Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diversification and Performance in Dutch Health Care An Empirical Analysis

The Dutch health care industry has a very particular business environment in relation to other industries. As from 2006, more market forces are introduced into the health care industry which increased the need for flexibility, quality, and efficiency. This made it inevitable for hospitals to be more dynamic and market oriented, as privatization puts pressure on certainty and security by increasing own responsibility. One popular way for hospitals to cope with this pressure, is to develop new revenue sources through diversification. International research claims that diversification can generate increased performance. However, large differences exist between related and unrelated diversification and empirical research in the health care industry is lacking. Therefore, the question is what the effect of diversification is on performance in the Dutch health care industry, either related or unrelated. Performance is analyzed empirically using a cross-section of data primarily from the annual reports of all Dutch hospitals. Moreover, performance is measured in terms of financial, medical, and organizational performance. This research shows that related diversification does not by definition outperform unrelated diversification. Hospitals that hold many clinics of specialism, and hence can be considered as related diversified hospitals, on average outperform hospitals that have fewer clinics of specialism. Unrelated diversification proved to have a positive effect on financial, medical, and organizational performance. Horizontal integration, although it is an important trend in the Dutch health care industry, did not bring many significant findings. Only the negative effect of horizontal integration on one of the financial performance indicators is useful. This finding indicates that the number of hospital locations negatively affects financial performance. Additionally, a two-way Analysis of Variances (ANOVA) was conducted, which gave a clear overview of the average performance of four different diversification groups. Although clear differences can be identified when observing the group means, pair wise comparison of group means hardly showed significance with respect to the performance indicators. Only the unrelated diversification groups proved to be significantly different on financial performance. This proves that unrelated diversification for Dutch hospitals can be profitable. Overall, it can be concluded that both related and unrelated diversification affect the performance of Dutch hospitals in different ways. However, firm characteristics like size, hospital type, or privatization grade often dominate the results. Hence, the level of market forces and diversification in the Dutch health care industry may not be as far as people nowadays expect and may not be that decisive for performance yet. Nevertheless, in 2012 the privatized part of revenues will grow from 34% to 70%, which is expected to have a far greater impact on performance. The final part therefore deliberately discusses the future development of hospitals
ive cell detection of chromosome 2 deletion and Sfpi 1 / PU 1 loss in adiation-induced mouse acute myeloid leukaemia

The CBA/H mouse model of radiation-induced acute myeloid leukaemia (rAML) has been studied for decades to bring to light the molecular mechanisms associated with multistage carcinogenesis. A specific interstitial deletion of chromosome 2 found in a high proportion of rAML is recognised as the initiating event. The deletion leads to the loss of Sfpi, a gene essential for haematopoietic development. Its product, the transcription factor PU.1 acts as a tumour suppressor in this model. Although the deletion can be detected early following ionising radiation exposure by cytogenetic techniques, precise characterisation of the haematopoietic cells carrying the deletion and the study of their fate in vivo cannot be achieved. ive cells hromosome deletion fpi1/PU.1 yeloid leukaemia ouse model Here, using a genetically engineered C57BL/6 mouse model expressing the GFP fluorescent molecule under the control of the Sfpi1 promoter, which we have bred onto the rAML-susceptible CBA/H strain, we demonstrate that GFP expression did not interfere with X-ray induced leukaemia incidence and that GFP fluorescence in live leukaemic cells is a surrogate marker of radiation-induced chromosome 2 deletions with or without point mutations on the remaining allele of the Sfpi1 gene. This study presents the first experimental evidence for the detection of this leukaemia initiating event in live leukemic cells. 201 ©
Evaluation of Some Allergic Mediators in Elderly Individuals

