Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stock Splits and Informational-Based Herding

This paper investigates the relation between institutional herding and stock splits. We use data on buying and selling activity of US institutional investors, from 1994 to 2005. We compute the abnormal correlation of trades among institutional investors in companies that have announced a stock split, compared to nonsplitting firms. The results show a significant level of convergence of behaviour, adjusted for common market factors, in both samples. Decomposing the correlation of trades into the contributions of several types of herding, we find significant impact of informational-based herding for splitting companies. The latter also motivates the difference between the two groups. We also observe herding has a significant stabilizing effect on the future returns of splitting companies. These results are consistent with an informational-based hypothesis of stock splits.
Early interventions for the prevention of post-traumatic stress symptoms in survivors of critical illness: protocol for a systematic review

Introduction Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is being increasingly reported among survivors of critical illness and injury. Previous work has demonstrated that PTSD reduces patient quality of life and ability to return to work, as well as increases healthcare costs. As such, identifying interventions aimed at preventing the development of critical illness-related PTSD could have an important public health impact. The objective of this systematic review is to collate the world’s literature on early interventions aimed at preventing PTSD among survivors of critical illness. Methods and analysis We will perform a qualitative systematic review of human clinical trials of interventions aimed at preventing or reducing critical illness-related PTSD symptoms. We will methodically search CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase and CINAHL. We will also search websites containing details on clinical trials registration (National Library of Medicine’s ClinicalTrials.gov and the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform), as well as screen reference lists of the articles we select for inclusion to identify additional studies for potential inclusion. Two authors will independently review all search results. After identification and inclusion of articles, we will use a standardised form for data extraction. We will use tables to describe the study type, populations, interventions tested and timing of interventions, outcome measures and effects of interventions on outcome measures compared with control groups. This review will be completed between 1 August 2017 and 31 August 2017. Ethics and dissemination The proposed systematic review will not collect individual patient level data and does not require ethical approval. Results of this study will contribute to the understanding of critical illness-related PTSD and help prompt future research aimed at further developing interventions to prevent PTSD symptoms in survivors of critical illness. PROSPERO registration number This systematic review is registered in the PROSPERO international prospective register of systematic reviews (registration number CRD42017069672).
Rituximab in the treatment of refractory adult and juvenile dermatomyositis and adult polymyositis: a randomized, placebo-phase trial.

OBJECTIVE To assess the safety and efficacy of rituximab in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-phase trial in adult and pediatric myositis patients. METHODS Adults with refractory polymyositis (PM) and adults and children with refractory dermatomyositis (DM) were enrolled. Entry criteria included muscle weakness and ≥2 additional abnormal values on core set measures (CSMs) for adults. Juvenile DM patients required ≥3 abnormal CSMs, with or without muscle weakness. Patients were randomized to receive either rituximab early or rituximab late, and glucocorticoid or immunosuppressive therapy was allowed at study entry. The primary end point compared the time to achieve the International Myositis Assessment and Clinical Studies Group preliminary definition of improvement (DOI) between the 2 groups. The secondary end points were the time to achieve ≥20% improvement in muscle strength and the proportions of patients in the early and late rituximab groups achieving the DOI at week 8. RESULTS Among 200 randomized patients (76 with PM, 76 with DM, and 48 with juvenile DM), 195 showed no difference in the time to achieving the DOI between the rituximab late (n = 102) and rituximab early (n = 93) groups (P = 0.74 by log rank test), with a median time to achieving a DOI of 20.2 weeks and 20.0 weeks, respectively. The secondary end points also did not significantly differ between the 2 treatment groups. However, 161 (83%) of the randomized patients met the DOI, and individual CSMs improved in both groups throughout the 44-week trial. CONCLUSION Although there were no significant differences in the 2 treatment arms for the primary and secondary end points, 83% of adult and juvenile myositis patients with refractory disease met the DOI. The role of B cell-depleting therapies in myositis warrants further study, with consideration for a different trial design.
Assessment of Glomerular Filtration Rate in Health and Disease: A State of the Art Review

Acute and chronic kidney diseases affect pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. There has been substantial progress in the past 20 years in the use of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) estimating equations. In principle, use of a single equation for each filtration marker (creatinine, cystatin C, or the combination) for detection, evaluation, and management of kidney disease and for drug development and dosing would facilitate clinical practice. We review the principles for assessment of GFR, provide historical perspectives and updates regarding use of GFR estimating equations, including assay methods for filtration markers, performance of estimating equations, and recommendations by clinical practice guideline groups and regulatory agencies. We conclude that it is time to change from rigid adherence to the use of the Cockcroft‐Gault equation for use in drug development and drug dosing to the more accurate and more widely used Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) study and the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD‐EPI) equations.
Bringing local entrepreneurs into the supply chain: the experience of Spier

