Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Association Between Genetic Polymorphism rs703842 in CYP27B1 and Multiple Sclerosis

AbstractMultiple sclerosis (MS) is the most frequent nontraumatic disabling neurological disease among young adults. Previous studies have examined the association of rs703842 in CYP27B1 with MS susceptibility, with inconsistent results reported.The objective of this study is to conduct a systematic literature search and perform meta-analyses to examine whether rs703842 is associated with MS risk.We searched potential literature in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and HuGE by using the following inclusion criteria: studies were on human subjects; the studies were case–control studies; studies included subjects who had MS and those who did not have MS; and the studies provided genotype data for rs703842 for subjects who had and did not have MS, or provided odds ratios (ORs) and the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for assessing the association of rs703842 with MS, or provided sufficient data for the calculation of OR and the 95% CI. We used random-effects models to calculate the OR as a measure of association. We used I2 to assess between-study heterogeneity, and a funnel plot and Egger test to assess publication bias.Seven studies published since 2008 met the eligibility criteria and were included in the meta-analyses. We found that the C allele was significantly associated with reduced MS susceptibility (OR = 0.88, 95% CI: 0.80–0.89; P < 0.0001). We also found significant association of rs703842 with MS risk using a dominant and a recessive model (both P < 0.0002). Our results remain unchanged if our meta-analysis was limited to studies that included only Caucasian participants (OR = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.80–0.90; P < 0.0001). Our study has several limitations: The sample size is limited; We were unable to control for some important confounding factors as data for individual participant were not available; and Most of the included studies focus on MS risk in Caucasian. As a result, we could not perform meta-analysis for assessing the relationship in other ethnic groups.In summary, we found that the genetic variant rs703842 in CYP27B1 is associated with MS risk in Caucasians. More studies with larger sample size that control for important confounding factors are needed to validate the findings from this study.
Valuing local collective goods: the case of business improvement districts

It is hard to find situations with localized public goods which lend themselves well to empirical study in economics. Business improvement districts (BIDs), for this reason, make for an interesting case study. BIDs are regions which use tax revenue to increase local amenity provision, in hopes of stimulating extra economic activity in the area. This paper examines how these amenities are capitalized into residential properties which overlap with, or reside near, these BIDs. Several findings emerge. First, homes within BIDs appear to appreciate more than homes within the rest of the DC area, following a BID’s anticipation or launch; this finding, however, is not robust to consideration of local price trends. Second, comparing homes within defined distances of BID borders suggests that homes within BIDs, following their anticipation or launch, do not appreciate more than their outside neighbors. Third, there is evidence of spillover effects. Homes closer to BIDs appreciate more than those further from such. Results suggest that positive externalities might not be solely confined to agents within a BID, but rather extend to its surrounding community.
True Green Consumers: An Investigation of Consumers’ Genuine Willingness to Share Environmental Responsibility

This research investigates environmental attitudes among consumers in three countries: The United States of America, Kuwait and Turkey. The choice of the three countries is based on levels of income and economic development. The focus of this study is exploring characteristics of consumers having the goal of becoming genuinely green. A true green consumer is an individual who plans their lifestyle to become environmental friendly. Moreover, true green consumers are not only environmentally responsible, but also committed to convert his family and friends into green individuals.
A Functional Role for Intra-Axonal Protein Synthesis during Axonal Regeneration from Adult Sensory Neurons

Although intradendritic protein synthesis has been documented in adult neurons, the question of whether axons actively synthesize proteins remains controversial. Adult sensory neurons that are conditioned by axonal crush can rapidly extend processes in vitro by regulating the translation of existing mRNAs (Twiss et al., 2000). These regenerating processes contain axonal but not dendritic proteins. Here we show that these axonal processes of adult sensory neurons cultured after conditioning injury contain ribosomal proteins, translational initiation factors, and rRNA. Pure preparations of regenerating axons separated from the DRG cell bodies can actively synthesize proteins in vitro and contain ribosome-bound β-actin and neurofilament mRNAs. Blocking protein synthesis in these regenerating sensory axons causes a rapid retraction of their growth cones when communication with the cell body is blocked by axotomy or colchicine treatment. These findings indicate that axons of adult mammalian neurons can synthesize proteins and suggest that, under some circumstances, intra-axonal translation contributes to structural integrity of the growth cone in regenerating axons. By immunofluorescence, translation factors, ribosomal proteins, and rRNA were also detected in motor axons of ventral spinal roots analyzed after 7 d in vivo after a peripheral axonal crush injury. Thus, adult motor neurons are also likely capable of intra-axonal protein synthesis in vivo after axonal injury.
Snow Cover Monitoring Using MODIS Data in Liaoning Province, Northeastern China

