Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A p53-Dependent Response Limits Epidermal Stem Cell Functionality and Organismal Size in Mice with Short Telomeres

Telomere maintenance is essential to ensure proper size and function of organs with a high turnover. In particular, a dwarf phenotype as well as phenotypes associated to premature loss of tissue regeneration, including the skin (hair loss, hair graying, decreased wound healing), are found in mice deficient for telomerase, the enzyme responsible for maintaining telomere length. Coincidental with the appearance of these phenotypes, p53 is found activated in several tissues from these mice, where is thought to trigger cellular senescence and/or apoptotic responses. Here, we show that p53 abrogation rescues both the small size phenotype and restitutes the functionality of epidermal stem cells (ESC) of telomerase-deficient mice with dysfunctional telomeres. In particular, p53 ablation restores hair growth, skin renewal and wound healing responses upon mitogenic induction, as well as rescues ESCmobilization defects in vivo and defective ESC clonogenic activity in vitro. This recovery of ESC functions is accompanied by a downregulation of senescence markers and an increased proliferation in the skin and kidney of telomerase-deficient mice with critically short telomeres without changes in apoptosis rates. Together, these findings indicate the existence of a p53-dependent senescence response acting on stem/progenitor cells with dysfunctional telomeres that is actively limiting their contribution to tissue regeneration, thereby impinging on tissue fitness.
Default Prediction of Various Structural Models

The structural approach of credit risk modeling has gained growing attention in both academics and industry. While there has been increasing effort in testing the structural models for credit derivatives pricing, little result has been shown on the default prediction of the structural models. In this paper, we compare comprehensively various credit structural models for their default prediction capability. We select models that cover distinctly different assumptions such that we can study how and why certain models can predict default better than others. In addition to the well known existing structural models, we also introduce a non-parametric model to study the distributional characteristics underlying the structural models. Our results indicate that the distribution characteristics of the equity returns and endogenous recovery are two important assumptions. On the other hand, random interest rates that play an important role in pricing credit derivatives are not an important assumption in predicting default.
OCCUPATIONAL IDENTITY: EVIDENCE FROM THE RUSSIAN OLD-AGE PENSION Government Transfers, Work and Occupational Identity: Evidence from the Russian Old-Age Pension

This paper examines how the receipt of the age-determined Russian state pension impacts the incomes, working hours, self-reported wellbeing, self-employed home production, and health behaviors of individuals. Household panel data spanning 2006-2011 is employed. Regression discontinuity estimators with individual fixed effects identify the causal impact of attaining state pension age on these outcomes. Attaining pension age has large negative causal impacts on market work hours, but also important positive effects on the self-employment output of women, and negative effects on the non-monetized home production activities of men. No positive impacts are found on any subjective measures of wellbeing or economic security. The results are reconciled by augmenting the standard labor supply theory of Gronau (1977) with new ideas about occupational identities first outlined in Akerlof and Kranton (2000). JEL codes: I31; H31; J22
A secure authenticated group key agreement protocol for resource-limited mobile devices

With rapid growth of mobile wireless networks, many mobile applications have received significant attention. However, security will be an important factor for their full adoption. Most security technologies currently deployed in wired networks are not fully applicable to wireless networks involved in resource-limited mobile nodes because of their low-power computing capability and limited energy. The design of secure group key agreement protocols is one of many important security issues in wireless networks. A group key agreement protocol involves all participants cooperatively establishing a group key, which is used to encrypt/decrypt transmitted messages among participants over an open channel. Unfortunately, most previously proposed group key agreement protocols are too expensive computationally to be employed in mobile wireless networks. Recently, Bresson et al. proposed an authenticated group key agreement protocol suitable for a mobile wireless network. This mobile wireless network is an asymmetric wireless one that consists of many mobile nodes with limited computing capability and a powerful node with less restriction. However, this protocol does not satisfy some important security properties such as forward secrecy and contributory key agreement. In this paper, we propose a new authenticated group key agreement protocol, which is well suited for this asymmetric wireless network. The proposed protocol not only is efficient but also meets strong security requirements. We demonstrate that the proposed protocol is a real contributory group key agreement one and provides forward secrecy as well as implicit key authentication. The proposed protocol is provably secure against passive adversaries and impersonator's attacks. A simulation result shows that the proposed protocol is well suited for mobile devices with limited computing capability.
A study of early and late adopters of International Financial Reporting Standards in New Zealand : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Accounting at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . ii LIST OF TABLES . vi LIST OF FIGURES . vii LIST OF APPENDICES . viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 STUDY OVERVIEW . 1 1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS . 3 1.3 MOTIVATION FOR THE STUDY AND CONTRIBUTIONS . 4 1.4 MAIN FINDINGS . 6 1.4. 1 IMPACT OF IFRS ADOPTION ON FINANCIAL INFORMATION . 6 1.4. 2 IFRS-RELATED DISCRETIONARY NARRATIVE DISCLOSURES . 7 1.4. 3 COSTS AND BENEFITS ARISING FROM IFRS ADOPTION AS WELL AS OTHER SURVEY INSIGHTS REGARDING ADOPTION TIMING . 8 1.5 FRAMEWORK OF THESIS . 9 1.6 PUBLICATIONS . 9 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND TO IFRS ADOPTION . 10 2.1 INSTITUTIONAL BACKGROUND . 10 2.2 MOTIVATION FOR ADOPTING IFRS IN NEW ZEALAND . 12 2.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY . 17 CHAPTER 3: THEORY AND LITERATURE . 18 3.1 INTRODUCTION . 18 3.2 ACCOUNTING CHOICE . 19 3.2.1 OVERVIEW . 19
Understanding the design of information technologies for knowledge management in organizations: a pragmatic perspective

