Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential Virulence of Candida glabrata Glycosylation Mutants

Background: Candida glabrata virulence is poorly understood at the molecular level. Results: Inactivation of components of the C. glabrata glycosylation machinery results in changes in fungal mannan structure and altered virulence. Conclusion: Changes in C. glabrata cell wall architecture impact the host-pathogen interactions. Significance: Greater understanding of C. glabrata virulence will provide insights that can be adopted for development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. The fungus Candida glabrata is an important and increasingly common pathogen of humans, particularly in immunocompromised hosts. Despite this, little is known about the attributes that allow this organism to cause disease or its interaction with the host immune system. However, in common with other fungi, the cell wall of C. glabrata is the initial point of contact between the host and pathogen, and as such, it is likely to play an important role in mediating interactions and hence virulence. Here, we show both through genetic complementation and polysaccharide structural analyses that C. glabrata ANP1, MNN2, and MNN11 encode functional orthologues of the respective Saccharomyces cerevisiae mannosyltransferases. Furthermore, we show that deletion of the C. glabrata Anp1, Mnn2, and Mnn11 mannosyltransferases directly affects the structure of the fungal N-linked mannan, in line with their predicted functions, and this has implications for cell wall integrity and consequently virulence. C. glabrata anp1 and mnn2 mutants showed increased virulence, compared with wild-type (and mnn11) cells. This is in contrast to Candida albicans where inactivation of genes involved in mannan biosynthesis has usually been linked to an attenuation of virulence. In the long term, a better understanding of the attributes that allow C. glabrata to cause disease will provide insights that can be adopted for the development of novel therapeutic and diagnostic approaches.
The Impact of Professional Learning on the Teaching Identities of Higher Education Lecturers

Higher Education is currently undergoing some of the most profound changes in its history. Against a backdrop of increasing marketization, rising levels of student debt and far greater fully online offerings, the higher education lecturer is grappling with new ways of working and high expectations of teaching quality. This 3 year qualitative study based in The Open University UK investigates the ways in which HE distance learning lecturers are approaching professional development and learning, identifying what type of learning may be most effective in creating and sustaining an online teaching identity. The study also examines ways in which resistance discourse is shaping these identities and practices revealing emerging re- conceptualisations of what it means to be an effective and well-motivated distance learning lecturer. The investigation uses a framework for identity analysis which analyses professional identity via the expression of hegemonies, phenomenological, narrative articulations of identity, and a post-modern, constructivist view of identity which is shaped by social interactions and communities of practice. It highlights the importance of personal agency in identity formation. The results revealed a number of insights into the ways in which a combination of resistance discourse, professional learning and reflections from student interactions are shaping new understandings of professional knowledge in this context.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Global Context and Russian Realities

82 English translation © 2007 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2005 “Voprosy ekonomiki. ” “Sotsial’naia otvetstvennost’ biznesa: global’nyi kontekst i rossiiskie realii,” Voprosy ekonomiki, 2005, no. 10, pp. 90–102. A publication of the NP “Editorial Board of Voprosy ekonomiki” and the Institute of Economics, Russian Academy of Sciences. The article was prepared with financial support from the Russian Humanities Fund, project No. 04-02-00173a. I. Soboleva is a Candidate of Economic Sciences and sector manager at the Institute of Economics, Russian Academy of Sciences. Translated by James E. Walker. Problems of Economic Transition, vol. 49, no. 8, December 2006, pp. 82–95. © 2007 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1061–1991/2007 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/PET1061-1991490805
Macroeconomic Considerations and Motives of Sovereign Wealth Funds Activity

Sovereign wealth funds are entities regarded as an institutional innovation in the international fi nancial market. Due to the nature of the ownership rights, the investment activity of such entities is still highly controversial. Objections against sovereign wealth funds included the alleged extraeconomic goals of their activity. This article attempts to show that the establishment development and operation of sovereign wealth funds are determined by economic factors. The study presents a description of the international monetary system and the motives for building foreign exchange reserves by countries. It has been evidenced on the basis of the most recent data that some countries have reserves considerably exceeding the level regarded as optimal for the economy. The article presents benefits for the economy from the use of sovereign wealth funds to manage excessive foreign exchange reserves.
The Search for Abatement Technologies in the Alberta Oil Sands

