Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Melanocortin 1 receptor genotype: an important determinant of the damage response of melanocytes to ultraviolet radiation

The melanocortin 1 receptor gene is a main determinant of human pigmentation, and a melanoma susceptibility gene, because its variants that are strongly associated with red hair color increase melanoma risk. To test experimentally the association between melanocortin 1 receptor genotype and melanoma susceptibility, we compared the responses of primary human melanocyte cultures naturally expressing different melanocortin 1 receptor variants to α‐melanocortin and ultraviolet radiation. We found that expression of 2 red hair variants abolished the response to α‐melanocortin and its photoprotective effects, evidenced by lack of functional coupling of the receptor, and absence of reduction in ultraviolet radiation‐induced hydrogen peroxide generation or enhancement of repair of DNA photoproducts, respectively. These variants had different heterozygous effects on receptor function. Microarray data confirmed the observed differences in responses of melanocytes with functional vs. non‐functional receptor to α‐melanocortin and ultraviolet radiation, and identified DNA repair and antioxidant genes that are modulated by α‐melanocortin. Our findings highlight the molecular mechanisms by which the melanocortin 1 receptor genotype controls genomic stability of and the mutagenic effect of ultraviolet radiation on human melanocytes. —Kadekaro, A. L. , Leachman, S. , Kavanagh, R. J., Swope, V. , Cassidy, P., Supp, D. , Sartor, M. , Schwemberger, S. , Babcock, G. , Wakamatsu, K. , Ito, S. , Koshoffer, A. , Boissy, R. E. , Manga, P., Sturm, R. A. , Abdel‐Malek, Z. A. Melanocortin 1 receptor genotype: an important determinant of the damage response of melanocytes to ultraviolet radiation. FASEB J. 24, 3850–3860 (2010). www.fasebj. org
RETHINKING L2 MOTIVATION RESEARCH

Abstract The present study proposed and tested a revision of the self-guides outlined in the L2 motivational self system (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009). Covering the previous conceptualization and measurement issues, ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self were bifurcated by own and other standpoints, and reoperationalized based on the fundamental tenets of self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987) and regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the fitness of the model and its superiority over three alternative models based on data collected from 257 international students learning English as a second language at a major North American university. Multiple regression results showed that ought L2 self/own was the strongest predictor of motivated behavior. Ideal L2 self/own, ought L2 self/other, and ideal L2 self/other were the next predictors in order of strength. Furthermore, ideal L2 self/own predicted an eager strategic inclination in L2 behavior, whereas ought L2 self/own predicted a vigilant strategic inclination, supporting the core principle of the regulatory focus theory that individuals with different regulatory orientations pursue their goals in qualitatively different manners.
Data Mining: A Tool for Enhancing Business Process in Banking Sector

Significant shifts in the business environment, economic volatility, changing customer and staff expectations, and the adopti on of new tech- nology make it increasingly challenging for banks to navigate technology strategy alternatives and prioritize technology investments. The banking indus- try around the world has undergone a tremendous change in the way business is conducted. Leading banks are using Data Mining (DM) tools for cus- tomer segmentation and profitability, credit scoring and approval, predicting payment default, marketing, detecting fraudulent transactions, etc. This pa- per provides an overview of the concept of Data Mining. Data might be one of the most valuable assets of any corporation, but only if it knows how to reveal valuable knowledge hidden in raw data. Data mining allows extracting diamonds of knowledge from the historical data, and predicting outcomes of future situations. It helps optimize business decisions, increase the value of each customer and communication, and improve customer satisfaction. Data mining is the process of extracting previously un- known information, typically in the form of patterns and associations, from large databases. Today, organizations are realizing the numerous advantages that come with data mining. It is a valuable tool, by identifying potentially useful information from the large amounts of data collected. An organization can gain a clear advantage over its competitors. The banking sector consists of public sector, private sector and foreign banks, apart from smaller regional and cooperative b anks. In the market, various IT-based banking products, services and solutions are available. The most common of them are Phone Banking; ATM facility; Credit, Debit and Smart Cards; Internet Banking & Mobile Banking; SWIFT Network & INFINET Network; connectivity of bank branches to facilitate anywhere banking.
Study and Analysis of Scientific Scopes, Issues and Challenges towards Developing a Righteous Wireless Body Area Network