Abstract. Researchers report mixed findings on the successful application of information technologies (IT) for knowledge management (KM). The primary difficulty is argued to be the use of information management techniques and concepts to design and develop KM Tools. Also problematic is the existence of a multiplicity of KM technologies, the application and use of which differs across organizations. This paper argues that these problems stem, in part, from the information system field’s over‐reliance on design concepts from the functionalist paradigm. Hence, our contention that alternative perspectives, which bring into focus issues of ontology and epistemology, need to be brought to bear in order to understand the challenges involved in the design and deployment of IT artefacts in knowledge management systems (KMS). The philosophy of technology, with its emphasis on the primacy of praxis, and which incorporates ontological and epistemological concepts from phenomenology and hermeneutics, is applied to the findings of a participative action research study to illustrate how social actors interpret and understand worldly phenomena and subsequently share their knowledge of the life‐world using IT. The outcome of this marriage of situated practical theory and philosophy is a set of design principles to guide the development of a core KM Tool for KMS.
The OECD Survey of Adult Skills (特集 国際成人力調査からの知見)

Introduction A decade after the publication of results from the first round of PISA, its seminal assessment of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds, the OECD has conducted its first Survey of Adult Skills, which extends the assessment of skills to the entire adult population. The survey, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), focuses on skills similar to those assessed in PISA – literacy, numeracy and problem-solving – but the two studies use different assessment tasks, reflecting the different contexts in which 15-year-old students and older adults live. The surveys have complementary goals: PISA seeks to identify ways in which students can learn better, teachers can teach better, and schools can operate more effectively; the Survey of Adult Skills focuses on how adults develop their skills, how they use those skills, and what benefits they gain from using them. To this end, the Survey of Adult Skills collects information on how skills are used at home, in the workplace and in the community; how these skills are developed, maintained and lost over a lifetime; and how these skills are related to labour market participation, income, health, and social and political engagement. With this information, the Survey of Adult Skills can help policy makers to:
Investigating vanilla MCTS scaling on the GVG-AI game corpus

The General Video Game AI Competition (GVG-AI) invites submissions of controllers to play games specified in the Video Game Description Language (VGDL), testing them against each other and several baselines. One of the baselines that has done surprisingly well in some of the competitions is sampleMCTS, a straightforward implementation of Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS). Although it has done worse in other iterations of the competition, this has produced a nagging worry to us that perhaps the GVG-AI competition might be too easy, especially since performance profiling suggests that significant increases in number of MCTS iterations that can be completed in a given time limit will be possible through optimizations to the GVG-AI competition framework. To better understand the potential performance of the baseline vanilla MCTS controller, I perform scaling experiments, running it against the 62 games in the public GVG-AI corpus as the time budget is varied from about 1/30 of that in the current competition, through around 30x the current competition's budget. I find that it does not in fact master the games even given 30x the current time budget, so the challenge of the GVG-AI competition is safe (at least against this baseline). However, I do find that given enough computational budget, it manages to avoid explicitly losing on most games, despite failing to win them and ultimately losing as time expires, suggesting an asymmetry in the current GVG-AI competition's challenge: not losing is significantly easier than winning.
Foundation species' overlap enhances biodiversity and multifunctionality from the patch to landscape scale in southeastern United States salt marshes