Opening up opportunities for emerging entrepreneurs to access corporate supply chains is one of the most useful ways in which mainstream business can contribute to local development. The best known examples are among major multinationals, often in the extractive sector, such as the oil and gas industries, where ‘linkage programmes’ can facilitate supply chain contracts amounting to millions of dollars for local Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs). This Project Briefing describes a rather different case study, focusing on just one hotel in the Western Cape of South Africa. Despite its small scale, Spier hotel is an invaluable case study, because it demonstrates the substantial development impact that can be generated by localising procurement, and a wide range of extremely practical tips on how to bring local micro and small enterprises into corporate supply chains. In short, the hotel has substantially adapted its procurement strategy to tie it more closely to local suppliers and contractors. Spier hotel embarked on a strategic review of its procurement in 2004, and in August that year took out its first contract with a newlyestablished black-owned local laundry business, sourced via a new ‘enterprise development’ procurement approach. Since then, it has adapted management of its entire supply chain, doubled and tripled the shares that are procured locally and from ‘black economically empowered’ business (meaning more than 25.1% black shareholding), enabled at least 11 local black-owned micro businesses to enter the supply chain and become established, and seen the first of these emerging enterprises achieve independent commercial expansion. Five years on, the experience highlights two over-arching lessons: 1. Supply chain reform works, commercially and developmentally. It is possible to develop local procurement with commercial return and substantially higher local economic value. The Spier Hotel has gained a range of business benefits, from cost-saving to government recognition and staff morale. Meanwhile, the gross injection into the local economy outweighs what would be possible via philanthropic flows or increased wages from a hotel this size. One medium size business can cascade new opportunities through the local economy through supply chain reform. 2. It requires leadership, hard work, and changes in approach. Spier learned the value of leadership, facilitation, communication, mentoring, service standards, payment reform, smaller contracts, quick-wins, reform of staff key performance indicators (KPIs) and much more, all of which are useful tips for others.
Using strategic information for small firms as a means of redressing the disadvantages of peripherality

With over 2,000 participating firms, CAM‐Benchmarking Ltd (http://www.cam‐benchmarking.com) is one of the world's largest strategy benchmarking databases for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper draws upon CAM data to show that in a geographical region suffering from the deleterious economic effects of peripherality real progress to convergence (in terms of firm performance) can be achieved through benchmarking. More specifically the paper shows that comprehensive benchmarking data can be used to close the information gap that small firms, relative to large firms, often have, and through this process boost individual firm, and hence overall regional, performance.
Cryptic-Plasmid-Free Gonococci May Contribute to Failure of cppB Gene-Based Assays To Confirm Results of BD ProbeTEC PCR for Identification of Neisseria gonorrhoeae

We note the recent article by Koenig et al. ([3][1]) which describes discordance between results obtained with the BD ProbeTEC ET System (BDPT) and a cppB gene-based PCR assay for the detection of Neisseria gonorrhoeae . Overall, 22.6% of BDPT-positive assays were not confirmed by the cppB gene-
International Policy Coordination: The Long View

This paper places current efforts at international economic policy coordination in historical perspective. It argues that successful cooperation is most likely in four sets of circumstances. First, when it centers on technical issues. Second, when cooperation is institutionalized - when procedures and precedents create presumptions about the appropriate conduct of policy and reduce the transactions costs of reaching an agreement. Third, when it is concerned with preserving an existing set of policies and behaviors (when it is concerned with preserving a policy regime). Fourth, when it occurs in the context of broad comity among nations. These points are elaborated through a review of 150 years of historical experience and then used to assess the scope for cooperative responses to the current economic crisis.
Corporate Meeting Destination Choice: The Effects of Organizational Structure

Abstract This study attempted to determine the influence of organizational structure on the novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. The three dimensions of structure incorporated were formalization, centralization and complexity. A total of 75 corporate meeting planners drawn from public listed services organizations were involved. The main method of data collection was questionnaire survey and multiple regression analysis was employed as the main statistical technique. The results revealed that both formalization and centralization were negatively correlated with novelty preference while complexity was positively correlated. However, only complexity contributed significantly to the prediction of novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. The main implication of this study is pertaining to the segmentation and targeting of the corporate meeting market. This study helped in bridging the gap between tourism marketing and organizational research. lt also contributed by developing the measurement for novelty preference from the context of experiential marketing.
Downregulation of an Astrocyte-Derived Inflammatory Protein, S100B, Reduces Vascular Inflammatory Responses in Brains Persistently Infected with Borna Disease Virus

