Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Pathogenetic Effect of Natural and Bacterial Toxins on Atopic Dermatitis

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common allergic skin disease that is associated with chronic, recurrent eczematous and pruritic lesions at the flexural folds caused by interacting factors related to environmental and immune system changes. AD results in dry skin, and immunoglobulin E-mediated allergic reactions to foods and environmental allergens. While steroids and anti-histamines temporarily relieve the symptoms of AD, the possibility of side effects from pharmacological interventions remains. Despite intensive research, the underlying mechanisms for AD have not been clarified. A study of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) established the role of its toxins in the pathogenesis of AD. Approximately 90% of patients with AD experience S. aureus colonization and up to 50%–60% of the colonizing S. aureus is toxin-producing. Any damage to the protective skin barrier allows for the entry of invading allergens and pathogens that further drive the pathogenesis of AD. Some natural toxins (or their components) that have therapeutic effects on AD have been studied. In addition, recent studies on inflammasomes as one component of the innate immune system have been carried out. Additionally, studies on the close relationship between the activation of inflammasomes and toxins in AD have been reported. This review highlights the literature that discusses the pathogenesis of AD, the role of toxins in AD, and the positive and negative effects of toxins on AD. Lastly, suggestions are made regarding the role of inflammasomes in AD.
Logistic Mixed Models to Investigate Implicit and Explicit Belief Tracking

We investigated the proposition of a two-systems Theory of Mind in adults’ belief tracking. A sample of N = 45 participants predicted the choice of one of two opponent players after observing several rounds in an animated card game. Three matches of this card game were played and initial gaze direction on target and subsequent choice predictions were recorded for each belief task and participant. We conducted logistic regressions with mixed effects on the binary data and developed Bayesian logistic mixed models to infer implicit and explicit mentalizing in true belief and false belief tasks. Although logistic regressions with mixed effects predicted the data well a Bayesian logistic mixed model with latent task- and subject-specific parameters gave a better account of the data. As expected explicit choice predictions suggested a clear understanding of true and false beliefs (TB/FB). Surprisingly, however, model parameters for initial gaze direction also indicated belief tracking. We discuss why task-specific parameters for initial gaze directions are different from choice predictions yet reflect second-order perspective taking.
Pressure Distribution of the Gaseous Flow in Microchannel: A Lattice Boltzmann Study

In this paper the pressure distribution of the gaseous flow in a microchannel is studied via a lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) method. With effective relaxation times and a generalized second order slip boundary condition, the LBE can be used to simulate rarefied gas flows from slip to transition regimes. The Knudsen minimum phenomena of mass flow rate in the pressure driven flow is also investigated. The effects of Knudsen number (rarefaction effect), pressure ratio and aspect ratio (compression effect) on the pressure distribution are analyzed. It is found the rarefaction effect tends to the curvature of the nonlinear pressure distribution, while the compression effect tends to enhance its nonlinearity. The combined effects lead to a local minimum of the pressure deviation. Furthermore, it is also found that the relationship between the pressure deviation and the aspect ratio follows a pow-law.
A Class of Controllers

The standard state space solutions to the H 1 control problem for linear time invariant systems are generalized to nonlinear time-invariant systems. A class of nonlinear H 1-controllers are parameterized as nonlinear fractional transformations on contractive, stable free nonlinear parameters. The investigation is carried out in a methodical fashion. As in the linear case, the H 1 control problem is solved by its reduction to four simpler special problems, together with a separation argument. Another byproduct of this approach is that the suucient conditions for H 1-control problem to be solved are also derived with this machinery. The solvability for nonlinear H 1-control problem requires positive deenite solutions to two parallel decoupled Hamilton-Jacobi inequalities and these two solutions satisfy an additional coupling condition. An illustrative example, which deals with a passive plant, is given at the end.
Employee Sentiment and Stock Option Compensation Paper

