Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Morphology and Phylogeny of Neoscytalidium orchidacearum sp. nov. (Botryosphaeriaceae)

Abstract A coelomycete with characters resembling the asexual morphs in the family Botryosphaeriaceae was isolated from a fallen leaf of an orchid collected in Thailand. Morphological and phylogenetic analyses placed the strain in Neoscytalidium. Phylogenetic relationships among Neoscytalidium species were inferred by analyzing internal transcribed spacers and large subunit of rRNA sequence data and indicate that our strain is a new species, which is introduced and illustrated herein as Neoscytalidium orchidacearum sp. nov.
Wideband Balanced-to-Unbalanced Filtering Power Dividers Based on Coupled Lines

Three novel wideband balanced-to-unbalanced filtering power dividers based on coupled lines are proposed in this paper. Multifunctional power dividers can replace various cascaded single devices to decrease integration mismatching loss and circuit size. The wideband response can be easily realized by the coupled lines structures. To further improve the differential-mode passband selectivity, open/shorted coupled lines and half-wavelength open stubs are applied to introduce two transmission zeros near the passband, respectively. In addition, a resistor in the middle of two single-ended ports can be used to realize isolation between out ports. To verify the proposed concepts, three prototypes of wideband balanced-to-unbalanced filtering power dividers operating at 2 GHz are designed and fabricated with the 4-dB differential-mode bandwidths of 80.5%, 71.5%, and 80%. All the structures show good performances for differential-mode out-of-band suppression, common-mode suppression, and isolation.
From gr8 to great: Lexical Access to SMS Shortcuts

Many contemporary texts include shortcuts, such as cu or phones4u. The aim of this study was to investigate how the meanings of shortcuts are retrieved. A primed lexical decision paradigm was used with shortcuts and the corresponding words as primes. The target word was associatively related to the meaning of the whole prime (cu/see you – goodbye), to a component of the prime (cu/see you – look), or unrelated to the prime. In Experiment 1, primes were presented for 57 ms. For both word and shortcut primes, responses were faster to targets preceded by whole-related than by unrelated primes. No priming from component-related primes was found. In Experiment 2, the prime duration was 1000 ms. The priming effect seen in Experiment 1 was replicated. Additionally, there was priming from component-related word primes, but not from component-related shortcut primes. These results indicate that the meanings of shortcuts can be retrieved without translating them first into corresponding words.
Spectral modeling of the three spectral states of the Galactic microquasar GRS 1915+105

We have analyzed Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer spectral data of the Galactic micro-quasar GRS 1915+105 in its various spectral states, as defined by Belloni et al. (2000). In states A and B the spectra are dominated by a strong soft thermal component, accompanied by a weak harder tail. The soft component is rather complex and cannot be described as a simple accretion disk emission. Relativistic effects in Kerr metric contribute to the complexity of the soft component but are not sufficient to fully account for it. As found previously, state C spectra are dominated by a Comptonized component, with small contribution from disk photons. The X-ray reprocessed component is highly significant in those spectra and, in contrast to the usual hard state spectra from accreting black holes, it is highly ionized.
Differences Between Women and Men in Phase I Cardiac Rehabilitation After Acute Myocardial Infarction

Abstract Although numerous studies have investigated gender-related differences in patients who have had an acute myocardial infarction (AMI), few studies have examined the gender-related differences among inpatients receiving Phase I inpatient cardiac rehabilitation following AMI. Using data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, this study analyzed 6713 adult patients who received inpatient cardiac rehabilitation following AMI between 2002 and 2011. The differences in comorbidity, medical service use, and prognosis between the male and female patients were analyzed to determine whether the comorbidities affecting their prognoses differed. Female patients accounted for 23.18% of the sample, had a higher average age, and exhibited severe comorbidities; furthermore, they had significantly more days of hospitalization and days in an intensive care unit than did male patients. The gender-related differences in hospital mortality rate and 30-day mortality rate were nonsignificant, but female patients exhibited a significantly higher 1-year mortality rate. Moreover, the risk for 1-year mortality was higher among female patients with moderate or severe renal disease (odds ratio: 1.94, 95% confidence interval: 1.29–2.92) than among their male counterparts. However, the 1-year mortality rate for the female patients did not increase after all risk factors were adjusted. Gender-related differences in age, comorbidity, and prognosis were confirmed in AMI patients receiving Phase I inpatient cardiac rehabilitation. In addition, gender-related differences were observed in the comorbidity risk factors affecting prognosis. However, being female did not affect the prognosis.
Energy landscapes of nucleophilic substitution reactions: A comparison of density functional theory and coupled cluster methods

