Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Apelin: a potential marker of coronary artery stenosis and atherosclerotic plaque stability in ACS patients.

UNLABELLED Apelin was shown to play an important role in atherosclerosis in mice. However, the involvement of apelin in atherosclerosis in humans has not been investigated. AIMS To characterize plasma apelin levels following acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and to examine their relationship with coronary stenosis and atherosclerotic plaque stability.The study enrolled 196 patients admitted with ACS, and another 171 outpatients with no coronary heart disease as control. Plasma concentrations of apelin, N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), and matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) were measured 2 hours and 6 months after admission, respectively. The severity of coronary artery stenosis of ACS patients was evaluated using the Gensini score. The stability and components of atherosclerotic plaque was assessed by intravascular ultrasound (IVUS). All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 16.0. Apelin concentration was reduced compared with healthy controls following ACS (0.54 ± 0.25 versus 3.22 ± 1.08 ng/mL, P < 0.001) and remained low to 6 months. The plasma level of apelin in the ACS group was negatively correlated with the Gensini score (r = -0.382, P = 0.009). Moreover, in the ACS patients, apelin levels were significantly lower in the group with the ruptured plaque than in those with the nonruptured plaque (0.42 ± 0.24 versus 0.68 ± 0.30 ng/mL, P = 0.042). Apelin levels were negatively correlated with plaque cross-sectional area (CSA) (r = -0.425, P = 0.018) and positively correlated with external elastic membrane (EEM) CSA (r = 0.311, P = 0.037). CONCLUSIONS Plasma apelin levels were inversely correlated with the severity of coronary artery stenosis and positively related with the stability of atherosclerotic plaque in humans with ACS.
Do Higher Value Firms Voluntarily Disclose More Information? Evidence from China

This paper examines the effect of guanxi on the relation between firm value and voluntary disclosure of information about new investment projects in China’s institutional setting. We find a negative relation between firm value and voluntary disclosure for firms that rely more heavily on guanxi in their value creation (e.g. non-high-tech firms, and firms located in regions with underdeveloped institutions). This type of firms refrains from detailed voluntary disclosures for fear of revealing sensitive information that may harm their guanxi. They may more incline to use guanxi to lower information asymmetry and the cost of capital. Therefore, they have less motivation of voluntary disclosure. By contrast, for firms that rely less heavily on guanxi and more on other sources of core competencies (e.g. high-tech firms, and firms in high-marketization regions), we find a positive relation between firm value and voluntary disclosure. This type of firms more replies on voluntary disclosure to reduce information asymmetry and financing cost. Such incentives are particularly strong for high value firms. The moderating role of guanxi on the relation between firm value and voluntary disclosure is explained by firms conscientiously balancing the costs and benefits of voluntary disclosure relative to guanxi. Our evidence has implications for research on motives for disclosure and regulation of financial reporting.
Toward the Development of Client-Specified Valuation Models

Because of the scope of the study, it is not possible to make general statements about the exact variables which should be used in client-specified valuation models. However, the interpretation of the results of the study suggests several tentative conclusions.First, the investor's investment analysis of common stock appears to be a multi-dimensional process. That is, more than one decision variable is involved in the analysis. Hence, it may be reasoned that client-specified valuation models should involve several independent variables.Second, the dividends factor is the most important of the three factors identified through factor analysis. This finding suggests large differences in perceptions among investors concerning the importance of dividends.Third, future expectations and financial stability are the other factors identified through factor analysis. These factors also represent areas of large perceptual differences among investors concerning their importance.Finally, investors are of two distinct types: those who seek dividends and those who seek capital appreciation. This finding provides a partial explanation for the inability of researchers using traditional methodology to predict a firm's stock price behavior. Thus, investors do not comprise a single homogeneous class. This suggests that certain types of stocks prove attractive to particular types of investors, i.e., a "clientele effect. " Hence, it is recommended that researchers interested in share price research segment the market by class of investor. Such investigation of investor socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics should prove worthwhile in providing a greater understanding of the factors influencing investor behavior.
Autonomous Motion of a Driverless Vehicle operating among Dynamic Obstacles

This paper presents a new approach to the problem of dynamic obstacle avoidance. Our developed approach, the Gradient Velocity Obstacle algorithm, has been designed specifically to operate in real-time on a non-holonomic car-like vehicle with a Ladar sensor being used for obstacle detection. The algorithm has been demonstrated both through simulation tests and operation on a test vehicle platform.
Le rôle de la relation de clientèle comme barrière à l'entrée sur les marchés bancaires

