Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Combined Aerobic and Stretching Exercises on the Cardiopulmonary Parameters of Premenopausal and Postmenopausal Breast Cancer Survivors.

BACKGROUND Therapeutic approaches that will improve the reduced cardiopulmonary functions of breast cancer (BC) survivors are of optimal importance. The effects of aerobic exercise on health-related outcomes of BC survivors have been reported while there is a dearth of information on the effects of combined aerobic and stretching exercises on cardiopulmonary parameters of female BC survivors. OBJECTIVE This study investigated the effects of combined aerobic and stretching exercises on cardiopulmonary functions of premenopausal and postmenopausal Breast cancer (BC) survivors. METHODS Fifty-four eligible BC survivors participated in the study but four-eight completed it. They were randomly' assigned to groups A and B and each group had two subgroups; subgroup 1 (premenopausal) and subgroup 2 (postmenopausal). Group A underwent combined aerobic exercise using treadmill and stretching exercises for 12 weeks while Group B was the control group. RESULTS Significant changes were observed in the cardiovascular parameters of participants in Groups A,,,,, (Resting systolic blood pressure (A1:p = 0.01*; A2: p = 0.01*), Resting diastolic blood pressure (A1: p = 0.01*; A2: p = 0.004*), Resting rate pressure product (A1: p 0.001*; A2: p = 0.02*). Significant changes were also observed in the pulmonary parameters of participants of Groups A(1&2) (Arterioxyhaemoglobin saturation (A,:p = 0.001*; A2:p = 0.02*), Forced vital capacity (A1:p = 0.13; A2: p = 0.05*), maximal oxygen uptake (A1:p = 0.03*; A2: p = 0.15). CONCLUSION Combined aerobic and stretching exercises brought about significant therapeutic effects on selected cardiopulmonary parameters in female BC survivors.
On the Market Failure in a Dixit‐Stiglitz Setup with Two Trading Cities

This study discusses the reasons for market failure and its bias in an economy with two cities and two final goods: tradeable differentiated products and non-tradeable housing. It is shown that inside the city, as in >Dixit and Stiglitz (1977), diversity (number of firms) is too small. With regard to the population partition between the cities, the paper distinguishes between a marginal and a global market bias against agglomeration or dispersion (in a second-best context). The reasons for a marginal bias are twofold: a gap between marginal and average labor productivity and the (excessive) labor employed in housing production which vary between the large and the small cities. The source of the global bias is multiple stable equilibria. The marginal bias may be in an opposite direction to the global bias, such that more agglomeration may be marginally desirable, whereas full dispersion is (second-best) optimal. Simulations demonstrate that the same market structure and potential source of market failure may imply bias in different directions, depending on the aggregate population size. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Inc.
A retrospective study of short- and long-term effects on renal function after acute renal infarction

Abstract Purpose: Acute renal infarction is often missed or diagnosed late due to its rarity and non-specific clinical manifestations. This study analyzed the clinical and laboratory findings of patients diagnosed with renal infarction to determine whether it affects short- or long-term renal prognosis. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 100 patients diagnosed as acute renal infarction from January 1995 to September 2012 at Gyeongsang National University Hospital, Jinju, South Korea. Results: Acute kidney injury (AKI) occurred in 30 patients. Infarct size was positively correlated with the occurrence of AKI (p = 0.004). Compared with non-AKI patients, AKI occurrence was significantly correlated with degree of proteinuria (p < 0.001) and the presence of microscopic hematuria (p = 0.035). AKI patients had higher levels of aspartate transaminase (p < 0.001), alanine transaminase (p < 0.001), and lactated dehydrogenase (p = 0.027). AKI after acute renal infarction was more common in patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) (eGFR < 60 mL/min), compared with non-CRF patients, whose baseline eGFR was >60 mL/min (p = 0.003). Most patients recovered from AKI, except for seven patients (7%) who developed persistent renal impairment (chronic kidney disease progression) closely correlated with magnitude of infarct size (p = 0.015). Six AKI patients died due to combined comorbidity. Conclusions: AKI is often associated with acute renal infarction. Although most AKI recovers spontaneously, renal impairment following acute renal infarction can persist. Thus, early diagnosis and intervention are needed to preserve renal function.
Identifying operational mechanisms for mainstreaming community-based adaptation in Nepal

