Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of Antioxidant Lycopene in Cancer and Heart Disease

Lycopene, a carotenoid without provitamin-A activity, is present in many fruits and vegetables; however, tomatoes and processed tomato products constitute the major source of lycopene in North American diet. Among the carotenoids, lycopene is a major component found in the serum and other tissues. Dietary intakes of tomatoes and tomato products containing lycopene have been shown to be associated with decreased risk of chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases in several recent studies. Serum and tissue lycopene levels have also been inversely related with the chronic disease risk. Although the antioxidant properties of lycopene are thought to be primarily responsible for its beneficial properties, evidence is accumulating to suggest other mechanisms such as modulation of intercellular gap junction communication, hormonal and immune system and metabolic pathways may also be involved. This review summarizes the background information about lycopene and presents the most current knowledge with respect to its role in human health and disease.
Effect of positioning from supine and left lateral positions to left lateral tilt on maternal blood flow velocities and waveforms in full‐term parturients

Positioning the parturient from supine to the left lateral tilt position (supine‐to‐tilt) may not effectively displace the gravid uterus, but turning from the left lateral position to the left lateral tilt position (left lateral‐to‐tilt) may keep the gravid uterus displaced and prevent aortocaval compression. Fifty‐one full‐term parturients were randomly placed in the left lateral position, supine‐to‐tilt and left lateral‐to‐tilt positions using a Crawford wedge. Femoral vein area, femoral vein velocity, femoral artery area, pulsatility index, resistance index and right arm mean arterial blood pressure and heart rate were recorded. Our results showed a lower mean (SD) femoral vein area (82.2 (14.9) vs 96.2 (16.4) mm2), a lower pulsatility index (3.83 (1.3) vs 5.8 (2.2)), a lower resistance index (0.93 (0.06) vs 0.98 (0.57)), a higher femoral artery area (33.3 (3.8) vs 30.9 (4.4) mm2) and a higher femoral vein velocity (7.9 (1.2) vs 6.1 (1.6) cm.s−1) with left lateral‐to‐tilt when compared with supine‐to‐tilt (all p < 0.001). Our results suggest that moving a full‐term parturient from the full left lateral to the lateral tilt position may prevent aortocaval compression in full‐term parturients more efficiently than when positioning the parturient from a supine to left lateral tilt position.
Directions for Australian higher education institutional policy and practice in supporting students from low socioeconomic backgrounds

The Australian Government's response to the 2008 Bradley Review of higher education has set clear targets for increased university participation of people from low socioeconomic status backgrounds. Using a ‘success-focused’ methodological approach, this research documents the factors that a sample of 53 later-year, low socioeconomic status background students at one Australian university report have assisted them to manage and overcome the challenges of remaining at, progressing through and succeeding at university. Thematic analyses of the data identified the most helpful factors as including the students' own study behaviour around, and attitude toward, study; teacher characteristics; institutional support of particular kinds; and student-to-student connections. Directions for institutional policy and practice are outlined.
INFLUENCE OF COMPENSATION PRACTICES ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE OF TEA COMPANIES IN RWANDA : A CASE STUDY OF RWANDA MOUNTAIN TEA

ompetitive environment, compensation system of the company has direct impact on its employee performance. Compensation is one of the physical needs that motivates which in turn affect the employee performance. The effects of compensation on motivation vary from organization to organization. Employees themselves fail to recognize the fact that their compensation is a package and not only related to cash. The total populations of this study were 440 employees from 3 tea companies and the sample size were 205 employees of Rwanda Mountain Tea. In this study researcher was used questionnaire as data collection instruments. The compensation practices have an overall correlation employee performance of 0.801 which is strong and positive relationship between two variables. This means that approximately 80.1% variations of compensation practices were explained by the employee’s performance at 5% level of significance. Pearson correlation coefficient, (r=0.862) shows that there is a positive and high correlation between Compensation practices and employee performance in Rwanda Mountain Tea. This means that the Compensation practices have big contribution on employee’s performance in Rwanda Mountain Tea. The Tea Company is one of the vital sectors necessitating the growth and development of Rwanda economy, therefore, it is vital for Company to embark on effective compensation management policies that will protect and promote employees performance. Rwanda Mountain Tea should ensure the provision of good welfare packages that will encourage and promote employees performance. The need to retain effective and qualified work force is a necessity for a functional organization, thereby necessitating the need to provide good working conditions and effective working packages that will support in retaining effective work force.
MOSAIC HETEROCHRONY AND EVOLUTIONARY MODULARITY: THE TRILOBITE GENUS ZACANTHOPSIS AS A CASE STUDY

