Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Its Receptor TrkB to Altered Inhibitory Prefrontal Circuitry in Schizophrenia

Dysfunction of inhibitory neurons in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), represented by decreased expression of GABA-related genes such as the 67 kDa isoform of glutamate decarboxylase (GAD67) and parvalbumin (PV), appears to contribute to cognitive deficits in subjects with schizophrenia. We investigated the involvement of signaling mediated by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its receptor tyrosine kinase TrkB in producing the altered GABA-related gene expression in schizophrenia. In 15 pairs of subjects with schizophrenia and matched control subjects, both BDNF and TrkB mRNA levels, as assessed by in situ hybridization, were significantly decreased in the PFC of the subjects with schizophrenia, whereas the levels of mRNA encoding the receptor tyrosine kinase for neurotrophin-3, TrkC, were unchanged. In this cohort, within-pair changes in TrkB mRNA levels were significantly correlated with those in both GAD67 and PV mRNA levels. Decreased BDNF, TrkB, and GAD67 mRNA levels were replicated in a second cohort of 12 subject pairs. In the combined cohorts, the correlation between within-pair changes in TrkB and GAD67 mRNA levels was significantly stronger than the correlation between the changes in BDNF and GAD67 mRNA levels. Neither BDNF nor TrkB mRNA levels were changed in the PFC of monkeys after a long-term exposure to haloperidol. Genetically introduced decreases in TrkB expression, but not in BDNF expression, also resulted in decreased GAD67 and PV mRNA levels in the PFC of adult mice; in addition, the cellular pattern of altered GAD67 mRNA expression paralleled that present in schizophrenia. Decreased TrkB signaling appears to underlie the dysfunction of inhibitory neurons in the PFC of subjects with schizophrenia.
A Framework for Service Discovery in Pervasive Computing

Service is provided by a lot of autonomous, heterogeneous devices in pervasive computing environment. Service discovery by interface or key words is not fit for heterogeneity and autonomy of devices in pervasive computing environment. Thereby, service discovery by the way of semantics is a hotspot for research. This paper introduces the service description language, OWL-S, and then designs a prototype of system for service discovery in pervasive computing. The system adopts Three-layer Pervasive Semantic Service Matching Algorithm (TPSSMA) which matches service according to category of service, Input/Output parameters and QoS, and which was proved that it is good for lots of service matching in pervasive computing. In this way, user-speciﬁed preferences for web services in terms of non-functional requirements (e.g.,QoS) can be incorporated into the web service discovery mechanism to generate a partially ordered list of services that meet user-speciﬁed functional requirements.
Race And Gender Affinities In Voting: Experimental Evidence

We analyze the results of a large-scale experiment wherein subjects participate in a hypothetical primary election and must choose between two fictional candidates who vary by sex and race. We find evidence of affinities along these dimensions in voting behaviour. A number of phenomena regarding these affinities and their interactions are detailed and explored. We find that they compete with each other on the basis of race and gender. Neuroeconomic metrics suggest that people who vote for own race candidates tend to rely more on heuristics than those who do not.
Star formation and agn activity in interacting galaxies : A near-UV perspective

We study nearby galaxies in close pairs to study the key factors affecting star formation and AGN activity triggered during galaxy interactions. Close pairs are selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey assuming a projected separation of $<$30kpc and recessional velocity difference $<$500km s$^{-1}$. Near-ultraviolet (NUV) fluxes from GALEX are used to estimate specific star formation rates (SSFRs). We find a factor of $\sim$5.3 increase in SSFR for low mass (10$^{8}-10^{11}$M$_{\odot}$) close pair galaxies and a factor of $\sim$2.1 increase in SSFR for high mass mass (10$^{11}-10^{13}$M$_{\odot}$) close pairs compared to the general galaxy population. Considering galaxies of all masses, we find a factor of $\sim$1.8 enhancement in SSFR for close pairs in field environments compared to non-pairs, with no significant increase for pairs in group and cluster environments. A modest decrease of a factor of $\sim$1.4 is found in the Seyfert fraction in close pair galaxies when compared to isolated galaxies, which suggests that mergers may not trigger AGN activity at the close-pair stage or may trigger a different class of AGN. This becomes a factor of $\sim$4.2 decrease when we restrict our analysis to high mass close pairs in group or cluster environments.
Relationships between skeletal maturity estimated from hand-wrist radiographs and the timing of the adolescent growth spurt.

