Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of acyclic nucleoside modifications in siRNAs finds sensitivity at position 1 that is restored by 5′-terminal phosphorylation both in vitro and in vivo

Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are short, double-stranded RNAs that use the endogenous RNAi pathway to mediate gene silencing. Phosphorylation facilitates loading of a siRNA into the Ago2 complex and subsequent cleavage of the target mRNA. In this study, 2′, 3′ seco nucleoside modifications, which contain an acylic ribose ring and are commonly called unlocked nucleic acids (UNAs), were evaluated at all positions along the guide strand of a siRNA targeting apolipoprotein B (ApoB). UNA modifications at positions 1, 2 and 3 were detrimental to siRNA activity. UNAs at positions 1 and 2 prevented phosphorylation by Clp1 kinase, abrogated binding to Ago2, and impaired Ago2-mediated cleavage of the mRNA target. The addition of a 5′-terminal phosphate to siRNA containing a position 1 UNA restored ApoB mRNA silencing, Ago2 binding, and Ago2 mediated cleavage activity. Position 1 UNA modified siRNA containing a 5′-terminal phosphate exhibited a partial restoration of siRNA silencing activity in vivo. These data reveal the complexity of interpreting the effects of chemical modification on siRNA activity, and exemplify the importance of using multiple biochemical, cell-based and in vivo assays to rationally design chemically modified siRNA destined for therapeutic use.
Volatility forecasting with range models: An evaluation of new alternatives to the CARR model

The aim of this paper is to analyze the forecasting ability of the CARR model proposed by Chou (2005) using the S&P 500. We extend the data sample, allowing for the analysis of different stock market circumstances and propose the use of various range estimators in order to analyze their forecasting performance. Our results show that there are two range-based models that outperform the forecasting ability of the GARCH model. The Parkinson model is better for upward trends and volatilities which are higher and lower than the mean while the CARR model is better for downward trends and mean volatilities.
Free fermion representation of a boundary conformal field theory.

The theory of a massless two-dimensional scalar field with a periodic boundary interaction is considered. At a critical value of the period this system defines a conformal field theory and can be reexpressed in terms of free fermions, which provide a simple realization of a hidden SU(2) symmetry of the original theory. The partition function and the boundary [ital S] matrix can be computed exactly as a function of the strength of the boundary interaction. We first consider open strings with one interacting and one Dirichlet boundary, and then with two interacting boundaries. The latter corresponds to motion in a periodic tachyon background, and the spectrum exhibits an interesting band structure which interpolates between free propagation and tight binding as the interaction strength is varied.
2 . 1 What some linguistic intuitions might not be

Gradientwordlikeness judgements do not necessarily imply that a gradientwell-formedness system underlies them; gradient judgements may be an artifact of gradient rating tasks. Dubious architectural assumptions are needed for speakers to report gradient well-formedness judgements. Simple baselines beer account for gradient well-formedness judgements than state-of-the-art computational models of gradient phonotactic knowledge.
Gallium modulates osteoclastic bone resorption in vitro without affecting osteoblasts

Background and purpose: Gallium (Ga) has been shown to be effective in the treatment of disorders associated with accelerated bone loss, including cancer‐related hypercalcemia and Paget's disease. These clinical applications suggest that Ga could reduce bone resorption. However, few studies have studied the effects of Ga on osteoclastic resorption. Here, we have explored the effects of Ga on bone cells in vitro.
How to Decide When Experts Disagree: Uncertainty-Based Choice Rules in Environmental Policy

Environmental economists have traditionally addressed the issue of choice under uncertainty by applying the expected utility hypothesis. When policymakers face a panel of experts with widely divergent beliefs, the problem may more accurately be described as a case of choice under pure uncertainty. Arrow and Hurwicz (1972) demonstrate that rational choice criteria under pure uncertainty will focus on the extremes of the state space, not the midpoint as is typically assumed. Using Nordhaus's DICE model, uncertainty-based choices about global warming policies are evaluated. Linkages to the safe minimum standard and the precautionary principle are also discussed.
Hartford Open Choice Students' School Engagement: The Role of Individual Characteristics and School Attributes

