Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality of life after breast cancer surgery: What have we learned and where should we go next?

Treatment options for women with newly diagnosed breast cancer include breast conservation therapy and mastectomy with or without reconstruction, which provide equivalent cancer outcomes in properly selected patients. Although multiple studies have evaluated breast surgery quality‐of‐life outcomes, the data are inconsistent. This factor is important to consider when counseling patients and defining surgical quality measures. J. Surg. Oncol. 2009;99:447–455. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Best Practices in Diversity Management

[Excerpt] The International Personnel Management Association (IPMA) has undertaken a human resource benchmarking project with the National Association of State Personnel Executives (NASPE). IPMA is an organization representing over 1,700 organizations and 2,500 individuals involved in public sector human resource management. The Association’s mission is to optimize organizational and individual performance in the public service by providing human resource leadership, professional development, information and services. IPMA has established an International Human Resource Advisory Board to facilitate the exchange of information on international human resource developments. The International Human Resource Advisory Board has 37 members from 35 countries and international organizations. Additional information about IPMA can be obtained at http://www.ipma-hr.org.
Comparison of fatty acid profile in the chicken meat after feeding with narasin, nicarbazin and salinomycin sodium and phyto-additive substances

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was an experimental investigation and a statistical evaluation of the influence of various additives in feed mixtures of broiler chickens on fatty acids content and their ratio in breast and thigh muscles. First feed additive consisted of narasin, nicarbasin and salinomycin sodium, and other five additives were of phytogenic origin. In vivo experiment was realized on the poultry experimental station with deep litter breeding system. A total of 300 one-day-old hybrid chickens Cobb 500 divided into six groups were used for the experiment. The experimental period was divided into four phases, i.e. Starter, Grower 1, Grower 2 and Final, according to the application of commercial feed mixture of soy cereal type. Additive substances used in feed mixtures were different for each group. Basic feed mixtures were equal for all groups. Fatty acid profile of breast and thigh muscles was measured by the method of FT IR Nicolet 6700. Investigated additive substances in the feed mixtures did not have statistically significant effect on fatty acid content and omega-6/omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) ratio in breast and thigh muscles. Strong statistically significant relation between omega-6 PUFAs and total PUFAs were proved by experiment. A relation between omega-3 PUFAs and total PUFAs was found only in the group with Biocitro additive.
Maturational changes in the in vivo activity of CYP3A4 in the first months of life.

OBJECTIVE To document maturational changes of the in vivo activity of CYP3A4 in the first months of life. METHODS The contribution of tramadol (M), O-demethyl tramadol (M1, CYP2D6-mediated) and N-demethyl tramadol (M2, CYP3A4-mediated) to the overall elimination of tramadol and the log M/M2 was assessed in 24-hour urine collections during continuous intravenous tramadol administration. Correlations with perinatal characteristics (postnatal age (PNA) and postmenstrual age (PMA)) were studied. RESULTS Of the total amount of tramadol administered in a 24-hour interval to 25 neonates and young infants (PMA 25 - 53 weeks), 34.5% (SD 6.1) were retrieved in the urine as parent compound or metabolite in a 24-hour interval. This retrieved material consisted primarily of tramadol 79% (SD 18), M1 10% (SD 17) and M2 3% (SD 3.4). The contribution of M (r2 = -0.53), M1 (r2 = 0.46) and M2 (r2 = 0.16) to overall M elimination correlated with increasing PMA. The mean log M/M2 was 1.44 (SD 0.46) and there was an inverse correlation between the log M/M2 ratio and PMA (r2 = -0.43, 95% CI for r = -0.84 to -0.34, p = 0.0006) and PNA (r2 = -0.25, 95% CI for r = -0.78 to -0.16, p = 0.008). The maturational half-life of the log M/M2 ratio was 16 - 20 weeks. In a multiple regression model, PMA was the only significant variable accounting for the interindividual variability in log M/M2. CONCLUSIONS PMA was found to be the most important maturational change determing the in vivo activity of CYP3A4. The activity of CYP3A4 is relatively delayed in the first months of life compared to the developmental changes in CYP2D6 activity described earlier, however, the overall weak correlations reflect that PMA explains only in part the interindividual variability observed.
The History of Commodity Futures Trading and Its Regulation

