Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Catastrophe: Risk and Response

INTRODUCTION What is catastrophe? The organization of this book Some useful disctinctions 1. WHAT ARE THE CATASTROHPIC RISKS, AND HOW CATASTROPHIC ARE THEY? Natural catastrophes Scientific accidents Other unintended man-made catastrophes Intentional catastrophes Catastrophic synergies and lesser-included catastrophes 2. WHY SO LITTLE IS BEING DONE ABOUT THE CATASTROPHIC RISKS Cultural factors Psychological factors Economic factors 3. HOW TO EVALUATE THE CATASTROPHIC RISKS AND THE POSSIBLE RESPONSES TO THEM The difference cost-benefit analysis can make: the case of RHIC A modest version of the precautionary principle Discounting to present value Taxes, subsidies, and options: the case of global warming Valuing human lives Risk versus uncertainty Coping with uncertainty Politics, expertise, and neutrality: RHIC revisited Summary 4. HOW TO REDUCE THE CATASTROPHIC RISKS Institutional reforms Fiscal tools: a recap Some hypothetical regulatory policies CONCLUSION Notes Index
Expression and the Peculiar Enzymatic Behavior of the Trypanosoma cruzi NTH1 DNA Glycosylase

Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas’ disease, presents three cellular forms (trypomastigotes, epimastigotes and amastigotes), all of which are submitted to oxidative species in its hosts. However, T. cruzi is able to resist oxidative stress suggesting a high efficiency of its DNA repair machinery.The Base Excision Repair (BER) pathway is one of the main DNA repair mechanisms in other eukaryotes and in T. cruzi as well. DNA glycosylases are enzymes involved in the recognition of oxidative DNA damage and in the removal of oxidized bases, constituting the first step of the BER pathway. Here, we describe the presence and activity of TcNTH1, a nuclear T. cruzi DNA glycosylase. Surprisingly, purified recombinant TcNTH1 does not remove the thymine glycol base, but catalyzes the cleavage of a probe showing an AP site. The same activity was found in epimastigote and trypomastigote homogenates suggesting that the BER pathway is not involved in thymine glycol DNA repair. TcNTH1 DNA-binding properties assayed in silico are in agreement with the absence of a thymine glycol removing function of that parasite enzyme. Over expression of TcNTH1 decrease parasite viability when transfected epimastigotes are submitted to a sustained production of H2O2.Therefore, TcNTH1 is the only known NTH1 orthologous unable to eliminate thymine glycol derivatives but that recognizes and cuts an AP site, most probably by a beta-elimination mechanism. We cannot discard that TcNTH1 presents DNA glycosylase activity on other DNA base lesions. Accordingly, a different DNA repair mechanism should be expected leading to eliminate thymine glycol from oxidized parasite DNA. Furthermore, TcNTH1 may play a role in the AP site recognition and processing.
The Impact of Institutions on Economic Performance

This dissertation analyzes the importance of institutions for economic performance. The first two chapters assess the importance of institutions empirically, while the last one provides a dynamic model of institutional change. Chapter 1 analyzes the robustness of institutions in growth regressions by means of the Bayesian Model Averaging methodology to find that institutions and public health are important and robust determimants of economic growth. Chapter 2 assesses the importance of institutional variables for determining income per capita in OECD countries by means of introducing new instrumental variables. Given the paramount role of institutions for economic development established in the first two chapters and, more importantly, in prominent recent contributions to the literature, the last chapter tries to answers the question why countries trying to improve their institutional framework may fail.
Predictive value of plasma HIV RNA level on rate of CD4 T-cell decline in untreated HIV infection.