The escalating applies of wireless networks and the constant tininess of electrical devices have empowered the development of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). In this network various sensors are attached on clothing or on the body or even implanted under the skin. This network enables medical doctor to distantly monitor essential signs and organs of patients and provide real time opinions for medical diagnosis. The numerous new, realistic and ground-breaking applications of WBAN facilitate to advance health care and the quality of life. By means of a WBAN, the patient experiences a superior and greater physical mobility and is no longer constrained to reside in the hospital. The amalgamation of low-power, miniaturized, lightweight sensors nodes lead to the development of a proactive and unobtrusive Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A WBAN presents a long term health monitoring of a patient devoid of any restriction on his/her normal daily life activities. It is the easiest and fastest way to monitor patient’s health status effectively. Although WBAN is the efficient way to diagnose patients existing condition but the challenges related to developing an effective WBAN is not studied and analyzed significantly. The effectiveness of the WBAN strongly depends on controlling the energy consumption of sensor nodes. To achieve energy efficiency, low duty cycle MAC protocols are used. In this paper, we discuss about the basic idea and key components of WBAN, basic difference between wireless sensor networks (WSN) and WBAN, technical challenges, and its importance, quality of service (QoS) and security, analysis of MAC features, various applications, different sensors; physiological signals, their frequency; different data rate, latency of WBANs, issues related to energy or power efficiency, and existing WBAN technologies.Finally, the open research issues and challenges are also pointed out.
Core Inflation in the UK

This paper presents a new measure of core inflation for the UK based on the idea that it is the persistence of individual inflation rates which matters in measuring the level of underlying inflation. The measure is based on the same components as RPIX, but it weights individual price changes by their past persistence, instead of their importance in households’ budgets, to derive a persistence-weighted core inflation measure, or RPIXP for short. This operationalises Blinder’s concept of core inflation as the durable or persistence part of aggregate inflation. The paper evaluates this new measure against existing measures in terms of its ability to predict future RPIX inflation. It finds that the new RPIXP is a good predictor of RPIX 6 months and 12 months ahead, and outperforms most other core inflation measures, as well as current RPIX itself, in its predictive ability. Surprisingly, RPIX excluding food and energy - which is a popular way of measuring underlying inflation - is a poor predictor of RPIX. One reason is that this measure excludes non-seasonal food prices which are highly persistent in the UK.
Cutting Edge: Antisense Knockdown of Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase Inhibits Induction of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis in SJL/J Mice

We used an antisense oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) complementary to inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) to inhibit experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in female SJL/J mice, an animal model for multiple sclerosis. The antisense ODN was administered intraventricularly to mice daily for 10 days beginning at the time of adoptive transfer of myelin basic protein-specific T lymphocytes. The antisense ODN treatment significantly reduced the clinical score of EAE and blocked iNOS mRNA and protein synthesis, as well as iNOS enzyme activity within the central nervous system. The levels of nitric oxide and cyclic guanosine monophosphate were also significantly reduced by the antisense ODN treatment. Neither sense nor random ODN affected clinical EAE or iNOS expression. Moreover, the protein and enzyme activity level of constitutive neuronal nitric oxide synthase was not affected by the antisense ODN. Thus, we have shown that the iNOS antisense ODN specifically blocked iNOS expression and ameliorated the induction of EAE.
Issues surrounding drug use and drug services among the South Asian communities in England 1

This is the first of a series of publications to inform drug service planning and provision by presenting results from the Department of Health’s Black and minority ethnic drug misuse needs assessment project that was conducted throughout England in three phases during 2000-2001, 2004-2005, and 2006. This project employed the Centre for Ethnicity and Health’s Community Engagement Model to train and support 179 community organisations to conduct the needs assessments (Fountain, Patel and Buffin, 2007; Winters and Patel, 2003). Each community organisation was also supported by a steering group whose membership included local drug service planners, commissioners and providers.
Timing of Target Discrimination in Human Frontal Eye Fields

Frontal eye field (FEF) neurons discharge in response to behaviorally relevant stimuli that are potential targets for saccades. Distinct visual and motor processes have been dissociated in the FEF of macaque monkeys, but little is known about the visual processing capacity of FEF in humans. We used double-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (d)TMS to investigate the timing of target discrimination during visual conjunction search. We applied dual TMS pulses separated by 40 msec over the right FEF and vertex. These were applied in five timing conditions to sample separate time windows within the first 200 msec of visual processing. (d)TMS impaired search performance, reflected in reduced d scores. This effect was limited to a time window between 40 and 80 msec after search array onset. These parameters correspond with single-cell activity in FEF that predicts monkeys' behavioral reports on hit, miss, false alarm, and correct rejection trials. Our findings demonstrate a crucial early role for human FEF in visual target discrimination that is independent of saccade programming.
Multi-context Attention for Human Pose Estimation

