Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acetabular Rim Degeneration: A Constant Finding in the Aged Hip

During recent years the acetabular labrum has gained increased interest because its degeneration frequently is found in association with early osteoarthritis of the hip. To determine spatial distribution of labral degeneration in the aged hip and to identify the pathologic features triggering this event, an anatomic postmortem and an intraoperative in vivo study were done in 30 cadavers (range, 60–90 years) and in 18 elderly patients (range, 69–97 years) who had hemiarthroplasty for displaced femoral neck fractures. In both groups, no gross anatomic or radiographic abnormalities suggesting advanced osteoarthritis were present. All cadaveric acetabuli (30 of 30) revealed labrum and cartilage damage. Labrum damage (17 of 18) and cartilage lesions (16 of 18) occurred less frequently and were smaller in the elderly patients. Peripheral joint degeneration was most frequent at the superior acetabular rim close to the anterior inferior iliac spine. More centrally localized cartilage lesions were present in 47% of cadavers and in 28% of patients. The majority of femurs (cadavers) (80%) showed reduced narrowing at the anteromedial femoral head-neck junction causing impingement against the corresponding acetabular rim or squeezing of this area into the joint during flexion, whereas the femoral head cartilage appeared normal in all but one hip. Acetabular rim degeneration is a constant finding in the aged hip, which seems to be triggered by femoroacetabular impingement.
Socio-economic status and problem alcohol use: the positive relationship between income and the DSM-IV alcohol abuse diagnosis.

AIMS Epidemiological evidence indicates a positive relationship between income and the prevalence of alcohol abuse in the general population, but an inverse relationship between income and alcohol dependence. Among those with a diagnosis of alcohol abuse, the most prevalent criterion is hazardous use, which commonly requires sufficient resources to own or access a car. The present study investigated whether the association between income and the prevalence of current alcohol abuse is accounted for by the hazardous use criterion; specifically, the drinking and driving symptoms of the hazardous use criterion. DESIGN Face-to-face survey conducted in the 2001-02 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, interviewed with the Alcohol Use Disorders and Associated Disabilities Interview 4th edition (AUDADIS-IV). SETTING The United States and District of Columbia, including Alaska and Hawaii. PARTICIPANTS Household and group-quarters residents aged >18 years. Life-time dependence cases were excluded (n = 4781). MEASUREMENTS Income was defined as past-year personal income. Outcomes were specific alcohol abuse criteria and symptom questions. Logistic regressions were performed controlling for demographics. The relationship between alcohol abuse severity indicators and income was modeled using polytomous regression. Findings Among the alcohol abuse criteria, hazardous use is the most prevalent and the only criterion to have a significant positive relationship with income (F = 20.3, df = 3, P < 0.0001). Among the hazardous use symptoms, driving after drinking (F = 13.0, df = 3, P < 0.0001) and driving while drinking (F = 9.2, df = 3, P < 0.0001) were related positively to income. CONCLUSIONS Because hazardous use is the most commonly endorsed criterion of alcohol abuse, the link with income raises questions about whether the current alcohol abuse diagnosis can capture the full range of alcohol abusers in every socio-economic class. While many psychiatric disorders exhibit an inverse relationship with socio-economic status, a selection bias may cause the alcohol abuse diagnosis to have an artificially positive relationship with income due to the necessity for access to a vehicle to be diagnosed.
The Impact of Tobacco Cultivation on Dalit Agricultural Labourers in Prakasam District of Andhra Pradesh, India

This paper highlights the consequences of the economic and educational change among the Dalits of Karavadi. The tobacco cultivation that engages a large amount of labour has attracted the left political parties for the spread of their ideology and recruitment of party workers. It has helped in working against the practice of untouchability. Further, it has enabled the Dalits to be politically conscious and seriously participate in the political process. The growth of educational institutions in the village and the economic improvement have together helped the Dalits to assert their political and economic rights in the village. As a cumulative effect, the hegemonic inter-caste relations in the village have changed, though caste bias has not disappeared.
AN ENHANCED SPATIOTEMPORAL VISUAL ATTENTION MODEL FOR SPORTS VIDEO ANALYSIS