Logical connections exist between evolutionary modularity and heterochrony, two unifying and structuring themes in the expanding field of evolutionary developmental biology. The former sees complex phenotypes as being made up of semi‐independent units of evolutionary transformation; the latter requires such a modular organization of phenotypes to occur in a localized or mosaic fashion. This conceptual relationship is illustrated here by analyzing the evolutionary changes in the cranidial ontogeny of two related species of Cambrian trilobites. With arguments from comparative developmental genetics and functional morphology, we delineate putative evolutionary modules within the cranidium and examine patterns of evolutionary changes in ontogeny at both global and local scales. Results support a case of mosaic heterochrony, that is, a combination of local heterochronies affecting the different parts individuated in the cranidium, leading to the complex pattern of allometric repatterning observed at the global scale. Through this example, we show that recasting morphological analyses of complex phenotypes with a priori knowledge or hypotheses about their organizational and variational properties can significantly improve our interpretation and understanding of evolutionary changes among related taxa, fossil and extant. Such considerations open avenues to investigate the large‐scale dynamics of modularity and its role in phenotypic evolution.
A quasi zero-current-switching DC/DC Modular-Multilevel Converter (MMC) with LCL circuit for DC grids

A DC/DC Modular-Multilevel Converter (MMC) is proposed in this paper, in which two modular multilevel converters are linked by a LCL tank. With the proposed converter, the high power medium frequency transformer can be eliminated to simplify the structure, quasi zero-current-switching operation of both MMCs can be achieved to alleviate the switching loss, the voltage stress of internal LCL tank can be controlled and the destructive voltage derivation applying on LCL tank can be avoided. The operations, modulations and parameter design are given in this paper. A simulation model in Matlab/Simulink and a low power prototype are built to validate the proposed topology.
Adhesins in Human Fungal Pathogens: Glue with Plenty of Stick

ABSTRACT Understanding the pathogenesis of an infectious disease is critical for developing new methods to prevent infection and diagnose or cure disease. Adherence of microorganisms to host tissue is a prerequisite for tissue invasion and infection. Fungal cell wall adhesins involved in adherence to host tissue or abiotic medical devices are critical for colonization leading to invasion and damage of host tissue. Here, with a main focus on pathogenic Candida species, we summarize recent progress made in the field of adhesins in human fungal pathogens and underscore the importance of these proteins in establishment of fungal diseases.
Time Series Analysis of Inflation Targeting in Selected Countries

Abstract We analyze a set of countries which adopted inflation targeting (IT) as a policy tool. We model the pre‐IT period with ARMA and GARCH methods, and conduct the one‐step ahead forecasting for the remainder of the times series data. The actual and forecasted inflation levels are compared for each country. We find that even though the actual inflation levels are lower than the forecasted ones, there is no statistical evidence to suggest that the adoption of IT causes a structural break in the inflation levels of the countries which adopt IT.
Status quo and future prospects for metallized polypropylene energy storage capacitors

The most important polymer film used in commercial capacitors is biaxially oriented polypropylene. Other materials, such as polyester or paper, are also used for self-healing metallized capacitors, depending on the application. Capacitors manufactured with polypropylene have the big advantage of being less expensive than other materials, and have a very low equivalent series resistance (ESR), due to the propylene-repeating group, which results in a regular polymer chain. Electrical breakdown behaviour will be analyzed in order to improve the electric field stress. Performance versus energy density will be investigated as well. We will give an overview of new proposals in the field of films, considering their reported better dielectric and mechanical performance.
Institutional Environments And Everyday EU Decision Making

What difference do institutional environments make? Do they primarily affect strategy, with constraining and enabling effects on behavior as rationalists hold? Or do they also affect attitudes, identities, and how interests are formulated as constructivists assert? Within a given institutional environment, what impact does the "style" of decision making-which beyond formal characteristics such as the decision rule includes informal rules, norms, and shared understandings-play in determining bargaining outcomes? This article examines these questions in the context of EU decision making by focusing on the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper). Coreper is an ideal laboratory to test these questions empirically, because this committee represents the needle's eye through which the legislative workload of the Council flows. And the permanent representatives who live in Brussels and meet weekly to prepare upcoming ministerial meetings are exemplars of state agents given their prominence in articulating and defending national interests across the gamut of EU affairs.
A Status Update on Fiscal Exit Strategies

With a modest recovery in the global economy underway, and amid rising concerns about the sharp increase in government debt in several countries, debate has increasingly focused on the need to identify and implement fiscal exit strategies. This paper reviews the medium-term plans of 25 countries - the G20 plus six others with large adjustment needs - and finds that most of them have made reasonable progress in defining these strategies. Nevertheless, strategies fall short in some areas, including committing to long-term debt targets, spelling out adjustment measures in detail, and tackling rising health care costs.
The successes and failures of Professor Coase

