Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alcohol alters DNA methylation patterns and inhibits neural stem cell differentiation.

BACKGROUND Potential epigenetic mechanisms underlying fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) include alcohol-induced alterations of methyl metabolism, resulting in aberrant patterns of DNA methylation and gene expression during development. Having previously demonstrated an essential role for epigenetics in neural stem cell (NSC) development and that inhibiting DNA methylation prevents NSC differentiation, here we investigated the effect of alcohol exposure on genome-wide DNA methylation patterns and NSC differentiation. METHODS Neural stem cells in culture were treated with or without a 6-hour 88 mM ("binge-like") alcohol exposure and examined at 48 hours, for migration, growth, and genome-wide DNA methylation. The DNA methylation was examined using DNA-methylation immunoprecipitation followed by microarray analysis. Further validation was performed using Independent Sequenom analysis. RESULTS Neural stem cell differentiated in 24 to 48 hours with migration, neuronal expression, and morphological transformation. Alcohol exposure retarded the migration, neuronal formation, and growth processes of NSC, similar to treatment with the methylation inhibitor 5-aza-cytidine. When NSC departed from the quiescent state, a genome-wide diversification of DNA methylation was observed-that is, many moderately methylated genes altered methylation levels and became hyper- and hypomethylated. Alcohol prevented many genes from such diversification, including genes related to neural development, neuronal receptors, and olfaction, while retarding differentiation. Validation of specific genes by Sequenom analysis demonstrated that alcohol exposure prevented methylation of specific genes associated with neural development [cut-like 2 (cutl2), insulin-like growth factor 1 (Igf1), epidermal growth factor-containing fibulin-like extracellular matrix protein 1 (Efemp1), and SRY-box-containing gene 7 (Sox 7)]; eye development, lens intrinsic membrane protein 2 (Lim 2); the epigenetic mark Smarca2 (SWI/SNF related, matrix associated, actin dependent regulator of chromatin, subfamily a, member 2); and developmental disorder [DiGeorge syndrome critical region gene 2 (Dgcr2)]. Specific sites altered by DNA methylation also correlated with transcription factor binding sites known to be critical for regulating neural development. CONCLUSION The data indicate that alcohol prevents normal DNA methylation programming of key neural stem cell genes and retards NSC differentiation. Thus, the role of DNA methylation in FAS warrants further investigation.
Treatment of Philadelphia chromosome‐positive acute lymphoblastic leukaemia with imatinib combined with a paediatric‐based protocol

Although the combination of tyrosine kinase inhibitors with chemotherapy is widely used for young adults with Philadelphia chromosome positive‐acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (Ph+ ALL), the outcome and safety of this combination using intensive paediatric‐based protocols has not been well described. The clinical course of 32 adults age 18–60 years with Ph+ ALL treated with a paediatric‐based protocol plus imatinib was evaluated. The complete response rate was 94%. Grade 3–4 infections, neuropathy, myopathy and liver function abnormalities were common, resulting in major treatment delays and dose reductions, and declines in performance status (physical deconditioning), particularly in patients aged 41–60 years. Median and 3‐year overall survival (OS) was 40·7 months and 53%, respectively, and median and 3‐year even‐free survival (EFS) was 30·1 months and 50%, respectively. OS and EFS were inferior in deconditioned patients. Of 16 patients who underwent haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in first complete remission, six died of non‐relapse complications. There was no significant difference in OS and EFS between transplanted and non‐transplanted patients, based on an intention‐to‐treat and time‐to‐donor identification analysis. The combination of imatinib with a paediatric‐based regimen in adults produced high response rates, but was associated with considerable toxicity and high non‐relapse mortality post‐HSCT.
Crude Oil and the Macroeconomy: Tests of Some Popular Notions: A Note.

Perhaps no other economic events in the post-World War II era have generated as much attention as the series of crude oil price shocks that have jolted the world economy since the OPEC boycott of 1973. A tremendous amount of space in the popular and professional literature has been devoted to analyzing the impacts of these shocks on the developed economies and the adjustments these shocks have induced. One residual of this literature has been a general impression that since 1973 the functional relationship between crude oil prices and the developed macroeconomies has been dramatically and fundamentally altered. Yet, to our knowledge, no one has formally tested this impression. Recent evidence of Hamilton (1983) suggests that crude oil prices had a strong impact on the U.S. business cycle well before 1973. Further, while textbook treatments of oil price shocks tend to highlight cost-push inflationary effects, the research of Berndt and Wood (1975, 1979) and Wilcox (1983) indicates the net complementarity between energy and capital in the U.S. economy is quite strong both before and after 1973. Thus, oil price shocks may have stronger real effects than generally believed. In this paper, we formally test three popular notions associated with the so-called
Public Debt, the Terms of Trade and Welfare in an Overlapping Generations Model with Lifetime Uncertainty

