Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Public Sector Reforms in Karnataka - A Case Study of the Turnaround of Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers through Strategic Partnership

The article deals with the performance appraisal of Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers which was the very first state public sector unit in Karnataka to be privatized and its renewal through Strategic Alliance partnership by inducting the UB Group on its Board. The GOK should learn from its previous experiences that it is pertinent to take timely decisions and develop suitable modalities for disinvestment rather than let the SPSUs to be shut down. This study based on Altmans’ Z score analysis shows clearly that privatization has not only helped in the turnaround of the company but also has improved the operational efficiency.
Long-Term Survival Rates of Patients Undergoing Vitrectomy for Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy

ABSTRACT Purpose: Reported 5-year survival rates in patients undergoing vitreous surgery for proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) range from 68–95%. Studies relating survival rates to medical baseline characteristics predate the millennium. This study aimed to update data on life expectancy of patients undergoing vitrectomy for PDR and identify baseline factors which may influence survival. Methods: A retrospective cohort study of consecutive patients who underwent their first pars-plana vitrectomy for PDR between April 2004 and May 2005 was performed. Survival status on 1 May 2012 was the primary endpoint. The Kaplan-Meier life table method was used to determine survival rates. Univariate and multiple variable Cox proportional hazards regressions were used to identify risk factors for mortality. Results: A total of 148 patients were included in the study, with a mean age of 54 years (range 20–80 years) at time of surgery. The 3-, 5- and 7-year survival rates were 94%, 86% and 77%, respectively (95% confidence interval, CI, 88–97%, 79–91% and 68–84%, respectively). Renal failure was the most common cause of death. The presence of limb ulcers at baseline was the most important prognostic indicator for mortality, with a hazard ratio of 3.13 (95% CI 1.46–6.71, p = 0.003) and a survival rate at 5 years reduced to 79%. Conclusion: The 5-year survival rate remains comparable to those reported 20 years ago despite a lowering in threshold for vitrectomy and increased health awareness. Limb ulcers are strongly associated with increasing mortality. Clinicians should remain mindful of the systemic associations of diabetes particularly in advanced retinal disease.
Therapeutic Activities of Artemesia Herba-Alba and Rosmarinus Officinalis against Microbial Infection : A Review

Natural products are still major potential sources of innovative therapeutic agents for various conditions, including infectious diseases as they represent an unmet source of chemical diversity. This study was conducted to determine the anti-trypanosomal properties of Artemisia herba-alba and Rosmarinus officinalis in vivo settings. We have reviewed previous studies in the literature, which support the therapeutic activity of these plants and the data suggest that A. herba-alba as well as R. officinalis have anti-trypanosomal activites, and reinforce the use of this plant as an alternative remedy for microbial infection in traditional medicine.
Cellular and Molecular Regulation of Vaccination with Heat Shock Protein 60 from Histoplasma capsulatum

ABSTRACT Vaccination with heat shock protein 60 (Hsp60) from Histoplasma capsulatum induces a protective immune response in mice. We explored the cellular and molecular requirements for the efficacy of recombinant Hsp60 in mice. Depletion of CD4+, but not CD8+, cells during the inductive phase of vaccination abolished protection, as assessed by survival and by the fungal burden in lungs and spleens. In the expressive phase, the elimination of CD4+ or CD8+ cells after immunization did not significantly alter fungal recovery or survival from a lethal challenge. Depletion of both subpopulations after Hsp60 vaccination resulted in a failure to control a lethal infection and a higher fungal burden in lungs and spleens. Cytokine release by spleen cells from mice vaccinated with Hsp60 produced substantially more gamma interferon and interleukin-10 and -12 than that of cells from mice immunized with either H. capsulatum recombinant Hsp70 or bovine serum albumin. The generation of gamma interferon, but not of interleukin-10, was dependent on T cells, in particular CD4+ cells. Treatment of Hsp60-immunized mice with monoclonal antibody to gamma interferon or interleukin-10 or -12 in the inductive phase of vaccination was accompanied by increased recovery of yeast cells from lungs and spleens and 100% mortality. Likewise, the neutralization of gamma interferon or interleukin-12 abolished the protective effect of Hsp60 in the expressive phase. These results delineate the complexity of the regulatory elements necessary for vaccination against this fungus.
Evaluation of the Trust in Physician Scale (TIPS) of primary health care patients in north-east Poland: a preliminary study