Summary. The roles of ossification events, bone stages and bone ages in the prediction of the timing of the pubertal growth spurt are examined using data from the Harpenden growth study. In general, predictions made more than two years in advance of the average age of peak height velocity (PHV) are of little clinical value. The timings of certain ossification events and of PHV are related but the practical difficulties of obtaining reliable information on their timings precludes their use in most circumstances. Certain bone stages may be used to indicate that growth is nearly completed. RUS bone age is more closely related to the timing of PHV than is carpal age, and it is the most convenient and reliable way of estimating the age at PHV, although the confidence limits of such a prediction are appreciable. It may be very misleading to assume that the growth spurt will be advanced or delayed to the same extent as ossification events or bone age and the appropriate regression equations must be used.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports Financial Visibility and the Decision to Go Private

A large fraction of the companies that went private between 1990 and 2007 were fairly young public firms, often with the same management team making the crucial restructuring decisions both at the time of the initial public offering (IPO) and the buyout. Why did these public firms decide to revert to private ownership? To answer this question, we investigate the determinants of the decision to go private over a firm’s entire public life cycle. Our evidence reveals that firms with declining growth in analyst coverage, falling institutional ownership, and low stock turnover were more likely to go private and opted to do so sooner. We argue that a primary reason behind the decision of IPO firms to abandon their public listing was a failure to attract a critical mass of financial visibility and investor interest. Consistent with the findings of earlier literature, we also find strong support for Jensen’s free-cash-flow hypothesis, which argues that these corporate restructurings are a useful tool in capital markets for mitigating agency problems between insiders and outside shareholders.
Where there is no intervention: Insights into processes of resilience supporting war-affected children.

The last decade has been marked by increasing attention to rigor in the evaluation of interventions that seek to promote the mental health and psychosocial well-being of children in crisis contexts. One of the key markers of such rigor has been the increased adoption of strong quasi-experimental designs, where children receiving an intervention are compared to children not receiving the intervention. Although usually not randomly assigned to such conditions, children in the ‘intervention’ and ‘comparison’ groups are generally assumed to have had similar experiences other than in relation to exposure to the intervention. The use of such designs—when planned and implemented on a sound ethical basis—can significantly strengthen the capacity to make appropriate attribution of any changes observed by exploring the counterfactual case: what happens when there is no intervention? This question is usually supplementary to questions about the outcomes observed in children receiving the services being evaluated and crucial to inference regarding such outcomes. However, this paper argues that data from comparison groups has major value in its own right. Indeed, it represents a major untapped source of reflection on processes of resilience in humanitarian contexts. We use as a foundation for our analysis 3 studies completed over the last decade which examined the impact of protective and psychosocial interventions for war-affected children in Sierra Leone and Uganda. The interventions considered include programs fostering reintegration of formerly abducted children, prompting structured activities in schools, and establishing child-friendly spaces in refugee settlements. In each case, however, our focus is not on the group that received greatest attention in the original reports—the children receiving the intervention—but on those that did not. Analysis indicates the powerful forces which promote recovery in situations of conflict and the need for interventions to be more mindful that their core function is to bolster such engagement and not seek to drive recovery.
Protein F, a Fibronectin-binding Protein of Streptococcus Pyogenes, Also Binds Human Fibrinogen: Isolation of the Protein and Mapping of the Binding Region

During screening of a gene library of Streptococcus pyogenes type M15 for f ibrinogen-binding material, a protein of approximately 100 kDa, encoded outside the vir region, was found. DNA sequencing revealed this component to be identical t o protein F, a fibronectin-binding protein. Isolation of the recombinant protein, termed F15, was performed by the use of fibrinogen affinity chromatography. The affinity constant (K,) of protein F15 for fibrinogen, 1.25 x lo7 mol'l, was lower than that for fibronectin, 1.8 x lo8 mol'l. The fibrinogen-binding domain was located in the N-terminal part of the molecule, while the fibronectin-binding domains, as previously determined, were in the C-terminal portion of protein F. To examine the amino acid sequence heterogeneity of protein F, the 5' part of the prtF gene, corresponding t o the N-terminal variable region of the protein, was amplified by PCR from 12 strains of 5. pyogenes belonging t o six different M-types. Alignment of these nucleotide sequences indicated that the 5' portion of the prtF gene had probably undergone a number of intragenic recombination and horizontal gene transfer events, allowing a pattern of structural diversity of protein F observed earlier for some other streptococcal virulence factors. There was no strict correlation between M-type and nucleotide sequence of the variable region of the prtF gene and, compared to streptococcal M protein, the overall variation observed for protein F appeared more limited.
Urine IgM excretion predicts outcome in ANCA-associated renal vasculitis.

