Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Systems Vaccinology Approach Reveals Temporal Transcriptomic Changes of Immune Responses to the Yellow Fever 17D Vaccine

In this study, we used a systems vaccinology approach to identify temporal changes in immune response signatures to the yellow fever (YF)-17D vaccine, with the aim of comprehensively characterizing immune responses associated with protective immunity. We conducted a cohort study in which 21 healthy subjects in China were administered one dose of the YF-17D vaccine; PBMCs were collected at 0 h and then at 4 h and days 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 14, 28, 84, and 168 postvaccination, and analyzed by transcriptional profiling and immunological assays. At 4 h postvaccination, genes associated with innate cell differentiation and cytokine pathways were dramatically downregulated, whereas receptor genes were upregulated, compared with their baseline levels at 0 h. Immune response pathways were primarily upregulated on days 5 and 7, accompanied by the upregulation of the transcriptional factors JUP, STAT1, and EIF2AK2. We also observed robust activation of innate immunity within 2 d postvaccination and a durable adaptive response, as assessed by transcriptional profiling. Coexpression network analysis indicated that lysosome activity and lymphocyte proliferation were associated with dendritic cell (DC) and CD4+ T cell responses; FGL2, NFAM1, CCR1, and TNFSF13B were involved in these associations. Moreover, individuals who were baseline-seropositive for Abs against another flavivirus exhibited significantly impaired DC, NK cell, and T cell function in response to YF-17D vaccination. Overall, our findings indicate that YF-17D vaccination induces a prompt innate immune response and DC activation, a robust Ag-specific T cell response, and a persistent B cell/memory B cell response.
Broken Windows Theory

The broken windows theory originated from a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article of the same name written by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. They postulated that broken windows and other unchecked social and physical disorder are direct antecedents to criminal behavior. The article led to the development of popular broken windows policing or zero-tolerance policing strategies that targeted minor offenses, such as panhandling, public drunkenness, and vandalism as a mechanism to reduce more serious offenses. This style of policing has been credited with reducing crime in several major cities including New York City. Broken windows theory and the associated policing policies have been heavily criticized. Opponents of the theory argue that social and physical disorder are symptoms of the same underlying problems that lead to crime under a social disorganization theory framework, including poverty and high rates of residential mobility. Opponents of broken windows policing argue that it unfairly targets the homeless, the poor, and minorities. Keywords: Community Policing; Crime; Crime Prevention; Ecology; Nuisance Crimes
Estimating Heart Rate and Rhythm via 3D Motion Tracking in Depth Video

Low-cost depth sensors, such as Microsoft Kinect, have potential for noncontact health monitoring that is robust to ambient lighting conditions. However, captured depth images typically suffer from high acquisition noise, and hence, processing them to estimate biometrics is difficult. In this paper, we propose to capture depth video of a human subject using Kinect 2.0 to estimate his/her heart rate and rhythm; as blood is pumped from the heart to circulate through the head, tiny oscillatory head motion due to Newtonian mechanics can be detected for periodicity analysis. Specifically, we first restore a captured depth video via a joint bit-depth enhancement/denoising procedure, using a graph-signal smoothness prior for regularization. Second, we track an automatically detected head region throughout the depth video to deduce 3D motion vectors. The detected vectors are fed back to the depth restoration module in a loop to ensure that the motion information in two modules is consistent, improving performance of both restoration and motion tracking. Third, the computed 3D motion vectors are projected onto its principal component for 1D signal analysis, composed of trend removal, bandpass filtering, and wavelet-based motion denoising. Finally, the heart rate is estimated via Welch power spectrum analysis, and the heart rhythm is computed via peak detection. Experimental results show accurate estimation of the heart rate and rhythm using our proposed algorithm as compared to rate and rhythm estimated by a portable oximeter.
It runs in the family: Meta‐regulation and its siblings