[fre] Le role de la relation de clientele comme barriere a l'entree sur les marches bancaires. L'article apporte une justification theorique au role de la relation de clientele comme barriere strategique a l'entree sur les marches bancaires. Une banque qui consent un pret a un client acquiert un avantage comparatif en termes d'information sur ce client par rapport aux banques concurrentes. Cette asymetrie d'information confere alors a la banque un pouvoir de monopole sur ses clients : la relation de clientele agit ainsi comme un « switching cost » pour les emprunteurs. Nous elaborons un modele de barrieres a l'entree strategiques ou la relation de clientele permet a une banque implantee sur un marche bancaire de prevenir l'entree d'une banque plus efficiente. [eng] Customer relationship as a strategic barrier to entry on banking markets. This paper aims at providing theoretical foundations to the role of customer relationship as a strategic barrier to entry on banking markets. A bank which grants a loan to a customer gains a comparative advantage in information on this customer as compared with competitors. This informational asymmetry gives to the bank a monopoly power on its customers: customer relationship acte as a "switching cost" for the borrowers. We elaborate a model of strategie barriers to entry in which customer relationship allows the incumbent bank to prevent the entry of a more efficient bank.
Audio susceptibility aware ramp signal design on feedforward voltage-mode CCM buck converter

This paper compares the effect on audio susceptibility with different implementations on the linear ramp signal in voltage-mode continuous-conduction-mode buck converter. Time domain charge-based analysis has been performed to justify the advantage of different approaches in different duty ratios. Transistor level simulations have been performed using a standard 0. 35µm CMOS process to verify the results.
New Spatial Configurations in the European Automobile Industry

Based on a forecasting study of the geography of the European automobile industry, this paper analyses first its spatial hierarchy corresponding to a regional vertical division of labour within different countries in a centre-periphery framework. Central functions (marketing, planning, R & D, luxury and upper range car assembly, etc.) located in the 'Banane Bleue', are attracted by the centre of gravity in southern Germany, whereas peripheral functions (assembly of small cars, production of generic components) are decentralized to southern European countries, and now eastern countries. Secondly, the paper identifies factors governing its evolution: changes in production organization (technological innovation, lean production) and their impacts on the location of activities (through a desegregated approach to location constraints on different activities: assembly, manufacturing, generic and specific components, etc.), as well as the new competitive context on the European market (arrival of new competitors, reduction of overcapacity, new niches, etc.). Thirdly, a sketch of the spatial configuration of the European automobile industry in 2005 is proposed on the basis of two opposite modalities of complementary spatial dynamics: on one side, concentration versus decentralization of assembly plants; on the other side, polarization or dispersion of upstream activities. Their intersection leads to four possible scenario-configurations: agglomerated unipolar, dispersed unipolar, multipolar and continental integration. Finally, conditions which would encourage or, alternatively, impede each scenario are discussed.
American Options in incomplete Markets: Upper and lower Snell Envelopes and robust partial Hedging

This thesis studies American options in an incomplete financial market and in continuous time. It is composed of two parts. In the first part we study a stochastic optimization problem in which a robust convex loss functional is minimized in a space of stochastic integrals. This problem arises when the seller of an American option aims to control the shortfall risk by using a partial hedge. We quantify the shortfall risk through a robust loss functional motivated by an extension of classical expected utility theory due to Gilboa and Schmeidler. In a general semimartingale model we prove the existence of an optimal strategy. Under additional compactness assumptions we show how the robust problem can be reduced to a non-robust optimization problem with respect to a worst-case probability measure. In the second part, we study the notions of the upper and the lower Snell envelope associated to an American option. We construct the envelopes for stable families of equivalent probability measures, the family of local martingale measures being an important special case. We then formulate two robust optimal stopping problems. The stopping problem related to the upper Snell envelope is motivated by the problem of monitoring the risk associated to the buyer’s choice of an exercise time, where the risk is specified by a coherent risk measure. The stopping problem related to the lower Snell envelope is motivated by a robust extension of classical expected utility theory due to Gilboa and Schmeidler. Using martingale methods we show how to construct optimal solutions in continuous time and for a finite horizon.
Political Expertise and Issue Voting in Presidential Elections

Recent research on political expertise indicates that what citizens know and how much they think about politics affect the political choices they make. So it would seem for issue voting in presidential elections. Unfor tunately, prior work has yielded such conflicting results that we lack a clear understanding of how expertise affects the vote. Drawing on re search from social and political psychology, I argue that the accessibility of policy attitudes from memory depends on political expertise. Given greater accessibility of policy attitudes, issue voting should be more pro nounced at higher levels of expertise. In contrast to most previous work, this research measures expertise with interval-level knowledge scales and employs formal interaction tests. Data from the 1984 and 1988 National Election Study surveys are used to test my hypotheses. Results show that increasing expertise results in higher levels of sociotropic, ideological, and policy voting.
Learning from African students

