Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consequences of prenatal growth retardation on arterial properties

In the embryo, hypoxemia causes redistribution of cardiac output from the periphery toward the heart and the brain. In view of this, we investigated developmental changes in the contractile and relaxing properties of the peripheral femoral artery (Fem) and the more central carotid artery (Car) at 0.7. 0.8. and 0.9 of the chicken embryo incubation time. Isolated arteries were studied in myographs and were exposed to norepinephrine or phenylephrine. High K*(125 mM) and electrical field stimulation (0.25-16 Hz) were used to induce receptor-independent and ncurogenic contractions. Relaxing responses to ACH were evaluated in the absence and presence of the nitric oxide (NO) synthase inhibitor NJ^-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (LNAMK) and before and after endothelium removal. a,-Adrenergic contractile responses increased in a time-dependent manner and were significantly larger in Fem than in Car. Ncurogenic contractions and adrenergic nerves could only be demonstrated in Fem at 0.9 incubation. AC'H caused relaxation in both Fem and Car at 0.7. 0.8. and 0.9 incubation. The NO-indepcndent part of the relaxation was more pronounced in Car than in Fem at all developmental stages. We conclude that the chicken embryo is a useful model to investigate the development of vasomotor control and vascular heterogeneity. The observed regional vascular differences may contribute to cardiac output redistribution during hypoxia in the embryo and might result from endolhelial and neurogenic influences on vascular smooth muscle differentiation. JtracrhiQ'qf>MAriwmr arwrws | 45
Concomitant chemoradiation versus neoadjuvant chemotherapy in locally advanced cervical carcinoma: results from two consecutive phase II studies.

BACKGROUND Randomized studies comparing induction chemotherapy followed by surgical resection with radiation alone found that the neoadjuvant approach produces better results. So far, this latter modality has not been compared with standard concomitant chemoradiation. The objective of this report was to compare the results of two consecutive phase II studies: neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery or chemoradiation for the unresectable cases versus standard cisplatin-based chemoradiation. PATIENTS AND METHODS From February 1999 to July 1999, 41 patients with cervical carcinoma, stages IB2-IIIB, were treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Treatment consisted of three 21-day courses of cisplatin 100 mg/m(2) on day 1 and gemcitabine 1000 mg/m(2) on days 1 and 8, followed by either surgery or concomitant chemoradiation for the non-operable cases. From August 1999 to December 1999, an equal number of patients having comparable clinicopathological characteristics were treated with six weekly courses of cisplatin 40 mg/m(2) during standard pelvic radiation. RESULTS A total of 82 patients were analyzed. Both groups were similar with regard to age, histology, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage, tumor size, pretreatment hemoglobin levels, parametrial infiltration and performance status. In the neoadjuvant arm the overall response rate to induction chemotherapy was 95% (95% confidence interval 88% to 100%). Twenty-three patients had surgery and 14 underwent chemoradiation. In the definitive chemoradiation study, 38 patients completed treatment, the median number of cisplatin courses was six for a dose intensity of 33 mg/m(2)/week. Doses to points A and B were 85 Gy (range 68-95) and 55 Gy (range 51-65), respectively. Chemoradiation was delivered in 44.6 (range 28-113) days. Complete response rates after all treatment were similar: 97% and 87% in the neoadjuvant and chemoradiation groups, respectively. At a median follow-up of 28 (range 2-33) and 24 (range 3-30) months, respectively, there were no differences in overall survival. To date, 15 and 13 patients in the neoadjuvant and chemoradiation groups, respectively, have died of disease (P = 0.8567). CONCLUSIONS The results of this non-randomized comparison suggest that induction chemotherapy followed by surgery or chemoradiation is at least as effective in terms of response and survival as standard cisplatin-based chemoradiation. A randomized study is needed to confirm these findings.
Empowerment, the Cornerstone of Quality: Empowering Management in Innovative Organizations in the 1990s

