Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RANTES and Monocyte Chemoattractant Protein–1 (MCP-1) Play an Important Role in the Inflammatory Phase of Crescentic Nephritis, but Only MCP-1 Is Involved in Crescent Formation and Interstitial Fibrosis

The involvement of chemokines in inflammation is well established, but their functional role in disease progression, and particularly in the development of fibrosis, is not yet understood. To investigate the functional role that the chemokines monocyte chemoattractant protein–1 (MCP-1) and RANTES play in inflammation and the progression to fibrosis during crescentic nephritis we have developed and characterized a murine model for this syndrome. Significant increases in T-lymphocytes and macrophages were observed within glomeruli and interstitium, paralleled by an induction of mRNA expression of MCP-1 and RANTES, early after disease initiation. Blocking the function of MCP-1 or RANTES resulted in significant decreases in proteinuria as well as in numbers of infiltrating leukocytes, indicating that both MCP-1 and RANTES (regulated upon activation in normal T cells expressed and secreted) play an important role in the inflammatory phase of crescentic nephritis. In addition, neutralization of MCP-1 resulted in a dramatic decrease in both glomerular crescent formation and deposition of type I collagen. These results highlight a novel role for MCP-1 in crescent formation and development of interstitial fibrosis, and indicate that in addition to recruiting inflammatory cells this chemokine is critically involved in irreversible tissue damage.
Human Neuroscience Original Research Article Meditation Increases the Depth of Information Processing and Improves the Allocation of Attention in Space

During meditation, practitioners are required to center their attention on a specific object for extended periods of time. When their thoughts get diverted, they learn to quickly disengage from the distracter. We hypothesized that learning to respond to the dual demand of engaging attention on specific objects and disengaging quickly from distracters enhances the efficiency by which meditation practitioners can allocate attention. We tested this hypothesis in a global-to-local task while measuring electroencephalographic activity from a group of eight highly trained Buddhist monks and nuns and a group of eight age and education matched controls with no previous meditation experience. Specifically, we investigated the effect of attentional training on the global precedence effect, i.e., faster detection of targets on a global than on a local level. We expected to find a reduced global precedence effect in meditation practitioners but not in controls, reflecting that meditators can more quickly disengage their attention from the dominant global level. Analysis of reaction times confirmed this prediction.To investigate the underlying changes in brain activity and their time course, we analyzed event-related potentials. Meditators showed an enhanced ability to select the respective target level, as reflected by enhanced processing of target level information. In contrast with control group, which showed a local target selection effect only in the P1 and a global target selection effect in the P3 component, meditators showed effects of local information processing in the P1, N2, and P3 and of global processing for the N1, N2, and P3. Thus, meditators seem to display enhanced depth of processing. In addition, meditation altered the uptake of information such that meditators selected target level information earlier in the processing sequence than controls. In a longitudinal experiment, we could replicate the behavioral effects, suggesting that meditation modulates attention already after a 4-day meditation retreat. Together, these results suggest that practicing meditation enhances the speed with which attention can be allocated and relocated, thus increasing the depth of information processing and reducing response latency.
Statistically Efficient Estimation Using Population Coding

Coarse codes are widely used throughout the brain to encode sensory and motor variables. Methods designed to interpret these codes, such as population vector analysis, are either inefficient (the variance of the estimate is much larger than the smallest possible variance) or biologically implausible, like maximum likelihood. Moreover, these methods attempt to compute a scalar or vector estimate of the encoded variable. Neurons are faced with a similar estimation problem. They must read out the responses of the presynaptic neurons, but, by contrast, they typically encode the variable with a further population code rather than as a scalar. We show how a nonlinear recurrent network can be used to perform estimation in a near-optimal way while keeping the estimate in a coarse code format. This work suggests that lateral connections in the cortex may be involved in cleaning up uncorrelated noise among neurons representing similar variables.
Tolerance for Failure and Corporate Innovation

Based on a sample of venture capital (VC)-backed IPO firms, we examine whether tolerance for failure spurs corporate innovation. We develop a novel measure of VC investors' failure tolerance by examining their willingness to continue investing in underperforming ventures. We find that IPO firms backed by more failure-tolerant VC investors are significantly more innovative and VC failure tolerance is particularly important for ventures that are subject to high failure risk. We show that these results are not driven by endogenous matching between failure-tolerant VC firms and start-ups with high ex ante innovative potential. We also examine the determinants of the cross-sectional heterogeneity in a VC firm's failure tolerance. We find that both capital constraints and career concerns can negatively distort a VC firm's failure tolerance. Less experienced VC firms are more exposed to these distortions, making them less failure tolerant than are more established VC firms. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. , Oxford University Press.
Gravitational lensing by wormholes