In this paper, we propose to incorporate convolutional neural networks with a multi-context attention mechanism into an end-to-end framework for human pose estimation. We adopt stacked hourglass networks to generate attention maps from features at multiple resolutions with various semantics. The Conditional Random Field (CRF) is utilized to model the correlations among neighboring regions in the attention map. We further combine the holistic attention model, which focuses on the global consistency of the full human body, and the body part attention model, which focuses on detailed descriptions for different body parts. Hence our model has the ability to focus on different granularity from local salient regions to global semantic consistent spaces. Additionally, we design novel Hourglass Residual Units (HRUs) to increase the receptive field of the network. These units are extensions of residual units with a side branch incorporating filters with larger receptive field, hence features with various scales are learned and combined within the HRUs. The effectiveness of the proposed multi-context attention mechanism and the hourglass residual units is evaluated on two widely used human pose estimation benchmarks. Our approach outperforms all existing methods on both benchmarks over all the body parts. Code has been made publicly available.
Krakatoa lives: The effect of volcanic eruptions on ocean heat content and thermal expansion

A suite of climate model experiments indicates that 20th Century increases in ocean heat content and sea‐level (via thermal expansion) were substantially reduced by the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. The volcanically‐induced cooling of the ocean surface is subducted into deeper ocean layers, where it persists for decades. Temporary reductions in ocean heat content associated with the comparable eruptions of El Chichón (1982) and Pinatubo (1991) were much shorter lived because they occurred relative to a non‐stationary background of large, anthropogenically‐forced ocean warming. Our results suggest that inclusion of the effects of Krakatoa (and perhaps even earlier eruptions) is important for reliable simulation of 20th century ocean heat uptake and thermal expansion. Inter‐model differences in the oceanic thermal response to Krakatoa are large and arise from differences in external forcing, model physics, and experimental design. Systematic experimentation is required to quantify the relative importance of these factors. The next generation of historical forcing experiments may require more careful treatment of pre‐industrial volcanic aerosol loadings.
Microarray Analysis Reveals Higher Gestational Folic Acid Alters Expression of Genes in the Cerebellum of Mice Offspring—A Pilot Study

Folate is a water-soluble vitamin that is critical for nucleotide synthesis and can modulate methylation of DNA by altering one-carbon metabolism. Previous studies have shown that folate status during pregnancy is associated with various congenital defects including the risk of aberrant neural tube closure. Maternal exposure to a methyl supplemented diet also can alter DNA methylation and gene expression, which may influence the phenotype of offspring. We investigated if higher gestational folic acid (FA) in the diet dysregulates the expression of genes in the cerebellum of offspring in C57BL/6 J mice. One week before gestation and throughout the pregnancy, groups of dams were supplemented with FA either at 2 mg/kg or 20 mg/kg of diet. Microarray analysis was used to investigate the genome wide gene expression profile in the cerebellum from day old pups. Our results revealed that exposure to the higher dose FA diet during gestation dysregulated expression of several genes in the cerebellum of both male and female pups. Several transcription factors, imprinted genes, neuro-developmental genes and genes associated with autism spectrum disorder exhibited altered expression levels. These findings suggest that higher gestational FA potentially dysregulates gene expression in the offspring brain and such changes may adversely alter fetal programming and overall brain development.
Marital Age Gaps and Educational Homogamy - Evidence from a Compulsory Schooling Reform in the UK

We investigate the impact of a compulsory schooling reform on marriage market matching using a regression discontinuity design. Our results imply that the formally gender-neutral educational reform has asymmetric impacts for men and women, owing to the pervasive marital age gap and the birthdate discontinuity. We show that treated women decrease the marital age gap to avoid marrying less qualified men. Treated men in contrast are able to marry similarly educated women without substantially changing the age gap. Our estimates indicate that the disruptions for cohorts around the introduction of the reform are economically significant.
Perception on Physical Education among Students

One way to find the perceptions about physical education (activity) among students is to apply some questionnaire. By applying physical activity index questionnaire to the students, we will be able to determine the level of physical activity practiced and their perception about physical education in their daily life. The study involved 166 undergraduate and master students (age 22.83±5.80) from the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava, whose distribution was as follows: undergraduate male - 61, undergraduate female - 58; master male - 28, master female – 19. It should be mentioned that their academic activity includes between 1 and 6 hours of practical activities and some of the participants practice various sports, which means additionally between 6 and 10 hours of training per week. The questionnaire was applied to the subjects in January 2018. The results for ANOVA analysis between gender indicated significant differences between males and females in all three analyzed situations (undergraduate, master and overall), but the analysis made inside gender (undergraduate, master) did not show any statistical difference. The study is limited to the number of participants (166), but it can be a benchmark for other studies aiming at the physical education for youth and students and their impact on health-related fitness and an active lifestyle. In the future it is necessary to assess the subjects with some practical tests to see if there is any correlation between questionnaire scores (a subjective evaluation) and the results of the tests, where we are talking about objective evaluation; this is necessary to determine if the reliability of the questionnaire is adequate to the Romanian students and to be used as benchmark in the future.
Student Abilities during the Expansion of U.S. Education, 1950-2000

