Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The prophylactic effect of itraconazole capsules and fluconazole capsules for systemic fungal infections in patients with acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes: a japanese multicenter randomized, controlled study

We performed a randomized, controlled study comparing the prophylactic effects of capsule forms of fluconazole (n = 110) and itraconazole (n = 108) in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) during and after chemotherapy.There were 4 cases with possible systemic fungal infection in the itraconazole group, and there were 8 possible and 3 probable cases in the fluconazole group. Adverse events did not significantly differ in the 2 groups. In patients with MDS or in the remission-induction phase of chemotherapy, the numbers of cases with probable or possible infections were lower in the itraconazole group than in the fluconazole group, whereas no difference was seen in patients with AML or in the consolidation phase of therapy. In patients with neutrophil counts of <0.1 * 109/L lasting for more than 4 weeks, the frequency of infection in the fluconazole group (5 of 9 patients) was significantly higher than in the itraconazole group (0 of 7 patients; P = .03). Our results suggest that both drugs were well tolerated in patients with AML or MDS who received chemotherapy and that the efficacy of itraconazole for prophylaxis against systemic fungal disease is not inferior to that of fluconazole.
Expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and its receptors correlates closely with formation of the plexiform lesion in human pulmonary hypertension

The pulmonary vasculature exhibits various morphological changes in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH). Among them, the plexiform lesion is one of the most characteristic vascular lesions, although nothing is known about the molecular mechanisms of its formation. In the present study, the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), an endothelial cell‐specific angiogenic mitogen, and its receptors, fms‐like tyrosine kinase (Flt‐1) and kinase insert domain‐containing receptor (KDR), in the lungs of five cases with PH, were examined. By in situ hybridization, VEGF expression was found in modified smooth muscle cells inside the plexiform lesions as well as in medial smooth muscle cells of the arteries adjacent to the lesions. The expression of Flt‐1 mRNA was observed in endothelial cells of the arteries adjacent to the plexiform lesions, while KDR mRNA was expressed in the endothelial cells inside the plexiform lesions. VEGF was immunolocalized to the endothelial cells expressing its receptors as well as the modified smooth muscle cells producing VEGF. These results demonstrate that VEGF and its receptors are upregulated with a close correlation to the plexiform lesions, and suggest that VEGF expressed by smooth muscle cells may activate the endothelial cells to form the plexiform lesions.
Images of desire: Cognitive models of craving

Cognitive modelling of phenomena in clinical practice allows the operationalisation of otherwise diffuse descriptive terms such as craving or flashbacks. This supports the empirical investigation of the clinical phenomena and the development of targeted treatment interventions. This paper focuses on the cognitive processes underpinning craving, which is recognised as a motivating experience in substance dependence. We use a high‐level cognitive architecture, Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS), to compare two theories of craving: Tiffany's theory, centred on the control of automated action schemata, and our own Elaborated Intrusion theory of craving. Data from a questionnaire study of the subjective aspects of everyday desires experienced by a large non‐clinical population are presented. Both the data and the high‐level modelling support the central claim of the Elaborated Intrusion theory that imagery is a key element of craving, providing the subjective experience and mediating much of the associated disruption of concurrent cognition.
The independent regulatory body : a new regulatory institution in the privatised telecommunications industry (the case of Indonesia)

Privatisation has led to the reorganisation of the government institutions involved in the telecommunications sector. More specifically, it has moved the telecommunications structure from government-based supply to market-based supply. One of the important consequences of this is that the government's involvement in the sector has focused more on its role as a policymaker. The government's involvement in detailed management of the telecommunications operation may create negative impacts in the competitive market. The establishment of an independent regulatory body has been essential in changing the regulatory mechanism from a political to a professional orientation.
2-D DOA Estimation in the Presence of Mutual Coupling

We present a 2-D direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm in the presence of unknown mutual coupling for the uniform rectangular array (URA) based on the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm. By setting the sensors on the boundary of the URA as auxiliary sensors, it can accurately estimate the DOAs without any calibration sources or iterative operations. We prove that the effect of mutual coupling can be eliminated by the inherent mechanism of the proposed method. Twice search technique is used to reduce the computation of the 2-D spectrum search. Moreover, we provide a method to estimate the mutual coupling coefficients after getting the DOA estimates. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
What Do Mature Travelers Perceive as Important Hotel/Motel Customer Services?