GING is a physiological process characterized by decreasing adaptation of the individual and accentuation of certain mechanisms e.g. arteriosclerotic plaque formation, oxidative stress and autoimmune diseases. Therefore, the present study was planned to evaluate immunosenescence on some allergic mediators in healthy individuals. Twenty-four male volunteers arranged into three groups according to their age were participated in this study. After their permission, personal and family history, full clinical examination and several laboratory confirmatory tests were determined to assure their healthy condition. Forty-eight h later another blood specimen was withdrawn where, complete blood picture, total immunoglobulin E (IgE), interleukin-4 (IL4), interleukin-5 (IL5) and γ-interferon (γ-INF) were estimated. Regarding the allergic mediators estimated in the present study, the third geriatric group had relative eosinophilia, positive correlation between IgE and γ-INF and high significant decrease in IgE and IL5. These results led to the conclusion that the immunosenescence in this group of individuals did not lead to any allergic related conditions and the impairment of functions associated with aged immune response most probably had no role on the prevalence of allergic disease in elderly individuals.
CNN Encoder User ( ! ) Conv ( " ) Word Embedding Graph Model Linear + Tanh Arcs infos + Conv RF Embedding User RF Embedding User CI Embedding × MLP Layers

The prevalent use of social media leads to a vast amount of online conversations being produced on a daily basis. It presents a concrete challenge for individuals to better discover and engage in social media discussions. In this paper, we present a novel framework to automatically recommend conversations to users based on their prior conversation behaviors. Built on neural collaborative filtering, our model explores deep semantic features that measure how a user’s preferences match an ongoing conversation’s context. Furthermore, to identify salient characteristics from interleaving user interactions, our model incorporates graph-structured networks, where both replying relations and temporal features are encoded as conversation context. Experimental results on two large-scale datasets collected from Twitter and Reddit show that our model yields better performance than previous stateof-the-art models, which only utilize lexical features and ignore past user interactions in the conversations.
Consultant ’ s Corner Autologous Stromal Stem Cell Infusion in Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy

We report two cases of patients with non ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy, wherein despite optimized medical therapy, they are symptomatic. Unlike other approaches in the cardiomyopathy therapy, we utilized only purified bone marrow mesenchymal cells instead of total bone marrow for them. Moreover, these purified bone marrow mesenchymal cells were infused instead of injected. Both patients responded well to stem cell infusion. There were improvements in echocardiographic parameters of cardiac function, which were highest after the third infusion. Decline in ejection fraction were noted after an infectious process. The first patient is currently alive (survived for at least 4 years from the time of infusion); while, the second patient succumbed to sepsis 9 months from the stem cell infusion.
THE MAINTENANCE BEHAVIOR OF THE BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON

T HIS paper is concerned with a three month study of the maintenance behavior of the Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) and includes a description and interpretation of the activities observed. Maintenance behavior, as used in this paper includes movements concerned with locomotion, preening, scratching, care of feet, shaking, stretching, defecation, bill-wiping, sleeping, throat pulsation, yawning, resting, and feeding. The Black-crowned Night Heron is well suited to this type of study due to its colonial nesting habit. The work by Meyerriecks (1960) reinforced our interest in herons and this paper follows the style established in his monograph, so that these data may be utilized more easily. Specific comparisons of night heron with Green Heron behaviors are made whenever the differences or similarities are striking enough to merit them. Some work has been done on the food preference of the night heron (see Palmer, 1962 and Teal, 1965), but little on the feeding behavior of immature herons. A detailed description of the behavior leading to the food transfer, as well as the food transfer itself, has not been available. Field observations were made in Fox’ s Marsh on North Bass Island, Ottawa County, Ohio, in western Lake Erie during the summer of 1963. Further observations were planned but the colony failed to breed in the marsh the following year. The marsh, about 1500 feet by 500 feet, is located at the south-west corner of the island. In the past it has been connected with the lake, but due to low water and wave action, it is now separated by a gravel bar. In the spring the marsh contains, at the deepest point, three feet of water, but becomes almost dry by August. The primary vegetation includes buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidental&), which supported the night heron nests, water persicaria (Polygonum lapathifolium) , and cattail (Typha Zatifolia) . The night herons were observed and photographed from an elevated blind located in the center of the marsh, by use of a 15x telescope adapted to a single lens reflex camera. Drawings were made from the photographs. Total observation time in the marsh was 114 hours. Data for this paper were collected while the senior author was a research assistant at Franz Theodore Stone Laboratory of The Ohio State University, Put-in-Bay, Ohio.
Spousal Labor Supply Response to Job Displacement and Implications for Optimal Transfers