This book analyzes the impact of regulation on today's commodity futures trading market by examining the development and growth of both. It addresses the development of regulatory efforts and examines the regulated futures exchange, discusses the creation and development of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and focuses on the types of commodity interests that are traded and their regulation. Commodity interests include leverage contracts, commodity futures contracts and options, and foreign contracts. Including an examination of the problems faced by the government in its regulatory efforts, this important new work is an accessible and authoritative guide for anyone involved in the commodity futures market, including banks, businesses, speculators, and regulators.
Efficiency and Risk Management Models for Cloud-Based Solutions in Supply Chain Management

Cloud computing has been proven to have numerous benefits for organizations, especially in supply chain management. More and more organizations have adopted cloud-based solutions to be their primary sourcing applications. Nevertheless, this technology is not without challenges, and in order to deploy and implement cloud-based solutions successfully with minimal risks organizations need to have practical guidance on this emerging technology. Despite the rapid growth of cloud computing in supply chain areas, the existing literature is still conceptual, inadequate, and mainly focused on the pre-adoption stage of this technology. This research examines the post-adoption stage of cloud-based supply chain solutions from the decision science perspective and intends to provide organizations with practical guidance on how to ensure the efficiency of a cloud-based supply chain system and control risks associated with cloud-based solutions.
Cytosolic Delivery of Granzyme B by Bacterial Toxins: Evidence that Endosomal Disruption, in Addition to Transmembrane Pore Formation, Is an Important Function of Perforin

ABSTRACT Granule-mediated cell killing by cytotoxic lymphocytes requires the combined actions of a membranolytic protein, perforin, and granule-associated granzymes, but the mechanism by which they jointly kill cells is poorly understood. We have tested a series of membrane-disruptive agents including bacterial pore-forming toxins and hemolytic complement for their ability to replace perforin in facilitating granzyme B-mediated cell death. As with perforin, low concentrations of streptolysin O and pneumolysin (causing <10%51Cr release) permitted granzyme B-dependent apoptosis of Jurkat and Yac-1 cells, but staphylococcal alpha-toxin and complement were ineffective, regardless of concentration. The ensuing nuclear apoptotic damage was caspase dependent and included cleavage of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase, suggesting a mode of action similar to that of perforin. The plasma membrane lesions formed at low dose by perforin, pneumolysin, and streptolysin did not permit diffusion of fluorescein-labeled proteins as small as 8 kDa into the cell, indicating that large membrane defects are not necessary for granzymes (32 to 65 kDa) to enter the cytosol and induce apoptosis. The endosomolytic toxin, listeriolysin O, also effected granzyme B-mediated cell death at concentrations which produced no appreciable cell membrane damage. Cells pretreated with inhibitors of endosomal trafficking such as brefeldin A took up granzyme B normally but demonstrated seriously impaired nuclear targeting of granzyme B when perforin was also added, indicating that an important role of perforin is to disrupt vesicular protein trafficking. Surprisingly, cells exposed to granzyme B with perforin concentrations that produced nearly maximal 51Cr release (1,600 U/ml) also underwent apoptosis despite excluding a 8-kDa fluorescein-labeled protein marker. Only at concentrations of >4,000 U/ml were perforin pores demonstrably large enough to account for transmembrane diffusion of granzyme B. We conclude that pore formation may allow granzyme B direct cytosolic access only when perforin is delivered at very high concentrations, while perforin’s ability to disrupt endosomal trafficking may be crucial when it is present at lower concentrations or in killing cells that efficiently repair perforin pores.
An alternatively spliced gene encoding a Y‐box protein showing maternal expression and tissue‐specific zygotic expression in the ascidian embryo

