Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevention and Intervention Studies with Telmisartan, Ramipril and Their Combination in Different Rat Stroke Models

Objectives The effects of AT1 receptor blocker, telmisartan, and the ACE inhibitor, ramipril, were tested head-to head and in combination on stroke prevention in hypertensive rats and on potential neuroprotection in acute cerebral ischemia in normotensive rats. Methods Prevention study: Stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR-SP) were subjected to high salt and randomly assigned to 4 groups: (1) untreated (NaCl, n = 24), (2) telmisartan (T; n = 27), (3) ramipril (R; n = 27) and (4) telmisartan +ramipril (T+R; n = 26). Drug doses were selected to keep blood pressure (BP) at 150 mmHg in all groups. Neurological signs and stroke incidence at 50% mortality of untreated SHR-SP were investigated. Intervention study: Normotensive Wistar rats were treated s.c. 5 days prior to middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) for 90 min with reperfusion. Groups (n = 10 each): (1) sham, (2) vehicle (V; 0,9% NaCl), (3) T (0,5 mg/kg once daily), (4) R (0,01 mg/kg twice daily), (5) R (0,1 mg/kg twice daily) or (6) T (0,5 mg/kg once daily) plus R (0,01 mg/kg twice daily). Twenty-four and 48 h after MCAO, neurological outcome (NO) was determined. Forty-eight h after MCAO, infarct volume by MRI, neuronal survival, inflammation factors and neurotrophin receptor (TrkB) were analysed. Results Stroke incidence was reduced, survival was prolonged and neurological outcome was improved in all treated SHR-SP with no differences between treated groups. In the acute intervention study, T and T+R, but not R alone, improved NO, reduced infarct volume, inflammation (TNFα), and induced TrkB receptor and neuronal survival in comparison to V. Conclusions T, R or T+R had similar beneficial effects on stroke incidence and NO in hypertensive rats, confirming BP reduction as determinant factor in stroke prevention. In contrast, T and T+R provided superior neuroprotection in comparison to R alone in normotensive rats with induced cerebral ischemia.
Mexican Immigrant Fathers and Their Children: An investigation of Communicative Resources Across Contexts of Learning

Situated in a recently established Mexican immigrant community in Pennsylvania, this dissertation investigates naturally occurring interactions in homes and school to reveal how Mexican immigrant fathers' participation shapes and is shaped by their young children's schooling. Drawing upon ethnographic and linguistic anthropological methods, I investigate participants' communicative repertoires, or how they deploy language and literacy resources in Spanish and English to meet their educational goals. This research examines three critical issues. First, how Mexican immigrant fathers' orient to models of fatherhood and married life from their upbringings in Mexico as well as their journey into family life in the US. Second, how participants' semiotic resources travel, are recognized, and are built upon across home and school contexts. And third, how Mexican immigrant men's positioning as certain social types, by teachers in schools and immigration officials in the community, affect their children's schooling. The findings indicate that racialization of the category of Mexican men makes them visible as potential "illegals" and invisible as caring husbands and fathers. These data challenge the gender bargain that Mexican immigrant couples are assumed to maintain and highlight the traditional and innovative ways that fathers are engaged in childcare, parent involvement, and other tasks that are often considered "women's work. " My findings also highlight how Mexican adult males are oftentimes targeted for minor infractions under current immigration practices, which leads to family separations and educational challenges for their children, a younger generation of DREAMers and U.S. Citizens. In addition to contributing to theoretical and methodological insights regarding Mexican immigrant fathers and their children's schooling, this study illustrates how a communicative repertoires approach can reveal participants' range of real-world languaging, parent involvement, and biliteracy practices. Only by first understanding the contextualized realities of what Mexican immigrant fathers and their children are already doing can we envision new policies and pedagogies that build upon these dynamic practices to support children's schooling. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Education First Advisor Betsy R. Rymes
Comovements and Sectoral Interdependence: Evidence for Latin America, East Asia, and Europe

This paper analyzes common economic patterns across countries and economic sectors in Latin America, East Asia, and Europe for the period 1970-94 by means of an error-components model that decomposes real value-added growth in each country into common international effects, sector-specific effects, and countryspecific effects. We find significant comovements in the European and East Asian samples. In the Latin American sample, however, we find country-specific components to be more important than common patterns. These results are robust to different sub-sample time spans and different sub-sample country groups.
Evaluation of Ground Potential Rises in a Commercial Building During a Direct Lightning Stroke Using CDEGS

This paper utilizes CDEGS software to calculate the transient ground potential rise (GPR) in a commercial building, with a base of 39m x 13m and a height of 21 m, during direct lightning strokes. The influences of soil resistivity, location of the lightning strike point, and wave shape of the lightning current on the transient GPRs of three scenarios for the building are analyzed. Such scenarios within the building include the following: 1) devices are grounded independently; 2) devices are grounded via vertical ground electrodes that are connected to each down conductor fixed on the outside of the building; and 3) devices are grounded via a ring ground electrode that is sited around the periphery of the building. The results show that the ring ground electrode provides effective lightning protection for the building under lightning and, therefore, is recommended.
Complex X-Ray Absorption and the Fe Kα Profile in NGC 3516