Background. Trust is a complex concept, difficult to study, but very important in a patient-family physician relationship. One of the measures used to assess interpersonal trust is a scale developed by Anderson & Dedrick entitled the Trust in Physician Scale (TI PS). Objectives. The aim of the study was to assess the TI PS properties in relation to the age, gender, and health status of primary health care patients consulting family doctors and trainees in north-east Poland. Material and methods. A cross-sectional study using the TI PS was conducted in primary health care units in north-east Poland. 120 patients (60 who came to see family doctors, and 60 who came to see trainees) were asked to participate in the survey. Results. The Trust in Physician Scale has good reliability in primary care patients in north-east Poland (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.90). Patients displayed statistically significant greater trust in family doctors than in trainees. A negative correlation was found between age and the trust scale (r = -0.30; p = 0.005); the younger the respondent, the higher trust in the physician, and conversely, a positive correlation between self-assessment of health and the trust scale (r = 0.3; p = 0.003). Conclusions. The Polish translation of the TI PS instrument performed well in terms of acceptability in the family medicine environment. It can be used to differentiate between the level of trust in family doctors and in trainees. A relation between age, sex, education level and self-assessment of health needs to be confirmed using a larger sample. (Less)
Antenna Bandwidth Optimization With Single Frequency Simulation

A method to compute antenna Q using an electromagnetic simulation at a single frequency is described. This method can easily be integrated into global optimization algorithms. In this way the optimization time of some antenna parameters, e.g., bandwidth, may be significantly reduced. The method is validated by direct comparison with the physical bound of the analyzed structure. Numerical examples for rectangular antennas and antennas with a rectangular ground plane illustrate the integration of the method into a genetic algorithm. The results predicted by optimization agree very well with those obtained using a commercial electromagnetic solver. These results suggest that the method can be used to yield antennas with Q factors within 20% of their corresponding physical bound.
Expression of Neurotransmitter Receptors by mRNAs from Neurons Developing In Vitro: A Xenopus Oocyte Expression Study

Abstract: Poly(A)+ mRNA was extracted from cultures of neurons isolated from mouse embryonic day 14 cerebral cortex and injected into Xenopus oocytes. This led to the expression of receptors for γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA), glycine, acetylcholine, serotonin, glutamate, kainate, N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate, and quisqualate. Northern blot analysis of poly(A)+ mRNA from the cultured neurons with a GluRI cDNA probe revealed the presence of three hybridization bands with estimated mRNA sizes of 5.1, 4.0, and 3.1 kb, respectively. The development of mRNAs coding for neurotransmitter receptors was investigated by isolating mRNA from neurons cultured for 2, 8, and 14 days in vitro and injecting it into Xenopus oocytes. The amplitude of membrane currents elicited by the transmitters gave a measure of the relative amounts of the different mRNAs. The size of the responses to kainate, aspartate (together with glycine), glutamate, acetylcholine, GABA, serotonin, and glycine increased with the time of culture in vitro. However, in contrast to all other agonist‐induced currents, the current induced by glycine failed to increase further from 8 to 14 days in culture. It is concluded that the time course of receptor development in cortical neurons in vitro is similar to the development in vivo.
The Motives for Private Equity Buyouts of Private Firms: Evidence from U.S. Corporate Tax Returns