Regulators in different countries and domains experiment with regulatory tools that allow organizations to adapt regulation to their individual circumstances, while holding them accountable for their self-regulation systems. Several labels have been coined for this type of regulation, including systems-based regulation, enforced self-regulation, management-based regulation, principles-based regulation, and meta-regulation. In this article, these forms of regulatory governance are classified as belonging to one family of “process-oriented regulation. ” Based on a review of diverse empirical and theoretical research, it is suggested that the family of process-oriented regulation tends to have a positive, albeit varied, impact on organizations' performance, and the factors that shape this inconsistent effect are analyzed. Building on aspects of Parker's normative construct of “meta-regulation,” the article explores the extent to which her innovative notion of a learning-oriented approach to regulation might overcome some of the weaknesses of prevalent process-oriented approaches. It is proposed that under conditions of regulatory uncertainty or entrenched and prevalent non-compliance or both, meta-regulation is likely to have many advantages over other forms of process-oriented regulation. Yet realizing these advantages requires a rare combination of high regulatory capacity, a stable regulatory agenda, and a supportive political environment.
Energy-Efficiency-Oriented Cross-Layer Resource Allocation for Multiuser Full-Duplex Decode-and-Forward Indoor Relay Systems at 60 GHz

Energy-efficiency (EE)-oriented green communication design is an important issue at 60 GHz due to high power consumption of devices working at such a high frequency. In this paper, we investigate EE-oriented resource allocation for full-duplex (FD) decode-and-forward relay-assisted 60-GHz multiuser indoor systems. In contrast to the existing spectral efficiency (SE)-oriented designs, our scheme maximizes the EE for a FD relaying system under cross-layer constraints, addressing the typical problems at 60 GHz, such as the intermittent signal blockage caused by the small wavelength of millimeter-wave. A low-complexity EE-orientated resource allocation algorithm is proposed, by which the transmission power allocation, subcarrier allocation, and throughput assignment are performed jointly across multiple users. Simulation results verify our analytical results and confirm that the FD relaying with the proposed algorithm achieves a higher EE than the FD relaying with SE-oriented approaches, while offering a comparable SE. In addition, a much lower throughput outage probability is guaranteed by the proposed resource allocation algorithm, showing its robustness against channel estimation errors. A full range of power consumption sources and imperfect self-interference cancellation are considered to rationalize our analysis.
Seed Funding for Innovative Ventures

This paper focuses on public innovation support for ventures in their early stages of development. Based on quantitative analysis of programme-specific data, the authors explore and discuss what mechanisms have influenced a public sector actor in selecting ideas for funding. The main findings show, first, that the ‘legal form of the firm’ and the ‘type of industry’ are the main factors that discriminate among firms that have gained public financial support and, second, that explicit and tacit selection criteria affect the process that determines which ideas are to receive support.
Asymmetric Information and Loan Contracts in a Neoclassical Growth Model

The authors consider a neoclassical growth model with risky investment projects in which a borrower's (an investor's) risk type is private information. Their innovation is to determine jointly the equilibrium loan contract and the economy's growth path and the steady state capital stock. The authors show that as capital accumulates, credit rationing may fall as an increasing number of lenders choose to acquire costly information to separate borrowers as to type. This transition from credit rationing to screening in turn results in a higher capital accumulation path and a higher steady state capital stock. They also investigate the effects of a decrease in the cost of information on the economy's capital accumulation path and steady state capital stock. The authors show that the cost of information must fall below a threshold level before the economy moves from a credit rationing equilibrium to a screening one. Thus a threshold must be crossed before the steady state capital stock is increased with a decrease in the cost of information. Copyright 1997 by Ohio State University Press.
Corporate Dividend Policies in Bank-based and Market-based Systems: Survey Evidence from UK and Portugal

This paper reports the empirical results of a questionnaire survey about corporate dividend policy addressed to finance directors of UK and Portuguese listed firms. Similar to other studies (for example, Brav et al., 2005 in the US and Dhanani, 2005 in the UK), we survey 313 finance directors in the UK and 48 in Portugal to examine their views of and understanding about the dividend decision in order to compare practice with theoretical propositions to be found in the literature and to examine cross-country determinants of dividend policy. Our survey results demonstrate similarities in the responses from the UK and Portugal, but also substantive differences, particularly in respect of the interaction between dividend and investment decisions and views about the signaling consequences of dividends.
What Impact Does Intellectual Property Have on the Business Performance of Technology Firms?