We present data from simultaneous Chandra, XMM-Newton, and BeppoSAX observations of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 3516, taken during 2001 April and November. We have investigated the nature of the very flat observed X-ray spectrum. Chandra grating data show the presence of X-ray absorption lines, revealing two distinct components of the absorbing gas, one that is consistent with our previous model of a UV/X-ray absorber while the other, which is outflowing at a velocity of ~1100 km s-1, has a larger column density and is much more highly ionized. The broadband spectral characteristics of the X-ray continuum observed with XMM-Newton during 2001 April reveal the presence of a third layer of absorption consisting of a very large column (≈2.5 × 1023 cm-2) of highly ionized gas with a covering fraction ~50%. This low covering fraction suggests that the absorber lies within a few light days of the X-ray source and/or is filamentary in structure. Interestingly, these absorbers are not in thermal equilibrium with one another. The two new components are too highly ionized to be radiatively accelerated, which we suggest is evidence for a hydromagnetic origin for the outflow. Applying our model to the November data set, we can account for the spectral variability primarily by a drop in the ionization states of the absorbers, as expected by the change in the continuum flux. When this complex absorption is accounted for, we find the underlying continuum to be typical of Seyfert 1 galaxies. The spectral curvature attributed to the high column absorber in turn reduces estimates of the flux and the extent of any broad Fe emission line from the accretion disk.
Longitudinal analysis of quality of life in patients with undifferentiated connective tissue diseases

Introduction/objectives To prospectively assess the quality of life (QoL) of patients affected by undifferentiated connective tissue diseases (UCTDs) and to identify factors associated with changes over time. Patients and methods A total of 46 consecutive UCTD patients completed the Short-Form 36 (SF-36) questionnaire at presentation and then yearly. At each 6-month visit, all patients underwent a detailed history taking and a laboratory and physical assessment, in order to follow the evolution of the disease over time and to assess the the co-existence of fibromyalgia. Results At presentation, scores lower than the average of the general population were detected in 34 (74%) and 41 (89%) patients in the physical and mental domains, respectively. No difference between patients with and without Raynaud’s phenomenon was detected. Fibromyalgia was the only independent variable associated with an impaired physical component summary score (p = 0.0009). No patient feature was found to be associated with the basal mental component summary score. During 24 months of follow-up, a significant improvement (ie, a change ≥5 from baseline) in physical component summary and mental component summary scores was observed in 14 (33.3%) and 20 (43.4%) patients, respectively. Patients who significantly improved in the physical domain more frequently had a history of glucocorticoids intake (p<0.001), while those who improved in the mental component more frequently had a history of either glucocorticoids (p = 0.043) or immunosuppressors (p = 0.037) intake during follow-up. Conclusion UCTD patients perceive a worse QoL, regardless of Raynaud’s phenomenon Fibromyalgia is one of the major contributors of physical QoL, whereas no factor influencing mental component has been identified. An improvement in QoL can be observed in less than half of patients over a 2-year follow-up. Larger studies are needed to identify factors influencing QoL and to define the role of pharmacological treatments.
Targeting Nominal GDP or Prices: Guidance and Expectation Dynamics

We examine global dynamics under infinite-horizon learning in New Keynesian models where monetary policy practices either price-level or nominal GDP targeting and compare these regimes to inflation targeting. These interest-rate rules are subject to the zero lower bound. Robustness of the three rules in learning adjustment are compared using criteria for the domain of attraction of the targeted steady state, volatility of inflation and output and sensitivity to the speed of learning parameter. Performance of price-level and nominal GDP targeting significantly improves if the additional guidance in these regimes is incorporated in private agents' learning.
In Vivo Imaging of Leukocyte Recruitment to the Atheroprone Femoral Artery Reveals Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Rosuvastatin

Objective. To monitor the anti-inflammatory effect of rosuvastatin in leukocyte endothelial interactions in the atheroprone femoral artery in vivo. Methods and Results. Male Apolipoprotein E null mice (ApoE−/− mice, 6 weeks old) were fed a high-fat diet (20% fat, 1.25% cholesterol) with or without the HMG CoA reductase inhibitor rosuvastatin (10 mg/kg/day) for 6 weeks. Significant leukocyte adhesion was observed in the femoral artery of ApoE−/− mice, but not of wild type mice, in the absence of rosuvastatin. Interestingly, no obvious plaque formation was observed in the artery at this time point. The number of adherent leukocytes was dramatically diminished in ApoE−/− mice treated with rosuvastatin. DHE-associated oxidative stress and the expression of gp91-phox, a component of NADPH oxidase, were induced in ApoE−/− mice and were abolished by rosuvastatin treatment. Conclusion. Our data documented leukocyte recruitment prior to lipid accumulation and subsequent inhibition by rosuvastatin. The underlying mechanism seemed to involve oxidative stress and an anti-inflammatory effect on the endothelium of atheroprone vessels.
Socioeconomic status and differential fertility in an African city