Quality empowering management is to the future of renewed worldwide competitiveness what quality control, participative management programmes and zero defects were to quality improvement. Empowerment holds that promoting employee involvement empowers workers to perform as whole, thinking human beings. Empowerment is the glue by which the elements of customer focus, quality process and products, continuous improvements, self‐managing teams, quality measurement, and utilization of the total workforce abilities are held together. Self‐managing teams are one of the major keys in the innovative organization to solving complex problems, increasing productivity, and heightening creativity. For most organizations and managers, quality empowering management is a new responsibility and a radical change in style of management and change in culture requiring new methods and systems.
Toward the Elimination of Substandard Shipping: The Report of the International Commission on Shipping

Despite efforts made by governments and international organizations like IMO to tighten regulatory measures, substandard ships and shipping-related practices continue to flourish. Serious ship accidents continue to occur and reports on abuse of seafarers are on the rise as the industry becomes more and more competitive and crews become increasingly multinational. The independent four-member International Commission on Shipping has conducted an in-depth study of the current practices of governments and shipping industry in the light of existing international rules and standards, and presented its findings with a number of recommendations to improve the situation. This article summarises the highlights of the Commission's report focusing mainly on those issues which are related to legal and institutional aspects.
Chromosomal radiosensitivity in G2-phase lymphocytes as an indicator of cancer predisposition.

Sanford et al. (Int. J. Radiat. Biol. 55, 963-981, 1989) have reported that G2-phase cells from many heritable cancer-prone conditions exhibit higher yields of X-ray-induced chromosome damage than those found in the majority of healthy controls. We have applied their protocol to lymphocytes of a group of control and cancer-prone individuals to see if we could confirm these observations. For control donors we observed higher aberration yields, different kinetics and more interexperiment variability than found by Sanford et al. These differences could not be attributed to unavoidable minor variations in procedures (e.g. serum batches, glassware washing methods), but the difference in X-ray qualities used in the two laboratories may have made a small contribution to the discrepancies. We attribute some of our experimental variability to the fact that, to varying extents in different experiments, centrifugation of cells prior to irradiation can slow down the progression of cells into metaphase and that cells can continue to repair during the harvesting procedure (centrifugation and hypotonic treatment). We have applied the assay to cases of ataxia telangiectasia (AT, homozygotes and heterozygotes), xeroderma pigmentosum (homozygotes and heterozygotes), familial adenomatous polyposis and the syndromes Li-Fraumeni, basal cell nevus, Down's and Fanconi's but have been unable to discriminate between these groups and controls except for AT homozygotes. By including a control sample in parallel with samples from cancer-prone groups we found a significant difference in mean aberration yields between controls and AT homozygotes and heterozygotes, but not for the other groups. Since technical features could explain the discrepancies between our laboratories, we have devised our own G2-phase assay which appears to be giving promising results.
Azimilide dihydrochloride: a new class III anti-arrhythmic agent

Azimilide dihydrochloride (Stedicor™) is a new class III anti-arrhythmic agent that is being developed by Proctor & Gamble to treat supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias. Development of this agent is being undertaken due to the high prevalence of atrial fibrillation and the lack of satisfactory therapy for this arrhythmia, along with the desire to develop therapy to reduce the risk of life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias in patients following myocardial infarction. The mechanism of action of azimilide is to block both the slowly conducting (IKs) and rapidly conducting (IKr) rectifier potassium currents in cardiac cells. This differs from other class III agents that block IKr exclusively or in combination with sodium, calcium, or transient outward (Ito) potassium current channels. Azimilide is distinguished by a relative lack of reverse use-dependence, excellent oral absorption, no need for dose titration, an option for out-patient initiation, no need for adjustment associated with renal or liver failure and a lack of interaction with warfarin or digoxin. It carries some risk of torsade de pointes and rarely, neutropoenia. Azimilide has shown dose-related efficacy in prolonging the time to recurrence of atrial fibrillation. A large trial examining the impact of azimilide on mortality in high-risk patients following myocardial infarction has completed enrolment and should yield data in the next couple of years and further studies are planned. Even if this trial fails to show a survival benefit, a neutral effect on mortality will make the agent attractive for atrial arrhythmias.
The Divisive Issue of Comparable Worth

