Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wage Inequality in Turkey, 2002–10

type="main" xml:id="ecot12058-abs-0001"> This paper studies the evolution of wage inequality in Turkey using household labour force survey data from 2002 to 2010. Between 2002 and 2004, the relative supply of more-educated workers to less-educated workers remained constant while their relative wages decreased in favour of less-educated workers. However, between 2004 and 2010, the relative supply of more-educated workers to less-educated workers rose, while their relative wages remained constant or kept increasing in favour of more-educated workers. This suggests factors other than those implied by a simple supply-demand model are involved, such as skill-biased technical change or minimum wage variations. The decomposition of wage inequality reveals that the price (wage) effect dominates the composition effect particularly in the first period. Our results show that the real minimum wage hike in 2004 corresponds to a major institutional change, which proved to be welfare-increasing in terms of wage inequality. The upper-tail (90/50) wage inequality decreased between 2002 and 2004 and stayed constant thereafter, whereas the lower-tail (50/10) wage inequality decreased throughout the period. Our findings thus provide evidence supporting the institutional argument for explaining wage inequality.
A Cross‐sectional Study Comparing the Oswestry and Roland‐Morris Functional Disability Scales in Two Populations of Patients With Low Back Pain of Different Levels of Severity

Study Design This cross‐sectional study compares the Oswestry and Roland‐Morris disability scales in two groups of patients with low back pain of different clinical and electromyographic severity. Objectives To evaluate the correlation between functional disability and diagnoses. Summary of Background Data There is an increasing need for functional disability measurements to be applied to the evaluation of therapy and outcome in patients experiencing low back pain. Methods Two very different groups of patients with low back pain completed the Oswestry and Roland‐Morris self‐administrated functional disability questionnaires. One group included patients presenting with an episode of mechanical low back pain with no clinical radiculopathy. The other group consisted of patients with low back pain and clinical and electromyographic evidence of radiculopathy. Results Patients diagnosed with low back pain who exhibited signs of radiculopathy on electromyography had a mean score of 49.1 ± 17.1 on the Oswestry disability questionnaire; a mean score of 33.0 ± 14.7 was found for patients who experienced “simple” low back sprain (with no radiculopathy). This difference was statistically significant (P < 0.0001). On the Roland‐Morris questionnaire, the mean score obtained by the group of patients with radiculopathy was 59.1 ± 21.8 compared with 45.4 ± 19.4 for those with no radiculopathy. This difference was also statistically significant (P < 0.0001). Moreover, there exists a moderate correlation between both functional scales within each group of patients: 0.72 (P < 0.0001) in the group with radiculopathy and 0.66 (P < 0.0001) among those without radiculopathy. Conclusions The authors conclude that both functional disability scales accurately discriminated between these two groups of patients with low back pain of very different clinical and electromyographic severity.
A Methodology for Identifying High Timing Variability Paths in Complex Designs

In some complex deep sub-micron designs, the variations in interconnect delay has a significant impact on the production yield of the product. In this paper, we develop a theoretical explanation for the unexpectedly higher process related timing variability shown by long interconnects that are driven by high drive strength gates. This gets even worse due to conventional gate delay variability and other random process effects. Our analysis is supported by actual silicon data and further validated by detailed Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations. Unfortunately, traditional scan based transition delay fault (TDF) timing tests can miss these variability induced delay faults on long interconnects which lies on the critical paths. We propose a methodology to identify high variability paths dominated by such long interconnects, with the aim of developing high quality delay timing tests. Specifically, we develop a heuristic based path selection algorithm to identify potentially slow paths that can contribute to test escapes in production. We further extend our approach to generate high quality delay timing tests for the target paths using the proposed "three pass" method.
Schema-driven Memory and Structural Alignment