Abstract: This paper presents the results of snow cover monitoring studies in Liaoning Province, northeastern China, using MODIS data. Snow cover plays an important role in both the regional water balance and soil moisture properties during the early spring in northeastern China. In addition, heavy snowfalls commonly trigger hazards such as flooding, caused by rapid snow melt, or crop failure, resulting from fluctuations in soil temperature associated with changes in the snow cover. The latter is a function of both regional, or global, climatic changes, as well as fluctuations in the albedo resulting from variations in the Snow Covered Area (SCA). These impacts are crucial to human activities, especially to those living in middle-latitude areas such as Liaoning Province. Thus, SCA monitoring is currently an important tool in studies of global climate change, particularly because satellite remote sensing data provide timely and efficient snow cover information for large areas. In this study, MODIS L1B data, MODIS Daily Snow Products (MOD10A1) and MODIS 8-day Snow Products (MOD10A2) were used to monitor the SCA of Liaoning Province over the winter months of November–April, 2006–2008. The effects of cloud masking and forest masking on the snow monitoring results were also assessed. The results show that the SCA percentage derived from MODIS L1B data is relatively consistent, but slightly higher than that obtained from MODIS Snow Products.
Is Fitts’ Law Continuous in Discrete Aiming?

The lawful continuous linear relation between movement time and task difficulty (i.e., index of difficulty; ID) in a goal-directed rapid aiming task (Fitts’ law) has been recently challenged in reciprocal performance. Specifically, a discontinuity was observed at critical ID and was attributed to a transition between two distinct dynamic regimes that occurs with increasing difficulty. In the present paper, we show that such a discontinuity is also present in discrete aiming when ID is manipulated via target width (experiment 1) but not via target distance (experiment 2). Fitts’ law’s discontinuity appears, therefore, to be a suitable indicator of the underlying functional adaptations of the neuro-muscular-skeletal system to task properties/requirements, independently of reciprocal or discrete nature of the task. These findings open new perspectives to the study of dynamic regimes involved in discrete aiming and sensori-motor mechanisms underlying the speed-accuracy trade-off.
TCF7L2 genetic variants modulate the effect of dietary fat intake on changes in body composition during a weight-loss intervention.

BACKGROUND TCF7L2 gene variants have been associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes and higher adiposity. Observational studies and short-term trials have suggested that macronutrients may modify these effects. However, to our knowledge, this has yet to be verified in long-term interventions. OBJECTIVE In a long-term intervention setting, we investigated the effects of TCF7L2 polymorphisms rs7903146 and rs12255372 and dietary total fat on changes in body composition and subsequent glycemic control. DESIGN Data were analyzed for 591 participants in the Preventing Overweight Using Novel Dietary Strategies (Pounds Lost) trial, which is a 2-y weight-loss randomized clinical trial of diets that differed in macronutrient proportions. Adjusted means for changes in body composition at 6 and 24 mo were obtained for gene main effects and interactions with a low-fat diet (20% from energy) compared with a high-fat diet (40% from energy). Interactions with protein and carbohydrate intakes were also tested. Predicted changes in glycemic control from changes in adiposity were determined by genotype and diet type. RESULTS Significant interactions were observed for rs12255372 TT (risk genotype) and fat intake for changes in BMI, total fat mass, and trunk fat mass (all P/q < 0.05) at 6 mo, with nonsignificant larger decreases for TT carriers on a low-fat diet. No significant associations were observed at 24 mo or for other macronutrients. Changes in body composition for TT carriers predicted reductions in plasma glucose and insulin only on the low-fat diet. CONCLUSIONS Individuals with the TCF7L2 rs12255372 risk genotype may reduce body adiposity by consuming a diet lower in total fat. These reductions may induce better glycemic control for such individuals predisposed to type 2 diabetes. The Pounds Lost trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00072995.
Who Pays for Universal Service?: When Telephone Subsidies Become Transparent

In virtually every country, the price of residential access to the telephone network is kept low and cross-subsidized by business services, long distance calling, and various other telephone services. This pricing practice is widely defended as necessary to promote "universal service," but Crandall and Waverman show that it has little effect on telephone subscriptions while it has major harmful effects on the value of all telephone service. The higher prices for long distance calls reduce calling, shift the burden of paying for the network to those whose social networks are widely dispersed. Therefore, many poor and rural households--the intended beneficiaries of the pricing strategy--are forced to pay far more for telephone service than they would if prices reflected the cost of service. Despite these burdens, Congress has extended the subsidies to advanced services for schools, libraries, and rural health facilities. Crandall and Waverman show that other regulated utilities are not burdened with similarly inefficient cross-subsidy schemes, yet universality of water, natural gas, and electricity service is achieved. As local telephone service competition develops in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the universal-service subsidy system will have to change. Subsidies will have to be paid from taxes on telecom services and paid directly to carriers or subscribers. Crandall and Waverman show that an intrastate tax designed to pay for each state's subsidized subscriptions is far less costly to the economy than an interstate tax. Robert W. Crandall is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Leonard Waverman is a visiting professor at the London Business School, on leave from the University of Toronto. They are coauthors of Talk Is Cheap: The Promise of Regulatory Reform in North American Telecommunications (Brookings, 1995).
Information Bottleneck Co-clustering