The practice of segregating certain jobs by sex, a long-accepted tradition in many in dustries, has recently come under fire from civil-rights proponents who maintain that jobs should be compared across categories when wages are determined. Their cause was fueled by a 1981 Supreme Court ruling that opened the way for discrimination suits based on job comparability. As more women seek to close the male-female wage gap through the courts, hospitality firms present a highly visible target for comparable-worth advocates
EMERGENCE OF INFLAMMATORY ALVEOLAR MACROPHAGES DURING REJECTION OR INFECTION AFTER LUNG TRANSPLANTATION

Local activation of macrophages may play an important role in immune complications following lung transplantation. To document such a phenomenon, we have investigated the possible changes of alveolar macrophage surface antigen expression after lung transplantation. Using immunocytofluorometry, we have analyzed the phenotype of alveolar macrophages from 41 bron-choalveolar lavage fluids obtained from 19 lung transplant recipients displaying various complications. The strong expression of HLA-DR observed on almost all alveolar macrophages was similar among groups I (no complication), II (minimal acute rejection), and III (mild to severe acute rejection), but was enhanced in group IV (bronchial infection) (P<0.03). We observed no significant variation in the monocyte lineage CD14 antigen expression among the 4 groups, and about 83% of alveolar macrophages expressed this marker strongly. Membrane expression of the 27E10 antigen that characterizes infiltrating macrophages in acute inflammatory lesions was significantly higher during mild to severe rejection episodes than in controls (P<0.02) and during bronchial infections (P<0.05) but not during minimal rejection. Double staining experiments confirmed that 27E10-positive cells in groups III and IV belonged to the macrophage lineage. In addition, the expression of the 27E10 antigen on cultured alveolar macrophages was found to be increased after stimulation by bacterial lipopolysaccharide or IFN-γ.
Inter-reader variability in follicular lymphoma grading: Conventional and digital reading

Context: Pathologists grade follicular lymphoma (FL) cases by selecting 10, random high power fields (HPFs), counting the number of centroblasts (CBs) in these HPFs under the microscope and then calculating the average CB count for the whole slide. Previous studies have demonstrated that there is high inter-reader variability among pathologists using this methodology in grading. Aims: The objective of this study was to explore if newly available digital reading technologies can reduce inter-reader variability. Settings and Design: In this study, we considered three different reading conditions (RCs) in grading FL: (1) Conventional (glass-slide based) to establish the baseline, (2) digital whole slide viewing, (3) digital whole slide viewing with selected HPFs. Six board-certified pathologists from five different institutions read 17 FL slides in these three different RCs. Results: Although there was relative poor consensus in conventional reading, with lack of consensus in 41.2% of cases, which was similar to previously reported studies; we found that digital reading with pre-selected fields improved the inter-reader agreement, with only 5.9% lacking consensus among pathologists. Conclusions: Digital whole slide RC resulted in the worst concordance among pathologists while digital whole slide reading selected HPFs improved the concordance. Further studies are underway to determine if this performance can be sustained with a larger dataset and our automated HPF and CB detection algorithms can be employed to further improve the concordance.
Four‐Hour Infusions of Synthetic Atrial Natriuretic Peptide in Normal Volunteers