Inspired by the human visual system, visual attention (VA) models seem to provide solutions to problems of semantic image understanding by selecting only a small but representative fraction of visual input to process. Having proposed a spatiotemporal VA model for video processing in the past, we propose considerable enhancements in this paper, including the use of steerable filters for 3D orientation estimation, and of PCA for fusion of features for the construction of saliency volumes. We further employ segmentation and feature extraction on salient regions to provide video classification using an SVM classifier. Finally, we provide results on sports video classification and comment on the usefulness of spatiotemporal VA for such purposes.
Job insecurity in managers: Antecedents and consequences

To date, popular accounts and systematic studies of the effects of job insecurity have focused exclusively on firms in acute crisis. In contrast, this study examines perceptions of the reactions to insecurity as a chronic, ambiguous threat. None of the 1291 managers surveyed was currently facing layoff, but half worked for firms that had laid off managers in the previous five years and half worked in a stable, expanding firm. As in previous studies, concern about any aspect of job insecurity was associated with decreased personal well-being and deterioration of work behavior and attitudes. However, only a small minority of managers were seriously worried about imminent job loss, with substantially more anxious about a deterioration in working conditions and long-term security.
Is Franchising a Financial Tool? A Dynamic Panel Data Approach

This work considers whether the difficulty for obtaining funding affects the choice of organizational form for franchise chains. We created a panel of Spanish franchisors who were observed from 1996 to 2002, and calculated a dynamic, partialadjustment model for ownership structure, using the generalised method of moments in first differences. This allowed us to introduce auto-regression and to use endogenous explanatory variables. The results obtained show that the greater a chain’s liquidity and return on assets and the lower its debt, the less likely it is to operate as a franchisor. This supports the financial argument. However, the requirements for investment in growth are not significant, and age shows does not show the expected sign. Finally, we verified the partial-adjustment model for ownership structure, obtaining a high adjustment speed of 78-69%.
A Hybrid Approach to Emotional Sentence Polarity and Intensity Classification

In this paper, the authors present a new approach to sentence level sentiment analysis. The aim is to determine whether a sentence expresses a positive, negative or neutral sentiment, as well as its intensity. The method performs WSD over the words in the sentence in order to work with concepts rather than terms, and makes use of the knowledge in an affective lexicon to label these concepts with emotional categories. It also deals with the effect of negations and quantifiers on polarity and intensity analysis. An extensive evaluation in two different domains is performed in order to determine how the method behaves in 2-classes (positive and negative), 3-classes (positive, negative and neutral) and 5-classes (strongly negative, weakly negative, neutral, weakly positive and strongly positive) classification tasks. The results obtained compare favorably with those achieved by other systems addressing similar evaluations.
Influence of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on the nematicidal properties of leaf extracts of Thymus vulgaris L.

