Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of Ectromelia Virus Deficient in EVM036, the Homolog of Vaccinia virus F13L, and Its Application for Rapid Generation of Recombinant Viruses

ABSTRACT The orthopoxvirus (OPV) vaccinia virus (VACV) requires an intact F13L gene to produce enveloped virions (EV) and to form plaques in cell monolayers. Simultaneous introduction of an exogenous gene and F13L into F13L-deficient VACV results in expression of the foreign gene and restoration of plaque size. This is used as a method to rapidly generate VACV recombinants without the need for drug selection. However, whether other OPVs require the orthologs of F13L to generate EV and form plaques, whether F13L orthologs and EV are important for OPV pathogenesis in natural hosts, and whether a system based on F13L ortholog deficiency can be used to generate recombinant OPVs other than VACV have not been reported. The F13L ortholog in ectromelia virus (ECTV), the agent of mousepox, is EVM036. We show that ECTV lacking EVM036 formed small plaques and was highly attenuated in vivo but still induced strong antibody responses. Reintroduction of EVM036 in tandem with the DsRed gene resulted in a virus that expressed DsRed in infected cells but was indistinguishable from wild-type ECTV in terms of plaque size and in vivo virulence. Thus, our data show that, like F13L in VACV, EVM036 is required for ECTV plaque formation and that EVM036 and EV are important for ECTV virulence. Our experiments also suggest that OPVs deficient in F13L orthologs could serve as safer anti-OPV vaccines. Further, our results demonstrate that ECTV deficient in EVM036 can be exploited for the rapid generation of fully virulent ECTV expressing foreign genes of interest.
Effects of the interrelationship between genotype, sex, and dietary lysine on growth performance and carcass composition in finishing pigs fed to either 104 or 127 kilograms.

One hundred twenty pigs (initially 44 kg BW) were used to determine effects of the interrelationship between genotype, sex, and dietary lysine on growth performance and carcass composition in a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial arrangement. Genetic comparisons were made between pigs characterized with either a high or medium potential for lean tissue gain. Within genotype, barrows and gilts were separately fed either a . 90 or . 70% lysine diet until the mean weight of pigs in each pen of three reached 104 kg. One pig per pen was slaughtered to determine carcass characteristics and chemical composition. From 104 to 127 kg, dietary lysine was lowered to . 75 or . 55% for pigs fed . 90 or . 70% dietary lysine, respectively. When the pigs' mean weight met or exceeded 127 kg, both pigs were slaughtered to determine carcass characteristics and chemical composition. Carcass length, longissimus muscle area, average backfat thickness, and 10th rib fat depth were measured 24 h postmortem on the chilled carcasses. The right side of each carcass was then ground and chemically analyzed to determine protein and lipid accretion rates. No interactions were detected from 44 to 104 kg; therefore, main effect means will be discussed. At 104 kg, high-lean pigs had increased ADG (P < .01) and gain:feed ratio (G/F; P < .05) compared with medium-lean pigs. Barrows had increased (P < .05) ADG and ADFI but exhibited a poorer (P < .01) G/F than gilts. Pigs fed . 90% lysine had improved (P < .01) ADG compared with pigs fed . 70% lysine. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Education and Health in an Effective‐Labour Empirical Growth Model*

A structural growth equation is formulated incorporating education and health as labor-augmenting variables in an aggregate production function. Although the model is an extension of the neoclassical framework, with diminishing returns to physical capital, growth rates in output per worker need not be identical across countries, even in their steady states. Cross-country empirical estimates suggest a strong positive relationship exists between growth and health (as proxied by life expectancy), even after allowing for possible simultaneity, consistent with other evidence on the productivity-enhancing effects of improved health status. By contrast, the relationship between output per worker and education is not significant. Copyright 1997 by The Economic Society of Australia.
Macroeconomic Factors and Investment in Africa

After more than a decade of implementing economic reform programmes aimed at improving the overall economic environment, investment in Africa is yet to show a robust improvement. This paper suggests that the standard macroeconomic policy variables, such as the exchange rate, trade policy, fiscal and monetary policies, and overall uncertainty explain the sluggish response of investment behaviour to reforms. The paper estimates quadrennial panel data regressions covering the period 1970–96 to study the relationship between macroeconomic policy variables and private investment in Africa. The results show that fiscal, financial and monetary policy, macroeconomic uncertainty and trade variables had a significant impact on private investment. Additionally, the study finds that investors are strongly influenced by the underlying political framework. Thus, political stability matters for investment. Further, the paper shows that Africa remains significantly vulnerable to external shocks, which have had a negative impact on private investment recovery, and suggests the need to diversify the export base as a cushion, especially against terms of trade shocks.
CEO DUALITY AND FIRM PERFORMANCE: WHAT'S THE FUSS?