The use of equity-based compensation for employees in the lower ranks of large organizations is a puzzle for standard economic theory: undiversified employees should discount company equity heavily, and any positive incentive effects should be diminished by free rider problems. We analyze whether the popularity of option compensation for rank-and-file employees may be driven by employee optimism. We develop a model of optimal compensation policy for a firm faced with employees with positive or negative sentiment, and show that employee optimism by itself is insufficient to make equity compensation optimal. The crucial insight is that firms compete with financial markets as suppliers of equity to employees and that employees’ access to the equity market restricts firms’ ability to profit from employee optimism. It follows that any explanation for option compensation based on employee optimism requires two ingredients: first, employees need to be over-optimistic about firm value, and second, firms must be able to extract some of the implied rents even though employees can purchase company equity by themselves. Such rent extraction becomes feasible if employees prefer the stock options offered by firms to the equity offered by the market, or if the traded equity is overvalued. We provide empirical evidence confirming that firms use broad-based option compensation when boundedly rational employees are likely to be excessively optimistic about company stock, and when employees are likely to have a strict preference for options over stock. * We are grateful for comments from seminar participants at the 2003 Frank Batten Young Scholars Conference, the 2004 AFA Meetings, the Harvard Law, Economics, and Organizations Seminar, the 2004 Financial Management Association Meeting, the 2004 NBER Behavioral Finance Program Meeting, the 2005 Maryland Finance Symposium, MIT Sloan, the University of Minnesota, HEC Paris, INSEAD, Duke University, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Cornell University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Northwestern University, and especially from Andrei Shleifer, Jeremy Stein, Malcolm Baker, Rajesh Aggarwal, Gordon Alexander, Lucian Bebchuk, Luca Benzoni, John Boyd, Markus Brunnermeier, Henrik Cronqvist, Louis Kaplow, Rakesh Khurana, Ross Levine, Robert McDonald, Stew Myers, Paul Oyer, Valery Polkovnichenko, Paul Povel, Michael Roberts, Scott Schaefer, Paul Sengmueller, Aamer Sheikh, Rajdeep Singh, Clifford Stephens, Eric Van den Steen, Wanda Wallace, Martin Weber, Andrew Winton, and Peter Wysocki. We thank John Core and Wayne Guay for making their employee options data available to us. All remaining errors are our own. † MIT Sloan, E52-437, Cambridge, MA 02142. E-mail: nbergman@mit.edu ‡ MIT Sloan and NBER, E52-446, Cambridge, MA 02142. E-mail: djenter@mit.edu
Network-Based Tools for the Identification of Novel Drug Targets

Analysis of network topology and dynamics holds promise for identifying new sets of potential drug targets. In the past few years, network-based tools have become increasingly important in the identification of novel molecular targets for drug development. Systems-based approaches to predict signal transduction–related drug targets have developed into an especially promising field. Here, we summarize our studies, which indicate that modular bridges and overlaps of protein-protein interaction and signaling networks may be of key importance in future drug design. Intermodular nodes are very efficient in mediating the transmission of perturbations between signaling modules and are important in network cooperation. The analysis of stress-induced rearrangements of the yeast interactome by the ModuLand modularization algorithm indicated that components of modular overlap are key players in cellular adaptation to stress. Signaling crosstalk was much more pronounced in humans than in Caenorhabditis elegans or Drosophila melanogaster in the SignaLink (http://www.SignaLink.org) database, a uniformly curated database of eight major signaling pathways. We also showed that signaling proteins that participate in multiple pathways included multiple established drug targets and drug target candidates. Lastly, we caution that the pervasive overlap of cellular network modules implies that wider use of multitarget drugs to partially inhibit multiple individual proteins will be necessary to modify specific cellular functions, because targeting single proteins for complete disruption usually affects multiple cellular functions with little specificity for a particular process. Tools for analyzing network topology and especially network dynamics have great potential to identify alternative sets of targets for developing multitarget drugs.
The Quality of Earnings Momentum and Performance of Mergers & Acquisitions

This paper provides an accounting explanation for the poor, post-acquisition stock performance of glamour acquirers (high market-to-book ratios). I document that glamour acquirers show considerable earnings momentum prior to the acquisition that dissipates after the acquisition. I evaluate the quality of earnings generated from long-term and short-term assets, and identify a new earnings quality measure based on investment returns. Benchmarked against value acquirers and matching glamour non-acquirers, glamour acquirers pursue more aggressive investment strategies but their investment yields lower returns. They also manage accruals for an extended period. The targets merged with glamour acquirers have higher market-to-book ratios but lower earnings quality than those merged with value acquirers. Glamour acquirers time the acquisitions when they can no longer sustain the positive earnings momentum, and the merger sets off a downward spiral in operating and stock performance.
Models of the 
formation of the planets in the 47 UMa system

