Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG Effective in Preventing the Onset of Antibiotic-Associated Diarrhoea: A Systematic Review

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG in the prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea. Data Sources: A computer-based search of MEDLINE, CINAHL, AMED, the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was conducted. A hand-search of the bibliographies of relevant papers and previous meta-analyses was undertaken. Review Methods: Trials were included in the review if they compared the effects of L. rhamnosus GG and placebo and listed diarrhoea as a primary end-point. Studies were excluded if they were not placebo-controlled or utilised other probiotic strains. Results: Six trials were found that met all eligibility requirements. Significant statistical heterogeneity of the trials precluded meta-analysis. Four of the six trials found a significant reduction in the risk of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea with co-administration of Lactobacillus GG. One of the trials found a reduced number of days with antibiotic-induced diarrhoea with Lactobacillus GG administration, whilst the final trial found no benefit of Lactobacillus GG supplementation. Conclusion: Additional research is needed to further clarify the effectiveness of Lactobacillus GG in the prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea.
Bank corporate governance and sound and prudent management

«Alongside adequate capital and organization, the third factor of the stability of the banking system is the quality of corporate governance» (Draghi 2008). The paper addresses the relationship between bank corporate governance and sound and prudent management by analysing the main strands of literature first on corporate governance in general, identified and classified on the basis of the OECD principles (2004), and then specifically on bank corporate governance and the role of bank boards, identified and classified using the BIS principles (2006). The paper concludes with the identification of the most promising areas for further research.
Towards a high-throughput drug discovery platform for the screening of GPCR targets in cells

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) play a key role in physiologic and pathologic processes via signal transduction pathways that convert extracellular information into intracellular functions. The identification of drugs that target GPCRs usually relies on functional, cell-based assays. Here, the binding of a test compound to a receptor alters the conformation of the associated G-protein, initiating a cascade of events. The magnitude of the response is typically measured by monitoring key elements in the cascade (e.g., calcium) with fluorescent dyes or with luminescent reporter proteins (e.g., aequorin). The goal of this project is to develop cell microchips for the screening of drugs that act upon GPCRs. The basic unit of the chip will be composed of: i) 15–100 micron-sized test sites where the cells are placed and contacted with the candidate drug via a microfluidic network, and ii) independent, micron-sized amorphous silicon photodetectors that convert the photons of generated light into an electric current and that can be arrayed.
E-Reverse Auctions Revisited: An Analysis of Context, Buyer–Supplier Relations and Information Behavior

SUMMARY This study investigates context, information behavior and buyer–supplier relationships in e-reverse auctions (e-RAs). Following a grounded theory approach, a comprehensive online questionnaire was developed and sent to both users and nonusers of e-RAs. Usable responses were received from 89 buyers and 54 suppliers that were analyzed taking into account both the size and consistency of effects obtained from the Mann–Whitney U-test and Kendall's tau (τ) statistic. The results not only show that e-RAs have fewer negative effects on buyer–supplier relationships than currently assumed but also that the management of e-RAs (particularly a high valuation of types and sources of information combined with a high quality of information exchange and communication) has a positive impact on the buyer–supplier relationship.
Kernel Approach for Modeling Interaction Effects in Genetic Association Studies of Complex Quantitative Traits

The etiology of complex traits likely involves the effects of genetic and environmental factors, along with complicated interaction effects between them. Consequently, there has been interest in applying genetic association tests of complex traits that account for potential modification of the genetic effect in the presence of an environmental factor. One can perform such an analysis using a joint test of gene and gene‐environment interaction. An optimal joint test would be one that remains powerful under a variety of models ranging from those of strong gene‐environment interaction effect to those of little or no gene‐environment interaction effect. To fill this demand, we have extended a kernel machine based approach for association mapping of multiple SNPs to consider joint tests of gene and gene‐environment interaction. The kernel‐based approach for joint testing is promising, because it incorporates linkage disequilibrium information from multiple SNPs simultaneously in analysis and permits flexible modeling of interaction effects. Using simulated data, we show that our kernel machine approach typically outperforms the traditional joint test under strong gene‐environment interaction models and further outperforms the traditional main‐effect association test under models of weak or no gene‐environment interaction effects. We illustrate our test using genome‐wide association data from the Grady Trauma Project, a cohort of highly traumatized, at‐risk individuals, which has previously been investigated for interaction effects.
A Vision-based Quadrotor Swarm for the participation in the 2013 International Micro Air Vehicle Competition