We develop a three-stage model of abatement technology search, adoption, and deployment. Using this model, which draws on search theory tools more frequently used in labour and monetary economics, we compare market-based and command-and-control pollution control instruments with respect to the incentives each provides for abatement technology search and adoption, expected emissions reductions, and expected compliance costs. We motivate our work by examining firm-level decisions in the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, where firms are developing new abatement technologies to reduce fluid tailings associated with mining operations. We show that the polluting firm always has more incentives to search for and adopt a more efficient abatement technology under either an emissions tax or a tradeable permit system than under an equivalently stringent emissions standard. We also show that while expected incentives for innovation are comparable under emissions taxes and tradeable permit regimes, the likelihood for total future compliance costs to be reduced after an increase in the stringency of environmental policy - the so-called Porter hypothesis - is higher with a tradeable permit regime.
ON THE ROBUSTNESS OF BARRO'S NEW CLASSICAL UNEMPLOYMENT MODEL

In this paper the robustness of Barro's new classical model of unemployment is examined using both two- and three-equation systems, to various sample periods and methods of estimation. The methods of estimation used are two-step OLS, two-step OLS with correct standard errors using the same and different numbers of observations for the expectations and structural equations, full information maximum likelihood, and four novel variants of the computationally intensive parametric bootstrap method. Not surprisingly, the empirical results for Barro's model change according to the sample period chosen, the different methods of estimation, and the different ways of computing the covariance matrix for purposes of inference. However, the empirical results and inferences are generally robust to variations in any or all of these options.
Recycling and the Domestic Division of Labour:

Domestic or household recycling has a crucial role to play in meeting EU targets for overall recycling rates. However, researchers have yet to agree on the characteristics of the domestic recycler and how recycling is actually carried out in the home. In this article, recycling is investigated within the context of domestic labour in an attempt to understand how it fits in with or overrides traditional divisions. This brings an important new perspective to the recycling debate and at the same time updates the domestic division of labour literature to include green activities. It is suggested that recycling contradicts prevailing trends towards decreasing time spent on household chores, but that, like domestic labour, it is initiated and largely sustained by women alone or together with a partner. In this sense, recycling follows a similar pattern to more established household chores.
Strong Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-Specific Cytotoxic T-Lymphocyte Activity in Sydney Blood Bank Cohort Patients Infected with nef-Defective HIV Type 1

ABSTRACT Proposals for the use of live attenuated human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 (HIV-1) as a vaccine candidate in humans have been based on the protection afforded by attenuated simian immunodeficiency virus in the macaque model. Although it is not yet known if this strategy could succeed in humans, a study of the Sydney Blood Bank Cohort (SBBC), infected with an attenuated HIV-1 quasispecies with natural nef and nef/long terminal repeat deletions for up to 17 years, could provide insights into the long-term immunological consequences of living with an attenuated HIV-1 infection. In this study, HIV-specific cytoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) responses in an SBBC donor and six recipients were examined over a 3-year period with enzyme-linked immunospot, tetrameric complex binding, direct CTL lysis, and CTL precursor level techniques. Strong HIV-specific CTL responses were detected in four of seven patients, including one patient with an undetectable viral load. Two of seven patients had weak CTL responses, and in one recipient, no HIV-specific CTLs were detected. High levels of circulating effector and memory HIV-specific CTLs can be maintained for prolonged periods in these patients despite very low viral loads.
Bargain Hunting or Star Gazing? Investors' Preferences for Stock Mutual Funds

Investors who wish to purchase shares in mutual funds balance many types of information, from a variety of sources, when making their fund selection. This research examines how investors choose a mutual fund within a given class of funds. Among the major findings are that investors pay a great deal of attention to past performance and vastly overweight loads relative to expense ratios when evaluating a fund's overall fee structure. I also find that investors with a greater knowledge of basic finance are less likely, not more likely, to make reasonable fund choices.
A research note on the determinants of UK corporate share repurchase decisions

In this article, we empirically investigate the motivations for share repurchase decisions by a sample of 267 large UK listed companies covering the 4-year period 2001 to 2004. Though the UK constitutes the second largest market for share repurchases after the US, relatively little is known of the motivations of UK firms to repurchase their shares. Moreover, due to differences in the corporate governance and share repurchase regulations of the two countries, the extant US literature and evidence appear to be of relatively little relevance in explaining UK share repurchase decisions. Our results, using both two-way fixed effects regression models and multinominal Logit estimates, indicate that most repurchasing firms tend to be large and to already have high dividend payout ratios. Moreover, the most important determinant of share repurchase decisions appears to be corporate earnings, particularly expected earnings, which suggest that a degree of dividend substitution may lie behind many UK share repurchase decisions.
R3: Reinforced Ranker-Reader for Open-Domain Question Answering