Co-clustering has emerged as an important approach for mining contingency data matrices. We present a novel approach to co-clustering based on the Information Bottleneck principle, called Information Bottleneck Co-clustering (IBCC), which supports both soft-partition and hardpartition co-clusterings, and leverages an annealing-style strategy to bypass local optima. Existing co-clustering methods require the user to define the number of rowand column-clusters respectively. In practice, though, the number of rowand column-clusters may not be independent. To address this issue, we also present an agglomerative Information Bottleneck Co-clustering (aIBCC) approach, which automatically captures the relation between the numbers of clusters. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our techniques.
External Beam Radiotherapy for Head and Neck Cancers Is Associated with Increased Variability in Retinal Vascular Oxygenation

Background Radiation retinopathy is a possible post-treatment complication of radiation therapy. The pathophysiologic mechanism is hypothesized to be microvascular in origin, but evidence is limited. In an effort to study retinal oxygenation in these patients, we herein evaluate the repeatability and variability of retinal oximetry measurements in subjects who had previously received radiation and make comparisons to a cohort of unirradiated subjects. Methods Using retinal oximetry, a non-invasive imaging modality, we performed in vivo measurements of arteriole (SaO2) and venule SO2 (SvO2) in subjects (n = 9, 18 retinas) who had received incidental radiation to their retinas (≥ 45 Gy to one retina) and in healthy subjects (n = 20, 40 retinas). A total of 1367 SO2 observations on 593 vessels in 29 persons were analyzed to assess three sources of variance in vessel SO2: 1) variance in repeated measurements of the same vessel (“repeatability”), 2) variance in different vessels within the same subject (“within-subject variability”), and 3) variance between subjects (“between-subject variability”). Results Retinal oximetry measurements were highly repeatable in both irradiated patients and unirradiated subjects. The within-subject variability of SvO2 and SaO2 measurements constituted the highest component of variance in both groups and was significantly higher in venules vs. arterioles (relative effect size 1.8, p<0.001) and in irradiated subjects vs. unirradiated subjects (relative effect size 1.6, p<0.001). Conclusions Retinal oximetry is a highly repeatable technology and can be reliably used to study vascular oxygenation in irradiated subjects. Different vessels within the same subject exhibit a high degree of variability, suggesting that pooled analyses of multiple vessels are most likely to be informative of regional retinal oxygenation. Finally, irradiated subjects exhibited significantly higher within-subject variability in SO2 measurements, suggesting that radiation may cause regional alterations in retinal oxygen delivery and/or metabolism.
ILBO: Balance Inbound Traffic Dynamically in Multihomed Stub Networks

Multihoming load balancing improves network performance and makes better use of network resource by leveraging the traffic among the access links in a multihomed network. Currently, no effective load balancing system is available to handle the inbound traffic in a multihomed stub network, where the traffic volume is unknown to the network and the route of the traffic is hard to control. In this paper, we propose ILBO, an inbound traffic load balancing mechanism to effectively balance the inbound traffic in a multihomed stub network. ILBO predicts and schedules the inbound traffic based on outbound traffic. It adopts a two-step traffic predictor to increase the prediction accuracy and also provides an inbound traffic control scheme that can guarantee the successful execution of the traffic scheduling. We have evaluated the effectiveness of ILBO in a trace driven simulation with real world traffic traces collected from multihomed stub networks.
A Framework for QoS Adaptive Grid Meta Scheduling

Grid environment, being a collection of heterogeneous and geographically distributed resources, is prone to many kinds of failures. In order to fully realize the potential of the grid environment, we need mechanisms that guarantee quality of service, even in the face of failures. In this paper, we introduce the notion of scheduling based on "availability", and provide a framework (AG-MetS) for QoS adaptive grid meta scheduling. AGMetS uses "availability" to adapt to the underlying resource failures, thereby ensuring QoS even in the face of failures. We provide detailed design description, and a prototype implementation of AGMetS. We further provide the experimental results of our work, showing the effectiveness of AGMetS
Reintroducing CEL as an OWL 2 EL Reasoner

The CEL system is known for its scalability of reasoning in the lightweight DL EL which has been proved suitable for several ontology applications, most notably from the life science domain. Recently, the DL EL has been adopted as the logical underpinning of the OWL 2 EL profile of the new Web Ontology Language which potentially attracts new folks of CEL’s users. To seamlessly integrate the reasoner to the OWL user community, we have implemented the OWL API for CEL. This paper describes the challenges, design decision and architecture of this implementation. Additionally, we present experimental results which highlight the scalability of the reasoner, as well as demonstrate a low overhead of our OWL API implementation.
Effects of Pharmacotherapy on Combat-Related PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Regression Analysis

