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Capnocytophaga canimorsus is a rare cause of serious infections with a high mortality of 10% to 30%. It is usually found in the oral cavity of cats and dogs and can cause severe sepsis in immunocompromised patients. An 81‐year‐old female Caucasian patient presented with C. canimorsus sepsis after a dog bite in her finger three days before presentation to our emergency department. She initially was presented to us with sepsis, thrombopenia, and schistocytes in her laboratory findings, suggesting the differential diagnoses of the multiple subtypes of thrombotic microangiopathy. She was admitted to the medical intensive care unit of the University Hospital of Saarland because of septic shock with circulatory insufficiency. The patient received plasmapheresis, antibiotics, and dialysis, under which she improved significantly. The fingertip of the affected finger developed necrosis and had to be amputated. Furthermore, the patient was diagnosed with a mitral valve endocarditis, a very rare complication of C. canimorsus infection. It was treated conservatively with antibiotics and was no longer detectable 8 weeks after the diagnosis. Surgical intervention was not needed. The case describes well that it is still difficult to distinguish between thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), and sepsis‐induced coagulopathy (SIC), especially in the early phases of acute disease, especially in C. canimorsus-induced sepsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous decades, seminal theories were advanced addressing the problems of asymmetric information. These scholarly works confirmed a significant positive correlation between insurance coverage and risk in insurance markets. We showed that when regression models were used to analyze the asymmetric information problem, the sample selection bias and chosen regression methods could produce distinct results. Moreover, samples at different quantiles may lead to considerably different levels of information asymmetry. The present research suggests that quantile regression models be employed to better reveal the situation of the insurance market and reduce estimation errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Gram-negative bacillus that defies identification was isolated from blood cultures of 17 patients with fever. Fifteen patients were male adults, and 14 patients had underlying diseases, including previous splenectomy in five, which impair host defenses against infection. Illnesses occurred in the summer and autumn in 14 cases and had been recently preceded by dog bites in 10 cases. Clincal syndromes included cellulitis in seven cases, primary bacteremia without localization in four, purulent meningitis in four, and endocarditis in three. Three patients died. The organism grows slowly on blood or chocolate agar in 10% CO, is oxidase- and catalase-positive, and is negative for nitrate reduction, indole production, and urease. It produces acid from glucose, lactose, and maltose. These features distinguish it from all previously described and classified bacteria. Furthermore, the epidemiologic features of the patients suggest that this organism is an opportunistic invader and may have an animal reservoir in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse university admissions using a statistical discrimination model where students differ by ability and social group. In this university system, candidates are evaluated on the basis of their expected human capital, which includes both their innate abilities and the knowledge acquired during their schooling. Consequently, students determine their study effort based on the behaviour of universities. Interestingly, we find that students from a less advantaged group need a lower grade to gain admission to the best universities. If a university cannot discriminate between social groups, all students with the same grade will attend universities of the same quality, but with different levels of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a fatal case of lipoid pneumonia in a two and one half month old Saudi female caused by aspiration of animal fat, ghee and complicated by Mycobacterium fortuitum infection. It highlights the need to look for M. fortuitum in lipoid pneumonia and suggests the prevention of the condition through health education.