I document a small spousal earnings response to the job displacement of the family head. The response is even smaller in recessions, when earnings losses are larger and additional insurance is valuable. Using cross-state differences in transfer generosity, I find that generous transfers substantially crowd out the spousal earnings response. To study its policy implications, I develop an incomplete markets model with family labor supply and aggregate fluctuations, where predicted labor supply elasticities to taxes and transfers are in line with empirical estimates both in aggregate and across income groups. Counterfactual experiments indeed reveal that generous transfers in recessions discourage spousal earnings. I show that the optimal policy features procyclical means-tested and countercyclical employment-tested transfers, unlike the existing policy that maintains generous transfers of both types in recessions. Abstracting from the incentive costs of transfers on the spousal labor supply changes both the level and the cyclicality of optimal transfers.
3-D Directional Transverse Oscillations Synthetic Aperture Vector Flow Imaging with a 1024 Element Matrix Probe

3-D vector flow imaging is simulated with a 1024 element matrix array and vessels aligned with the x- and y- axes. Parabolic flow profiles with a peak velocity of 0.5 m/s are simulated with an interleaved synthetic aperture sequence with 5 emissions at a pulse repetition frequency of 15 kHz. Two-peak receive apodizations are used to induce transverse oscillations (TO) in the x- and y-directions, and a directional TO velocity estimator based on cross-correlation is used to estimate the 3 velocity components. The relative mean bias and relative mean standard deviation are calculated for each velocity component and the velocity magnitude. For the vessel aligned with the x-axis, the bias of the x-component is -10.1%, and for the vessel aligned with the y-axis, the bias of the y-component is -2.04%. Relative mean standard deviations of the x- and y-components are in the range 10% to 17% and below 3.2% for the z-component.
A COMPACT ULTRAWIDEBANDANTENNA WITH BAND-NOTCHES AT WIMAX AND WLAN BANDS

A circular disk-shaped monopole ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna having a small area of 26 x 31 x 1.6 mm 3 was proposed in this paper. The antenna printed on FR4 material of permittivity 4.4 and height of 1.6mm. Microstrip line having a width of 3mm is used to excite antenna. The band-notch from 3.2 to 3.7 GHz is achieved by incorporating C-shape slot having a length of 28 mm on the radiating patch. Two symmetrical C-shaped strips are placed near to the feeding line edges to achieve another notch at 5 to 6 GHz. The proposed antenna is operating in the whole ultra-wideband from 2.4 to 11.8 GHz while rejecting electromagnetic interference from WiMax and WLAN systems. The simulated results such as Sparameters, VSWR, radiation patterns, current distributions, and gain shows that the antenna is well appropriate for wireless portable devices.
“ 17 % at or above the 95 th percentile ” e What is wrong with this statement ?