CONTEXT Plasma human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) RNA level predicts HIV disease progression, but the extent to which it explains the variability in rate of CD4 cell depletion is poorly characterized. OBJECTIVE To estimate the proportion of variability in rate of CD4 cell loss predicted by presenting plasma HIV RNA levels in untreated HIV-infected persons. DESIGN Repeated-measures analyses of 2 multicenter cohorts, comprising observations beginning on May 12, 1984, and ending on August 26, 2004. Analyses were conducted between August 2004 and March 2006. SETTING Two cohorts of HIV-infected persons: patients followed up at 4 US teaching medical institutions or participating in either the Research in Access to Care for the Homeless Cohort (REACH) or the San Francisco Men's Health Study (SFMHS) cohorts and participants in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) cohort. PARTICIPANTS Antiretroviral treatment-naive, chronically HIV-infected persons (n = 1289 and n = 1512 for each of the 2 cohorts) untreated during the observation period (> or =6 months) and with at least 1 HIV RNA level and 2 CD4 cell counts available. Approximately 35% were nonwhite, and 35% had risk factors other than male-to-male sexual contact. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The extent to which presenting plasma HIV RNA level could explain the rate of model-derived yearly CD4 cell loss, as estimated by the coefficient of determination (R2). RESULTS In both cohorts, higher presenting HIV RNA levels were associated with greater subsequent CD4 cell decline. In the study cohort, median model-estimated CD4 cell decrease among participants with HIV RNA levels of 500 or less, 501 to 2000, 2001 to 10,000, 10,001 to 40,000, and more than 40,000 copies/mL were 20, 39, 48, 56, and 78 cells/microL, respectively. Despite this trend across broad categories of HIV RNA levels, only a small proportion of CD4 cell loss variability (4%-6%) could be explained by presenting plasma HIV RNA level. Analyses using multiple HIV RNA measurements or restricting to participants with high HIV RNA levels improved this correlation minimally (R2, 0.09), and measurement error was estimated to attenuate these associations only marginally (deattenuated R2 in the 2 cohorts, 0.05 and 0.08, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Presenting HIV RNA level predicts the rate of CD4 cell decline only minimally in untreated persons. Other factors, as yet undefined, likely drive CD4 cell losses in HIV infection. These findings have implications for treatment decisions in HIV infection and for understanding the pathogenesis of progressive immune deficiency.
World Library and Information Congress: 70th IFLA General Conference and Council 22-27 August 2004 Buenos Aires, Argentina

El apasionante mundo del documento, referido a la definición de la Unesco, como todo aquello que dé información y su laberinto de acceso y disponibilidad, aunado a los complejos recursos y servicios que deben propiciarse para su administración en el no menos sofisticado mundo de la Biblioteca, hace posible en las universidades la creación de las carreras de Bibliotecología, Documentación y Ciencias de la Información.
Integrative and Translational Physiology : Integrative Aspects of Energy Homeostasis and Metabolic Diseases Insulin effects on glucose tolerance , hypermetabolic response , and circadian-metabolic protein expression in a rat burn and disuse model

Pidcoke HF, Baer LA, Wu X, Wolf SE, Aden JK, Wade CE. Insulin effects on glucose tolerance, hypermetabolic response, and circadian-metabolic protein expression in a rat burn and disuse model. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 307: R1–R10, 2014. First published April 23, 2014; doi:10.1152/ajpregu.00312. 2013. —Insulin controls hyperglycemia after severe burns, and its use opposes the hypermetabolic response. The underlying molecular mechanisms are poorly understood, and previous research in this area has been limited because of the inadequacy of animal models to mimic the physiological effects seen in humans with burns. Using a recently published rat model that combines both burn and disuse components, we compare the effects of insulin treatment vs. vehicle on glucose tolerance, hypermetabolic response, muscle loss, and circadian-metabolic protein expression after burns. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were assigned to three groups: cage controls (n 6); vehicle-treated burn and hindlimb unloading (VBH; n 11), and insulin-treated burn and hindlimb unloading (IBH; n 9). With the exception of cage controls, rats underwent a 40% total body surface area burn with hindlimb unloading, then IBH rats received 12 days of subcutaneous insulin injections (5 units·kg ·day ), and VBH rats received an equivalent dose of vehicle. Glucose tolerance testing was performed on day 14, after which blood and tissues were collected for analysis. Body mass loss was attenuated by insulin treatment (VBH 265 17 g vs. IBH 283 14 g, P 0.016), and glucose clearance capacity was increased. Soleus and gastrocnemius muscle loss was decreased in the IBH group. Insulin receptor substrate-1, AKT, FOXO-1, caspase-3, and PER1 phosphorylation was altered by injury and disuse, with levels restored by insulin treatment in almost all cases. Insulin treatment after burn and during disuse attenuated the hypermetabolic response, increased glucose clearance, and normalized circadian-metabolic protein expression patterns. Therapies aimed at targeting downstream effectors may provide the beneficial effects of insulin without hypoglycemic risk.
Diploma / Master Thesis Game theory : ( Byzantine ) Potential in Games

This paper attends to the problem of a mechanism designer seeking to influence the outcome of a strategic game based on her creditability. The mechanism designer offers additional payments to the players depending on their mutual choice of strategies in order to steer them to certain decisions. If the players trust her, they will select a newly profitable strategy. Of course, the mechanism designer aims at spending as little as possible and yet implement her desired outcome. We present several algorithms for this optimization problem both for optimal solutions and approximations thereof. We analyze singleton target strategy profiles and target strategy profile sets. Furthermore, the paper shows how a bankrupt mechanism designer can decide efficiently whether strategy profiles can be implemented at no cost at all. Finally risk-averse players and dynamic games are examined.
Nonprofit Nation: A New Look at the Third America

