Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short and long term fate of human AMSC subcutaneously injected in mice.

AIM To study the ability of human adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AMSCs) to survive over the short and long term, their biodistribution and their biosafety in vivo in tumor-prone environments. METHODS We subcutaneously injected human AMSCs from different human donors into immunodeficient SCID mice over both short- (2 and 4 mo) and long- (17 mo) term in young, and aged tumor-prone mice. Presence of human cells was studied by immunohistochemistry and polymerase chain reaction analysis in all organs of injected mice. RESULTS Subcutaneously injected AMSCs did not form teratomas at any time point. They did not migrate but remained at the site of injection regardless of animal age, and did not fuse with host cells in any organ examined. AMSCs survived in vivo for at least 17 mo after injection, and differentiated into fibroblasts of the subdermic connective tissue and into mature adipocytes of fat tissue, exclusively at the site of injection. CONCLUSION Our results support the assertion that AMSC may be safe candidates for therapy when injected subcutaneously because of their long term inability to form teratomas.
GNAS Mutations in Pseudohypoparathyroidism Type 1a and Related Disorders

Pseudohypoparathyroidism type 1a (PHP1a) is characterized by hypocalcaemia and hyperphosphatemia due to parathyroid hormone resistance, in association with the features of Albright's hereditary osteodystrophy (AHO). PHP1a is caused by maternally inherited inactivating mutations of Gs‐alpha, which is encoded by a complex imprinted locus termed GNAS. Paternally inherited mutations can lead either to pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (PPHP) characterized by AHO alone, or to progressive osseous heteroplasia (POH), characterized by severe heterotopic ossification. The clinical aspects and molecular genetics of PHP1a and its related disorders are reviewed together with the 343 kindreds with Gs‐alpha germline mutations reported so far in the literature. These 343 (176 different) mutations are scattered throughout the 13 exons that encode Gs‐alpha and consist of 44.9% frameshift, 28.0% missense, 14.0% nonsense, and 9.0% splice‐site mutations, 3.2% in‐frame deletions or insertions, and 0.9% whole or partial gene deletions. Frameshift and other highly disruptive mutations were more frequent in the reported 37 POH kindreds than in PHP1a/PPHP kindreds (97.3% vs. 68.7%, P < 0.0001). This mutation update and respective genotype–phenotype data may be of use for diagnostic and research purposes and contribute to a better understanding of these complex disorders.
Aggressive variants of papillary thyroid carcinoma

A number of histologic variants of well‐differentiated papillary carcinoma have been found to be associated with more aggressive tumor behavior. Tall cell, columnar cell, diffuse sclerosing, solid/trabecular, and insular variants of well‐differentiated papillary thyroid cancer are all potentially more aggressive than conventional papillary thyroid cancer. When subjected to multivariate analysis, however, evidence that the histologic subtype of tumor is an independent predictor of outcome is weak. Rather, the aggressive variants tend to present with features recognized by other staging systems as associated with a worse prognosis, including higher histologic grade, extracapsular spread, large tumor size, and the presence of distant metastases. Prognosis is directly related to the presence of these features. The state of our knowledge is limited by the relatively small number of cases that have been studied. The presence of an aggressive variant of papillary carcinoma should alert the surgeon that he is dealing with a potentially aggressive tumor. Clinical treatment decisions should be based on the stage of the disease, influenced by the knowledge that the aggressive variants tend to be associated with higher risk factors. The surgeon must be prepared to perform at the first, or second stage, a total thyroidectomy, central compartment neck dissection, additional lymphadenectomy, and/or resection of invaded surrounding structures, and search for distant metastasis. Postoperative radioactive iodine should generally be administered for these variants as they will generally be intermediate to advanced tumors. The tall cell variant is often refractory to such treatment but may be susceptible to treatment targeted against BRAF mutation. External beam irradiation may be used in cases of incomplete resection. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck, 2011
The Festivalscape of Finnmark

Abstract The diversity of festivals in Finnmark, Norway, was researched with the aim of creating a festival map of the county’s Festivalscape. Data were collected by questionnaires to the registered festival managers. It was concluded that Finnmark is a festive county where 72,000 people share close to 60 festivals arranged annually in 19 municipalities across the county. The festivals were categorized as either music, arts, sports or market festivals, however the largest group were named thematic festivals as they are each built around rather unique themes, thus representing a diverse example of festival variety and creativity. Even so, live music and food sales are found at most festivals, and all festivals have more than one main activity. Festivals are by no means a source of paid employment for the inhabitants, but rich opportunities for more than 3000 volunteers to participate in creating compressed cultural expressions and develop social networks. The number of visitors at the festivals varies from 100 to 10,000 persons. It is also a cost effective way of culture production as most of the festivals present budgets below 500,000 NOK. Entrance fees, sales of merchandise, sponsorship and public municipality funding are the most important source of sponsorship. A wide range of themes are represented in these festivals in which ethnicity, nationality and various border themes also play roles as ideological bases and cultural framing of the events. The tourism potential of the festivals and their actual production processes seems underdeveloped.
EU posted work and transnational action in the German meat industry

