Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dealing with Tyranny: International Sanctions and the Survival of Authoritarian Rulers

This paper examines whether economic sanctions destabilize authoritarian rulers. We argue that the effect of sanctions is mediated by the type of authoritarian regime against which sanctions are imposed. Because personalist regimes and monarchies are more sensitive to the loss of external sources of revenue (such as foreign aid and taxes on trade) to fund patronage, rulers in these regimes are more likely to be destabilized by sanctions than leaders in other types of regimes. In contrast, when dominant single-party and military regimes are subject to sanctions, they increase their tax revenues and reallocate their expenditures to increase their levels of cooptation and repression. Using data on sanction episodes and authoritarian regimes from 1960 to 1997 and selection-corrected survival models, we test whether sanctions destabilize authoritarian rulers in different types of regimes. We find that personalist dictators are more vulnerable to foreign pressure than other types of dictators. We also analyze the modes of authoritarian leader exit and find that sanctions increase the likelihood of a regular and an irregular change of ruler, such as a coup, in personalist regimes. In single-party and military regimes, however, sanctions have little effect on leadership stability. During his inaugural address in 2005, US President George W. Bush proclaimed that ‘‘it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. ’’ 2 The general goal of ending tyranny has been shared by many of Western advanced democracies since the end of the Second World War. Yet there is little consensus over the most effective means to promote regime change and democratization.
Implications of Tumor Location on Subtypes of Medulloblastoma

Medulloblastoma (MB) comprises of four molecular subtypes, Sonic hedgehog (SHH), Wingless (WNT), Groups 3 and 4. WNT‐subtype MBs were found to arise from midline of the brainstem occupying the fourth ventricle while SHH‐subtype occupied the cerebellar hemisphere in a small subset of patients.
Molecular and functional characterization of a novel efflux pump, AmvA, mediating antimicrobial and disinfectant resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii.

OBJECTIVES Acinetobacter baumannii has emerged as an important nosocomial pathogen in hospitalized patients, and causes a multitude of infections with significant morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to elucidate the role of a novel efflux pump in A. baumannii. METHODS The open reading frame ABAYE1518, annotated as a putative Methyl Viologen resistance protein in the genome of strain A. baumannii AYE, exhibits >50% similarity with members of the major facilitator superfamily (MFS) multidrug efflux pumps. The antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of Escherichia coli KAM32 cells carrying the putative efflux pump were monitored by broth dilution method. Different efflux pump inhibitors were used for fluorimetric efflux assays. The functions of the putative efflux pump were confirmed in A. baumannii by insertional inactivation and complementation. Its expression in clinical isolates was analysed by reverse transcriptase-PCR. RESULTS E. coli cells carrying the pump had decreased susceptibility to some antibiotics, disinfectants, dyes and detergents, with enhanced efflux activity. The pump was inactivated in a clinical isolate of A. baumannii AC0037 and further characterization confirmed its role in antimicrobial resistance by active efflux. We found increased expression of the pump in clinical isolates that also exhibited elevated tolerance to antibacterial agents. CONCLUSIONS This report describes the functions of a novel resistance determinant, a member of the MFS efflux pumps, for the first time in A. baumannii.
Effect of adipose tissue thickness, muscle site, and sex on near-infrared spectroscopy derived total-[hemoglobin + myoglobin].

Craig JC, Broxterman RM, Wilcox SL, Chen C, Barstow TJ. Effect of adipose tissue thickness, muscle site, and sex on near-infrared spectroscopy derived total-[hemoglobin + myoglobin]. J Appl Physiol 123: 1571-1578, 2017. First published September 21, 2017; doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00207. 2017 . -Adipose tissue thickness (ATT) attenuates signals from near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and diminishes the absolute quantification of underlying tissues by contemporary NIRS devices. Based on the relationship between NIRS-derived total-[hemoglobin + myoglobin] (total-[Hb + Mb]) and ATT, we tested the hypotheses that the correction factor for ATT 1) is muscle site specific; 2) does not differ between men and women; and that 3) exclusion of the shortest source-detector distance from data analysis increases total-[Hb + Mb]. Fourteen healthy subjects (7 men) rested in a neutral body position (supine or prone) while measurements of total-[Hb + Mb] and ATT were taken at four muscles common to resting and exercise studies: vastus lateralis (VL), rectus femoris (RF), gastrocnemius (GS), and flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS). ATT averaged 6.0 ± 0.4 mm across all muscles. Every muscle showed a negative slope ( r2: 0.6-0.94; P < 0.01) for total-[Hb + Mb] as a function of ATT: VL (-34 μM/mm), RF (-26 μM/mm), GS (-54 μM/mm), and FDS (-33 μM/mm). The projected total-[Hb + Mb] at 0 mm ATT ( y-intercept) was 452, 372, 620, and 456 μM for VL, RF, GS, and FDS, respectively. No differences were found between the sexes within VL, RF, or FDS, but men had a greater projected total-[Hb + Mb] at 0 mm for GS (688 ± 44 vs. 552 ± 40 μM; P < 0.05). Exclusion of the shortest source-detector distance increased total-[Hb + Mb] by 12 ± 1 μM ( P < 0.05). The present findings demonstrate that total-[Hb + Mb] should be corrected for ATT using muscle site-specific factors which are not sex specific, except in the case of GS. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is an important tool for physiologists and clinicians. However, adipose tissue greatly attenuates the signals from these devices. Correcting for this attenuation has been suggested based on the strength of the relationship between NIRS-derived measurements and the adipose tissue thickness. We show that this relationship is unique to the muscle site of interest but may not be sex specific. Accurate quantification of underlying tissue mandates researchers correct for adipose tissue thickness.
The Effects of Sexual Harassment on Job Satisfaction, Earnings, and Turnover among Female Lawyers