In Nonprofit Nation, the new edition of his classic work, O'Neill takes a fresh look at the nonprofit sector and the power it has to use its growing visibility and strength. Like the first edition, this new book is an up--to--date, comprehensive guide to understanding the nonprofit sector. Identifying and examining the major nonprofit subsectors--health care, arts, social service, and religious organizations, for example--and detailing their particular concerns and impact enable O'Neill to explore their influence on business, government and society. The new edition also features: Expanded sections on scope and impact Updated and enlarged statistical information New insights on the development of the nonprofit sector A new section on theories of the nonprofit sector
MLE’s Bias Pathology, Model Updated MLE, and Wallace’s Minimum Message Length Method

The inherent bias pathology of the maximum likelihood estimation method is confirmed for models with unknown parameters θ and ψ when maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) ψ̂ is function of MLE θ̂. To reduce ψ̂'s bias the likelihood equation to be solved for ψ is updated using the model for the data Y in it. For various models with ψ a shape parameter model updated (MU) MLE, ψ̂<sub>MU</sub>, reduces ψ̂'s bias. For the Pareto model ψ̂<sub>MU</sub> reduces in addition ψ̂'s variance. The results explain the difference that puzzled Fisher, between biased ψ̂ and the unbiased estimate he obtained for two models with the abandoned two-stage procedure used in MUMLE's implementation. ψ̂<sub>MU</sub> is also obtained with the minimum message length method thus motivating the use of priors in frequentist inference.
Feature level sentiment analysis on movie reviews

Sentiment Analysis is a very challenging task in these days, which is a great requirement in every field as in Political field, Marketing field and in social field mainly. Many researchers have been taken a lot of interest in this area and proposed their work. The Sentiment analysis is done on the basis of Document, Sentence and feature levels. But the first two levels didn't consider object features that have been commented in a sentence. So the feature level sentiment analysis is more appropriate compare to both. Different types of tools and approaches have been used by the researchers for pre-processing, tagging, semantic orientation, and finally for calculating scores for deriving sentiments of the reviews. But the problems, found in analysis generally are, where reviews contain the negative, intensifier, conjunctive and synonyms words. And other problems are coreference resolution; anaphora resolution, named-entity recognition, and word-sense disambiguation. These problem are unresolved sometimes so that the performance of sentiment analysis decrease. A lot of work is done mainly in Product, News, Sports domains. We proposed our work in Movie Reviews because it's a more attractive area, for now-a-days generation where multiple sites allow users to submit reviews describing what they either liked or disliked about a particular movie. In this work we have proposed a system which classifies the polarity of the movie reviews on the basis of features by handling negation, intensifier, conjunction and synonyms with appropriate pre-processing steps. We have used SentiWordNet tool for calculating the scores of reviews.
REAL INTEREST RATE PARITY FOR CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: A NEW UNIT ROOT TEST WITH TWO STRUCTURAL BREAKS

This study applies Narayan and Popp’s (2010) unit-root test with two endogenous breaks, which has been proven to be more powerful than the other unit root tests with two breaks (Narayan and Popp, 2013) to assess the non-stationary properties of the real interest rate parity (RIRP) for thirteen Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. We examine the validity of RIRP from the unit root with two breaks of view and provide robust evidence which clearly indicates that RIRP holds true for six countries. Our findings point out their real interest rate convergence is mean reversion towards RIRP equilibrium values with two structural breaks. Our results have important policy implications for these CEE countries under study.
TEMPORAL INVERTED INTERNAL LIMITING MEMBRANE FLAP TECHNIQUE FOR A MACULAR HOLE PATIENT UNABLE TO MAINTAIN POSTOPERATIVE PRONE POSITIONING

The temporal inverted internal limiting membrane flap technique, which is a simple surgical strategy to treat macular holes, provides scaffolding for retinal gliosis and may facilitate bridge formation between the walls of the macular hole beneath the flap. The procedure may be a good option to achieve macular hole closure without postoperative prone positioning.
Prevalence and Correlates of Dental Caries in an Elderly Population in Northeast China