From Cournot, Walras, and Pareto's research to what followed in the form of marginalist economics, chaos theory, agent-based modeling, game theory, and econophysics, the interpretation and analysis of economic systems have been carried out using a broad range of higher mathematics methods. The evolution of mathematical economics is associated with the most productive and influential authors, sources, and countries, as well as the identification of interactions between the authors and research topics. Bibliometric analysis provides journal-, author-, document-, and country-level metrics. In the present study, a bibliometric overview of mathematical economics came from a screening performed in September 2023, covering the timespan 1898–2023. About 6477 documents on mathematical economics were retrieved and extracted from the Scopus academic database for analysis. The Bibliometrix package in the statistical programming language R was employed to perform a bibliometric analysis of scientific literature and citation data indexed in the Scopus database. VOSviewer (version 1.6.19) was used for the visualization of similarities using several bibliometric techniques, including bibliographic coupling, co-citation, and co-occurrence of keywords. The analysis traced the most influential papers, keywords, countries, and journals among high-quality studies in mathematical economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease with veterinary, public health, and economic implications. The study aimed to estimate the seroprevalence of Brucella spp. among ruminants in Rafha, Saudi Arabia during January to October 2022 and to identify camel strains based on a glycosyltransferase gene sequence. Sera (n=1012) were collected from non-vaccinated sheep, goats, camels and cattle of different sex, age and breed randomly from the abattoirs to investigate the circulating brucella antibodies using RBPT. One hundred and eighteen sera (9.7%) were reactive for Brucella spp. IgG immunoglobulins, with higher percentages detected in sheep (11.4%), females (13.3%), adults (10.7%), and naieme breed (13.9%). Significant correlation between Brucella spp. antibodies and animal species (0.095), age (0.077) was found, while strong correlation between antibodies and sex was observed. Glycosyltransferase gene was amplified and sequenced from camel reactive sera (n=6). Camel strains displayed multiple nucleotide substitutions and deletions, nucleotide identity among local strains is 96.2-100%. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Brucella spp. strains clustered in two groups, Rafha strains clustered in one group together with other strains. Further investigation is needed to determine the prevalence of the bacteria among farm animals and to identify the strains involved to improve the preventive measures and strategies adopted for control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convection-enhanced drug delivery (CED) directly infuses drugs with a large molecular weight toward target cells as a therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative diseases and brain cancers. Despite the success of many previous in vitro experiments on CED, challenges still remain. In particular, a theoretical predictive model is needed to form a basis for treatment planning, and developing such a model requires well-controlled injection tests that can rigorously capture the convective (advective) and diffusive transport of an infusate. For this purpose, we investigated the advection-diffusion transport of an infusate (bromophenol blue solution) in the brain surrogate (0.2% w/w agarose gel) at different injection rates, ranging from 0.25 to 4 μL/min, by closely monitoring changes in the color intensity, propagation distance, and injection pressures. One dimensional closed-form solution was examined with two variable sets, such as the mathematically calculated coefficient of molecular diffusion and average velocity, and the hydraulic dispersion coefficient and seepage velocity by the least squared method. As a result, the seepage velocity was greater than the average velocity to some extent, particularly for the later infusion times. The poroelastic deformation in the brain surrogate might lead to changes in porosity, and consequently, slight increases in the actual flow velocity as infusion continues. The limitation of efficiency of the single catheter was analyzed by dimensionless analysis. Lastly, this study suggests a simple but robust approach that can properly capture the convective (advective) and diffusive transport of an infusate in an in vitro brain surrogate via well-controlled injection tests., (© 2024. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Biomedical Engineering Society.)

We consider Cournot competition in general equilibrium. Decisions in firms are taken by majority voting. Naturally, interests of voters—shareholders or stakeholders—depend on their endowments and portfolios. Indeed, voters in every firm are concerned about the return on their portfolios rather than their shares in the firm. We introduce two notions of local Cournot–Walras equilibria to overcome difficulties arising from non-concavity of profit functions and multiplicity of equilibrium prices. We show existence of local Cournot–Walras equilibria, and characterize distributions of voting weights for which equilibrium allocations are Pareto optimal. We discuss the efficiency of various governance modes and highlight the importance of financial markets in regulating large firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University (Medical Science) is the property of Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University (Medical Science) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Craters of the Moon (COM) Volcanic Field in Idaho is the largest mostly Holocene lava field in the conterminous U.S. and the site of the most recent volcanism in the Yellowstone‐Snake River Plain province. This prominent example of a polygenetic fissure field has produced over 60 eruptions over the past 15,000 years from the Great Rift fissure system. The eight most recent lava flows, known as Period A, were erupted between about 2,500 and 2,000 years ago. In this study, major and trace element and Pb‐Sr‐Nd isotope data were obtained, with several samples collected from each flow from widely spaced locations to evaluate heterogeneity in their source magmas. The results reveal three previously unrecognized compositional groups that may represent separate magma batches, and that assimilation and fractional crystallization (AFC) controlled