This article traces the course of a transnational action in the German meat industry involving an alliance of transnational posted workers, a local civil society organization and the trade union NGG (Gewerkschaft Nahrung-Genuss-Gaststätten). As labour’s channels of influence have broken down and posting of low-wage workers has intensified, trade unionists have responded by building coalitions with societal actors. The case illustrates a complementary approach to studying how resistance unfolds in transnational workplaces under conditions in which traditional avenues for protest are blocked or marginalized.
Seeking connection: family care experiences following long-term dementia care placement.

AIM To outline the experiences of family caregivers in Brisbane, Australia who have placed a relative with dementia into long-term care. BACKGROUND Whilst the aged care literature in Australia highlights the rising numbers of people with dementia admitted to long-term care, empirical research exploring family and staff relationships and their influence on quality of care remains limited. International research demonstrates that the transition to long-term care is stressful for families and the person with dementia, often resulting in ongoing family and staff conflict. DESIGN The study utilised a descriptive qualitative design. METHODS A purposive sample of 10 participants from a large study that tested an education intervention took part in the qualitative phase of this mixed method, sequential design study. Semi-structured interviews and confirmatory thematic analysis were used to identify family caregiver experiences following placement of their relative in long-term care. RESULTS The findings emphasise the increasing isolation and burden of care felt by families prior to admission, which often is perpetuated during long-term care placement and may present as dissatisfaction with care. CONCLUSIONS Improving staff-family relationships has the potential to reduce conflict and to improve the long-term care environment, relieve the pressure of work overload, decrease staff frustration and reduce negative reactions to family caregivers. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE The findings highlight the crucial need for long-term care facilities to support families, as well as the person with dementia, through the transition to the care environment. The resulting improved family relationships with staff, based on negotiation and increasing knowledge of dementia care, can then provide potential to develop more specialised evidence-based dementia care and service delivery.
Have Hedge Funds Eroded Market Opportunities?

Hedge funds, with almost $1 trillion under management before leverage, have become a dominant force in market trading. As they grow larger, they will eventually erode the market opportunities and mispricings they have relied on to create their superior returns. Opportunities seem to disappear fastest where hedge funds are very active and remain ample where there are fewer hedge funds. This article discusses whether and how hedge funds erode opportunities in interest–rate, credit, equity, and currency markets. The authors believe that this erosion will prove temporary, with new active trading opportunities emerging in the near future.
Wages in Managed Markets: An Explanation of the Gender Wage Gap?

Over the last decade or so in Australia, relative wages have declined in some female‐dominated occupations, notably in the care industries. This article argues that the strong growth in labour force participation of mature‐aged women has allowed wages to remain low in these ‘managed’ industries. Limited mobility across industries and occupations, at least in part due to preferences for part‐time work, and an institutional wage‐setting mechanism also play a role. Growing demand for workers in the care industries, rising skill levels of women, and slowing growth in participation as rates converge with those of men will contribute to stronger wage growth in the future.
Entry mode choices in international markets: examining the antecedents of service firms’ strategies

The intensification of markets globalisation and the diffusion of internationalisation strategies across various businesses, led the academic literature to challenge the notion of entry modes in international ventures. Nevertheless, with specific regard to soft-service industries, only a few authors investigated the entry-mode behaviour of firms for testing the applicability of traditional theories. Therefore, this paper investigates the antecedents of firms' entry choice on a quantitative basis, focusing on the wholly owned subsidiary/joint venture dilemma. The empirical analysis is conducted on 416 overseas market entries in the container port industry. The manuscript proposes and tests an eclectic model for evaluating the determinants of foreign entry in soft-service industries, including internal, external and cross-cultural factors.
Block adaptive compressive sensing for distributed MIMO radars in clutter environment

For the target parameter estimation in MIMO radars in the presence of strong clutter, non-adaptive compressive sensing methods have a poor performance. On the other hand, the adaptive ones usually need higher data acquisition time. In this paper, we propose an adaptive compressive sensing method called L-BGT that has tolerable data acquisition time. furthermore, we have presented the essential changes in a distributed MIMO radar to exploit an adaptive group testing compressive sensing method.
Active Investors, Lbos, and the Privatization of Bankruptcy