Two doses of synthetic atrial natriuretic peptide (0.5 and 5.0 μg/min) and its vehicle were infused intravenously for 4 hours in eight salt-loaded normal volunteers, arid the effect on blood pressure, heart rate, renal hemodynamics, solute excretion, and secretion of vasoactive hormones was studied. The 0.5/oig/min infusion did not alter blood pressure or heart rate, whereas the 5.0 μg/min infusion significantly reduced the mean pressure by 20/9 mm Hg after 2.5 to 3 hours and increased the heart rate slightly. Inulin clearance was not significantly changed, but the mean p-aminohippurate clearance fell by 13 and 32% with the lower and higher doses, respectively. Urinary excretion of sodium and chloride increased slightly with the lower dose. With the higher dose, a marked increase in urinary excretion of sodium, chloride, and calcium was observed, reaching a peak during the second hour of the infusion. Potassium and phosphate excretion did not change significantly. A brisk increase in urine flow rate and fractional water excretion was seen only during the first hour of the high-dose infusion. Signs and symptoms of hypotension were observed in two subjects. No change in plasma renin activity, angiotensih II, or aldosterone was observed during either infusion, but a marked increase occurred after discontinuation of the high-dose infusion. In conclusion, the 5 μg/min infusion induced a transient diuretic effect, delayed maximal natriuretic activity, and a late fall in blood pressure, with no change in inulin clearance but a dose-related decrease in p-aminohippurate clearance. Despite large amounts of sodium excreted arid blood pressure reduction, no coiinterregulatory changes were observed in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system or plasma vasopressin levels during the infusion.
Do developing countries need Education laws to manage its system or are ethics and a market- driven approach sufficient? its system or are ethnic and a market-approach sufficient?

The Education sector is one of the fundamental industries as described by the recent concept of “state business,” which is also the most critical player in making other sectors of a state functional. The criteria of Education governance and legislations as well as their schemata have evolved out of historical social practices. The interpretation of social events is guided and constrained by the prevailing rationality which itself reflects the dominant constellation of power. Since its inception, the Education sector has been informally governed by the ethics. Before this, Education especially in developing world was provided on a very small scale through Guru-Shiso provision and was not a major concern of public policy. However, its recent expansion in the early 1950’s has made it a major cause for concern for developing world. The public policies currently available, particularly with regard to governance and regulatory control, are aimed at governing Education as a whole and Education itself lacks adequate rules and regulations. Now the question arises: is public policy, formal and informal governance, as well as regulatory approaches enough to control, monitor and to guide the Education sector while it experiences a numbers of challenges and dynamisms? Or is there a need for Education law? Law is considered as one of the fundamental tools for governance and regulatory control and once it is used; there will be little hope to control the sector with value and ethics. Therefore, the use of law is frequently unwelcome, since it is the method used when no other alternatives are available. With the phenomenal growth and challenges in Education, we need to revisit governance and regulatory control for the Education system. This article examines this issue, with a view at seeking the answer to the question: is there a need for Education laws or are ethics, value, policy and market-driven theory enough? Key words: Law, policy, ethics, value, governance, legislation, Education management, developing world.
Financial Deepening and Monetary Growth with Endogenous Liquidity Constraints

This paper sets up a monetary growth model with an endogenous liquidity constraint on consumption, and uses it to analyze the economy's long-run response to money growth. We find that a rise in the rate of money growth will increase the consumer's financial deepening, thereby leading to a reduction in the liquidity constraint on consumption and a rise in the consumption-capital ratio. With such an adjustment, the representative household can borrow more and raise its consumption. As a consequence, a rise in the rate of money growth will deter the savings rate and the economic growth rate.
Multisite accelerometry for sleep and wake classification in children