ABSTRACT Borna disease virus (BDV) is a neurotropic virus that causes a persistent infection in the central nervous system (CNS) of many vertebrate species. Although a severe reactive gliosis is observed in experimentally BDV-infected rat brains, little is known about the glial reactions contributing to the viral persistence and immune modulation in the CNS. In this regard, we examined the expression of an astrocyte-derived factor, S100B, in the brains of Lewis rats persistently infected with BDV. S100B is a Ca2+-binding protein produced mainly by astrocytes. A prominent role of this protein appears to be the promotion of vascular inflammatory responses through interaction with the receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE). Here we show that the expression of S100B is significantly reduced in BDV-infected brains despite severe astrocytosis with increased glial fibrillary acidic protein immunoreactivity. Interestingly, no upregulation of the expression of S100B, or RAGE, was observed in the persistently infected brains even when incited with several inflammatory stimuli, including lipopolysaccharide. In addition, expression of the vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1), as well as the infiltration of encephalitogenic T cells, was significantly reduced in persistently infected brains in which an experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis was induced by immunization with myelin-basic protein. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the continuous activation of S100B in the brain may be necessary for the progression of vascular immune responses in neonatally infected rat brains. Our results suggested that BDV infection may impair astrocyte functions via a downregulation of S100B expression, leading to the maintenance of a persistent infection.
Induced abortion and traumatic stress: a preliminary comparison of American and Russian women.

BACKGROUND Individual and situational risk factors associated with negative postabortion psychological sequelae have been identified, but the degree of posttraumatic stress reactions and the effects of culture are largely unknown. MATERIAL/METHODS Retrospective data were collected using the Institute for Pregnancy Loss Questionnaire (IPLQ) and the Traumatic Stress Institute's (TSI) Belief Scale administered at health care facilities to 548 women (331 Russian and 217 American) who had experienced one or more abortions, but no other pregnancy losses. RESULTS Overall, the findings here indicated that American women were more negatively influenced by their abortion experiences than Russian women. While 65% of American women and 13.1% of Russian women experienced multiple symptoms of increased arousal, re-experiencing and avoidance associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 14.3% of American and 0.9% of Russian women met the full diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Russian women had significantly higher scores on the TSI Belief Scale than American women, indicating more disruption of cognitive schemas. In this sample, American women were considerably more likely to have experienced childhood and adult traumatic experiences than Russian women. Predictors of positive and negative outcomes associated with abortion differed across the two cultures. CONCLUSIONS Posttraumatic stress reactions were found to be associated with abortion. Consistent with previous research, the data here suggest abortion can increase stress and decrease coping abilities, particularly for those women who have a history of adverse childhood events and prior traumata. Study limitations preclude drawing definitive conclusions, but the findings do suggest additional cross-cultural research is warranted.
Video Super-Resolution through Image Registration based on Structural Similarity

It is commonly known that the Mean Square Error (MSE) does not accurately reflect the subjective image quality for most video enhancement tasks. Among the various image quality metrics, Structural Similarity metric provides remarkably good prediction of the subjective scores. In this paper a new registration method based on contribution of structural similarity measurement to the well known Lucas-Kanade (LK) algorithm has been proposed. The core of the proposed method is contributing the SSIM in the sum of squared difference of images along with the Levenberg-Marquardt optimization approach in LK algorithm. Mathematical derivation of the proposed method, based on the unified framework of Baker et. al.is given. The proposed registration algorithm is applied to a video super resolution problem, successfully. Various objective and subjective comparisons show the superior performance of the proposed method. Preprint submitted to Image and Vision Computing October 3, 2009 Figure 1: “sliding window” technique for video super resolution [3].
Virtual Reality Techniques for 3D Data-Warehouse Exploration

This paper focuses on the evaluation of virtual reality (VR) interaction techniques for exploration of data warehouse (DW). The experimental DW involves hierarchical levels and contains information about customers profiles and related purchase items. A user study has been carried out to compare two navigation and selection techniques. Sixteen volunteers were instructed to explore the DW and look for information using the interaction techniques, involving either a single WiimoteTM (monomanual) or both WiimoteTM and NunchuckTM (bimanual). Results indicated that the bimanual interaction technique is more efficient in terms of speed and error rate. Moreover, most of the participants preferred the bimanual interaction technique and found it more appropriate for the exploration task. We also observed that males were faster and made less errors than females for both interaction techniques.
Serum Biochemistry and Serum Cortisol Levels of Immobilized and Hunted Muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) from Northern Canada