Formation of planets in the 47 UMa system is followed in an evolving protoplanetary disk composed of gas and solids. The evolution of the disk is calculated from an early stage, when all solids, assumed to be high-temperature silicates, are in the dust form, to the stage when most solids are locked in planetesimals. The simulation of planetary evolution starts with a solid embryo of 1 Earth mass, and proceeds according to the core accretion - gas capture model. Orbital parameters are kept constant, and it is assumed that the environment of each planet is not perturbed by the second planet. It is found that conditions suitable for both planets to form within several Myr are easily created, and maintained throughout the formation time, in disks with 0:01. In such disks, a planet of 2.6 Jupiter masses (the minimum for the inner planet of the 47 UMa system) may be formed at 2.1 AU from the star in 3 Myr, while a planet of 0.89 Jupiter masses (the minimum for the outer planet) may be formed at 3.95 AU from the star in about the same time. The formation of planets is possible as a result of a significant enhancement of the surface density of solids between 1.0 and 4.0 AU, which results from the evolution of a disk with an initially uniform gas-to-dust ratio of 167 and an initial radius of 40 AU.
Book Reviews WINNERS, LOSERS, AND MICROSOFT: COMPETITION AND ANTITRUST IN HIGH TECHNOLOGY. BY STAN J.

Antitrust regulation has been in a steep intellectual decline since at least the mid-1970s. Much of that decline has been due to the fact that Austrian and Chicago critics have eviscerated the conventional theory and empirical “evidence” that was said to rationalize traditional antitrust enforcement. A dwindling number of antitrust scholars now believe that market concentration, barriers to entry, foreclosure, or predatory practices can secure “monopoly” and misallocate resources. Similarly on the empirical side, the evidence that free-market dominant firms restrain trade and raise prices has proven to be nonexistent. Revisionist case analysis has demonstrated that most antitrust defendants were expanding output, innovating rapidly, and lowering prices. Thus, with no theory and no evidence, one might think that the critics had won the war and that antitrust would be headed straight for policy oblivion. Well not quite. The resourceful antitrust community has simply gone ahead and reinvented itself by developing several new theories and an entirely new approach to evidence. (Unfortunately, the new approach is that favorable evidence no longer matters.) All of this is important since the antitrust enthusiasts and regulators intend to apply their newer theories to the current high-tech industry cases, most importantly U.S. v. Microsoft, where their application threatens substantial economic havoc. It is in this context that Winners, Losers, and Microsoft by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis, appears at a most opportune moment, indeed. This carefully written and thoughtful book is devoted to a critical examination of these new theories and to a search for evidence, any evidence, that these new theories can support antitrust. The core of the newer theories is the notion of “network effects. ” Network effects arise whenever the value of a good to a consumer depends importantly on the number of other consumers that use the good, i.e., the more consumers that use computers with email or fax capabilities, the more valuable it becomes having a computer with such capabilities. These increasing returns (advantages) to consumers with compatible computers are clearly beneficial; but, say the critics, they tend to ‘‘lock in” some initial technological innovation as a kind of industry standard (and lock out would-be competitors) and create a fatal “path dependence” that ultimately can lead to (inefficient) monopoly for the first-mover firms.
Training Providers in the Use of Evidence-Based Treatments: A Comparison of In-Person and Online Delivery Modes

Evidenced-based psychotherapies (EBPs) are primarily disseminated via in-person workshops, which have been shown to be effective in training clinicians. However, there is limited space at these workshops, they occur in limited locations, and the time and money required to travel to these workshops is limiting for many providers. An online virtual and interactive training is a potential solution to increase EBP training opportunities for providers. The present study was an initial step to address this limitation in the current research. In-person workshops were compared with live 3-D workshops conducted in the online virtual and interactive platform, Second Life. Analysis of the data demonstrated that the 706 participants, regardless of training modality, demonstrated significant knowledge gains and that the magnitude of these gains did not differ across the in-person and virtual online training modalities. Participants in the online and in-person modality also did not differ in their perceived readiness to implement the EBP after the workshop. A significant difference in training satisfaction was found between the two modalities, with the in-person training group reporting higher satisfaction ratings than the online training participants. Overall, these findings suggest that virtual online EBP training is at least as effective as in-person training.
Coevolution of a Backgammon Player

One of the persistent themes in Artificial Life research is the use of co-evolutionary arms races in the development of specific and complex behaviors. However, other than Sims’s work on artificial robots, most of the work has attacked very simple games of prisoners dilemma or predator and prey. Following Tesauro’s work on TD-Gammon, we used a 4000 parameter feed-forward neural network to develop a competitive backgammon evaluation function. Play proceeds by a roll of the dice, application of the network to all legal moves, and choosing the move with the highest evaluation. However, no back-propagation, reinforcement or temporal difference learning methods were employed. Instead we apply simple hillclimbing in a relative fitness environment. We start with an initial champion of all zero weights and proceed simply by playing the current champion network against a slightly mutated challenger, changing weights when the challenger wins. Our results show co-evolution to be a powerful machine learning method, even when coupled with simple hillclimbing, and suggest that the surprising success of Tesauro’s program had more to do with the co-evolutionary structure of the learning task and the dynamics of the backgammon game itself, than to sophistication in the learning techniques.
Feeding Behaviour on Host Plants May Influence Potential Exposure to Bt Maize Pollen of Aglais Urticae Larvae (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae)