The Supreme Court declared unconstitutional state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Despite this major achievement, more than 60 years ago, residents in Hartford, Connecticut continue their fight to eliminate educational inequalities. In Sheff vs. O’Neill (1989) plaintiffs challenged the economic and racial segregation of public schools in Hartford and the lack of adequate resources in the city schools, which denied its students an equal education. Hartford public schools, where currently more than 90 percent of students are black or Latino, remain as segregated today, as they were when the Sheff lawsuit was filed in 1989. The central purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of Open Choice high school students’ level of school engagement as an important component of their educational experience and to address whether this indicator differed by race and ethnicity and school attributes. The subjects of this study were high school students participating in the Open Choice Program conducted through the Capital Region Education Council (CREC) who are bused from Hartford to surrounding suburban towns for an equitable and less segregated educational experience. To explore the integration experience of Open Choice Program participants from both perspectives, a mixed-methods approach was used: a survey questionnaire and focus groups of current participants attending suburban high schools, and in-depth interviews with school administrators from a subset of the high schools were completed. Hartford Open Choice Students’ School Engagement: The Role of Individual Characteristics and School Attributes
Characterization of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli O157:H7 Isolated in Italy and in France

ABSTRACT Twenty-one Escherichia coli O157:H7 strains isolated in northern Italy from sporadic cases of hemolytic-uremic syndrome and from cattle and food were characterized by virulence gene analysis, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of XbaI-digested DNA, enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) sequence-based PCR (ERIC-PCR), and antibiotic resistance patterns and compared to 18 strains isolated in France from human cases of diarrhea, cattle, and the environment. Strains isolated in Sicily (southern Italy) from a local farm (one strain) and from calves just imported from France (11 strains) and Spain (six strains) were also typed. Whereas the eae and hlyA genes were always detected, Shiga toxin gene (stx) analysis showed some differences related to geographic areas. Isolates from northern Italy showed a high frequency of stx1 and stx2, while strains isolated in France and from French and Spanish calves imported to Sicily more frequently possessed the stx2c gene. The majority of the strains isolated in northern Italy were also resistant to one or more antibiotics, while most of the strains isolated in France and Sicily were fully susceptible. ERIC-PCR analysis was not able to differentiate the strains. PFGE typing after XbaI DNA digestion produced a total of 54 distinct restriction endonuclease digestion profiles (REDPs) among the 57 strains. Phylogenetic analysis was unable to cluster REDPs according to geographic origin. All epidemiologically related isolates showed either identical or ≥91% similar REDPs. Our findings suggest a peculiar circulation of antibiotic-resistant, genetically unrelated strains in northern Italy.
The Credibility of a Fixed Exchange Rate: How Reputation Is Gained or Lost

The authors examine the interest rate differential between each of the four largest Nordic countries and the countries of their foreign currency baskets on monthly data for the period 1978/79-92. The interest rate differential is assumed to reflect devaluation expectations, which partly depend on government reputation. The authors investigate the formation of the reputation of the government, assuming that reputation is updated using Bayes's formula. It is shown theoretically that, when there is no devaluation, the improvement in government reputation is larger, the larger the prior devaluation expectations. For Norway, the evidence gives support to this assertion. Copyright 1996 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.
New Insights from HST Studies of Globular Cluster Systems. I. Colors, Distances, and Specific Frequencies of 28 Elliptical Galaxies

We present an analysis of the globular cluster systems of 28 elliptical galaxies using archival WFPC2 images in the V and I bands. The V-I color distributions of at least 50% of the galaxies appear to be bimodal at the present level of photometric accuracy. We argue that this is indicative of multiple epochs of cluster formation early in the history of these galaxies, possibly due to mergers. We also present the first evidence of bimodality in low-luminosity galaxies and discuss its implication on formation scenarios. The mean color of the 28 cluster systems studied by us is V-I = 1.04 ± 0.04 (0.01) mag corresponding to a mean metallicity of Fe/H = -1.0 ± 0.19 (0.04). We find that the turnover magnitudes of the globular cluster luminosity functions (GCLF) of our sample are in excellent agreement with the distance measurements using other methods and conclude that the accuracy of the GCLF is at least as good as the surface brightness fluctuation method. The absolute magnitude of the turnover luminosity of the GCLF is M = -7.41 (0.03) in V and M = -8.46 (0.03) in I. The mean local specific frequency of our sample of elliptical galaxies within the WFPC2 field-of-view is 2.4 ± 1.8 (0.4), considerably higher than the 1.0 ± 0.6 (0.1) derived for a comparable sample of S0s in a similar analysis. It shows no obvious correlation with metallicity, host galaxy mass or membership in a galaxy cluster. The median size of clusters in all galaxies appears to be remarkably constant at ∼2.4 pc. We suggest that in the future it might be possible to use the sizes of clusters in the inner regions of galaxies as a simple geometrical distance indicator.
Retrieval Practice, with or without Mind Mapping, Boosts Fact Learning in Primary School Children