In the 1960s and 70s, researchers paid a great deal of attention to schematic memory, or memory for thematic information. In the 1980s and 90s, this research ground to a halt, in large part because researchers lacked a strong theoretical framework for the study of schematic memory. We suggest that structure-mapping theory, a theory of analogy and similarity comparisons, may provide such a framework. We conduct two experiments designed to replicate classic findings from the schematic memory literature that memory for schema-relevant information is better than that for schema-irrelevant information, and that information in a schema can intrude on memory for instances using a paradigm from work in analogical reasoning. Because we can replicate schema-driven findings in an analogy paradigm, we should be able to use what we know about analogy to understand schematic memory.
α‐Galactosylceramide‐loaded, antigen‐expressing B cells prime a wide spectrum of antitumor immunity

Most of the current tumor vaccines successfully elicit strong protection against tumor but offer little therapeutic effect against existing tumors, highlighting the need for a more effective vaccine strategy. Vaccination with tumor antigen‐presenting cells can induce antitumor immune responses. We have previously shown that NKT‐licensed B cells prime cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) with epitope peptide and generate prophylactic/therapeutic antitumor effects. To extend our B cell vaccine approach to the whole antigen, and to overcome the MHC restriction, we used a nonreplicating adenovirus to transduce B cells with antigenic gene. Primary B cells transduced with an adenovirus‐encoding truncated Her‐2/neu (AdHM) efficiently expressed Her‐2/neu. Compared with the moderate antitumor activity induced by vaccination with adenovirus‐transduced B cells (B/AdHM), vaccination with α‐galactosylceramide‐loaded B/AdHM (B/AdHM/αGalCer) induced significantly stronger antitumor immunity, especially in the tumor‐bearing mice. The depletion study showed that CD4+, CD8+ and NK cells were all necessary for the therapeutic immunity. Confirming the results of the depletion study, B/AdHM/αGalCer vaccination induced cytotoxic NK cell responses but B/AdHM did not. Vaccination with B/AdHM/αGalCer generated Her‐2/neu‐specific antibodies more efficiently than B/AdHM immunization. More importantly, B/AdHM/αGalCer could prime Her‐2/neu‐specific cytotoxic T cells more efficiently and durably than B/AdHM. CD4+ cells appeared to be necessary for the induction of antibody and CTL responses. Our results demonstrate that, with the help of NKT cells, antigen‐transduced B cells efficiently induce innate immunity as well as a wide range of adaptive immunity against the tumor, suggesting that they could be used to develop a novel cellular vaccine. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Intracellular responses of identified rat olfactory bulb interneurons to electrical and odor stimulation.

1. Intracellular recordings were made from 28 granule cells and 6 periglomerular cells of the rat olfactory bulb during odor stimulation and electrical stimulation of the olfactory nerve layer (ONL) and lateral olfactory tract (LOT). Neurons were identified by injection of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) or biocytin and/or intracellular response characteristics. Odorants were presented in a cyclic sniff paradigm, as reported previously. 2. All interneurons could be activated from a wide number of stimulation sites on the ONL, with distances exceeding their known dendritic spreads and the dispersion of nerve fibers within the ONL, indicating that multisynaptic pathways must also exist at the glomerular region. All types of interneurons also responded to odorant stimulation, showing a variety of responses. 3. Granule cells responded to electrical stimulation of the LOT and ONL as reported previously. However, intracellular potential, excitability, and conductance analysis suggested that the mitral cell-mediated excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP) is followed by a long inhibitory postsynaptic potential (IPSP). An early negative potential, before the EPSP, was also observed in every granule cell and correlated with component I of the extracellular LOT-induced field potential. We have interpreted this negativity as a "field effect," that may be diagnostic of granule cells. 4. Most granule cells exhibited excitatory responses to odorant stimulation. Odors could produce spiking responses that were either nonhabituating (response to every sniff) or rapidly habituating (response to first sniff only). Other granule cells, while spiking to electrical stimulation, showed depolarizations that did not evoke spikes to odor stimulation. These depolarizations were transient with each sniff or sustained across a series of sniffs. These physiological differences to odor stimulation correlated with granule cell position beneath the mitral cell layer for 12 cells, suggesting that morphological subtypes of granule cells may show physiological differences. Some features of the granule cell odor responses seem to correlate with some of the features we have observed in mitral/tufted cell intracellular recordings. Only one cell showed inhibition to odors. 5. Periglomerular (PG) cells showed a response to ONL stimulation that was unlike that found in other olfactory bulb neurons. There was a long-duration hyperpolarization after a spike and large depolarization or burst of spikes (20-30 ms in duration). Odor stimulation produced simple bursts of action potentials, Odor stimulation produced simple bursts of action potentials, suggesting that PG cells may simply follow input from the olfactory nerve. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Rapid and accurate direct antibiotic susceptibility testing of blood culture broths using MALDI Sepsityper combined with the BD Phoenix automated system.