This paper presents a completely autonomous solution to participate in the 2013 International Micro Air Vehicle Indoor Flight Competition (IMAV2013). Our proposal is a modular multi-robot swarm architecture, based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) software framework, where the only information shared among swarm agents is each robot's position. Each swarm agent consists of an AR Drone 2.0 quadrotor connected to a laptop which runs the software architecture. In order to present a completely visual-based solution the localization problem is simplified by the usage of ArUco visual markers. These visual markers are used to sense and map obstacles and to improve the pose estimation based on the IMU and optical data flow by means of an Extended Kalman Filter localization and mapping method. The presented solution and the performance of the CVG UPM team were awarded with the First Prize in the Indoors Autonomy Challenge of the IMAV2013 competition.
A two-stage supply chain with demand sensitive to price and warranty length

Based on game theory, this study investigated decision-making of retail price and warranty length for a two-stage supply chain with one supplier and one retailer. Mathematical models have been developed to analyze the competition mechanism for two different cases- where in the decentralized setting, with the manufacturer as the Stackelberg leader, the manufacturer and the retailer respectively independently make decisions of retail price and warranty length to maximize individual profit per unit time;with the retailer as the Stackelberg leader, the manufacturer and the retailer respectively independently make decisions of retail price and warranty length to maximize individual profits per unit time. According to the two settings, the analytical solutions or joints equations for optimal retail price and warranty length have been obtained.
Fork Reversal and ssDNA Accumulation at Stalled Replication Forks Owing to Checkpoint Defects

Checkpoint-mediated control of replicating chromosomes is essential for preventing cancer. In yeast, Rad53 kinase protects stalled replication forks from pathological rearrangements. To characterize the mechanisms controlling fork integrity, we analyzed replication intermediates formed in response to replication blocks using electron microscopy. At the forks, wild-type cells accumulate short single-stranded regions, which likely causes checkpoint activation, whereas rad53 mutants exhibit extensive single-stranded gaps and hemi-replicated intermediates, consistent with a lagging-strand synthesis defect. Further, rad53 cells accumulate Holliday junctions through fork reversal. We speculate that, in checkpoint mutants, abnormal replication intermediates begin to form because of uncoordinated replication and are further processed by unscheduled recombination pathways, causing genome instability.
A 77-GHz FMCW radar transceiver MMIC/waveguide integration approach

System integration is an important aspect in today's mm-wave systems. Monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) operating at mm-wave frequencies have become inexpensive and are now available even for lower volume applications. Most systems, however, rely on radio frequency (RF) substrates, bare-die chips and wire bonding, which makes them hard to handle and expensive. In this paper we present one possible solution: the integration of a 77-GHz frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar transceiver MMIC with an antenna in package that directly feeds a WR12 waveguide. The proposed system does not require RF substrate, is based on a packaged transceiver MMIC with a ball grid array, and has a WR12 interface that allows for a flexible combination with other WR12 components. We present simulation results of the MMIC to WR12 transition as well as measurement results of the integrated module.
Genetic Loci Influencing Myocardial Mass