Mainstreaming is a feasible and viable option for scaling up initiatives on community-based adaptation (CBA) to climate change. However, there is little evidence on how to get CBA mainstreaming feasible and to work effectively. This paper aims to investigate two major questions: (1) what kind of policies favour mainstreaming CBA; and (2) what kinds of approaches or practices are required to operationalize CBA mainstreaming in the case of Nepal? The field research for this paper was conducted in the Dhading, Nawalparasi and Pyuthan districts of Nepal. The research used a mix of approaches and methods for data generation and analysis. The findings reveal that policies to operationalize CBA mainstreaming should build on past policy successes and include community-centric provisions that empower local institutions and encourage them to practice inclusive decision-making and benefit-sharing mechanisms. One lesson from this analysis of the practices of mainstreaming in Nepal is that an integrated co-management approach to mainstreaming is necessary to overcome the barriers related to knowledge, finance and technology. It is concluded that the operational mechanisms of mainstreaming CBA in development should have an inclusive local structure and be responsive to national policies and governance arrangements.
ISO 9001 European Scoreboard: an instrument to measure macroquality

Purpose: ISO 9001 certification is nowadays considered to be one of the most effective tools that can be adopted for guiding the management of Quality Systems. The stunning growth observed by these standards all over the world confirms a strong polarisation of enterprises' interest in this practice. Owing to the wide incidence of this phenomenon, a deep investigation of ISO 9001 diffusion over time is mandatory and of importance. In line with our previous publications, this paper derives from a research project that we are conducting in Portugal in order to develop the ‘ISO 9001 European Scoreboard’, aimed at studying and ranking European Union (EU) countries based on the diffusion of quality management systems. Methodology/approach: In order to achieve such a goal, the authors have performed a set of statistical analyses over public data sets. Findings: Based on the model developed and the analyses performed, we were able to identify clusters of countries with different ISO 9001 evolution stages, derived from the ISO 9001 per 1000 inhabitants' scores and countries’ growth indexes. Originality: With this scoreboard, we are able to categorise and rank countries based on the quality management systems evolution (growth rates) over the past few years. Ultimately, such an ‘ISO 9001 European Scoreboard’ will be an instrument to provide a comparative assessment of quality management practices over the EU states, leading to the dynamic evaluation of their ‘macroquality’ levels achieved, according to such a standard. We believe that such results provide an additional important contribution to the study of management systems diffusion/evolution, aimed at providing more fact-based insights and understandings.
The Probability of a Trade at the Ask: An Examination of Interday and Intraday Behavior

Abstract This paper tests the null hypothesis of no difference in the probability of a trade occurring at the ask using a new database containing intraday bid-ask quotes and transaction prices on both U.S. and Canadian Exchanges. We use LOGIT analysis to test the hypothesis across days of the week, price-stratified portfolios, and times of the day. We find systematic patterns in the probability of a trade at the ask resembling previously documented returns anomalies and conclude that the findings of previous weekend and intraday returns studies may be overstated. The significance of this conclusion substantially increases as one moves from the use of interday to intraday data.
The Relationship Between Stock and Option Price Changes

This paper documents an important step in reconciling conflicting results by Manaster and Rendleman and Stephan and Whaley regarding price change relationships between options and their underlying stocks. Using recent advances in bi-directional causality testing and data sources available only fairly recently, statistical tests are conducted that mitigate the nonsynchroneity and bid-ask bias problems that may have affected the Manaster and Rendleman study. Even with these adjustments, empirical results are consistent with Manaster and Rendleman, indicating that stock price changes adjust to lagged option price changes over two trading days. Moreover, results suggest that the causality is bidirectional. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.
Exploring the Role of the Real Exchange Rate in Australian Monetary Policy