the evolution of the entire Period A suite. The three oldest flows were periodic withdrawals from a body of highly evolved and poorly homogenized magma, and four later flows represent successive samplings from a stratified body of more primitive magma. These two flow groups are related via variable AFC modeled with Magma Chamber Simulator software, with Neogene rhyolite as a plausible crustal assimilant. A third compositional type that requires a different parent magma and AFC history is represented by a single flow erupted from vents a few km away from the others. The compositional evolution and variability observed in this sequence of flows provide new insights into how magmas are generated, modified, and delivered in such polygenetic fissure systems. Plain Language Summary: The Craters of the Moon Volcanic Field is a prominent example of a long‐lived eruptive fissure system in a continental setting, where lava flows are produced at the Great Rift, a linear zone of fracturing and extending crust on the Snake River Plain in southern Idaho. Craters of the Moon has produced more than 60 eruptions over the past 15,000 years, including young lavas with high‐silica compositions that are relatively uncommon in the region. The eight most recent lava flows, known as Period A, were erupted between about 2,500 and 2,000 years ago. This sequence of flows provides snapshots of the evolving system over time and constrains processes that modify and feed magmas to this type of volcanic system. New chemical and isotope data with higher precision than in previous studies reveal that the flows fall into three compositional groups, likely reflecting separate magma batches with distinct histories of cooling, crystallization, and contamination by wall rock. These results illuminate the processes that deliver and alter magmas in such long‐lived fissure systems. Key Points: Compositions of the eight most recent Craters of the Moon lava flows elucidate magma evolution in this polygenetic fissure systemThis compositional study revealed the flows were fed by three previously unrecognized magma compositions with distinct petrologic historiesThe magmas were heterogenous, stratified, and culminated in the eruption of increasingly less evolved flows [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effect of private lower secondary schools on student achievement in France. I use propensity score matching on a large French database to estimate the effect of enrollment in a private school on academic achievement as measured by ninth-grade test scores in three school subjects. I find that private school attendance has a large and significant effect on educational success. Boys' (girls') scores in private school were between 0.193 (0.138) and 0.222 (0.198) standard deviations higher on standardized tests in ninth grade. A series of checks confirm the robustness of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1500–1970 literature on the theory of production/the firm can be usefully divided into four approaches to the positive analysis of production or the firm: aggregate production, market structure, the representative firm and micro-production. Each approach will be examined to establish the nature and development of the approach and the relationships between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glioblastoma is one of the most difficult tumor types to manage, having high morbidity and mortality with available therapies (surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy). Immunotherapeutic agents like Oncolytic Viruses (OVs), Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICIs), Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells and Natural Killer (NK) cell therapies are now being extensively used as experimental therapies in the management of glioblastoma. Oncolytic virotherapy is an emerging form of anti-cancer therapy, employing nature's own agents to target and destroy glioma cells. Several oncolytic viruses have demonstrated the ability to infect and lyse glioma cells by inducing apoptosis or triggering an anti-tumor immune response. In this mini-review, we discuss the role of OV therapy (OVT) in malignant gliomas with a special focus on ongoing and completed clinical trials and the ensuing challenges and perspectives thereof in subsequent sections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nordic Journal of Transitions, Careers & Guidance is the property of Ubiquity Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Unconditional intergovernmental grants are popular with economists but increasingly rarely observed in practice. Conversely, earmarking grants became a common form of the centres' support to states in federalist countries, though they are seriously flawed by welfare loss induced by the intended reallocation of states' provision of goods and services. Conditional grants bring states' governments a dilemma: intergovernmental grants increase states' revenues and enhance welfare, but the revenue gain is paid with amendments on the expenditure side, which harms welfare. We introduce the notion of price-shifting fungibility. It describes the effect of grant-receiving states minimizing the distortionary impact of conditional grants by lowering the prices or quality of the targeted good. By reducing the expenditure for the subsidized good, states create financial leeway to promote goods and services other than the targeted interest. By doing so, they can compensate for the welfare loss caused by conditional grants. We provide a simple theoretical model and some empirical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial and systematic cross-country variation in entrepreneurship rates has been found in various studies. We attempt to explain such differences focusing on the interaction between institutional factors and population psychological characteristics. Constitutional provisions supporting economic freedom are our measure of the institutional context, whereas we proxy psychological characteristics with a country's endowment of agency culture. We apply an IV-GMM treatment to deal with endogeneity to a data set comprising 86 countries over the period 2004-2013, and we control for de facto variables and other factors that are likely to influence entrepreneurship. Our results demonstrate that agency culture is indeed an important predictor of entrepreneurship and that this effect is moderated by constitutional provisions supporting economic freedom. In particular, the impact of agency culture on entrepreneurship becomes stronger as a country expands the constitutional