This paper uses corporate tax return data to study the motives for private equity (PE) buyouts of U.S. private firms between 1995 and 2009. In contrast with prior evidence that PE acquirers target public firms facing overinvestment problems, we find that PE acquirers target private firms facing underinvestment problems due to financing constraints. These firms tend to grow substantially post-buyout. We also find some evidence that PE buyers target industry laggards as well, and engineer operational turnarounds in these firms.
Use of the multiple imputation strategy to deal with missing data in the ISBSG repository

Multi-organizational repositories, in particular those based on voluntary data contributions such as the repository of the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG), may be missing a large number of values for many of their data fields, as well as including some outliers. This paper suggests a number of data quality issues associated with the ISBSG repository which can compromise the outcomes for users exploiting it for benchmarking purposes or for building estimation models. We propose a number of criteria and techniques for preprocessing the data in order to improve the quality of the samples identified for detailed statistical analysis, and present a multiple imputation (MI) strategy for dealing with datasets with missing values.
Feature Selection using a Genetic Algorithm for the Detection of Abnormal ECG Recordings

A new classi cation algorithm, called CFI (for Classi cation on Feature Intervals), is developed and applied to problem of detecting abnormal ECG signals. The domain contains records of patients with known diagnosis. Given a training set of such records the CFI learns how to detect arrhythmia. CFI represents a concept in the form of feature intervals on each feature dimension separately. Classi cation in the CFI algorithm is based on a real-valued voting. A genetic algorithm is used to select the set of relevant features. Each selected feature equally participates in the voting process and the class that receives the maximum amount of votes is declared to be the predicted class. The performance of the CFI classi er is evaluated empirically in terms of classi cation accuracy and running time.
Geographical Distribution, Host Associations, and Vector Roles of Ticks (Acari: Ixodidae, Argasidae) in Sweden

Abstract This review covers the geographic distribution and host relationships of the tick species in Sweden. Ixodes uriae White, I. caledonicus Nuttall, I. unicavatus Neumann, I. arboricola Schulze & Schlottke, and I. lividus Koch are ornithophagous species. I. trianguliceps Birula, I. canisuga Johnston, I. hexagonus Leach, and Argas vespertilionis (Latreille) are mammalophagous. I. ricinus (L.) and Haemaphysails punctata Canestrini & Fanzago feed on both birds and mammals. All these tick species may be considered to be permanently present in Sweden. I. persulcatus Schulze, Hyalomma marginatum Koch, and the brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus satiguineus (Latreille), may be regarded as not indigenous to Sweden although they may be regularly introduced by spring-migrating birds or imported dogs, respectively. The first European record of the American dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis (Say), is reported. There are several records of Hyalomma aegyptium (L.) from imported tortoises in Sweden. Excluding other ticks imported on exotic pets and zoo animals, another 13 tick species are listed that may occur, at least occasionally, in Sweden. Because of its wide geographic distribution, great abundance, and wide host range, I. ricinus is medically the most important arthropod in northern Europe. I. ricinus is common in southern and south-central Sweden and along the coast of northern Sweden and has been recorded from 29 mammal species, 56 bird species, and two species of lizards in Sweden alone. The potential introduction to Sweden of exotic pathogens with infected ticks (e.g., I. persulcatus and H. marginatum on birds or Dermacentor spp. and R. sanguineus on mammals) is evident.
The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS): Overview

The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) is designed to probe the correlated evolution of galaxies, star formation, active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and dark matter (DM) with large-scale structure (LSS) over the redshift range z > 0.5-6. The survey includes multiwavelength imaging and spectroscopy from X-ray-to-radio wavelengths covering a 2 deg2 area, including HST imaging. Given the very high sensitivity and resolution of these data sets, COSMOS also provides unprecedented samples of objects at high redshift with greatly reduced cosmic variance, compared to earlier surveys. Here we provide a brief overview of the survey strategy, the characteristics of the major COSMOS data sets, and a summary the science goals.
Entrepreneurial success: the ‘push’, ‘pull’ or personality factor?

