Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phagocytosis and cytokine response to rough and smooth colony variants of 
Mycobacterium abscessus by human peripheral blood mononuclear cells

Mycobacterium abscessus is a non‐tuberculous mycobacteria able to cause opportunistic infections in selected patient groups. During the last decades it has emerged as a cause of chronic pulmonary infection in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). M. abscessus strains exhibit either smooth or rough colony morphology. Strains exhibiting the rough phenotype more often cause pulmonary infections in CF patients than did the smooth ones. Here, we examined phagocytosis and production of cytokines by human peripheral blood mononuclear cells, in response to M. abscessus strains with smooth and rough colony phenotype. The rough isolates all formed multicellular cords, similar to what is observed in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Monocytes were generally unable to internalize these rough cord isolates, in contrast with the smooth ones. Furthermore, the rough M. abscessus strains induced a distinct cytokine profile differing from that induced by the smooth ones. Rough isolates induced significantly less IL‐10 and tumour necrosis factor compared to smooth strains, but more IL‐1β. Both varieties induced equal amounts of IFN‐γ, IL‐17, IL‐23, IL‐6, IL‐8 and equally little IL‐12. The ability to withstand phagocytosis might be a virulence factor contributing to the capacity of rough M. abscessus strains to give persistent pulmonary infections.
Functional Logistic Regression Approach to Detecting Gene by Longitudinal Environmental Exposure Interaction in a Case‐Control Study

Most complex human diseases are likely the consequence of the joint actions of genetic and environmental factors. Identification of gene‐environment (G × E) interactions not only contributes to a better understanding of the disease mechanisms, but also improves disease risk prediction and targeted intervention. In contrast to the large number of genetic susceptibility loci discovered by genome‐wide association studies, there have been very few successes in identifying G × E interactions, which may be partly due to limited statistical power and inaccurately measured exposures. Although existing statistical methods only consider interactions between genes and static environmental exposures, many environmental/lifestyle factors, such as air pollution and diet, change over time, and cannot be accurately captured at one measurement time point or by simply categorizing into static exposure categories. There is a dearth of statistical methods for detecting gene by time‐varying environmental exposure interactions. Here, we propose a powerful functional logistic regression (FLR) approach to model the time‐varying effect of longitudinal environmental exposure and its interaction with genetic factors on disease risk. Capitalizing on the powerful functional data analysis framework, our proposed FLR model is capable of accommodating longitudinal exposures measured at irregular time points and contaminated by measurement errors, commonly encountered in observational studies. We use extensive simulations to show that the proposed method can control the Type I error and is more powerful than alternative ad hoc methods. We demonstrate the utility of this new method using data from a case‐control study of pancreatic cancer to identify the windows of vulnerability of lifetime body mass index on the risk of pancreatic cancer as well as genes that may modify this association.
Interactive effects of temperature and pCO2 on sponges: from the cradle to the grave

As atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise, associated ocean warming (OW) and ocean acidification (OA) are predicted to cause declines in reef‐building corals globally, shifting reefs from coral‐dominated systems to those dominated by less sensitive species. Sponges are important structural and functional components of coral reef ecosystems, but despite increasing field‐based evidence that sponges may be ‘winners’ in response to environmental degradation, our understanding of how they respond to the combined effects of OW and OA is limited. To determine the tolerance of adult sponges to climate change, four abundant Great Barrier Reef species were experimentally exposed to OW and OA levels predicted for 2100, under two CO2 Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). The impact of OW and OA on early life‐history stages was also assessed for one of these species to provide a more holistic view of species impacts. All species were generally unaffected by conditions predicted under RCP6.0, although environmental conditions projected under RCP8.5 caused significant adverse effects: with elevated temperature decreasing the survival of all species, increasing levels of tissue necrosis and bleaching, elevating respiration rates and decreasing photosynthetic rates. OA alone had little adverse effect, even under RCP8.5 concentrations. Importantly, the interactive effect of OW and OA varied between species with different nutritional modes, with elevated pCO2 exacerbating temperature stress in heterotrophic species but mitigating temperature stress in phototrophic species. This antagonistic interaction was reflected by reduced mortality, necrosis and bleaching of phototrophic species in the highest OW/OA treatment. Survival and settlement success of Carteriospongia foliascens larvae were unaffected by experimental treatments, and juvenile sponges exhibited greater tolerance to OW than their adult counterparts. With elevated pCO2 providing phototrophic species with protection from elevated temperature, across different life stages, climate change may ultimately drive a shift in the composition of sponge assemblages towards a dominance of phototrophic species.
Influence of Approach and Implant on Reduction Accuracy and Stability in Lisfranc Fracture-Dislocation at the Tarsometatarsal Joint