In this testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee on February 1, 1989 (when LBOs and other highly leveraged transactions were under fierce attack by politicians and the media), the author identified “LBO associations” such as KKR and Forstmann Little as a valuable innovation in organizational form—a new model of management and governance that was competing directly with the headquarters of large public corporations, especially conglomerates. In the author's words, LBOs “substitute incentives provided by compensation and ownership plans for the direct monitoring and often centralized decision‐making in the typical corporate bureaucracy. ” In illustrating his point, the author noted that whereas the CEOs of U.S. companies during the '70s and '80s saw their personal wealth go up by only about $3 for every $1,000 increase in firm value, the average CEO in an LBO experienced a change of $64 per $1,000—and for the partners of the LBO firm, the closest equivalent to a conglomerate CEO, the change was about $200 per $1,000. Based on the performance of the first wave of LBOs to return to public ownership, such dramatic concentrations of equity ownership appear to have produced large gains in operating efficiency. (And since the author's testimony, these findings have been confirmed by subsequent studies of later periods and in other countries.) The heavy debt loads in these transactions, besides making possible the concentration of equity ownership, also perform an important control function, intensifying the search for efficiencies and discouraging reinvestment in low‐return projects. For those LBOs that have trouble servicing their debt loads, the author argues that the costs of insolvency should turn out to be significantly lower than for traditional public companies because LBOs provide strong incentives to keep the process of reorganizing troubled companies out of the bankruptcy court (a prediction that, although proving wrong in the early‘90s, has turned out to be true of the most recent wave of private equity deals).
The Strengths and Limits of New Forms of EU Governance: The Cases of Mainstreaming and Impact Assessment in EU Public Health and Sustainable Development Policy

Abstract Since the mid‐1990s, the EU has been experimenting with a variety of new forms of EU governance, including mainstreaming and impact assessment. Though originating in gender policy at the EU level, mainstreaming and impact assessments strategies subsequently spread to other social policies and more recently public health and sustainable development policy. However, the spread of these strategies has not been uncontested or unproblematic, generating problems of bureaucratic overload and costs and competition between policy areas. Using primary and secondary sources and recent interviews with European non‐governmental organisations and Commission elites, this article will examine and compare recent developments in the mainstreaming of EU health and sustainable development policy and compare the histories of and debates surrounding these developments. Through this comparison this article will expose new insights into current developments in both policy fields and contribute to the debate on mainstreaming and impact assessment strategies as new forms of EU governance.
The Audit Review Process and Sensitivity to Information Source Objectivity

Auditing standards require auditors to consider the reliability of the evidence they use in making judgments. One aspect of that reliability is the objectivity of the information source. More objective sources (e.g., third parties) provide higher quality information than less objective ones (e.g., client personnel), so auditors should be sensitive to the source of the information they receive. In this study, we examine the effect of the role that auditors perform on their sensitivity to information source objectivity. Specifically, we test whether sensitivity varies depending on whether the auditor is the preparer of the workpaper or the reviewer of the workpaper in the task of evaluating the adequacy of an allowance for doubtful accounts. It is hypothesized that processing differences between the two roles will cause reviewers to be more sensitive than preparers to the objectivity of the information source. In an experiment, auditors were assigned to either a preparer or reviewer role in an accounts rece.
The Effect of Conservation Activity on Surrounding Land Prices

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the structure of land prices both before and after land conservation occurs. Using data describing 12 years of vacant land transactions in Buncombe County, North Carolina, we find that fee simple conservations, as opposed to conservation easements, occur in higher-priced areas, but that lower-valued parcels within these areas are selected for conservation. We find positive price effects from land conservation of 46%. This premium declines with distance from the conserved parcel but does so to a lesser extent with easements, perhaps suggesting the market’s perception that conservation easements are more permanent than parcels conserved in fee. (JEL H23, Q51)
Detection and Characterization of Genetic Recombination in Cytopathic Type 2 Bovine Viral Diarrhea Viruses

ABSTRACT In cytopathic bovine viral diarrhea virus genotype 1 (BVDV1) isolates, insertions are reported at position A (amino acid [aa] 1535) and position B (aa 1589). Insertions at position B predominate. In this survey it was found that in BVDV2, insertions at position A predominate. Possible reasons for this difference in relative frequency are discussed.
The solution structure of VAT-N reveals a 'missing link' in the evolution of complex enzymes from a simple betaalphabetabeta element.

