Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serum aldosterone concentration and cardiovascular risk in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome.

CONTEXT Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is associated with early impairment of vascular structure and a low-grade chronic inflammation. Aldosterone is a well-recognized cardiovascular risk (CVR) factor and is related to inflammatory processes. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to investigate serum aldosterone levels in PCOS and correlate them to some CVR factors and early atherosclerotic markers. DESIGN AND SETTING A prospective baseline-controlled clinical study was conducted at the University "Federico II" of Naples School of Medicine (Naples, Italy). PATIENTS Fifty PCOS women age- and body mass index-matched with 50 healthy women were enrolled. MEAN OUTCOME MEASURES Anthropometric, hormonal, and metabolic patterns, including plasma aldosterone, renin, and C-reactive protein, were measured in each subject. Intima-media thickness was also evaluated in each patient and control. RESULTS Aldosterone levels were significantly increased (P < 0.001) in PCOS compared with healthy women (10.5 +/- 3.2 vs. 5.7 +/- 2.5 ng/dl). In PCOS, a significant (P < 0.001) direct correlation between plasma aldosterone and homeostasis model assessment, C-reactive protein, intima-media thickness, and mean blood pressure was found. On the other hand, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and potassium were inversely (P < 0.001) related to serum aldosterone. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that the area under the curve for insulin and homeostasis model assessment was linearly related to aldosterone in PCOS. CONCLUSION PCOS women show an insulin resistance related increase in serum aldosterone levels.
Environmental R&D, imperfectly competitive recycling market, and recycled content standards

In this paper, we construct a model consisting of an upstream monopoly recycler and downstream oligopolistic firms to examine the economic and environmental impacts of a recycled content standard (RCS). In our model, final goods firms undertake environmental research and development (ER&D) for the purpose of improving green design of the goods. Using this framework with a linear demand curve, we show that a stricter RCS reduces both the output of final goods and the degree of green design, even though it decreases the price of recycled materials. The profits of the recycler and the final goods firms also decrease. Besides, the economy improves its recycling ratio and can curtail the total amount of waste if the degree of the green design is less than a half.
The scheduling risk of lossless shift factors in the ISO energy market and its resolution

This paper presents the scheduling risk of Independent System Operators in using the DC-based shift factor in modeling transmission constraints in its market optimization model while the incremental transmission losses are only accounted for in the power balancing constraint. Because of the inconsistency in incremental loss modeling, the effectiveness of resource adjustment in resolving transmission congestion is subject to distortion from a full lossy modeling. Under the condition that abundant effective adjustments are available, the distortion effect on the MW solution is minimal. However, when effective adjustment is exhausted, the distortion effect could give rise to false adjustments that have no real effect in resolving transmission congestion, posing a system reliability issue. The paper advocates the use of AC-based shift factor in the market optimization model to avoid the false adjustments between resources in market resolution.
Does Casualization Increase the Job Opportunity to the Workers or Impoverish Them? An Evidence from Indian-Organized Manufacturing Sector

This article investigates the impact of casualization on the labour market of organized manufacturing industries in India. In specific, this article analyses the impact of casualization on the labour demand and output elasticity of 15 manufacturing industries in the post-liberalization period for the direct production workers. Dynamic panel data analysis of system generalized methods of moment method is used here for the estimation of lagged labour demand for permanent production workers. Aggregate level analysis ensures that casualization has a significant positive impact on the labour demand and on output elasticity. Disaggregate level analysis also confirms the significant positive impact on the output elasticity at individual industry level. However, wage share of the workers falls along with the increase in the usage of contract workers across most of the industries. Output elasticity increases but at the cost of falling wage share. Casualization generates more job opportunity but reduces the wage share for the permanent production workers in post-liberalization period. JEL Codes: J20, J21, J30, J46, C23
Venous stasis and whole blood platelet aggregometry: a question of data reliability and patient safety

The assessment of platelet function by multiple electrode aggregometry (MEA) (Multiplate, Roche Diagnostics GmbH) is common in laboratory hematology. As regards the ISO 15189:2012 international standard, appropriate use of laboratory equipment requires appropriate pre-examination activities (e.g., blood collection). Venous stasis can influence several blood analytes, but the tourniquet time is rarely regarded as a source of variability. Aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of venous stasis on platelet function by MEA. A total of 6 ml of blood was collected from 20 volunteers into two 3.0 ml Hirudin vacuum tube (Roche Diagnostics GmbH), and subjected to two procedures: procedure 1 (no stasis) – collection after localization of forearm vein by subcutaneous tissue transilluminator device without tourniquet; procedure 2 (stasis) – collection after localization of vein by prior 60 s tourniquet application. Samples were processed on Multiplate, for: ADP-test (without prostaglandin E1), ADP HS-test (with prostaglandin E1), ASPI-test, COL-test, RISTO H-test (high concentration, 0.77 mg/ml), RISTO L-test (low concentration, 0.20 mg/ml), and TRAP-test. The significance of the differences between samples was assessed by Wilcoxon ranked-pairs test. Surprisingly, the results of ADP HS-test, ASPI-test, COL-test, and RISTO H-test appeared unbiased by venous stasis. RISTO L-test, ADP-test, and TRAP-test were significantly biased; the mean percent difference between stasis and no stasis were −7.2% (P = 0.040), −28.4% (P = 0.015), and 1.1% (P = 0.031), respectively. In conclusion, the tourniquet should be avoided when assessing platelet function by MEA.
Antibiotic treatment of moderate-severe community-acquired pneumonia: design and rationale of a multicentre cluster-randomised cross-over trial.