In recent years researchers have achieved considerable success applying neural network methods to question answering (QA). These approaches have achieved state of the art results in simplified closed-domain settings such as the SQuAD (Rajpurkar et al. 2016) dataset, which provides a pre-selected passage, from which the answer to a given question may be extracted. More recently, researchers have begun to tackle open-domain QA, in which the model is given a question and access to a large corpus (e.g., wikipedia) instead of a pre-selected passage (Chen et al. 2017a). This setting is more complex as it requires large-scale search for relevant passages by an information retrieval component, combined with a reading comprehension model that “reads” the passages to generate an answer to the question. Performance in this setting lags well behind closed-domain performance. In this paper, we present a novel open-domain QA system called Reinforced Ranker-Reader (R3), based on two algorithmic innovations. First, we propose a new pipeline for open-domain QA with a Ranker component, which learns to rank retrieved passages in terms of likelihood of extracting the ground-truth answer to a given question. Second, we propose a novel method that jointly trains the Ranker along with an answer-extraction Reader model, based on reinforcement learning. We report extensive experimental results showing that our method significantly improves on the state of the art for multiple open-domain QA datasets.
Hedge Ratios and Hedging Effectiveness of the SPI Futures Contract

In this paper two hedging models are studied in the context of the SPI futures. I analyze the hedge ratio and hedging effectiveness of the models relative to the naïve hedging model. Firstly, I find that Working's (1953) strategy enhances the performance of hedging over the naïve strategy. Secondly, based on risk reduction, the Variance Minimization model is found to be very useful. It performs better than the naïve model. The hedging effectiveness of a longer hedge duration is found to be more effective than a shorter one. Finally, the effects of time to expiration on hedge ratio and hedging effectiveness are not clear.
Accountability and adaptive performance under uncertainty: A long-term view

Accountability pressures are a ubiquitous feature of social systems: virtually everyone must answer to someone for something. Behavioral research has, however, warned that accountability, specifically a focus on being responsible for outcomes, tends to produce suboptimal judgments. We qualify this view by demonstrating the long-term adaptive benefits of outcome accountability in uncertain, dynamic environments. More than a thousand randomly assigned forecasters participated in a ten-month forecasting tournament in conditions of control, process, outcome or hybrid accountability. Accountable forecasters outperformed non-accountable ones. Holding forecasters accountable to outcomes (“getting it right”) boosted forecasting accuracy beyond holding them accountable for process (“thinking the right way”). The performance gap grew over time. Process accountability promoted more effective knowledge sharing, improving accuracy among observers. Hybrid (process plus outcome) accountability boosted accuracy relative to process, and improved knowledge sharing relative to outcome accountability. Overall, outcome and process accountability appear to make complementary contributions to performance when forecasters confront moderately noisy, dynamic environments where signal extraction requires both knowledge pooling and individual judgments.
Stock and bond market interactions with two regime shifts: evidence from Turkey

This study aims to examine the relationship between the stock market and the government bond market in Turkey over a period from May 2001 to August 2009 in order to find out whether specific asset allocation in these markets provides benefits. This article employs several cointegration techniques such as Engle and Granger (EG, 1987), Gregory and Hansen (GH, 1996) and Hatemi-J (HJ, 2008). Furthermore, it applies the long run elasticities of Stock and Watson (1993) and parameter stability tests of Hansen (1992) and Andrews (1993). According to the results of EG and GH tests, the government bond index is not cointegrated with any other stock market indices. In contrast to the previous tests, we find a relationship which indicates low benefits of asset allocation between some stock indices and the government bond index when we employ the HJ method which takes two structural breaks into consideration. When we use the long run elasticities based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Dynamic OLS (DOLS) procedures, we find that the government bond index has a significant effect on some stock indices. In addition, employing the stability test of Hansen (1992), we find that the results of cointegration test with structural breaks (HJ) are consistent. Finally, we use Quandt–Andrews (Andrews, 1993) test and investigate possible break points in the relationship between price indices.
Renal Function in Conscious Normotensive WKY and Hypertensive SHR Rats during Nondiuretic and Volume Expansion

Renal clearance studies were performed in conscious 13-week-old spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) before and during volume expansion by intravenous infusion of isotonic saline. Mean arterial pressure and filtration fraction were greater in SHR, whereas fractional and absolute excretion of sodium and water, glomerular filtration rate, and renal plasma flow in SHR and WKY were not statistically different. This was the case during hydropenia and volume expansion. We did not observe an exaggerated natriuresis after intravenous loading when unanesthetized SHR were compared with the response of WKY. These observations suggest that the kidneys of genetically hypertensive rats of the Okamoto-Aoki strain have adapted to an elevated renal perfusion pressure or that hypertension is required to normalize renal function so that excretion is appropriately matched with intake.
Public Provision, Commodity Demand, and Hours of Work: An Empirical Analysis