Rising shareholder activism following poor corporate performance and a subsequent drop in shareholder value at many major U.S. corporations has rekindled interest in duality and corporate governance. Despite limited empirical evidence, duality (chairman of the board and CEO are the same individual) has been blamed, in many cases, for the poor performance and failure of firms to adapt to a changing environment. In examining the relationship between duality and firm performance, this study considers the announcement effects of changes in duality status, accounting measures of operating performance for firms that have changed their duality structure, and long-term measures of performance for firms that have had a consistent history of a duality structure. Our results suggest that: (1) the market is indifferent to changes in a firm's duality status; (2) there is little evidence of operating performance changes around changes in duality status; and (3) there is only weak evidence that duality status affects long-term performance, after controlling for other factors that might impact that performance.
Detection and genotyping of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato by polymerase chain reaction.

AIM To isolate and genotype Borrelia burgdorferi genospecies in serum samples of Croatian patients with erythema migrans. METHODS DNA isolates from sera of patients with erythema migrans were analyzed by nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR), amplifying a segment of flagellin gene with primers encompassing the conserved region of the gene. To screen PCR products for heterogeneity, we performed single-stranded conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis. The samples showing differences in SSCP patterns were sequenced, and the sequence compared in the GeneBank for sequence homology with known Borrelia burgdorferi genospecies. We also constructed phylogenetic tree of all known borrelial sequences. RESULTS The nested PCR method using specially designed flagellin gene primers, achieved the sensitivity of 10 genome copies (0.01 pg of purified Borrelia burgdorferi DNA from culture) by dilution analysis. The assay specificity was confirmed by amplification of a part of the flagellin gene from different bacterial species. The primer pairs successfully amplified only Borrelia burgdorferi flagellin gene. The genome of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato was detected in the sera of all 10 tested patients with erythema migrans. Sequence data and phylogenetic analysis confirmed that all amplified samples belonged to Borrelia afzelii genospecies. CONCLUSION Phylogenetic tree analysis placed the borrelial isolates together with Borrelia afzelii sequences into a single group. This finding was additionally supported by sequence homology analysis, which produced a homology score of 99%. In patients with erythema migrans who come from the northwest Croatia, an endemic area for Lyme borreliosis, Borrelia afzelii was the cause of skin manifestations of Lyme borreliosis.
Country Competition and Us Overseas Assembly

To examine the role of international competition in outsourcing production decisions, I study the decisions of producers who used the U.S. Overseas Assembly Program (OAP) to conduct assembly operations in developing countries. The evidence, which is based on U.S. OAP imports between 1991 to 2000, shows that production costs and corporate tax policies both shaped production decisions. While increases in own country costs reduced the size of a developing country's OAP shipments, increases in competitor costs helped to increase a country's shipments. The effects of competitor country cost changes were relatively large, as the analysis suggests that a ten percent increase in competing country costs would increase a country's OAP outsourcing activities by 5.8 percent, while a ten percent increase in competitor country taxes would increase a country's OAP exports by 1.6 percent.
COMPLEMENTARITY AND EXTERNAL LINKAGES: THE STRATEGIES OF THE LARGE FIRMS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY*

In biotechnology, large firms enter into different kinds of linkages with universities and small/medium sized research-intensive firms. The authors test the hypothesis that the strategies of external linkage of the large firms with other parties are complementary to one another. They show that if any two strategies are complementary (i.e., undertaking more of one strategy raises the marginal value of the other), then they are positively correlated. Using data for a sample of large U.S., European, and Japanese chemical and pharmaceutical producers, the authors find that the strategies above are positively correlated even after controlling for firm-specific characteristics. Copyright 1990 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Interoceptive Effects of Alcohol Require mGlu5 Receptor Activity in the Nucleus Accumbens