Antibiotic susceptibility testing with the BD Phoenix system on bacterial cell pellets generated from blood culture broths using the Bruker MALDI Sepsityper kit was evaluated. Seventy-six Gram-negative isolates, including 12 with defined multi-resistant phenotypes, had antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) performed by Phoenix on the cell pellet in parallel with conventional methods. In total, 1414/1444 (97.9 %) of susceptibility tests were concordant, with only 1 (0.07 %) very major error. This novel method has the potential to reduce the turnaround time for AST results by up to a day for Gram-negative bacteraemias.
Attenuated Vesicular Stomatitis Viruses as Vaccine Vectors

ABSTRACT We showed previously that a single intranasal vaccination of mice with a recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) expressing an influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA) protein provided complete protection from lethal challenge with influenza virus (A. Roberts, E. Kretzschmar, A. S. Perkins, J. Forman, R. Price, L. Buonocore, Y. Kawaoka, and J. K. Rose, J. Virol. 72:4704–4711, 1998). Because some pathogenesis was associated with the vector itself, in the present study we generated new VSV vectors expressing HA which are completely attenuated for pathogenesis in the mouse model. The first vector has a truncation of the cytoplasmic domain of the VSV G protein and expresses influenza virus HA (CT1-HA). This nonpathogenic vector provides complete protection from lethal influenza virus challenge after intranasal administration. A second vector with VSV G deleted and expressing HA (ΔG-HA) is also protective and nonpathogenic and has the advantage of not inducing neutralizing antibodies to the vector itself.
Martelella suaedae sp. nov. and Martelella limonii sp. nov., isolated from the root of halophytes.

Two Gram-stain-negative, aerobic and endophytic bacterial strains, designated YC7033T and YC7034T, were isolated from the roots of halophytes (Suaeda maritime and Limonium tetragonum, respectively) inhabiting tidal flats of the Sacheon area, Korea. The phylogenetic analyses of 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that the two strains were closely related to Martelella endophytica YC6887T, Martelella mangrovi BM9-1T, Martelella radicis BM5-7T and Martelella mediterranea DSM 17316T at 97.6-99.1 % similarity. Sequence similarities with the type strains of another closely related genus, Rhizobium, were lower than 95.0 %. Both strains contained ubiquinone-10 (Q-10) as the major respiratory quinone system. The G+C contents of the genomic DNA of strains YC7033T and YC7034T were 52.8 and 62.2 mol%, respectively. The major fatty acids of both strain YC7033T and strain YC7034T were summed feature 8 (C18 : 1ω7c and/or C18 : 1ω6c) and C19 : 0 cyclo ω8c. On the basis of phylogenetic analysis, and biochemical and phenotypic characteristics, strains YC7033T and YC7034T represent two novel species of the genus Martelella, for which the names Martelella suaedae sp. nov. (type strain: YC7033T=KACC 17175T=NBRC 109440T) and Martelella limonii sp. nov. (type strain: YC7034T=KACC 17176T=NBRC 109441T) are proposed, respectively.
A 1V buck converter IC with hybrid current-mode control and a charge-pump DAC

