFLPs in detecting genetic differentiation among samples. However, on a small geographical scale, AFLPs were able to discriminate individuals from neighbouring populations whereas SSRs were not, and the percentage of individuals correctly assigned to their population of origin was higher with AFLPs than with SSRs. The high number of loci analysed with the AFLP technique could increase the probability to include outlier loci in the analysis; however, the neutrality test performed on our data set did not show evidence of selection acting on the S. vulgaris samples. Even if the choice of the molecular marker depends mainly on the biological question to be addressed, the higher power of discrimination and the comparative technical ease of obtaining data from AFLPs with respect to SSRs suggest the use of AFLPs for many population genetics studies.
l‐NG‐nitro arginine inhibits non‐adrenergic, non‐cholinergic relaxations of guinea‐pig isolated tracheal smooth muscle

The effects of l‐NG‐nitro arginine (l‐NOARG) on α‐chymotrypsin‐resistant, non‐adrenergic, non‐cholinergic (NANC) relaxations of guinea‐pig tracheal smooth muscle have been examined. l‐NOARG (1–100 μm), but not d‐NOARG (100 μm), inhibited the NANC relaxations in a concentration‐related manner. The effects of l‐NOARG were partially reversed by l‐arginine but not d‐arginine.l‐NOARG was without effect on acetylcholine‐induced contractile responses of the trachea or on relaxations produced by vasoactive intestinal peptide, sodium nitroprusside or isoprenaline. These results suggest that an endogenous nitrate may contribute to NANC relaxations of tracheal smooth muscle.
Increased p38 mitogen‐activated protein kinase signaling is involved in the oxidative stress associated with oxygen and glucose deprivation in neonatal hippocampal slice cultures

The pathological basis of neonatal hypoxia–ischemia (HI) brain damage is characterized by neuronal cell loss. Oxidative stress is thought to be one of the main causes of HI‐induced neuronal cell death. The p38 mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) is activated under conditions of cell stress. However, its pathogenic role in regulating the oxidative stress associated with HI injury in the brain is not well understood. Thus, this study was conducted to examine the role of p38 MAPK signaling in neonatal HI brain injury using neonatal rat hippocampal slice cultures exposed to oxygen/glucose deprivation (OGD). Our results indicate that OGD led to a transient increase in p38 MAPK activation that preceded increases in superoxide generation and neuronal death. This increase in neuronal cell death correlated with an increase in the activation of caspase‐3 and the appearance of apoptotic neuronal cells. Pre‐treatment of slice cultures with the p38 MAPK inhibitor, SB203580, or the expression of an antisense p38 MAPK construct only in neuronal cells, through a Synapsin I‐1‐driven adeno‐associated virus vector, inhibited p38 MAPK activity and exerted a neuroprotective effect as demonstrated by decreases in OGD‐mediated oxidative stress, caspase activation and neuronal cell death. Thus, we conclude that the activation of p38 MAPK in neuronal cells plays a key role in the oxidative stress and neuronal cell death associated with OGD.
Innovation Dynamics in Tuberculosis Control in India: The Shift to New Partnerships

Innovation dynamics in Tuberculosis control in India: The shift to new partnerships Tuberculosis remains the biggest infectious killer in India and worldwide, and it has recently regained substantial international attention with its come-back in drug resistant forms. The environment, the disease and the societal response to it are changing and with it challenges and opportunities to control the disease. Innovation in a variety of areas such as improved diagnostic tests, drugs, delivery mechanisms, service processes, institutions and treatment regimes is needed in order to be able to respond to the changing public health challenge. Recent developments in the literature emphasize that innovation is a complex endeavour that includes processes of negotiation, learning and alignment amongst researchers, health practitioners, firms and public authorities. The ground level realities for innovation in countries such as India where TB is a social as much as a clinical problem are complicated with challenges and constraints inherent to the health and wider social system that hamper learning, experimenting and thus innovation. Based on preliminary results from qualitative fieldwork in India this paper will examine the innovation dynamics in one of the recent policy changes in TB control in India: the emergence of new partnerships between private medical providers, NGOs and the government. The paper traces where new ideas come from, how they make their way through the existing control structure and how the existing efforts to control TB respond to and cope with these new developments. The central argument is that the dynamics of innovation in a complex, conflicting and confusing setting like TB control can be understood as a continuous evolution of problems, promises and solutions.
Family dinner and diet quality among older children and adolescents.