Although there is mounting evidence that biodiversity is an important and widespread driver of ecosystem multifunctionality, much of this research has focused on small-scale biodiversity manipulations. Hence, which mechanisms maintain patches of enhanced biodiversity in natural systems and if these patches elevate ecosystem multifunctionality at both local and landscape scales remain outstanding questions. In a 17 month experiment conducted within southeastern United States salt marshes, we found that patches of enhanced biodiversity and multifunctionality arise only where habitat-forming foundation species overlap—i.e. where aggregations of ribbed mussels (Geukensia demissa) form around cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) stems. By empirically scaling up our experimental results to the marsh platform at 12 sites, we further show that mussels—despite covering only approximately 1% of the marsh surface—strongly enhance five distinct ecosystem functions, including decomposition, primary production and water infiltration rate, at the landscape scale. Thus, mussels create conditions that support the co-occurrence of high densities of functionally distinct organisms within cordgrass and, in doing so, elevate salt marsh multifunctionality from the patch to landscape scale. Collectively, these findings suggest that patterns in foundation species' overlap drive variation in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning within and across natural ecosystems. We therefore argue that foundation species should be integrated in our conceptual understanding of forces that moderate biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships, approaches for conserving species diversity and strategies to improve the multifunctionality of degraded ecosystems.
Informedness and Customer-centric Revenue Management

textabstractThe recent pervasive adoption of modern IT in the marketplace has profoundly changed information availability to customers and firms. This improved information endowment results in changes in consumer behavior and corporate strategy. This dissertation proposes new theoretical perspectives – firm informedness, customer informedness, and informedness through learning – to re-conceptualize the decision making process of customer-centric revenue management. It consists of three studies. First, using multiple cases in which firms adopt smart cards and mobile technologies in America, Europe, and Asia, we examine the value creation process of the firm using the explanation of firm informedness and investigate how it advances revenue management. Second, we test the theory of consumer informedness and examine heterogeneity in consumer preferences using stated choice experiments. We find the evidence for trading down and trading out behavior and show that the use of mobile ticketing technologies can help firms to build a hyper-differentiated transport market. Finally, using a computational simulation, we explore the opportunity for devising service offerings to capture profitable consumer responses, considering demand-driven revenue and capacity-management. Overall, this research introduces methods, models, and guidelines for organizations to strategize the informational challenge, make informed decisions, and create transformational values to win in today’s competitive network environment.
Social Behavior

Over the past 30 years investigators have called repeatedly for research on the mechanisms through which social relationships and social support improve physical and psychological well-being, both directly and as stress buffers. I describe seven possible mechanisms: social influence/social comparison, social control, role-based purpose and meaning (mattering), self-esteem, sense of control, belonging and companionship, and perceived support availability. Stress-buffering processes also involve these mechanisms. I argue that there are two broad types of support, emotional sustenance and active coping assistance, and two broad categories of supporters, significant others and experientially similar others, who specialize in supplying different types of support to distressed individuals. Emotionally sustaining behaviors and instrumental aid from significant others and empathy, active coping assistance, and role modeling from similar others should be most efficacious in alleviating the physical and emotional impacts of stressors.
Magnesium Sulfate as a Second-Line Tocolytic Agent for Preterm Labor: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Kyushu Island

Objectives. We evaluated the efficacy of magnesium sulfate as a second-line tocolysis for 48 hours. Materials and Methods. A multi-institutional, simple 2-arm randomized controlled trial was performed. Forty-five women at 22 to 34 weeks of gestation were eligible, whose ritodrine did not sufficiently inhibit uterine contractions. After excluding 12 women, 33 were randomly assigned to either magnesium alone or combination (ritodrine and magnesium). The treatment was determined as effective if the frequency of uterine contraction was reduced by 30% at 48 hours of the treatment. Results. After magnesium sulfate infusion, 90% prolonged their pregnancy for >48 hours. Combination therapy was effective in 95% (18/19), which was significantly higher than 50% (7/14) for magnesium alone. Conclusion. This randomized trial revealed that combination therapy significantly reduced uterine contractions, suggesting that adjuvant magnesium with ritodrine is recommended, rather than changing into magnesium alone, when uterine contractions are intractable with ritodrine infusion.
Causal Prediction of Continuous-Valued Music Features

This paper investigates techniques for predicting sequences of continuous-valued feature vectors extracted from musical audio. In particular, we consider prediction of beatsynchronousMel-frequencycepstralcoefficientsandchroma features in a causal setting, where features are predicted as they unfold in time. The methods studied comprise autoregressive models, N-gram models incorporating a smoothing scheme, and a novel technique based on repetition detection using a self-distance matrix. Furthermore, we propose a method for combining predictors, which relies on a running estimate of the error variance of the predictors to inform a linear weighting of the predictor outputs. Results indicate that incorporating information on long-term structure improves the prediction performance for continuous-valued, sequential musical data. For the Beatles data set, combining the proposed self-distance based predictor with both N-gram and autoregressive methods results in an average of 13% improvement compared to a linear predictive baseline.
Is the Rent-Collector Worthy of His Full Hire?