van der Harst, Pim; van Setten, Jessica; Verweij, Niek; Vogler, Georg; Franke, Lude; Maurano, Matthew T; Wang, Xinchen; Mateo Leach, Irene; Eijgelsheim, Mark; Sotoodehnia, Nona; Hayward, Caroline; Sorice, Rossella; Meirelles, Osorio; Lyytikäinen, Leo-Pekka; Polašek, Ozren; Tanaka, Toshiko; Arking, Dan E; Ulivi, Sheila; Trompet, Stella; MüllerNurasyid, Martina; Smith, Albert V; Dörr, Marcus; Kerr, Kathleen F; Magnani, Jared W; Del Greco M, Fabiola; Zhang, Weihua; Nolte, Ilja M; Silva, Claudia T; Padmanabhan, Sandosh; Tragante, Vinicius; Esko, Tõnu; Abecasis, Gonçalo R; Adriaens, Michiel E; Andersen, Karl; Barnett, Phil; Bis, Joshua C; Bodmer, Rolf; Buckley, Brendan M; Campbell, Harry; Cannon, Megan V; Chakravarti, Aravinda; Chen, Lin Y; Delitala, Alessandro; Devereux, Richard B; Doevendans, Pieter A; Dominiczak, Anna F; Ferrucci, Luigi; Ford, Ian; Gieger, Christian; Harris, Tamara B; Haugen, Eric; Heinig, Matthias; Hernandez, Dena G; Hillege, Hans L; Hirschhorn, Joel N; Hofman, Albert; Hubner, Norbert; Hwang, Shih-Jen; Iorio, Annamaria; Kähönen, Mika; Kellis, Manolis; Kolcic, Ivana; Kooner, Ishminder K; Kooner, Jaspal S; Kors, Jan A; Lakatta, Edward G; Lage, Kasper; Launer, Lenore J; Levy, Daniel; Lundby, Alicia; Macfarlane, Peter W; May, Dalit; Meitinger, Thomas; Metspalu, Andres; Nappo, Stefania; Naitza, Silvia; Neph, Shane; Nord, Alex S; Nutile, Teresa; Okin, Peter M; Olsen, Jesper V; Oostra, Ben A; Penninger, Josef M; Pennacchio, Len A; Pers, Tune H; Perz, Siegfried; Peters, Annette; Pinto, Yigal M; Pfeufer, Arne; Pilia, Maria Grazia; Pramstaller, Peter P; Prins, Bram P; Raitakari, Olli T; Raychaudhuri, Soumya; Rice, Ken M; Rossin, Elizabeth J; Rotter, Jerome I; Schafer, Sebastian; Schlessinger, David; Schmidt, Carsten O; Sehmi, Jobanpreet; Silljé, Herman H W; Sinagra, Gianfranco; Sinner, Moritz F; Slowikowski, Kamil; Soliman, Elsayed Z; Spector, Timothy D; Spiering, Wilko; Stamatoyannopoulos, John A; Stolk, Ronald P; Strauch, Konstantin; Tan, Sian-Tsung; Tarasov, Kirill V; Trinh, Bosco; Uitterlinden, Andre G; van den Boogaard, Malou; van Duijn, Cornelia M; van Gilst, Wiek H; Viikari, Jorma S; Visscher, Peter M; Vitart, Veronique; Völker, Uwe; Waldenberger, Melanie; Weichenberger, Christian X; Westra, Harm-Jan; Wijmenga, Cisca; Wolffenbuttel, Bruce H; Yang, Jian; Bezzina, Connie R; Munroe, Patricia B; Snieder, Harold; Wright, Alan F; Rudan, Igor; Boyer, Laurie A; Asselbergs, Folkert W; van Veldhuisen, Dirk J; Stricker, Bruno H; Psaty, Bruce M; Ciullo, Marina; Sanna, Serena; Lehtimäki, Terho; Wilson, James F; Bandinelli, Stefania; Alonso, Alvaro; Gasparini, Paolo; Jukema, J Wouter; Kääb, Stefan; Gudnason, Vilmundur; Felix, Stephan B; Heckbert, Susan R; de Boer, Rudolf A; Newton-Cheh, Christopher; Hicks, Andrew A; Chambers, John C; Jamshidi, Yalda; Visel, Axel; Christoffels, Vincent M; Isaacs, Aaron; Samani, Nilesh J; de Bakker, Paul I W
Multivessel myocardial infarction: a window to future treatments of myocardial infarction