The availability of quality service substantially influences consumer satisfac tion. Therefore, the provision of quality service has become an increasingly impor tant concern of hotel/motel managers. Due to the size, growth rate, and special concerns of the mature population, their assessment of hotel/motel services is necessary in order to determine whatservices hotels/motels should provide to attract and maintain theirbusiness. The purpose of this study was to assess the importance of services provided by hotels/motels as perceived by mature travelers. The objectives of this study were accomplished through descriptive analysis of quantita tive data gathered from a sample of mature consumers in the state of Texas using the SERVQUAL model. Results indicated customer services related to assurance and reliability were considered highly important. To attract and satisfy mature travelers, hotels/motels should focus their efforts to provide quality customer services of all types, particularly in the areas of assurance and reliability.
The European Union: a distinctive model of internationalization

The central argument in this article is that the process of institution-building, law-making, policy integration and market creation in the European Union (EU) has produced a European model of internationalization with distinctive characteristics. The article seeks to analyse the characteristics of the emerging European system by acknowledging the 'betweenness' of the EU. Scholars of integration have always been confronted and challenged by the 'betweenness' of the Union. The EU hovers between politics and diplomacy, between states and markets, and between government and governance.
Market Structure versus Information Costs as Determinants of Underwriters' Spreads on Municipal Bonds

The market for underwriting services provides a valuable opportunity to test two competing hypotheses in monopsony theory. When applied to the area of investment banking, the theory implies that spread behavior ought to be influenced not only by the average costs of providing underwriting services, but also by the extent of vigorous competition. In competitive markets the prices of products and services tend to reflect minimum average costs in the long run. When competition declines, spreads can be expected to widen. A number of empirical studies have established that spread behavior is in fact dependent on the extent of bidding competition [5, 8, 9, 2]. “The intensity of competition in underwriting new issues of tax exempts has the expected effect on underwriters' spreads, that is, the difference between buying and selling prices; spreads decrease as the degree of competition increases” [2, p. 707].
New pathogenic insights into rheumatoid arthritis

Purpose of reviewRheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a heterogeneous chronic immune-mediated inflammatory disease, associated with significant morbidity and reduced life expectancy. Here, we review recent discoveries; particularly those which have attempted to integrate genome-wide association studies (GWAS) with biological pathways and cell types known to play a role in disease pathology in order to expand our current understanding of the pathogenesis of RA. As the role of stromal cells in the pathogenesis of RA has been reviewed in detail in Current Opinions in Rheumatology, this area will not be covered in this review. Recent findingsAlthough our understandings of the pathogenic processes that drive disease in RA remain incomplete, remarkable advances over the past year can be highlighted. GWAS have raised awareness of important new risk loci with genes that either are the targets of approved therapies for RA, or involve pathways for drugs that could be repurposed from other disease indications such as cancer. Furthermore, promising strides have been made in predicting the likelihood of developing RA in those at risk using human leukocyte antigen (HLA), smoking, and autoantibody status prediction models. These findings give a fresh insight into RA pathogenesis and help identify new, or repurpose known therapeutic targets from other disease areas. SummaryThe findings discussed in this review underscore the progress made to date and the need for future studies, investigating disease mechanisms in RA, with particular interest in at-risk RA gene loci, their function in immune and stromal cells within the synovium, and how they interact with environmental factors to initiate and perpetuate disease.
Applying a Package Goods Research Method to Tourism Marketing

A visitor survey tackles the problem of increasing the efficiency of Curacao's marketing strategy. This article focuses on two areas: (1) the tourists' biggest problems with Curacao, which must be the focus of corrective efforts, and (2) Curacao's nonproblem areas, or positive aspects which can be featured in advertis ing and promotion. A consumer research technique called problem detection, widely used in package goods marketing, was applied to the development of an improved marketing strategy for Curacao.
Robust track-to-track association algorithm based on t-distribution mixture model

To address multi-sensor robust track-to-track association in the presence of sensor biases and missed detections, where sensors biases is time-varying and non-uniform, the target of different sensors is non-identical, the robust track-to-track association algorithm based on t-distribution mixture model is proposed. The robust track-to-track association problem is turned into the non-rigid point matching problem. Firstly, the orthogonal normalization reduce the general affine case of track point set; second, the heavy-tailed t-distribution mixture model is established with better robustness to tracks of non-common, solved by Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. The conditional expectation function is added a regular item of point sets that the points have a feature of Coherent Point Drift (CPD). Adaptability experiments are established to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches compared with competing algorithms at the presence of sensor biases and missed detections.
The impact of the United States subsidies on world cotton price: evidence from ARDL bounds tests

