Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Importance of Strain Imaging in Cardiac Rehabilitation

Cardiac rehabilitation improves the subjective condition of the patient; but are there associated structural and functional cardiac adaptations? The study group consisted of 39 patients with an inferior infarction and 21 patients with an anterior infarction, treated by surgical revascularization followed by 4 months of cardiac rehabilitation. Maximal exercise testing and Doppler echocardiography were performed before and after the rehabilitation program. Performance capacity was significantly improved after cardiac rehabilitation, but left ventricular function remained unchanged on Doppler imaging. Only by analyzing the subgroups using strain imaging significant differences were noted after cardiac rehabilitation: patients with an inferior infarction exhibited improved strain values in the anterior wall; those with an anterior infarction had improved strain values in the inferior wall. Strain values in the infarcted regions were worse after cardiac rehabilitation. Strain imaging indicated that cardiac rehabilitation could bring about improvements in cardiac function exclusively in the healthy non-infarcted myocardium, while there were signs of further deterioration of myocardial function in the highly ischemic zones.
Unequivocal identification of brown adipose tissue in a human infant

We report the unique depiction of brown adipose tissue (BAT) by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) in a human 3‐month‐old infant. Based on cellular differences between BAT and more lipid‐rich white adipose tissue (WAT), chemical‐shift MRI and CT were both capable of generating distinct signal contrasts between the two tissues and against surrounding anatomy, utilizing fat‐signal fraction metrics in the former and x‐ray attenuation values in the latter. While numerous BAT imaging experiments have been performed previously in rodents, the identification of BAT in humans has only recently been described with fusion positron emission and computed tomography in adults. The imaging of BAT in children has not been widely reported and, furthermore, MRI of human BAT in general has not been demonstrated. In the present work, large bilateral supraclavicular BAT depots were clearly visualized with MRI and CT. Tissue identity was subsequently confirmed by histology. BAT has important implications in regulating energy metabolism and nonshivering thermogenesis and has the potential to combat the onset of weight gain and the development of obesity. Current findings suggest that BAT is present in significant amounts in children and that MRI and CT can differentiate BAT from WAT based on intrinsic tissue properties. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2012;35:938–942. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Does Product Market Competition Increase Credit Availability?

Abstract With asymmetric information between investors and firms, credit availability is affected by the resale value of collateralized productive assets. If liquidation occurs, investors recover a greater value the higher the probability to find a buyer and the higher his willingness to pay to use the assets for production. We extend the idea of complementarities among firms in the same industry (as in Shleifer and Vishny, 1992) to study under which conditions credit availability is enhanced by competition in the product market when assets are industry specific.
The Generational Contract in the Family: An Analysis of Transfer Regimes in Europe

Recent research has suggested that financial transfers from parents to their adult children in the family are less likely to take place but more intense—i.e. for larger amounts—in the Southern European countries than in the Nordic ones, with the Continental European countries falling in-between the two. What remains to be examined is the variation among regimes in the social mechanisms regulating these transfers. Using data from the first wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this article shows that financial transfers have different aims and meanings across the regimes. In Southern Europe, parents support their children mainly through co-residence, and little economic support passes the walls of the house. In the Nordic countries, in contrast, parent-child co-residence is non-normative. Children leave their parents' home early and then receive direct and explicit help from them. The Continental countries fall in-between.
Coping with the Loss of Pooling Synergy in Cellular Manufacturing Systems

The conversion of a functional layout into a cellular manufacturing system involves the partitioning of several multiserver work centers. The loss of pooling synergy in this process can be significant, and this paper investigates the impact of several measures to overcome the adverse effects on flow time, work-in-process inventory and machine utilization. These can be alleviated to a certain extent through reductions in setup times and lot sizes that has been traditionally emphasized in group technology, but a more concerted effort is required. Analytical models are first utilized to investigate the extent to which these adverse effects can be overcome through 1 reduction in setup time, 2 lot sizing, 3 reduction in the variability of process-times and job arrivals, and, 4 reduction in processing times through productivity improvements, all arising from part family-oriented processing. These insights are verified through a simulation comparison of five cellular manufacturing systems with a functional layout system in which optimal lot sizes, low move times and a part family-oriented scheduling rule are used.
Analysis of tail regeneration in the lizard Lygosoma laterale. I. Initiation of regeneration and cartilage differentiation: The role of ependyma