This article reconsiders the relationship between government debt and welfare in a two-country overlapping-generations model with lifetime uncertainty and international product differentiation. It has recently been proposed that a higher steady-state debt level may be welfare-enhancing in this setting. It is pointed out that this proposition does not adequately account for the effect of debt policy on individual agents' intertemporal consumption profiles. While a higher debt may indeed raise aggregate steady-state consumption, the lifetime utility of all steady-state cohorts will actually , unless the elasticity of substitution between domestic output and imports is extremely low. These particular results illustrate a more general caveat pertaining to any normative policy analysis in settings with overlapping generations of intertemporally optimizing agents: Attempts to draw welfare inferences on the basis of comparisons of aggregate consumption paths can be misleading.
An economic evaluation of a systems-based strategy to expedite surgical treatment of hip fractures.

BACKGROUND A recent systematic review has indicated that mortality within the first year after hip fracture repair increases significantly if the time from hospital admission to surgery exceeds forty-eight hours. Further investigation has shown that avoidable, systems-based factors contribute substantially to delay in surgery. In this study, an economic evaluation was conducted to determine the cost-effectiveness of a hypothetical scenario in which resources are allocated to expedite surgery so that it is performed within forty-eight hours after admission. METHODS We created a decision tree to tabulate incremental cost and quality-adjusted life years in order to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of two potential strategies. Several factors, including personnel cost, patient volume, percentage of patients receiving surgical treatment within forty-eight hours, and mortality associated with delayed surgery, were considered. One strategy focused solely on expediting preoperative evaluation by employing personnel to conduct the necessary diagnostic tests and a hospitalist physician to conduct the medical evaluation outside of regular hours. The second strategy added an on-call team (nurse, surgical technologist, and anesthesiologist) to staff an operating room outside of regular hours. RESULTS The evaluation-focused strategy was cost-effective, with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $2318 per quality-adjusted life year, and became cost-saving (a dominant therapeutic approach) if =93% of patients underwent expedited surgery, the hourly cost of retaining a diagnostic technologist on call was <$20.80, or <15% of the hospitalist's salary was funded by the strategy. The second strategy, which added an on-call surgical team, was also cost-effective, with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $43,153 per quality-adjusted life year. Sensitivity analysis revealed that this strategy remained cost-effective if the odds ratio of one-year mortality associated with delayed surgery was >1.28, =88% of patients underwent early surgery, or =339.9 patients with a hip fracture were treated annually. CONCLUSIONS The results of our study suggest that systems-based solutions to minimize operative delay, such as a dedicated on-call support team, can be cost-effective. Additionally, an evaluation-focused intervention can be cost-saving, depending on its success rate and associated personnel cost.
Microcredit in Theory and Practice: Using Randomized Credit Scoring for Impact Evaluation

A randomized controlled trial reveals both expected and surprising effects of microcredit. Microcredit institutions spend billions of dollars fighting poverty by making small loans primarily to female entrepreneurs. Proponents argue that microcredit mitigates market failures, spurs micro-enterprise growth, and boosts borrowers’ well-being. We tested these hypotheses with the use of an innovative, replicable experimental design that randomly assigned individual liability microloans (of $225 on average) to 1601 individuals in the Philippines through credit scoring. After 11 to 22 months, we found evidence consistent with unmet demand at the current price (a roughly 60% annualized interest rate): Net borrowing increased in the treatment group relative to controls. However, the number of business activities and employees in the treatment group decreased relative to controls, and subjective well-being declined slightly. We also found little evidence that treatment effects were more pronounced for women. However, we did find that microloans increase ability to cope with risk, strengthen community ties, and increase access to informal credit. Thus, microcredit here may work, but through channels different from those often hypothesized by its proponents.
Relationship of abnormal vaginal flora, proinflammatory cytokines and idiopathic infertility in women undergoing IVF.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the prevalence of bacterial vaginosis (BV) and abnormal bacterial vaginal flora in an infertile population and correlate with cervical cytokine production and in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcome. STUDY DESIGN In a blinded study, 331 asymptomatic IVF patients were evaluated for BV, abnormal vaginal flora and cervical cytokine production (interleukin 1 beta [IL-1 beta] and IL-8) on the day of oocyte retrieval. All patients received tetracycline prophylaxis at the time of oocyte retrieval. RESULTS BV was identified in 4.2% (14/331) of the patients. Patients with idiopathic infertility were more likely to have BV than were women with other causes of infertility (P = .02 vs. male factor, P = .03 vs. tubal factor and P < .01 vs. endometriosis-associated infertility). Patients with abnormal vaginal flora had higher cervical IL-1 beta and IL-8 cytokine levels as compared to patients with normal vaginal flora. IL-1 beta and IL-8 levels in the study subjects correlated highly. No differences were detected in IVF outcome parameters based on the vaginal flora determined at the time of retrieval. CONCLUSION Abnormal vaginal flora, including that causing BV, is associated with elevated cervical levels of IL-1 beta and IL-8. The induction of proinflammatory cytokines by an altered vaginal ecosystem may be a previously unrecognized cause of idiopathic infertility.
The abundance of Zoogloea ramigera in sewage treatment plants