Retrieval practice is a method of study in which testing is incorporated into the learning process. This method is known to facilitate recall for facts in adults and in secondary-school-age children, but existing studies in younger children are somewhat limited in their practical applicability. In two studies of primary school-age children of 8–12 years, we tested retrieval practice along with another study technique, mind mapping, which is more widely-used, but less well-evidenced. Children studied novel geographical facts, with or without retrieval practice and with or without mind mapping, in a crossed-factorial between-subjects design. In Experiment 1, children in the retrieval practice condition recalled significantly more facts four days later. In Experiment 2, this benefit was replicated at one and five weeks in a different, larger sample of schoolchildren. No consistent effects of mind mapping were observed. These results underline the effectiveness of retrieval practice for fact learning in young children.
Some phonetic structures of Chickasaw

This article provides a quantitative phonetic study of Chickasaw, a Muskogean language spoken in Oklahoma. Basic properties such as vowel quality, voice onset time, and consonant closure duration are examined and compared with the corresponding properties in other languages of the world. The article also investigates various quantitative properties of the typologically unusual three-way length distinction in Chickasaw vowels.
Special Care and School Difficulties in 8-Year-Old Very Preterm Children: The Epipage Cohort Study

Objectives To investigate school difficulties, special care and behavioral problems in 8 year-old very preterm (VPT) children. Patient and Methods Longitudinal population-based cohort in nine regions of France of VPT children and a reference group born at 39–40 weeks of gestation (WG). The main outcome measures were information about school, special care and behavioral problems using Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire from a questionnaire to parents. Results Among the 1439 VPT children, 5% (75/1439) were in a specialised school or class, 18% (259/1439) had repeated a grade in a mainstream class and 77% (1105/1439) were in the appropriate grade-level in mainstream class; these figures were 1% (3/327) , 5% (16/327) and 94% (308/327) , respectively, for the reference group. Also, 15% (221/1435) of VPT children in a mainstream class received support at school versus 5% (16/326) of reference group. More VPT children between the ages of five and eight years received special care (55% (794/1436)) than children born at term (38% (124/325)); more VPT children (21% (292/1387)) had behavioral difficulties than the reference group (11% (35/319)). School difficulties, support at school, special care and behavioral difficulties in VPT children without neuromotor or sensory deficits varied with gestational age, socioeconomic status, and cognitive score at the age of five. Conclusions Most 8-year-old VPT children are in mainstream schools. However, they have a high risk of difficulty in school, with more than half requiring additional support at school and/or special care. Referral to special services has increased between the ages of 5 and 8 years, but remained insufficient for those with borderline cognitive scores.
Topology of the Hungarian large-value transfer system

The paper deals with the topology of the Hungarian large-value transfer system, known as VIBER. The paper is generally descriptive in nature, the goal of the research being the assessment of the payment topology. A graph theoretical framework is applied; the graph representation allows a system-wide assessment of high-value payments. By taking interdependences between institutions into account, seven centrality indices are defined. The different measures of centrality focus on different aspects of the payment topology. The goal of applying graph theoretical methods is twofold. Firstly, the paper aims to analyse the permanency of the network over time. This is achieved by depicting the centrality measures, examining the correlation coefficients of the centrality indices across days, drawing empirical distributions and defining matrices of the strongest linkages. It is shown that the structure of the payments was permanent in June 2005; ad hoc relationships did not dominate the topology of the payments. The most central institutions were the same; the key players did not vary across days. One interesting feature of the topology was that only 30 per cent of the existing linkages were permanent linkages, although nearly 90 per cent of the payment orders were sent or received through these linkages. The Hungarian payment system can be characterised as a structure with multiple liquidity centres. Secondly, according to certain network criteria institutions most capable of generating contagion were identified. The fact that a liquidity crisis could arise if funds are not transferred to counterparties, although the counterparties might expect it, was taken into account. A well-defined group of institutions was identified; the illiquidity of these institutions could cause the most serious disruption of the payment system. Surprisingly, the institutions most capable of generating contagion were not the largest Hungarian banks measured by asset size. Rather they were directly or indirectly active players of the USD/HUF FX swap market.
Hospitality Sales and Marketing Executives

Abstract This research concerns the satisfaction of lodging sales and marketing executives on different job attributes. Respondents were asked about their satisfaction with pay, current position, and their profession. Significant differences were found based on the size of hotel, marital status, personal income, and gender. A comparison of the respondents of this study to financial and technology professionals conducted by DeFranco and Schmidgall (2001) suggests that Sales and Marketing executives are somewhat more satisfied than their counterparts in Accounting/Technology.
Accounting for value

