Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pomegranate (Punica granatum) Seed Oil for Treating Menopausal Symptoms: An Individually Controlled Cohort Study.

Context • In the folk medicine of Mediterranean countries and in ancient Ayurveda, Punica granatum seeds (ie, pomegranate seeds) have been used for treatment of various disorders, including those that nowadays are classified as menopausal symptoms (MSs). Pomegranate seed oil (PSO) from those seeds mainly contains unsaturated fatty acids such as γ-linoleic acid and linolenic acid, but it also includes phytoestrogens. It is, therefore, regarded as a promising option for treating MSs today. Objectives • The study intended to investigate the safety and effectiveness of PSO as a defined P granatum seed oil for patients with MSs. Design • The research team designed an individually controlled, investigator-initiated cohort study. Setting • The treatments were performed at 2 institutions: (1) the Center for Complementary Medicine at the University Medical Center Freiburg (Freiburg, Germany); and (2) in the medical practice of H. Fischer (Freiburg, Germany). Participants • Seventy-eight patients, who had a mean duration of MSs of 46 mo, participated in the study. Intervention • After 4 wk without treatment, which functioned as a period providing an individual control, each participant took 1000 mg of PSO daily in 2 capsules for 8 wk. Outcome Measures • The symptom severity was scored on the German version of the menopausal rating scale (MRS) at baseline, after 4 wk without treatment, after 4 wk of treatment, and postintervention, with 0 = absence of symptoms and 4 = very strong symptoms. The efficacy and tolerability were estimated on scales from 0-4. Each participant's 17ß estradiol was determined at baseline and after postintervention using the patient's sera. The content of the β-sitosterol was determined in the PSO preparations by gas chromatography. Results • The content of β-sitosterol in the PSO used in the study was 6.3 mg/1000 mg. In the intention to treat analysis, most MRS symptoms were significantly and relevantly reduced (eg, hot flushes changed from 2.32 ± 1.04 to 1.41 ± 1.07, P < .001). Remarkably, urogenital tract symptoms (ie, a dry vagina) also significantly improved, moving from 1.32 ± 1.43 to 0.85 ± 1.19, P < . 001. Few patients reported gastrointestinal symptoms. The tolerability was excellent at 3.69 ± 0.71 after 4 wk of treatment and 3.71 ± 0.65 after 8 wk of treatment. The 17ß estradiol was unchanged. Conclusions • Participants showed significant improvements in all domains of the MRS, remarkably including the difficult-to-treat urogenital symptoms. No changes occurred in the 17ß-estradiol in patients' sera after the PSO treatment. The results are promising and encourage the investigation of PSO rich in β-sitosterol for treatment of MSs in placebo-controlled studies.
Can Private Real Estate Portfolios Be Rebalanced/Diversified Using Equity REIT Shares?

Executive Summary. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not private real estate portfolios can be diversified or rebalanced using public real estate (equity real estate investment trust stocks). An examination of resulting efficient frontiers and their corresponding optimal portfolio weights across various levels of expected return reveals that the ability of public real estate to rebalance private real estate only portfolios, using either long or short positions, is very much in doubt. The results found in a mixed-asset setting are more promising, but not convincing. Hence, if institutional investors wish to continue to hold public real estate, they should do so for reasons other than rebalancing or diversifying their private real estate portfolios.
Controlling Avoidance of Food Safety Regulations in Meat Packing Industry

The sale of meat and poultry contains asymmetric information dealing with food safety. Since pathogens in most cases are invisible, consumers lack information on the safety of meat and poultry. Government interaction through the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) in the meat and poultry industry is necessary to regulate the safety of meat and poultry products. Inevitably, any rules in society are likely to include violators. The cost of perfectly safe food is far too great for the industry to bear. The marginal gain in revenue from violating a regulation may be greater than the marginal cost. Violators of rules may resort to sophisticated means to avoid detection of the original violations. The means used to avoid detection may be legal or illegal. Effective regulation of avoidance activities will lead to lower violations of the original crime. Such regulations may be ex-ante or ex-post. This paper discusses potential effectiveness of ex-ante or ex-post regulations on avoidance activities of food safety regulations in the meat and poultry industry. The use of ex-ante measures such as contracting external service providers coupled with the threat of ex-post punishment on service providers would potentially decrease the number of avoidance activities and their associated original crime in the meat and poultry industry.
Business Models and Virtual Worlds: The Second Life Lesson