During the last 50 years, the treatment of myocardial infarction has evolved. Monitoring of arrhythmias,1 defibrillation of the detected arrhythmias and the eventual implantation of defibrillators have decreased the risk of sudden death.2 Anticoagulation, antiplatelets and thrombolytics attacked the initiating event of thrombosis within the artery.3–8 This event, easily accepted today, required visualisation of the thrombus in live patients, since the clot was often absent in pathological examination.9–12 A great deal of effort has been spent in refining antithrombotic drugs and the development of protocols that would reduce thrombosis with the least risk of bleeding. The observation of clot in a vessel enabled cardiology to decrease the mortality of myocardial infarction from 50% to less than 5%. Although many agents have been added to the patient to reduce thrombosis, there has never been a consideration to remove offending agents from the patient. A new paradigm in the aetiology of myocardial infarction has been growing in our clinical trials. This new concept is the role of inflammation.13–15 Inflammation of blood vessels is one explanation for the onset of the clinical syndrome. Coronary atherosclerosis is present in 75% of individuals over the age of 21. This fact has been known since the Korean War.16 17 Inflammation weakens the lipid-filled plaque wall. The thinned plaque ruptures, exposing the blood vessel to thrombogenic factors, and attracts clumping platelets to initiate clots. Inflammation occurs in a smaller percentage of individuals explaining why acute events are less frequent than the prevalence of disease.18 Inflammation can be helpful by signalling for repair progenitors, but may also impede the healing of the myocardium by destroying the progenitor cells or disrupting differentiation that would replace the damaged myocardium. Inflammation of the vessel wall is more difficult to visualise than clots, but appears to …
Vulnerability and Information Security Investment Under Interdependent Risks: A Theoretical Approach

This article develops an economic model that shows the optimal level of information security investment in the context of interdependent security risks. Using particular functional forms, the analysis shows that the relationship between the security vulnerability level and the level of optimal information security investment is affected by externalities caused by agents’ correlated security risks. This article further illustrates that these externalities make an agent invest a different fraction of the expected loss compared to security investments in the situation of independent security risks: that is, in order to maximize the expected benefits from security investments, an agent should invest a larger fraction of the expected loss from a security breach in the case of negative externalities, while an agent should spend a smaller fraction of the expected loss in the case of negative externalities.
Development of a Multiple‐item Scale for Measuring Hospital Service Quality

Many hospitals apply modern marketing ideas to serve customer markets in a more efficient and effective way. An important strategic variable in this respect is service quality. Gives a theoretical conceptualization of the service‐quality construct and discusses its major underlying assumptions and concepts. Also describes some specific characteristics of the quality construct in the health‐care sector. Explores the dimensionality of the service‐quality construct using the SERVQUAL instrument. Also describes the Access concept, which is widely used in the health‐care literature. On the basis of these theoretical considerations, reports an empirical study in a Belgian hospital to develop an appropriate multiple‐item scale to measure hospital service quality. Discusses discrepancies between SERVQUAL and the dimensions obtained from this study in some detail along with the reliability and validity properties of our scale and makes some critical comments on the SERVQUAL approach with recommendations for future.
AID EFFECTIVENESS IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC ISLAND COUNTRIES A CASE STUDY OF VANUATU

Among all the island countries of the world, Vanuatu, a small island nation in the South Pacific with a population of 220,000 was once ranked as the most vulnerable economy on the basis of its least resilience to withstand the adverse impacts of external and internal shocks. It has been currently designated on the basis of quality of life one of the five least developed countries among the Pacific island countries. Recognizing its special circumstances, including its high dependency on strategic imports including fuel, with unstable export earnings, its proneness to natural disasters and its inadequate human resource skills, the international community has been assisting the country with generous external aid ever since its independence in 1980. Aside from the bilateral overseas development assistance, especially from the two regional metropolitan powers, in terms of pure grants on an annual basis, multilateral funding agencies including Asian Development Bank have been assisting the country with concessional loans for several projects and reform programs. Despite these annual aid inflows, Vanuatu has been performing poorly which is reflected in stagnation of its per capita income. This article seeks to examine the nexus between aid and growth in Vanuatu and investigates causes behind weak performance. Based on the analysis, the article makes recommendations with some policy implications.
ACTIVE, an Extensible Cataloging Platform for Automatic Indexing of Audiovisual Content