Objectives The present study aimed to investigate the prevalence and correlates of dental caries in elderly population in northeast China. Methods A community-based, cross-sectional study among 2376 elderly subjects (age: 65–74 years) from nine urban areas and nine rural areas in three provinces of northeast China was conducted using multistage stratified random sampling per the World Health Organization oral health survey methodology. Decayed-missing-filled teeth (DMFT) and decayed-filled teeth (DFT) indices were used to evaluate the prevalence of dental caries. Face-to-face questionnaire survey on oral health was performed in a randomly selected subset (n = 1197). T test and chi square test were employed to compare groups for continuous and categorical variables, respectively. Multivariate logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and corresponding confidence intervals (CIs). Results 67.5% of elderly subjects reported dental caries (average DFT = 2.68±3.40), and the prevalence was higher in urban areas (P<0.01). Missing teeth accounted for 80.72% of DMFT, and filled teeth due to caries accounted for 2.08% with a rate higher in urban areas (P<0.01). Logistic regression analysis indicated significant association among elderly population in urban areas (OR 1.713; 95% CI 1.337–2.195), smoking (OR 1.779; 95% CI 1.384–2.288), and individuals without dental insurance (OR 2.050; 95% CI 1.120–3.754) with dental caries. Conclusions The prevalence of dental caries in the elderly population in northeast China is high. The elderly from urban areas who smoke and who do not have a dental insurance are at a higher risk to develop dental caries.
Constructing Institutional Measures: Indicators of Political and Property Rights in Mozambique, 1900–2005

In this paper we focus on the role of political and economic institutions in Mozambiqueâ€™s development. We produce a set of institutional indicators for Mozambique for the period 1900 through to 2005. The first index tracks political freedoms and is unique in its duration and complexity. The second index is a measure of property rights for Mozambique and such a measure has not existed previously and certainly not for this length of time. The construction of these indices is a painstaking process through historical records but it provides us with a richness of institutional data previously not available. The new institutional indices will allow us to explore the role of the institutional environment in determining economic growth and development in Mozambique over time.
An equation-based optimization approach for analog circuit design

An efficient approach and an associated tool to optimize the performance of integrated analog circuits were described. The main objectives with the approach are to significantly speed up the design process and to obtain better overall, possibly optimal, circuit performance compared to a manual, simulation-based, approach. In order to achieve good agreement with circuit simulators high accuracy transistor models are used. A key feature is the automatic generation of the performance metrics and cost function from the circuit netlist. As a design example we select a current-mirror operational transconductance amplifier.
fMRI reveals novel functional neuroanatomy in a child with perinatal stroke

Children who have experienced a perinatal stroke often develop normal language function, but the neurobiologic mechanisms underlying this plasticity remain unclear. In this study, we used fMRI to compare, at two ages, the functional neuroanatomy of a child with perinatal stroke with that of age-appropriate cohorts of typically developing children. Although the data for this child are similar to the control group, there are age-dependent differences.
Volume estimation of the subcortical structures in Parkinson's disease using magnetic resonance imaging: A methodological study

Background & Objectives: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder, beginning in the in the substantia nigra and spreading to the subcortical structures to the limbic cortices, and eventually to the neocortex and is characterized clinically by tremor at rest, bradykinesia, and rigidity. Regional brain atrophy is found to be an important marker of PD’s pathology. The aim of the current study was to compare the volumes of subcortical brain structures between healthy subjects and patients with PD using stereological (point-counting) and semi-automated segmentation methods. Methods: Twenty-four patients with PD and 23 age matched healthy subjects free of any psychiatric, neurological or cognitive impairment were included in our study. Magnetic resonance images were analyzed by using two methods. Results: Both methods showed a decrease in volume of caudate nucleus and lentiform nucleus in PD group compared to the control group. (p˂0.05). However, no significant differences was found between patient and control groups for the volume of thalamus (p>0.05). Also, no significant difference was found between point-counting and semi-automated segmentation methods for the volumes of subcortical structures in both two groups (p>0.05). Conclusion: Magnatic resonance imaging is helpful to facilitate the diagnosis in vivo of patients with PD, revealing atrophy of specific brain regions such as caudate nucleus and lentiform nucleus.
Time Resolved Absorption Spectroscopy for the Study of Electron Transfer Processes in Photosynthetic Systems

Transient absorption spectroscopy was used to study light induced electron transfer processes in Type 1 photosynthetic reaction centers. Flash induced absorption changes were probed at 800, 703 and 487 nm, and on multiple timescales from nanoseconds to tens of milliseconds. Both wild type and menB mutant photosystem I reaction centers from the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 were studied. Photosystem I reaction centers from the green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and the newly discovered chlorophyll-d containing organism Acaryochloris marina, were also studied. The flash induced absorption changes obtained for menB mutant photosystem I reaction centers are distinguishable from wild type at 800 nm. MenB mutant photosystem I reaction centers displays a large amplitude decay phase with lifetime of ~50 ns which is absent in wild type photosystem I reaction centers. It is hypothesized that this ~50 ns phase is due to the formation of the triplet state of primary electron donor. INDEX WORDS: Photosynthesis, Photosystem I, P700, Laser flash photolysis, Pump-probe spectroscopy, Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, menB, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, P740, Acaryochloris marina TIME RESOLVED ABSORPTION SPECTROSCOPY FOR THE STUDY OF ELECTRON TRANSFER PROCESSES IN PHOTOSYNTHETIC SYSTEMS