Zoogloea ramigera has long been considered the typical activated sludge bacterium responsible for the formation of activated sludge flocs. On the basis of the results of a comparative sequence analysis, we designed three oligonucleotide probes complementary to characteristic regions of the 16S rRNAs of Z. ramigera ATCC 19544T (T = type strain) and two misclassified strains, Z. ramigera ATCC 25935 and ATCC 19623. Dissociation temperatures were determined, and probe specificities, as well as the potential of probes for whole-cell hybridization, were evaluated by using numerous reference organisms. Several activated sludge samples were examined with these probes by using both the in situ and dot blot hybridization methods. Only the type strain probe hybridized to cells that accumulated in the typical branched gelatinous matrices, the so-called Zoogloea fingers. This probe revealed cells in most of the activated sludge samples studied. We found that relatively high levels of Z. ramigera cells (up to approximately 10% of the total number of cells) and typical morphology tended to be linked to overloading of sewage plants. The probe directed to rejected type strain Z. ramigera ATCC 19623 bound to only a few cells. Cells that reacted with the probe complementary to Z. ramigera ATCC 25935, which was originally isolated from a trickling filter, were not observed in activated sludge.
Analysis and Measurement of Spurious Emission and Phase Noise Performance of an RF All-Digital Phase Locked Loop using a Frequency Discriminator

A frequency discriminator in all-digital phase locked loops (ADPLLs) for RF-synthesis has to fulfill several tough requirements. The most important requirements are the in-band phase noise performance and knowledge about offset frequencies of the spurious emissions, because the ADPLL should fulfill several wireless communication standard requirements like UMTS and GSM. This paper presents a theoretical derivation, simulative analysis, and measurement results for the in-band phase noise level and the offset frequencies of spurious emissions of an ADPLL with a two-bit Frequency Discriminator implemented in a standard 0.13 mum CMOS technology
Area analysis of foveal avascular zone in diabetic retinopathy colour fundus images

An enlargement of foveal avascular zone (FAZ) is usually found in eyes with diabetic retinopathy (DR). Currently, it is difficult to discern the FAZ area and to measure its enlargement in an objective manner using on colour fundus. A new automated approach for area analysis of FAZ using colour fundus images has been developed. Here, a binary map of retinal vasculature is computer generated from the colour fundus image and is then used to determine vessel ends and pathologies surrounding FAZ for area analysis. The performance of the developed method is compared to a manually-segmented FAZ from normal colour fundus image. The proposed method is found to achieve accuracies from 69.1% to 99.8% compared to accuracies of 16.6% to 98.9% for normal colour fundus images. The proposed method is more consistent with mean accuracy improvement of 16.1%. The standard deviation achieved by the proposed method is also smaller by a factor of 2.8. The developed algorithm is thus more reliable.
3,3′‐Diindolylmethane Enhances Glucose Uptake Through Activation of Insulin Signaling in 3T3‐L1 Adipocytes

Indole‐3‐carbinol (I3C), a naturally occurring compound found in cruciferous vegetables, and its metabolite 3,3′‐diindolylmethane (DIM) reduce body mass and serum glucose levels in high‐fat‐diet‐induced obese mice. This study aimed to determine whether I3C or DIM could increase glucose uptake via enhanced insulin sensitivity in 3T3‐L1 adipocytes, as well as the mechanism involved.
Indoor Use of Gray and White Spaces: Another Look at Wireless Indoor Communication

Television (TV) white space (WS) constitutes a key technology to support the increasing worldwide growth of spectrum demand with several regulation standards that are already available for long- and medium-range communications. At the same time, estimations based on WS spectrum databases (SDBs) indicate that the availability of TVWS is often very limited in dense urban areas where spectrum resources are more needed. Therefore, the benefits provided by the utilization of TVWS have yet to be fully assessed. In this article, we rethink the utilization of TVWS in indoor communication environments through novel three-dimensional (3-D) spectrum-sharing mechanisms. Based on measurements that demonstrate the differences in terms of spectrum opportunities at different floors of the same building, we propose an underlay spectrum-sharing architecture to enable a per-building finegrained reuse of TV frequencies while protecting the operations of TV receivers in a neighborhood. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed spectrum-sharing architecture over several urban environments in Italy by taking into account many real characteristics of the scenarios. Our results demonstrate that through our architecture, more spectrum resources than what are reported in the SDB can be available for indoor scenarios, even in highly congested urban areas, paving the way to novel TVWS applications.
Introduction: Organizational change, management reform and EU policy-making