The interoceptive effects of alcohol are major determinants of addiction liability. Metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptors are widely expressed in striatal circuits known to modulate drug-seeking. Given that the interoceptive effects of drugs can be important determinants of abuse liability, we hypothesized that striatal mGlu receptors modulate the interoceptive effects of alcohol. Using drug discrimination learning, rats were trained to discriminate alcohol (1 g/kg, i.g.) versus water. We found that systemic antagonism of metabotropic glutamate subtype 5 (mGlu5) receptors [10 mg/kg 2-methyl-6-(phenylethynyl)pyridine (MPEP) and 3 mg/kg 3-((2-methyl-1,3-thiazol-4-yl)ethynyl)pyridine], but not mGlu1 receptors ([0.3–3 mg/kg JNJ16259685) (3,4-dihydro-2H-pyrano[2,3]β-quinolin-7-yl)(cis-4-methoxycyclohexyl) methanone)], inhibited the discriminative stimulus effects of alcohol. Furthermore, mGlu5 receptor antagonism (10 mg/kg MPEP) significantly inhibited neuronal activity in the nucleus accumbens core as levels of the transcription factor c-Fos were significantly reduced. Accordingly, targeted inhibition of mGlu5 receptors (20 μg of MPEP) in the nucleus accumbens core blunted the discriminative stimulus effects of alcohol (1 g/kg). Anatomical specificity was confirmed by the lack of effect of inhibition of mGlu5 receptors (10–30 μg of MPEP) in the dorsomedial caudate–putamen and the similar cytological expression patterns and relative density of mGlu5 receptors between the brain regions. Functional involvement of intra-accumbens mGlu5 receptors was confirmed as activation of mGlu5 receptors [10 μg of (RS)-2-amino-2-(2-chloro-5-hydroxyphenyl)acetic acid sodium salt] enhanced the discriminative stimulus effects of a low alcohol dose (0.5 g/kg), and mGlu5 receptor inhibition (20 μg of MPEP) prevented the agonist-induced enhancement. These results show that mGlu5 receptor activity in the nucleus accumbens is required for the expression of the interoceptive effects of alcohol.
The effectiveness of a computer‐assisted instruction programme on communication skills of medical specialists in oncology

Although doctor–patient communication is important in health care, medical specialists are generally not well trained in communication skills. Conventional training programmes are generally time consuming and hard to fit into busy working schedules of medical specialists. A computer‐assisted instruction (CAI) programme was developed – `Interact‐Cancer' – which is a time‐efficient learning method and easily accessible at the workplace.
Freeing Resources for Improving Schools: A Case Study of Teacher Allocation in Boston Public Schools

Increasingly, discussions of education reform end up in debate over how much money will be required to fund it. Although educators often argue for more funds and critics counter that school spending is already at an all-time high, neither group has looked systematically at the use of existing resources. This analysis addresses how school systems might reconsider their use of teachers, their most important and expensive resource, to support reform. A case study of Boston Public Schools shows how the specialization and fragmentation of teaching resources reduced the individual attention most students received and limited a school's flexibility to respond to student needs. The analysis develops three measures that might be used as indicators of the size of opportunity for freeing teaching resources. It identifies four practices that together account for over 40% of Boston's teaching resources and could provide significant opportunity to redirect resources to support reform.
Poor Risk Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma: Outcomes from a Registry in a Tertiary Cancer Center

Abstract Background: Poor-risk advanced Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) are an under-evaluated and difficult to treat subset of patients with poor prognosis. While Temsirolimus is the approved first line therapy for this category, Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are also commonly uses as initial treatment. We present an analysis of poor-risk advanced RCC treated in our institute. Materials and Methods: Patients diagnosed as poor-risk (as per Heng criteria) advanced RCC from June 2008 to December 2015 were analysed for baseline demographics, treatment received, toxicity (primarily Grade 3 and Grade 4), response rates (RR) and survival. Results: 60 patients (43 males, 17 females) with a median age of 53 years were included for final analysis. Median ECOG PS was 1, clear cell was the predominant histology (63.3%), and 46.7% of patients had greater than 2 sites of metastases. Sorafenib, Sunitinib, Temsirolimus and Pazopanib were used to treat 43.3%, 36.7%, 8.3% and 6.7% of patients respectively, while 3 patients were offered upfront best supportive care. Common adverse events included skin rash (31.5%), HFS (Grade 2 and 3 - 30.8%), mucositis (26.3%), hypertension (24.5%), and dyslipidaemias (22.8%). 41 patients were available for response - overall response rate observed was 15%, while clinical benefit rate was 50%. Median progression free survival was 5.78 months (4.67-6.89) and median overall survival (OS) was 10.05 months (7.31-12.79). Conclusion: A majority of poor-risk metastatic RCC patients in our study were treated with TKIs and the survival outcomes appear to suggest that this strategy is a feasible alternative to Temsirolimus in the Indian setting.
Mapping 'Information Economy' Businesses with Big Data: Findings for the UK

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT and digital industries. Policymakers thus need a clear sense of the size and characteristics of digital businesses, but this is hard to do with conventional datasets and industry codes. This paper uses innovative ‘big data’ resources to perform an alternative analysis at company level, focusing on ICT-producing firms in the UK (which the UK government refers to as the ‘information economy’). Exploiting a combination of public, observed and modelled variables, we develop a novel ‘sectorproduct’ approach and use text mining to provide further detail on the activities of key sector-product cells. On our preferred estimates, we find that counts of information economy firms are 42% larger than SIC-based estimates, with at least 70,000 more companies. We also find ICT employment shares over double the conventional estimates, although this result is more speculative. Our findings are robust to various scope, selection and sample construction challenges. We use our experiences to reflect on the broader pros and cons of frontier data use.
Sequestration of RNA in Alzheimer's disease neurofibrillary tangles and senile plaques