Non-target butterfly larvae may be harmed by feeding on host plants dusted with Bt maize pollen. Feeding patterns of larvae and their utilization of host plants can affect the adverse Bt impact because the maize pollen is distributed unequally on the plant. In a field study, we investigated the feeding of larvae of the Small Tortoiseshell, Aglais urticae, on nettles, Urtica dioica. Young larvae used smaller host plants than older larvae. In general, the position of the larvae was in the top part of the host plant, but older larvae showed a broader vertical distribution on the nettles. Leaf blades and leaf tips were the plant parts most often consumed. Leaf veins were consumed but midribs were fed on to a lesser extent than other plant veins, particularly by young larvae. The feeding behavior of the larvae may increase possible exposure to Bt maize pollen because pollen densities are expected to be higher on the top parts and along leaf veins of nettles.
Evaluating aggregated search pages

Aggregating search results from a variety of heterogeneous sources or verticals such as news, image and video into a single interface is a popular paradigm in web search. Although various approaches exist for selecting relevant verticals or optimising the aggregated search result page, evaluating the quality of an aggregated page is an open question. This paper proposes a general framework for evaluating the quality of aggregated search pages. We evaluate our approach by collecting annotated user preferences over a set of aggregated search pages for 56 topics and 12 verticals. We empirically demonstrate the fidelity of metrics instantiated from our proposed framework by showing that they strongly agree with the annotated user preferences of pairs of simulated aggregated pages. Furthermore, we show that our metrics agree with the majority preference more often than current diversity-based information retrieval metrics. Finally, we demonstrate the flexibility of our framework by showing that personalised historical preference data can be used to improve the performance of our proposed metrics.
THE OUTER DISK OF THE MILKY WAY SEEN IN λ21 cm ABSORPTION

Three recent surveys of 21 cm line emission in the Galactic plane, combining single dish and interferometer observations to achieve resolution of 1′–2′, ∼1 km s−1, and good brightness sensitivity, have provided some 650 absorption spectra with corresponding emission spectra for study of the distribution of warm and cool phase H i in the interstellar medium. These emission–absorption spectrum pairs are used to study the temperature of the interstellar neutral hydrogen in the outer disk of the Milky Way, outside the solar circle, to a radius of 25 kpc. The cool neutral medium is distributed in radius and height above the plane with very similar parameters to the warm neutral medium. In particular, the ratio of the emission to the absorption, which gives the mean spin temperature of the gas, stays nearly constant with radius to ∼25 kpc radius. This suggests that the mixture of cool and warm phases is a robust quantity, and that the changes in the interstellar environment do not force the H iinto a regime where there is only one temperature allowed. The mixture of atomic gas phases in the outer disk is roughly 15–20% cool (40–60 K), the rest warm, corresponding to mean spin temperature ∼250–400 K. The Galactic warp appears clearly in the absorption data, and other features on the familiar longitude–velocity diagram have analogs in absorption with even higher contrast than for 21 cm emission. In the third and fourth Galactic quadrants the plane is quite flat, in absorption as in emission, in contrast to the strong warp in the first and second quadrants. The scale height of the cool gas is similar to that of the warm gas, and both increase with Galactic radius in the outer disk.
Daily perceptions of relationship quality with leaders: implications for follower well-being

ABSTRACT We examined how a key relationship at work, an employee’s relationship with their leader, affects employee daily well-being. In a study of 129 employees across a variety of industries, we examined how follower perceptions of their daily leader–member exchange (LMX) quality across a workweek influenced their well-being (n = 468 observations). Results provided general support for our hypotheses. Specifically, we found that on days when employees perceived a higher quality LMX relationship with their leader, they were more likely to report a sense of belongingness, which was then positively associated with daily reports of vigor and negatively associated with emotional exhaustion. Lagged analyses showed that perceptions of LMX quality were also negatively associated with reports of emotional exhaustion the following workday suggesting that these effects may persist over time. Finally, we found that day-to-day variation in reports of LMX quality attenuated the beneficial effects of LMX on relatedness and vigor supporting our hypothesis that uncertainty related to resource availability may contribute to a threat mindset focused on resource conservation rather than engagement. Implications and future research on leadership and employee well-being are discussed.