Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In Vivo Imaging Using a Copolymer Phased Array

Phased-array images have been obtained in vivo with a steered copolymer array operating at 2.5 MHz. The array was fabricated using 28 μm copolymer film, λ/4 resonant at 21 MHz, which was bonded to a glass ceramic backing with a thin film bond. The 32 array elements were created by laser ablation of the continuous gold electrode on one side of the film. The transducer was driven by 200 V shock excitation, and the received signal was processed by 32 custom IC preamplifiers that were mounted to the array connector. The amplifiers had a high input impedance compared to that of the array elements and their output impedance matched that of the coaxial cable that connected to the scanner. Because the copolymer transducer had a broad bandwidth, the spectrum of the pulse echo image was modified by the frequency dependent attenuation of tissue and the bandpass of the ultrasound scanner, resulting in a center frequency of 2.5 MHz. The performance of the copolymer array was compared to that of a 3 MHz, PZT array with similar dimensions. On the Duke phased-array scanner, the copolymer sensitivity was 28 dB less than that of PZT. The copolymer elements had a 6 dB pulse-echo angular response of 30°, and the interelement cross-coupling was −35 dB. Phased-array images were made of the heart of a 25 year-old normal male.
The course of alcohol amnestic disorder: a three‐year follow‐up study of clinical signs and social disabilities

Forty‐four patients with alcohol amnestic disorder were prospectively studied from 1987 to 1990. The cognitive impairment, social disability and mental symptoms of patients under different conditions were compared. Thirty‐three patients (75%) had no symptoms of Wernicke's disease nor a medical history to suggest its existence. The course of mean cognitive impairment of patients in different settings was stable. Change in intelligence quotient correlated with alcohol consumption during the study. The development of social disability differed remarkably in different settings. Patients in a large nursing home deteriorated and patients in small‐scale sheltered accommodation improved.
Developmental consultation in implementing career education programs

A model is proposed for the implementation of career education programs in schools. Career education is defined as having goals coincident with many of the objectives of education itself and is placed firmly within the context of psychological education. The process suggested for implementation of these programs is developmental consultation which L described as involving the counsellor in: (a) increasing staff awareness of the need for career education through recognition of commonality of goals between academic and career education, (b) focusing onpriorities for implementation of specific programs, (c) assisting in their operation, and (d) facilitating assessment of the effectiveness of career education programs implemented.
Effect of implant- and occlusal load location on stress distribution in Locator attachments of mandibular overdenture. A finite element study

PURPOSE The aim of this study is to evaluate and compare the stress distribution in Locator attachments in mandibular two-implant overdentures according to implant locations and different loading conditions. MATERIALS AND METHODS Four three-dimensional finite element models were created, simulating two osseointegrated implants in the mandible to support two Locator attachments and an overdenture. The models simulated an overdenture with implants located in the position of the level of lateral incisors, canines, second premolars, and crossed implant. A 150 N vertical unilateral and bilateral load was applied at different locations and 40 N was also applied when combined with anterior load at the midline. Data for von Mises stresses in the abutment (matrix) of the attachment and the plastic insert (patrix) of the attachment were produced numerically, color-coded, and compared between the models for attachments and loading conditions. RESULTS Regardless of the load, the greatest stress values were recorded in the overdenture attachments with implants at lateral incisor locations. In all models and load conditions, the attachment abutment (matrix) withstood a much greater stress than the insert plastic (patrix). Regardless of the model, when a unilateral load was applied, the load side Locator attachments recorded a much higher stress compared to the contralateral side. However, with load bilateral posterior alone or combined at midline load, the stress distribution was more symmetrical. The stress is distributed primarily in the occlusal and lateral surface of the insert plastic patrix and threadless area of the abutment (matrix). CONCLUSION The overdenture model with lateral incisor level implants is the worst design in terms of biomechanical environment for the attachment components. The bilateral load in general favors a more uniform stress distribution in both attachments compared to a much greater stress registered with unilateral load in the load side attachments. Regardless of the implant positions and the occlusal load application site, the stress transferred to the insert plastic is much lower than that registered in the abutment.
Motives and modes of FDI in Poland: An exploratory qualitative study*

The present paper is based on a complex analysis of the results from a survey of seven subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs), which entered the Polish market in the early nineties, and focuses on the motives and modes of setting up these subsidiaries. The survey design has been based on an extensive literature review and the collected data are analysed using a within-case and cross-case approach. The findings of this exploratory study lead to the formulation of pertinent hypotheses that may serve as possible guidelines for undertaking and stimulating future research based on larger and more representative samples of MNC subsidiaries.
Efficient Multiplication of Human Metapneumovirus in Vero Cells Expressing the Transmembrane Serine Protease TMPRSS2

