Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Rate of Age-Related Olfactory Decline Among the General Population of Older U.S. Adults.

BACKGROUND Age-related olfactory loss (presbyosmia) is a prevalent sensory impairment with a large public health impact. In cross-sectional analyses, we found striking health disparities in olfactory function among older U.S. adults. Here, we report a 5-year follow-up to determine the magnitude of within-person olfactory decline. METHODS The National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) interviewed a probability sample of home-dwelling older U.S. adults (57-85 years) in 2005-2006 (Wave 1) and reinterviewed them in 2010-2011 (Wave 2), assessing demographics, social life, and health, including olfaction. Odor identification was measured with a 5-item version of the Sniffin' Sticks (0-5 correct). Fourteen hundred and thirty-six respondents provided olfaction data in both waves. Multivariate linear and logistic regression were used to model the association between change in olfactory performance and demographic, health, and psychosocial factors. RESULTS Odor identification declined most rapidly among older individuals (0.25 additional errors per 5 years for each decade of age, p < .001) and in men (0.17 additional errors per 5 years compared to women, p = .005). Among those with perfect scores in Wave 1, African Americans declined more rapidly than Whites (p = .04). Neither socioeconomic status, health conditions, cognition, mental health, alcohol use nor smoking was associated with change in olfaction (p > .05, all). CONCLUSIONS The rate of olfactory decline increases with age and is greater among men than women despite adjusting for differences in psychosocial and health conditions, indicating physiologic factors as drivers. African Americans are more likely to experience initial olfactory decline, consistent with an earlier onset of aging among this subgroup.
Changing distribution of primary cancers in the large bowel.

Analysis of the changing distribution of origin site of 1,990 colorectal cancers observed at a large midwestern hospital shows a statistically significant trend of a decreasing percentage of distal (rectum, P=.0192) and an increasing percentage of proximal (cecum, P=.0015) large-bowel lesions during a period of at least 30 years. Mortality data for 11,635 colorectal cancers in the state of Kansas for this period confirm this trend (P less than .0001). The respective decrease and increase may well be the result of more than one factor. Results of digital examination of the rectum and sigmoidoscopy are less likely to diagnose large-bowel cancer as they did 30 years ago. Stool screening for occult blood, barium enema roentgenographic examination, and colonoscopy become more important diagnostic tools in light of this trend.
Effectiveness of sales promotion effort in emerging markets: a brand level analysis

This research analyses the impact of promotion on sales and overall customer satisfaction for Keo-Karpin and Navratna brands of hair care products in the state of West Bengal, India. The Return-On-Investment (ROI) has been calculated on the basis of sales, adjusted for respective Customer Satisfaction Indices (CSI). Results obtained are compared between the brands to observe effectiveness of promotion on Sales, CSI and ROI. The promotional effort has a significant positive impact on sales and overall customer satisfaction for both the cases with ROI being higher for Navratna than Keo-Karpin. These findings could help improve allocation of the marketing budget.
A functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) replication of the sunscreen persuasion paradigm

Abstract Activity in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during persuasive messages predicts future message-consistent behavior change, but there are significant limitations to the types of persuasion processes that can be invoked inside an MRI scanner. For instance, real world persuasion often involves multiple people in conversation. Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) allows us to move out of the scanner and into more ecologically valid contexts. As a first step, the current study used fNIRS to replicate an existing fMRI persuasion paradigm (i.e. the sunscreen paradigm) to determine if mPFC shows similar predictive value with this technology. Consistent with prior fMRI work, activity in mPFC was significantly associated with message-consistent behavior change, above and beyond self-reported intentions. There was also a difference in this association between previous users and non-users of sunscreen. Activity differences based on messages characteristics were not observed. Finally, activity in a region of right dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC), which has been observed with counterarguing against persuasive messages, correlated negatively with future behavior. The current results suggest it is reasonable to use fNIRS to examine persuasion paradigms that go beyond what is possible in the MRI scanner environment.
Early craniofacial morphology and growth in children with nonsyndromic Robin Sequence.