An ascidian Y‐box protein gene was cloned, designated as CiYB, which consists of a highly conserved cold shock domain and an auxiliary tail domain with alternating modules of acidic and basic amino acids. CiYB is a single copy gene in the ascidian genome. During oogenesis and early development, CiYB produces three different transcripts (CiYB1, CiYB2 and CiYB3) by alternate splicing. CiYB1 and CiYB2 were expressed during oogenesis, suggesting that they are recruited into maternal ribonucleoprotein particles. According to gel mobility shift assay, the CiYB1 protein has the ability to bind RNA. The sequence preference of RNA binding is similar to that of the Xenopus Y‐box protein (FRGY2), which is a major component of the maternal messenger ribonucleoprotein particles (mRNP) in the oocyte. These results suggest that the ascidian Y‐box protein may have an important role for masking and translational regulation of maternal mRNA. Furthermore, CiYB1, CiYB2 and CiYB3 were expressed zygotically in a tissue restricted manner. CiYB1 was expressed specifically in muscle precursor blastomeres and tail muscle cells suggesting its important role in muscle differentiation.
Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift Among Newly Issued Public Companies in U.S. Capital Markets

Saifan 2 Acknowledgements I want to express my sincerest gratitude to all the people who have supported me during my undergraduate studies and in the completion of this honors thesis. I am very grateful to my advisors Connel Fullenkamp and Michelle Connolly for their guidance over the past year. Connel Fullenkamp – thank you for your candid comments and helping me motivate the ideas presented in my thesis. Your knowledge and integrity as an economics professor is impressive, and your character is a motivation to me. Michelle Connolly – thank you for always thoroughly reading my drafts and for giving concrete advice on how to improve my research. Throughout this whole process, you have made yourself available for me. Thank you. I hope to spend time with you again at the Washington Duke Inn, and perhaps one day win an M&M prize. Phil Nousak – even though you are not a formal advisor, this paper would have not been possible without you. Thank you, Phil, for helping me with the data and SAS programming. I enjoyed our long hours in the office together and talking about hockey while waiting for SAS programs to finish running. It was a privilege to work with you. Lastly, I wish to express my appreciation to the entire faculty at Duke's Department of Economics. You have provided me with a strong interest in economics and finance and have prepared me well for my future endeavors. Abstract Post-earnings-announcement drift is the tendency for a stock's cumulative abnormal returns to drift in the direction of an earnings surprise for several weeks following an earnings announcement. I show that the drift is significantly more pronounced when investigating the unexpected earnings of initial public offerings in comparison to the aggregate U.S. stock market. My results suggest that this disparity is attributable to firm-specific characteristics inherent in initial public offerings and the extraordinary growth numerous young firms experience. Further, I postulate that drift patterns following earnings announcements for IPO firms differ from those observed in prior PEAD research.
A photoelectric plethysmograph for the measurement of cutaneous blood flow.

The photodetector used is a cadmium selenide photoconductive cell and allowance is made for the temperature coefficient of the cell by applying a correction factor. Nonlinearity of the photocell response has been shown to be of negligible importance. Heating of the skin by the light source is greatly reduced by the use of fibre optic light guides and the influence on the recording of changes in oxygenation of haemoglobin is kept to a minimum by an infrared filter. The instrument has been shown to be sensitive, atraumatic and applicable to almost any skin area. Quantitative measurements of blood flow are not possible but accurate comparative measurements of changes in flow are easily obtained when the area of skin under study is compared with an adjacent control area.
Graded Aspects of Morphological Processing: Task and Processing Time

Effects on targets of orthographically (O) and semantically (S) related primes were compared with morphologically related (M) primes in the lexical decision, naming, and go/no go naming tasks. The overall pattern typified the graded nature of morphological processing. Morphological relatedness produced facilitation whose magnitude varied across a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs of 66-300 ms) and tasks. The effect of semantic and orthographic similarity also depended on SOA and on task. Importantly, the effects of morphological relatedness and orthographic similarity diverged along a time course that reflected semantic processing but could only be approximated by the effect of semantic relatedness between prime and target.
Arabidopsis Plants Acclimate to Water Deficit at Low Cost through Changes of Carbon Usage: An Integrated Perspective Using Growth, Metabolite, Enzyme, and Gene Expression Analysis1[C][W][OA]