Actigraphy is a useful alternative to the gold standard polysomnogram for non-invasively measuring sleep and wakefulness. However, it is unable to accurately assess sleep fragmentation due to its inability to differentiate restless sleep from wakefulness and quiet wake from sleep. This presents significant limitations in the assessment of sleep-related breathing disorders where sleep fragmentation is a common symptom. We propose that this limitation may be caused by hardware constraints and movement representation techniques. Our objective was to determine if multisite tri-axial accelerometry improves sleep and wake classification. Twenty-four patients aged 6–15 years (median: 8 years, 16 male) underwent a diagnostic polysomnogram while simultaneously recording motion from the left wrist and index fingertip, upper thorax and left ankle and great toe using a custom accelerometry system. Movement was quantified using several features and two feature selection techniques were employed to select optimal features for restricted feature set sizes. A heuristic was also applied to identify movements during restless sleep. The sleep and wake classification performance was then assessed and validated against the manually scored polysomnogram using discriminant analysis. Tri-axial accelerometry measured at the wrist significantly improved the wake detection when compared to uni-axial accelerometry (specificity at 85% sensitivity: 71.3(14.2)% versus 55.2(24.7)%, p < 0.01). Multisite accelerometry significantly improved the performance when compared to the single wrist placement (specificity at 85% sensitivity: 82.1(12.5)% versus 71.3(14.2)%, p < 0.05). Our results indicate that multisite accelerometry offers a significant performance benefit which could be further improved by analysing movement in raw multisite accelerometry data.
The Effects of Capital Mobility, Trade Openness, and Democracy on Social Spending in Latin America, 1980–1999

Empirical studies measuring the impact of globalization on social spending have appeared recently in leading journals. This study seeks to improve upon previous work by (1) employing a more sophisticated and comprehensive measure of financial openness; (2) using a more accurate measure of trade openness based on purchasing power parities; and (3) relying on social spending data that are more complete than those used by previous studies on Latin America. Our estimates suggest that several empirical patterns reported in previous work deserve a second look. We find that trade openness has a positive association with education and social security expenditures, that financial openness does not constrain government outlays for social programs, and that democracy has a strong positive association with social spending, particularly on items that bolster human capital formation.
Boards, CEO Entrenchment and the Cost of Capital

Existing research on chief executive officer (CEO) turnover focuses on CEO ability. This paper argues that board ability is also important. Corporate boards are reluctant to replace CEOs, as this makes financing expensive by sending a negative signal about board ability. Entrenchment in this model does not result from CEO power, or from agency problems. Entrenchment is mitigated when there are more assets-in-place relative to investment opportunities. The paper also compares public and private equity. Private ownership eliminates CEO entrenchment, but market signals improve investment decisions. Finally, the model implies that board choice in publicly listed firms will be conservative.
From Talk to Walk: The Emergence of Human Rights Responsibilities for Corporations at International Law

The economic power of transnational corporations (TNCs) is undoubted. They are the driving agents of the global economy, exercising dominant control over global trade, investment, and technology transfers. Flowing directly from such positions of economic influence, TNCs also manage to exercise considerable political leverage in both domestic and international spheres. The social power of TNCs is, however, a different matter. For although their social power too is enormous and global, it has been, until recently, far less obvious, little acknowledged, and minimally regulated. TNCs have the ability significantly to affect the nature, form, and extent of social relations. By virtue, specifically, of their economic and political muscle, TNCs are uniquely positioned to affect, positively and negatively, the level of enjoyment of human rights. On these bases there are abundant reasons why the legal regulation of TNCs' activities at all levels of impact is sought, ought to be sought, and is sometimes achieved. This article is concerned with developing the arguments for, and designing the architecture of, such regulation with respect to the human rights obligations of corporations at the level of international law.
Changing patterns of migration to Australia's Northern Territory : evidence of new forms of escalator migration to frontier regions?

Building on Fielding’s idea of escalator regions as places where young people migrate (often temporarily) to get rapid career advancement, this paper proposes a new perspective on 'escalator migration' as it applies to frontier or remote regions in particular. Life events, their timing and iterations have changed in the thirty years since Fielding first coined the term ‘escalator region’, with delayed adulthood, multiple career working lives, population ageing and different dynamics between men and women in the work and family sphere. The object of this paper is to examine recent migration trends to Australia's Northern Territory for evidence of new or emerging 'escalator migrants'.