Lizards represent the highest group of vertebrates that have retained a considerable measure of regenerative ability, and even they are limited to an imperfect regeneration of the tail. The lizard tail is an unique system in which to study regeneration. First of all, lizards are the only vertebrates that regenerate an appendage from a discrete preformed break (autotomy) plane. Secondly, the regenerate that forms after normal autotomy of the tail has two very distinct features: (1 ) the regenerate does not contain vertebrae; instead the vertebral column is replaced by an unsegmented cartilage tube (Duges, '29); (2) more notably, the regenerated spinal cord is imperfect, consisting only of descending fiber tracts from the old cord, the ependymal lining of the central canal and scattered glial cells (Hooker, '12). Few experimental studies of lizard tail regeneration appear in the literature. Woodland ('20) was probably the first to perform significant experiments. He demonstrated that separation of the tail at the autotomy plane was not a prerequisite to regeneration. He also described the experimental production of bifid regenerates, some of which failed to differentiate cartilage tubes. Kamrin and Singer ('55) demonstrated the dependence of tail regeneration upon the presence of the spinal cord in the lizard Anolis. This observation was later confirmed for Lygosoma by Simpson ('62) and was extended to demonstrate that the spinal cord determines the position and orientation of the tail regenerate. The present investigation was undertaken to determine: (1) which component
An entrepreneurial network evolving: Patterns of change

It is now recognized that to broaden our understanding about networks more qualitative and longitudinal work is required that examines transformation and the change processes of networks; how they emerge and develop over time. The case study reported here deals with these issues. It considers the development of a network for new entrepreneurs first established by a local enterprise support agency in North East Scotland.This forum provided a near ‘natural experiment’ to chart network emergence, change and evolution. Employing participant observation, interviews and surveys, data were collected over a six-year period. This allowed the network to be mapped, and provided information about structural characteristics and in-depth detail about network dynamics and change processes over time. Findings show how network structure shifts from calculative to affective ties and demonstrate the importance of social ties for the operation of a network.
Price Elasticity Dynamics over the Adoption Life Cycle

Little empirical research has been conducted to test the dynamic behavior of elasticities over the product life cycle. Competing specifications of price elasticity dynamics are examined to test the prevailing hypothesis that elasticities increase over the adoption life cycle or diffusion process. Though not supporting the hypothesis, the empirical results suggest that certain factors, including the degree to which a product is a necessity and faces competitive substitutes, affect elasticity dynamics.
Paternalism at a crossroads: labour relations in Chile in transition

Purpose – Paternalism in labour relationships is characteristic of Chilean and Latin American firms. Despite its empirical and practical relevance it lacks adequate conceptual elaboration so that it remains an opaque real drive that cannot be managed. This paper seeks to propose some conceptual distinctions to help clarify its meaning.Design/methodology/approach – Using the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann, paternalism is analysed as semantics which makes three main aspects visible: interests, autonomous decisions and responsibility that are seen as different sources of risk and danger for the workers. Paternalism is allegedly a protective device.Findings – Paternalism is reinforced and reproduced by distrust in the workers' capacities to make decisions on their own and it becomes a justification to keep wages low, hinder delegation and becomes an ideology that justifies gaps between productivity and compensation.Research limitations/implications – Paternalism is difficult to operationalize in orde.
The Market For Congressional Votes: Is Timing of Contributions Everything?1

This study utilizes the timing of campaign contributions to identify whether the objective of Political Action Committees (PACs) is to influence congressional votes or solely to elect a preferred candidate. The results show that PAC behavior is consistent with an attempt to purchase congressional votes and to influence elections. Contributions increase in the weeks surrounding legislative events of importance to PACs and elections. The magnitude of increased contributions is examined. The article also addresses the lack of legal enforcement mechanisms in vote‐for‐contribution agreements. It develops hypotheses regarding the timing of contributions as an inexpensive mechanism to assure contractual performance. Hypotheses are tested regarding PACs' incentives to mitigate potential cheating by legislators on such agreements. Results show that PACs use the timing of contributions as a mechanism to prevent legislators from reneging on vote‐for‐contribution trades.
Deposit Rate-Setting, Risk Aversion, and the Theory of Depository Financial Intermediaries