An important issue in small open-economies is whether policymakers should respond to exchange rate movements when they formulate monetary policy. Micro-founded models tend to suggest that there is little to be gained from responding to exchange rate movements, and the literature has largely concluded that such a response is unnecessary, or even undesirable (Taylor, 2001). This paper examines this issue using an estimated model of the Australian economy. In contrast to micro-founded models, according to this model policymakers should allow for movements in the real exchange rage and the terms-of-trade when they set interest rates. Further, taking real exchange rate movements into account appears even more important with price level targeting than with inflation targeting.
Effects of Hydrogen Pressure during Growth and Effects of Pregrowth with Hydrogen on Acetate Degradation by Methanosarcina Species

Methanosarcina barkeri 227 and Methanosarcina mazei S-6 grew with acetate as the substrate; we found little effect of H2 on the rate of aceticlastic growth in the presence of various H2 pressures between 2 and 810 Pa. We used physical (H2 addition or flushing the headspace to remove H2) and biological (H2-producing or -utilizing bacteria in cocultures) methods for controlling H2 pressure in Methanosarcina cultures growing on acetate. Added H2 (ca. 100 Pa) was removed rapidly (a few hours) by M. barkeri and slowly (within a day) by M. mazei. When the H2 produced by the aceticlastic methanogens was removed by coculturing with an H2-using Desulfovibrio sp. , the H2 pressure was about 2.2 Pa. Under these conditions the stoichiometry of aceticlastic methanogenesis did not change. H2-grown inocula of M. barkeri grew with acetate as the sole catabolic substrate if the inoculum culture was transferred during logarithmic growth to acetate-containing medium or if the transfer was accomplished within 1 or 2 days after exhaustion of H2. H2-grown cultures incubated for 4 or more days after exhaustion of H2 were able to grow with H2 but not with acetate as the sole catabolic substrate. Addition of small quantities of H2 to acetate-containing medium permitted these cultures to initiate growth on acetate.
Deconstructing European poverty measures: What relative and absolute scales measure

The movement toward evidence-based policymaking in the United States owes much to politicians and scholars like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once said: " In policy debates everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. " But facts do not droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, but rather are the difficult-to obtain first step in the empirical process that allows policymakers to establish social success indicators for their policies, understand the causal relationships between those policies and social outcomes, and thus more effectively carry out policies that best achieve future social successes. The United States and the European Union share the common goal of the alleviation of poverty for all their citizens. The papers presented at the Joint Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)/University of Maryland International Conference on Measuring Poverty, Income Inequality, and Social Exclusion: Lessons from Europe, demonstrate that European scholars whose business it is to establish the necessary facts to measure poverty, how it changes over time, and what policies best reduce it, share a great deal in common with their American colleagues. This is most especially the case with respect to the decisions they face in their conceptualization of poverty and in how they choose to operationalize these concepts in collecting the data necessary to measure it. The primary funder—and with rare exceptions the primary institution charged with collecting data on economic well-being for a given country—is that country's central statistical agency. Within the European Union (EU), each state's statistical agency has been increasingly asked to coordinate its micro-data gatherings along EU guidelines. The first major success of this effort is the EU-SILC (European Union—Survey of Income and Living Conditions). It offers the only current ex ante equivalent data on economic well-being in each of the 27 EU member states. In doing so, the EU-SILC provides an alternative to the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), which was previously the main source of micro data on EU countries available to the international network of scholars doing poverty research. LIS was and will continue to be valuable for capturing longer-term trends in economic wellbeing both because it provides at least limited access to difficult to obtain crosssectional country data for prior years, and because ex post, it standardizes that data for crosscountry comparative purposes. However, the EU-SILC is likely to be increasingly used both by the EU and the OECD as the source for …
Global Momentum Strategies