BACKGROUND The VAT protein of the archaebacterium Thermoplasma acidophilum, like all other members of the Cdc48/p97 family of AAA ATPases, has two ATPase domains and a 185-residue amino-terminal substrate-recognition domain, VAT-N. VAT shows activity in protein folding and unfolding and thus shares the common function of these ATPases in disassembly and/or degradation of protein complexes. RESULTS Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, we found that VAT-N is composed of two equally sized subdomains. The amino-terminal subdomain VAT-Nn (comprising residues Met1-Thr92) forms a double-psi beta-barrel whose pseudo-twofold symmetry is mirrored by an internal sequence repeat of 42 residues. The carboxy-terminal subdomain VAT-Nc (comprising residues Glu93-Gly185) forms a novel six-stranded beta-clam fold. Together, VAT-Nn and VAT-Nc form a kidney-shaped structure, in close agreement with results from electron microscopy. Sequence and structure analyses showed that VAT-Nn is related to numerous proteins including prokaryotic transcription factors, metabolic enzymes, the protease cofactors UFD1 and PrlF, and aspartic proteinases. These proteins map out an evolutionary path from simple homodimeric transcription factors containing a single copy of the VAT-Nn repeat to complex enzymes containing four copies. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that VAT-N is a precursor of the aspartic proteinases that has acquired peptide-binding activity while remaining proteolytically incompetent. We propose that the binding site of the protein is similar to that of aspartic proteinases, in that it lies between the psi-loops of the amino-terminal beta-barrel and that it coincides with a crescent-shaped band of positive charge extending across the upper face of the molecule.
Study of the B cell memory compartment in common variable immunodeficiency

We evaluated the B cell memory pool among blood B cells from 20 patients with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID). CD27+ B cell number was normal or increased in 6 patients (with 95 % CD27+ B cells in 1 patient) and decreased in 14 patients. In 13 or 15 patients studied, the CD27 molecule was detectable on less than 50 % IgG or IgA B cells, indicating a defect in the maturation of these memory cells. Within the group of patients with a low number of CD27+ B cells, no up‐regulation of this molecule was observed after in vitro stimulation of purified B cells from 3 of 5 patients studied, suggesting an intrinsic B cell defect. In addition, ligation of the CD27 molecule was unable to trigger terminal differentiation of purified B cells in 1 of 2 cases with a large number of CD27+ B cells. Finally, the CD27 ligand was normally expressed on activated T cells in only 5 of 14 patients studied. These data confirm the heterogeneity of immunological defects in patients with CVID. Abnormal expression and / or function of the CD27‐CD70 members of the TNF / TNF receptor family contribute to the immunological defect.
Differentially Stimulated CD4+ T Cells Display Altered Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection Kinetics: Implications for the Efficacy of Antiviral Agents

ABSTRACT The activation state of CD4+ T cells plays a crucial role in the establishment of a productive human immunodeficiency virus infection. Here, we show that T cells stimulated for 1 day demonstrated delayed kinetics of viral reverse transcription and integration compared to cells stimulated for 2 days prior to infection. As a result, the efficiency of reverse transcription and integration inhibitors differs in these differentially stimulated cells. These studies increase our understanding of how T cells support viral replication and provide insight regarding the efficiency of antiretroviral therapy in lymphoid compartments.
Studies in the mathematical theory of decentralized resource-allocation

(This dissertation was submitted, in May 1971, to the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. It was published by EFI in June 1972.) This is a research report about decentralization in economic systems. Decentralization is an important management technique with obvious advantages and disadvantages to the management practitioner. There is a rather large body of literature which deals with practical aspects of decentralization: the proper degree of centralization or decentralization in large organizations, how best to design decentralized administrative systems, etc. This report does not belong to that body of literature, that may as well be admitted at once. Rather, this report is a more theoretical discussion of some facets of decentralization in economic systems. However, it was written in the hope that theoretical discussions of this kind will nevertheless provide insights of value for practical decision-making in organizations. The first half of this research report investigates the applicability of some different decentralization principles, or methods, such as the price mechanism, which have been proposed in the literature. This is done within the context of a highly simplified and idealized model organization. It will become evident to the reader that decomposition theory of mathematical programming plays a very important role in this report. A new decomposition algoritm for linear programming problems is also given in the report.
Model Retrieval by 3D Sketching in Immersive Virtual Reality

We describe a novel method for searching 3D model collections using free-form sketches within a virtual environment as queries. As opposed to traditional Sketch Retrieval, our queries are drawn directly onto an example model. Using immersive virtual reality the user can express their query through a sketch that demonstrates the desired structure, color and texture. Unlike previous sketch-based retrieval methods, users remain immersed within the environment without relying on textual queries or 2D projections which can disconnect the user from the environment. We show how a convolutional neural network (CNN) can create multi-view representations of colored 3D sketches. Using such a descriptor representation, our system is able to rapidly retrieve models and in this way, we provide the user with an interactive method of navigating large object datasets. Through a preliminary user study we demonstrate that by using our VR 3D model retrieval system, users can perform quick and intuitive search. Using our system users can rapidly populate a virtual environment with specific models from a very large database, and thus the technique has the potential to be broadly applicable in immersive editing systems.