This paper reports the results of an original empirical study of the relationship between intellectual property and the financial performance of technology firms in the bioscience-technology industries. The study found a statistically significant positive relationship between the firms’ investments in intellectual property and their performance. The performance measure was based upon revenue-growth data collected from each firm, and the categories of intellectual property analysed included patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyright and licenses to externally sourced technology. This study also found that the financial benefits of accumulating a strong intellectual property portfolio were enjoyed by technology firms regardless of whether they were strategically oriented towards R&D or strategically oriented towards the commercial production of products and services.
Pitfalls in Testing for Explosive Bubbles in Asset Prices

A number of studies (e.g., Robert J. Shiller, 1981; Olivier J. Blanchard and Mark Watson, 1982; Kenneth D. West, 1988) have argued that dividend and stock price data are not consistent with the "market fundamentals" hypothesis, in which prices are given by the present discounted values of expected dividends. These results have often been construed as evidence for the existence of bubbles or fads. (Related arguments have been made with respect to gold, bonds, and foreign exchange). A major problem with such arguments (e.g., James Hamilton and Charles Whiteman, 1985) is that apparent evidence for bubbles can be reinterpreted in terms of market fundamentals that are unobserved by the researcher. Behzad T. Diba and Herschel I. Grossman (1984, 1988b) and Hamilton and Whiteman (1985) have recommended the alternative strategy of testing for rational bubbles by investigating the stationarity properties of asset prices and observable fundamentals.1 In essence, the argument for equities is that if stock prices are not more explosive than dividends then it can be concluded that rational bubbles are not present, since they would generate an explosive component to stock prices.2 Using unit-root tests, autocorrelation patterns, and cointegration tests to implement this procedure, Diba and Grossman (1988b p. 529) state that "the analysis supports the conclusion that stock prices do not contain explosive rational bubbles. " This paper shows that the above battery of tests is in fact unable to detect an important class of rational bubbles. The point is demonstrated by constructing rational bubbles that appear to be stationary when unitroot tests are applied, even though they are explosive in the relevant sense. Simulations show that, when such bubbles are present, stock prices will not appear to be more explosive than dividends on the basis of these tests, even though the bubbles are substantial in magnitude and volatility. The presence of rational bubbles in actual stock prices thus remains an open question.
How two-tier boards can be more effective

Purpose – This study seeks to explore how non-executive directors address governance problems on Dutch two-tier boards. Within this board model, challenges might be particularly difficult to address due to the formal separation of management boards' decision-management from supervisory boards' decision-control roles. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire among non-executive directors provide unique insights into three major challenges in the boardrooms of two-tier boards in The Netherlands. Findings – The study indicates that non-executive directors mainly experience challenges in three areas: the ability to ask management critical questions, information asymmetries between the management and supervisory boards and the management of the relationship between individual executive and non-executive directors. The qualitative in-depth analysis reveals the complexity of the contributing factors to problems in the boardroom and the range of process and social interventions.
The Poor as Suppliers of Intellectual Property: A Social Network Approach to Sustainable Poverty Alleviation

ABSTRACT: We extend the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) poverty-alleviation approach by recognizing the poor as valuable suppliers—specifically of intellectual property. Although the poor possess huge reserves of intellectual property, they are unable to participate in global knowledge networks owing to their illiteracy and poverty. This is a crippling form of social exclusion in today’s growing knowledge economy because it adversely affects their capabilities for advancement at several levels. Providing the poor access to global knowledge networks as rightful participants—as suppliers of intellectual property—leads to poverty alleviation as a result of their increased social inclusion, not only through economic benefits, but also through the poor’s improved well-being as a result of their increased self-esteem and dignity. Using concepts from social network theory, we develop a poverty-alleviation approach to harness and integrate the intellectual property of the poor into global knowledge networks through trust-based partnerships among the poor, non-governmental organizations, and multinational corporations.
Corporate governance: directors, shareholders and the Audit Committee