Here are some practical perspectives on momentum investing in stocks internationally. Momentum is generally more profitable on the long side than on the short side, making it accessible to a broad range of institutional capital, and both price and earnings momentum profits are significant globally. Earnings momentum internationally is distinct from price momentum; using price and earnings momentum in conjunction produces greater economic profits. Momentum profits co–move more weakly across markets than market indexes. Interestingly, while market correlations are much higher in down markets than in up markets, momentum correlations are low under both market conditions. There is no appreciable difference in momentum strategy profitability in up and down markets, which means timing is less important to momentum traders. Finally, momentum strategies are not riskless? there are often periods of several months when they have netted low or negative returns. The findings altogether suggest that momentum is useful in international portfolio management, but it should be implemented very thoughtfully.
Validation of a quantitative real-time PCR assay and comparison with fluorescence microscopy and selective agar plate counting for species-specific quantification of an in vitro subgingival biofilm model.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Subgingival biofilms are the prime etiological factor of periodontal disease. Owing to their complex polymicrobial nature, quantification of individual bacterial species within the biofilm for research and diagnostic purposes can be methodologically challenging. The aims of this study were to establish a quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) assay to quantify the bacteria used in our 10-species in vitro 'subgingival' biofilm model and to compare the quantitative outcome with fluorescence microscopy and colony-forming unit (CFU) counts on selective agar plates. MATERIAL AND METHODS The 10 species included in the in vitro biofilm were Streptococcus oralis, Streptococcus anginosus, Veillonella dispar, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Treponema denticola, Tannerella forsythia, Actinomyces oris, Campylobacter rectus, Porphyromonas gingivalis and Prevotella intermedia. The numbers of each species were quantified at two time points using qPCR, microscopy counting following fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) or immunofluorescence staining, and counting of CFUs after growth on selective agar plates. RESULTS All 10 species were successfully quantified using qPCR and FISH or immunofluorescence, and the eight species culturable on selective agar plates were also quantified by counting the numbers of CFUs after growth on selective agar. In early biofilm cultures, all methods showed a significant correlation, although the absolute numbers differed between methods. In late biofilm cultures, measurements obtained using qPCR and FISH or immunofluorescence, but not by CFU counts, maintained significant correlation. CFU counts yielded lower values than did measurements made using the other two methods. CONCLUSION Quantitative PCR and epifluorescence microscopy can be easily combined with each other to determine species-specific bacterial numbers within biofilms. However, conventional bacterial cultures cannot be as efficiently combined using these molecular detection methods. This may be crucial in designing and selecting appropriate clinical diagnostic methods for subgingival biofilm samples.
Intradural Extramedullary Spinal Ependymoma: A Benign Pathology?

Study Design. Spinal ependymoma is a benign central nervous system tumor described as an intramedullary lesion more frequently located at the conus medullaris. It has been described exceptionally in the literature as an intradural extramedullary tumor. Objective. Presentation of an extremelly rare location and evolution of extremedullary ependymoma and discussion of its probable origin, differential diagnosis, treatment options, and follow-up. Summary of Background Data. This case demonstrates an unusual location of a benign ependymal tumor in the extramedullary space with a total resection, which recurred in a lower level with a malignant transformation with the same extramedullary location. Methods. The authors present the case of a 47-year-old woman with a subacute spinal cord dysfunction and an intradural extramedullary D2–D3 tumor mimicking meningioma or neurinoma. At surgery, an encapsulated intradural extramedullary mass was found, but neither dural attachment nor medullary infiltration was present. Results. After complete resection, anatomic-pathologic studies confirmed that the lesion was a benign classic ependymoma. Good neurologic outcome was achieved, and no residual tumor was present at magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) control performed at 3 and 9 months later. One year after surgery, a new intradural extramedullary tumor was found at the D4 level without recurrence at D2. The patient was operated on again, but at this time the histologic study showed an anaplastic ependymoma with a proliferation index of 25% measured by Ki-67. Whole central nervous system radiotherapy was performed. Conclusion. All of the previously reported cases of spinal intradural extramedullary ependymomas carried out a benign course. The case we are reporting is the first one in which malignant transformation occurred. This tumor should be taken into account in the differential diagnosis of intradural extramedullary lesions. Moreover, close follow-up is recommended for this unusual location of ependymomas.
Association of serum level of 25 hydroxy-vitamin D with prognostic factors for breast cancer.