When reporting the prevalence of childhood obesity in the USA a few years ago, the magazine U.S. News & World Report stated: “. some 17 percent of kids are now obese, which means they’re at or above the 95th percentile for weight in relation to height for their age; an additional 17 percent are overweight, or at or over the 85th percentile. ” Anyonewith some basic training inmeasurement or statistics will realize that this statement is incorrect. This is because the percentile is defined as the value below which a certain percent of observations fall in a population. For example, the 15th percentile is the value (or score) below which 15 percent of the observations in a population may be found. If the percentile value in the above statement is correct, 5%, rather than 17%, should be at or above the 95th percentile. Unfortunately, similar statements can be found everywhere in scientific literature, especially when describing the prevalence of childhood obesity using the growth chart developed by theU.S. Centers forDisease Control and Prevention (CDC). How could this happen? To fully understand what went to wrong in this statement and similar reporting practices, a quick review on commonly used evaluation frameworks should be helpful. After getting a value or score from a measurement scale, we can make a judgment of the value either by comparing it with the values of others or with an absolute standard. The former is known as the norm-referenced (NR) evaluation and the latter is called as the criterion-referenced (CR) evaluation. When employing the NR evaluation framework, a person’s performance is compared with his/her peers, often by gender and age. Therefore, the nature of the NR evaluation is “relative. ” The Presidential Physical Fitness Award (PPFA) in the U.S. President’s Challenge program is a good example of an NR
Oil Market Factors as a Source of Liquidity Commonality in Global Equity Markets

This study investigates the effects of oil market on liquidity commonality in global equity markets. Using a sample of firms drawn from 50 countries spanning from Jan 1995 to Dec 2015, we find that the returns and volatility of oil prices explain the liquidity commonality in countries with higher integration to oil market. In addition, we show that the effect of oil volatility is more pronounced in net oil exporters as opposed to net oil importers after controlling for oil sensitivity. Our findings suggest that oil volatility on liquidity commonality is more substantial for high oil sensitive countries than oil price returns except five OPEC members, where liquidity commonality is highly influenced by oil return along with volatility. These results are robust to controlling for possible sources of liquidity commonality as found in the literature.
Running Head : ECOLOGICALLY UNEQUAL EXCHANGE & FDI Ecologically Unequal Exchange and the Environmental Effects of FDI : Empirical Analyses of Emissions and Consumption in Developing Countries , 1997-2007

With the current increasing trends of economic liberalization and globalization, the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown substantially over the past three decades. Along with rapid economic development, FDI is often considered to have brought serious environmental consequences to host developing countries. Ecologically unequal exchange theorists argue that the disproportionate export flow of energy and materials from developing to developed countries allows developed countries to improve their environment and increase their consumption of environmental resources, while deteriorating the environment of developing countries and suppressing their levels of environmental consumption. This article presents empirical analyses of ecologically unequal exchange hypotheses, which postulate that the higher the level of FDI intensity, the higher the level of CO2 emissions and the lower the level of environmental consumption within developing countries. To test the hypotheses, the total CO2 emissions and per capita ecological footprint in 1999, 2003, and 2007 were regressed (OLS) on the estimated models consisting of the levels of FDI intensity and other factors supposedly responsible for the respective forms of environmental outcomes. With the results being insignificant across all tested models, findings from the present study do not support the hypotheses, leading to the conclusion that the level of FDI intensity does not necessarily have determinant effects on either CO2 emissions or environmental consumption.
EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF CAPSULES FORMATION USING DIFFERENT TYPES OF POLYMERS

The aim of this work was an experimental study of the possibility of formation of capsules by different types of polymers. In this work, several types of polymers were chosen as encapsulating materials: amide pectin, alginate and gelatin. In the experiment different polymer concentrations were used and the dependence of the formation of spherical capsules from the concentration of the encapsulating substance was studied. It was experimentally established that elastic, preserving the structure of spherical capsules are obtained by using alginate / gelatin in a percentage of 1/1. The strength of the capsules was also studied. As a result, it was found that the best option is the composition of capsules containing 1% gelatin and 1% alginate. Capsules made of this composition have a rounded spherical shape, the same size, and they are resistant to physical impact. As a result of the study of rheological characteristics of natural polymers, promising for obtaining capsules, it can be concluded that the most suitable samples for the creation of new functional gel systems based on natural polymers are the ratio of alginate and gelatin, because they form heat-reversible gels.
“STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL CHARACTERIZATION OF ESCHERICHIA COLI FLAVOHEMOGLOBIN”. ALESSANDRA BONAMORE

