Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Responsiveness of insulin-induced cardiac sympathetic nerve activation associates with blood pressure regulation in diabetics.

To quantitatively evaluate the effect of insulin on cardiac sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) and analyze clinical factors associated with insulin sensitivity for the regulation of SNA in diabetics, 29 Japanese type 2 diabetics without neuropathy were recruited. A 2-h control study and a 2-h hyperinsulinemic euglycemic glucose clamp study were performed. From the power spectral analysis of R-R intervals on ECG during both studies, two major components, the low-frequency (LF) and the high-frequency component (HF), were obtained. Then %LF was calculated as LF/(LF +HF), and the ratio of the average %LF during the last 30 min of the clamp or the control to the average %LF for the entire time for clamp or control (R-%LF) was used as a marker of changes in SNA. R-%LF was significantly higher during the clamp than in the control (1.07 +/- 0.04 vs. 1.03 +/- 0.03, P < 0.05). High responders (individual R-%LF during clamp > or = mean + 2SD in control) showed a higher basal mean blood pressure (BP) before the clamp (89 +/- 3 vs. 82 +/- 2, P < 0.03) but not a higher glucose infusion rate (GIR) compared with low responders (<mean + 2SD). Furthermore, R-%LF showed a positive correlation with basal mean BP (P < 0.02) but not with GIR. These data demonstrate that an acute insulin load stimulates cardiac SNA, and insulin sensitivity in the regulation of SNA may be associated with BP regulation independently of peripheral insulin sensitivity.
Valuing IPOs q

The use of accounting information in conjunction with comparable "rm multiples is widely recommended for valuing initial public o! erings (IPOs). We "nd that the price}earnings (P/E), market-to-book, and price-to-sales multiples of comparable "rms have only modest predictive ability without further adjustments. This is largely due to the wide variation of these ratios for young "rms within an industry. P/E multiples using forecasted earnings result in much more accurate valuations than multiples using trailing earnings. ( 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
The Fallibility of Diagnostic Tests for Sexually Transmitted Diseases: The Impact on Behavioral and Epidemiologic Studies

Objectives Analysis of sexually transmitted disease (STD) data to identify specific behaviors and risk factors often fails to take into account the misclassification of disease by a less than perfect diagnostic test. The authors consider here how a diagnostic test's performance profile can introduce misclassification and thereby bias measures of association. Methods The authors used hypothetical data relating to diagnostic tests for Chlamydia trachomatis infections and oral contraceptive use to determine odds ratio estimates given a range of sensitivity, specificity, prevalence of infection, and sample size. Results Lower specificity in a diagnostic test can result in an underestimation of a risk factor's association with an infection. This bias is particularly severe in low prevalence populations. Use of a diagnostic test with low specificity also will increase the sample size needed to demonstrate the association and, thus, the cost of such surveys. Conclusions Diagnostics tests for sexually transmitted diseases have less than perfect sensitivity and specificity, which affects the validity of analyses of factors associated with sexually transmitted diseases. Analyses done using low prevalence populations and/or small sample sizes may underestimate the magnitude of effect in retrospective studies and clinical trials of behavioral interventions aimed at reducing sexually transmitted disease risk.
NVA: A Value Addition Measure For Capital Project Evaluation

Corporate financial objective of stockholder wealth maximization and use of discounted cash flow methods for evaluation of capital projects are two of the well-accepted tenets of financial management. Present project evaluation methods, including the Net Present Value (NPV) technique, do not fully meet the stockholder wealth maximization criteria. This paper attempts to scrutinize the relevance of the NPV method in achieving the wealth maximization objective and suggests an alternative value addition measure, named Net Value Added (NVA). In the NPV method, all cash flows pertaining to a project are lumped together and discounted with one single rate, the weighted average cost of capital. The NVA method advocates that a project’s residual (net of its debt servicing) cash flows that belong to stockholders should be classified on the basis of their end-use, viz., equity servicing, capital maintenance, and value creating surplus cash flows. As the risks associated with each of these three stockholders’ cash flows are not the same, they are separately discounted at appropriate rate depending upon the associated risk. Power of time (n) is assigned only to real risk-free rate of return and inflation premium to discount equity servicing and capital maintenance cash flows that are subject to exponential growth over time but not to the risk premium.
How communities can react to crisis: Social capital as a source of empowerment and well-being

Within the post-modern scenario, largely characterized by a sense of diffused social uncertainty and dominated by the ghost of a wide spreading economical and social crisis, social capital, solidarity and social responsibility might represent concrete and efficacious tools to cope with the implications of such cultural drift. The present paper aims at arguing such position by accounting for a repertoire of “good practices” experienced in the south of Italy, which have been read with theoretical and methodological lenses borrowed from social community psychology as well as sociology. The discussion will take into account two case studies (Diffused Guest House and Urban Laboratories) which are both representative in terms of social participation as well as in terms of social capital enhancement. Indeed, all the accounted experiences have shown how the construction of solid and open communities could concretely contribute to enhance social capital as well as to contrast with the diffusion of narrow and conflicting ghetto-communities based on marginality and social uncertainty, which are source for self-segregation, social fragmentation and increasing powerlessness.
Market Making in the Options Markets and the Costs of Discrete Hedge Rebalancing