This article investigates the impact of the United States subsidies on world cotton price in a structural framework. It starts with a simultaneous equations model of world cotton market, and then, it focuses on the reduced form. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds tests of Pesaran et al. (2001), no evidence of cointegration is found between the underlying variables. This contrasts with results found in the classical framework, which highlight a strong evidence of a negative impact of subsidies on cotton price, either in the short or long run.
Co-Operative Agreements and the Organization of Industry

THE field of industrial organization involves, in major part, the study of how industry is organized and why. The organization of industry, including for example the size distribution of firms, depends in turn on how firms interact. In Markets and Hierarchies, Williamson [11] has identified two major types of interaction: the marketplace (either competition between firms or single transactions between buyers and sellers), and mergers. Earlier, Coase [6] identified the two methods for organizing economic activity as internal to the firm or external to the firm. This paper investigates an intermediate form of interrelationship between firms, which provides yet another way of organizing economic activity, the co-operative agreement. It is important to state just what we mean by co-operative agreements, and to differentiate these type of agreements from other transactions. For our purposes, a co-operative agreement is any long term, explicit agreement amongst two or more firms. This agreement may or may not involve financial remuneration. There can be payment for some good or service: alternatively, the firms may agree to exchange information or other commodity or service: both are co-operative agreements. To meet our definition, the agreement must be long term: a one time purchase of goods and services is not a co-operative agreement, but an agreement to purchase all inputs from one supplier over the next ten years is a co-operative agreement. The agreement must be explicit: just because a majority of all purchases happen ex-post to have been from one supplier does not imply that a co-operative agreement was in force unless there was an explicit understanding before the fact that this would be so. Although the agreement must be explicit, there need not be a written contract for a co-operative agreement to exist. Co-operative agreements can be made verbally, although most agreements are indeed based on a written contract. Finally, a co-operative agreement can take various legal forms: two legal forms that are investigated in this paper are the joint venture and the bidding consortium (which itself may or may not be a joint venture). Since the objective of this paper is to study that transactional middle ground between single transactions in the marketplace and internal organization
Export response to trade liberalization in Bangladesh: a cointegration analysis

This paper investigates the response of Bangladesh's aggregate merchandise exports to a real exchange rate-based trade liberalization programme during the period 1974-1995. The cointegration and error correction modelling approaches have been applied. The empirical results suggest that there exists a unique long-run or equilibrium relationship among real quantities of export, relative export price and export-weighted real effective exchange rate. The short-term dynamic behaviour of Bangladesh's export supply has been investigated by estimating an error correction model in which the error correction term has been found to be correctly signed and statistically significant. Relative export price (lagged two quarters), real effective exchange rate, predicted values of real GDP (lagged one quarter) and a dummy variable capturing the effects of trade liberalization programme have all emerged as important determinants of an aggregate export supply function for Bangladesh. The error correction model has also been found to be robust as it satisfies all relevant diagnostic tests.
ENMD-2076 Is an Orally Active Kinase Inhibitor with Antiangiogenic and Antiproliferative Mechanisms of Action

ENMD-2076 is a novel orally active, small molecule kinase inhibitor with a mechanism of action involving several pathways key to tumor growth and survival: angiogenesis, proliferation, and the cell cycle. ENMD-2076 has selective activity against the mitotic kinase Aurora A, as well as kinases involved in angiogenesis (VEGFRs, FGFRs). ENMD-2076 inhibited the growth in vitro of a wide range of human solid tumor and hematopoietic cancer cell lines with IC50 values ranging from 0.025 to 0.7 μmol/L. ENMD-2076 was also shown to induce regression or complete inhibition of tumor growth in vivo at well-tolerated doses in tumor xenograft models derived from breast, colon, melanoma, leukemia, and multiple myeloma cell lines. Pharmacodynamic experiments in vivo showed that in addition to inhibiting Aurora A, single doses of ENMD-2076 had sustained inhibitory effects on the activation of Flt3 as well as the angiogenic tyrosine kinases, VEGFR2/KDR and FGFR1 and 2. ENMD-2076 was shown to prevent the formation of new blood vessels and regress formed vessels in vivo at doses equivalent to those that gave substantial activity in tumor xenograft models. These results indicate that ENMD-2076 is a well-tolerated, orally active multitarget kinase inhibitor with a unique antiangiogenic/antiproliferative profile and provides strong preclinical support for use as a therapeutic for human cancers. Several phase 1 studies involving ENMD-2076 have been recently completed, and the compound is currently being evaluated in a phase 2 clinical trial in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. Mol Cancer Ther; 10(1); 126–37. ©2010 AACR.
Dynamic models of labour force retirement: an empirical analysis of early exit in the Netherlands