Muskoxen ( Ovibos moschatus ) are Arctic-adapted ruminants native to the Arctic regions of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland. Little is known about the serum biochemistry and serum cortisol of this species, or the effects of chemical immobilization on serum biochemical parameters. This study aimed to describe blood chemistry parameters and cortisol levels in hunted, tame, and chemically immobilized muskoxen and to examine differences in blood chemistry parameters and levels of stress associated with different capture techniques. Serum was collected from 91 adult female muskoxen in northern Canada. For analysis, these muskoxen were classified into six groups, five of free-ranging muskoxen (10 animals shot from snowmobiles near Kugluktuk, Nunavut; 18 chemically immobilized from a helicopter near Kugluktuk; 8 chemically immobilized from a helicopter near Norman Wells, Northwest Territories; 17 shot from snowmobiles near Cambridge Bay, Nunavut; 33 chemically immobilized from a snowmobile near Kugluktuk) and one of tame muskoxen (five tame animals maintained on pasture near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan). All samples were analyzed for cortisol, and 26 serum biochemistry parameters were measured in serum collected from three of the six groups (n = 36). Comparison of four groups showed that serum cortisol levels of muskoxen chemically immobilized from a helicopter near Kugluktuk were significantly higher( p < 0.05) than those of muskoxen chemically immobilized from snowmobiles or shot. A comparison of serum biochemistry from the groups of muskoxen shot and immobilized near Kugluktuk found that serum sodium, creatinine, phosphorus, magnesium, and creatine kinase were significantly higher ( p < 0.05) in hunted muskoxen than in chemically immobilized animals, while urea, glucose and gamma glutamyl transferase were significantly higher ( p < 0.05) in immobilized muskoxen. Most serum biochemical parameters, however, were similar to those of captive muskoxen. This evidence of differences between hunted and immobilized muskoxen in several serum biochemistry parameters will contribute to further research on the effects of immobilization and other health assessments in this species.
Test suites for benchmarks of static analysis tools

This paper proposes test suites for the benchmarks of static analysis tools. In our test suites, a wide variety of common defects are intentionally implemented. In addition, we also propose several criteria for the evaluation of static analysis tools. By using them, we can compare the performance of static analysis tools in a quantitative manner. Our test suites are available in the public domain. Moreover, this paper provides the evaluation results of the top performance tools as references. We would like to anticipate the further improvement of static analysis tools leveraged by our test suites and reference data.
A Resource-Based View of Product Development

The resource-based view of the firm contributes to the management of product development by highlighting how different functional and integrative capabilities affect process efficiency and product effectiveness. Here, I first review this evidence and then add it to past findings on this topic to form an agent-resource model, which provides a more analytical understanding of product development performance drivers. I also discuss the model in order to direct future research on such relevant issues as the creation, the utilization, and the capitalization of capabilities.
Enrichment and isolation of a ruminal bacterium with a very high specific activity of ammonia production

When mixed ruminal bacteria were inoculated into semicontinuous cultures (25% transfer every other day) containing lactate, dulcitol, pectin, or xylose and Trypticase (1 g/liter) as the sole nitrogen source, the specific activity of ammonia production increased. The greatest enrichment was observed with lactate and xylose, and in these cases the specific rate of ammonia production was eightfold higher than that of the ruminal fluid control (approximately 35 nmol of ammonia per mg of protein per min). Isolates with different morphologies were obtained from each of the enrichments, but in no case did the specific activity of any isolate exceed that of the mixed ruminal bacteria. If Trypticase (15 g/liter) was used as the only energy and nitrogen source, there was an even greater increase in ammonia production, and two monensin-sensitive bacteria, a Peptostreptococcus species and a Clostridium species, were obtained. The Peptostreptococcus species was unable to grow on any of 25 carbohydrate or carbohydrate derivatives tested; but the Clostridium species was able to use glucose, maltose, fructose, cellobiose, trehalose, sorbitol, and salicin as energy sources. Neither organism was able to grow in the absence of an amino acid source, but growth rates on Trypticase were greater than 0.35/h. The specific activities of ammonia production were 346 and 427 nmol/mg of protein per min for strains of Peptostreptococcus and Clostridium, respectively. Megasphaera elsdenii and Bacteroides ruminicola, previously isolated ruminal ammonia producers, had specific activities of only 11 and 19 nmol of ammonia per mg of protein per min, respectively. The most probable number of Clostridium species in ruminal fluid was less than 10(3)/ml, but the Peptostreptococcus species was present at 10(8)/ml. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)