Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Factors associated with post-intensive care unit adverse events: a clinical validation study.

BACKGROUND Many patients discharged from intensive care units (ICU) have complex care needs, placing them at risk of an adverse event in a ward environment. Currently, there is limited understanding of factors associated with these events in the post-intensive care population. A recent study explored intensive care liaison nurses' opinions on factors associated with these events; 25 factors were identified, highlighting the multifaceted nature of post-intensive care adverse events. AIM This study aimed to clinically validate 25 factors intensive care liaison nurses believe are associated with post-intensive care adverse events, to determine the factors' relevance and importance to clinical practice. DESIGN Prospective, clinical validation study. METHOD Data were prospectively collected on a convenience sample of 52 patients at 4 tertiary referral hospitals in an Australian capital city. All patients had experienced an adverse event after intensive care discharge. RESULTS Each of the 25 factors contributed to adverse events in at least 6 patients. The factors associated with the most adverse events were those that related to the patient such as illness severity and co-morbidities. CONCLUSION Clinical care and research should focus on modifiable factors in care processes to reduce the risk of future adverse events in post-intensive care patients. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Many patients are at risk of post-ICU adverse events due to the contribution of non-modifiable factors. However, by focusing on modifiable factors in care processes, the risk of post-ICU adverse events may be reduced.
Influence of track surface on the equine superficial digital flexor tendon loading in two horses at high speed trot.

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY Although track surfaces are a risk factor of tendon injuries, their effects on tendon loading at high speed are unknown. Using a noninvasive ultrasonic technique, it is now possible to evaluate the forces in the superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT) in exercise conditions. OBJECTIVES To compare the effects of an all-weather waxed track (W) vs. a crushed sand track (S), on the SDFT loading in the trotter horse at high speed. METHODS Two trotter horses were equipped with the ultrasonic device (1 MHz ultrasonic probe, fixed on the palmar metacarpal area of the right forelimb). For each trial, data acquisition was made at 400 Hz and 10 consecutive strides were analysed. In each session, the 2 track surfaces were tested in a straight line. The speed was imposed at 10 m/s and recorded. The right forelimb was also equipped with a dynamometric horseshoe and skin markers. The horse was filmed with a high-speed camera (600 Hz); all recordings were synchronised. Statistical differences were tested using the GLM procedure (SAS; P < 0.05). RESULTS Maximal tendon force was significantly lower on W compared with S. In addition to maximal force peaks around mid-stance, earlier peaks were observed, more pronounced on S than on W, at about 13% (horse 2) and 30% (both horses) of the stance phase. Comparison with kinematic data revealed that these early peaks were accompanied by plateaux in the fetlock angle-time chart. For high tendon forces, the tendon maximal loading rate was significantly lower on W than on S. CONCLUSIONS AND POTENTIAL CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The all-weather waxed track appears to induce a lesser and more gradual SDFT loading than crushed sand. The SDFT loading pattern at high speed trot suggests proximal interphalangeal joint movements during limb loading.
Efficacy and safety of paliperidone palmitate in adult patients with acutely symptomatic schizophrenia: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-response study

This 13-week, double-blind study evaluated the efficacy and safety of the atypical antipsychotic paliperidone palmitate (recently approved in the United States) versus placebo administered as monthly gluteal injections (after two initial doses given 1 week apart) in acutely symptomatic patients with schizophrenia. Patients (N=388) were randomly assigned (1 : 1 : 1 : 1) to paliperidone palmitate 50, 100, or 150 mg eq. or placebo. As the 150 mg eq. dose was administered to fewer patients (n=30) than planned, meaningful and definitive conclusions cannot be drawn from the results of this group. The change from baseline in Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale total score at endpoint showed improvement in both paliperidone palmitate 50 and 100 mg eq. groups but was significant only in the 100 mg eq. group (P=0.019). The paliperidone palmitate 50 (P=0.004) and 100 mg eq. (P<0.001) groups showed significant improvement in the Personal and Social Performance score from baseline to endpoint versus placebo. Common adverse events (in ≥2% of patients in any group) more frequent with paliperidone palmitate 50 or 100 mg eq. than placebo (≥5% difference) were headache, vomiting, extremity pain, and injection site pain. Treatment with paliperidone palmitate (100 mg eq.) was efficacious and all doses tested were tolerable.
Evaluation of biological debris on endodontic instruments after cleaning and sterilization procedures.