BACKGROUND For the empirical treatment of community-acquired pneumonia requiring admission to a non-ICU ward, the Dutch guidelines recommend either beta-lactam monotherapy, beta-lactam and macrolide combination therapy, or fluoroquinolone monotherapy. The lack of convincing evidence to preferentially recommend any of the three empiric regimens results from intrinsic limitations of current studies, such as bias by indication and residual confounding in observational studies, and the unknown effects of pre-randomisation antibiotic use in randomised controlled trials. In this paper we discuss the methodological drawbacks of observational cohorts and randomised controlled trials in antibiotic therapy. Next, we explain why we designed a multicentre cluster-randomised cross-over study to evaluate the effectiveness of three antibiotic treatment strategies, consisting of a preferred treatment regimen of beta-lactam monotherapy, beta-lactam and macrolide combination therapy or fluoroquinolone monotherapy, in adult patients admitted to a non-ICU ward with a clinical diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia. Furthermore we outline different aspects of this design that deserve thorough consideration. CONCLUSION We discuss different aspects of a cluster-randomised cross-over trial that is designed to determine the effects of three recommended regimens of antibiotic treatment of CAP.
The Urban Informal Economy in Ethiopia: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Abstract:Despite availability of ample empirical evidence regarding the role the urban informal sector plays in the economy of low income households in developing countries in general, development programmes and plans have failed to integrate the sector into the overall development effort. In addition, evidence is limited in the Ethiopian context. This study used national household survey data to explore the roles and characteristics of the informal sector in urban centers of Ethiopia, in light of existing theory. Data was analyzed using simple descriptive statistics such as means and frequencies, and results were discussed using relevant literature, document review and observation. Results show that 1) informal sector employment substantially increased, 2) some production activities such as manufacturing; services; and trade, hotels and restaurant activities decreased while construction and related activities increased, 3) shortage of capital was found to be the major factor limiting work participation in the sector, and the financing of the sector mainly came from informal sources, 4) the level of income per person varied sharply among the various sectors. Finally, the role and characteristics of the Ethiopian urban informal sector is not fully explained by any single theory since all the three theoretical perspectives discussed in the literature review appear to be working in combination.
Genome profile in a extremely rare case of pulmonary sclerosing pneumocytoma presenting with diffusely-scattered nodules in the right lung

ABSTRACT Background: Pulmonary sclerosing pneumocytoma (PSP) typically presents solitary and peripheral mass, while only rarely cases display unusual multiple lesions. We reported a extremely rare case of PSP with diffusely-scattered nodules in the right lung. Case presentation: Diffusely round-shaped nodular shadows in the right lung were found by CT scan in a 31-year-old Chinese woman. The patient undergone the right pneumnectomy. Grossly, numerous small nodules, up to 2.5 cm in greatest dimension were identified in the upper, middle and lower lobes of the right lung. Histologically, the tumor presented the typical features of PSP, with a variable proportion of solid, sclerotic and papillary patterns. Immunohistochemical staining further revealed that cuboidal surface epithelial cells were positive for TTF-1, EMA, AE1/3 and vimentin (partially), and round or polygonal cells expressed TTF-1, vimentin, EMA (weakly), synaptophysin (partially), progesterone receptor (partially), and estrogen receptor (scatteredly). The patient has been followed up for 83 months after surgery by annual chest CT and no new lesions are detected in her left lung and other organs. The whole-exome sequencing identified 15 somatic mutations genes (MEGF6, DNAH5, AKT1, GPRIN2, PIK3AP1, FBXO40, HERC1, VPS16, MORN1, ZNF474, CTNNB1, ZNF251, TSC1, ATM, KDR). Pathway analysis showed possible pathways like the components of CTNNB1, AKT1, and TSC1 mutations in the PI3K/AKT signalings and AKT1, KDR and ATM in VEGF signaling pathway and AKT1 activation seemed closely related with these pathways. Conclusion: According to our and previous data, PSP with diffuse or multiple lesions is very rare, and the patients are most commonly seen in women in Asian countries. The misdiagnosis rate by clinical and intraoperative frozen-section assessment is high because of the multiple nodules in the lung and its confusing histological features. Long time follow up indicates surgical resection should not be considered as the preferred strategy for treating multiple PSP in the intralobar sites. AKT1 activation may contribute to the development of PSP while the pathogenesis of diffuse or multiple PSP still needs to be further analyzed.
SoundView: An auditory guidance system based on environment understanding for the visually impaired people