CONTEXT The proportion of children eating dinner with their families declines with age and has decreased over time. Few data exist concerning the nutritional effect of eating family dinner. OBJECTIVE To examine the associations between frequency of eating dinner with family and measures of diet quality. DESIGN Cross-sectional. SETTING A national convenience sample. PARTICIPANTS There were 8677 girls and 7525 boys in the study, aged 9 to 14 years, who were children of the participants in the ongoing Nurses' Health Study II. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES We collected data from a self-administered mailed survey, including food and nutrient intakes from a validated semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire. Main outcome measures included servings per day of selected foods and food groups, daily intakes of selected macronutrients and micronutrients, and frequency of multivitamin use. RESULTS Approximately 17% of participants ate dinner with members of their family never or some days, 40% on most days, and 43% every day. More than half of the 9-year-olds ate family dinner every day, whereas only about one third of 14-year-olds did so. In age- and sex-adjusted logistic regression models, the odds ratios associated with a frequency of family dinner of most days compared with never or some days, or every day compared with most days, were as follows: for eating at least 5 servings per day of fruits and vegetables, 1.45 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.37-1.53); for eating any fried foods away from home, 0.67 (95% CI, 0.64-0.70); and for drinking any soda, 0.73 (95% CI, 0.66-0.80). Multiple linear regression showed that an increased frequency of family dinner was also associated with substantially higher intake of several nutrients, including fiber, calcium, folate, iron, vitamins B6, B12, C, and E; lower glycemic load; and lower intake of saturated and trans fat as a percentage of energy. We observed little or no effect on intakes of whole dairy products, red meat, or snack foods. Patterns were similar for boys and girls. CONCLUSIONS Eating family dinner was associated with healthful dietary intake patterns, including more fruits and vegetables, less fried food and soda, less saturated and trans fat, lower glycemic load, more fiber and micronutrients from food, and no material differences in red meat or snack foods.
Quetiapine in patients with comorbid schizophrenia-spectrum and substance use disorders: an open-label trial

ABSTRACT Background: Preliminary evidence suggests that clozapine relieves the craving for psychoactive substances in schizophrenia patients. Quetiapine shares crucial pharmacological properties with clozapine. Promising results have been described with quetiapine therapy in patients with psychosis and substance use disorder. Methods: Based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – fourth edition (DSM‐IV) criteria, patients were diagnosed with comorbid schizophrenia-spectrum and substance use disorders. Patients were switched to quetiapine for a 12‐week open-label trial. Craving, quantities used, days of consumption, and severity of substance abuse were assessed every 3 weeks. Alcohol and Drug Use Scales were administered on baseline and end-point. Psychiatric symptoms, depressive symptoms, extrapyramidal symptoms, and cognition were also assessed at baseline, week 6 and week 12. Results: Twenty-four schizophrenia-spectrum patients were included in the last observation carried forward (LOCF) analyses, responding to one or more of the following substance use disorders: cannabis (15 patients), alcohol (10 patients), and other psychoactive substances (nine patients). Overall, severity of substance abuse improved during the study. Less weekly days were spent on drugs of abuse. A decrease in the weekly Canadian dollars spent on psychoactive substances was also observed. Cognition, psychiatric, depressive, and extrapyramidal symptoms also significantly improved ( p < 0.05). Conclusions: In this open-label, uncontrolled trial, significant improvements were noted in substance abuse, psychiatric symptoms, extrapyramidal symptoms, and cognition during quetiapine therapy. The study suffered from three main limitations: (1) the open-label design of the study; (2) the patients’ poor compliance; and (3) the small sample size involved. Controlled studies on the use of quetiapine in dual diagnosis schizophrenia are warranted to confirm that the effects are drug-related.
FinFET Centric Variability-Aware Compact Model Extraction and Generation Technology Supporting DTCO

In this paper, we present a FinFET-focused variability-aware compact model (CM) extraction and generation technology supporting design-technology co-optimization. The 14-nm CMOS technology generation silicon on insulator FinFETs are used as testbed transistors to illustrate our approach. The TCAD simulations include a long-range process-induced variability using a design of experiment approach and short-range purely statistical variability (mismatch). The CM extraction supports a hierarchical CM approach, including nominal CM extraction, response surface CM extraction, and statistical CM extraction. The accurate CM generation technology captures the often non-Gaussian distributions of the key transistor figures of merit and their correlations preserving also the correlations between process and statistical variability. The use of the hierarchical CM is illustrated in the simulation of FinFET-based SRAM cells and ring oscillators.
Aesthetics based assessment and ranking of fashion images

