Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fanon: Africana Philosopher of Existence

ABSTRACT The idea of the absence of reason and philosophy among colonized cultures is very prevalent in the Western philosophical canon. The purpose of this study is to make an argument for a reading of Fanon’s thought in philosophical terms and thus dispel the myth that Africans do not and cannot philosophise. The study has two main findings, firstly, that the preclusion of Africans from philosophy is based on pejorative biological stereotypes about the absence of reason among Africans. Secondly, that a compelling argument can be made for a reading of Fanon’s thought in philosophical terms. The study makes use of a close reading of relevant primary and secondary literature.
Sumoylation dynamics during keratinocyte differentiation

SUMO modification regulates the activity of numerous transcription factors that have a direct role in cell-cycle progression, apoptosis, cellular proliferation, and development, but its role in differentiation processes is less clear. Keratinocyte differentiation requires the coordinated activation of a series of transcription factors, and as several crucial keratinocyte transcription factors are known to be SUMO substrates, we investigated the role of sumoylation in keratinocyte differentiation. In a human keratinocyte cell line model (HaCaT cells), Ca2+-induced differentiation led to the transient and coordinated transcriptional activation of the genes encoding crucial sumoylation system components, including SAE1, SAE2, Ubc9, SENP1, Miz-1 (PIASxβ), SUMO2 and SUMO3. The increased gene expression resulted in higher levels of the respective proteins and changes in the pattern of sumoylated substrate proteins during the differentiation process. Similarly to the HaCaT results, stratified human foreskin keratinocytes showed an upregulation of Ubc9 in the suprabasal layers. Abrogation of sumoylation by Gam1 expression severely disrupted normal HaCaT differentiation, consistent with an important role for sumoylation in the proper progression of this biological process.
Analysis of theta power in hippocampal EEG during bar pressing and running behavior in rats during distinct behavioral contexts

These experiments examine changes in theta power as measured by wavelet analysis in five rats performing a conditional visual discrimination task and a simple running task. In the conditional task, rats were trained to press one lever to initiate a trial and then to press one of two choice levers, each corresponding to one of two cue lights. Analysis of theta power in this operant task found a large decrease in theta power during the choice bar presses, in contrast to the increase in theta power during trial initiation bar presses. This result seems to stand counter to results that propose consistent relationships between motor actions and theta power (Vanderwolf, EEG Clin Neurophys 26:407–418, 1969 ), as well as studies suggesting that the lack of bar‐press theta is the result of habituation. However, these data can be seen as being in broad agreement with the theoretical framework of sensorimotor integration (Bland and Oddie, Behav Brain Res 127:119–136, 2001 ). To investigate further the power of theta observed at the termination of type 1 motor activity, a runway task was devised in which rats ran back and forth between two ends of a linear track, one of which was always rewarded and the other never rewarded. Theta power decreased sharply 240 ms before movement ended at the rewarded end, but not at the unrewarded end of the track. These data extend the current scope of theory in demonstrating that hippocampal theta activity can end abruptly 200–400 ms prior to the end of type 1 motor movement when approaching the end of a motor sequence. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Mutation of tlyA Confers Capreomycin Resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

ABSTRACT Capreomycin, an important drug for the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, is a macrocyclic peptide antibiotic produced by Saccharothrix mutabolis subspecies capreolus. The basis of resistance to this drug was investigated by isolating and characterizing capreomycin-resistant strains of Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Colonies resistant to capreomycin were recovered from a library of transposon-mutagenized M. smegmatis. The transposon insertion site of one mutant was mapped to an open reading frame in the unfinished M. smegmatis genome corresponding to the tlyA gene (Rv1694) in the M. tuberculosis H37Rv genome. In M. smegmatis spontaneous capreomycin-resistant mutants, the tlyA gene was disrupted by one of three different naturally occurring insertion elements. Genomic DNAs from pools of transposon mutants of M. tuberculosis H37Rv were screened by PCR by using primers to the tlyA gene and the transposon to detect mutants with an insertion in the tlyA gene. One capreomycin-resistant mutant was recovered that contained the transposon inserted at base 644 of the tlyA gene. Complementation with the wild-type tlyA gene restored susceptibility to capreomycin in the M. smegmatis and M. tuberculosis tlyA transposon mutants. Mutations were found in the tlyA genes of 28 spontaneous capreomycin-resistant mutants generated from three different M. tuberculosis strains and in the tlyA genes of capreomycin-resistant clinical isolates. In in vitro transcription-translation assays, ribosomes from tlyA mutant but not tlyA+ strains resist capreomycin inhibition of transcription-translation. Therefore, TlyA appears to affect the ribosome, and mutation of tlyA confers capreomycin resistance.
Wage norms, capital accumulation, and unemployment: a post-Keynesian view