Most demographic reports of developing nations usually contain particular phraseology such as: the high density of population, the falling trend in the death rate, the educated elite's decreasing commitment to demands by kinsmen, the population's readiness to adopt more effective health innovations, the new elite's influence as initiators and carriers of new values, rapid urbanization, the spread of literacy, etc. Some of these reports, at times, attempt to assess the role which each nation might play in population control through the introduction of family planning programs. The effectiveness of such programs depends on adequate factual knowledge of demographic trends in these developing nations. Such data are now gradually becoming available for some social groups in parts of tropical Africa,) although more studies should and must be done. The paucity of systematic data on demographic trends in Nigeria is due in part to the fact that there are very few trained demographers; in addition, some highly placed policy makers rank demographic problems
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 Genetic Structure of the Threatened West- Pannonian Population of Great Bustard (otis Tarda)

The genetic diversity, population structure and gene flow of the Great Bustards (Otis tarda) living in Austria-Slovakia-West Hungary (West-Pannonian region), one of the few populations of this globally threatened species that survives across the Palaearc-tic, has been assessed for the first time in this study. Fourteen recently developed mi-crosatellite loci identified one single population in the study area, with high values of genetic diversity and gene flow between two different genetic subunits. One of these subunits (Heideboden) was recognized as a priority for conservation, as it could be crucial to maintain connectivity with the central Hungarian population and thus contribute to keeping contemporary genetic diversity. Current conservation efforts have been successful in saving this threatened population from extinction two decades ago, and should continue to guarantee its future survival.
WoM-SET: Low power proactive-SET-based PCM write using WoM code

The emerging Phase Change Memory (PCM), while having many advantages, suffers from slow write operations. This is mainly due to its asymmetric write characteristic, i.e., for two types of write operations of PCM, SET is much slower than RESET. Recent study has shown that proactively setting dirty memory lines to all `1's can enable RESET-only writes when these lines are written back from the cache, which helps to reduce the effective write latency. Unfortunately, it results in higher write power demand. In this paper, we propose WoM-SET, a low power proactive-SET-based write strategy. By exploiting the WoM (write-once memory) code, we greatly reduce the number of RESETs per write and hence the write power demand. By applying our design only to write-intensive pages, we restrict the extra space requirement in WoM-SET. Our experiments show that WoM-SET achieves 40% RESET bit reduction, 40% write power reduction, and 12% energy-delay-product improvement over the PreSET scheme.
Efficient overlap and content reuse detection in blogs and online news articles

The use of blogs to track and comment on real world (political, news, entertainment) events is growing. Similarly, as more individuals start relying on the Web as their primary information source and as more traditional media outlets try reaching consumers through alternative venues, the number of news sites on the Web is also continuously increasing. Content-reuse, whether in the form of extensive quotations or content borrowing across media outlets, is very common in blogs and news entries outlets tracking the same real-world event. Knowledge about which web entries re-use content from which others can be an effective asset when organizing these entries for presentation. On the other hand, this knowledge is not cheap to acquire: considering the size of the related space web entries, it is essential that the techniques developed for identifying re-use are fast and scalable. Furthermore, the dynamic nature of blog and news entries necessitates incremental processing for reuse detection. In this paper, we develop a novel qSign algorithm that efficiently and effectively analyze the blogosphere for quotation and reuse identification. Experiment results show that with qSign processing time gains from 10X to 100X are possible while maintaining reuse detection rates of upto 90%. Furthermore, processing time gains can be pushed multiple orders of magnitude (from 100X to 1000X) for 70% recall.
Cells Signaling Pathways in Mammary Epithelial ALK 4-Dependent and-Independent Cripto-1 Activates Nodal-and

10.1128/MCB.22. 8.2586-2597.2002. 2002, 22(8):2586. DOI: Mol. Cell. Biol. and David S. Salomon Sanicola Kenney, Andreas Ebert, Kevin P. Williams, Michele Antonella De Luca, Youping Sun, Nadia Khan, Nicholas Wechselberger, Masaharu Seno, Nicola Normanno, Caterina Bianco, Heather B. Adkins, Christian Cells Signaling Pathways in Mammary Epithelial ALK4-Dependent and -Independent Cripto-1 Activates Nodaland
The Effectiveness of an Information Sharing Strategy in Industrial Buyer and Seller Negotiations - An Experimental Study