In response to the growing numbers of African students on the social work qualifying programme at the University of Northampton, three senior lecturers undertook a small-scale study in 2008 to evaluate African students’ particular learning experiences. This trend of increasing student numbers reflects the national picture as indicated by the General Social Care Council (GSCC, 2009). The African student experience is different and therefore different strategies are needed to ensure that learning and subsequent employability are maximised. The research identified two significant outcomes. The first was the need for a peer support group, which was set up in September 2008. The group named itself PADARE, a Zimbabwean term which means: meeting place. The second was the need for a qualified social worker as a mentor to support the students’ transition from academic learning into work-based learning and practice. This paper will focus mainly on the rationale and potential of these two initiatives from both an educator’s perspective and that of the students themselves drawing on relevant contemporary literature in the areas of Mentoring and Peer support groups.
Internationalisation strategies for management education

Western business schools currently face a number of pressures to internationalise their postgraduate course provision in terms both of content and place of delivery. In doing so they are faced with decisions concerning their motivations, the broad strategies to adopt, the nature of collaborative links with host‐country institutions, and a number of practical matters. The literature suggests that many of such issues have now broadly become clearly identified, and that a general “model” of postgraduate management course internationalisation may have begun to emerge. In this article a survey of the literature is followed by a case study of the internationalisation experience of a small UK university business school. It reports on the extent to which its experience supports the model and highlights other issues. The conclusion of the analysis is that an emergent strategy in this respect, not necessarily following a clear stages model, has nonetheless been largely successful.
Activity-Based Costing

ABSTRACT Activity-Based Costing (ABC) has been successfully applied in the manufacturing industry for the last two decades. In this study, a workable ABC model for restaurants was created and tested in a restaurant operation in a western urban area of the United States. The study identified that the actual cost of the dinner entrees was higher than the restaurant's prices, when analyzed using ABC methods. The results revealed that ABC appears to be a very feasible method for establishing accurate menu costs in restaurants.
Futures-Trading Activity and Stock Price Volatility

The authors examine whether greater futures-trading activity (volume and open interest) is associated with greater equity volatility. They partition each trading activity series into expected and unexpected components, and document that while equity volatility covaries positively with unexpected futures-trading volume, it is negatively related to forecastable futures-trading activity. Further, though futures-trading activity is systematically related to the futures contract life cycle, the authors find no evidence of a relation between the futures life cycle and spot equity volatility. These findings are consistent with theories predicting that active futures markets enhance the liquidity and depth of the equity markets. Copyright 1992 by American Finance Association.
High glucose increases extracellular matrix production in pancreatic stellate cells by activating the renin–angiotensin system

Pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) are involved in pancreatic inflammation and fibrosis. Recent studies have shown that blocking the renin–angiotensin system (RAS) attenuates pancreatic inflammation and fibrosis. However, there are few data about the direct effects of high glucose on extracellular matrix (ECM) protein synthesis and angiotensin II (Ang II) induction in PSCs. PSCs were isolated from male Sprague–Dawley rats and cultured in medium containing 5.5 mM (LG group) or 27 mM D‐glucose (HG group). Levels of Ang II and transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) in culture media were measured and Ang II‐positive cells were counted. We used real‐time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect Ang II receptor expression and Western blot analysis for the expression of ECM proteins such as connective‐tissue growth factor (CTGF) and collagen type IV. Cells were also treated with an Ang II‐receptor antagonist (candesartan, 10 µM) or angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor (ramiprilat, 100 nM). Thymidine uptake by PSCs increased fourfold with high glucose treatment. Ang II levels and the proportion of Ang II‐positive PSCs were significantly increased after 6 h under high‐glucose conditions. TGF‐β concentrations also increased significantly with high glucose. After 72 h, the expression of CTGF and collagen type IV proteins in high‐glucose cultures increased significantly and this increase was effectively attenuated by the candesartan or the ramiprilat. All together, high glucose induced PSCs proliferation and ECM protein synthesis, and these effects were attenuated by an Ang II‐receptor antagonist. The data suggest that pancreatic inflammation and fibrosis aggravated by hyperglycemia, and Ang II play an important role in this pathogenesis. J. Cell. Biochem. 98: 343–355, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Human Pericytes for Ischemic Heart Repair