IT IS WIDELY RECOGNIZED that the theory of the depository financial intermediary is not well developed.1 There are at least two areas, however, where a thorough understanding of intermediary behavior is essential. First, financial intermediaries are among the most heavily regulated firms in the economy. The effectiveness of this regulation is largely dependent on an understanding of the behavioral characteristics of these intermediaries. Second, the new view of money supply determination, which is gaining renewed interest in the literature, emphasizes the role of intermediary decisions in determining the money supply. According to this view, an understanding of intermediary behavior is essential to understanding money supply movements. Two divergent approaches have been employed in the literature to model the depository financial intermediary. A number of writers e.g., Hart and Jaffee [6], Hyman [9], Kane and Malkiel [11], Parkin [18], and Pyle [24], have adopted the Markowitz-Tobin portfolio theory as their analytical apparatus. The principal advantage of this approch is the explicit treatment of uncertainty which has long played a prominent role in discussions of intermediary behavior. This approach, however, omits two key aspects of the behavior of depository financial intermediaries. First, it is assumed that asset and deposit markets are perfectly competitive so that quantity-setting is the relevant behavioral mode in both markets. This assumption is not applicable to deposit markets since such markets are virtually always highly concentrated where intermediaries set rates and face random deposit levels. The effect of deposit quantity-setting behavior is that liquidity considerations, which have also played a prominent role in discussions of intermediary behavior, are ignored.2 Second, the approach ignores the resource costs incurred in intermediary operations.
A Note on the Apparent Bias of Net Revenue Estimates for Capital Investment Projects

CONSIDER JOE. His job is evaluating potential investment projects for the XYZ Corporation. For each proposed project, Joe carefully estimates expected cost and revenue streams and calculates expected net present values and rates of return. Management takes Joe's reports, selects the projects that appear desirable for implementation, and rejects the rest. When the life of the project has ended, actual cash flows are determined and compared with Joe's estimates. It's clear that, on the average, the investments that have been undertaken have not turned out so well as Joe predicted. Joe is puzzled. He feels he is as unbiased as possible in making his estimates. He is fully aware, of course, that since he cannot predict the future with complete accuracy, that some estimates will be high and some low, and that a different amount of variability ought to be associated with each. But he feels that in the long run his errors ought nearly to balance out, leaving net realized cash flows, on average, equaling those he predicted. Management is puzzled, too. They respect Joe's skill in making the estimates, yet they feel that he must be making some systematic errors. Should they direct Joe deliberately to bias cost estimates upwards, or revenue estimates downwards, or both, in order to compensate for these errors? Not necessarily. It is possible that Joe is indeed turning in unbiased estimates, but that the selection process yields a set of investments that will, typically not perform so well as Joe has estimated. If Joe's estimates are unbiased, the estimates associated with a random selection of the projects Joe has evaluated will be unbiased too. But the selection of investments to be implemented is not a random process. Expected net present value or discounted rate of return strongly influences management's decision to accept or reject a potential project. The higher the estimated net present value or rate of return for a project, the more probable, ceteris paribus, it is that the project will be accepted. Thus for any specified project, acceptance may be more likely if Joe has underestimated costs or overestimated revenues, and less likely if Joe has overestimated costs or underestimated revenues. Therefore, relatively more projects may be selected that turn out more poorly than Joe predicted, and relatively fewer may turn out better, than if the selection process had been random. A more formal statement in the context of net present value estimation can be made as follows: Let V stand for the actual net present value of the capital project, V' for Joe's estimate of this net present value, A for whatever is assumed about the accuracy of V', and PSS for the project selection strategy
Anthropometric Evidence on Living Standards in Northern Italy, 1730–1860

New estimates of mean stature indicate declining heights in Northern Italy from 1730 to 1860, corroborating recent findings of a deterioration in per capita GDP and real wages—though possibly calling into question its severity. The level of heights in the 1830s is respectable in international comparison. Estimated geographic and occupational effects show the influence of the disease environment, malnutrition, and income. Declining living standards suggest a Malthusian interpretation of the economy, in which even a relatively flexible agricultural sector was not quite able to keep up with the growing pressure of population on resources.John Komlos arranged the collection of the data analyzed here and made them available to me. I am also indebted to him for ongoing discussions about anthropometrics and helpful comments on this article. I am grateful to Jörg Baten, Giovanni Federico, Paolo Malanima, Gianni Toniolo, and Vincent Tassenaar for reading and commenting on the article, and to three anonymous referees for their com-ments. An earlier version of the article was presented at the Seminar for Economic History, University of Munich.
Murine natural killer cell licensing and regulation by T regulatory cells in viral responses

Natural killer (NK) cells show differential functionality based on their capability of binding to self-MHC consistent with licensing. Here we show in vivo confirmation of the physiologic effects of licensing with differential effects of NK subsets on anti-murine cytomegalovirus (anti-MCMV) responses after syngeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) or regulatory T-cell (Treg) depletion. After HSCT, depletion of licensed NK cells led to far greater viral loads in target organs early after infection compared with nondepleted and unlicensed depleted mice. There was a preferential expansion of licensed, C-type lectin-like activating receptor Ly49H+ NK cells with increased IFNγ production after infection in nondepleted mice post-HSCT and after Treg depletion. Adoptive transfer of licensed NK subsets into immunodeficient hosts provided significantly greater MCMV resistance compared with transfer of total NK populations or unlicensed subsets. In non-HSCT mice, only concurrent depletion of Tregs or TGF-β neutralization resulted in detection of NK licensing effects. This suggests that licensed NK cells are the initial and rapidly responding population of NK cells to MCMV infection, but are highly regulated by Tregs and TGF-β.
Recent progress in anticoagulant therapy: oral direct inhibitors of thrombin and factor Xa