Growth and carbon (C) fluxes are severely altered in plants exposed to soil water deficit. Correspondingly, it has been suggested that plants under water deficit suffer from C shortage. In this study, we test this hypothesis in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) by providing an overview of the responses of growth, C balance, metabolites, enzymes of the central metabolism, and a set of sugar-responsive genes to a sustained soil water deficit. The results show that under drought, rosette relative expansion rate is decreased more than photosynthesis, leading to a more positive C balance, while root growth is promoted. Several soluble metabolites accumulate in response to soil water deficit, with K+ and organic acids as the main contributors to osmotic adjustment. Osmotic adjustment costs only a small percentage of the daily photosynthetic C fixation. All C metabolites measured (not only starch and sugars but also organic acids and amino acids) show a diurnal turnover that often increased under water deficit, suggesting that these metabolites are readily available for being metabolized in situ or exported to roots. On the basis of 30 enzyme activities, no in-depth reprogramming of C metabolism was observed. Water deficit induces a shift of the expression level of a set of sugar-responsive genes that is indicative of increased, rather than decreased, C availability. These results converge to show that the differential impact of soil water deficit on photosynthesis and rosette expansion results in an increased availability of C for the roots, an increased turnover of C metabolites, and a low-cost C-based osmotic adjustment, and these responses are performed without major reformatting of the primary metabolism machinery.
CD163: a regulated hemoglobin scavenger receptor with a role in the anti‐inflammatory response

CD163 is a hemoglobin scavenger receptor exclusively expressed in the monocyte‐macrophage system. A particularly high expression is seen in macrophages of the ‘alternative activation’ phenotype playing a major role in dampening the inflammatory response and in scavenging components of damaged cells. CD163‐mediated endocytosis of haptoglobin‐hemoglobin complexes formed upon red blood cell hemolysis leads to lysosomal degradation of the ligand protein and metabolism of heme by cytosolic heme oxygenase. In accordance with a stimulated expression of haptoglobin, CD163 and heme oxygenase‐1 during the acute phase response, there is evidence that this metabolic pathway regulates inflammation by at least two ways. First, CD163 is reported to directly induce intracellular signaling leading to secretion of anti‐inflammatory cytokines. Second and perhaps even more important, the CD163‐mediated delivery of hemoglobin to the macrophage may fuel an anti‐inflammatory response because heme metabolites have potent anti‐inflammatory effects. In addition to being present on the macrophage surface, continuous shedding of the extracellular domain of CD163 leads to substantial amounts of soluble receptor in plasma. An increased shedding is due to inflammatory stimuli, and a role for soluble CD163 in immune suppression has been proposed. Furthermore, recent data indicate that soluble CD163 may be a valuable diagnostic parameter for monitoring macrophage activation in inflammatory conditions.
Image-Quality-Based Power Control Technique for Organic Light Emitting Diode Displays

This paper presents a new image-quality-based power control algorithm for an organic light-emitting diode display. The proposed algorithm calculates the optimal tradeoff between image quality and power consumption by employing an objective function that integrates a roll-off curve to eliminate the clipping error, which severely degrades the perceptual image quality. In addition, a sampling technique is adopted to reduce the computational complexity. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm reduces the average power consumption by up to 0.310 ×10 9 (11.75% decrease) while preserving the image quality above the target level. When applying the sampling technique to the proposed method, the average computation time per pixel is reduced by up to 1.025 μs (37.63% decrease) whereas the image quality and power consumption remain virtually unchanged.
Clonal Dissemination of Macrolide-Resistant and Penicillin-Susceptible Serotype 3 and Penicillin-Resistant Taiwan 19F-14 and 23F-15 Streptococcus pneumoniae Isolates in Japan: a Pilot Surveillance Study