PURPOSE Craniofacial morphology and growth comparisons in children with untreated nonsyndromic Robin Sequence (RS) and a control group with unilateral incomplete cleft lip (UICL) in which the lip was surgically closed at 2 months of age. MATERIAL The 52 children (7 RS and 45 UICL) included in the study were drawn from a group representing all Danish cleft children born 1976 through 1981. The ages of the children were 2 and 22 months at the time of examination 1 and 2, respectively. METHOD The method of investigation was three-projection cephalometry. Craniofacial morphology was analyzed by means of linear, angular, and area variables. Growth at a specific anatomical location in a patient was defined as the displacement vector from the coordinate of the corresponding landmark at examination 1 to its coordinate at examination 2. RESULTS The most striking findings in the RS group were markedly increased posterior maxillary width, increased width of the nasal cavity, short maxilla with reduced posterior height, short mandible, bimaxillary retrognathia, and severe reduction in size of the pharyngeal airway. The amount of facial growth was similar in the two groups; however, a tendency toward a more vertical growth direction was observed in the RS group. CONCLUSION Facial morphology in children with RS differed significantly from that of children with UICL at both 2 and 22 months of age. The magnitude of facial growth was similar in the two groups, whereas a tendency toward a more vertical facial growth direction was observed in the RS group.
Quncho: the first popular tef variety in Ethiopia

Tef, Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter, is the main Ethiopian cereal grown on 2.5 million ha annually, and serving as a staple food grain for more than 50 million people. The major constraints in tef husbandry are low productivity (average about 1 t ha21) and lodging. Scientific research on tef began in the late 1950s and over the years a number of improved varieties and management practices have been developed. However, the research outputs have, until recently, been little adopted by farmers. This paper gives an overview of new and impactful technological, institutional and partnership innovation undertaken by Debre Zeit Agricultural Research Centre with a new tef variety called Quncho. Quncho was developed from an intra-specific hybridization between two improved pure line selection varieties (DZ-01-974 and DZ-01-196). The variety DZ-01-974 is high yielding, but because of the seed colour (pale white) its preference by farmers was limited. On the other hand, the variety DZ-01-196 has been popular for its very white seed colour, but its productivity has been relatively low (1.6–1.8t ha21). Hence, a targeted cross to bring together the high- yielding traits of DZ-01-974 with the seed quality of DZ-01-196 was made in 2000. Quncho was then developed as an F2-derived recombinant inbred line (RIL) through a single-seed descent breeding method. Officially released in 2006, the Quncho variety is presently attracting farmers and seed growers.
Risk, safety and sex among male PrEP users: time for a new understanding

Abstract Recent advances in biomedical HIV prevention have led to optimistic projections of a dramatic worldwide reduction of new infections by 2030. This optimism is counterbalanced by concerns that the protective benefits of one such technology, HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), may be negated by increases in other behaviours that offset these benefits (risk compensation). To contribute to a deeper understanding of concepts of safety and risk in the context of HIV PrEP, we draw on the narrative accounts of 61 male PrEP users who participated in the inaugural PrEP demonstration project: the iPrEx open-label extension study. We conducted in-depth interviews with a purposeful sample of iPrEx participants. Overall, participants did not report significant changes to their sexual practices once they had begun taking PrEP. Rather, participants reported experiencing a sense of relief or reprieve from HIV-related stress. This unburdening of fear did not necessarily lead to condomless sex. Instead, men expressed feeling a sense of security and less free-floating fear of HIV. We contend that no longer living under the threat of HIV is a significant benefit that has not been adequately explored in HIV prevention research.
From maximizing shareholder value to delighting the customer

Purpose – The paper was written with the intention of drawing attention to a fundamental dysfunction that is widespread in large organizations today – a myopic focus on maximizing shareholder value.Design/methodology/approach – The paper identifies the source of the dysfunction, the reasons why it has spread, and explains the corrective measures required, namely, a shift in goal from maximizing shareholder value to delighting the customer.Findings – The dysfunction is widespread and dangerously counterproductive to long‐term business success.Research limitations/implications – Further quantification is needed, both of the business results over time of firms that have failed to make the shift and of those firms that have made the transition.Practical implications – The paper proposes transformation of business practices throughout the world – the adoption of radical management and goals that produce stakeholder value.Originality/value – The findings and implications of the paper, which draw on recent work .
A Case of Auditory Agnosia with Impairment of Perception and Expression of Music: Cognitive Processing of Tonality

There is fairly general agreement that the melody and the rhythm are the independent components of the perception of music. In the theory of music, the melody and harmony determine to which tonality the music belongs. It remains an unsettled question whether the tonality is also an independent component of the perception of music, or a by-product of the melody and harmony. We describe a patient with auditory agnosia and expressive amusia that developed after a bilateral infarction of the temporal lobes. We carried out a detailed examination of musical ability in the patient and in control subjects. Comparing with a control population, we identified the following impairments in music perception: (a) discrimination of familiar melodies; (b) discrimination of unfamiliar phrases, and (c) discrimination of isolated chords. His performance in pitch discrimination and tonality were within normal limits. Although intrasubject statistical analysis revealed significant difference only between tonality task and unfamiliar phrase performance, comparison with control subjects suggested a dissociation between a preserved tonality analysis and impairment of perception of melody and chords. By comparing the results of our patient with those in the literature, we may say that there is a double dissociation between the tonality and the other components. Thus, it seems reasonable to suppose that tonality is an independent component of music perception. Based on our present and previous studies, we proposed the revised version of the cognitive model of musical processing in the brain.
WOMEN AND THE UNION WAGE GAP