Accounting for Value teaches investors and analysts how to handle accounting in evaluating equity investments. The book's novel approach shows that valuation and accounting are much the same: valuation is actually a matter of accounting for value. Laying aside many of the tools of modern finance? the cost-of-capital, the CAPM, and discounted cash flow analysis? Stephen Penman returns to the common-sense principles that have long guided fundamental investing: price is what you pay but value is what you get; the risk in investing is the risk of paying too much; anchor on what you know rather than speculation; and beware of paying too much for speculative growth. Penman puts these ideas in touch with the quantification supplied by accounting, producing practical tools for the intelligent investor. Accounting for value provides protection from paying too much for a stock and clues the investor in to the likely return from buying growth. Strikingly, the analysis finesses the need to calculate a "cost-of-capital," which often frustrates the application of modern valuation techniques. Accounting for value recasts "value" versus "growth" investing and explains such curiosities as why earnings-to-price and book-to-price ratios predict stock returns. By the end of the book, Penman has the intelligent investor thinking like an intelligent accountant, better equipped to handle the bubbles and crashes of our time. For accounting regulators, Penman also prescribes a formula for intelligent accounting reform, engaging with such controversial issues as fair value accounting.
Designing Monetary Policy Committees

We integrate monetary policy-making by committee into a New Keynesian model to assess the consequences of the committee׳s institutional characteristics for inflation, output, and welfare. Our analysis delivers the following results. First, we demonstrate that transparency about the committee׳s future composition is typically harmful. Second, we show that short terms for central bankers lead to effective inflation stabilization at the expense of comparably high output variability. Third, larger committees generally allow for more efficient stabilization of inflation but possibly for less efficient output stabilization. Fourth, large committees and short terms are therefore socially desirable if the weight on output stabilization in the social loss function is low. Fifth, we show that a central banker with random preferences may be preferable to a central banker who shares the preferences of society.
Brands and Continuous Economies

This thesis provides a sociological investigation of contemporary branding practices and their increasing investment in consumer involvement, participation and co-creation. Revisiting the role of brands in contemporary capitalism, it shows that brands are not discrete, purely economic entities, but emerge in relations to multiple actors and are distributed across a series of spaces, societal issues and temporalities. The key objective of this thesis is to explore how brands are involved in (re)organising the boundaries between economy and society, allowing for a multiplication and continuation of value production. In an empirical exploration featuring two case studies on Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty and American Apparel, this thesis brings together social and digital research methods in order to trace and map the distributed becoming of both brands. Attention is directed to three key intersections: the embeddedness of brands in relations, the distributed spatialisation of brands, and the role of bodies and sexuality as issue deployed in branding practices. What a brand stands for, I argue, cannot be limited to its strategic ‘making’, but is tied to its emergent and distributed ‘happening’. Informed by my the fieldwork, I develop the claim that contemporary brands are increasingly partible, as they are reliant on their constant re-appropriation by a variety of actors and are therefore entangled in a ‘becoming topological’, as they are defined through relations which can only be accounted for from the inside. Brands emerge as a specific socio-economic form involved in what I call ‘continuous economies’, in which economic value production increasingly arises from non-economic activities and becomes inherently partible in social activities. Such continuous economies are being animated by the brands’ capacity to create multi-valence, in which consumer activities are at the same time social, cultural and economic acts. Continuity, in this context, addresses a specific mode of boundary making, one that brings together brands and consumers without dissolving them into each other but that maintains a specific imbalance and asymmetry between them. Brands do not, as suggested by some sociological critique, merely subsume social activities into exploitative labour, but enable the organisation of continuity and discontinuity between the social and the economic in immanent ways, while at the same time displacing value production temporally and pre-structuring its potential futures.
9. D. Deutsch, “Quantum theory, the Church–Turing principle and the universal quantum computer, ” Proc.

Are there interactive protocols for co-NP languages? " Inform. book contains reprints of the articles that were critical in the development of the fastest known factoring algorithm. A rigorous time bound for factoring integers, " J. Amer. Math. Soc. An improved algorithm for computing discrete logarithms over GF(p) and its cryptographic significance, " IEEE Trans. Information Theory , Vol. 24, pp. 106–110 (1978). 26. C. Pomerance, " Fast, rigorous factoriza-tion and discrete logarithm algorithms, " in Discrete Algorithms and Complexity (Proc. A method of obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosys-tems, "tural basis of multistationary quantum systems II: Effective few-particle dynamics, " Phys.