Using data from the American Bar Association's National Survey of Career Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction (1990), the authors estimate the incidence and impact of sexual harassment in the legal profession. Nearly two-thirds of female lawyers in private practice and nearly half of those in corporate or public agency settings reported either experiencing or observing sexual harassment by male superiors, colleagues, or clients during the two years prior to the survey. Female lawyers who had experienced or observed sexual harassment by male superiors or colleagues reported lower overall job satisfaction than did those who had not, as well as a greater intention to quit. The authors speculate that employers and coworkers may sometimes be able to sexually harass female employees in ways or degrees that are not sanctionable but that induce the victims to quit. Sexual harassment may contribute to an undetermined extent to many aspects of women's employment experience, including absenteeism, turnover, productivity rates and work motivation, job dissatisfaction, and unemployment. —MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women
Der Aufbau von lernförderlichen Infrastrukturen

La discussion tres orientee vers la technologie risque de provoquer des attentes souvent trop hautes et meme partiellement fausses a l'utilisation du multimedia. Au premier plan se trouve l'etude individuelle independamment des conditions de temps, d'espace, et de d'environement social. Notre approche par l'etablissement d'infrastructures favorables a l'etude met par contre l'accent sur la necessite tant theorique que pratique de placer les technologies d'apprentissage utilisables pour un usage quotidien dans l'environement respectif de l'utilisation quant a l'egard de l'organisation, de la pedagogie, et de la technologie. L'etude se pratique sous de multiples formes et est repartie sur plusieurs lieux: les amphitheâtres, les bibliotheques, les laboratoires, lieux de travail comme aussi les domiciles doivent se reunir dans un reseau afin de rendre accessible tous les materiaux d'enseignement a tous les lieux d'etudes. La communication decrit les experiences accumulees pendant plusieurs annees avec l'etablissement de telles infrastructures favorisant l'etude.
TVT-Secur (Hammock) Versus TVT-Obturator: A Randomized Trial of Suburethral Sling Operative Procedures

Objectives This study aimed to compare TVT-Secur (TVT-S) and TVT-Obturator (TVT-O) suburethral slings for treatment of stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Methods This was a single-center, nonblinded, randomized trial of women with SUI who were randomized to TVT-S or TVT-O from May 2007 to April 2009. The primary outcome, SUI on cough stress test (CST), and quality-of-life and symptom questionnaires (Pelvic Floor Distress Inventory [PFDI-20] and Pelvic Floor Impact Questionnaire [PFIQ-7]) were assessed at 12 weeks and 1 year. Results Forty-three women were randomized to TVT-S and 44 to TVT-O. There were no differences in median baseline PFDI-20 and PFIQ-7. Twenty-two (52.4%) of 42 participants randomized to TVT-S had a positive CST result at evaluation after 12 weeks or 1 year, whereas 4 (9.1%) of the 44 in the TVT-O group had a positive CST result. The intent-to-treat analysis showed that the risk of a positive CST result was 6 times higher after TVT-S than TVT-O (risk ratio, 6.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.3–16.0). Among women not lost to follow-up, the risk ratio for a positive CST result after TVT-S compared with TVT-O was 17.9 (95% CI, 2.5–128.0) at 12 weeks and 3.5 (95% CI, 1.1–11.0) at 1 year. Both TVT-S and TVT-O resulted in improved quality of life and symptoms at 12 weeks. There was no difference between the groups for PFDI-20 (P = 0.40) or PFIQ-7 (P = 0.43). A similar pattern was seen at 1 year (P = 0.85 and P = 0.36). Conclusions The TVT-S seems to have a higher risk of positive postoperative CST result; however, the procedures result in similar improvements in quality of life and symptoms.
Theorisation In Critical Realist Is Research And Its Implications On Structure And Agency Interplay: A Morphogenetic Approach