BACKGROUND Renal function at diagnosis is a strong predictor not only of renal survival but also of patient survival of those with anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated small vessel vasculitis (ASVV). Apart from the renal function at diagnosis, there are no other established risk factors for renal outcome in ASVV. We have previously reported that in other forms of glomerular diseases, an increased urine excretion of IgM is an early marker of poor renal outcome. METHODS In this single-centre observational study, the prognostic significance of urine IgM excretion and other selected prognostic markers was studied in 83 consecutive patients (49 males, 34 females) with ASVV with renal involvement. RESULTS Patient survival at 1 and 5 years was 93 and 77%, respectively, and the corresponding figures for renal survival censored for death were 84 and 76%. Univariate analysis indicated that patient survival was inversely associated with age, male sex, serum creatinine, low serum albumin and high urine IgM excretion. Renal survival was inversely associated with serum creatinine, albuminuria and urine IgM. Multivariate analysis determined that only old age and high urine IgM excretion were independent predictors of patient survival [odds ratio (OR) = 11.2 and 4.4, respectively, P<0.01]. Urine excretion of IgM was the only independent predictor of end-stage renal disease (OR = 19.8, P = 0.004). Overall, 35% of the patients reached the composite end-point of either death or renal replacement therapy. Urine IgM excretion was the most potent single predictor of such an outcome (OR = 7.7, P = 0.000). CONCLUSION The occurrence of an increased amount of IgM in urine at presentation is a strong marker of poor prognosis for patients with ANCA-associated renal vasculitis.
Functional interplay between protein arginine methyltransferases in Trypanosoma brucei

Arginine methylation is a common posttranslational modification that has far‐reaching cellular effects. Trypanosoma brucei is an early‐branching eukaryote with four characterized protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs), one additional putative PRMT, and over 800 arginine methylated proteins, suggesting that arginine methylation has widespread impacts in this organism. While much is known about the activities of individual T. brucei PRMTs (TbPRMTs), little is known regarding how TbPRMTs function together in vivo. In this study, we analyzed single and selected double TbPRMT knockdowns for the impact on expression of TbPRMTs and global methylation status. Repression of TbPRMT1 caused a decrease in asymmetric dimethylarginine and a marked increase in monomethylarginine that was catalyzed by TbPRMT7, suggesting that TbPRMT1 and TbPRMT7 can compete for the same substrate. We also observed an unexpected and strong interdependence between TbPRMT1 and TbPRMT3 protein levels. This finding, together with the observation of similar methyl landscape profiles in TbPRMT1 and TbPRMT3 repressed cells, strongly suggests that these two enzymes form a functional complex. We show that corepression of TbPRMT6/7 synergistically impacts growth of procyclic‐form T. brucei. Our findings also implicate the actions of noncanonical, and as yet unidentified, PRMTs in T. brucei. Together, our studies indicate that TbPRMTs display a functional interplay at multiple levels.
The Value of Education and Job Training in the Developing World: New Evidence from Migrant Workers in China

This paper utilises a new survey to evaluate the impact of education and on-the-job training on earnings by migrant workers in China. It accounts for job-skill mismatch and selection bias in training, and examines the sources of a gender gap. The evidence is as follows: the return to required education is 9.5% while that of job training is three times as high; the effect of migrant work experience is considerable; women earn more than men due to endowment effects. This evidence calls for new policy initiatives in China to raise the skills of migrant workers and abolish discrimination against them.
Agent-based distributed power management for Kilo-core processors: Special Session: “Keeping Kilo-core chips cool: New directions and emerging solutions”

Power management for Kilo-core processors have become an intricate problem due to the scalability issues and mixed-workloads of massively multi-threaded applications. This paper highlights the power related issues in Kilo-core processors and presents two emerging trends towards agent-based distributed and self-adaptive power management for Kilo-core processors. Agent-based power management allows applications to autonomously control the power states of their resources while operate efficiently as a whole to improve the overall system's energy efficiency. The first approach based on our concept of virtual power gating that allows applications to temporarily reserve their resources to locally optimize for power efficiency. The second approach is game-theoretic power management to achieve fair resource allocations while maximizing the energy efficiency. We present results for scalability and energy efficiency.
Duration Models for Arabic Text Recognition Using Hidden Markov Models

We present in this paper a system for recognition of printed Arabic text based on hidden Markov models (HMM). While HMMs have been successfully used in the past for such a task, we report here on significant improvements of the recognition performance with the introduction of minimum and maximum duration models. The improvements allow us to build a system working in open vocabulary mode, i.e., without any limitations on the size of the vocabulary. The evaluation of our system is performed using HTK (hidden Markov model toolkit) on a database of word images that are synthetically generated.
THE NEUTRINO SELF-ENERGY IN A MAGNETIZED MEDIUM

In this work we calculate the neutrino self-energy in the presence of a magnetized medium. The magnetized medium consists of electrons, positrons, neutrinos and a uniform classical magnetic field. The calculation is done assuming that the background magnetic field is weak compared to the W-boson mass squared, as a consequence of which only linear order corrections in the field are included in the W-boson propagator. The electron propagator consists of all order corrections in the background field. Although the neutrino self-energy in a magnetized medium in various limiting cases has been calculated previously, in this paper we produce the most general expression of the self-energy in the absence of the Landau quantization of the charged gauge fields. We calculate the effect of the Landau quantization of the charged leptons on the neutrino self-energy in the general case. Our calculation is specifically suited for situations where the background plasma may be CP symmetric.
Motivated disbelief in immigration policy: When disagreeing with the solution means denying the problem