SummaryThe effect of arbuscolar mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) on the nematicidal activity of Thymus vulgaris against the rootknot nematodes Meloidogyne incognita and M. javanica was investigated in two in vitro experiments. In the first experiment egg masses of M. incognita and M. javanica were immersed for 3 weeks in aqueous leaf extracts of thyme plants non-inoculated or previously inoculated with Glomus mosseae or mixed AMF strains (Sclerocystis sinuosa, Glomus claroideum-1, G. claroideum-2 and G. claroideum-3). Thereafter the hatching test continued in distilled water for five more weeks. In the second experiment egg masses of both Meloidogyne species were exposed to the different thyme extracts for 4, 8 and 16 hours and then incubated in distilled water for 8 weeks. Distilled water and 5 mg/ml aqueous solution of fenamiphos nematicide were used as controls. Numbers of second stage juveniles emerging weekly were expressed as cumulative percentages of the total egg content of the egg masses. In the first experiment juvenile emergence from eggs of both Meloidogyne species immersed in thyme extracts for three weeks was completely suppressed since the first week. Hatching of eggs of M. incognita in all the extracts was significantly lower than that in water control, although emergence in the extract from uninoculated thyme plants was significantly higher than the others and no statistical different from that of aqueous fenamiphos solution. Emergence of M. javanica juveniles was significantly lower after immersion in all the extracts than in distilled water control and aqueous fenamiphos solution. In the second experiment a 4-hour exposure to the extract from thyme inoculated with G. mosseae and mixed AMF population significantly reduced the final hatch of M. incognita in comparison to distilled water. A 16-hour exposure to the extract from mixed AMF inoculated plants resulted in a significantly lower egg hatch than the shorter exposure times, whereas no statistical difference was found between 4 and 8 hour exposure to both extracts. Emergence of M. javanica juveniles was statistically lower than in water only after 16 hours exposure to the extracts from mixed AMF strains inoculated plants, but no difference was found among the different exposure times. Growth of T. vulgaris was significantly increased only by the infections of mixed AMF strains.
Bacteriophage P1 gene 10 is expressed from a promoter-operator sequence controlled by C1 and Bof proteins

Gene 10 of bacteriophage P1 encodes a regulatory function required for the activation of P1 late promoter sequences. In this report cis and trans regulatory functions involved in the transcriptional control of gene 10 are identified. Plasmid-borne fusions of gene 10 to the indicator gene lacZ were constructed to monitor expression from the gene 10 promoter. Production of gp10-LacZ fusion protein became measurable at about 15 min after prophage induction, whereas no expression was observed during lysogenic growth. The activity of an Escherichia coli-like promoter, Pr94, upstream of gene 10, was confirmed by mapping the initiation site of transcription in primer extension reactions. Two phage-encoded proteins cooperate in the trans regulation of transcription from Pr94: C1 repressor and Bof modulator. Both proteins are necessary for complete repression of gene 10 expression during lysogeny. Under conditions that did not ensure repression by C1 and Bof, the expression of gp10-LacZ fusion proteins from Pr94 interfered with transformation efficiency and cell viability. Results of in vitro DNA-binding studies confirmed that C1 binds specifically to an operator sequence, Op94, which overlaps the -35 region of Pr94. Although Bof alone does not bind to DNA, together with C1 it increases the efficiency of the repressor-operator interaction. These results are in line with the idea that gp10 plays the role of mediator between early and late gene transcription during lytic growth of bacteriophage P1.
Family Ties and Peso Signs: Challenges for Career Counseling in the Philippines

The article's 1st section provides an overview of the historical development of career counseling in the Philippines from an economic-political perspective. The 2nd section raises current challenges and concerns, highlighting the need for a career counseling model that would address, among other things, Filipinos' valued characteristics of close family ties and desire for economic progress.
Intestinal luminal pH in inflammatory bowel disease: possible determinants and implications for therapy with aminosalicylates and other drugs

Measurements of luminal pH in the normal gastrointestinal tract have shown a progressive increase in pH from the duodenum to the terminal ileum, a decrease in the caecum, and then a slow rise along the colon to the rectum. Some data in patients with ulcerative colitis suggest a substantial reduction below normal values in the right colon, while limited results in Crohn's disease have been contradictory. Determinants of luminal pH in the colon include mucosal bicarbonate and lactate production, bacterial fermentation of carbohydrates and mucosal absorption of short chain fatty acids, and possibly intestinal transit. Alterations in these factors, as a result of mucosal disease and changes in diet, are likely to explain abnormal pH measurements in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It is conceivable that reduced intracolonic pH in active ulcerative colitis impairs bioavailability of 5-aminosalicylic acid from pH dependent release formulations (Asacol, Salofalk) and those requiring cleavage by bacterial azo reductase (sulphasalazine, olsalazine, balsalazide), but further pharmacokinetic studies are needed to confirm this possibility. Reports that balsalazide and olsalazine may be more efficacious in active and quiescent ulcerative colitis, respectively, than Asacol suggest that low pH may be a more critical factor in patients taking directly pH dependent release than azo bonded preparations. Reduced intracolonic pH also needs to be considered in the development of pH dependent colonic release formulations of budesonide and azathioprine for use in ulcerative and Crohn's colitis. This paper reviews methods for measuring gut pH, its changes in IBD, and how these may influence current and future therapies.
Hemodynamics of the Isolated Perfused Liver of Hypothyroid and Hyperthyroid Rats 1