Natural wormholes and its astrophysical signatures have been suggested in various opportunities. By applying the strong field limit of gravitational lensing theory, we calculate the deflection angle and magnification curves produced by Morris-Thorne wormholes in asymptotically flat space-times. The results show that wormholes act like convergent lenses. Therefore, we show that it is hard to distinguish them from black holes using the deflection’s angle of the gravitational lens effect, in contrast with the results reported by Cramer et al. and Safanova et al. However, we also show that it is possible, in principle, distinguish them by the magnification curves, in particular, by observing the position of the peak of the Einstein’s ring.
Parenteral Nutrition in Pancreatitis is Passé: But Are We Ready for Gastric Feeding? A Practical Guide to Jejunal Feeding: Revenge of the Cyst -Part II NUTRITION ISSUES IN GASTROENTEROLOGY, SERIES #55

Nutrition support is required to prevent or reverse malnutrition in the 15%–20% of patients that develop severe or complicated pancreatitis who are unable to resume oral intake in seven-to-ten days. The best available data supports the use of jejunal feeding over parenteral nutrition in those patients. Jejunal enteral nutrition can be successfully achieved by using nasojejunal access (in those patients requiring <30 days of nutrition support) and either percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy with jejunal extension or direct percutaneous jejunostomy access in patients requiring longer support. Symptoms such as diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and excessive gastric secretion may appear to be obstacles to successful enteral feeding, but our experience demonstrates that patients rarely remain intolerant to enteral feeding and require parenteral nutrition. The transient gastrointestinal symptoms associated with enteral feeding can be managed by the following recommendations outlined in this article. The use of long term enteral nutrition in patients with chronic pain, pseudocysts, malnutrition and other complications is increasing, but the efficacy of this practice still needs to be clearly demonstrated in randomized controlled trials. Joe Krenitsky Diklar Makola Carol Rees Parrish
Studies of the cleavage in the frog egg. II. On determination of the position of the furrow.

In sea-urchin eggs, once karyokinesis reaches metaphase or anaphase, the cleavage furrow can be formed even if the mitotic apparatus is destroyed (Swann & Mitchison, 1953) or removed (Hiramoto, 1956). A similar result was obtained in frog eggs (Kubota, 1966). In amphibian eggs a much longer time is available for performing experiments than in sea urchins as the furrow first appears at the animal pole and slowly travels toward the vegetal pole. Taking advantage of this situation, Waddington (1952) and Dan & Kuno-Kojima (1963) performed various kinds of operations to elucidate the roles of the egg cortex and the inner cytoplasm in furrow formation, and Selman & Waddington (1955) also made cytological observations of the process. In the present paper a shift of the inner cytoplasm relative to the cortex and its influence on the course of the furrow was analysed for eggs of the frog Rana nigromaculata .
Percieved Organizational Efficacy in Internationalized Companies: Application of Competing Values Approach and Collective Efficacy

This dissertation focuses on “organizational efficacy”, in particular on employees’ beliefs of organizational capacity to be efficacious. Organizational efficacy is considered from two perspectives – competing values approach and collective efficacy, and evaluated in internationalized companies. The dissertation is composed of three studies. The data were collected in thirteen Italian companies on different stages of internationalization for a total number of respondents is 358. In the first study the factorial validity of the competing values instrument (Rohrbaugh, 1981) was investigated and confirmed. Two scales were used to measure collective efficacy: a general collective efficacy scale (Bohn, 2010), and a specific collective efficacy scale, developed following suggestions of Borgogni et al. (2001), it evaluates employees’ beliefs of efficacy of organizations in the international market. The findings suggest that competing values and collective organizational efficacy instruments may provide a multi-faceted measurement of employees’ beliefs of organizational efficacy. The second study examined the relationship between organizational efficacy and collective work engagement. To measure collective work engagement the UWES-9 (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003) was adapted at the group level; its factor structure and reliability were similar to the standard UWES-9. The findings suggest that organizational efficacy fully predicts collective work engagement. Also we investigated whether leadership moderates the relationship between organizational efficacy and collective work engagement. We operationalized leadership style with MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1995); the results suggest that intellectual stimulation and idealized influence (transformational leadership) and contingent reward (transactional leadership) enhance the impact of organizational efficacy on collective work engagement. In the third study we investigated organizational efficacy and collective work engagement in internationalized companies. The findings show that beliefs of organizational efficacy vary across companies in different stages of internationalization, while no significant difference was found for collective work engagement. Limitations, practical implications and future studies are discussed in the conclusion.
Clustering Semantic Spaces of Suicide Notes and Newsgroups Articles.