When ‘The Problem of Social Cost’ (Coase, 1960) was first published more than half a century ago, it was an instant classic. For the group of Chicago economists who stood as its midwife, the birth of the article made intellectual history (Stigler, 1988). 1 For economists at large, Coase (1960) repudiated the Pigovian analysis of social cost, the fountainhead for modern welfare economics. For legal scholars, Coase (1960) provided an analytical framework to bridge two hitherto separate bodies of law, tort and property, and laid the foundation for the rise of law and economics. For other social scientists, Coase (1960) brought to the front the critical role of rights, including but not limited to legal rights, in structuring social life (Coleman, 1990). The article, or what became known as its main argument, was soon distilled into what George Stigler (1966) called the ‘Coase Theorem’, which quickly became a household name in the profession, although the phrase has never been endorsed by Coase himself. At the same time, the article has rarely failed to provoke criticism and skepticism (e.g., Cooter, 1982; Demsetz, 2011; Samuelson, 1995). The British economist, Edwin Canan, who was Arnold Plant’s teacher, who in turn introduced the young Ronald Coase to economics, once remarked that falsehood may win the day, but in the end truth prevails. Half a century may not be long enough for truth to prevail in the battle of ideas. Still, we cannot help wondering where Professor Coase has triumphed and where he has lost in changing the thinking of his contemporaries and immediate successors. In this short note, we present a progress report, assessing the performance of ‘The Problem of Social Cost’ in the market for economics ideas over the past half century. Let us briefly revisit the problem that gave rise to ‘The Problem of Social Cost’. A fertilizer plant, while producing fertilizers, pollutes water in a nearby river, and consequently
How do Consumers Respond to Gasoline Price Cycles?

Abstract This paper empirically studies how consumers respond to retail gasoline price cycles. Our analysis uses new station-level price data from local markets in Ontario, Canada, and a unique market-level measure of consumer responsiveness based on web traffic from gasoline price reporting websites. We first document how stations use coordinated pricing strategies that give rise to large daily changes in price levels and dispersion in cycling gasoline markets. We then show consumer responsiveness exhibits cycles that move with these price fluctuations. Through a series of tests we find that forward-looking stockpiling behavior by consumers plays a central role in generating these patterns.
Predictive risk assessment using cooperation concept for collision avoidance of side crash in autonomous lane change systems

We present an innovative approach to risk assessment using cooperation concept for collision avoidance of side crash for autonomous lane change system. The cooperation concept is proposed to check an available space in the target lane for lane change in a short period of the future. Before moving to the target lane, the ego vehicle needs to check whether the object vehicle is cooperative or not for the lane change. The object vehicles are indexed as cooperative driver (CD) or non-cooperative driver (NCD) through the conditions based on the relative longitudinal acceleration and the collision free time. If the object vehicle is CD, the ego vehicle moves toward the target lane within the original lane for the preparation of the lane change. The ego vehicle should keep its lateral position within the original lane until the situation for the lane change becomes safe. As soon as the risk assessment becomes safe, the lane change is performed. Therefore, lane change can be started in advance compared to the conventional methods. The proposed method was validated via computational simulation and experimental results.
The glucocorticoid contribution to obesity

Obesity is fast becoming the scourge of our time. It is one of the biggest causes of death and disease in the industrialized world, and affects as many as 32% of adults and 17% of children in the USA, considered one of the world's fattest nations. It can also cost countries billions of dollars per annum in direct and indirect care, latest estimates putting the USA bill for obesity-related costs at $147 billion in 2008. It is becoming clear that the pathophysiology of obesity is vastly more complicated than the simple equation of energy in minus energy out. A combination of genetics, sex, perinatal environment and life-style factors can influence diet and energy metabolism. In this regard, psychological stress can have significant long-term impact upon the propensity to gain and maintain weight. In this review, we will discuss the ability of psychological stress and ultimately glucocorticoids (GCs) to alter appetite regulation and metabolism. We will specifically focus on (i) GC regulation of appetite and adiposity, (ii) the apparent sexual dimorphism in stress effects on obesity and (iii) the ability of early life stress to programme obesity in the long term.
A 0.7-V 60-GHz low-power LNA with forward body bias technique in 90 nm CMOS process

A low voltage and low power 60 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) using 90 nm standard MS/RF CMOS technology is presented in this paper. For the low voltage applications, a three-stage common source configuration is utilized. By using forward-body-bias, our LNA can operate at 0.7 V supply voltage and consumes 4.9 mW dc power while maintaining a peak gain of 13 dB at 55 GHz and 12.6 dB at 60 GHz with a compact chip size of 0.351 mm2. The 1-dB gain bandwidth is 54.5 to 61.0 GHz and the minimum noise figure is 6.3 dB at 64 GHz. This MMIC successfully demonstrates the forward-body-biased LNA in millimeter-wave frequency region with the lowest supply-voltage among the published LNAs around 60 GHz.
Litigation Risk and Abnormal Accruals