We have carried out a detailed evaluation of the performance of all classes of density functional theory (DFT) for describing the potential energy surface (PES) of a wide range of nucleophilic substitution (SN2) reactions involving, amongst others, nucleophilic attack at carbon, nitrogen, silicon, and sulfur. In particular, we investigate the ability of the local density approximation (LDA), generalized gradient approximation (GGA), meta‐GGA as well as hybrid DFT to reproduce high‐level coupled cluster (CCSD(T)) benchmarks that are close to the basis set limit. The most accurate GGA, meta‐GGA, and hybrid functionals yield mean absolute deviations of about 2 kcal/mol relative to the coupled cluster data, for reactant complexation, central barriers, overall barriers as well as reaction energies. For the three nonlocal DFT classes, the best functionals are found to be OPBE (GGA), OLAP3 (meta‐GGA), and mPBE0KCIS (hybrid DFT). The popular B3LYP functional is not bad but performs significantly worse than the best GGA functionals. Furthermore, we have compared the geometries from several density functionals with the reference CCSD(T) data. The same GGA functionals that perform best for the energies (OPBE, OLYP), also perform best for the geometries with average absolute deviations in bond lengths of 0.06 Å and 0.6°, even better than the best meta‐GGA and hybrid functionals. In view of the reduced computational effort of GGAs with respect to meta‐GGAs and hybrid functionals, let alone coupled cluster, we recommend the use of accurate GGAs such as OPBE or OLYP for the study of SN2 reactions. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2007
On the relative frequencies of core-collapse supernovae sub-types: The role of progenitor metallicity

We show that the observed ratio N I b , c /N I I of the subtypes Ib,c and II core-collapse supernovae depends on the metallicity of the host galaxy, as expected on theoretical grounds. However, the observed relation differs considerably from expectations based on non-rotating models of single stars with mass loss. We argue that the predictions of recent models with rotation offer a much better agreement with observations, at least for progenitor stars with solar metallicity; calculations of models with higher and lower metallicities are required in order to substantiate these conclusions. We also suggest that systematic surveys of core collapse supernovae up to redshift z ∼ 1 with the SNAP satellite would allow to probe the effect of metallicity on supernovae properties during the past history of the Universe.
Neural Progenitor Cells Generate Motoneuron-Like Cells to Form Functional Connections with Target Muscles after Transplantation into the Musculocutaneous Nerve

Neural progenitor cells (NPCs) are suggested to be a valuable source of cell transplant in treatment of various neurological diseases because of their distinct attributes. They can be expanded and induced to differentiate in vitro. However, it remains uncertain whether in vitro expanded NPCs have the capacity to give rise to functional motoneurons after transplantation in vivo. Here, we showed that in vitro expanded NPCs, when transplanted into the musculocutaneous nerve, generated motoneuron-like cells that exhibited typical morphology with large cell bodies, expressed specific molecules, and extended axons to form functional connections with the target muscle. In contrast, transplanted NPCs failed to yield motoneurons in the injured ventral horn of the spinal cord. The results of the study demonstrate that NPCs have the potential to generate functional motoneurons in an appropriate environment. The distinct differentiating fate of NPCs in the musculocutaneous nerve and the injured ventral horn suggests the importance and necessity of modifying the host microenvironment in use of NPCs for cell replacement therapies for motoneuron diseases.
How Is Internationalization Implemented? A Framework for Organizational Practice.

The trend to internationalize has impacted upon most higher education institutions in the United States. This paper offers an organizational framework for understanding and implementing internationalization as an institution-wide process. The first section of the paper discusses and identifies the core characteristics required for all internationalization efforts, including institutional commitment to internationalization; organizational leadership; and having the necessary resources. The next section discusses and offers micro examples of internationalization of three types of on-campus activities: (1) university services (e.g., student services, information technology/management); (2) curriculum development (individual course development, language courses, infusion, area studies, cross-cultural and international courses, and global studies); and (3) social events (cultural activities, cross-cultural discussions, residence hall activities, and student involvement). A final section of the paper looks at the macro perspective of internationalization, exploring four types of relationships: recruitment of international students; increasing study abroad educational opportunities for both students and faculty; having student and faculty exchange programs; and encouraging international collaborative research programs. (Contains 114 references.) (MKA) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. HOW IS INTERNATIONALIZATION IMPLEMENTED? A FRAMEWORK FOR ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICE Dilys Schoorman Assistant Professor Department of Teacher Education Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991 Telephone: (561) 297-3003 Fax: (561) 297-3335 E-mail: dschoorm@fau.edu U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) tl This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Sa-mlarran TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1
The birth and life of lipid droplets: learning from the hepatitis C virus

