Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND POLICY REFORM Working Paper No . 72 Courts and Relational Contracts

Post-communist countries offer new evidence on the relative importance of courts and relationships in enforcing contracts. Belief in the effectiveness of courts has a significant positive effect on the level of trust shown in new relationships between firms and their customers. Well-functioning courts also encourage entrepreneurs to try out new suppliers. A major role of the courts is to support the development of new relationships. While relationships can sustain existing interactions, workable courts help new interactions to start and develop.
Energy-Recovery Pressure-Reducer in District Heating System

Already existing man-made infrastructures that create water flow and unused pressure are interesting energy sources to which micro-hydropower plants can be applied. Apart from water supply systems (WSSs), which are widely described in the literature, significant hydropower potential can also be found in district heating systems (DHSs). In this paper, a prototype, a so-called energy-recovery pressure-reducer (ERPR), utilized for a DHS, is presented. It consisted of a pump as a turbine coupled to a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The latter was connected to the power grid through the power electronic unit (PEU). The variable-speed operation allowed one to modify the turbine characteristics to match the substation’s hydraulic conditions. The proposed ERPR device could be installed in series to the existing classic pressure reducing valve (PRV) as an independent device that reduces costs and simplifies system installation. The test results of the prototype system located in a substation of Cracow’s DHS are presented. The steady-state curves and regulation characteristics show the prototype’s operating range and efficiency. In this study, the pressure-reducer impact on the electrical and hydraulic systems, and on the environment, were analyzed. The operation tests during the annual heating season revealed an average system’s efficiency of 49%.
A Bayesian Approach to Optimal Monetary Policy with Parameter and Model Uncertainty

This paper undertakes a Bayesian analysis of optimal monetary policy for the United Kingdom. We estimate a suite of monetary policy models that include both forward and backward-looking representations as well as large and small-scale models. We find an optimal simple Taylor-type rule that accounts for both model and parameter uncertainty. For the most part, backward-looking models are highly fault tolerant with respect to policies optimised for forward-looking representations, while forward-looking models have low fault tolerance with respect to policies optimised for backward-looking representations. In addition, backward-looking models often have lower posterior probabilities than forward-looking models. Bayesian policies therefore have characteristics suitable for inflation and output stabilisation in forward-looking models.
Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 4 (cid:2) Contributes to Thyroid Hormone Homeostasis by Cooperatively Regulating the Type 1 Iodothyronine Deiodinase Gene with GATA4 and Kru¨ppel-Like Transcription Factor 9 (cid:1) †

Type 1 iodothyronine deiodinase (Dio1), a selenoenzyme catalyzing the bioactivation of thyroid hormone, is highly expressed in the liver. Dio1 mRNA and enzyme activity levels are markedly reduced in the livers of hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 (cid:1) (HNF4 (cid:1) )-null mice, thus accounting for its liver-speciﬁc expression. Consistent with this deﬁciency, serum T 4 and rT 3 concentrations are elevated in these mice compared with those in HNF4 (cid:1) -ﬂoxed control littermates; however, serum T 3 levels are unchanged. Promoter analysis of the mouse Dio1 gene demonstrated that HNF4 (cid:1) plays a key role in the transactivation of the mouse Dio1 gene. Deletion and substitution mutation analyses demonstrated that a proximal HNF4 (cid:1) site (direct repeat 1 [TGGACAAA GGTGC]; HNF4 (cid:1) -RE) is crucial for transactivation of the mouse Dio1 gene by HNF4 (cid:1) . Mouse Dio1 is also stimulated by thyroid hormone signaling, but a direct role for thyroid hormone receptor action has not been reported. We also showed that thyroid hormone-inducible Kru¨ppel-like factor 9 (KLF9) stimulates the mouse Dio1 promoter very efﬁciently through two CACCC sequences that are located on either side of HNF4 (cid:1) -RE. Furthermore, KLF9 functions together with HNF4 (cid:1) and GATA4 to synergistically activate the mouse Dio1 promoter, suggesting that Dio1 is regulated by thyroid hormone in the mouse through an indirect mechanism requiring prior KLF9 induction. In addition, we showed that physical interactions between the C-terminal zinc ﬁnger domain (Cf) of GATA4 and activation function 2 of HNF4 (cid:1) and between the basic domain adjacent to Cf of GATA4 and a C-terminal domain of KLF9 are both required for this synergistic response. Taken together, these results suggest that HNF4 (cid:1) regulates thyroid hormone homeostasis through transcriptional regulation of the mouse Dio1 gene with GATA4 and KLF9.
Offspring's Leukocyte Telomere Length, Paternal Age, and Telomere Elongation in Sperm

Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is a complex genetic trait. It shortens with age and is associated with a host of aging-related disorders. Recent studies have observed that offspring of older fathers have longer LTLs. We explored the relation between paternal age and offspring's LTLs in 4 different cohorts. Moreover, we examined the potential cause of the paternal age on offspring's LTL by delineating telomere parameters in sperm donors. We measured LTL by Southern blots in Caucasian men and women (n=3365), aged 18–94 years, from the Offspring of the Framingham Heart Study (Framingham Offspring), the NHLBI Family Heart Study (NHLBI-Heart), the Longitudinal Study of Aging Danish Twins (Danish Twins), and the UK Adult Twin Registry (UK Twins). Using Southern blots, Q-FISH, and flow-FISH, we also measured telomere parameters in sperm from 46 young (<30 years) and older (>50 years) donors. Paternal age had an independent effect, expressed by a longer LTL in males of the Framingham Offspring and Danish Twins, males and females of the NHLBI-Heart, and females of UK Twins. For every additional year of paternal age, LTL in offspring increased at a magnitude ranging from half to more than twice of the annual attrition in LTL with age. Moreover, sperm telomere length analyses were compatible with the emergence in older men of a subset of sperm with elongated telomeres. Paternal age exerts a considerable effect on the offspring's LTL, a phenomenon which might relate to telomere elongation in sperm from older men. The implications of this effect deserve detailed study.
Association of pre-miR-146a rs2910164 polymorphism with the risk of head and neck cancer.

BACKGROUND Over- or underexpression of miR-146a has been reported in several different human tumor types, and a polymorphism in its precursor form (pre-miR-146a rs2910164 G/C) has been recently studied in connection with cancer susceptibility. The aim of the present study was to investigate the possible influence of the pre-miR-146a rs2910164 polymorphism on the risk of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNSCC). PATIENTS AND METHODS The study included 468 patients with HNSCC and 468 cancer-free, age-, gender-, and smoking-matched controls. The miR-146a genotypes were determined using polymerase chain reaction with confronting two-pair primers, and their distribution was compared by multivariate binary logistic regression analysis. RESULTS Occurrence of heterozygous (odds ratio, OR=1.46, 95% confidence interval, CI=1.10-1.95, p=0.009) and C/C homozygous (OR=2.37, 95% CI=1.01-5.60, p=0.048) individuals was significantly more frequent among patients with HNSCC than in the control group. CONCLUSION The pre-miR/146a C allele may contribute to an increased susceptibility to HNSCC.
Changes in upper-extremity muscle activities due to head position in subjects with a forward head posture and rounded shoulders

[Purpose] This study investigated upper-extremity muscle activities in natural, ideal, and corrected head positions. [Subjects and Methods] Forty subjects with a forward head posture and rounded shoulder were recruited and randomly assigned to the natural head position group (n = 13), ideal head position group (n = 14), or corrected head position group (n = 13). Muscle activities were measured using a four-channel surface electromyography system at the sternocleidomastoideus, upper and lower trapezius, and serratus anterior muscles on the right side during an overhead reaching task. [Results] The muscle activities of the upper trapezius and serratus anterior differed significantly among head positions. Post hoc tests revealed significant differences between natural and ideal head positions, and natural and ideal head positions for both the upper trapezius and serratus anterior. [Conclusion] Recovery of normal upper trapezius and serratus anterior muscle functions plays an important role in correcting forward head posture and rounded shoulders.
BUDAYA AUSTRONESIA DI PAPUA

Papua has a strategic location in the western Pacific region, as a connector between South East Asia and Pacific Region that makes it a strategic place to transit from both west and east. On 1500 to 1000 BC there were a new wave of migration from Austronesia. The colonist left a vivid track about their journey through ocean and islands which can be seen form their archaeological sites. These sites were found in Admiralty island on the north of New Guinea to the east of Samoa island on West Polynesia. The strongest evidence on the migration of the Austronesian in Pacific is the language. The imigrant from Austronesia who came to Pacific settled accross the coastal area of north Papua. The influence of Austronesian culture in Papua that is only on north coast Papua, the Cendrawasih bay and the Bird’s Head Peninsula is particularly the Melanesian language, which actually a development of local Papua language influenced by the Austronesian language. Other influence they made is the tradition of the making and utilization of vessels. It is because this tradition was widely unknown in mid Papua mountains and south-coast Papua. Then the other Austronesian characteristics are the structured hierarchical organization, which applied hereditary and tattoo tradition.
Unbounded Lookahead in WMSO+U Games