Discusses the different roles played by directors, shareholders and auditors in ensuring the success of a company. Outlines the responsibilities of the directors, pointing out the risks that directors may bully auditors; also that a persistently questioning director, especially a non‐executive director, will be labelled as a trouble maker and not be listened to. Argues that shareholders and auditors cannot be linked in a way that would effectively supervise the conduct of directors. Concludes that directors need to be properly monitored: shareholders have failed to do this, so the audit committee needs to ensure that directors do their duties. Shows how an effective audit committee can be set up.
Antifertility effects of methanolic pod extract of Albizzia lebbeck (L.) Benth in male rats.

AIM To evaluate the antifertility activity of the methanolic pod extract of Albizzia lebbeck (L.) Benth in male albino rats. METHODS The methanolic pod extract of Albizzia lebbeck was administrated orally for 60 days at 50, 100 and 200 mg.kg(-1). day(-1) to male albino rats. Sperm motility and density in cauda epididymides were assessed. Biochemical and histological analysis were performed in blood samples and reproductive organs. RESULTS Albizzia lebbeck pod extract brought about a significant decrease in the weights of testis, seminal vesicles, epdidymis and ventral prostate. The sperm motility and density were significantly reduced. There was a marked reduction in the numbers of primary spermatocytes, secondary spermatocytes and spermatids. The Sertoli cell count as well as its cross sectional surface area were significantly decreased. The Leydig cell nuclear area and the number of mature Leydig cells were also significantly decreased. The protein, glycogen and cholesterol content of the testis, the fructose in the seminal vesicles and protein in the epididymis were significantly decreased. The RBC and WBC counts, haemoglobin, haematocrit and blood sugar were within the normal range. CONCLUSION The methanolic extract of A. lebbeck pods causes spermatogenic arrest in male albino rats.
Primary multidrug-resistant tuberculosis versus drug-sensitive tuberculosis in non-HIV-infected patients: Comparisons of CT findings

Background Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis has emerged as a global threat. The aim of this work was to compare the CT findings of primary multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and drug-sensitive tuberculosis in non-AIDS adults. Material and methods From January 2012 to February 2016, 89 patients with primary multidrug-resistant tuberculosis were retrospectively reviewed, and 89 consecutive drug sensitive TB patients with no history of anti-tuberculous chemotherapy from January 2014 to November 2014 were enrolled as control group. All patients were seronegative for HIV. The patients’ demographic data and the locations, frequency and patterns of lung lesions on chest CT were compared. Results Gender and frequency of diabetes were similar between the two groups. The mean age of primary multidrug-resistant tuberculosis patients was younger than that of drug-sensitive tuberculosis (39.0 vs 47.5, P = 0.005). Lung cavitary nodules or masses were more frequently observed and also showed greater extent in primary multidrug-resistant tuberculosis compared with drug-sensitive tuberculosis. The extent of bronchiectasis was significantly greater in primary multidrug-resistant tuberculosis than in drug-sensitive tuberculosis. Calcification, large nodules and calcified lymph nodes were more frequent in drug-sensitive tuberculosis. Conclusion Characteristic chest CT findings may help differentiate between primary multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and drug-sensitive tuberculosis in patients without HIV infection.
Residential Proximity among Racial Groups in U.S. and Canadian Neighborhoods

The author compares the racial residential proximity patterns in U.S. and Canadian neighbor-hoods. In the United States, Asian-Americans experience higher levels of residential proximity in neighborhoods with whites than do blacks. In Canada, blacks and Asians experience similar levels of residential proximity in neighborhoods with whites. A dynamic spatial assimilation perspective is proposed to understand the racial residential proximity patterns in neighborhoods in both countries. In the United States, but not in Canada, blacks appear to be in a disadvantaged position in the beginning of the process of spatial assimilation, and other racial groups appear to actively avoid moving into neighborhoods with dominant black presence.
THE ARABIC SCALE OF DEATH ANXIETY (ASDA): ITS DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION, AND RESULTS IN THREE ARAB COUNTRIES