Previous research found a relationship between opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial success. Additionally, a relationship between personality and entrepreneurial success is found. In this research the mediating effect of personality on the relationship between nascent opportunity versus nascent necessity entrepreneurship and nascent entrepreneurial success is researched. The traits that are researched are the traits need for achievement, need for autonomy, self-efficacy, endurance and need for approval. Data from the PSED II cohort are used that tracks the startup efforts in ‘real time’ for a period of six years. The competing risks model and KHB method are used to find a mediating effect of personality on the relationship between nascent opportunity versus necessity entrepreneurship and nascent entrepreneurial success. Evidence presented in this research suggests that nascent opportunity entrepreneurs are more successful in setting up a business than nascent necessity entrepreneurs. Additionally, nascent entrepreneurs with higher levels of self-efficacy and endurance are more likely to achieve nascent entrepreneurial success, while nascent entrepreneurs with higher levels of need for achievement, need for autonomy and need for approval are more likely to fail. Lastly, selfefficacy significantly mediates the relationship between nascent opportunity entrepreneurship and nascent entrepreneurial success. This could implicate that training focused on strengthening the self-efficacy of nascent necessity entrepreneurs could increase their chances of nascent entrepreneurial success.
Optimal Information Disclosure: A Linear Programming Approach

An uninformed sender designs a mechanism that discloses information about her type to a privately informed receiver, who then decides whether to act. I impose a single-crossing assumption, so that the receiver with a higher type is more willing to act. Using a linear programming approach, I characterize optimal information disclosure and provide conditions under which full and no revelation are optimal. Assuming further that the sender's utility depends only on the sender's expected type, I provide conditions under which interval revelation is optimal. Finally, I show that the expected utilities are not monotonic in the precision of the receiver's private information.
Tyrosinase Inhibitor Isolated from the Leaves of Zanthoxylum piperitum

Two flavonols, quercetin (1) and quercitrin (2), were isolated from the leaves of Zanthoxylum piperitum. Their structures were established by UV, one- and two-dimensional NMR, and mass spectroscopic methods. Quercetin showed significant inhibition against mushroom tyrosinase with an IC50 value of 3.8 μg/ml, and appeared to inhibit the polyphenol oxidase activity of tyrosinase in a competitive manner (Ki=10±0.20 μM) when L-tyrosine was used as a substrate, although it did not inhibit the melanin production of Streptomyces bikiniensis.
Millimeter-Wave Silicon IMPATT Sources and Combiners for the 110-260 GHz Range

This paper reports the recent progress in CW and pulsed silicon IMPATT sources in the 110-260 GHz frequency range. A bridged double-quartz-standoff package has been developed and successfully used for the entire frequency range. Power combiners at center frequencies of 140 and 217 GHz have also been developed with peak output power of 9.2 and 1 W respectively.
Decentralized Discrete-Time Formation Control for Multirobot Systems

Inspired from the collective behavior of biological entities for the group motion coordination, this paper analyzes the formation control of mobile robots in discrete time where each robot can sense only the position of certain team members and the group behavior is achieved through the local interactions of robots. The main contribution is an original formal proof about the global convergence to the formation pattern represented by an arbitrary Formation Graph using attractive potential functions. The analysis is addressed for the case of omnidirectional robots with numerical simulations.
Orexin A Controls Glucose Metabolism

The orexin-A and orexin-B are a hypothalamic neuropeptides, involved in the regulation of feeding behaviour, sleep-wakefulness rhythm, and neuroendocrine homeostasis that influence the sympathetic nervous system activity, blood pressure regulation, and metabolic status, glycemic, and may contribute to increase diabetics morbidity and mortality. This review concentrates on the catabolic role of orexin, which paradoxically coexists with its anabolic feeding-inducing role. This review aims to provide insight into the biological mechanism that controls orexin’s role in energy expenditure and to discuss its significance in the context of glycemic control. On the other hands, hypothalamus regulates muscle glucose metabolism and its insulin sensitivity; in fact the ventromedial hypothalamus increases glucose uptake in certain peripheral tissues, including brown adipose tissue. The circumstance that it has been found a relationship between brown adipose tissue, orexins, glucose, insulin levels suggests new research focused on the possible roles of orexins in many anomalies of energy expenditure and of glucose homeostasis, with reference to the diabetic patient.
Use of social media as a part of organizations marketing strategy : opportunities, challenges and solutions