Delay games are two-player games of infinite duration in which one player may delay her moves to obtain a lookahead on her opponent's moves. We consider delay games with winning conditions expressed in weak monadic second order logic with the unbounding quantifier (WMSO+U), which is able to express (un)boundedness properties. It is decidable whether the delaying player is able to win such a game with bounded lookahead, i.e., if she only skips a finite number of moves. However, bounded lookahead is not always sufficient: we present a game that can be won with unbounded lookahead, but not with bounded lookahead. Then, we consider WMSO+U delay games with unbounded lookahead and show that the exact evolution of the lookahead is irrelevant: the winner is always the same, as long as the initial lookahead is large enough and the lookahead tends to infinity.
Survival in systemic sclerosis-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension in the modern management era

Objective To assess the survival and prognostic factors in patients with newly diagnosed incident systemic sclerosis (SSc)–associated pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in the modern management era. Methods Prospectively enrolled SSc patients in the French PAH Network between January 2006 and November 2009, with newly diagnosed PAH and no interstitial lung disease, were analysed (85 patients, mean age 64.9±12.2 years). Median follow-up after PAH diagnosis was 2.32 years. Results A majority of patients were in NYHA functional class III–IV (79%). Overall survival was 90% (95% CI 81% to 95%), 78% (95% CI 67% to 86%) and 56% (95% CI 42% to 68%) at 1, 2 and 3 years from PAH diagnosis, respectively. Age (HR: 1.05, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.09, p=0.012) and cardiac index (HR: 0.49, 95% CI 0.27 to 0.89, p=0.019) were significant predictors in the univariate analysis. We also observed strong trends for gender, SSc subtypes, New York Heart Association functional class, pulmonary vascular resistance and capacitance to be significant predictors in the univariate analysis. Conversely, six-min walk distance, mean pulmonary arterial and right atrial pressures were not significant predictors. In the multivariate model, gender was the only independent factor associated with survival (HR: 4.76, 95% CI 1.35 to 16.66, p=0.015 for male gender). Conclusions Incident SSc-associated PAH remains a devastating disease even in the modern management era. Age, male gender and cardiac index were the main prognosis factors in this cohort of patients. Early detection of less severe patients should be a priority.
The Development of Structural Thinking About Social Categories

Representations of social categories help us make sense of the social world, supporting predictions and explanations about groups and individuals. In an experiment with 156 participants, we explore whether children and adults are able to understand category-property associations (such as the association between “girls” and “liking pink”) in structural terms, locating an object of explanation within a larger structure and identifying structural constraints that act on elements of the structure. We show that children as young as 3–4 years old show signs of structural thinking, and that 5–6-year-olds show additional differentiation between structural and nonstructural thinking, yet still fall short of adult performance. These findings introduce structural connections as a new type of nonaccidental relationship between a property and a category, and present a viable alternative to internalist accounts of social categories, such as psychological essentialism.
STDP-Compatible Approximation of Backpropagation in an Energy-Based Model

We show that Langevin Markov chain Monte Carlo inference in an energy-based model with latent variables has the property that the early steps of inference, starting from a stationary point, correspond to propagating error gradients into internal layers, similar to backpropagation. The backpropagated error is with respect to output units that have received an outside driving force pushing them away from the stationary point. Backpropagated error gradients correspond to temporal derivatives with respect to the activation of hidden units. These lead to a weight update proportional to the product of the presynaptic firing rate and the temporal rate of change of the postsynaptic firing rate. Simulations and a theoretical argument suggest that this rate-based update rule is consistent with those associated with spike-timing-dependent plasticity. The ideas presented in this article could be an element of a theory for explaining how brains perform credit assignment in deep hierarchies as efficiently as backpropagation does, with neural computation corresponding to both approximate inference in continuous-valued latent variables and error backpropagation, at the same time.
Deceased Organ Donation in Canada: An Opportunity to Heal a Fractured System

There has been no significant increase in the number of deceased organ donors in Canada over the past decade. Canada's donation and transplant system will be restructured with the formation of a new national organization to oversee activity in provincially governed donation and transplantation services. We review the current status of deceased organ donation, highlight issues contributing to the current stagnation in donation and identify changes that will enable success in a new Canadian system. Determining Canada's organ donation performance is difficult because the data required to calculate meaningful metrics of donation performance are not available. Canadians wait longer for transplantation than Americans, and Canada is falling further behind the United States primarily because of fewer donations after cardiac death. The ongoing divide between intergovernmental jurisdictional domains limits national initiatives to improve Canada's donation system. The success of a new national system will be enabled by uniform provincial legislation to ensure that all patients are offered the option to donate, commitment of resources to support organ donation by provincial governments, transparent reporting of comparable metrics of donation performance, establishment of processes to introduce and implement new initiatives and alterations to reimbursement models for organ donation and recovery.
Rapid detection of Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, Prevotella intermedia and Porphyromona gingivalis by multiplex PCR.