Background: Besides early diagnosis, an anatomical and stable reduction is paramount for obtaining a favorable outcome. The current study looked at the influence that the type of approach for tarsometatarsal injuries has on the accuracy of the reduction and the effect that the type of fixation has on stability. Methods: Consecutive patients treated surgically for an acute Lisfranc injury were included. All radiographs were reassessed for accuracy and secondary displacement following either a closed or an open approach and in terms of the type of fixation (Kirschner wires alone or a combination of screws and plates and Kirschner wires). A total of 28 patients were included. Six patients were treated with closed reduction and percutaneous fixation and 22 with open reduction internal fixation. Sixteen patients were treated with Kirschner wires only (6 closed, 10 open), 7 with screws with or without Kirschner wires, and 5 with medial plating with or without Kirschner wires. Results: In the closed reduction group, 2 of 6 (33%) reductions were considered acceptable versus 19 of 22 (86%) in the open group (P = .021). All 6 secondary displacements occurred in the Kirschner wire fixation group (37.5%) versus none in the rigid fixation group (P = .024). Conclusion: The results demonstrate that open reduction and internal fixation with screws or plate resulted in better reduction and better maintenance of reduction in both low- and high-energy Lisfranc injuries. These results should be further evaluated in light of functional outcome. Level of Evidence: Level III, retrospective comparative case series.
Organizational Human Resources Integration in Project Management

Human resource management is an operation between hiring trained people for the firm's needs and training and developing them to meet the firm's needs. So, human resource management is a very crucial concept as it assists the company to compete successfully in the market. In the new economic environment that has emerged as an impact of the recent ‘crisis’, the complexity of each industry forms a demanding context that affects consistently both the internal and external environment of organizations. As a result, the firms need to maintain their competitive advantage.
Acoustic Emission Source Location on an Arbitrary Surface by Geodesic Curve Evolution

Location of an acoustic emission (AE) source is generally obtained by assuming simplified velocity models on surfaces and solids, for which a definite parametric representation exists. These attempts employ triangulation to form distance equations using time-differences obtained from experimental data, which are solved analytically or numerically to get to the location of source. This approach may not be suitable for complex geometry components. Also, the problem gets compounded if the material of the structure is anisotropic warranting complex analytical velocity models. Hence, there has been a need to obtain a practicable source location solution in a more general setup on any arbitrary surface containing finite discontinuities. The approach suggested here is based on the fact that the wave takes minimum energy path to travel from a source to any other point in the connected domain. An AE signal takes this path from the source to an AE sensor array. By propagating the waves in reverse virtually from these sensors along the minimum energy path and by locating the first intersection point of these waves, one can get the source location.
Statistics on the number of people in the regular scene based on Hough and SVM

Automatic statistics system based on intelligent video analysis has become one of the hot spots in the field of computer vision in recent years, and its research results have been widely used in various fields. The infrared cinema images with low resolution as the experimental object, this paper put forward a method, which is the combination of curve Hough transform and support vector machine SVM. This method can complete one task with people counting in regular seats of any scenes. Through the observation of seats arrangement, the curve Hough transform is used to segment the target seats, not only make the segmentation simple, but also improve the segmentation rate, and solve the problems caused by the characteristics of the infrared image, which is hard to detect the edge of the targets in the infrared images due to the background contrast difference, blurred edges, poor visual effects and other causes, to make the segmentation more accurate. At the same time, the use of machine learning to classify the segmented seat image, compared to direct cinema image statistics, which can not only accelerate the statistical rate, but also to enhance the accuracy of statistical. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme is simple, universal and robust, and has the advantages of accurate statistical results.
Information Leakage, Foreign Certification and Business Groups: Evidence from PIPE Deals