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An investigation into responsible tourism practices in the South African hotel industry

This paper sheds light on the reasons for the limited uptake of responsible tourism initiative memberships by hotels in South Africa, despite South Africa being regarded as a leader in the field of responsible tourism policy, with the drafting of responsible tourism guidelines by the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT). The International Centre for Responsible Tourism’s conference (hosted in South Africa) preceding the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 resulted in the Cape Town Declaration, which was based on the guidelines developed by DEAT. There are currently two responsible tourism membership initiatives in South Africa. Non-experimental survey research was conducted among hotels about their understanding and implementation of responsible tourism practices. Sixty hotels responded to the survey, and it would appear that these hotels implement Corporate Social Responsibility/responsible tourism, though to varying extents. Many responding hotels do not participate in responsible tourism initiatives because of - amongst others - confusion about what the concept means, and a lack of awareness of such initiatives. This paper raises questions about the effectiveness of membership initiatives in promoting the implementation of responsible tourism practices and questions the importance of a common understanding and awareness of what responsible tourism entails in ensuring that policy is implemented.
Frequency and duration of remission after isolated limb perfusion for melanoma.

OBJECTIVE To examine the frequency and duration of complete remission for locally recurrent and metastatic limb melanoma after isolated limb perfusion (ILP) with cytotoxic agents. DESIGN A case series of 114 consecutive therapeutic ILPs performed between April 1984 and April 1994 and a review of previously published studies. SETTING A tertiary referral center for melanoma treatment, located at a university teaching hospital. RESULTS Of 111 assessable ILPs, 81 (73%) resulted in complete limb tumor remission and 14 (13%) resulted in partial remission (defined as a reduction in size of tumor deposits by > 50%). Complete remission was maintained in 37 (46%) of the 81 cases without any further treatment (median follow-up, 33 months; range, 8-112 months). Of the other 44 cases, disease subsequently recurred in the perfused limb (median time to recurrence, 9.5 months; range, 2-65 months). In 19 of these cases, however, the limb was again disease free at last follow-up after local surgery (12 cases) or a repeat ILP (7 cases). Overall, complete locoregional control was achieved after 50% of assessable ILPs, and a long-term disease-free state in the limb was achieved, with or without further treatment, in 56 (69%) of the 81 cases in which an initial complete remission occurred. For 743 therapeutic ILPs undertaken in 12 series previously reported in the literature, an initial complete remission was reported in 50% of these cases and partial remission in 32%. CONCLUSION Therapeutic ILP is an effective form of treatment for patients with recurrent and metastatic limb melanoma, achieving short- and long-term results that are superior to those achievable by any other form of treatment currently used.
Auditors’ Professional Skepticism: Neutrality versus Presumptive Doubt†

Although skepticism is widely viewed as essential to audit quality, there is a debate about what form is optimal. The two prevailing perspectives that have surfaced are ‘neutrality’ and ‘presumptive doubt’. With neutrality, auditors neither believe nor disbelieve client management. With presumptive doubt, auditors assume some level of dishonesty by management, unless evidence indicates otherwise. The purpose of this study is to examine which of these perspectives is most descriptive of auditors’ skeptical judgments and decisions, in higher and lower control environment risk settings. This issue is important, since there is a lack of empirical evidence as to which perspective is optimal in addressing client risks. An experimental study is conducted involving a sample of 96 auditors from one of the Big 4 auditing firms in the Netherlands, with experience ranging from senior to partner. One of the skepticism measures is reflective of neutrality (the Hurtt Professional Skepticism Scale - HPSS) whereas the other reflects presumptive doubt (the inverse of the Rotter Interpersonal Trust scale - RIT). The findings suggest that the presumptive doubt perspective of professional skepticism is more predictive of auditor skeptical judgments and decisions than neutrality, particularly in higher risk settings. Since auditing standards prescribe greater skepticism in higher risk settings, the findings support the appropriateness of a presumptive doubt perspective and have important implications for auditor recruitment and training, guidance in audit tools, and future research.