The efficacy of pharmacotherapy for PTSD, anxiety, and depression among combat veterans is not well-established. Objectives To estimate the effect of pharmacotherapy on PTSD, anxiety, and depression among combat veterans; to determine whether the effects varied according to patient and intervention characteristics; and to examine differential effects of pharmacotherapy on outcomes. Materials and Methods Google Scholar, PILOTS, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science databases were searched through November 2014. Searches resulted in eighteen double-blind, placebo controlled trials of 773 combat veterans diagnosed with PTSD and included only validated pre- and post-intervention PTSD and anxiety or depression measures. Authors extracted data on effect sizes, moderators, and study quality. Hedges’ d effect sizes were computed and random effects models estimated sampling error and population variance. The Johnson-Neyman procedure identified the critical points in significant interactions to define regions of significance. Results Pharmacotherapy significantly reduced (Δ, 95%CI) PTSD (0.38, 0.23-0.52), anxiety (0.42, 0.30-0.54), and depressive symptoms (0.52, 0.35-0.70). The effects of SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants on PTSD were greater than other medications independent of treatment duration. The effect of SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants were greater than other medications up to 5.2 and 13.6 weeks for anxiety and depression, respectively. The magnitude of the effect of pharmacotherapy on concurrently-measured PTSD, anxiety, and depression did not significantly differ. Conclusions Pharmacotherapy reduced PTSD, anxiety, and depressive symptoms in combat veterans. The effects of SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants were greater for PTSD and occurred quicker for anxiety and depression than other medications.
Unemployment, discouraged workers and female labour supply

Abstract We develop and implement a model of female participation, labour supply and employment that incorporates both search unemployment and discouraged workers. We show that in an intertemporal environment with fixed costs, search costs, permanent lay-offs and infrequent job arrivals, an adaptation of the standard (two-stage budgeting) approach to modelling hours for the employed remains appropriate. Moreover, this model indicates a clear-cut role for business-cycle variables in a participation equation that controls for expected market wages. Our empirical results indicate that business-cycle variables do indeed play a statistically significant role in such an equation. Our approach also provides a straightforward means of calculating the separate effect of fixed costs and search costs on the participation decision.
The extended X-ray halo of the Crab-like SNR G21.5-0.9

Recent XMM-Newton observations reveal an extended (r ≈ 150′′) low-surface brightness X-ray halo in the supernova remnant G21.5-0.9. The near circular symmetry, the lack of any limb brightening and the nonthermal spectral form, all favour an interpretation of this outer halo as an extension of the central synchrotron nebula rather than as a shell formed by the supernova blast wave and ejecta. The X-ray spectrum of the nebula exhibits a marked spectral softening with radius, with the power-law spectral index varying from Γ = 1.63± 0.04 in the core to Γ = 2.45±0.06 at the edge of the halo. Similar spectral trends are seen in other Crab-like remnants and reflect the impact of the synchrotron radiation losses on very high energy electrons as they diffuse out from the inner nebula. A preliminary timing analysis provides no evidence for any pulsed X-ray emission from the core
Economic Shocks, Competition and Merger Activity

This study seeks to understand “how” economic shocks drive industry merger activity. We test whether economic shocks from deregulation and technological change drive industry merger activity by increasing industry competition, controlling for the effect of valuations. We find that these shocks drive merger activity through three channels related to industry competition; deregulation drives merger activity by increasing entry and cash flow volatility; technological change drives merger activity by increasing entry and inter-firm dispersion in the quality of production technology. These findings underscore the role of the competitive mechanism in how managers reallocate assets via mergers and support the view that the industry-level clustering of merger activity is an efficiency-driven restructuring response to increased competition.
Message-Passing Receiver for Joint Channel Estimation and Decoding in 3D Massive MIMO-OFDM Systems

In this paper, we address the design of message-passing receiver for massive multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplex (MIMO-OFDM) systems. With the aid of the central limit argument and Taylor-series approximation, a computationally efficient receiver that performs joint channel estimation and decoding is devised by the framework of expectation propagation. In particular, the local belief defined at the channel transition function is expanded up to the second order with Wirtinger calculus, to transform the messages sent by the channel transition function to a tractable form. As a result, the channel impulse response between each pair of antennas is estimated by Gaussian message passing. In addition, a variational expectation-maximization-based method is derived to learn the channel power-delay profiles. The proposed scheme is assessed in 3D massive MIMO-OFDM systems with spatially correlated channels, and the empirical results corroborate its superiority in terms of performance and complexity.