Gas contaminants generated from the grease of bearings operating in a magnetic disk device adhere to the magnetic head and causing stiction and magnetic head crash. Such bearings are typically spindle bearings and pivot bearings. In operation, heat is generated that causes the bearing grease to generate the gases. By heat treating the grease, slow evaporating substances of hydrocarbon compounds with carbons of C9 to C13 in the grease are reduced to not more than 0.001 wt. % of the grease. The grease can then be used to lubricate the bearings. The heat treatment is performed at a temperature of 60 DEG to 100 DEG C. at a pressure of 10-3 to 10-8 torr. The assembled, lubricated bearings can be heat treated separately from the magnetic disk device or the heat treatment can take place after the bearings have been assembled in the magnetic disk device.
Numerical analysis of global ionospheric current system including the e ect of equatorial enhancement

A modeling method is proposed to derive a two-dimensional ionospheric layer conductivity, which is appropriate to obtain a realistic solution of the polar-originating ionospheric current system including equatorial enhancement. The model can be obtained by modifying the conventional, thin shell conductivity model. It is shown that the modi®cation for one of the non-diagonal terms (Shu) in the conductivity tensor near the equatorial region is very important; the term in ̄uences the pro®le of the ionospheric electric ®eld around the equator drastically. The proposed model can reproduce well the results representing the observed electric and magnetic ®eld signatures of geomagnetic sudden commencement. The new model is applied to two factors concerning polar-originating ionospheric current systems. First, the latitudinal pro®le of the DP2 amplitude in the daytime is examined, changing the canceling rate for the dawnto-dusk electric ®eld by the region 2 ®eld-aligned current. It is shown that the equatorial enhancement would not appear when the ratio of the total amount of the region 2 ®eld-aligned current to that of region 1 exceeds 0.5. Second, the north-south asymmetry of the magnetic ®elds in the summer solstice condition of the ionospheric conductivity is examined by calculating the global ionospheric current system covering both hemispheres simultaneously. It is shown that the positive relationship between the magnitudes of high latitude magnetic ®elds and the conductivity is clearly seen if a voltage generator is given as the source, while the relationship is vague or even reversed for a current generator. The new model, based on the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model, can be applied to further investigations in the quantitative analysis of the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling problems.
Predicting Drug Concentration‐Time Profiles in Multiple CNS Compartments Using a Comprehensive Physiologically‐Based Pharmacokinetic Model

Drug development targeting the central nervous system (CNS) is challenging due to poor predictability of drug concentrations in various CNS compartments. We developed a generic physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for prediction of drug concentrations in physiologically relevant CNS compartments. System‐specific and drug‐specific model parameters were derived from literature and in silico predictions. The model was validated using detailed concentration‐time profiles from 10 drugs in rat plasma, brain extracellular fluid, 2 cerebrospinal fluid sites, and total brain tissue. These drugs, all small molecules, were selected to cover a wide range of physicochemical properties. The concentration‐time profiles for these drugs were adequately predicted across the CNS compartments (symmetric mean absolute percentage error for the model prediction was <91%). In conclusion, the developed PBPK model can be used to predict temporal concentration profiles of drugs in multiple relevant CNS compartments, which we consider valuable information for efficient CNS drug development.
Speech recognition and keyword spotting for low-resource languages: Babel project research at CUED

Recently there has been increased interest in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Key Word Spotting (KWS) systems for low resource languages. One of the driving forces for this research direction is the IARPA Babel project. This paper describes some of the research funded by this project at Cambridge University, as part of the Lorelei team co-ordinated by IBM. A range of topics are discussed including: deep neural network based acoustic models; data augmentation; and zero acoustic model resource systems. Performance for all approaches is evaluated using the Limited (approximately 10 hours) and/or Full (approximately 80 hours) language packs distributed by IARPA. Both KWS and ASR performance figures are given. Though absolute performance varies from language to language, and keyword list, the approaches described show consistent trends over the languages investigated to date. Using comparable systems over the five Option Period 1 languages indicates a strong correlation between ASR performance and KWS performance.
Informational Lobbying and Agenda Distortion C