Private equity firms typically invest in small, privately held companies, help them grow and then exit the firm by taking it public or selling it to an acquirer. However, some times, private equity firms invest in public firms through a type of transaction called private investment in public equity (PIPE). This creates a special interaction between private equity firms and public companies. In this paper, we study the effect of foreign certification and business group affiliation on short term and long term performance of PIPE deals. We analyse if foreign private equity investors are able to better certify a PIPE investment than domestic private equity investors. We also study if business group affiliation affects the market reaction around PIPE deal announcements. This is also the first time in literature that PIPE deals are being studied in an emerging market. We use event studies to analyse all PIPE deals in India and find strong evidence of pre-announcement information leakage and post-announcement market efficiency. We find evidence of foreign certification since foreign private equity investor-led PIPEs perform significantly better than domestic private equity investor-led PIPEs in the short term. We also find that business group PIPEs perform better than non-business group PIPEs in the short-term. Interestingly, we find that foreign certification is a temporary effect since the difference in performance between foreign and domestic invested PIPEs vanishes in the long term. However, business group PIPEs perform significantly better than non-business group PIPEs in the long term thus showing that the business group effect persists longer than foreign certification.
NÍVEIS DIFERENCIADOS DE GOVERNANÇA CORPORATIVA E GRAU DE CONSERVADORISMO: ESTUDO EMPÍRICO EM COMPANHIAS ABERTAS LISTADAS NA BOVESPA DIFFERENTIAL LEVELS OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND THE DEGREE OF CONSERVATISM: AN EMPIRICAL-STUDY IN THE BRAZILIAN PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANIES LISTED IN BOVESPA

This study had the objective to identify if the degree of conservatism used by companies that are part of the differentiated levels of corporate governance is different from the conservatism used by other companies. The model used was that of the Basu (1997) which allows identifying the existence of recognition asymmetry between good and bad news, using the stock market economic return for its purpose. The conservatism is a tool used by accounting with the purpose of making accounting information more reliable and less optimistic. The data obtained was taken between 2000 and 2004 and the results show that the degree of conservatism, used by the companies that have differential levels of corporate governance, (companies listed by Nivel 1, Nivel 2 or by the Novo Mercado) is higher than that used by other companies listed by Bovespa, which do not have shares listed by such levels. This research made it possible to observe that accounting, using mechanisms as the conservatism, can influence the accounting results and because of that, the results found reaffirm the existence of recognition asymmetry for good and bad news, in the Brazilian market.
Health IT: A Framework for Managing Privacy Impact Assessment of Personally Identifiable Data

Health IT is the use of Information Technology (IT) in healthcare to improve patients’ experience, enable quality care, efficiency, speed, and security of the collection, exchange, sharing, and storage of sensitive personal information. But Health IT faces a number of notable challenges ranging from privacy risks to trust and confidence in the use of EHRs. In this chapter, a framework for conducting Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) of Health IT projects is discussed. Privacy impact assessment is a process through which privacy risks are assessed. The chapter includes recommendations for mitigating identified risks and ensuring compliance to policy and processes for handling and processing of highly sensitive and Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
Chromosome pattern, growth in agar and tumorigenicity in nude mice of four human bladder carcinoma cell lines

Four human bladder carcinoma cell lines have been characterized by G‐banding, and the chromosomal patterns correlated to growth in agar and tumorigenicity in nude mice. Each cell line was shown to be chromosomally unique and although numerical and structural anomalies were present, none were common to all four cell lines. However, one or more copies of a structurally altered chromosome 8 were present in all four cell lines and may be associated with tumorigenicity in nude mice. A combination of three marker chromosomes was found in the more anaplastic cell lines, but not in the two well‐differentiated tumour cell lines. Growth in agar may be associated with the presence of the three marker chromosomes but was not correlated with tumorigenicity in nude mice.
Short report: zinc sulphate supplementation corrects abnormal erythrocyte membrane long‐chain fatty acid composition in patients with Crohn's disease

Patients with Crohn's disease may become zinc‐deficient and, in such patients, an altered metabolism of radiolabelled long‐chain fatty acids has been reported. We have investigated the possible reversal by zinc supplementation of altered long‐chain fatty acid profiles of red cells in Crohn's disease. Twenty patients with long‐standing Crohn's disease in clinical remission received 200 mg of zinc sulphate daily for 6 weeks. Phospholipid fatty acid profiles of washed red cells were analysed before and after zinc treatment and compared to those of 20 unsupplemented healthy controls.
Efficient state space pruning in symbolic backward traversal