protection of economic rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract We evaluate the causal effect of class size (number of students in a classroom) on incidence of class closure due to the flu, as an outcome of an infectious disease epidemic. For identification of causal effects, we apply a regression discontinuity design using discontinuous variation of class sizes, around the class size cap set by regulation, to administrative data of public primary and middle school students in one of the largest municipalities within the Tokyo metropolitan area from 2015 to 2017. Most classrooms in Japan are constructed in accordance with a standard of classroom area, 63 square meters; class size reduction improves social distancing among students in a classroom. We find that class size reduction is effective in reducing class closures due to the flu: a one-unit reduction of class size decreases class closure by about 5 percent. Additionally, forming small classes with 27 students at most, satisfying the social distancing of 1.5 meters recommended to prevent droplet infection including influenza and COVID-19, reduces class closure by about 90 percent. Moreover, we find that the older the students, the larger the effects of class size reduction. Our findings provide evidence for the effectiveness of social distancing policy in primary and middle schools to protect students from droplet infectious disease spread, including COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite significant advances in developing drugs to treat brain tumours, achieving therapeutic concentrations of the drug at the tumour site remains a major challenge due to the presence of the blood–brain barrier (BBB). Several strategies have evolved to enhance brain delivery of chemotherapeutic agents to treat tumours; however, most approaches have several limitations which hinder their clinical utility. Promising studies indicate that ultrasound can penetrate the skull to target specific brain regions and transiently open the BBB, safely and reversibly, with a high degree of spatial and temporal specificity. In this review, we initially describe the basics of therapeutic ultrasound, then detail ultrasound-based drug delivery strategies to the brain and the mechanisms by which ultrasound can improve brain tumour therapy. We review pre-clinical and clinical findings from ultrasound-mediated BBB opening and drug delivery studies and outline current therapeutic ultrasound devices and technologies designed for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the associations between class size, teacher characteristics, and children's academic achievement in mathematics, reading, and science using a recent, large-scale, longitudinal dataset. Individual fixed effects models, which control for observed and unobserved time-invariant student variables, were employed to conduct analysis of longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten in 2011 (ECLS-K:2011). Results suggest that reducing class size is associated with increases in reading and mathematics scores, but not in science scores. Non-linear class size effects were also detected and were more pronounced in reading achievement. Class size estimates were small in magnitude. A five-student decrease in class size corresponds to nearly a 0.01 standard deviation increase in mathematics and reading scores. None of the teacher characteristics were related to children's cognitive outcomes. Finally, changing schools from grade to grade has a significant negative effect on children's reading achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delivering therapeutic agents into the brain via convection-enhanced delivery (CED), a mechanically controlled infusion method, provides an efficient approach to bypass the blood–brain barrier and deliver drugs directly to the targeted focus in the brain. Mathematical methods based on Darcy's law have been widely adopted to predict drug distribution in the brain to improve the accuracy and reduce the side effects of this technique. However, most of the current studies assume that the hydraulic permeability and porosity of brain tissue are homogeneous and constant during the infusion process, which is less accurate due to the deformability of the axonal structures and the extracellular matrix in brain white matter. To solve this problem, a multiscale model was established in this study, which takes into account the pressure-driven deformation of brain microstructure to quantify the change of local permeability and porosity. The simulation results were corroborated using experiments measuring hydraulic permeability in ovine brain samples. Results show that both hydraulic pressure and drug concentration in the brain would be significantly underestimated by classical Darcy's law, thus highlighting the great importance of the present multiscale model in providing a better understanding of how drugs transport inside the brain and how brain tissue responds to the infusion pressure. This new method can assist the development of both new drugs for brain diseases and preoperative evaluation techniques for CED surgery, thus helping to improve the efficiency and precision of treatments for brain diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

4 To be precise: suppose student A applies to university X only, student B to university X as first choice and to university Y as second choice, and student C to university Y only. From Assumption 1, we can therefore write the student's payoff maximising probability of admission as: HT ht Graph (3)This is the latent probability in a binomial regression model. Naturally, we require (i) HT ht , and (ii) HT ht . [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Geomechanik und Tunnelbau is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We study rules based on instruments versus targets. Our application is a New Keynesian economy where the central bank has non-contractible information about aggregate demand shocks and cannot commit to policy. Incentives are provided to the central bank via punishment which is socially costly. Instrument-based rules condition incentives on the central bank's observable choice of policy, whereas target-based rules condition incentives on the outcomes of policy, such as inflation, which depend on both the policy choice and realized shocks. We show that the optimal rule within each class takes a threshold form, imposing the worst punishment upon violation. Target-based rules dominate instrument-based rules if and only if the central bank's information is sufficiently