Virtual Worlds seem to offer firms new opportunities for managing the convergence among technology, organization and business. The complex relation between people and their avatars and the capability to engage users into active participation yielded relevant insights in marketing and business model literature. At the same time, firms may find it difficult to manage and operate in a digital space, in which rules and behaviors may differ from the real world. This article emphasizes the issues and insights suggested in business literature. Special attention is given to the role of Virtual Worlds in innovating firms’ business models, focusing on the evidences obtained by Second Life. A framework is proposed to explain why value extraction should be carefully evaluated when firms intend to integrate Virtual Worlds into their business models.
Weight gain associated with olanzapine and risperidone in adolescent patients: a comparative prospective study.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate weight gain associated with olanzapine, risperidone, and haloperidol treatment and its clinical risk factors in adolescent patients. METHOD The study was conducted at three adolescent psychiatric departments in two mental health centers in the Tel Aviv area. All patients were Jewish Israelis. Weight and body mass index (BMI) of hospitalized adolescents treated with olanzapine (n = 21), risperidone (n = 21), or haloperidol (n = 8) were prospectively monitored on a weekly basis for the first 12 weeks of treatment. Various clinical risk factors were tested for association with weight gain. RESULTS The olanzapine and risperidone groups experienced significant weight gain between baseline and endpoint (p < .01), whereas the average weight of the haloperidol group did not change. Average weight gain was significantly higher for the olanzapine group (7.2 +/- 6.3 kg, 11.1% +/- 7.8%) than for the risperidone (3.9 +/- 4.8 kg, 6.6% +/- 8.6%) and haloperidol (1.1 +/- 3.3 kg, 1.5% +/- 6.0%) groups. Extreme weight gain (>7%) was recorded in 19 patients (90.5%), 9 patients (42.9%), and 1 (12.5%) patient, respectively Gender (males), low concern about gaining weight (females), low baseline BMI, and paternal BMI were positively correlated with weight gain, whereas previous neuroleptic history, neuroleptic dosage, response to treatment, and illness duration were not. CONCLUSIONS Olanzapine and risperidone are associated with extreme weight gain in adolescents, much higher than that reported in adults. This side effect should be taken into consideration before prescribing these medications, especially in patients at high risk.
Corporate Governance Reforms and Financial Disclosures: A Case of Indian Companies

Corporate governance reforms assume critical significance for developing economies like India, which is moving towards a more transparent and accountable system of economic governance. Though India has initiated serious efforts towards overhauling the corporate governance mechanisms through comprehensive corporate governance laws and regulations, their enforcement remains inadequate. Earlier studies indicate that disclosure practices of Indian companies do not go beyond the mandatory requirements, thus creating an urgent need for corporate governance reforms. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of corporate governance reforms brought out by Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Clause 49 of the Listing Agreement (2006), on the level of financial disclosures of the Indian firms. The current research has been carried out with 30 Indian listed companies which form part of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) index for the pre-reform period (2001-02 to 2004-05) and post-reform period (2005-06 to 2008-09). A Corporate Governance Transparency and Disclosure Score (CGS) has been constructed for the sample companies based on the attributes drawn from the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) Transparency and Disclosure Survey (2008). The study indicates that despite impressive corporate governance reforms, there is only a moderate level of financial disclosures by the Indian firms. It emphasizes a need for improved enforcement of legal and regulatory structures to enhance financial reporting quality.
All Stitched Up? The 2007 Amendments to the Safety Net

In response to mounting community concern about the use of workplace agreements to erode employee conditions, the Howard Government has introduced substantial changes to the legal framework. These changes include a new Fairness Test and the rebadging of the two main institutions responsible for supervising agreement-making. This article outlines the main elements of these reforms and considers the extent to which the redesigned ‘safety net’ will offer protection to employees who enter into federal workplace agreements.
Two-level logging with non-volatile byte-addressable memory in log-structured file systems

The file system durability is provided by flushing dirty pages periodically into the non-volatile storage. Since the traditional storage devices such as hard disk and flash memory can be written in the unit of block, the file system writes a whole block even when only a small number of bytes are modified. To resolve such a wasting write traffic problem, we propose a two-level logging scheme by exploiting non-volatile and byte-addressable memories (NVMs). Whereas the previous approach which exploits the NVM device is targeted for EXT4 file system, our scheme uses log-structured file systems in order to guarantee the file system reliability even for sudden system crashes. While the NVM is used for fine-grained logging, the flash memory is used for coarse-grained logging. Experiments with a real NVM device show that the proposed scheme reduces the write traffic on storage by up to 78% and improves the I/O performance significantly.
Identifying challenges in humanitarian logistics