In this paper, the authors provide empirical evidence consistent with the hypothesis that options market makers face risks in managing inventory that are unique to the options market. In particular, they show that risks associated with the inability to rebalance an option position continuously and uncertainty about the return volatility of the underlying stock each account for a statistically and economically significant proportion of the bid-ask spreads quoted for a sample of Chicago Board Options Exchange options. Copyright 1992 by American Finance Association.
Potential relationship between BK virus and renal cell carcinoma

The objective of the present study was to investigate the potential association between the presence of BK virus (BKV) DNA and mRNA and renal cell carcinoma and bladder transitional cell carcinoma. The formalin‐fixed and paraffin‐embedded tissue samples were obtained from 50 cancer patients with renal cell carcinoma, 40 cancer patients with bladder transitional cell carcinoma, 45 control patients with the benign renal pathology, and from another 25 control patients with benign bladder pathology. The samples were subjected to nested PCR for detection of BKV DNA and real‐time reverse transcription PCR (real‐time RT‐PCR) for determining mRNA levels of BKV. The results of the nested PCR indicated that 23 (14.3%) of 160 samples were positive for BKV DNA. The relationship between the cancer and the presence of BKV DNA was significant (P < 0.05). The BKV DNA positivity was significantly associated with the histological diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma (P = 0.03), but not with that of bladder transitional cell carcinoma. The results of real‐time RT‐PCR showed that the mRNA of BKV VP1 was present in 69.5% of the BKV DNA positive samples. The levels of BKV mRNA were significantly higher in the renal cell cancer samples than in the control samples (P < 0.05). The results of the present study confirm the association between BKV and renal cell cancer. The findings also indicated that the presence of BKV DNA resulted in a fivefold increase in the risk of development of renal cell carcinoma. J. Med. Virol. 85: 1085–1089, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Requirement of Syk‐phospholipase C‐γ2 pathway for phorbol ester‐induced phospholipase D activation in DT40 cells

Treatment of many cell types with phorbol esters stimulates phospholipase D (PLD) activity implying regulation of the enzyme by protein kinase C. Studies of the effects of several protein‐tyrosine kinase (PTK) inhibitors have suggested that PTK(s) play some roles in the phorbol ester‐induced PLD activation, but it remains unclear how and which PTK(s) is involved in this pathway. In this study, we investigated the roles of Syk and other PTKs for the phorbol esters, 12‐O‐tetradecanoylphorbol 13‐acetate (TPA)‐induced PLD activation in K562 and DT40 cells.
Assessing Consumer Preferences For Organic, Eco-Labeled, And Regular Apples

We assess consumer choice of eco-labeled, organic, and regular apples, and identify sociodemographic characteristics affecting the choice among those three alternatives. Eco-labeled apples are less desirable than organic when food safety, the environment, and children's needs are considered. Characteristics that may be expected to positively affect the decision to buy eco-labeled apples relative to regular apples actually have the opposite effect with the inclusion of the organic alternative. When considering all three choices, the eco-labeled product is found to be an intermediate choice among consumers.
INFECTION WITH A RATBORNE HANTAVIRUS IN U.S. RESIDENTS IS CONSISTENTLY ASSOCIATED WITH HYPETENSIVE RENAL DISEASE

A survey of 8080 subjects was conducted in Baltimore, examining the association between infection with hantaviruses and renal disease. Two groups (N = 6060) with no known risk factors were selected to establish a baseline antibody prevalence. Overall, antibody prevalence was 0.25%. Seroprevalence increased with age, without sex- or race-related differences. Patients with proteinuria showed the same patterns of infection but were more commonly seropositive (1.46%) than the reference group (OR, 3.23; P < .05). Infection among dialysis patients with end-stage renal disease was 2.76%, significantly higher than in the reference group (OR, 5.03; P < .05). In the proteinuria and the dialysis groups, hantavirus infection was consistently associated with a diagnosis of hypertensive renal disease. The association was unrelated to other chronic renal disease diagnoses. Overall, 6.5% of patients with end-stage renal disease due to hypertension were seropositive for a hantavirus. These data suggest that hantavirus infection is associated with hypertensive renal disease.
Magnesium and Trace Metals: Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease? Associations Between Blood Levels and Angiographic Findings