The polypeptide composition of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) and senile plaques (SPs) has been characterized extensively within the Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain. Because few data exist on the nonproteinaceous components of these lesions, we sought to determine if NFTs, neuropil threads (NTs), and SPs contain RNA species. To acoomplish this, acridine orange (AO) histofluorescence was employed, alone or in combination with thioflavine S (TS) staining and immunohistochemistry to identify RNAs in paraffin‐embedded tissue sections of hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. Postmortem brain samples came from 32 subjets including AD and elderly Down's syndrome (DS) patints, age‐matched normal controls, and non‐AD diseased controls. AO stained the cytoplasm of normal hippocampal and entorhinal neurons in all of the cases, while NFTs, NTs, and SPs were AO‐positive in the same regions of AD and DS brains. Cytoplasmic AO histofluorescence was abolished with RNase, but not DNase or proteinase K, indicating the relative specificity of AO for RNA species. Quantitative analysis of double‐labeled sections demonstrated that approximately 80% of TS‐positive NFTs also were AO‐positive, whereas approximately 55% of TS‐stained SPs contained AO labeling. These novel observations demosntrate the presence of RNAs in NFTs, NTs, and SPs.
External Debt and Capital Flight in the Indian Economy

This paper estimates Indian capital flight at US $88 billion (in 1997 dollars) over the 1971‐97 period, a sum that is roughly 20% of the US $448 billion real external debt disbursed to the country over the same time period. There is also evidence of a strong year-to-year correlation between debt inflows and flight-capital outflows. The paper explores the nature of this association between capital flight and external debt in the Indian economy. An analysis by Boyce (1992, World Development, 20, pp. 335‐349) for the Philippines revealed the presence of contemporaneous bi-directional causality, in other words, a financial revolving door relationship between external debt and capital flight in that economy. The research question addressed by this paper is whether such a financial revolving door relationship exists in India, given its higher level of external indebtedness and lower debt-to-GNP ratio as compared with the Philippines. Utilizing a simultaneous equation model to examine the association between capital flight and external debt in the Indian economy, the paper confirms the existence of a financial revolving door relationship between the two endogenous variables.
The Low-Resolution Structure of Nascent High Density Lipoprotein Reconstituted with DMPC With and Without Cholesterol Reveals A Mechanism for Particle Expansion

Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) with contrast variation was used to obtain the low resolution structure of nascent HDL (nHDL) reconstituted with dimyristoyl phosphatidyl choline (DMPC) in the absence and presence of cholesterol, [apoA1:DMPC (1:80, mol:mol) and apoA1:DMPC:Cholesterol (1:86:9, mol:mol:mol)]. The overall shape of both particles is discoidal with the low resolution structure of apoA1 visualized as an open, contorted, and out of plane conformation with three arms in nHDL/DMPC without cholesterol (nHDLDMPC) and two arms in nHDL/DMPC with cholesterol (nHDLDMPC+Chol). The low resolution shape of the lipid phase in both nHDLDMPC and nHDLDMPC+Chol were oblate ellipsoids, and fit well within their respective protein shapes. Modeling studies indicate that apoA1 is folded onto itself in nHDLDMPC, making a large hairpin, which was also confirmed independently by both cross-linking mass spectrometry and hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry analyses. In nHDLDMPC+Chol, the lipid was expanded and no hairpin was visible. Importantly, despite the overall discoidal shape of the whole particle in both nHDLDMPC and nHDLDMPC+Chol, an open conformation (i.e. not a closed belt) of apoA1 is observed. Collectively, these data show that full length apoA1 retains an open architecture that is dictated by its lipid cargo. The lipid is likely predominantly organized as a bilayer with a micelle domain between the open apoA1 arms. The apoA1 configuration observed suggests a mechanism for accommodating changing lipid cargo by quantized expansion of hairpin structures. by gest, on N ovem er 9, 2017 w w w . j.org D ow nladed fom
Tax Loss Offset Restrictions - Last Resort for the Treasury? An Empirical Evaluation of Tax Loss Offset Restrictions Based on Micro Data

In Germany, the tax loss carry-forward of corporations significantly increased over the last decade. At the same time only a small percentage of losses have been effectively offset in the following periods. One potential reason for this puzzle is that stricter loss offset restrictions have been introduced in recent years. I use a newly developed micro simulation model for the corporate sector in Germany to evaluate the fiscal effects of these restrictions. Additionally, distributional breakdowns concerning the amounts of tax loss carry-forward and the effects of loss offset restrictions are provided. I find that the restrictions on the use of tax loss carryback are rather ineffective while the newly introduced minimum taxation considerably increases yearly tax revenue by 1.1 billion €.