The aim of this thesis is to provide companies guidance on how to adopt social media as a part of their marketing strategy and efforts. Social media has been making its way to being a crucial part of marketing communications for over a decade now and its importance has been steadily growing over the years. Marketers and managers have started to see the potential in the channel, and early research on the phenomenon has provided them with insight on how to use the channel properly. With use of literature the author wants to show how companies can benefit from the use of social media in marketing, and what challenges they may face while implementing these changes. Along with possible benefits companies will face risks when engaging with social media. There are some key challenges arising from the literature that will be tackled and given guidance on how to counter them.
An improved deadbeat control method based on current predictive algorithm for shunt active power filter

This paper proposes a deadbeat current control method using predictive current algorithm for three-phase shunt active power filter (SAPF). In proposed controller, the current predictive algorithm is used to reduce the overshoot phenomenon of the input current caused by the delay controller. The compensating current reference which is necessary for the deadbeat control is estimated by using the current predictive algorithm. This method can improve the accuracy of compensation and ensure the fast dynamic response of SAPF. Simulations have been carried out to demonstrate the performance of SAPF using the proposed control method.
Prolonged Peritoneal Gene Expression Using a Helper-Dependent Adenovirus

Background Encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis (EPS) is a rare complication of peritoneal dialysis. The causes of EPS are not well defined and are likely multifactorial. A suitable animal model would facilitate research into the pathophysiology and treatment of EPS. Methods We developed a helper-dependent adenovirus that expresses both green fluorescent protein (GFP) and active transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β1; HDAdTGF-β1). Mice were administered HDAdTGF-β1 via intraperitoneal injection and the response was compared with mice administered either first-generation adenovirus expressing TGF-β1 (AdTGF-β1) or control adenovirus (AdGFP). Results HDAdTGF-β1-treated mice continued to express the GFP reporter transgene to day 74, the end of the observation period. Transgene expression lasted less than 28 days in the animals treated with first-generation adenoviruses. Animals treated with first-generation AdTGF-β1 demonstrated submesothelial thickening and angiogenesis at day 7, with almost complete resolution by day 28. The HDAdTGF-β1-treated mice demonstrated progressive peritoneal fibrosis with adhesion formation and encapsulation of bowels. Weight gain was significantly reduced in animals treated with HDAdTGF-β1 compared to both the control-treated animals and the AdTGF-β1-treated animals. Inflammation was not a major component of the fibroproliferative response. Conclusions Peritoneal administration of a first-generation AdTGF-β1 leads to transient gene expression, resulting in a resolving fibrotic response and histology similar to that seen in simple peritoneal sclerosis. Prolonged TGF-β1 expression induced by the helper-dependent HDAdTGF-β1 led to changes in peritoneal morphology resembling EPS. This suggests that TGF-β1 may be a contributing factor in both simple peritoneal sclerosis and EPS. This model will be useful for elucidation of the mechanism of EPS and evaluation of potential treatment.
Urolithin B, a newly identified regulator of skeletal muscle mass

The control of muscle size is an essential feature of health. Indeed, skeletal muscle atrophy leads to reduced strength, poor quality of life, and metabolic disturbances. Consequently, strategies aiming to attenuate muscle wasting and to promote muscle growth during various (pathological) physiological states like sarcopenia, immobilization, malnutrition, or cachexia are needed to address this extensive health issue. In this study, we tested the effects of urolithin B, an ellagitannin‐derived metabolite, on skeletal muscle growth.