Summary Livers of Sprague-Dawley (Si-monsen) hypothyroid, hyper thyroid and euthyroid rats were isolated and perfused, pressure-flow relationships were measured and vascular resistance was calculated. Both hyperthyroid and hypothyroid rat livers exhibited reduced vascular resistance and increased blood flow per gram of liver despite a reduction in liver mass and apparent absence of pathologic change.
A performance view on DNSSEC migration

In July 2008, the Kaminsky attack showed that DNS is sensitive to cache poisoning, and DNSSEC is considered the long term solution to mitigate this attack. A lot of technical documents provide configuration and security guide lines to deploy DNSSEC on organization's servers. However, such documents do not provide ISP or network administrators inputs to plan or evaluate the cost of the migration. This paper describes current deployment of DNSSEC and provides key elements to consider when planning DNSSEC deployment. Then we focus our work on performance aspects and provide experimental measurements for both DNS and DNSSEC architecture. Experimental results evaluate the cost of DNSSEC for authoritative and recursive server with different implementations.
Indinavir-Loaded pH-Sensitive Microparticles for Taste Masking: Toward Extemporaneous Pediatric Anti-HIV/AIDS Liquid Formulations with Improved Patient Compliance

The aim of this work was to develop indinavir pediatric anti-HIV/AIDS formulations enabling convenient dose adjustment, ease of oral administration, and improved organoleptic properties by means of the generation of drug-loaded microparticles made of a polymer that is insoluble under intake conditions and dissolves fast in the stomach in order to completely release the active agent. Indinavir-loaded microparticles made of a pH-dependent polymeric excipient soluble at pH < 5, Eudragit E100, were prepared using a double emulsion solvent diffusion technique and the in vitro release profiles characterized. Finally, taste masking properties were evaluated in blind randomized sensory experiments by ten healthy human volunteers. The use of a w/o/o emulsion system resulted in indinavir loads around 90%. Thermal analysis of the microparticles by differential scanning calorimetry revealed that indinavir appeared mainly dispersed at the molecular level. Concentrations of residual organic solvents as determined by gas chromatography were below the upper limits specified by the European Pharmacopeia for pharmaceutical oral formulations. Then, the behavior of drug-containing microparticles in aqueous media at different pH values was assessed. While they selectively dissolved in gastric-like medium, in tap water (intake conditions), the matrix remained almost unchanged and efficiently prevented drug dissolution. Finally, sensoring taste tests performed by volunteers indicated that systems with indinavir loads ∼15% displayed acceptable taste. This work explored the production of indinavir-containing microparticles based on a common pharmaceutical excipient as a means for the improvement of medicines of drugs involved in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. For systems containing about 15% drug, taste studies confirmed the acceptability of the formulation. In pediatric regimes, this composition would require an acceptable amount of formulation (0.7–1.5 g).
Understanding Fiji ’ s declining foreign reserves position paresh

95 Pacific Economic Bulletin volume 24 number 2 july 2009 © the australian national University This article examines the volatility in Fiji’s foreign reserves—in particular, whether shocks have an asymmetrical effect on volatility and whether shocks have a persistent impact on volatility. In the pre-coup period (1975–86), shocks had a temporary effect on volatility; in the coup period (1987–2006), shocks had a more lasting impact. In the pre-coup period, negative shocks contributed more to foreign reserves volatility than positive shocks; but in the period including the coups, positive shocks increased the volatility of foreign reserves more than negative shocks. The reasons for, and the policy implications of, this asymmetrical behaviour are explored. Paresh Kumar Narayan is the Professor of Finance, School of Accounting Economics and Finance, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University.
Reinforcement Learning for Problems with Hidden State