The Arabic Scale of Death Anxiety (ASDA) was constructed and validated in a sample of undergraduates (17–33 yrs) in 3 Arab countries, Egypt (n = 418), Kuwait (n = 509), and Syria (n = 709). In its final form, the ASDA consists of 20 statements. Each item is answered on a 5-point intensity scale anchored by 1: No, and 5: Very much. Alpha reliabilities ranged from . 88 to . 93, and item-remainder correlations ranged between . 27 and . 74; the 1-week test-retest reliability was . 90 (Egyptians only), denoting high internal consistency and stability. The correlations between the ASDA and Templer's DAS ranged from . 60 to . 74 denoting high convergent validity of the ASDA against the DAS in the 3 Arab countries. Four factors were extracted in the Egyptian sample and labeled “Fear of dead people and tombs”, “Fear of postmortem events”, “Fear of lethal disease”, and “death preoccupation”. The first two factors were almost completely identical in the three countries. The item, “I fear the torture of the grave”, had a very high mean score. There were significant correlations between the ASDA and death depression, death obsession, reasons for death fear, and general anxiety, depression, obsession-compulsion, neuroticism, and being a female. All female groups attained significantly higher mean ASDA scores than their male counterparts. Kuwaitis had higher mean ASDA total scores, in comparison with their Egyptian and Syrian counterparts, whereas female Syrians attained the lowest mean ASDA total score in proportion to their female peers.
Short-Term Effects of Whole-Body Exposure to 56Fe Ions in Combination with Musculoskeletal Disuse on Bone Cells

Abstract Space travel and prolonged bed rest cause bone loss due to musculoskeletal disuse. In space, radiation fields may also have detrimental consequences because charged particles traversing the tissues of the body can elicit a wide range of cytotoxic and genotoxic lesions. The effects of heavy-ion radiation exposure in combination with musculoskeletal disuse on bone cells and tissue are not known. To explore this, normally loaded 16-week-old male C57BL/6 mice were exposed to 56Fe ions (1 GeV/nucleon) at doses of 0 cGy (sham), 10 cGy, 50 cGy or 2 Gy 3 days before tissue harvest. Additional mice were hindlimb unloaded by tail traction continuously for 1 week to simulate weightlessness and exposed to 56Fe-ion radiation (0 cGy, 50 cGy, 2 Gy) 3 days before tissue harvest. Despite the short duration of this study, low-dose (10, 50 cGy) irradiation of normally loaded mice reduced trabecular volume fraction (BV/TV) in the proximal tibiae by 18% relative to sham-irradiated controls. Hindlimb unloading together with 50 cGy radiation caused a 126% increase in the number of TRAP+ osteoclasts on cancellous bone surfaces relative to normally loaded, sham-irradiated controls. Together, radiation and hindlimb unloading had a greater effect on suppressing osteoblastogenesis ex vivo than either treatment alone. In sum, low-dose exposure to heavy ions (50 cGy) caused rapid cancellous bone loss in normally loaded mice and increased osteoclast numbers in hindlimb unloaded mice. In vitro irradiation also was more detrimental to osteoblastogenesis in bone marrow cells that were recovered from hindlimb unloaded mice compared to cells from normally loaded mice. Furthermore, irradiation in vitro stimulated osteoclast formation in a macrophage cell line (RAW264.7) in the presence of RANKL (25 ng/ml), showing that heavy-ion radiation can stimulate osteoclast differentiation even in the absence of osteoblasts. Thus heavy-ion radiation can acutely increase osteoclast numbers in cancellous tissue and, under conditions of musculoskeletal disuse, can enhance the sensitivity of bone cells, in particular osteoprogenitors, to the effects of radiation.