Without visual information, the blind people live in various hardships with shopping, reading, finding objects and etc. Therefore, we developed a portable auditory guide system, called SoundView, for visually impaired people. This prototype system consists of a mini-CCD camera, a digital signal processing unit and an earphone, working with built-in customizable auditory coding algorithms. Employing environment understanding techniques, SoundView processes the images from a camera and detects objects tagged with barcodes. The recognized objects in the environment are then encoded into stereo speech signals for the blind though an earphone. The user would be able to recognize the type, motion state and location of the interested objects with the help of SoundView. Compared with other visual assistant techniques, SoundView is object-oriented and has the advantages of cheap cost, smaller size, light weight, low power consumption and easy customization.
The Politics of Hidden Policy: Feedback Effects and the Charitable Contributions Deduction

Policy feedback, or the process in which policies create constituencies vested in their maintenance, is a durable feature of the American welfare state. Scholars have shown that policy visibility conditions how feedback effects unfold: for public-private policies—arrangements in which the state delegates service provision to private actors, often described as “hidden” or “submerged”—policy feedback typically galvanizes not citizens but market actors that benefit indirectly from these subsidies. This article extends theories of public-private policy feedback from market actors to charitable organizations through a case study of the charitable contributions deduction. The deduction’s incremental expansion is found to have mobilized charities as powerful stakeholders in the policy’s endurance. Charities’ efforts to protect the deduction, together with the efforts of lawmakers, have couched the policy in a politics of neoliberalism and disguised its effects, insulating it from reform even as elites have netted a greater share of its benefits over time.
Visual Space as Physical Geometry

The geometrical incongruence between patterns in visual space and structures and patterns of activity in the visual cortex, long known to investigators, serves as a criterion for evaluating physical theories of visual space. The problem of determining the geometry of the visual world (visual geometry) is compared with that of determining the geometry of the physical world (physical geometry). Theories as to the possible physical locus of visual space, whether in the brain or elsewhere, are reviewed, analyzed, and criticized accordingly. It is concluded that on the basis of congruence alone it would be predicted that visual space is not to be found in the brain, even though it is seemingly linked to it causally, as experimental neurology and neurophysiology demonstrate. Alternative theories as to the nature of visual space are considered, but are also found to be inadequate in explaining visual space in terms acceptable to contemporary science.
Bandpass Effects in Time-Resolved Diffuse Spectroscopy

This paper discusses the spectral distortions occurring when time-resolved spectroscopy of diffusive media is performed illuminating with a wide bandpass. It is shown that the spectral region within the bandpass that exhibits the lowest absorption will dominate the resulting time-resolved curve, leading to significant underestimations of absorption as well as distortions in the spectral shape (including shifts in peak positions). Due to the nonlinear behavior of absorption, this effect becomes even more pronounced when including longer and longer photon path lengths. First, a theoretical treatment of the problem is given, and then the distortion is described by time-resolved reflectance simulations and experimental measurements of lipid and water samples. A spectrally constrained data analysis is proposed that takes into account the spectrum of the light injected into the sample, used to overcome the distortion and improve the accuracy of the estimation of chromophore concentrations from absorption spectra. Measurements on a lipid sample show a reduction of the error from 30% to 6%.
Ultrawideband-Based 3-D Localization Using Compact Base-Station Configurations

This letter presents theoretical and experimental investigations and analysis on three-dimensional ultrawideband (UWB) localization using compact base-station configurations. A comparative study is performed between the three proposed configurations (Y-shape, L-shape, and mirror-based) and the commonly used cuboid-shape configuration in terms of accuracy and compactness. Results show that the average localization accuracy of the Y- and L-shape configurations is in the range of 3-5 cm, whereas the cuboid- and mirror-based configurations give an accuracy of around 2-5 cm. The Geometric Dilution of Precision (GDOP) values have been calculated for all configurations, which shows a high level of accuracy (i.e., precision values are in the range of 2-4). In addition, a tradeoff regarding occupancy area and complexity is taken into account, and the results show that the proposed configurations have the advantage of compactness as compared to the cuboid configuration and also provide high accuracy in centimeter range, hence making it suitable for various applications such as motion capture in healthcare systems and entertainment.
Transforming growth factor β increases ecto‐nucleoside triphosphate pyrophosphatase activity of human bone‐derived cells

Inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi) may be involved in the regulation of mineralization. The cell surface enzyme, ecto‐NTP pyrophosphatase, could be a major source of extracellular PPi in bone, and agents that influence its activity in osteoblasts may modulate bone mineralization. We studied the effects of serum on the ecto‐NTP pyrophosphatase activity of cultured human osteoblast‐like cells. Enzyme activity was lowered when the concentration of fetal calf serum (FCS) was reduced from 10 to 2.5% (vol/vol) for 48 h, and a further decrease in activity was observed after 96 h. Relative to enzyme activity in cells cultured in serum‐free medium for 96 h, adult human platelet‐poor plasma (HPPP; 2.5–10% vol/vol) induced a small increase, similar concentrations of adult human serum (HS) induced much larger increases, and charcoal‐depleted FCS was ineffective. In an attempt to identify the factor(s) present in serum that influence ecto‐NTP pyrophosphatase activity, we examined transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) and platelet‐derived growth factor (PDGF). PDGFs AA, AB, and BB (0.1–10 ng/ml) were ineffective, but both TGF‐β1 and TGF‐β2 increased enzyme activity. The increase was dose dependent between 0.001 and 10 ng/ml, was enhanced in the presence of 2% vol/vol FCS, and was not potentiated by PDGF or by 1,25‐(OH)2D3. Furthermore, the increase was independent of cell density and was blocked by inhibitors of protein and RNA synthesis. Ecto‐NTP pyrophosphatase of subject‐matched human dermal fibroblasts was unaffected by TGF‐β (10 ng/ml), suggesting that modulation of activity by the growth factor may be tissue specific. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) probably serves to hydrolyze extracellular PPi in bone. In contrast to effects on NTP pyrophosphatase activity in osteoblast‐like cells, TGF‐β1 and TGF‐β2 (0.001–10 ng/ml) decreased ALP activity dose dependently after 72 h. By inducing opposing changes in ecto‐NTP pyrophosphatase and ALP activities, TGF‐β may increase extracellular PPi concentrations in osseous tissues and consequently modulate bone mineral properties in vivo.
Predictive Modelling Strategies to Understand Heterogeneous Manifestations of Asthma in Early Life

Wheezing is common among children and ∼50% of those under 6 years of age are thought to experience at least one episode of wheeze. However, due to the heterogeneity of symptoms there are difficulties in treating and diagnosing these children. ‘Phenotype specific therapy’ is one possible avenue of treatment, whereby we use significant pathology and physiology to identify and treat pre-schoolers with wheeze. By performing feature selection algorithms and predictive modelling techniques, this study will attempt to determine if it is possible to robustly distinguish patient diagnostic categories among pre-school children. Univariate feature analysis identified more objective variables and recursive feature elimination a larger number of subjective variables as important in distinguishing between patient categories. Predicative modelling saw a drop in performance when subjective variables were removed from analysis, indicating that these variables are important in distinguishing wheeze classes. We achieved 90%+ performance in AUC, sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy, and 80%+ in kappa statistic, in distinguishing ill from healthy patients. Developed in a synergistic statistical - machine learning approach, our methodologies propose also a novel ROC Cross Evaluation method for model post-processing and evaluation. Our predictive modelling's stability was assessed in computationally intensive Monte Carlo simulations.
Quality Assurance and Utilization Review in a Health Insuring Organization

HealthPASS is a Philadelphia-based health insur ance organization (HIO), owned and operated by the Penn Health Corporation, a subsidiary of Maxicare, the large for-profit health maintenance organization (HMO) company based in California. In a contractual agreement with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare (DPW), Maxicare contracts primary care physician services on a capitated basis, and other services on a fee basis, to about 96,000 Medicaid enrollees in certain zip codes in Philadelphia. Al though HealthPASS does not provide care directly, it contracts with providers for these medical services. HealthPASS serves a primarily poor, minority, and inner city population with high rates of drug abuse, alcoholism, and mental illness. Currently, the enrol lees are served by a network of providers including more than 40 participating hospitals and over 500 primary care providers (PCPs) in the community. HealthPASS is unique as previous HIOs in Kentucky and Arizona both failed. This paper describes the quality assurance and uti lization review (QA-UR) system implemented by HealthPASS with specific examples of case discus sions and a detailed look at the structure and function of the internal review process. Before outlining the QA-UR system, a brief history is provided of the recent controversial trend toward managed care for Medicaid recipients, as there have been marked fail ures in this arena nationally. The HealthPASS system is described—what it is, how it is staffed, who it serves, and the health services it offers. Discussion of the QA-UR system follows. Lastly, some of the thorny political issues that remain, such as the effort by HealthPASS to educate physicians about managed care, to develop protocols of care, and to coordinate QA-UR for so many physicians and hospitals, are examined.