This paper uses the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (1986) data set to provide new estimates for the female union wage gap for Britain. The joint endogeneity of trade union and full-time/part-time employment status is addressed within the econometric framework of a bivariate sample selection model. The mean unconditional union "mark-up" estimate for female full-time workers is estimated at 14.6 percent with the comparable estimate for part-time female workers estimated at 15.3 percent. Copyright 1992 by Royal Economic Society.
Optimal Design of Feed-in-Tariffs to Stimulate Renewable Energy Investments Under Regulatory Uncertainty - A Real Options Analysis

Feed-in-tariffs (FITs) are widely used as policy instruments to promote investments in renewable energy sources (RES). While FITs are often regarded as the most effective RES support scheme, regulators around the world continuously review their FIT schemes in the light of budget constraints and evolving policy goals. We assess the impact of adjustments to FIT schemes by quantifying the relationship between FIT levels, i.e., the guaranteed amount paid per quantity of electricity produced and the propensity to invest in RES. Through a regime switching model, we quantify the impact of regulatory uncertainty induced by regulators considering moves from a FIT scheme to a more market-oriented regulatory regime. Our focus is on market-independent, fixed FITs, the dominant scheme in Europe receiving increasing attention globally. We find that RES investment projects under market-independent, fixed FIT schemes become now-or-never decisions and derive FIT thresholds required to induce investment. We show that uncertainty regarding future regulatory regimes delays or even reduces investment activity for FIT levels near electricity market prices and high probabilities of an imminent regime switch.
Automated Extraction of Results from Full Text Journal Articles

Recent mandates by federal funding agencies and universities to create open access repositories of published research allow researchers a wealth of texts to analyze. Furthermore, some publishers of academic texts have begun creating policies to permit non-commercial text mining of journal articles. This project follows the approach of [7], which automatically extracts result sentences from full-text biomedical journal articles by using support vector machines and naive B¨ayes classiﬁers. I also experiment with using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) [6, 18] as a method to select features for the classiﬁers. I compare this new approach with other feature selection strategies used in previous studies.
Consistency between Cognition and Behavior Creates Consciousness

What is consciousness? Is it possible to create consciousness mechanically? Various studies have been performed in the fields of psychology and cerebral science to answer these questions. As of yet, however, no researchers have proposed a model capable of explaining the mind-body problem described by Descartes or replicating a consciousness as advanced as that of human beings. Ancient people believed that the consciousness resided in a Homunculus, a human in miniature who lived in the brain. It is no mystery that the ancients came up with such an idea; for consciousness has always been veiled in mystery, beyond the reach of our explorative powers. We can assert, however, that consciousness does not "live" in us, but "exists" in us. Insofar as the processes occurring inside the human brain are a product of the physical activity of the neurons that reside there, we believe that it should be possible to define consciousness systematically.
Photoresponse of n-ZnO∕p-SiC heterojunction diodes grown by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy

High quality n-ZnO films on commercial p-type 6H–SiC substrates have been grown by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy, and n-ZnO∕p-SiC heterojunction mesa structures have been fabricated. Current-voltage characteristics of the structures had a very good rectifying diode-like behavior with a leakage current less than 2×10−4A∕cm2 at −10V, a breakdown voltage greater than 20V, a forward turn on voltage of ∼5V, and a forward current of ∼2A∕cm2 at 8V. Photosensitivity of the diodes was studied at room temperature and a photoresponsivity of as high as 0.045A∕W at −7.5V reverse bias was observed for photon energies higher than 3.0eV.
Effect of routine heparins treatment in acute coronary syndrome on serum pregnancy-associated plasma protein a concentration.