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges of humanitarian logisticians with respect to different types of disasters, phases of disaster relief and the type of humanitarian organization. A conceptual model is constructed that serves as a basis to identify these challenges.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a country as a case, namely Ghana. Structured and unstructured data are collected in a workshop with humanitarian logisticians, and complemented with presentations of humanitarian logisticians, as they perceive their challenges. Disaster statistics and country profiles are used as secondary data.Findings – The paper shows that some disasters defy a categorization between natural and man‐made causes. Challenges of humanitarian logisticians depend not only on the disaster at hand, but also on the local presence of their organization. The most emphasized challenge is the coordination of logistical activities. Challenges can be managed better if attributing them to di.
The Length-of-Stay Problem in Tourist Studies

of government bureaus, research foundations, and university research bureaus are the result of group activity unless it appears that the contribution was largely that of an individual. The Harvard problem books, likewise, are credited to group effort. On the other side, the collaboration of two or three individuals is not considered group effort unless it appears that they were members of an organized research group or received major assistance from such a group. Of the 11 pioneers who received awards in 1949, 9 made their contributions as individuals. Of the 13 winners of annual awards from 1948 to 1952, 8 per cent made their contributions as individuals. However, 6 of the 7 honorable mentions in these years were the result of group research. Of the contributions rated by the national panel, approximately three fourths in the 1944 and the 1954 polls resulted from individual effort. In the 1949 and 1952 polls, approximately three fifths was the result of individual effort. Even though the importance of group research has increased, the individual scholar is still making the majority of the contributions to marketing knowledge. This does not mean that he does not need nor that he does not sometimes have cleriral, statistical, and interviewing help. The professor may have his teaching load reduced, or at times he may be freed entirely of teaching assignments while engaged in a specific piece of 357
Explanation of Value Premium on the Dhaka Stock Exchange: Risk and Firm Size

This paper provides explanation of value premium on the Dhaka Stock Exchange from 2000–2009 and a search process involving both price to earnings (P/E) and price to book value (P/B) ratios. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of ‘risk’ and ‘firm size’ on value premium on the Dhaka Stock Exchange. Based on P/E ratio, the risk for value portfolio is positively correlated with mean annual value premium. On the other hand, the risk for growth portfolios is negatively correlated with mean annual value premium. However, based on P/B ratio, the relationship between risk and value premium is not significant. The study found that, relatively higher positive and negative returns of small value and small growth stocks respectively have effect on the value premium for both the multiples and relatively higher negative returns of large growth stocks have also the effect on the value premium for P/B multiple. Comparatively small value stocks perform better in the Dhaka Stock Exchange during the study period
Breaking In: Human Metapneumovirus Fusion and Entry

Human metapneumovirus (HMPV) is a leading cause of respiratory infection that causes upper airway and severe lower respiratory tract infections. HMPV infection is initiated by viral surface glycoproteins that attach to cellular receptors and mediate virus membrane fusion with cellular membranes. Most paramyxoviruses use two viral glycoproteins to facilitate virus entry—an attachment protein and a fusion (F) protein. However, membrane fusion for the human paramyxoviruses in the Pneumovirus subfamily, HMPV and respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV), is unique in that the F protein drives fusion in the absence of a separate viral attachment protein. Thus, pneumovirus F proteins can perform the necessary functions for virus entry, i.e., attachment and fusion. In this review, we discuss recent advances in the understanding of how HMPV F mediates both attachment and fusion. We review the requirements for HMPV viral surface glycoproteins during entry and infection, and review the identification of cellular receptors for HMPV F. We also review our current understanding of how HMPV F mediates fusion, concentrating on structural regions of the protein that appear to be critical for membrane fusion activity. Finally, we illuminate key unanswered questions and suggest how further studies can elucidate how this clinically important paramyxovirus fusion protein may have evolved to initiate infection by a unique mechanism.
Brain tumor detection from MRI image: An approach

A brain tumor is an abnormal growth of cells within the brain, which can be cancerous or non-cancerous (benign). This paper detects different types of tumors and cancerous growth within the brain and other associated areas within the brain by using computerized methods on MRI images of a patient. It is also possible to track the growth patterns of such tumors.
Managing Intellectual Capital in Practice