In this paper, we describe how techniques from reinforcement learning might be used to approach the problem of acting under uncertainty. We start by introducing the theory of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) to describe what we call hidden state problems. After a brief review of other POMDP solution techniques, we motivate reinforcement learning by considering an agent with no previous knowledge of the environment model. We describe two major groups of reinforcement learning techniques: those the learn a value function over states of world, and those that search in the space of policies directly. Finally, we discuss the general problems with these methods, and suggest promising avenues for future research.
Active Polymeric Composite Membranes for Localized Actuation and Sensing in Microtransfer Printing

Soft locally active structures are becoming increasingly important in a number of applications, from microfluidic systems to soft robotics. In this paper, we develop an active polymeric composite membrane for use as an active stamp in the microtransfer printing process. The membrane is a composite of multiple layers: 1) a soft polydimethylsiloxane layer for transfer printing; 2) a lead zirconate titanate (PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3) layer for actuation; 3) metal layers for strain sensing and interconnects; and 4) patterned photopolymer (SU-8) layers for selectively tuning the compliance in the membrane and for handling. A novel and scalable fabrication approach that uses photolithography and microtransfer printing is developed for heterogeneously integrating the different materials into a functional structure. Approaches to designing and characterizing these active membranes are also discussed. Finally, the use of such membranes as stamps in the microtransfer printing process is demonstrated. By distributing actuation closer to critical regions of the tool, adaptability to local conditions for increased robustness and greater process flexibility is achieved.
Geo-cultural proximity, genre exposure, and cultivation

Abstract This work investigates the influence of geo-cultural proximity and exposure to news and crime-action drama on the cultivation effect. A content analysis of prime-time programming (N = 63 hours) was used to compose questions about the prevalence of policemen, lawyers, and salesmen in the USA and Israel. A sample of 655 students answered the questions. Viewing of American programming is significantly correlated with a tendency to hold a biased estimation of the prevalence of all three occupations in America in a manner that resembles the world of TV content. Viewing of Israeli programs has no such impact. Viewing of news and crime-action drama and general viewing have no systematic influence on the estimations made about any of the countries.
A cooperative approach to fully utilizing the aggregate bandwidth of all service channels in IEEE 802.11p/1609 networks

The IEEE 802.11p/1609 standards specify a suite of communication protocols for vehicular communication networks. One control channel and six service channels are used in such a network. Ideally, the data transmission load generated by all service providers and their user stations should be spread over all of the six service channels evenly to fully utilize the aggregate bandwidth of these service channels. However, the IEEE 802.11p/1609 standards do not define a way to achieve this load-balancing goal. As a result, many service providers may choose to use the same service channel and leave some service channels totally unused. This will cause heavy congestion on some service channels while wasting the bandwidth of unused service channels. To solve this problem, in this paper we propose a cooperative approach to fully utilizing the bandwidth of the six service channels in the IEEE 802.11p/1609 networks. In our approach, every service provider collects and computes the current load of the service channel that it is using and shares the computed load information with other service providers on the control channel via its WSA control packets. With this global knowledge, each service provider can choose to use an idle or lightly-used service channel to avoid heavy congestion. We used the EstiNet network simulator and emulator to conduct simulation studies. Our simulation results show that our approach significantly improves the utilization of the aggregate bandwidth of the six service channels by as high as 600%.
Ki‐67 and coagulative tumor necrosis are independent predictors of poor outcome for patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma and not surrogates for each other

Ki‐67 is a cell proliferation protein associated with aggressive clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). A recent report suggests that Ki‐67 may represent a surrogate marker for coagulative tumor necrosis. Thus, the goal was to directly test whether Ki‐67 and necrosis convey similar or distinct information for the prognostic assessment of ccRCC.