precise, and they are relatively more attractive the less severe the central bank's commitment problem. The optimal unconstrained rule relaxes the instrument threshold whenever the target threshold is satisfied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: We analyze the impact of choosing an elite school on high school graduation in an early tracking system in Flanders (Belgium). Whereas elite schools offer only an academic track, most other schools offer multiple tracks. On average, students experience a 3.3 percentage point increase in the likelihood of obtaining a degree. We find that the effects are heterogeneous. On average, students who self‐select into elite schools do not experience an effect. However, students who do not choose an elite school would experience positive effects. Our results can be explained by different tracking decisions in both types of schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of class size reduction on student performance has been of great research interest and policy debate worldwide. Nevertheless, the evidence has been largely inconclusive partially due to potential bias arising from non-random placement of students and teachers in classrooms of different sizes. This study applied instrumental variable (IV) methods and used a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to conduct analyses of TIMSS data in 2003, 2007 and 2011. The purpose was to investigate over time the effects of class size on eighth grade students' cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes on five mathematics and science subjects in four European countries (i.e. Hungary, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia). IV estimates indicate that in Romania in 2003 smaller classes had significant and positive effects on academic scores in mathematics, physics, chemistry and earth science and in 2007 on enjoyment to learn mathematics. In Lithuania, in 2011 small classes had significant and positive effects on enjoyment to learn biology and chemistry and learning chemistry well. In 2007 however, the effects were reversed on some of the biology related non-cognitive outcomes. Overall, the class size effects that were significant were also substantial in magnitude and typically much larger than the effects reported in Project STAR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do well-intended regulatory regimes have unintended consequences? We examine one obstacle to successful regulation, "regulatory leakage," in the context of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention (ABC). Leakage occurs when regulated behavior decreases for actors under a regime's jurisdiction, but increases among those outside of it. We analyze a formal model that demonstrates how the ABC may simultaneously reduce bribery among firms from member countries, while increasing bribery by firms from non-ABC member countries. We also show how the ABC may lead firms from ABC member countries to shift to bribery through intermediaries. New empirical evidence of MNC activity in Vietnam shows evidence of both regulatory leakage and bribery through intermediaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall survival of pediatric gliomas varies over a wide spectrum depending on the tumor grade. Low-grade gliomas have an excellent long-term survival, with a possible burden of surgery, irradiation, and chemotherapy; in contrast, high-grade gliomas generally have a short-term, devastating lethal outcome. Recent advances in understanding their molecular background will transform the classification and therapeutic approaches of pediatric gliomas. Molecularly targeted treatments may acquire a leading role in the primary treatment of low-grade gliomas and may provide alternative therapeutic strategies for high-grade glioma cases in the attempt to avoid the highly unsuccessful conventional therapeutic approaches. This review aims to overview this progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The present study assesses how sibship size affects child quality as measured by educational attainment. Design/methodology/approach: The data are from the Canadian General Social Surveys (GSS) of 1986, 1990, 1994 and 1995. The sample is restricted to the individuals born in Canada between 1946 and 1965, that is, the baby-boom generation. In addition to controlling for parental education, the sibship size is instrumented by a non-binary variable created based on the sex composition of the sibship. While most previous studies have pooled both genders, the present paper produces by gender estimates Findings: The OLS estimates are statistically significant, negative and moderately large for both male and female baby boomers. When the sibship size is instrumented, the estimates indicate that one additional sibling had reduced the educational attainment of male baby boomers by almost half a year. No causal effect for the sibship size is found for female baby boomers. Originality/value: This is the first paper on the effects of sibship size on educational attainment, using Canadian data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The brain is actuated by billions of neurons with trillions of interconnections that regulate human behaviors. Understanding the mechanisms of these systems that induce sensory reactions and respond to disease remains one of the greatest challenges in science, engineering, and medicine. Recent advances in nanomaterials and nanotechnologies have led to the extensive research of electronic devices for brain interfaces to better understand the neural activities of the brain's complex nervous system. The development of sensor devices for monitoring the physiological signals of the brain related to traumatic injury status has accompanied by the progress of electronic neural probes in parallel. In addition, these neurological and stereotactic surgical revolutions hold immense potential for clinical analysis of pharmacological systems within cerebral tissues. Here, we review the progress of electronic devices interfacing with brain in terms of the materials, fabrication technologies, and device designs. Neurophysiological activity can be measured and modulated by brain probes based on newly developed nanofabrication methodologies. Furthermore, in vivo pathological monitoring of the brain and pharmacological assessment has been developed in miniaturized and wireless form. We also consider the key challenges and prospects for further development, and explore the future directions emerging in the latest research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]