AIM To examine the presence of biological debris and the level of contamination on reusable endodontic instruments those were subjected to different cleaning methods prior to sterilization. METHODOLOGY One hundred and eighty endodontic instruments from eighteen dental practices were analysed. These practices used different decontamination protocols for reusable instruments. The presence of organic debris was detected by the use of Van Gieson's stain. Forty-eight new stainless steel hand instruments were used as controls. The samples were examined by light microscopy. RESULTS Residual biological debris was observed in 96% of the samples. The mean value of maximum biological contamination was 34% in the group in which the instruments were brushed manually and immersed in alcohol, 25% in the group in which commercially available disinfectants were used and 5% in the group in which the instruments were cleaned ultrasonically. There was a statistically significant difference in the mean values with respect to the cleaning protocol applied (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS The methods used to clean endodontic instruments appear to be generally ineffective for the removal of biological debris. The best method was the one that included mechanical, chemical and ultrasonic cleaning of instruments.
Family-Friendly Workplace Policy Adoption in General and Special Purpose Local Governments

What factors explain the variation in number and types of family-friendly work-place policies implemented within public agencies? Is there any systematic attempt to measure the effectiveness of these programs? To what extent do these policies contribute to gender equality at work? To answer these questions, the authors surveyed all general and special purpose local governments in the state of Washington. They conclude that family-friendly workplace policies are adopted unevenly across local jurisdictions. Agency size, the presence of union representation, an agency’s adoption of a formal sexual harassment policy, and agency type account for much of the variance.
The Gatekeepers of European Integration? The Functions of National Parliaments in the EU Political System

Abstract Parliaments have several functions that can be divided into two categories: functions related to governance and functions that focus on linking with citizens. Analysis of European Convention and COSAC documents shows that when defining a role for the national parliaments in the EU’s political system, domestic MPs emphasize the function of government oversight, with functions relating to citizens receiving little attention. This choice of emphasis is arguably explained by the incentives of political parties and the institutional set‐up of European political architecture. National parliaments are increasingly seen as gatekeepers between national and EU politics, with the ‘early warning system’ included in the Lisbon Treaty reinforcing this perception of domestic MPs acting as gatekeepers of European integration. In terms of transparency, the main difference between domestic and EU politics concerns the role of the plenary, with European matters only seldom debated by the whole chamber.
The Political Economy of the Privatisation of the Land Market in Shanghai

This paper examines a land market in which the authority in China has a monopolistic power in the granting of the use rights of land to developers/investors for real estate development purposes. By granting land in private treaty mode rather than open market competition to the developers/investors, the Chinese authority is actually distorting the land prices achieved in the emerging market which will subsequently lead to a distortion of normal land price behaviour. Despite the fact that the authority might have been underpricing land in Shanghai, they continue to sell land through the same private treaty mechanism. One possible explanation for this is the deeply rooted ideology of the concept of' cost as value', while another is the possible political complications involved in the property rights of various invisible interests in land.
Estimation of Censored Demand Equations from Large Cross‐Section Data

The article develops an alternative econometric methodology to estimate a system of censored demand equations using a large cross-section data from Colombian urban households. The approach preserves the behavioralinformation expressed by zero expenditures and conforms with the requirements imposed by consumer theory in a way consistent with the random utility hypothesis. We motivate the choice of the Tobit modelas a statistical representation of consumer behavior and introduce the methodology by specifying the AIDS model modified according to both a translating and scaling demographic transformation. We propose to estimate each demand equation in unrestricted form using the jackknife technique. We then recover the demand parameters imposing the cross-equations restrictions by using minimum distance estimation. The empirical results of the censored demand system for specific households of policy relevance are reported. Copyright 2000, Oxford University Press.
Is devaluation expansionary or contractionary? Empirical evidence from Fiji

Devaluation has been traditionally promoted as an effective tool for increasing exports and improving the external position of the devaluing country if a nominal devaluation results in expenditure switching. In this article, our aim is to model the relationship between currency devaluations and output for Fiji. Following the approach in Bahmani et al. (2002), we extend the traditional model by incorporating other monetary and fiscal policy variables. We achieve our goal by using the recently developed bounds testing approach to cointegration and the autoregressive distributed lag model and find that devaluation is expansionary in the case of Fiji.
From Ties to Gains? Evidence on Connectedness and Human Capital Acquisition

This paper uses micro‐level data on social networks in middle and secondary schools to estimate effects of connectedness on education attainment outcomes. The analysis addresses concerns about unobserved neighborhood and school‐level heterogeneity by using within‐school variation between grade cohorts to identify effects of connectedness. Main findings include that being part of a more connected cohort within a given secondary or middle school is associated with significantly higher years of schooling attained and higher probability of having attended college 7 years later.
Genetically modified chondrocytes expressing TGF-β1: a revolutionary treatment for articular cartilage damage?