If it remains true that the Commission is an essential component within the process of EU policy-making, changes in the organizational basis of this key actor are likely to have broader implications. Adopting this vantage point the article discusses the potential for advancing our theoretical and empirical understanding of the EU policy process by analysing the recent administrative reforms in the European Commission. It is argued that studying internal reform is particularly important as it structures and conditions the capacities and subsequently the impact of the Commission as an actor in EU policy-making. Put simply, organizational changes do affect policy outputs. Hence, studying organizational change in the form of administrative modernization – be it as a dependent or independent variable – should become an important task also for students of EU policy-making.
Relational Algebra for In-Database Process Mining

The execution logs that are used for process mining in practice are often obtained by querying an operational database and storing the result in a flat file. Consequently, the data processing power of the database system cannot be used anymore for this information, leading to constrained flexibility in the definition of mining patterns and limited execution performance in mining large logs. Enabling process mining directly on a database - instead of via intermediate storage in a flat file - therefore provides additional flexibility and efficiency. To help facilitate this ideal of in-database process mining, this paper formally defines a database operator that extracts the 'directly follows' relation from an operational database. This operator can both be used to do in-database process mining and to flexibly evaluate process mining related queries, such as: "which employee most frequently changes the 'amount' attribute of a case from one task to the next". We define the operator using the well-known relational algebra that forms the formal underpinning of relational databases. We formally prove equivalence properties of the operator that are useful for query optimization and present time-complexity properties of the operator. By doing so this paper formally defines the necessary relational algebraic elements of a 'directly follows' operator, which are required for implementation of such an operator in a DBMS.
Structuring residual income and decision rights under internal governance: results from the Hungarian trucking industry

The paper offers a property rights and monitoring cost explanation for the allocation of residual income and decision rights between the carriers and truck drivers under internal governance. First, by applying the property rights theory, we argue that the structure of residual income rights depends on the importance of noncontractible (intangible) assets of the truck driver to generate residual surplus. The more important the truck driver's intangible knowledge assets, the more residual income rights should be transferred to him. Second, we controlled for the monitoring costs as an additional explanatory variable of the allocation of residual income rights. According to agency theory, the variable proportion of the driver's income should be higher where monitoring costs are higher. Third, we investigate the relationship between residual income and residual decision rights under internal governance. If the contractual relation is governed by an employment contract, residual decision and residual income rights may be substitutes because, under fiat, a certain incentive effect of the governance structure may result either from the allocation of high-powered incentives or the transfer of residual decision rights to the driver. These hypotheses were tested by using data from the Hungarian trucking industry. The data provide partial support for the hypotheses. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
*Conspicuous Consumption, Inconspicuous Leisure

It is commonly argued that because relative consumption appears to matter to people, they must be involved in a 'rat race': people work harder and consume more than they would have were optimum public policies in place. But although consuming more today would improve one's relative consumption now, it would worsen one's relative consumption in the future. In this article we identify the structure of felicity functions for which the two effects offset each other exactly. The finding goes some way toward explaining why, while household surveys suggest that relative consumption matters, the consumption behaviour of households has not pointed unambiguously to the presence of relative consumption effects. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2009.
The Effectiveness of Dry Needling and Exercise Therapy in Patients with Dizziness Caused By Cervical Myofascial Pain Syndrome; Prospective Randomized Clinical Study

Objective The aim of this study is to compare the effectiveness of dry needling therapy combined with exercise and exercise treatment alone for alleviating the dizziness caused by cervical myofascial pain syndrome. Design This was a prospective randomized clinical study that included 61 women who had dizziness and myofascial trigger points on the neck muscles. The patients were randomized into a dry needling + exercise group (N = 31) and an exercise only group (N = 30). Results The mean age of the patients (±SD) was 38.4 ± 8.3 years. The intragroup comparisons of the severity of neck pain, algometric measurement, number of dizziness attacks per week, severity of the dizziness, fall index, and the Dizziness Handicap Inventory were improved in both groups at the first and fourth months (P < 0.05). The intergroup comparisons of the severity of neck pain, algometric measurement, number of dizziness attacks per week, the severity of the dizziness, and the Dizziness Handicap Inventory were more improved in the dry needling + exercise group at the first or fourth month compared with their inital assessments (P < 0.05). There was no diffence in fall index scores between the groups (P > 0.05). Conclusions Both dry needling + exercise therapy and exercise therapy alone were effective in treating dizziness caused by cervical myofascial pain syndrome. However, dry needling + exercise treatment was superior to exercise treatment alone.