The paper presents a post-Keynesian view of unemployment. It argues, first, that the effective labour demand need not be downward sloping with respect to real wages, and aggregate demand need not be downward sloping with respect to inflation; second, that there is a broad case for unemployment hysteresis, understood as endogeneity of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), based on social norms in wage bargaining and on the supply-side effects of capital accumulation; and, third, that, much as Keynes argued, capital investment (rather than labour-market institutions) is the key variable to explain changes in aggregate unemployment performance across countries and over time. Overall, the paper advocates a Keynesian view of the NAIRU, where effective demand determines unemployment in the short run and the deviation of actual unemployment from the NAIRU determines the change in inflation. In the medium term the NAIRU is endogenous and follows actual unemployment. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.
Solid Food Introduction in Relation to Eczema: Results From a Four-Year Prospective Birth Cohort Study

REVIEWER COMMENTS. There seems to be a differential effect of the relation of breastfeeding to lung function on the basis of the asthmatic background of the mother. Breastfed children with nonatopic, nonasthmatic mothers had an increased FVC and no decrease in their airflows. However, children of mothers with asthma with longer breastfeeding did not demonstrate any improvement in FVC but had a significant reduction in airflows, suggesting that the risk for increased asthma in this group may be partly a result of altered lung growth. Children with longer breastfeeding who had atopic but nonasthmatic mothers had intermediate findings, and they showed a similar increase in FVC compared with those with nonatopic, nonasthmatic mothers but a decrease in airflows similar to children with asthmatic mothers. These findings may support the speculation that the milk of mothers with atopy or asthma may differ with regard to immunologically active substances; thus, breastfeeding in these groups may have a different effect on growth and/or development of the airways. It goes without saying that the clinical significance of these findings is unknown. Human milk is uniquely suited to the feeding of infants. There are many well-documented benefits of breastfeeding. For children of nonasthmatic mothers, this study demonstrates a further benefit of breastfeeding. Additional study is needed draw firm conclusions for other infants.
Effects of the topically applied calcium-channel blocker flunarizine on intraocular pressure in clinically normal dogs.

OBJECTIVE To determine effects of the topically applied calcium-channel blocker flunarizine on intraocular pressure (IOP) in clinically normal dogs. ANIMALS 20 dogs. PROCEDURES Baseline diurnal IOPs were determined by use of a rebound tonometer on 2 consecutive days. Subsequently, 1 randomly chosen eye of each dog was treated topically twice daily for 5 days with 0.5% flunarizine. During this treatment period, diurnal IOPs were measured. In addition, pupillary diameter and mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) were evaluated. Serum flunarizine concentrations were measured on treatment day 5. Intraday fluctuation of IOP was analyzed by use of an ANOVA for repeated measures and a trend test. Changes in IOP from baseline values were assessed and compared with IOPs for the days of treatment. Values were also compared between treated and untreated eyes. RESULTS A significant intraday fluctuation in baseline IOP was detected, which was highest in the morning (mean +/- SE, 15.8 +/- 0.63 mm Hg) and lowest at night (12.9 +/- 0.61 mm Hg). After 2 days of treatment, there was a significant decrease in IOP from baseline values in treated (0.93 +/- 0.35 mm Hg) and untreated (0.95 +/- 0.34 mm Hg) eyes. There was no significant treatment effect on pupillary diameter or MAP. Flunarizine was detected in serum samples of all dogs (mean +/- SD, 3.89 +/- 6.36 microg/L). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Topically applied flunarizine decreased IOP in dogs after 2 days of twice-daily application. This calcium-channel blocker could be effective in the treatment of dogs with glaucoma.
Cooling and heating the intracluster medium in hydrodynamical simulations