ABSTRACT Human metapneumovirus (HMPV) is a major causative agent of severe bronchiolitis and pneumonia. Its fusion (F) protein must be cleaved by host proteases to cause membrane fusion, a critical step for virus infection. By generating Vero cells constitutively expressing the transmembrane serine protease TMPRSS2 and green fluorescent protein-expressing recombinant HMPV, we show that TMPRSS2, which is expressed in the human lung epithelium, cleaves the HMPV F protein efficiently and supports HMPV multiplication. The results indicate that TMPRSS2 is a possible candidate protease involved in the development of lower respiratory tract illness in HMPV-infected patients.
Reproducibility of repeated human regional splenic blood flow measurements using [15O] water and positron emission tomography

The reproducibility of measurement of regional splenic blood flow by dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) using [15O]water was evaluated. In 19 patients, the correlation between the first and second of two serial dynamic measurements was significant (P = 1.78×10−6; r = 0.858). The regression equation was y = 1.06x, and the slope of the line described had a 95% confidence interval of 0.09. The error apparent between the two measurements was 0.129 (95% confidence interval 0.059). The results demonstrated sufficiently good reproducibility for measurements of regional splenic blood flow with PET and [15O]water to suggest use of this method for serial measurements intended to detect change, including drug effects.
Events and festivals: Current trends and issues

The aim of this special edition of Managing Leisure is to acknowledge the multi-factorial and dynamic nature of events and festivals as research areas. The articles captured in this special edition give some indication of this, located as they are in very different performance contexts and each offering analysis and interpretation of different trends and issues within these.
The Changing Face of Distribution Channels: Partial Forward Integration and Strategic Investments

Recent years have seen a drastic transformation in the organization of wholesale and retail markets. Where once clear distinctions between wholesale suppliers and retail competitors existed, now an era of blurring boundaries has emerged. This transformation has been marked by the introduction of online channels for suppliers to provide products directly to consumers while, at the same time, traditional retailers too persist. Thus, retailers are both wholesale customers and retail competitors of many manufacturers. The consequences of the rapid emergence of instances of such partial forward integration by suppliers are not yet fully known. To this end, we study how partial forward integration can affect competing firms' strategic investments. We find that integration shifts the environment from being one in which firms invest to undercut retail rivals to one in which firms invest more in boosting demand, even that of their competitors. A case in point is the tendency for a manufacturer to invest broadly in brand promotion (benefiting both itself and its retail competitor), rather than heavy promotion of its own sales channel. The shift in the nature of strategic investments arising from partial forward integration implies that such integration can benefit firms and consumers alike, even the firm which finds itself reliant on a competitor for supplies.
The press and issue framing in the Australian mining tax debate

Using supervised learning techniques to code newspaper articles on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax (originally known as the Resources Super Profits Tax), this article analyses sources of partiality and emphasis in media coverage of the issue. It shows that opponents were more successful in airing their views in the opening stages of the debate, but the government's re-branding led to more favourable media coverage. There was a regional bias, however, with newspapers in states dominated by mining interests more critical than newspapers from other states. The only truly national newspaper (the Australian) was notable for having fewer ‘neutral’ articles, with a relatively high number of both negative and positive articles. The Australian Financial Review, meanwhile, had a greater number of neutral articles. Framing remained homogenous over time though variable across publications. 本文使用指导学习技术，对有关矿产资源租借税的报刊文章进行编码，分析了媒体就此话题的报道其中中立性和重点性的根源。 研究显示，反对者在辩论的开始阶段成功地传播他们的观点。 不过，政府的再推广也达到了有利的媒体宣传效果。 当然，会有地区偏差，矿业利益集团控制的州，那里的报纸会比其他州更持批判立场。 唯一名副其实的全国性大报登载的“中性”文章明显要少，负面和正面的文章都比较多，而《澳大利亚财经评论》倒是刊登了较多的中性文章。 总之，格局一直比较单一，但具体到出版物则有参差。
Innovation and Economic Growth in East Asia: An Overview

type="main"> East Asia has been one of the most dynamic regions of economic growth and development. The past two decades have seen tremendous economic and technological catching up in the region. Using South Korea as a case to illustrate the process of technology catching up, we find that the process of graduating from imitation to innovation is a nonlinear one, and requires conscious efforts to invest in research and development and other technological capability-enhancing activities. Successful technology upgrading also calls for policies and institutions that are relevant to technological innovation to evolve and adapt as an economy goes through the different stages of economic and technological development.
Inconsistency of fairness evaluation in simulated labot market.