Introduction: Currently, joint arthroplasty remains the only definitive management of osteoarthritis, while other treatment modalities only provide temporary and symptomatic relief. The use of genetically engineered chondrocytes is currently undergoing clinical trials. Specifically, it has been designed to induce cartilage growth and differentiation in patients with degenerative arthritis, with the aim to play a curative role in the disease process. Areas covered: This treatment involves the incorporation of TGF-β1, which has been determined to play an influential role in chondrogenesis and extracellular matrix synthesis. Using genetic manipulation and viral transduction, TGF-β1 is incorporated into human chondrocytes and administered in a minimally invasive fashion directly to the affected joint. Following a database literature search, we evaluated the current evidence on this product and its outcomes. Furthermore, we also briefly reviewed other treatments developed for chondrogenesis and cartilage regeneration for comparison. Expert opinion: This treatment method has sustained positive effects on functional outcomes and cartilage growth in initial trials. It allows administration in a minimally invasive manner that does not require extended recovery time. Although several treatment modalities are currently under investigation and appear promising, we hope that these effects can be sustained in further studies. Ultimately, we anticipate that the results may be reproducible in many clinical settings and allow us to effectively treat cartilage damage in patients with degenerative arthritis.
Effect of Semantic Context on the Perceptual Learning of Lexical Tone

Previous research has not determined whether the inclusion of lexical semantic information facilitates or inhibits the learning of second language (L2) phonetic contrasts. The present study addresses this issue by comparing the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones with and without semantic contexts. Two groups of native English listeners with no lexical tone experience participated in a Mandarin tone training program where one (“No meaning”) group received training with only phonetic tonal contrasts, while the other (“Meaning”) group was additionally provided with semantic information. Results show that although both groups started comparably and improved significantly with training, the “No-meaning” trainees had significantly higher tone identification accuracy rates than the “Meaning” trainees after training. However, the inter-session tests with the training stimuli reveal the opposite pattern, where the Meaning group outperformed the No-meaning group. Together, these results indicate that, at the initial stage of tone learning, non-native listeners learn more efficiently by focusing on phonetic tonal distinctions, whereas remembering the meanings of tone words does not generalize well to tone category identification.
Political Appointees in the United States: Does Gender Make a Difference?

Information about women who hold appointive office is a neglected area. –Eileen Shanahan, former Assistant Secretary, HEWEileen Shanahan, former Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HEW, quoted in Carroll and Geiger-Parker, 1983. With every new presidential administration in the United States, the incoming president is in charge of appointing thousands of individuals to work throughout the executive branch of government and assist him in fulfilling his constitutional responsibility to “faithfully execute the laws of the Nation” (Pfiffner 1996). When the Center of American Women and Politics (CAWP) first began studying female political appointees in the early 1980s, very few women had ever served in Cabinet positions or other high-ranking executive positions within the federal government. In fact, in 1977, almost two hundred years after the founding of the United States, President Carter appointed only the fourth and fifth women ever to serve as Cabinet Secretaries (CAWP 1998). As Carroll and Geiger-Parker note in the introduction to the very first study of female political appointees, “for the first time in history, women had been appointed in large enough numbers to survey and to compare with other appointees” (1983a, ix).
Minimum Wages and the Joint Distribution of Employment and Wages

This paper proposes a new procedure to jointly estimate the effect of the minimum wage on the distribution of wages and employment. The proposed approach offers a common framework for modelling the effect of the minimum wage on both employment and the distribution of wages using distribution regressions. Using Canadian data from 19972010, I find that for teenagers, increases in the minimum wages “pushes up” a large fraction of workers to the new minimum wage, but also yields some modest employment losses. There are no discernable impacts of the minimum wage for young adults.
Increasing Male Earnings Inequality in Canada and the United States, 1981­1997: The Role of Hours Changes versus Wage Changes

This paper looks at changes in hourly wages and hours worked per week of prime-age males in different skill groups (measured by earnings quintile) in the United States and Canada from 1981 to 1997. The analysis reveals that increases in hourly wage inequality are primarily responsible for increases in weekly earnings inequality in both countries. Increases in the dispersion of hours worked per week play a more important part in explaining the increase in earnings inequality in Canada than in the United States. High-skill workers experienced increases in earnings growth due to increases in hours and, at least for the US, increases in wages. In contrast, low-skill workers experienced declines in earnings growth due to decreases in wages and hours. This evidence is consistent with a skill-biased demand shock. In Canada a larger percentage of the reduction in earnings of low-skill workers is accounted for by declining hours. This evidence suggests a higher degree of downward wage rigidity in Canada than in the United States.
Defense mechanisms involving Fc-dependent functions of immunoglobulin A and their subversion by bacterial immunoglobulin A proteases.