Atkinson and Stiglitz (Journal of Public Economics 1976) show that when the government has access to non-linear income taxation and consumer preferences are separable between consumption and leisure, there is no need for differentiated commodity taxation. This paper examines the empirical validity of this claim using consumption data from Finland. The data have extensive information on commodity demand, the use of public services and hours of work. When labour income is controlled for in a semi-parametric way, we find that capital income and housing expenses are negatively associated with hours of work, whereas the use of child care is somewhat positively correlated with labour supply. These results suggest that capital income and housing should be taxed whereas day care could perhaps be subsidised.
Memoirs: Studies on the Structure, Development, and Physiology of the Neptaridia of Oligochaeta Part V. The Enteronephric System in Megascolex Ceylonicus and M. Sarasinorum, with Remarks on the Phagocytic Organs in Megascolex Templetonianus

1. With the discovery of the enteronephric type of nephridial system in the earthworms Megascolex ceylonicus and Megascolex sarasinorum, this type of nephridial system is now known to occur in the following earthworms: 1. Pheretima--all species. 2. Lampito mauritii and Lampito trilobatus. 3. Woodwardiella bahli. 4. Tonoscolex--all species. 5. Megascolex: ( a ) Megascolex cochinensis. ( b ) Megascolex konkanensis. ( c ) Megascolex ceylonicus. ( d ) Megascolex sarasinorum. Of these earthworms the best developed system is found in Pheretima, while the most primitive occurs in Megascolex ceylonicus and Megascolex sarasinorum. 2. Megascolex templetonianus does not possess the enteronephric type of nephridial system. 3. Like Acanthodrilus falclandicus, Megascolex templetonianus possesses a pair of well developed ventral phagocytic organs in each segment behind segment XIX, one on each side of the ventral nerve-cord.
Targeting Safety Net Interventions in Developing Countries: Some Insights from a Qualitative Simulation Study from Malawi

This article presents the results of a study that simulated the implementation of targeted safety nets in Malawi. It was prompted by the proposal by the government of Malawi to establish a publicly supported safety net system in partnership with a consortium of donors, which would, among other things, operate on the basis of the principle of community targeting for purposes of maximising efficiency and effectiveness. The purpose of this study was therefore threefold: to find out whether communities could develop criteria for targeting beneficiaries; to establish whether communities could make decisions on who to include and exclude as beneficiaries on the basis of criteria identified; and to seek their views on how the safety net transfers could be efficiently and effectively managed. The results demonstrated that there is great resistance to targeting but nevertheless communities have clear ideas on whom to target and on how to make the selection and distribution processes fair, transparent and accountable.Cet article présente les résultats d'une étude sur la mise en œuvre de filets de sécurité ciblés au Malawi. Elle a été suscitée par une proposition du gouvernement visant à mettre en place un système de filet de sécurité financé sur fonds publics et appuyé par un consortium de donateurs. Pour être plus efficace, ce système reposerait sur le principe du ciblage des communautés. Dès lors, les objectifs de cette étude sont les suivants: 1) découvrir si des communautés pourraient développer des critéres pour cibler les bénéficiaires; 2) si les communautés peuvent prendre des décisions incluant ou excluant des personnes du groupe des bénéficiaires sur la base de ces critères; 3) solliciter leurs avis sur la façon dont les transferts liés aux filets de sécurité pourraient être gérés efficacement. Les résultats montrent qu'il y a une grande résistance face au ciblage mais néanmoins les communautés ont les idées claires sur ceux qu'il faut atteindre, sur les moyens de les identifier et sur la façon de procéder pour que la distribution soit juste, transparente et responsable.
30 Years after Bayh-Dole: Reassessing Academic Entrepreneurship

On the 30th anniversary of enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act in the U.S., we consider the rationale for academic entrepreneurship and describe the evolving role of universities in the commercialization of research. We also discuss and appraise the effects of legislative reform in several OECD countries relating to academic entrepreneurship. The article synthesizes papers from the special section and outlines an agenda for additional research on various aspects of academic entrepreneurship in terms of system, university and individual levels. We also consider measurement and methodological issues that must be addressed in additional research.
Assessing the Effect of Schooling on Earnings Using a Social Experiment

The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability remain important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education reform in Sweden which was implemented in the 60s. The reform was preceded by a "social experiment" in which only a proportion of municipalities received the new school system. We use survey data linked with Tax records covering 10% of one of the cohorts who were educated during the experimental period, to evaluate the impact of the reform on educational attainment and earnings. We find significant increases in the educational attainment of individuals from poorer backgrounds. We also find that the largest impact on earnings was for higher ability individuals from poorer backgrounds. In addition we estimate the returns to education for those affected by the reform. By exploiting the differential impact of the reform by county we are able, in some cases, to distinguish its direct effect on earnings from the effect it had by increasing the quantity of education. We find that the main source of increased earnings came from increasing educational attainment.