BACKGROUND AND AIM In recent years, there has been considerable interest in whether vitamin D inhibits breast cancer development. Experimental studies have shown that vitamin D promotes cell differentiation and retards or terminates proliferation of breast cancer cells. However, there is little evidence supporting the association of vitamin D and prognosis of breast cancer. METHODS AND MATERIALS In this analytic-descriptive study, 119 female patients with histological proven breast cancer were recruited in Tabriz oncology clinics in a 15-month period of time. History of chemotherapy, radiotherapy or receiving vitamin D/Ca supplements and presence of other malignancies were exclusion criteria. Serum level of 25 hydroxy vitamin D (25(OH)D) was measured in all patients. RESULTS One hundred and nineteen patients with a mean age of 50.4∓12.6 (26-76) years were enrolled in the study. Metastasis was present in 21.8% of the cases. Stage of tumor was I, II, III and IV in 11, 56, 26 and 26 patients, respectively. The Tumor grade was low in 37 cases, intermediate in 46 cases, and high in 36 cases. The P53, Ki-67, HER2, ER and PR were positive in 30.3%, 49.6%, 17.6%, 61.2% and 55.5% of the patients, respectively. The mean serum level of 25(OH)D was 15.7∓17.8 (4-122) ng/ml, deficient in 66 cases, insufficient in 36 cases and normal level in 17 cases. The median level of 25(OH)D was lower in the P53+ group in a borderline trend (17.3 vs. 13.6 ng/ml; p=0.07). The median level of 25(OH)D was significantly higher in the patients with metastasis, as well (27.7 vs. 12.0 ng/ml; p=0.03). There was no significant association between the serum level of 25(OH)D and other studied parameters. CONCLUSION Based on our findings, there may be an association between the serum level of 25(OH)D and prognosis of breast cancer.
Monocyte chemoattractant protein‐1 is a mediator of the anabolic action of parathyroid hormone on bone

Parathyroid hormone (PTH) has a significant role as an anabolic hormone in bone when administered by intermittent injection. Previous microarray studies in our laboratory have shown that the most highly regulated gene, monocyte chemoattractant protein‐1 (MCP‐1), is rapidly and transiently induced when hPTH(1‐34) is injected intermittently in rats. Through further in vivo studies, we found that rats treated with hPTH(1‐34) showed a significant increase in serum MCP‐1 levels 2 hours after PTH injection compared with basal levels. Using immunohistochemistry, increased MCP‐1 expression in osteoblasts and osteocytes is evident after PTH treatment. PTH also increased the number of marrow macrophages. MCP‐1 knockout mice injected daily with hPTH(1‐34) showed less trabecular bone mineral density and bone volume compared with wild‐type mice as measured by peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) and micro‐computed tomography (µCT). Histomorphometric analysis revealed that the increase in osteoclast surface and osteoclast number observed with intermittent PTH treatment in the wild‐type mice was completely eliminated in the MCP‐1 null mice, as well as much lower numbers of macrophages. Consequently, the lack of osteoclast and macrophage activity in the MCP‐1 null mice was paralleled by a reduction in bone formation. We conclude that osteoblast and osteocyte MCP‐1 expression is an important mediator for the anabolic effects of PTH on bone.