Summary. While parenteral anticoagulants such as unfractionated and low molecular weight heparins and the oral vitamin K antagonists are effective for the prevention and treatment of thrombosis, they have a number of limitations. Up until recently, vitamin K antagonists (e.g. warfarin) have been the only available oral anticoagulants. These drugs have a delayed onset of action, food and drug interactions, and variable pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics such that regular laboratory monitoring and dose adjustments are required to maintain the International Normalized Ratio (INR) in the therapeutic range. New oral anticoagulants that selectively inhibit either thrombin (dabigatran etexilate) or factor Xa (rivaroxaban, apixaban) have now gained approval in many countries for some clinical indications. Unlike warfarin, these drugs have a rapid onset of action and a relatively wide therapeutic range such that coagulation monitoring is not required. These agents are more convenient for patients and health care providers, but also have potential for improving clinical outcomes and being more cost‐effective than existing agents. This will result in major changes in the way that thrombosis is managed, both with respect to prevention and treatment. The new oral inhibitors of thrombin and factor Xa, however, have limitations and the absence of a need for regular laboratory monitoring makes medication compliance extremely important for maintaining efficacy given their relatively short half‐lives. Furthermore there will be challenges in managing patients on these agents who develop recurrent thrombosis or major bleeding until methods to monitor and assess the levels of the new agents are readily available and specific antidotes are developed.
Industry Distributional Characteristics of Financial Ratios: An Acquisition Theory Application

This study explores the importance of capturing industry-specific distributional characteristics in analyses based on financial ratios. As a test case, the study replicates Palepu (1986), who employs financial ratios in logit models to investigate the usefulness of six acquisition hypotheses in predicting takeover targets. Without adjustment for industry-specific distributional characteristics, this study's findings are only consistent with one of the six acquisition hypotheses. After adjusting for distributional properties, the results are consistent with four of the six acquisition hypotheses. Furthermore, the adjusted model produces a classification accuracy significantly greater than chance, as well as significantly greater than that observed for the unadjusted model. Copyright 2000 by MIT Press.
Sports, jobs, and taxes : the economic impact of sports teams and stadiums

This book examines the economic impact of new stadiums or a sports franchise on the local economy. It explores such general issues as the appropriate method for measuring economic benefits and costs, the source of the bargaining power of teams in obtaining subsidies from local government, the local politics of attracting and retaining teams, the relationship between sports and local employment, and the importance of stadium design in influencing the economic effects of a facility. The book also contains case studies of major league sports facilities in Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and the Twin Cities and of minor league baseball stadiums and spring training facilities. The primary conclusions are the sports teams and stadiums are not a source of local economic growth and employment; the size of the net subsidy exceeds the financial benefit of a new stadium; and cities are probably willing to subsidize sports teams because of the intense popularity of sports among a substantial proportion of voters and businesses and the leverage that teams enjoy from the monopoly position of professional sports leagues.
Brain responses to obesogenic diets and diet-induced obesity

Rodent models of diet-induced obesity (DIO) mimic common human obesity more accurately than obese single-gene mutation lines, such as the ob/ob mouse. Sprague-Dawley rats sourced in the UK develop obesity when fed a high-energy diet, but susceptibility to DIO is normally distributed, as might be anticipated for a polygenic trait in an outbred population, in contrast to reports in the literature using ostensibly the same strain of rats sourced in the USA. Nevertheless, the responses of these rats to solid and liquid obesogenic diets are very similar to those reported elsewhere, and this model of DIO has much to commend it as a vehicle for the mechanistic study of susceptibility to DIO, development and reversal of obesity on solid and liquid diets and the response of peripheral and central energy balance systems to the development of obesity and to the obesogenic diets themselves. In general, hypothalamic energy-balance-related systems respond to obesogenic diets and developing obesity with activity changes that appear designed to counter the further development of the obese state. However, these hypothalamic changes are apparently unable to maintain body weight and composition within normal limits, suggesting that attributes of the obesogenic diets either evade the normal regulatory systems and/or engage with reward pathways that override the homeostatic systems. Since diets are a risk factor in the development of obesity, it will be important to establish how obesogenic diets interact with energy-balance pathways and whether there is potential for diets to be manipulated with therapeutic benefit.