Reciprocal behavior was often explained by perception of fairness derived from either agents’ intention or distributional outcome. In this paper, we demonstrated that fairness perception depended on the evaluability of the partner’s type. We conducted experiments to investigate how workers formed fairness perception on the employers. We found inconsistency in fairness evaluation in the two simulated worker-employer relations; workers derived fairness by comparing own wage with market wage in a one shot interaction, but workers derived fairness based on current and previous wage when interacting with same employer. The reversal of fairness perception suggested the role of evaluability of partners’ attribute in effort decision among workers.
Double Standards in Educational Standards – Do Schools with a Disadvantaged Student Body Grade More Leniently?

Abstract A simple model of decentralized graduation standards is presented. It is shown that a school whose students are disadvantaged on the labor market applies less demanding standards because such students have lower ability or less incentives to graduate. The model’s predictions are tested using Dutch school-level data. Since students in the Netherlands have to participate in both a central and a school specific examination, we can identify the grading policy of individual schools. We find that schools which harbor greater shares of disadvantaged students tend to set lower standards. This association is most pronounced in the track of secondary schooling that prepares for university.
Empirical Research on the Relationship between Real Estate and Stock Price Fluctuation in China Based on VAR Model

In recent years, China has experienced high real estate price and stock market fluctuations. It is necessary to study the relationship between real estate and stock price in order to promote healthy and stable development of the economy. Based on data from 1999 to 2009, this article empirically explored their relationship by multivariable VAR model under the situation of taking currency liquidity as endogenous variable. The results show that there is a long-term equilibrium relationship between real estate and stock price in China, and they are the Granger reasons for each other. In a short-term, real estate price changes at the same direction as stock price fluctuation caused by one standard deviation innovation, while stock price changes at the adverse direction of real estate price fluctuation caused by one standard deviation innovation. The variance decomposition analysis suggests that the contribution of real estate price to forecast mean square error of stock price is less than that of stock price to forecast mean square error of real estate price.
Effects of Donor- and Supporter-Based Campaign Networks on Crowdfunding Campaign Success

Driven by the increasing popularity of crowdfunding, academic researchers have examined the impacts of internal social capital accumulated on crowdfunding platforms and external social capital formed through online and offline friend networks on campaign success. However, no research has examined the impacts of social networks from a structural perspective. In the current research, we investigate the extent to which donorand supporter-based campaign network centralities affect the amount of capital a fundraising campaign is able to generate. Using a panel data set collected from a donation-based crowdfunding platform, Fundly, we reveal that campaign network centralities based on strong ties (shared donors) and weak ties (shared supporters) are more important predictors of fundraising success than the number of donors a campaign has.
Social Security and Rural Poverty in Brazil

This paper investigates the effectiveness of the social security system as a rural antipoverty policy. The source of econometric identification is a Brazilian legislative change implemented in 1991 that reduced the minimum eligibility age, increased the benefits, and extended the participation to non-head of the household members. Our findings indicate that the reform has reduced the incidence of poverty by 40% in eligible households.
Computational fluid dynamics analysis of tandem carotid artery stenoses: Investigation of neurological complications after carotid artery stenting.

BACKGROUND Combined extra- and intracranial carotid artery stenoses, particularly involving multiple lesions, show complex hemodynamic properties and represent a therapeutic dilemma. We used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to investigate whether insufficient cerebral blood flow (CBF) in a 70-year-old man with tandem stenoses was the cause of aphasia and right hemiparesis after carotid artery stenting (CAS) of the extracranial stenosis. METHOD Three-dimensional digital subtraction angiography (3D-DSA) was performed before and after balloon angioplasty and CAS in the patient. The geometrical and rheological conditions of the carotid arteries were determined, and computational meshes were generated from the patient-specific 3D-DSA datasets. CFD analysis was performed, and hemodynamic parameters such as mass flow, pressure, fractional flow reserve, and streamlines were calculated. RESULTS Post-CAS simulations showed that the percentage of internal carotid artery mass flow from common carotid artery mass flow increased from 9% to 14% and CBF improved by only 5%. CONCLUSIONS CFD analysis suggested that the neurological complications were caused by insufficient CBF rather than embolic events, and in tandem carotid stenoses, CAS for an extracranial lesion alone may not always sufficiently increase CBF. CFD enabled the noninvasive quantitative estimation of the effects of CAS of each stenotic segment on carotid flow.
Micro-enterprise as an approach for promoting economic development in social work: lessons from the Self-Employment Investment Demonstration

Historically, the profession of social work has been concerned with promoting human capital formation through building interpersonal skills and enhancing family and community strengths. However, this has not been a dominant activity in social work. Generally, the profession has fostered a remedial and maintenance-oriented approach to social welfare. Although social work has campaigned to maintain traditional social welfare policies and programmes, it is being increasingly recognized that governments will not restore bugetary reductions and that consumption-based social services will face greater pressure in the future. In view of this trend, new ideas which transcend traditional approaches are urgently needed. The writings of Sherraden (1991) and Midgley (1995) offer opportunities
The Finnish prostate cancer screening trial: Analyses on the screening failures