This paper presents an integrated dc-dc converter with an output voltage of 1 V for portable applications. A hybrid peak current-mode control-scheme is demonstrated, where the voltage-loop compensation is achieved in the digital domain, while the current-regulation loop has a more traditional analog implementation. The main contribution of this work is the novel DAC architecture, which was developed specifically to achieve fast transient-response without needing clock frequencies beyond fs, or expensive signal processing. Unlike the previous approach, based on an adaptive DeltaSigma DAC, the charge-pump (CP) DAC is capable of rapidly increasing the current-command in a single-cycle during load-steps. In addition to a low steady-state current-consumption of 3 muA, the CP-DAC has a guaranteed monotonic transfer characteristic and simplifies the overall system architecture. The resulting system solution achieves dynamic response comparable to state-of-the-art analog current-mode solutions, without using a power-hungry controller, or quantizing the inductor current. A custom IC, which was fabricated in a 0.18 mum CMOS process with 5 V compatible transistors, achieves a response-time of 4 mus at fs = 3 MHz and Vout = 1 V, for a 200 mA load-step. The active area of the controller is only 0.077 mm2, and the total controller current-draw, which is heavily dominated by the on-chip senseFET current-sensor, is below 0.5 % of the load current at Iout= 50 mA.
Safety and effectiveness of a single and repeat intramuscular injection of a GnRH vaccine (GonaCon™) in adult female domestic cats.

Sterilization is a key strategy to reduce the number of domestic cats entering and killed in shelters each year. However, surgical sterilization is expensive and labour-intensive and cannot fully address the 70 million free-roaming cats estimated to exist in the United States. GonaCon™ is a gonadotropin-releasing hormone vaccine originally developed for use as a wildlife immunocontraceptive. An earlier formulation was tested in domestic cats and found to be safe and effective for long-term contraception. However, the current Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered formulation consists of a different antigen-carrier protein and increased antigen concentration and has never been tested in cats. A pilot study was undertaken to evaluate the short-term safety of a single GonaCon immunization, assess the consequences of vaccinated cats receiving an accidental second GonaCon injection and determine the humoral immune response to immunization. During Phase 1, cats in Group A (n = 3) received a single intramuscular injection of GonaCon and Group B (n = 3) received a single intramuscular injection of saline. During Phase 2, Group A received a second GonaCon injection and Group B received their initial GonaCon injection. All cats developed GnRH antibodies within 30 days of vaccine administration. The endpoint titre (1:1,024,000) was similar among all cats, and levels remained high throughout the duration of the study. Four cats developed a sterile, painless, self-limiting mass at the site of injection. The mean number of days to mass development was 110.3 (range, 18-249 days). In conclusion, this preliminary study suggests that the EPA-registered GonaCon formulation is safe for continued testing in domestic cats, an accidental revaccination should not increase the risk of a vaccine reaction and the EPA-registered formulation effectively elicits a strong humoral immune response.
Media Catching and the Journalist–Public Relations Practitioner Relationship: How Social Media are Changing the Practice of Media Relations

With the changing media environment and the evolving online atmosphere, traditional media relations strategies (e.g., news release and media kit preparation and distribution) are shifting to practices that are more relevant to a social media environment. The purpose of this article is to define the changing interplay between journalists and public relations practitioners and to analyze the phenomenon of “media catching,” a reversal of the traditional media relations' communication patterns. Given its rapid increase in the past 2 years, journalists are eager to turn the tables and target large numbers of public relations practitioners for specific content for story ideas. The researchers employed content analysis, and the units of analysis were 3,106 reporter requests sent through the Help-A-Reporter-Out (HARO) list and media-related Twitter updates from HARO founder, Peter Shankman, during a 6-month span. Analysis revealed that traditional news outlets more often used the Twitter venue, yet new media outlets preferred the LISTSERV technology. The importance and value of this study for public relations practitioners and scholars are in the study's attempt to profile the trend of media catching, and to discuss the importance of fielding media requests from a variety of news outlets because of the importance of intermedia agenda setting.
The American Fiscal Deficit: Facts and Effects