A deficiency or an excessive intake of metals with cardiovascular effects is suspected to be involved in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease (CHD) and sudden death. Therefore, In 106 patients undergoing coronary arteriography, serum levels of six essential metals (magnesium, chromium, copper, manganese, selenium and zinc) and whole blood concentrations of two elements without known esetial function (cadmium and lead) were measured using atomic absorption spectrophotometry, including the flameless technique, or neutron activation analysis. The patients were clasifed into three groups according to severity of CHD as assessed by coronary angiography: those without coronary lesions (n = 31) and those with moderate (n = 34) or severe CHD (n = 41). Patients with severe CHD had lower mean serum magnesium and higher serum copper and manganese levels than those without CHD (magnesium, 1.63 ± 0.16 [SD] VS 1.78 ± 0.16 mEq/l, p < 0.005; copper, 1.39 ± 0.22 vs 1.24 ± 0.24 mg/l, p < 0.05; manganese, 1.30 ± 0.43 vs 1.05 ± 0.40 μg/l, p < 0.05). In contrast, metal concentrations in patients with moderate CHD did not differ significantly from control values. There was no significant association between prevalence and severity of CHD and the other elements investigated. Analysis of associations between metal concentrations and clinical characteristics revealed markedly elevated blood cadmium levels in cigarette smokers compared with nonsmokers (2.49 ± 1.72 [n = 28] vs 0.43 ± 0.22 Mg/1 [n = 181, p < 0.001). A correlation was noted between cadmium levels and the number of cigarettes smoked per day (r = 0.725, p < 0.001). Our results suggest that a deficiency of magnesium but not of the other metals studied may be present in patients with severe CHD; elevated serum copper and manganese levels do not play a role in the development of CHD in the sample of patients studied; and cigarette smoking may be associated with increased serum cadmium levels, which may explain in part the contribution of smoking to the risk of sudden death in patients with CHD.
I/Q imbalance compensation in precoded MIMO-OFDMA systems

We study the selection of precoders for transmission on mirror carrier pairs in a multiple input multiple output orthogonal frequency division multiple access system, where transmitter and receiver I/Q imbalance cause inter-carrier interference. In I/Q aware precoding, the precoders on mirror carriers are jointly selected. Viable selection schemes for a matched filter receiver are addressed. We compare schemes that favour one of the mirror carriers to iterative line and gradient searches, maximizing the instantaneous sum rate, as well as to an I/Q interference alignment approach. It turns out that the I/Q-aware precoding significantly improves performance at high signal-to-noise ratio regime where I/Q interference dominates.
Mobile Service Micro-containers for Cloud Environments

Study of mobility on Cloud infrastructures and platforms shows that they present limitation related to deployment and running of service-based applications that are built from heterogeneous services (heterogeneous programming languages, communication protocols and/or hosting frameworks). In this paper, we present mobile service-containers that are able to host services on the Cloud and migrate from one virtual machine to another independently of the programming languages and/or bindings of the deployed services. Mobile micro-containers are extensions from our already developed micro-containers for hosting service-based applications on the Cloud. Several approaches were considered and discussed to provide mobility for service micro-containers. Experiments are conducted to compare these approaches but also to determine the overhead of the added mobility.
Cell-to-Cell Contact with Hepatitis C Virus-Infected Cells Reduces Functional Capacity of Natural Killer Cells

ABSTRACT The distinct feature of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a high incidence of chronicity. The reason for chronic HCV infection has been actively investigated, and impairment of innate and adaptive immune responses against HCV is proposed as a plausible cause. Whereas functional impairment of HCV-specific T cells is well characterized, the role and functional status of natural killer (NK) cells in each phase of HCV infection are still elusive. We therefore investigated whether direct interaction between NK cells and HCV-infected cells modulates NK cell function. HCV-permissive human hepatoma cell lines were infected with cell culture-generated HCV virions and cocultured with primary human NK cells. Cell-to-cell contact between NK cells and HCV-infected cells reduced NK cells' capacity to degranulate and lyse target cells, especially in the CD56dim NK cell subset, which is characterized by low-density surface expression of CD56. The decrease in degranulation capacity was correlated with downregulated expression of NK cell-activating receptors, such as NKG2D and NKp30, on NK cells. The ability of NK cells to produce and secrete gamma interferon (IFN-γ) also diminished after exposure to HCV-infected cells. The decline of IFN-γ production was consistent with the reduction of NK cell degranulation. In conclusion, cell-to-cell contact with HCV-infected cells negatively modulated functional capacity of NK cells, and the inhibition of NK cell function was associated with downregulation of NK-activating receptors on NK cell surfaces. These observations suggest that direct cell-to-cell interaction between NK cells and HCV-infected hepatocytes may impair NK cell function in vivo and thereby contribute to the establishment of chronic infection.
Still Silent – Political Market Segmentation and the Case of Ethnic Women