The paper develops a conceptual framework to advance the understanding on theorising the sociomateriality of Information technology (IT) especially with regards to a complex inverse information infrastructure (II) that depicts emergent usage behaviour. Drawing on Archer’s morphogenetic approach, derived from the critical realism (CR) philosophy, we discuss the relevance of understanding theory/theorisation from a critical realist perspective and its implications on structure and agency interplay. We also highlight the contributions of realists’ theorisation to IS research and the need to identify the mechanisms that give rise to emergent IT usage as a future research endeavour. We then propose the morphogenetic model of emergent IT usage behaviour which questions the assumption of the duality of structure and agency, instead of conceptualising them separately. We illustrate this approach with a discussion of a specific example of web personalised systems for online banking services, as an example of a complex inverse II.
Immigrant Enclaves and Ethnic Communities in New York and Los Angeles

The predominant post–1965 immigrant groups have established distinctive settlement areas in many American cities and suburbs. These areas are generally understood in terms of an “immigrant enclave” model in which ethnic neighborhoods in central cities serve relatively impoverished new arrivals as a potential base for eventual spatial assimilation with the white majority. This model, and the “ethnic community “ model, are evaluated here. In the ethnic community model, segregated settlement can result from group preferences even when spatial assimilation is otherwise feasible. Analysis of the residential patterns of the largest immigrant groups in New York and Los Angeles shows that most ethnic neighborhoods can be interpreted as immigrant enclaves. In some cases, however, living in ethnic neighborhoods is unrelated to economic constraints, indicating a positive preference for such areas. Suburban residence does not necessarily imply living outside of ethnic neighborhoods. Indeed, for several groups the suburban enclave provides an alternative to assimilation—it is an ethnic community in a relatively high-status setting.
Black Single Fathers

This ethnographic study uses the narratives of African American, single, full-time fathers to explore the motivations precipitating their choice to parent. While the fathers had in common a number of demographic characteristics, such as full employment, residence, and support systems, which factored into their timing of and ability to take full custody, none of these are salient in their own narratives expressing why they wanted to be full-time fathers. Instead, their main motives centered on fulfilling a sense of duty and responsibility, reworking the effects of having had weak or absent fathers themselves, wanting to provide a role model for their children, and fulfilling an already established parent-child bond.
Intensity-modulated radiation therapy for head and neck cancer: emphasis on the selection and delineation of the targets.

The head and neck contain many critical, noninvolved structures in close vicinity to the targets. The tightly conformal doses produced by intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), and the lack of internal organ motion in the head and neck, provide the potential for organ sparing and improved tumor irradiation. Many studies of treatment planning for head and neck cancer have demonstrated the dosimetric superiority of IMRT over conventional techniques in these respects. The initial results of clinical studies demonstrate reduced xerostomia. They suggest an improvement in tumor control, which needs to be verified in larger studies and longer follow-up. Critical issues for successful outcome of head and neck IMRT are accurate selection of the neck lymph nodes that require adjuvant treatment, and accurate delineation on the planning computed tomography (CT) of the lymph-node bearing areas and subclinical disease adjoining the gross tumor. This review emphasizes these topics and provides some guidelines.
The Effects of Spirituality and Religiosity on Well-Being of People With Cancer: A Literature Review on Current Evidences

Context: Receiving a diagnosis of cancer can be devastating and life-altering news for any person. Recent studies have shown that spirituality and religiosity may have positive effects on physical and psychological well-being in patients with cancer. This review article aimed to assess the effects of spirituality and religiosity on well-being of patients with cancer. Evidence Acquisition: A literature search was done for related articles published between 2000 and 2014 on PubMed, Science Direct, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus for both English and non-English language articles by the following keywords: “cancer”, “spirituality”, “religion/religious/religiosity”, and “Well-being”. Results: Of the 16 studies reviewed, ten studies have found that spirituality and religiosity were positively associated with well-being, two studies found no association, and four studies showed both beneficial and detrimental effects of spirituality and religiosity on well-being of patients with cancer. Conclusions: Most of the reviewed articles showed the important role of religiosity and spirituality in palliative treatment of patients with cancer. It has recommended that medical care team, especially nurses, pay more attention to spiritual and religious beliefs of patients with cancer to improve their well-being.
Nitroso-redox balance in the cardiovascular system.