SUMMARY In this paper, we examine the relation between auditor litigation risk and abnormal accruals over the 1989–2007 time period. We address potential endogeneity in prior studies by jointly modeling abnormal accruals and litigation risk in a simultaneous equation system. Our findings suggest that client-specific litigation risk affects auditor incentives to acquiesce to client demands for earnings management, i.e., the higher the risk of auditor litigation, the greater the auditor's restraining influence on the abnormal accruals reported by the client. We also find evidence that abnormal accruals increase the likelihood of auditor litigation. We also document that the 1995 Public Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) lowered the client-specific risk of auditor litigation. Litigation reform remains a topic of ongoing interest. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the effects of litigation reform (and related changes in legal exposure) on auditor incentives and earnings management.
Features of request strategies in Chinese

As Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper 1989:1 point out, speech acts are “one of the most compelling notions in the study of language use”. The Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Project (CCSARP; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1984) analyses two speech acts: requests and apologies across a range of languages and cultures to investigate whether there are universal pragmatic principles in speech act realisation, and what the characteristics of those universals might be. Concerning requests, one of the most significant findings of the CCSARP was that all languages studied overwhelmingly preferred conventionally indirect request strategies (e.g. Could I borrow your notes? ; Would you mind moving your car? ). However, there remains a distinct Western bias in the CCSARP: all of the languages and varieties studied (except Hebrew) are either Germanic or Romance, and all of the cultures studied are either Western or heavily influenced by Western culture. Therefore, in this article I will focus on the strategy types of making requests classified in CCSARP to analyse the linguistic features in Chinese speakers’ speech act realisation in the hope that further evidence can be found to support claims for a universal category of conventionally indirect requests. (Less)
The Other Invisible Hand: Delivering Public Services through Choice and Competition

How can we ensure high-quality public services such as health care and education? Governments spend huge amounts of public money on public services such as health, education, and social care, and yet the services that are actually delivered are often low quality, inefficiently run, unresponsive to their users, and inequitable in their distribution. In this book, Julian Le Grand argues that the best solution is to offer choice to users and to encourage competition among providers. Le Grand has just completed a period as policy advisor working within the British government at the highest levels, and from this he has gained evidence to support his earlier theoretical work and has experienced the political reality of putting public policy theory into practice. He examines four ways of delivering public services: trust; targets and performance management; "voice"; and choice and competition. He argues that, although all of these have their merits, in most situations policies that rely on extending choice and competition among providers have the most potential for delivering high-quality, efficient, responsive, and equitable services. But it is important that the relevant policies be appropriately designed, and this book provides a detailed discussion of the principal features that these policies should have in the context of health care and education. It concludes with a discussion of the politics of choice.
Changing the institutional and policy environment for small enterprise development in Africa

The changes faced by African business people over recent years have provided opportunities in the form of increased export markets and threats in the form of competition from new labour-force entrants. This article, which is adapted from the keynote speech of the conference of donor agencies for small and medium enterprises in Abidjan in 1993, outlines some of the changes that have taken place in many African countries following structural adjustment programmes. It describes changes in the markets in which firms operate, in the business environment and in the institutions affecting small enterprises.
Core needle biopsy is effective in the initial diagnosis of mediastinal lymphoma.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE With the development and refinement of guidance modalities for percutaneous biopsies, many investigators have reported studies supporting the role of guided core needle biopsy in the diagnosis of mediastinal lymphoma. The aims of this report are to evaluate the efficacy of findings at core needle biopsy of mediastinal masses on patient care and define the key determinants of clinical success. DESIGN AND METHODS Fluoroscopy-guided (in 75 patients) and computed tomography-guided (in 8 patients) core needle biopsies were performed in 83 patients with mediastinal lymphoma: all but one of the patients were at first diagnosis. All the biopsies were performed using a Menghini needle (from 1.2 mm to 1.8 mm). In the vast majority of cases the 1.8 mm gauge was employed. RESULTS The overall sensitivity for the diagnosis of lymphoma was 81% (67/83 cases). In the remaining 16 patients the lymphoma diagnosis was reached either by mediastinoscopy (11 cases) or anterior mediastinotomy (3 cases) or core needle biopsy of the lung (1 case); one patient was treated directly after the needle biopsy had been unsuccessful because he needed rapid therapy. In 77/82 (93%) patients it was possible to assess the specific histotype. There was no operative mortality; all the biopsies were performed on an outpatient basis. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS Our data indicate that core needle biopsy should be considered as an effective and safe procedure in the diagnosis of patients with mediastinal lymphoma with the possibility of determining the tumor subtype and subsequent specific treatment.