BACKGROUND Pregnancy-associated plasma protein A (PAPP-A) has been suggested as a useful marker of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Serum PAPP-A concentrations are affected by unfractionated heparin (UFH) in ACS population, and we tried to investigate the time profile of effects of routine heparins treatment on serum PAPP-A concentrations in ACS population thoroughly and give advice to sample collection of related study. METHODS Twenty cases were involved in this study: ten patients with acute myocardial infarction received subcutaneous low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) twice a day (group A), and the other ten percutaneous coronary intervention patients with stenting received intravenous UFH (group B). Samples were collected before and after heparin administration and serum PAPP-A concentrations were analyzed in these samples. RESULTS Serum PAPP-A concentration increased in both group A and B. In group A, PAPP-A concentration elevated gradually (14.5 to 29.4 mIU/L, P<0.05) throughout the observation period and normalized at 48h after drug discontinuation. In group B, there was a rapid and intense increase after intravenous heparin injection (13.1 to 49.3 mIU/L, P<0.05), and a new PAPP-A peak was induced by additional heparin administration. CONCLUSIONS Heparins-induced increase in serum PAPP-A concentration lasted until 48h after drug use was discontinued. We recommend that samples from these patients for PAPP-A measurement should be collected at least 48h after the last administration if its not available before the administration of heparins.
The N-Terminal Region of the Ryanodine Receptor Affects Channel Activation

Mutations in the cardiac ryanodine receptor (RyR2), the ion channel responsible for release of calcium ions from intracellular stores into cytoplasm, are the cause of several inherited cardiac arrhythmias. At the molecular level, disease symptoms can be mimicked by domain peptides from mutation-prone regions of RyR2 that bind to RyR2 and activate it. Here we show that the domain peptide DPcpvtN2, corresponding to the central helix of the N-terminal region of RyR2, activates the RyR2 channel. Structural modeling of interaction between DPcpvtN2 and the N-terminal region of RyR2 in the closed and open conformation provided three plausible structures of the complex. Only one of them could explain the dependence of RyR2 activity on concentration of DPcpvtN2. The structure of the complex was at odds with the previously proposed “domain switch” mechanism of competition between domain peptides and ryanodine receptor domains. Likewise, in structural models of the N-terminal region, the conformational changes induced by DPcpvtN2 binding were different from those induced by mutation of central helix amino acids. The activating effect of DPcpvtN2 binding and of mutations in the central helix could be explained by their similar effect on the transition energy between the closed and open conformation of RyR2.
Economic Effects of Animal Diseases linked to Trade Dependency

The importance of livestock and poultry trade to producers and consumers around the world increased in the last part of the 20th century. Producers in major exporting countries grew to rely on trade as a significant outlet for their products, and consumers in the importing countries relied increasingly on trade for a significant contribution to their diets. In the last decade, however, a spate of animal disease outbreaks has repeatedly disrupted livestock and poultry meat trade and created uncertainty about future trade disruptions. Two diseases, avian influenza (AI) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), are at the forefront of today’s trade disruptions, but a third disease, footand-mouth disease (FMD), has caused havoc in livestock markets for the past decade and emerged again very recently in Brazil. Some of the trade disruptions have resulted in losses for livestock industries, such as the pork exporters of Taiwan, whose exports were nearly eliminated from early 1997 to the present because of FMD. Disease-related interruptions of trade flows have also affected the food industry and consumers in the importing countries, when the meat affected by the ban could not be replaced by either domestic producers or other exporting countries or when consumers reduced purchases because of fears for their health. The economic costs of these disruptions vary, and three criteria help explain the extent of damage done by a disease outbreak. First is the relative importance of meat exports to producers in the affected country. Loss of export markets is much more serious if 40 percent of the country’s output is exported than if 5 percent is exported. For example, disease outbreaks among the pork industries in Denmark and Taiwan and the poultry industry in Thailand, all heavily dependent on exports, have inflicted great damage on producers in those countries. A sudden end to trade leaves an increased supply of meat that must be sold domestically, reducing prices. In contrast, a large 23 A P R IL 2 0 0 6 F E A T U R E
Pension funds governance: An overview of the role of trustees

The Myners Review of the pension fund industry has started a debate on pension fund governance and the fund industry itself. This paper provides a review of pension fund trusteeship in the UK, its role, operating models and impact. It argues that deficiencies in the systems uncovered by the Myners Review stem from a tension between conflicting philosophies â€“ that of trusteeship built on stakeholder principles but operating in shareholder markets.
Consensus Building and Complex Adaptive Systems

Abstract Consensus building and other forms of collaborative planning are increasingly used for dealing with social and political fragmentation, shared power, and conflicting values. The authors contend that to evaluate this emergent set of practices, a new framework is required modeled on a view of self-organizing, complex adaptive systems rather than on a mechanical Newtonian world. Consensus building processes are not only about producing agreements and plans but also about experimentation, learning, change, and building shared meaning. This article, based on our empirical research and practice in a wide range of consensus building cases, proposes that consensus building processes be evaluated in the light of principles of complexity science and communicative rationality, which are both congruent with professional practice. It offers principles for evaluation and a set of process and outcome criteria.