LDs (lipid droplets) are probably the least well‐characterized cellular organelles. Having long been considered simple lipid storage depots, they are now considered to be dynamic organelles involved in many biological processes. However, most of the mechanisms driving LDs biogenesis, growth and intracellular movement remain largely unknown. As for other cellular mechanisms deciphered through the study of viral models, HCV (hepatitis C virus) is an original and relevant model for investigations of the birth and life of these organelles. Recent studies in this model have raised the hypothesis that the HCV core protein induces the redistribution of LDs through the regression and regeneration of these organelles in specific intracellular domains.
Strategic decision processes in high velocity environments: four cases in the microcomputer industry

How do executives make strategic decisions in industries where the rate of technological and competitive change is so extreme that market information is often unavailable or obsolete, where strategic windows are opening and shutting quickly, and where the cost of error is involuntary exit? How do top management teams divide the decision making responsibility? And how is risk of strategic error mitigated? What we report here is a set of hypotheses induced from a field investigation of four microcomputer firms, where we studied how each of the top management teams went about making major decisions. Our goal was to extend prior work on strategic decision making to what we term high velocity environments. Our results consist of a set of paradoxes which the successful firms resolve and the unsuccessful firms do not. We found an imperative to make major decisions carefully, but to decide quickly; to have a powerful, decisive CEO and a simultaneously powerful top management team; to seek risk and innovation, but to execute a safe, incremental implementation. Despite the apparent paradox, effective firms do all of these simultaneously. These paradoxes are presented in the form of propositions and testable hypotheses.
The Great Moderation and the â€˜Bernanke Conjectureâ€™

Was the Great Moderation in the United States due to good policy or good luck? Taking, as data generation process, a New Keynesian sticky-price model in which the only source of change is the move from a passive to an active monetary rule, we show how standard econometric methods, both reducedform and structural, often misinterpret good policy for good luck. Specifically, we show how such a move is perfectly compatible with: (a) little change in the estimated impulse-response functions to a monetary policy shock, as in Stock and Watson (2002), Primiceri (2005), Canova and Gambetti (2005), and Gambetti, Pappa, and Canova (2006). (b) Significant changes in the estimated volatilities of both reduced-form and structural shocksâ€“as in (e.g.) Ahmed, Levin, and Wilson (2004) and Stock and Watson (2002)â€“even in the absence, by construction, of any change in the volatilities of structural innovations. (c) Little change in the integrated normalised spectra of inflation and GDP growth at the business-cycle frequencies, as in Ahmed, Levin, and Wilson (2004). In line with Bernankeâ€™s (2004) conjecture, the explanation is that conventional econometric methods are intrinsically incapable of capturing the role played by the systematic component of monetary policy in (de)stabilising in- flation expectations, and are therefore inevitably bound to confuse shifts in expected inflation with true structural innovations, thus giving the illusion of good luck even when good policy is, by construction, the authentic explanation
Using Exploratory Data Analysis for Fraud Elicitation through Supervised Learning

Outlier detection is a relevant problem for many domains, among which for detection of fraudulent behavior. Exploratory Data Analysis techniques are known to be very useful for highlighting patterns and deviations in data through visual representations. Less explored is the feasibility of using them to build learning models for outlier detection, which can be applied automatically to classify data without human intervention. In this paper we propose a method that uses one Exploratory Data Analysis technique -- Andrews curves -- in order to produce a classifier, which we applied to a real dataset, extracted from an online auction site, obtaining positive results regarding elicitation of fraudulent behavior.
Parasitic Prevalence in a Suburban School of Famaillá, Tucumán, Argentina

Prevalence of intestinal parasites was investigated in rural primary school children in Famaillá city, Tucumán province, Argentina. Stool specimens from 149 school children were collected. The prevalence rate of intestinal parasite infections was 86.6%. No significant differences were observed in the distribution by age or by sex. Blastocystis hominis was the most commonly found protozoan parasite (54.4%), followed by Entamoeba coli (35.6%), Giardia lamblia (24.8%), and others (16.7%). Enterobius vermicularis was the most prevalent intestinal helminth (27.5%), followed by Ascaris lumbricoides (20.8%), Trichuris trichiura (12.8%), and others (5.4%). Most of the patients had polyparasitism (62.4%), and protozoan infections prevailed over helminthic infections. These results show high rates of parasitism in the school children of Famaillá, which would be associated with socioeconomic factors and poor environmental sanitation conditions in this area.
Crossing the Rio Grande: Migrations, Business Cycles and the Welfare State

In this paper we study the macroeconomic effects of an inflow of low-skilled workers into an economy where there is capital accumulation and two types of agents. We find that there are substantial dynamic effects following unexpected migrations with adjustments that resemble those triggered by a sudden disruption of the capital stock. We look at the interrelations between these dynamic effects and three different fiscal systems for the redistribution of income and find that these schemes can change the dynamics and lead to prolonged periods of adjustments. The aggregate welfare implications are sensitive to the welfare system: while there are welfare gains without redistribution, these gains may be turned into costs when the state engages in redistribution.
Internet Stock Message Boards and Stock Returns