The cost of manual metadata production is high, especially for audiovisual content, where a time-consuming inspection is usually required in order to identify the most appropriate annotations. There is a growing need from digital content industries for solutions capable of automating such a process. In this work we present ACTIVE, a platform for indexing and cataloging audiovisual collections through the automatic recognition of faces and speakers. Adopted algorithms are described and our main contributions on people clustering and caption-based people identification are presented. Results of experiments carried out on a set of TV shows and audio files are reported and analyzed. An overview of the whole architecture is presented as well, with a focus on chosen solutions for making the platform easily extensible (plug-ins) and for distributing CPU-intensive calculations across a network of computers.
Use of the Genotype MTBDR Assay for Rapid Detection of Rifampin and Isoniazid Resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex Isolates

ABSTRACT A commercially available DNA strip assay (Genotype MTBDR; Hain Lifescience, Nehren, Germany) was evaluated for its ability to detect mutations conferring resistance to rifampin (RMP) and isoniazid (INH) in clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates. A total of 103 multidrug-resistant (MDR; i.e., at least resistant to RMP and INH) and 40 fully susceptible strains isolated in Germany in 2001 in which resistance mutations have been previously defined by DNA sequencing and real-time PCR analysis were investigated. The Genotype MTBDR assay identified 102 of the 103 MDR strains with mutations in the rpoB gene (99%) and 91 strains (88.4%) with mutations in codon 315 of katG. All 40 susceptible strains showed a wild-type MTBDR hybridization pattern. The concordance between the MTBDR assay and the DNA sequencing results was 100%. Compared to conventional drug susceptibility testing, the sensitivity and specificity were 99 and 100% for RMP resistance and 88.4 and 100% for INH resistance, respectively. In conclusion, the MTBDR assay is a rapid and easy-to-perform test for the detection of the most common mutations found in MDR M. tuberculosis strains that can readily be included in a routine laboratory work flow.
Discriminating Contagion: An Alternative Explanation of Contagious Currency Crises in Emerging Markets

This paper shows that a country's vulnerability to contagious crises depends on the visible similarities between that country and other countries that are experiencing crises. A country is vulnerable to shifts in investor sentiment if it exhibits weaknesses in the same economic variables as other countries affected by a contagious crisis (particularly the country that started the contagious wave), or if it is located in the same region. The paper uses a sample of 19 emerging markets, and data from the Mexican, Asian, and Russian crises to provide evidence of this discriminating contagion, after controlling for alternative channels of contagion such as trade spillovers and financial linkages.
Domestic Medical Tourism: A Neglected Dimension of Medical Tourism Research

To date, the literature on medical tourism has focused almost exclusively on international medical tourism, or medical services outsourced to other countries. However, there are a growing number of patients who travel for medical care within their own country. Medical tourism experts have suggested that competition introduced from abroad, combined with health care reform, may stimulate improvement in health care offerings in the United States, and lead to an increase in such medical tourism. This article will therefore extend the literature by examining domestic medical tourism in the United States. There is a scarcity of research investigating consumer attitudes and beliefs towards the concept of medical tourism—particularly for domestic medical tourism. The authors present a new model, along with a research agenda for studying both attitudes towards such tourism, as well as the potential impact of domestic medical tourism on regional economies in the United States.
Calorie Restriction Promotes Mammalian Cell Survival by Inducing the SIRT1 Deacetylase

A major cause of aging is thought to result from the cumulative effects of cell loss over time. In yeast, caloric restriction (CR) delays aging by activating the Sir2 deacetylase. Here we show that expression of mammalian Sir2 (SIRT1) is induced in CR rats as well as in human cells that are treated with serum from these animals. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) attenuated this response. SIRT1 deacetylates the DNA repair factor Ku70, causing it to sequester the proapoptotic factor Bax away from mitochondria, thereby inhibiting stress-induced apoptotic cell death. Thus, CR could extend life-span by inducing SIRT1 expression and promoting the long-term survival of irreplaceable cells.