We present an approach for ranking images by pooling from the knowledge and experience of crowdsourced annotators. Specifically, we address the highly subjective and complex problem of fashion interpretation and assessment of aesthetic qualities of images. To utilize the visual judgements, we introduce a novel dataset complete with labellings of various attributes of clothing and body shapes. Large scale pairwise comparisons of the order of tens of thousands are performed by annotators who follow fashion. We then apply various consistency measures to verify the agreement and correlation between the annotators to rule out inconsistencies amongst them. Based on the annotations we establish reliable rankings which are utilized to learn an image representation based on qualitative assessments of visual aesthetics. This relies on a multi-node multi-state model that represents image attributes and their relations. Bag-offeatures object recognition is used for the classification of visual attributes such as clothing and body shape in an image. The attributes and their relations are then assigned learnt potentials which are used to rate the images. Evaluation of the representation model has demonstrated a high performance rate in ranking fashion images.
Speed optimisation of the mobile PAN coordinator for QoS enhancement in IoT networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) network is typified by deployments such as a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). These WSN's are commonly deployed within a target area for a specific task such as farm monitoring and asset movement control. A group of sensors are typically led by a Personal Area Network Coordinator (PANC). In some situations like in large scale greenhouse monitoring, mobile PANC are required to eliminate energy-hole issues and hence improve the performance of the WSN. The energy-hole issue is a problem caused by the depleted cluster head nodes. In this paper we analyse the performance of a WSN with a mobile PANC. Using inputs from previous empirical studies we designed a scenario of a mobile PAN coordinator using a simulation package. The performance was evaluated. The mobile PANC speed and contact time is monitored and the average network throughput and delay are measured. Based on an analysis of these results a comprehensive set of guidelines are provided for operators of IoT networks. These guidelines optimise the network performance and ultimately lead to cost savings for network providers.
Temporal classification of natural gesture and application to video coding

A method for the temporal classification of natural gesture from video imagery is presented. The work is motivated by recent developments in the theory of natural gesture which have identified several key temporal aspects of gesture important to communication. In particular gesticulation during conversation can be coarsely characterized as periods of bi-phasic or tri-phasic gesture separated by a rest state. We first present an automatic procedure for hypothesizing plausible rest state configurations of a speaker. Second, we develop a state-based parsing algorithm used to both select among candidate rest states and to parse an incoming video stream into bi-phasic and tri-phasic gestures. Finally, we demonstrate the use of the bi-phasic/tri-phasic labeling to select semantically significant static images for low bandwidth coding of video of story-telling speakers.
Normative Influences in Household Waste Recycling

It is often stated that social pressures to conform to the norm can help stimulate some individuals into recycling. Whilst this can be intuitively accepted by most people, there have been few scientific studies to show if and how these normative influences can make any significant impact on recycling behaviour within a community. Normative influences, however, are not directly measurable quantities. Their presence may only be supposed either: (1) by showing that models of the expected effects are consistent with observed behaviours; or (2) by questioning individuals on their motivation for recycling. This paper explores both approaches. Measured recycling performance indicators have been examined for evidence that non-chance behaviour is occurring. Results show that if natural normative influence is occurring, its measurable effects are likely to be small and substantially masked by natural random variation. The effects themselves serve more to increase recycling frequency than to increase absolute levels.
Strategic Human Resource Management

ENVIRONMENT, STRATEGY, AND ORGANIZATION. The External Context of Human Resource Management (C. Fombrun). The Organizational Context of Strategic Human Resource Management (N. Tichy, et al.). A Framework for Strategic Human Resource Management (M. Devanna, et al.). THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF THE HUMAN RESOURCE SYSTEMS. Strategic Staffing (E. Miller). Strategic Staffing at Chase Manhattan Bank (C. Borucki and A. Lafley). The Appraisal System as a Strategic Control (G. Latham). STRATEGIC ISSUES IN HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT. Bringing Human Resources into Strategic Planning: Systems Design Considerations (P. Lorange and D. Murphy). Managing Human Resources in a Declining Context (T. Gimore and L. Hirschhorn). Human Resource Policies for the Innovating Organization (J. Galbraith). HUMAN RESOURCES: THE CEO's PERSPECTIVE. An Interview with Reginald Jones and Frank Doyle (C. Fombrun). An Interview with Edson Spencer and Doston Boyle (N. Tichy). References. Index.
Investment Selection with Imperfect Capital Markets

IN THIS PAPER we present a multiperiod model of investment and reinvestment in which the investor's goal is the maximization of terminal wealth over the finite horizon in which economic activity occurs. The model entails the absence of risk, constant returns-to-scale, stationarity, and a borrowing constraint. The main point is to characterize the relationship between an investment project's asymptotic (internal) growth rate and its set of internal-rates-of-return, thereby provid
The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy

Part 1 Intimations of mortality: the embattled elite the decline and dispersal of territorial wealth the erosion of local control the eclipse of a senatorial order the demise of patrician professionals the "corruption" of public life the dilution of select society. Part 2 The light of common day: from leisured class to labouring aristocracy lost causes and disappointed hopes the politics of paranoia the reconstruction of social prestige World War II the end of the affair perceptions and perspectives.