We discuss tree+SPH (smoothed-particle hydrodynamics) simulations of galaxy clusters and groups, aimed at studying the effect of cooling and non-gravitational heating on observable properties of the intracluster medium (ICM). We simulate at high resolution four group- and cluster-sized haloes, with virial masses in the range (0.2‐4) × 10 14 M� , extracted from a cosmological simulation of a flat �-cold dark matter model. We discuss the effects of using different SPH implementations and show that high resolution is mandatory to correctly follow the cooling pattern of the ICM. Our recipes for non-gravitational heating release energy to the gas either in an impulsive way, at some heating redshift, or by modulating the heating as a function of redshift according to the star formation history predicted by a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. Our simulations demonstrate that cooling and non-gravitational heating exhibit a rather complex interplay in determining the properties of the ICM: results on the amount of star formation and on the X-ray properties are sensitive not only to the amount of heating energy, but also depend on the redshift at which it is assigned to gas particles. All of our heating schemes that correctly reproduce the X-ray scaling properties of clusters and groups do not succeed in reducing the fraction of collapsed gas below a level of 20 (30) per cent at the cluster (group) scale, which appears to be in excess of observational constraints. Finally, gas compression in cooling cluster regions causes an increase of the temperature and a steepening of the temperature profiles, independent of the presence of non-gravitational heating processes. This is inconsistent with recent observational evidence for a decrease of gas temperature towards the centre of relaxed clusters. Provided these discrepancies persist even for a more refined modelling of energy feedback from supernova or active galactic nuclei, they may indicate that some basic physical process is still missing in hydrodynamical simulations.
Energetic particle fluxes in the exterior cusp and the high-latitude dayside magnetosphere: statistical results from the Cluster/RAPID instrument

Abstract. In this paper we study the fluxes of energetic protons (30–4000 keV) and electrons (20–400 keV) in the exterior cusp and in the adjacent high-latitude dayside plasma sheet (HLPS) with the Cluster/RAPID instrument. Using two sample orbits we demonstrate that the Cluster observations at high latitudes can be dramatically different because the satellite orbit traverses different plasma regions for different external conditions. We make a statistical study of energetic particles in the exterior cusp and HLPS by analysing all outbound Cluster dayside passes in February and March, 2002 and 2003. The average particle fluxes in HLPS are roughly three (protons) or ten (electrons) times larger than in the exterior cusp. This is also true on those Cluster orbits where both regions are visited within a short time interval. Moreover, the total electron fluxes, as well as proton fluxes above some 100 keV, in these two regions correlate with each other. This is true even for fluxes in every energy channel when considered separately. The spectral indices of electron and proton fluxes are the same in the two regions. We also examine the possible dependence of particle fluxes at different energies on the external (solar wind and IMF) and internal (geomagnetic) conditions. The energetic proton fluxes (but not electron fluxes) in the cusp behave differently at low and high energies. At low energies ( Keywords. Magnetospheric physics (Magnetopause, cusp and boundary layers; Solar wind-magnetosphere interactions) – Space plasma physics (magnetic reconnection)
Genome Sequencing and Comparative Genomics of the Broad Host-Range Pathogen Rhizoctonia solani AG8