Author(s): Brookfield, Jacob S. | Advisor(s): Sherman, David | Abstract: The motivation to be competent and correct in one’s beliefs has been investigated in empirical research looking at the psychological biases that occur when individuals attempt to explain why their beliefs are correct, despite the presence of evidence that contradicts that. In two studies, I examine one form of these phenomena, motivated disbelief, in the novel domain of immigration policy. After reading a passage on the types of harm that undocumented immigrants experience in U.S., politically conservative participants who read about a proposed immigration policy that was incongruent with their ideology minimized the extent to which they perceived injured undocumented workers as neglected relative to conservative participants who read about a more ideologically-congruent policy (study 1). Similarly, conservative participants who showed low support for a given policy minimized the extent to which they perceived neglect toward undocumented workers and the extent to which undocumented workers experience wage theft (study 2). These studies provide first steps toward unpacking the phenomenon of motivated disbelief within a complex societal issue with multiple groups of people involved (i.e., liberals, conservatives, immigrants). Future work will investigate ways to disrupt these biases in order to better understand the process of their occurrence.
Variation in Women’s Preferences Regarding Male Facial Masculinity Is Better Explained by Genetic Differences Than by Previously Identified Context-Dependent Effects

Women’s preferences for masculine versus feminine male faces are highly variable. According to a dominant theory in evolutionary psychology, this variability results from adaptations that optimize preferences by calibrating them to certain contextual factors, including women’s self-perceived attractiveness, short- versus long-term relationship orientation, pathogen disgust sensitivity, and stage of the menstrual cycle. The theory does not account for the possible contribution of genetic variation on women’s facial masculinity preference. Using a large sample (N = 2,160) of identical and nonidentical female Finnish twins and their siblings, we showed that the proportion of variation in women’s preferences regarding male facial masculinity that was attributable to genetic variation (38%) dwarfed the variation due to the combined effect of contextual factors (< 1%). These findings cast doubt on the importance of these context-dependent effects and may suggest a need for refocusing in the field toward understanding the wide genetic variation in these preferences and how this variation relates to the evolution of sexual dimorphism in faces.
Students’ and teacher’s experiences of the validity and reliability of assessment in a bioscience course

This case study explores the assessment of students’ learning outcomes in a second-year lecture course in biosciences. The aim is to deeply explore the teacher’s and the students’ experiences of the validity and reliability of assessment and to compare those perspectives. The data were collected through stimulated recall interviews. The results showed that grades did not always reflect the learning outcomes and that the intended level of understanding was not always measured. In addition, the teacher and the students thought that the assessment criteria were unclear, which in turn led to the unreliability of the assessment. These problems with the validity and reliability of assessment led to perceptions that the assessment was unfair. The results imply that grades should be critically evaluated as indicators of the quality of learning outcomes. In addition, practical implications are discussed.
Pretest-Posttest-Posttest Multilevel IRT Modeling of Competence Growth of Students in Higher Education in Germany

Longitudinal research in higher education faces several challenges. Appropriate methods of analyzing competence growth of students are needed to deal with those challenges and thereby obtain valid results. In this article, a pretest-posttest-posttest multivariate multilevel IRT model for repeated measures is introduced which is designed to address educational research questions according to a German research project. In this model, dependencies between repeated observations of the same students are considered not, as usual, by clustering observations within participants but rather by clustering observations within semesters. Estimation of the model is conducted within a Bayesian framework. Results indicate that competences grew over time. Gender, intelligence, motivation, and prior education could explain differences in the level of competence among business and economics students.
Mapping of file-sharing onto mobile environments: feasibility and performance of eDonkey with GPRS

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing has become a major application in the Internet with respect to traffic volume which is even surpassing Web usage. This characteristic makes P2P commercially attractive to network operators interested in increased traffic. In parallel, the demand for wireless services has caused wireless networks to grow enormously. We assume that P2P file-sharing will be mapped onto mobile environments by its users. This results in a mobile P2P file-sharing service, which we denote as mobile P2P. In this paper, we examine the feasibility of the eDonkey file-sharing service in GPRS networks, detect problems of the interaction between P2P and the mobile network, and find solutions to overcome them. Furthermore, this paper measures and analyzes the characteristics of mobile P2P and gives first empirical performance values. Summarizing, the goal is the analysis of feasibility for an Internet-based file-sharing application in a mobile network and to provide first measurements from two real-world networks.