This paper reports the results of two experiments simulating buyer-seller negotiations over two periods. We introduce two bargaining asymmetries – an external threat price from an alternative supplier, representative of a type of buyer advantage that is commonplace in competitive business markets and the sharing of private information instigated by either the seller or buyer. Our experiments attempt to reconcile conflicting propositions about the effect that information sharing has on negotiated outcomes when buyers/sellers negotiate a single issue (contract price), particularly in the presence of a buyer's threat, to switch to an alternative supplier who has made a price bid. Results show that there is a positive effect of information sharing on price, beneficial to the seller, but this only occurs when the seller is facing a buyer's threat price. In the absence of a threat, there is no effect of information sharing. Furthermore, we find that prices negotiated under threat and information sharing are perceived as fair by the buyer, and a seller sharing information is given credit by the buyer for having influenced the negotiation process and outcome. Taken together, results indicate that sellers should use an information sharing strategy only when facing the power asymmetry posed by a buyer with a credible threat. The bargaining frontiers in our experiments consist of specific price points corresponding to solutions that are formally equitable alternatives to axiom-based bargaining solutions. One of the formally equitable solutions on the bargaining frontier, a solution providing equal gain of utility from each player's minimum utility point, occurs most frequently when there is both threat and information sharing.
AGGREGATE DEMAND AND AGGREGATE SUPPLY IN GERMANY AND THE UNITED KINGDOM

The article uses a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model under some well agreed-on long-run neutrality assumption to identify the aggregate demand (AD) and aggregate supply curve (AS) in West Germany and the UK. The empirical results indicate similarities and contrasts in macroeconomic behaviour across both countries. A main result is that the UK is characterized by much larger output and price responses to to demand disturbances.
Part-Time Workers: Who Are They?.

A new definition of part-timers, utilizing existing data from the Current Population Survey, gives a more accurate estimate of the number of part-time workers Although typically pictured as working 40 hours a week, the American work force includes a substantial number of persons who put in far fewer hours. Young people working while attending school, parents juggling childrearing and career responsibilities, those in retirement wishing to remain partly active in the work force, and workers whose hours have been reduced because of economic conditions are examples of persons who either choose or have to settle for part-time employment. Because of the variety of situations found in the workplace , labor market analysts who study part-time employment have sometimes found it a difficult concept to define. Although the official government definition of part-time work is clear, estimating the number of part-time workers is more complex. It depends on exactly what is being measured the total number of persons who worked part-time hours during the survey reference week, the number who choose to work part-time hours, or the number who typically work part time. Each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes data on the number of hours worked by persons during the survey reference week and considerable detail about persons who work less than 35 hours a week-the official boundary between full-and part-time employment . ' The data collected include both the reasons people work less than 35 hours as well as their usual full-or part-time status. To reflect the diversity of the workplace, BLs disaggregates the data about people at work less than 35 hours into three subgroups: (1) those voluntarily at work part time, (2) those working part time for economic reasons, and (3) those who usually work full time but worked less than 35 hours during the reference week because of holiday, illness, vacation, or similar reasons. These data are combined with information on several other groupings-persons at work more than 35 hours (full-time workers), employed persons who were not at work during the survey reference week, and unemployed persons-to yield estimates of the full-and part-time labor forces. These categories are useful for a variety of analyses. The number of persons at work part time for economic reasons, for example, is of interest as a measure of underutilization of human resources and also is an important indicator of the cyclical movements in the labor market . 2 Data about the …
Global epistasis makes adaptation predictable despite sequence-level stochasticity

Clouding evolution's crystal ball Because of a sort of mutation buffering process, different starting mutations can tend to end up with similar overall affects on an organism's fitness. Kryazhimskiy et al. evolved lines of yeast, each originating from distinct single genotypes, under the same selective regimen. A subset of clones from these adapted populations was subjected to fitness assays and sequenced. Populations with lower initial fitness, adapted more rapidly than populations with higher initial fitness, so that in the end the fitness levels were similar. Science, this issue p. 1519 Epistasis makes fitness trajectories unpredictable in yeast, even as they converge upon the same biological pathway. Epistatic interactions between mutations can make evolutionary trajectories contingent on the chance occurrence of initial mutations. We used experimental evolution in Saccharomyces cerevisiae to quantify this contingency, finding differences in adaptability among 64 closely related genotypes. Despite these differences, sequencing of 104 evolved clones showed that initial genotype did not constrain future mutational trajectories. Instead, reconstructed combinations of mutations revealed a pattern of diminishing-returns epistasis: Beneficial mutations have consistently smaller effects in fitter backgrounds. Taken together, these results show that beneficial mutations affecting a variety of biological processes are globally coupled; they interact strongly, but only through their combined effect on fitness. As a consequence, fitness evolution follows a predictable trajectory even though sequence-level adaptation is stochastic.