1. What is Intellectual Capital and Why is it Important? 2. How to Identify the Organization's Intellectual Capital Resources 3. Putting the Intellectual Capital Resources to Value-Creating Use 4. Valuing and Measuring Intellectual Capital 5. Reporting on Intellectual Capital 6. Other Applications of the Intellectual Capital Approach
Background patterns and sleep‐wake cycles on amplitude‐integrated electroencephalography in preterms younger than 30 weeks gestational age with peri‐/intraventricular haemorrhage

Aim: The objective of this prospective study was to evaluate the influence of peri‐/intraventricular haemorrhage (PIVH) grades I–IV on amplitude‐integrated electroencephalographic (aEEG) activity in preterm infants <30 weeks gestational age (GA).
HIV‐1 proviral DNA polymerase chain reaction detection in chorionic villi after exclusion of maternal contamination by variable number of tandem repeats analysis

ObjectiveThe study of the placental HIV infection in cases of seropositive pregnant women after exclusion of maternal contamination of chorionic villi samples by variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) analysis. MethodsWe studied 30 HIV-positive women: 17 terminated their pregnancy (11 in the first trimester and six in the second) and 13 delivered at term (one was a twin gestation). We selected chorionic villi and ruled out maternal contamination by VNTR analysis. DNA from chorionic villi and cord and maternal blood were tested for HIV by PCR. All infants underwent a paediatric follow-up. ResultsAll maternal blood samples tested positive for HIV-1 by polymerase chain reaction. No maternal contamination was revealed and HIV was found in six out of 11 first trimester placentas, in all second trimester samples, and in 10 out of 14 at term. Cord blood tested positive in all second trimester cases and in seven out of 14 live-borns. In no case was HIV found in cord blood without infection of the corresponding placenta; conversely, three placentas tested positive but cord blood was negative. Two infants were HIV-positive, 11 were uninfected (one case was lost to follow-up). ConclusionOur study indicates that HIV-1 can infect the placenta from first trimester onwards. HIV was found in two-thirds of our cord blood samples but it is possible that some viral DNA in cord blood may have come from infected placental cells. Additional studies are needed to assess the source of HIV in cord blood and the possible contribution of placental or maternal cells infected with HIV to vertical transmission of the virus.
Modeling charge polarization voltage for large lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles

Purpose: Polarization voltage of the lithium-ion battery is an important parameter that has direct influence on battery performance. The paper aims to analyze the impedance characteristics of the lithium-ion battery based on EIS data. Design/methodology/approach: The effects of currents, initial SOC of the battery on charge polarization voltage are investigated, which is approximately linear function of charge current. The change of charge polarization voltage is also analyzed with the gradient analytical method in the SOC domain. The charge polarization model with two RC networks is presented, and parts of model parameters like Ohmic resistance and charge transfer impedance are estimated by both EIS method and battery constant current testing method. Findings: This paper reveals that the Ohmic resistance accounts for much contribution to battery total polarization compared to charge transfer impedance. Practical implications: Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the model with the proposed identification method, which provides the foundation for battery charging optimization. Originality/value: The paper analyzed the impedance characteristics of the lithium-ion battery based on EIS data, presented a charge polarization model with two RC networks, and estimated parameters like Ohmic resistance and charge transfer impedance.
Food availability and choice in rural Scotland: the impact of “place”

This paper comprises an examination of a connection between geographical remoteness and isolation, and food availability and choice amongst the local populations. The paper focuses on three locations within the Highlands and Islands: the Western Isles, Upper Loch Torridon, and the rural areas surrounding Thurso. Following an outline of the research projects and their methodology, selected results are presented, focusing on the contemporary diet, and food choice and availability. The paper concludes with a discussion concerning the extent to which the data from the three rural case studies support a relationship between “place” and food choice, and makes recommendations concerning future policy and research issues.
Research on the architecture of Internet of Things

The Internet of Things is a technological revolution that represents the future of computing and communications. It is not the simple extension of the Internet or the Telecommunications Network. It has the features of both the Internet and the Telecommunications Network, and also has its own distinguishing feature. Through analysing the current accepted three-layer structure of the Internet of things, we suggest that the three-layer structure can't express the whole features and connotation of the Internet of Things. After reanalysing the technical framework of the Internet and the Logical Layered Architecture of the Telecommunication Management Network, we establish new five-layer architecture of the Internet of Things. We believe this architecture is more helpful to understand the essence of the Internet of Things, and we hope it is helpful to develop the Internet of Things.