Rhizoctonia solani is a soil-borne basidiomycete fungus with a necrotrophic lifestyle which is classified into fourteen reproductively incompatible anastomosis groups (AGs). One of these, AG8, is a devastating pathogen causing bare patch of cereals, brassicas and legumes. R. solani is a multinucleate heterokaryon containing significant heterozygosity within a single cell. This complexity posed significant challenges for the assembly of its genome. We present a high quality genome assembly of R. solani AG8 and a manually curated set of 13,964 genes supported by RNA-seq. The AG8 genome assembly used novel methods to produce a haploid representation of its heterokaryotic state. The whole-genomes of AG8, the rice pathogen AG1-IA and the potato pathogen AG3 were observed to be syntenic and co-linear. Genes and functions putatively relevant to pathogenicity were highlighted by comparing AG8 to known pathogenicity genes, orthology databases spanning 197 phytopathogenic taxa and AG1-IA. We also observed SNP-level “hypermutation” of CpG dinucleotides to TpG between AG8 nuclei, with similarities to repeat-induced point mutation (RIP). Interestingly, gene-coding regions were widely affected along with repetitive DNA, which has not been previously observed for RIP in mononuclear fungi of the Pezizomycotina. The rate of heterozygous SNP mutations within this single isolate of AG8 was observed to be higher than SNP mutation rates observed across populations of most fungal species compared. Comparative analyses were combined to predict biological processes relevant to AG8 and 308 proteins with effector-like characteristics, forming a valuable resource for further study of this pathosystem. Predicted effector-like proteins had elevated levels of non-synonymous point mutations relative to synonymous mutations (dN/dS), suggesting that they may be under diversifying selection pressures. In addition, the distant relationship to sequenced necrotrophs of the Ascomycota suggests the R. solani genome sequence may prove to be a useful resource in future comparative analysis of plant pathogens.
Atrial Fibrillation and Isolated Systolic Hypertension: The Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program and Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program-Extension Study

We performed a post hoc analysis of the Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program database to assess the incidence of atrial fibrillation in the elderly hypertensive population, its influence on cardiovascular events, and whether antihypertensive treatment can prevent its onset. The Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program was a double-blind placebo-controlled trial in 4736 subjects with isolated systolic hypertension aged ≥60 years. Atrial fibrillation was an exclusion criterion from the trial. Participants were randomly assigned to stepped care treatment with chlorthalidone and atenolol (n=2365) or placebo (n=2371). The occurrence of atrial fibrillation and cardiovascular events over 4.7 years as well as the determination of cause of death at 4.7 and 14.3 years were followed. Ninety-eight subjects (2.06%) developed atrial fibrillation over 4.7 years mean follow-up, without significant difference between treated and placebo groups. Atrial fibrillation increased the risk for: total cardiovascular events (RR 1.69; 95% CI 1.21 to 2.36), rapid death (RR 3.29; 95% CI 1.08 to 10.00), total (RR 5.10; 95% CI 3.12 to 8.37) and nonfatal left ventricular failure (RR 5.31; 95% CI 3.09 to 9.13). All-cause and total cardiovascular death were significantly increased in the atrial fibrillation group at 4.7 years (HR 3.44; 95% CI 2.18 to 5.42; HR 2.39; 95% CI 1.05 to 5.43) and 14.3 years follow-up (HR 2.33; 95% CI 1.83 to 2.98; HR 2.21; 95% CI 1.54 to 3.17). Atrial fibrillation increased the risk for total cardiovascular events, rapid death, and left ventricular failure. All-cause mortality and total cardiovascular mortality were significantly increased in hypertensives with atrial fibrillation at 4.7 and 14.3 years follow-up.
Unsupervised Phoneme Segmentation Using Mahalanobis Distance

Abstract One of the fundamental problems in speech engineering is phoneme segmentation. Approaches to phoneme segmentation can be divided into two categories: supervised and unsupervised segmentation. The approach of this paper belongs to the 2nd category, which tries to perform phonetic segmentation without using any prior knowledge on linguistic contents and acoustic models. In an earlier work, we formulated the segmentation problem into an optimization problem through statistics and information analysis. An objective function, summation of squared error (SSE), is developed by using Euclidean distance of cepstral features. However, it is not known whether or not Euclidean distance yields the best distance metric to estimate the goodness of segmentations. A popular generalization of Euclidean distance is Mahalanobis distance (MD). In this paper, we study whether and how MD can be used to improve the performance of segmentation. The essential problem here is how to determine the parameters (covariance matrix) for MD calculation. We deal with this problem in a learning framework and propose two criteria for determining the optimal parameters: Minimum of Summation Variance (MSV) and Maximum of Discrimination Variance (MDV). MSV minimizes the summation of variance within phonemes, while MDV maximizes the variance between phonemes and minimizes the variance within phonemes at the same time. Both of them can lead to close form solutions by using matrix calculation. We also propose an algorithm to learn the parameters without using labeled data. We carried out experiments on the TIMIT database to eveluate the proposed methods. The results indicate that the use of learning MD can increase the correct recall rates. We also found the use of power can further improve the results.
Actividades de ocio y su presencia en las redes sociales en jóvenes potencialmente vulnerables