The main objective of this paper is to understand and to evaluate recently expressed popular anxiety about large American fiscal deficits. The paper begins with a discussion of problems involved in measuring the fiscal deficit. A general conclusion is that all interesting measures of the federal fiscal deficit have increased substantially over the past eight presidential terms and are likely to increase further in the near future. The paper goes on to analyze possible connections between fiscal deficits and inflation, economic growth, and fluctuations in the level and composition of economic activity. Important conclusions are that monetary policy, inflation, and aggregate economic activity are all largely independent of the fiscal deficit, but that the fiscal deficit can have major effects on the division of output between consumption and investment. Key elements in the analysis are the effects of taxation on consumption and investment demands and the relations between real and financial developments.
The Capital Investment Problem with Technological Change

The investment decision of a firm allowing for technological change is investigated. Based on the premise that technological change requires capital investment, a simple Q model of capital investment, which describes the investment behaviour of a perfectly competitive firm, is developed. The model is estimated using US manufacturing sector data over the period 1947-87 and the data provide support for the model. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and The Victoria University of Manchester.
Global absolute quantification of a proteome: Challenges in the deployment of a QconCAT strategy

In this paper, we discuss the challenge of large‐scale quantification of a proteome, referring to our programme that aims to define the absolute quantity, in copies per cell, of at least 4000 proteins in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We have based our strategy on the well‐established method of stable isotope dilution, generating isotopically labelled peptides using QconCAT technology, in which artificial genes, encoding concatenations of tryptic fragments as surrogate quantification standards, are designed, synthesised de novo and expressed in bacteria using stable isotopically enriched media. A known quantity of QconCAT is then co‐digested with analyte proteins and the heavy:light isotopologues are analysed by mass spectrometry to yield absolute quantification. This workflow brings issues of optimal selection of quantotypic peptides, their assembly into QconCATs, expression, purification and deployment.
Subjective sleep quality in non‐demented older adults with and without cognitive impairment

Sleep problems are prevalent among older adults who are at risk of developing dementia. Until now, there have been relatively few studies investigating subjective sleep quality in these individuals. The first objective of this study was to compare seniors with cognitive impairment no dementia (CIND) and older adults without cognitive impairment (non‐CIND) on several subjective sleep measures. The second objective was to verify whether sleep parameters associated with CIND differ between men and women.
A Hybrid Cascaded Multilevel Converter for Battery Energy Management Applied in Electric Vehicles

In electric vehicle (EV) energy storage systems, a large number of battery cells are usually connected in series to enhance the output voltage for motor driving. The difference in electrochemical characters will cause state-of-charge (SOC) and terminal voltage imbalance between different cells. In this paper, a hybrid cascaded multilevel converter which involves both battery energy management and motor drives is proposed for EV. In the proposed topology, each battery cell can be controlled to be connected into the circuit or to be bypassed by a half-bridge converter. All half-bridges are cascaded to output a staircase shape dc voltage. Then, an H-bridge converter is used to change the direction of the dc bus voltages to make up ac voltages. The outputs of the converter are multilevel voltages with less harmonics and lower dv/dt, which is helpful to improve the performance of the motor drives. By separate control according to the SOC of each cell, the energy utilization ratio of the batteries can be improved. The imbalance of terminal voltage and SOC can also be avoided, fault-tolerant can be easily realized by modular cascaded circuit, so the life of the battery stack will be extended. Simulation and experiments are implemented to verify the performance of the proposed converter.
GERMLINE CAG REPEAT LENGTH OF THE ANDROGEN RECEPTOR AND TIME TO PROGRESSION IN PATIENTS WITH PROSTATE CANCER TREATED WITH ANDROGEN DEPRIVATION THERAPY

There was little association between the number of CAG repeats and extent of disease, Gleason score and preoperative PSA level at diagnosis. Overall, patients who had >18 CAG repeats had a greater risk of recurrence compared with patients who had ≤18 CAG repeats (HR = 1.52; P = 0.03). Excess risk was not found among patients who were at low risk of recurrence (HR = 0.93; P = 0.96); however, among patients who were at high risk of recurrence, the risk elevated for white men (HR =1.75; P = 0.28), African-American men (HR = 1.49; P = 0.06), and both races combined (HR = 1.53; P = 0.03).