In this issue of the Journal, Taylor and colleagues report the results of the African-American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT), a double-blind, randomized trial that evaluated the effect of the addition of isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine to the best conventional therapy in patients with symptomatic congestive heart failure who identified themselves as black.1 The results with the combination therapy were markedly positive, meeting the composite end point of the trial, which included death from any cause, a first hospitalization for heart failure, and quality-of-life measures. In addition, there was an impressive reduction in the rate of death from any cause of .
Enumeration of linear threshold functions from the lattice of hyperplane intersections

We present a method for enumerating linear threshold functions of n-dimensional binary inputs. Our starting point is the geometric lattice Ln of hyperplane intersections in the dual (weight) space. We show how the hyperoctahedral group O(n+1), the symmetry group of the (n+1)-dimensional hypercube, can be used to construct a symmetry-adapted poset of hyperplane intersections Deltan which is much more compact and tractable than Ln. A generalized Zeta function and its inverse, the generalized Möbius function, are defined on Deltan. Symmetry-adapted posets of hyperplane intersections for three-, four-, and five-dimensional inputs are constructed and the number of linear threshold functions is computed from the generalized Möbius function. Finally, we show how equivalence classes of linear threshold functions are enumerated by unfolding the symmetry-adapted poset of hyperplane intersections into a symmetry-adapted face poset. It is hoped that our construction will lead to ways of placing asymptotic bounds on the number of equivalence classes of linear threshold functions.
Actions really do speak louder than words—but only implicitly: Young children's understanding of false belief in action

Children show understanding of a mistaken story character’s actions in their visualorienting responses before they show this in their answers to test questions. Clements and Perner (1994) interpreted the visual responses as reflecting implicit understanding (implicit-knowledge hypothesis). The present study explores three possible ways of saving the hypothesis that different bodies of exclusively explicit knowledge are involved (explicit-knowledge-only hypothesis): the lack-of-confidence hypothesis asserts that children are just not confident of the novel but correct answer and the misinterpretation hypothesis claims that children are simply misinterpreting the test question. The temporal stacking hypothesis assumes that children consider first the novel idea that the protagonist will go where he or she thinks the object is and then they consider the more established idea that the protagonist will go where the object really is. It explains the original finding by assuming that visual responses are governed by the earlier and the verbal answers by the later considered idea. The results offered little support for the first two of these attempts to save the explicit-knowledge-only hypothesis. Although parts of the results are compatible with the temporal stacking hypothesis, the overall pattern of results is not. Rather, it is very similar to findings from implicit visual perception, where people experience a lack of conscious awareness. This similarity reinforces the original interpretation of a dissociation between implicit and explicit understanding of belief-based action. The development of children’s theory of mind makes an important step with the understanding of misinformation, in particular the understanding of false belief. Although different tasks for assessing this understanding have some effect, overall the age trend is quite robust, located between 3 and 5 years (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). However, Clements and Perner (1994) reported a substantially earlier, but implicit, understanding of false belief. Such precocious, implicit understanding has also
Prediction of Metastasis and Recurrence in Colorectal Cancer Based on Gene Expression Analysis: Ready for the Clinic?

Cancers of the colon and rectum, which rank among the most frequent human tumors, are currently treated by surgical resection in locally restricted tumor stages. However, disease recurrence and formation of local and distant metastasis frequently occur even in cases with successful curative resection of the primary tumor (R0). Recent technological advances in molecular diagnostic analysis have led to a wealth of knowledge about the changes in gene transcription in all stages of colorectal tumors. Differential gene expression, or transcriptome analysis, has been proposed by many groups to predict disease recurrence, clinical outcome, and also response to therapy, in addition to the well-established clinico-pathological factors. However, the clinical usability of gene expression profiling as a reliable and robust prognostic tool that allows evidence-based clinical decisions is currently under debate. In this review, we will discuss the most recent data on the prognostic significance and potential clinical application of genome wide expression analysis in colorectal cancer.
Reduced nephron number, renal development and 'programming' of adult hypertension.

Depending on severity and duration of the disease, hypertension is known to lead to classical morphological changes in kidneys, ranging from glomerular sclerosis and interstitial fibrosis to fibrinoid necrosis and loss of nephrons. In recent years, it has been proposed that, in addition to being a consequense of hypertension, loss of existing nephrons or impeded formation of new nephrons during critical ‘windows’ of embryonal or postnatal life may be a predisposing factor for later development of hypertension [2]. This hypothesis has opened a new avenue of hypotheses, and broadened the view on pathogenetic mechanisms for hypertension to include factors of relevance for embryonic and postnatal kidney development.
Constructional Inheritance and Case Assignment In Finnish Numeral Expressions

The grammar of Finnish licenses two different types of complex numeral expressions.While the two occur in the same range of external syntactic and semantic contexts, theynevertheless exhibit striking differences in internal case-marking properties. Utilizing a sign-based, Construction Grammar approach, an analysis of the two types of numeral expressions is provided in terms of a set of closely related constructions. It is argued that the range and properties of numeral expressions as well as the interactions among them reveal a tight system of organization across constructions, expressed here in terms of a carefully formulated inheritance hierarchy. It is also argued that a close examination of the grammar of Finnish numeral expressions provides important insights into more general grammatical phenomena, including compounding, morphosyntactic feature distribution, inflectional realization, and the semantics of quantification