La atencion a los colectivos en riesgo de exclusion social en referencia a la alfabeti­zacion digital ha de tener mayor protagonismo en la investigacion educativa y social. El objetivo del estudio es analizar la presencia y difusion en las redes sociales de las actividades de ocio de un colectivo de jovenes potencialmente vulnerable, relacionandolo con el sexo y las areas geograficas de residencia. La muestra ascendio a 140 estudiantes espanoles de Formacion Pro­fesional Basica. Se aplico un cuestionario estructurado en diferentes bloques tematicos, del que se seleccionaron los 3 items que indagaban en el tema objeto de estudio. Se llevaron a cabo analisis descriptivos e inferenciales. Los resultados manifiestan que un 62.8% difunden sus actividades de ocio en las redes sociales, siendo las actividades fisicas las experiencias mas compartidas por este colectivo. Los chicos publican en mayor medida actividades festivas. Son los nortenos y quienes residen en el centro de Espana los que mas comunican en las redes so­ciales las actividades fisicas y los levantinos quienes mas comparten las experiencias culturales. Las conclusiones de este estudio han proporcionado claves que optimizan la educacion del ocio digital de los estudiantes de Formacion Profesional Basica para un uso constructivo y critico de las redes sociales, lo que contribuira a la alfabetizacion digital de este colectivo y, por ende, a minimizar las posibilidades de pertenecer a escenarios de riesgo.
What Explains High Unemployment? The Aggregate Demand Channel

A drop in aggregate demand driven by shocks to household balance sheets is responsible for a large fraction of the decline in U.S. employment from 2007 to 2009. The aggregate demand channel for unemployment predicts that employment losses in the non-tradable sector are higher in high leverage U.S. counties that were most severely impacted by the balance sheet shock, while losses in the tradable sector are distributed uniformly across all counties. We find exactly this pattern from 2007 to 2009. Alternative hypotheses for job losses based on uncertainty shocks or structural unemployment related to construction do not explain our results. Using the relation between non-tradable sector job losses and demand shocks and assuming Cobb-Douglas preferences over tradable and non-tradable goods, we quantify the effect of aggregate demand channel on total employment. Our estimates suggest that the decline in aggregate demand driven by household balance sheet shocks accounts for almost 4 million of the lost jobs from 2007 to 2009, or 65% of the lost jobs in our data.
Mantle convection with a brittle lithosphere: thoughts on the global tectonic styles of the Earth and Venus

SUMMARY Plates are an integral part of the convection system in the fluid mantle, but plate boundaries are the product of brittle faulting and plate motions are strongly influenced by the existence of such faults. The conditions for plate tectonics are studied by considering brittle behaviour, using Byerlee’s law to limit the maximum stress in the lithosphere, in a mantle convection model with temperature-dependent viscosity. When the yield stress is high, convection is confined below a thick, stagnant lithosphere. At low yield stress, brittle deformation mobilizes the lithosphere which becomes a part of the overall circulation; surface deformation occurs in localized regions close to upwellings and downwellings in the system. At intermediate levels of the yield stress, there is a cycling between these two states: thick lithosphere episodically mobilizes and collapses into the interior before reforming. The mobile-lid regime resembles convection of a fluid with temperature-dependent viscosity and the boundary-layer scalings are found to be analogous. This regime has a well defined Nusselt number‐Rayleigh number relationship which is in good agreement with scaling theory. The surface velocity is nearly independent of the yield stress, indicating that the ‘plate’ motion is resisted by viscous stresses in the mantle. Analysis suggests that mobilization of the Earth’s lithosphere can occur if the friction coeYcient in the lithosphere is less than 0.03‐0.13—lower than laboratory values but consistent with seismic field studies. On Venus, the friction coeYcient may be high as a result of the dry conditions, and brittle mobilization of the lithosphere would then be episodic and catastrophic.