Flavohemoglobins are oxygen binding proteins composed of a heme-containing globin domain fused with a ferredoxin reductase-like FADand NAD-binding domain. Genes codifing for these proteins have been identified in a wide variety of bacteria and eukaryotic microorganisms, although their physiological role is still uncertain. A possible function for flavohemoglobins has been proposed in the framework of the response to nitrosative stress as they are able to catalize the oxidation of free NO to nitrate in the presence of oxygen and NADH. The aim of this work is to determine the structure of Escherichia coli flavohemoglobin (HMP) and to investigate novel possible enzymatic functions for the protein. We have found that HMP is able to bind reversibly a number of unsaturated and cyclopropanated phospholipids and fatty acids as well as liposomes obtained from E. coli total lipid extract. Along the same line, HMP is shown to be an efficient alkyl hydroperoxide reductase, thus suggesting that the protein is involved in a specific lipid hydroperoxide repair mechanism induced by oxidative/nitrosative stress.
Does ultra-slow diffusion survive in a three dimensional cylindrical comb ?

We present an exact analytical result on ultra-slow diffusion by solving a Fokker–Planck equation, which describes anomalous transport in a three dimensional (3D) comb. This 3D cylindrical comb consists of a cylinder of discs of either infinite or finite radius, threaded on a backbone. It is shown that the ultra-slow particle spreading along the backbone is described by the mean squared displacement (MSD) of the order of ln (t). This phenomenon takes place only for normal two dimensional diffusion inside the infinite secondary branches (discs). When the secondary branches have finite boundaries, the ultra-slow motion is a transient process and the asymptotic behavior is normal diffusion. In another example, when anomalous diffusion takes place in the secondary branches, a destruction of ultra-slow (logarithmic) diffusion takes place as well. As the result, one observes “enhanced” subdiffusion with the MSD ∼ t1−α ln(t), where 0 < α < 1. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Using Gaming GPUs for Deep Learning Extended Abstract Gangwon

We propose two techniques to use cost-effective gaming GPUs as accelerators for deep learning, instead of expensive HPCdedicated GPUs. A closed-circuit direct water cooling system keeps gaming GPUs at a low temperature. It ensures the long lifetime and reliability of gaming GPUs, rids the GPUs of memory errors, and reduces cooling fan noise. A VMDNN (virtual GPU memory for deep neural networks) library virtually expands the GPU memory space during the training period of a deep neural network model, by automatically swapping out unnecessary GPU memory object to the main memory. We present a gaming-GPU-based deep learning system that adopts these two techniques. The experimental result shows that the proposed system achieves 2–2.5x cost effectiveness compared to a system containing HPC-dedicated, high-end GPUs. CCS CONCEPTS • Computer systems organization → Heterogeneous (hybrid) systems; • Hardware → Temperature optimization; • Software and its engineering → Virtual memory ; • Computing methodologies → Neural networks;
An Approach to Improve the Classification Performance of Least Square Support Vector Machine

Data mining and machine learning concepts play a vital role in dealing with large number of datasets. Various algorithms embedded within these concepts provide a wide array of mechanisms to classify the data into its specific classes. Least square support vector machine (LS-SVM) is a machine learning approach used to classify the data. Although it works better in comparison to other algorithms, the various changes sustained on each run of the program execution in its parametric values makes it quite resilient enough towards its performance. Hence, this paper focuses on improvement of the performance level of traditional LS-SVM. In order to do so, traditional LS-SVM is integrated together with simplified particle swarm optimization technique (PSO). PSO, a swarm intelligence based, optimization approach is exploited to optimize the kernel parametric values of LSSVM so that it not only improves its classification performance but significantly also improve the time execution of the program being run. The proposed method is exploited on the phishing dataset and experimental results are evaluated against the results of other algorithms. Keyword: Phishing dataset, Machine learning, Least Square Support Vector Machine, Simple Particle Swarm Optimization, Schaffer function