ABSTRACT Large-scale surveillance studies using molecular techniques such as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) have revealed that the spread of antibiotic-resistant pneumococci is due to clonal spread. However, in Japan, surveillance studies using such molecular techniques have never been done. Therefore, we conducted a pilot surveillance study to elucidate the present situation in Japan. Among the 145 isolates examined, the most prevalent serotype was type 19F (20%), for which most isolates were not susceptible to penicillin (86.2%) but were positive for the mef(A)/mef(E) gene (89.7%). The secondmost prevalent was serotype 3 (16.6%), for which most isolates were susceptible to penicillin (87.5%) and positive for the erm(B) gene (91.7%). PFGE analysis showed that both serotypes consisted mainly of clonally identical or related isolates and, in particular, 38% of the type 19F isolates were indistinguishable from or closely related to the Taiwan 19F-14 clone. In addition, some of the Japanese type 23F isolates with the erm(B) gene were indistinguishable from or related to the Taiwan 23F-15 clone as analyzed by PFGE. Based on the results of our pilot study performed in a single institution, it is likely that international antibiotic-resistant clones have already spread in Japan; therefore, a nationwide surveillance study should be urgently conducted.
IL‐12 and IL‐23: master regulators of innate and adaptive immunity

Summary: Initiation of an effective immune response requires close interactions between innate and adaptive immunity. Recent advances in the field of cytokine biology have led to an increased understanding of how myeloid cell‐derived factors regulate the immune system to protect the host from infections and prevent tumor development. In this review, we focus on the function of interleukin (IL)‐23, a new member of the IL‐12 family of regulatory cytokines produced by activated macrophages and dendritic cells. We propose that IL‐12 and IL‐23 promote two distinct immunological pathways that have separate but complementary functions. IL‐12 is required for antimicrobial responses to intracellular pathogens, whereas IL‐23 is likely to be important for the recruitment and activation of a range of inflammatory cells that is required for the induction of chronic inflammation and granuloma formation. These two cytokines work in concert to regulate cellular immune responses critical for host defense and tumor suppression.
The Dependence of the Financial System on Central Bank and Government Support

How much does the banking sector depend on public support? Utilisation of many support facilities has declined, due mainly to a fall in demand. Supply factors play a smaller, but not insignificant role, as governments and central banks have tightened the conditions on which certain support measures are available or have phased them out entirely. However, not all financial institutions have reduced their use of support facilities. Weaker banks especially continue to depend on public support.
Histological and immunohistochemical analysis of initial and early osseous integration at chemically modified and conventional SLA titanium implants: preliminary results of a pilot study in dogs.

OBJECTIVES The aim of the present pilot study was to investigate initial and early tissue reactions to modified (mod) and conventional sand-blasted, large grit and acid-etched (SLA) titanium implants. MATERIAL AND METHODS Implantation of modSLA and SLA implants was performed bilaterally in both the mandible and maxilla of dogs. The animals were sacrificed after a healing period of 1, 4, 7 and 14 days, respectively. Peri-implant tissue reactions were assessed in non-decalcified tissue sections using conventional histology (Toluidine blue-TB and Masson Goldner Trichrome stain-MG) and immunohistochemistry using monoclonal antibodies to transglutaminase II (TG) (angiogenesis) and osteocalcin (OC). Bone density (BD) and bone to implant contact (BIC) were assessed histomorphometrically. RESULTS Day 1 revealed an early TG antigen reactivity in the provisional fibrin matrix adjacent to both implant surfaces. Day 4 was characterized by the formation of a collagen-rich connective tissue (MG), which revealed the first signs of OC synthesis adjacent to modSLA surfaces. Immunohistochemical staining for TG revealed a direct correlation between angiogenesis and new bone formation, which was clearly identifiable after 7 days by means of increasing BD, BIC and OC values. After 14 days, modSLA surfaces seemed to be surrounded by a firmly attached mature, parallel-fibered woven bone. CONCLUSIONS Within the limits of the present study, it might be concluded that the combination of immunohistochemical and conventional histological stainings in non-decalcified tissue sections is a valuable technique to evaluate the initial and early stages of wound healing around endosseous titanium implants.