INTRODUCTION . 296 DIRECT EFFECTOR FUNCTIONS OF S-IgA . 297 Inhibition of Microbial Adherence and Colonization . 297 Toxin and Enzyme Neutralization . 297 Virus Neutralization . 297 Inhibition of Antigen Absorption . 298 INDIRECT EFFECTOR FUNCTIONS OF IgA . 298 Interactions of IgA with Innate Humoral Defense Factors . 298 Complement. 298 Lactoferrin, lactoperoxidase, and lysozyme . 298 Mucin. 298 IgA-Dependent Cell-Mediated Effector Functions . 298 Phagocytosis. 299 Antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity . 299 Hepatobiliary transport . 299 ANTI-INFLAMMATORY AND SHIELDING EFFECTS OF IgA.299 INTERFERENCE WITH IgA-MEDIATED DEFENSE MECHANISMS BY BACTERIAL IgA PROTEASES . 299 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . 301 LITERATURE CITED. 301
Induction of antigen-specific antibodies in vaginal secretions by using a nontoxic mutant of heat-labile enterotoxin as a mucosal adjuvant

Immunization of the female reproductive tract is important for protection against sexually transmitted diseases and other pathogens of the reproductive tract. However, intravaginal immunization with soluble antigens generally does not induce high levels of secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA). We recently developed safe mucosal adjuvants by genetically detoxifying Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin, a molecule with a strong mucosal adjuvant activity, and here we describe the use of the nontoxic mutant LTK63 to induce a response in the mouse vagina against ovalbumin (Ova). We compared intravaginal and intranasal routes of immunization for induction of systemic and vaginal responses against LTK63 and Ova. We found that LTK63 is a potent mucosal immunogen when given by either the intravaginal or intranasal route. It induces a strong systemic antibody response and IgG and long-lasting IgA in the vagina. The appearance of vaginal IgA is delayed in the intranasally immunized mice, but the levels of vaginal anti-LTK63 IgA after repeated immunizations are higher in the intranasally immunized mice than in the intravaginally immunized mice. LTK63 also acts as a mucosal adjuvant, inducing a serum response against Ova, when given by both the intravaginal and intranasal routes. However, vaginal IgA against Ova is stimulated more efficiently when LTK63 and antigen are given intranasally. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that LTK63 can be used as a mucosal adjuvant to induce antigen-specific antibodies in vaginal secretions and show that the intranasal route of immunization is the most effective for this purpose.
Heterotopic Mucosal Grafting Enables the Delivery of Therapeutic Neuropeptides Across the Blood Brain Barrier.

BACKGROUND The blood-brain barrier represents a fundamental limitation in treating neurological disease because it prevents all neuropeptides from reaching the central nervous system (CNS). Currently, there is no efficient method to permanently bypass the blood-brain barrier. OBJECTIVE To test the feasibility of using nasal mucosal graft reconstruction of arachnoid defects to deliver glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) for the treatment of Parkinson disease in a mouse model. METHODS The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approved this study in an established murine 6-hydroxydopamine Parkinson disease model. A parietal craniotomy and arachnoid defect was repaired with a heterotopic donor mucosal graft. The therapeutic efficacy of GDNF (2 μg/mL) delivered through the mucosal graft was compared with direct intrastriatal GDNF injection (2 μg/mL) and saline control through the use of 2 behavioral assays (rotarod and apomorphine rotation). An immunohistological analysis was further used to compare the relative preservation of substantia nigra cell bodies between treatment groups. RESULTS Transmucosal GDNF was equivalent to direct intrastriatal injection at preserving motor function at week 7 in both the rotarod and apomorphine rotation behavioral assays. Similarly, both transmucosal and intrastriatal GDNF demonstrated an equivalent ratio of preserved substantia nigra cell bodies (0.79 ± 0.14 and 0.78 ± 0.09, respectively, P = NS) compared with the contralateral control side, and both were significantly greater than saline control (0.53 ± 0.21; P = .01 and P = .03, respectively). CONCLUSION Transmucosal delivery of GDNF is equivalent to direct intrastriatal injection at ameliorating the behavioral and immunohistological features of Parkinson disease in a murine model. Mucosal grafting of arachnoid defects is a technique commonly used for endoscopic skull base reconstruction and may represent a novel method to permanently bypass the blood-brain barrier.
Openness, Investment and Growth

In the empirical growth literature both investment and openness to international trade have been identified as important determinants of growth. These relationships appear to be robust in a number of specifications. However, Sachs and Warner claim that openness is such an important determinant of investment that the coefficient on investment will be insignificant in growth regressions, which already account for openness. I re‐examine this result and can only support it if I use their model specification and estimation method. I suggest that their ordinary least squares estimation suffers from both endogeneity and omitted variable bias. Using panel data analysis, I show that ignoring unobserved country‐specific effects and endogeneity problems cause investment to be insignificant. Estimating the model with the Blundell and Bond system general method of moments estimator, which allows me to address the omitted variable as well as the endogeneity bias, I find that investment is significant in the Sachs–Warner model despite controlling for openness. Thus, my regressions confirm that openness has a significant, positive effect on income. However, this variable is not so important that it drives investment out of the model. My re‐examination of the Sachs–Warner model shows that results from single cross‐country growth regressions can be misleading when unobserved country‐specific effects and endogeneity problems are ignored.