During 1999-2001 more than 35 million messages about public firms were posted on Yahoo! Finance. This paper examines whether stocks with high posting levels also have unusual subsequent returns and/or risk. They do. Stocks with the highest level of posting have unusually high realized volatility and unusually poor subsequent returns. This remains true after accounting for the effects of the market, firm size, value, momentum and liquidity factors. Consideration is given to market manipulation, differences of opinion, and anxiety reduction as possible explanations for the observed patterns. (JEL: G12, G14)
β-Catenin Inactivation Is a Pre-Requisite for Chick Retina Regeneration

In the present study we explored the role of β-catenin in mediating chick retina regeneration. The chick can regenerate its retina by activating stem/progenitor cells present in the ciliary margin (CM) of the eye or via transdifferentiation of the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE). Both modes require fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2). We observed, by immunohistochemistry, dynamic changes of nuclear β-catenin in the CM and RPE after injury (retinectomy). β-catenin nuclear accumulation was transiently lost in cells of the CM in response to injury alone, while the loss of nuclear β-catenin was maintained as long as FGF2 was present. However, nuclear β-catenin positive cells remained in the RPE in response to injury and were BrdU-/p27+, suggesting that nuclear β-catenin prevents those cells from entering the cell cycle. If FGF2 is present, the RPE undergoes dedifferentiation and proliferation concomitant with loss of nuclear β-catenin. Moreover, retinectomy followed by disruption of active β-catenin by using a signaling inhibitor (XAV939) or over-expressing a dominant negative form of Lef-1 induces regeneration from both the CM and RPE in the absence of FGF2. Our results imply that β-catenin protects cells of the CM and RPE from entering the cell cycle in the developing eye, and specifically for the RPE during injury. Thus inactivation of β-catenin is a pre-requisite for chick retina regeneration.
Bayesian Intensity Models in Analyzing Interval Censored Data: Case Studies in Dental Caries and Rat Tumorigenicity

Acknowledgements I wish to present my gratitude to my supervisor Elja Arjas for his support and patience during all these years of my postgraduate studies. My cooperation with experts in dentistry, Jorma Virtanen, Markku Larmas and Hannu Hausen, has also been fruitful, starting from when I was working at the University of Oulu. The working environment was good there, most of all due to the staff, especially Andrei Andreev, Dario Gasbarra (who were my colleagues also in Helsinki) and Liping Liu, in the department of statistics to whom I am grateful. Over the past years I have worked at the Rolf Nevanlinna Institute, and would like to thank all of the staff for a good working atmosphere, especially members of the biometry division: environment has been vital in my work, so Pekka Kangas and Matti Taskinen have my special gratitude. In the rat tumorigenicity study the help of Timo Hakulinen and Marja Mutanen was important. The constructive feedback of the pre-examiners, Jochen Mau and Erik Parner is gratefully acknowledged. The support of my family and my friends has been important. Thank Scandinavian Journal of Statistics for the permission to reproduce Article I. (2001) Applying modern survival analysis methods to longitudinal dental caries studies. Submitted. Tumor incidence, prevalence and lethality estimation in absence of cause-of-death information. Submitted.
Mitochondrial DNA damage and repair in RPE associated with aging and age-related macular degeneration.

PURPOSE Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) damage may be associated with age-related diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The present study was designed to test whether the frequency of mtDNA damage, heteroplasmic mtDNA mutations, and repair capacity correlate with progression of AMD. METHODS Macular and peripheral RPE cells were isolated and cultured from human donor eyes with and without AMD. The stages of AMD were graded according to the Minnesota Grading System. Confluent primary RPE cells were used to test the frequency of endogenous mtDNA damage by quantitative PCR. Mutation detection kits were used to detect heteroplasmic mtDNA mutation. To test the mtDNA repair capacity, cultured RPE cells were allowed to recover for 3 and 6 hours after exposure to H(2)O(2), and repair was assessed by quantitative PCR. The levels of human OGG1 protein, which is associated with mtDNA repair, were analyzed by Western blot. RESULTS This study showed that mtDNA damage increased with aging and that more lesions occurred in RPE cells from the macular region than the periphery. Furthermore, mtDNA repair capacity decreased with aging, with less mtDNA repair capacity in the macular region compared with the periphery in samples from aged subjects. Most interestingly, the mtDNA damage was positively correlated with the grading level of AMD, whereas repair capacity was negatively correlated. In addition, more mitochondrial heteroplasmic mutations were detected in eyes with AMD. CONCLUSIONS These data show macula-specific increases in mtDNA damage, heteroplasmic mutations, and diminished repair that are associated with aging and AMD severity.