Most symbolic state space exploration techniques for finite state machines (FSMs) are exact and based on forward traversal, but limited to medium-size circuits. Approximate forward traversal deals with bigger circuits at the expense of exactness. Backward traversal focuses the search process on the property under scrutiny, but it also takes into account many unreachable states. For this reason, it works mainly on small circuits. This paper presents novel techniques that make exact symbolic backward traversal feasible also for large circuits. The key point is an efficient pruning of the search space, exploiting information coming from an approximate forward reachability analysis. Experimental evidence shows that, for the first time, the larger ISCAS'89 and MCNC circuits are symbolically manipulated in an exact way and the test patterns for them are generated. <<ETX>>
Customer Accounting and Environmental Uncertainty: Sequential Explanatory Study

This study seeks to substantiate its proposition through two research objectives: (1) To investigate the impact of customer accounting (CA) information usage on companies’ performance; and (2) to determine the moderating effect of perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) on the relationship between CA information and companies’ performance. This study develops a theoretical framework by applying interaction fit. To answer the research questions, the study follows a sequential explanatory design and the data is collected in two phases. In the first phase, 172 questionnaires are distributed to managers, of which 97 questionnaires are deemed usable. The results of this stage indicate that CA information usage significantly influences organizational performance, and that there is a moderating effect of PEU on the relationship between CA information and organizational performance. The second phase aims to validate the quantitative results via seven semi-structured interviews. The results of the interviews confirm and explain those obtained from the first phase.
"Missed pill" conception: fact or fiction?

A study of 19 healthy nulliparous women 20-30 years who were using the low dose combined oral contraceptive (OC) pill demonstrated ovarian folliculogenesis during the 7-day pill withdrawal in 28 day pill cycles. This makes the genuine occurrence of "missed pill" conceptions seem less mythical. All of the women had normal menstrual histories before OC use. They had been on treatment for at least 3 months and had regular monthly withdrawal bleeds. Ultrasonographic examination of the ovaries was performed on the last day of 1 pill pack (day 21) on the last "pill free" day (day 28) and on the 7th day of the next pill pack (day 7). An Elscint Dynex sector scanner with a 3.5 MHz probe was used which is capable of measuring down to 1.5 mm. All subjects showed some ovarian follicular activity by the last day of the pill-free phase and half developed multiple follicles with a dominant follicular diameter of 7 mm or greater the diameter seen on day 7 of the normal cycle. Continuation of the gonadotrophin stimulation of these dominant follicles would have led to ovulation. By the 7th day of the new pill pack the follicular appearance had returned to the dormant condition shown by the 1st scan in all but 1 subject and she showed reduction in follicular diameter. No pills were missed by any subject during the study cycles. In 2 subjects small cysts were detected at the 1st scan and at the 2nd and 3rd examinations unaffected by the development and regression of the other follicles. 1 subject inadvertently missed a pill on day 5 of a cycle after completing the study. She was examined 24 hours later and a 10 mm follicle was seen. She was unable to attend for further examination. With the current 21 day pill pack it is strongly recommended that alternative contraception be used when a pill is missed during the first 7 days of a pack even if the woman has been using OC for some time. This is most likely not necessary when a pill is missed later in the course. Women using OCs should also be warned of the danger of delaying restarting treatment after the 7 pill free days.
Investigation of the brain activity during browsing websites

This paper describes an investigation of the brain activity during browsing websites. The study was carried out at the University of Žilina in Slovakia. Data, in the form of scan path from eye tracking and signal from Electroencephalograph, were collected and analysed. The researchers found higher brain activity only during decision making processes. During browsing websites there was no clearly increased brain activity. The findings suggested that visual stimuli of website might have had a bearing on the human active thinking, but it could not be clearly identified. The results also supported the notion that the internet users do not read the websites.
FATORES EXPLICATIVOS DO NÍVEL DE DISCLOSURE VOLUNTÁRIO DE EMPRESAS BRASILEIRAS LISTADAS NA BM&FBOVESPA EXPLANATORY FACTORS LEVEL OF VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE OF BRAZILIAN COMPANIES LISTED ON BM&FBOVESPA

The internationalization of markets and the constant financial crises that have occurred in recent years, make the voluntary disclosure gain increasing attention from investors. The disclosure is one of the principles of corporate governance and is the way the company communicates with investors and the market capital. Given the above, the study aims to verify the factors that best explain the level of voluntary disclosure of Brazilian companies in 2011. The methodology is characterized with descriptive about the objectives, procedures such as documentary research and how to approach the problem of quantitative. Hypotheses were formulated and validated for the analysis of multiple linear regression by