This paper challenges the prevailing view that strict informational lobbying (in the absence of political contributions and evidence distortion) leads to better policy outcomes. Key to our analysis is the fact that policymakers are constrained on the number of issues they can address, which forces them to prioritize issues. We show how interest groups advocating reform on less-important issues may have greater incentive to produce information, which can lead policymakers to prioritize those reforms over more-salient ones. Such distortion of the policy agenda leads to worse policy outcomes and lower constituent welfare. Our story is consistent with empirical accounts of the lobbying process.
Integrated Immunomodulatory Mechanisms through which Long-Chain n-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Attenuate Obese Adipose Tissue Dysfunction

Obesity is a global health concern with rising prevalence that increases the risk of developing other chronic diseases. A causal link connecting overnutrition, the development of obesity and obesity-associated co-morbidities is visceral adipose tissue (AT) dysfunction, characterized by changes in the cellularity of various immune cell populations, altered production of inflammatory adipokines that sustain a chronic state of low-grade inflammation and, ultimately, dysregulated AT metabolic function. Therefore, dietary intervention strategies aimed to halt the progression of obese AT dysfunction through any of the aforementioned processes represent an important active area of research. In this connection, fish oil-derived dietary long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in the form of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) have been demonstrated to attenuate obese AT dysfunction through multiple mechanisms, ultimately affecting AT immune cellularity and function, adipokine production, and metabolic signaling pathways, all of which will be discussed herein.
The Importance of Transmitter Side Information and the Value of Training ∗

Coherent communication over fading wireless channels requires channel state information (CSI). Therefore, CSI has value. Communication systems that require CSI must devote some system resources to obtaining it. CSI has associated cost. When the cost can be used to train either the transmitter or the receiver, then the optimal solution is to allocate the training where it will have the highest value. In this work, we show that wireless communication systems that require minimum outage probability should allocate their training resources to the transmitter. To that end, we derive the associated bound on mutual information and use it to develop a precoding scheme. At high SNR, we show that transmitter training yields infinite diversity for any amount of training while receiver training offers only finite diversity. Finally, we demonstrate that the outage performance provided by even minimal transmitter training is significantly superior to infinite training of the receiver over all SNR.
Occupational well-being : the role of areas of worklife and achievement and social strategies

Innanen, Hely Occupational Well-being: The Role of Areas of Worklife and Achievement and Social Strategies Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, 2014, 88 p. (Jyvaskyla Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research ISSN 0075-4625; 508) ISBN 978-951-39-5870-1 (nid.) ISBN 978-951-39-5871-8 (PDF) Yhteenveto: Tyoolojen ja suoritusja sosiaalisten strategioiden rooli tyohyvinvoinnissa This research focused on the role of the six areas of worklife (workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values) and achievement and social strategies in occupational well-being. The research had four aims: 1) to examine the role of the six areas of worklife and achievement and social strategies in burnout; 2) to examine the role of gender in these relations; 3) to identify longitudinal subjective well-being at work profiles among highly educated employees; 4) to examine the antecedents and outcomes of the subjective well-being at work profiles. Two different data sets were used. Sample 1a from occupational health care clients included 1,800 employees from four organizations: a logistics organization, a health care organization, a university, and a company in information and communications technology (ICT). Sample 1b from the same data included 386 young employees (from 18 to 30 years old) at their early career stage. The second data set (sample 2) was from the ongoing Helsinki Longitudinal University Student Study (HELS) (since 1991). The results showed, first, that achievement and social strategies, and the six areas of worklife, were significantly related to exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy. Furthermore, achievement and social strategies partially mediated the associations between areas of worklife and burnout. Second, the results revealed no gender differences in regard to the levels of exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy during the early career stage. Achievement optimism significantly supported professional efficacy among women. A strong preventive role of appropriate workload against exhaustion, and congruent values against cynicism was observed among both sexes. Rewards protected against exhaustion among men and strongly against cynicism among women. Third, two longitudinal subjective well-being at work profiles, the Engaged and the Exhausted–Workaholic profile, were labeled among highly educated employees. The profiles mostly showed high stability over time. The level of workaholism, however, decreased in the Exhausted–Workaholic profile. Fourth, social pessimism in the transition from university to work, predicted the membership of the longitudinal Exhausted–Workaholic profile. Finally, employees in the Engaged profile had higher experiences of psychological detachment, relaxation, life satisfaction, and rewards than employees in the Exhausted–Workaholic profile.