Since 1950, U.S. educational attainment has increased substantially. While the median student in 1950 dropped out of high school, the median student today attends some college. In an environment with ability heterogeneity and positive sorting between ability and school tenure, the expansion of education implies a decrease in the average ability of students conditional on school attainment. Using a calibrated model of school choice under ability heterogeneity, we investigate the quantitative impact of rising attainment on ability and measured wages. Our findings suggest that the decline in average ability depressed wages conditional on schooling by 31-58 percentage points. We also find that the entire rise in the college wage premium since 1950 can be attributed to the rising mean ability of college graduates relative to high school graduates.
Current Understanding of Lifestyle and Environmental Factors and Risk of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma: An Epidemiological Update

The incidence rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) have steadily increased over the last several decades in the United States, and the temporal trends in incidence can only be partially explained by the HIV epidemic. In 1992, an international workshop sponsored by the United States National Cancer Institute concluded that there was an “emerging epidemic” of NHL and emphasized the need to investigate the factors responsible for the increasing incidence of this disease. Over the past two decades, numerous epidemiological studies have examined the risk factors for NHL, particularly for putative environmental and lifestyle risk factors, and international consortia have been established in order to investigate rare exposures and NHL subtype-specific associations. While few consistent risk factors for NHL aside from immunosuppression and certain infectious agents have emerged, suggestive associations with several lifestyle and environmental factors have been reported in epidemiologic studies. Further, increasing evidence has suggested that the effects of these and other exposures may be limited to or stronger for particular NHL subtypes. This paper examines the progress that has been made over the last twenty years in elucidating the etiology of NHL, with a primary emphasis on lifestyle factors and environmental exposures.
Human preferences for sexually dimorphic faces may be evolutionarily novel

Significance It is a popular assumption that certain perceptions—for example, that highly feminine women are attractive, or that masculine men are aggressive—reflect evolutionary processes operating within ancestral human populations. However, observations of these perceptions have mostly come from modern, urban populations. This study presents data on cross-cultural perceptions of facial masculinity and femininity. In contrast to expectations, we find that in less developed environments, typical “Western” perceptions are attenuated or even reversed, suggesting that Western perceptions may be relatively novel. We speculate that novel environments, which expose individuals to large numbers of unfamiliar faces, may provide novel opportunities—and motives—to discern subtle relationships between facial appearance and other traits. A large literature proposes that preferences for exaggerated sex typicality in human faces (masculinity/femininity) reflect a long evolutionary history of sexual and social selection. This proposal implies that dimorphism was important to judgments of attractiveness and personality in ancestral environments. It is difficult to evaluate, however, because most available data come from large-scale, industrialized, urban populations. Here, we report the results for 12 populations with very diverse levels of economic development. Surprisingly, preferences for exaggerated sex-specific traits are only found in the novel, highly developed environments. Similarly, perceptions that masculine males look aggressive increase strongly with development and, specifically, urbanization. These data challenge the hypothesis that facial dimorphism was an important ancestral signal of heritable mate value. One possibility is that highly developed environments provide novel opportunities to discern relationships between facial traits and behavior by exposing individuals to large numbers of unfamiliar faces, revealing patterns too subtle to detect with smaller samples.
Instructional Aids to Support a Conceptual Understanding of Multiple Representations.

The main goals of this study were to test whether multiple representations, such as diagrams and equations, per se help to acquire conceptual understanding in probability, and to investigate whether learners need instructional support to utilize the potentials of multiple representations. The authors conducted an experimental study with 8 conditions in which high school students (N = 170) studied worked examples from probability. The authors varied the type and number of representations and the availability of 2 support procedures: (a) a relating aid that used color codes and flashing to help learners see which elements in different representations corresponded to each other on a surface level and (b) self-explanations prompts to ensure that learners integrate corresponding parts in different representations on a structural level. The authors found that multiple representations per se did not foster conceptual understanding, however, both support procedures enhanced it. Yet, the self-explanation prompts did not only foster conceptual understanding by eliciting elaborations directed to domains principles but also incorrect elaborations that hindered the acquisition of procedural knowledge. Hence, self-explanation prompts are an instructional support procedure that can have conflicting effects on learning outcomes.