Human microvascular pericytes (CD146+/34−/45−/56−) contain multipotent precursors and repair/regenerate defective tissues, notably skeletal muscle. However, their ability to repair the ischemic heart remains unknown. We investigated the therapeutic potential of human pericytes, purified from skeletal muscle, for treating ischemic heart disease and mediating associated repair mechanisms in mice. Echocardiography revealed that pericyte transplantation attenuated left ventricular dilatation and significantly improved cardiac contractility, superior to CD56+ myogenic progenitor transplantation, in acutely infarcted mouse hearts. Pericyte treatment substantially reduced myocardial fibrosis and significantly diminished infiltration of host inflammatory cells at the infarct site. Hypoxic pericyte‐conditioned medium suppressed murine fibroblast proliferation and inhibited macrophage proliferation in vitro. High expression by pericytes of immunoregulatory molecules, including interleukin‐6, leukemia inhibitory factor, cyclooxygenase‐2, and heme oxygenase‐1, was sustained under hypoxia, except for monocyte chemotactic protein‐1. Host angiogenesis was significantly increased. Pericytes supported microvascular structures in vivo and formed capillary‐like networks with/without endothelial cells in three‐dimensional cocultures. Under hypoxia, pericytes dramatically increased expression of vascular endothelial growth factor‐A, platelet‐derived growth factor‐β, transforming growth factor‐β1 and corresponding receptors while expression of basic fibroblast growth factor, hepatocyte growth factor, epidermal growth factor, and angiopoietin‐1 was repressed. The capacity of pericytes to differentiate into and/or fuse with cardiac cells was revealed by green fluorescence protein labeling, although to a minor extent. In conclusion, intramyocardial transplantation of purified human pericytes promotes functional and structural recovery, attributable to multiple mechanisms involving paracrine effects and cellular interactions. STEM CELLS2013;31:305–316
Does History Matter Only When it Matters Little? the Case of City-Indu Try Location

When will an industry subject to agglomeration economies move from an old, high-cost site to a new, low-cost site? It is argued that history, in the form of sunk costs resulting from the operation of many firms at a site, creates a first-mover disadvantage that can prevent relocation. It is demonstrated that developers of industrial parks can partly overcome this inertia through discriminatory pricing of land over time, and empirical evidence is provided that they actually engage in such behavior. It is also shown that other aspects of developer land-sale strategy can be a source of information on the nature of interfirm externalities.
Teacher Unions and the Cost of Public Education

Do teacher unions affect the cost of public education? Based upon data from two national surveys and holding measures of educational output and other factors constant, the authors of this paper find that teacher unions raise costs by 7 to 15 percent. The estimated differential is not reduced by treating unionization as endogenous, by distinguishing between large and small districts, or by distinguishing between districts in large and small cities. The union effect on cost works through teacher compensation, production technology, and factor use, and is borne primarily by taxpayers, with little or no effect on average student achievement.
Critical Thinking Required or Seven Deadly Sins of Information Technology

This paper is not about pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth the Seven Deadly Sins that since medieval times have been castigated by religious teaching. Or rather, it is not explicitly about those things. The failings that I describe here are modern, perhaps even post-modern. They relate to Information Technology and to the ways in which IT can be misrepresented and abused by mortal beings.
The Career Paths of Doctoral Graduates in Austria

Economists and policy makers often emphasise the importance of human capital as a key determinant in the pursuit of economic growth. The highest formal qualification in the educational system is the doctorate, which is attained after the first stage of tertiary education at ISCED 6 level. Doctorate holders play a central role in research and innovation in any industrialised economy, with highly specialised knowledge and research capabilities acquired during their studies. However, their employment depends on the availability of suitable positions on the labour market. Despite huge demand for relevant employment data for this particular group, the available data in most countries is scant. The data collection on Careers of Doctorate Holders (CDH) initiated by EUROSTAT, the OECD and the UNESCO somewhat clarifies the professional situation of doctorate holders. This article presents some key findings of the Austrian CDH data collection carried out in 2006–07. The results are, amongst other things, that in Austria the general employment situation of doctorate holders is relatively good. However, they are faced with a shortage of adequate positions, especially in research. Often doctorate holders have to compromise between the intellectual challenge of working in research and the higher job security outside of research. The employment situation and the sectors of employment depend primarily on the field of science and technology of the doctoral degree.
Designing Self-Reply Questionnaires to Survey Tourists: Issues and Guidelines for Researchers

ABSTRACT The use of self-reply questionnaires as a data collection instrument is common in tourism research. However, while there is a long tradition of use of these instruments in social science research, there has been little discussion of the particular needs and challenges created by tourism situations. This paper blends both theory, practical and experience to suggest a range of issues and guidelines which researchers may find useful in preparing a self-reply questionnaire. A number of technical issues associated with surveys are also addressed. A number of principles and examples of good practice from the literature on survey methods and survey design together with the problems of using this positivist mode of data collection in tourism scenarios are developed.