Allyn Young and Frank H. Knight have set straight the Marshall-Pigou fallacy that all increasing cost industries ought to be socially penalized: Young and Knight point out that the bidding up of rents to factors scarce to an industry are "transfer" costs to society; and, further, that such rents have to be charged if social efficiency is to be achieved. Otherwise land will get nonoptimally utilized; fishing seas and roads may become overcrowded. I take this all to be standard doctrine.
TEN NEW AND UPDATED MULTIPLANET SYSTEMS AND A SURVEY OF EXOPLANETARY SYSTEMS

We present the latest velocities for ten multiplanet systems, including a re-analysis of archival Keck and Lick data, resulting in improved velocities that supersede our previously published measurements. We derive updated orbital fits for 10 Lick and Keck systems, including two systems (HD 11964, HD 183263) for which we provide confirmation of second planets only tentatively identified elsewhere, and two others (HD 187123 and HD 217107) for which we provide a major revision of the outer planet's orbit. We compile orbital elements from the literature to generate a catalog of the 28 published multiple-planet systems around stars within 200 pc. From this catalog we find several intriguing patterns emerging: (1) including those systems with long-term radial velocity trends, at least 28% of known planetary systems appear to contain multiple planets; (2) planets in multiple-planet systems have somewhat smaller eccentricities than single planets; and (3) the distribution of orbital distances of planets in multiplanet systems and single planets are inconsistent: single-planet systems show a pileup at P ∼ 3 days and a jump near 1 AU, while multiplanet systems show a more uniform distribution in log-period. In addition, among all planetary systems we find the following. (1) There may be an emerging, positive correlation between stellar mass and giant-planet semimajor axis. (2) Exoplanets with M sin i > 1 MJup more massive than Jupiter have eccentricities broadly distributed across 0 < e < 0.5, while lower mass exoplanets exhibit a distribution peaked near e = 0.
An alternative to killing? Treatment of reservoir hosts to control a vector and pathogen in a susceptible species

SUMMARY Parasite-mediated apparent competition occurs when one species affects another through the action of a shared parasite. One way of controlling the parasite in the more susceptible host is to manage the reservoir host. Culling can cause issues in terms of ethics and biodiversity impacts, therefore we ask: can treating, as compared to culling, a wildlife host protect a target species from the shared parasite? We used Susceptible Infected Recovered (SIR) models parameterized for the tick-borne louping ill virus (LIV) system. Deer are the key hosts of the vector (Ixodes ricinus) that transmits LIV to red grouse Lagopus lagopus scoticus, causing high mortality. The model was run under scenarios of varying acaricide efficacy and deer densities. The model predicted that treating deer can increase grouse density through controlling ticks and LIV, if acaricide efficacies are high and deer densities low. Comparing deer treated with 70% acaricide efficacy with a 70% cull rate suggested that treatment may be more effective than culling if initial deer densities are high. Our results will help inform tick control policies, optimize the targeting of control methods and identify conditions where host management is most likely to succeed. Our approach is applicable to other host-vector-pathogen systems.
Accounting for tastes: correlates of risk and time preferences

Most economists assume that tastes are exogenous, that tastes do not lend themselves to economic analysis, and that their development should therefore be ignored. While most recognize that tastes are probably influenced by psychological and sociological factors particularly as they influence family life, few economists speculate about what those factors might be and the corresponding implications they might have for economic policy pronouncements. By assuming tastes to be exogenous, economics is rendered an inherently conservative discipline; that is, much economic analysis provides an ideological rationale for the status quo. Economists are more likely to ask, How might resources be better allocated to satisfy existing tastes? rather than, Are tastes themselves in any sense desirable or undesirable and should they be changed? Policymakers, fortunately, are willing to ask both questions and to be guided by social science research in arriving at answers. Social scientists have provided valuable information to policymakers concerning, for example, the causes and cures for bigotry. Education researchers have produced ample evidence that, for children studying in racially mixed classrooms, attitudinal measures of racism are less than for children who study in segregated classrooms. The primary aim of desegregation and civil rights legislation in the eyes of many policymakers has been to change the tastes and preferences of segregated populations concerning their views of each other.
A Theory of Minimalist Democracy

A majority of the world democracies are far from the benchmark of representative democracy. This paper presents a model of political transitions based on a minimalist conception of the democratic state, i.e. a form of government solely characterized by competitive elections. We show that the model can produce dynamics of transition into democracy without requiring any role for redistribution or representation of voters, but solely based on interactions among the ruling elites. This allows the model to match several relevant stylized facts concerning the organization of new and consolidating democracies, weakly institutionalized countries, and hybrid regimes.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber. org.