This paper considers not only the nature of segmentation, but in particular political segmentation. It suggests that currently political parties utilise a simplistic type of segmentation and that they need to be more aware of the complexities of the electorate. In particular, the political parties need to be aware of the preferences of those who make up 52% of the population – women. The literature on attracting women voters is explored indicating that women have different perceptions of politics and politicians. To illustrate the point a discussion group with black and Asian women is presented. The campaigns and the results of the 2005 election are also explored to further illustrate the point. The paper concludes that the issues of importance to politicians are not in line with the aspirations and requirements of the female voters.
On the Interpretation of the Kemp/Wan Theorem

This note considers the well-known theorem of M. Kemp and H. Wan concerning the welfare gains from the formation of customs unions. The author argues that the theorem may not imply that a union can unilaterally guarantee a welfare gain if nonmembers set tariffs optimally against the union. He provides an example in which a customs union cannot improve the joint welfare of members. Copyright 1995 by Royal Economic Society.
Organizational Diversity Management and Job Satisfaction among public servants

The world-wide shift in demographics, changing immigration patterns and social change are all factors that affect the work environment. (Brevis & Vrba, 2014: 194). The demands of globalization, technological innovation, economic imperatives, ecological sensitivity and the need for sustainable development are the challenges that business organizations worldwide face in order to survive. From the human perspective the challenges are about socio-political transformation and especially about managing and celebrating diversity (Magretta, 1999). The diversity aspect of the topic is an important part of the economic landscape in post-apartheid South Africa where phrases like “economic freedom” are voiced from labor unions and political figures alike. These calls from the likes of Julius Malema, the then leader of the African National Congress Youth League, Zwelinzima Vavi, the General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and Matthews Phosa, Treasurer-General of the African National Congress are often the focus of news reports (ANCYL march – Day 2, 2011; Phosa calls for economic freedom, 2012; Vavi, 2012). Almost half the organizations reported that the biggest challenge facing organizations over the next ten years is obtaining human capital and optimizing their human capital investments (HR Magazine. 55, no.11 (November 2010): 80) in Bohlander & Snell (2013: 21). Bohlander & Snell (2013: 21) further answer the question of why is this so? Changes in the demographic makeup of employees, such as their ages, education levels, and ethnicities, are part of the reason why. In this current study, a population study of 50 public servants in a selected public sector industry was used. Data was collected through the administration of the organizational diversity questionnaire and job satisfaction questionnaire. Individuals in the population sample were instructed to complete a questionnaire as a measuring instrument. The copies of ODQ and JSQ were distributed among public servants at a selected public service department.
Retraction: Capital Market Pressure, Disclosure Frequency-Induced Earnings/Cash Flow Conflict, and Managerial Myopia

We examine the effects of increased capital market pressure and disclosure frequency‐induced earnings/cash flow conflict on myopic behavior. In our experiments, experienced financial managers choose between projects where a conflict exists between near‐term earnings and total cash flow. Managers more often choose projects that they believe will maximize short‐term earnings (and price) as opposed to total cash flows in response to increased capital market pressure resulting from a pending stock issuance, holding constant agency frictions and other stock market pressures. When faced with increased capital market pressure, changes in disclosure frequency cause managers to behave more or less myopically depending on the impact of the change on the pattern of earnings and the resulting earnings/cash flow conflict. Our study provides insights into managers' beliefs about stock market pressures, mandatory reporting, and the availability of alternative communications channels, and contributes to literature on man.
Interleukin-1β Suppresses Retinoid Transactivation of Two Hepatic Transporter Genes Involved in Bile Formation*

Cytokines have been implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory cholestasis. This is due to transcriptional down-regulation of hepatic transporters including the Na+/bile acid cotransporter, ntcp, and the multispecific organic anion exporter, mrp2. We have recently shown that ntcp suppression by lipopolysaccharidein vivo is caused by down-regulation of transactivators including the previously uncharacterized Footprint B-binding protein. Both the ntcp FpB element and the mrp2 promoter contain potential retinoid-response elements. We hypothesized that retinoic acid receptor (RAR) and retinoid X receptor (RXR) heterodimers would activate these two genes and that cytokines that reduce bile flow might do so by suppressing nuclear levels of these transactivators. Retinoid transactivation and interleukin-1β down-regulation of thentcp and mrp2 promoters were mapped to RXRα:RARα-response elements. Gel mobility shift assays demonstrated specific binding of RXRα:RARα heterodimers to the ntcpand mrp2 retinoid-response elements. The RXRα:RARα complex was down-regulated by IL-1β in HepG2 cells. An unexpected finding was that an adjacent CAAT-enhancer-binding protein element was required for maximal transactivation of the ntcp promoter by RXRα:RARα. Taken together, these studies demonstrate regulation of two hepatobiliary transporter genes by RXRα:RARα and describe a mechanism which likely contributes to their down-regulation during inflammation.