The identification of specific periodontal pathogens by conventional methods, mainly anaerobic cultivation, is difficult, time consuming and even sometimes unreliable. Therefore, a multiplex PCR method for simultaneous detection of Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans (A.a.), Porphyromona gingivalis (P.g.) and Prevotella intermedia (P.i.) was developed for rapid and easy identification of these specific bacterial pathogens in subgingival plaque samples. In this paper, there is a detailed description of the oligonucleotide primer selection, DNA extraction and PCR conditions and the sequencing of the amplified products. The locus chosen to be amplified is a highly variable region in the 16S ribosomal DNA. For the development of this technique ATCC cultures and pure cultures from subgingival plaque samples taken from periodontitis patients were used. As an internal positive control a recombinant plasmid was developed. This simple DNA extraction procedure and the DNA amplification and visualization of the amplified product permits the detection of the bacteria in a working day. Thus, this multiplex PCR method is a rapid and effective detection method for specific periodontal pathogens.
Electromagnetic wave scattering by many small bodies and creating materials with a desired refraction coefficient.

Electromagnetic wave scattering by many small particles is studied. An integral equation is derived for the self-consistent fleld E in a medium, obtained by embedding many small particles into a given region D. Here D is a bounded domain in which small inclusions (particles) are embedded, and E is the electric fleld in the resulting medium. The derivation of this integral equation uses a lemma about convergence of certain sums. These sums are similar to Riemannian sums for the integral equation for the fleld E. Convergence of these sums is essentially equivalent to convergence of a collocation method for solving this integral equation. By choosing the distribution law for embedding the small particles and their physical properties one can create a medium with a desired refraction coe-cient. This coe-cient can be a tensor. It may have desired absorption properties.
Enhanced Apoptosis of Soft Tissue Sarcoma Cells with Chemotherapy: A Potential New Approach Using Trail

Soft tissue sarcomas are less responsive to conventional chemotherapy when compared to bone sarcomas. We investigated the possibility of enhancing the efficacy of chemotherapy by utilising the recently identified cytokine, tumour necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL/Apo2L) in combination with standard chemotherapeutic agents. Fresh human soft tissue sarcomas (rhabdomyosarcoma, fibrosarcoma, malignant fibrous histiocytoma) were obtained at biopsy and dispersed tumour cells were incubated in cell culture with standard cytotoxic agents, either as single agents or in combination with TRAIL. The chemotherapeutic agents were, at best, moderately effective, in terms of induction of cellular apoptosis, although the fibrosarcoma was completely unresponsive to all single agents. TRAIL alone had no effect on any sarcoma cell culture. In contrast, the addition of TRAIL and drug together produced a significant increase in sarcoma cell apoptosis, with TRAIL and doxorubicin the most effective combination.
3D finite difference computation on GPUs using CUDA

In this paper we describe a GPU parallelization of the 3D finite difference computation using CUDA. Data access redundancy is used as the metric to determine the optimal implementation for both the stencil-only computation, as well as the discretization of the wave equation, which is currently of great interest in seismic computing. For the larger stencils, the described approach achieves the throughput of between 2,400 to over 3,000 million of output points per second on a single Tesla 10-series GPU. This is roughly an order of magnitude higher than a 4-core Harpertown CPU running a similar code from seismic industry. Multi-GPU parallelization is also described, achieving linear scaling with GPUs by overlapping inter-GPU communication with computation.
Segregation and Integration of Auditory Streams when Listening to Multi-Part Music

In our daily lives, auditory stream segregation allows us to differentiate concurrent sound sources and to make sense of the scene we are experiencing. However, a combination of segregation and the concurrent integration of auditory streams is necessary in order to analyze the relationship between streams and thus perceive a coherent auditory scene. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigates the relative role and neural underpinnings of these listening strategies in multi-part musical stimuli. We compare a real human performance of a piano duet and a synthetic stimulus of the same duet in a prioritized integrative attention paradigm that required the simultaneous segregation and integration of auditory streams. In so doing, we manipulate the degree to which the attended part of the duet led either structurally (attend melody vs. attend accompaniment) or temporally (asynchronies vs. no asynchronies between parts), and thus the relative contributions of integration and segregation used to make an assessment of the leader-follower relationship. We show that perceptually the relationship between parts is biased towards the conventional structural hierarchy in western music in which the melody generally dominates (leads) the accompaniment. Moreover, the assessment varies as a function of both cognitive load, as shown through difficulty ratings and the interaction of the temporal and the structural relationship factors. Neurally, we see that the temporal relationship between parts, as one important cue for stream segregation, revealed distinct neural activity in the planum temporale. By contrast, integration used when listening to both the temporally separated performance stimulus and the temporally fused synthetic stimulus resulted in activation of the intraparietal sulcus. These results support the hypothesis that the planum temporale and IPS are key structures underlying the mechanisms of segregation and integration of auditory streams, respectively.