Prostate cancer (PC) screening with prostate‐specific antigen (PSA) has been shown to decrease PC mortality in the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC). However, in the Finnish trial, which is the largest component of the ERSPC, no statistically significant mortality reduction was observed. We investigated which had the largest impact on PC deaths in the screening arm: non‐participation, interval cancers or PSA threshold. The screening (SA) and control (CA) arms comprised altogether 80,144 men. Men in the SA were screened at four‐year intervals and referred to biopsy if the PSA concentration was ≥4.0 ng/ml, or 3.0–3.99 ng/ml with a free/total PSA ratio ≤16%. The median follow‐up was 15.0 years. A counterfactual exclusion method was applied to estimate the effect of three subgroups in the SA: the non‐participants, the screen‐negative men with PSA ≥3.0 ng/ml and a subsequent PC diagnosis, and the men with interval PCs. The absolute risk of PC death was 0.76% in the SA and 0.85% in the CA; the observed hazard ratio (HR) was 0.89 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.76–1.04). After correcting for non‐attendance, the HR was 0.78 (0.64–0.96); predicted effect for a hypothetical PSA threshold of 3.0 ng/ml the HR was 0.88 (0.74–1.04) and after eliminating the effect of interval cancers the HR was 0.88 (0.74–1.04). Non‐participating men in the SA had a high risk of PC death and a large impact on PC mortality. A hypothetical lower PSA threshold and elimination of interval cancers would have had a less pronounced effect on the screening impact.
Toxoplasma gondii Dysregulates IFN-γ-Inducible Gene Expression in Human Fibroblasts: Insights from a Genome-Wide Transcriptional Profiling1

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite that persists for the life of a mammalian host. The parasite’s ability to block the potent IFN-γ response may be one of the key mechanisms that allow Toxoplasma to persist. Using a genome-wide microarray analysis, we show here a complete dysregulation of IFN-γ-inducible gene expression in human fibroblasts infected with Toxoplasma. Notably, 46 of the 127 IFN-γ-responsive genes were induced and 19 were suppressed in infected cells before they were exposed to IFN-γ, indicating that other stimuli produced during infection may also regulate these genes. Following IFN-γ treatment, none of the 127 IFN-γ-responsive genes could be significantly induced in infected cells. Immunofluorescence assays showed at single-cell levels that infected cells, regardless of which Toxoplasma strain was used, could not be activated by IFN-γ to up-regulate the expression of IFN regulatory factor 1, a transcription factor that is under the direct control of STAT1, whereas uninfected cells in the same culture expressed IFN regulatory factor 1 normally in response to IFN-γ. STAT1 trafficked to the nucleus normally and indistinguishably in all uninfected and infected cells treated with IFN-γ, indicating that the inhibitory effects of Toxoplasma infection likely occur via blocking STAT1 transcriptional activity in the nucleus. In contrast, a closely related apicomplexan, Neospora caninum, was unable to inhibit IFN-γ-induced gene expression. A differential ability to interfere with the IFN-γ response may, in part, account for the differences in the pathogenesis seen among Toxoplasma and Neospora parasite strains.
Diosgenin-Rich Yam Extract Enhances Cognitive Function: A Placebo-Controlled, Randomized, Double-Blind, Crossover Study of Healthy Adults

Diosgenin, a yam-derived compound, was found to facilitate the repair of axonal atrophy and synaptic degeneration and improve memory dysfunction in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It was also found to enhance neuronal excitation and memory function even in normal mice. We hypothesized that diosgenin, either isolated or in an extract, may represent a new category of cognitive enhancers with essential activities that morphologically and functionally reinforce neuronal networks. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a diosgenin-rich yam extract on cognitive enhancement in healthy volunteers. For this placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind, crossover study, 28 healthy volunteers (age: 20–81 years) were recruited from Toyama Prefecture, Japan, and was randomly assigned to receive either a yam extract or placebo. Preliminary functional animal experiments indicated that an oil solvent mediated the most efficient distribution of diosgenin into the blood and brain after oral administration, and was a critical factor in the cognitive benefits. Therefore, test samples (placebo and yam extract) were prepared with olive oil and formulated as soft capsules. The intake period was 12 weeks, and a 6-week washout period separated the two crossover intake periods. The Japanese version of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) test was used for neurocognitive assessment, and the adverse effects were monitored through blood testing. Diosgenin-rich yam extract consumption for 12 weeks yielded significant increases in total RBANS score. Among the 12 individual standard cognitive subtests, diosgenin-rich yam extract use significantly improved the semantic fluency. No adverse effects were reported. The diosgenin-rich yam extract treatment appeared to safely enhance cognitive function in healthy adults.