Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Manipulation of the Rice L-Galactose Pathway: Evaluation of the Effects of Transgene Overexpression on Ascorbate Accumulation and Abiotic Stress Tolerance

Ascorbic acid (AsA) is the most abundant water-soluble antioxidant in plants, and it plays a crucial role in plant growth, development and abiotic stress tolerance. In the present study, six key Arabidopsis or rapeseed genes involved in AsA biosynthesis were constitutively overexpressed in an elite Japonica rice cultivar. These genes encoded the GDP-mannose pyrophosphorylase (GMP), GDP-mannose-3',5'-epimerase (GME), GDP-L-galactose phosphorylase (GGP), L-galactose-1-phosphate phosphatase (GPP), L-galactose dehydrogenase (GDH), and L-galactono-1,4-lactone dehydrogenase (GalLDH). The effects of transgene expression on rice leaf AsA accumulation were carefully evaluated. In homozygous transgenic seedlings, AtGGP transgenic lines had the highest AsA contents (2.55-fold greater than the empty vector transgenic control), followed by the AtGME and AtGDH transgenic lines. Moreover, with the exception of the AtGPP lines, the increased AsA content also provoked an increase in the redox state (AsA/DHA ratio). To evaluate salt tolerance, AtGGP and AtGME transgenic seedlings were exposed to salt stress for one week. The relative plant height, root length and fresh weight growth rates were significantly higher for the transgenic lines compared with the control plants. Altogether, our results suggest that GGP may be a key rate-limiting step in rice AsA biosynthesis, and the plants with elevated AsA contents demonstrated enhanced tolerance for salt stress.
Compensation and Performance - Empirical Studies on Wages, Bonus Payments, and Intra-Firm Trainings

This thesis analyzes the relationship between compensation and performance. The four chapters empirically investigate the determinants and performance effects of compensation schemes. These topics include the effects of a higher differentiation in bonus payments on individual performance, the determinants of wage premia for newly hired employees, the long-term effects of training participation, and the effect of the recent financial crisis on the determinants of compensation schemes. All chapters have two things in common: First, they are all related to compensation policies, i.e. they all focus either on base salaries or short-term bonus payments or a combination of both. And second, they are based on two large-scaled data sets, because in the end the answers to the questions raised above are empirical ones. We focus on non-executive employees, i.e. lower- and middle-level employees below the top management level. The thesis can be divided into two parts. In chapters 2 to 4, the determinants of compensation schemes in a broader sense are being investigated. Chapter 2 provides an extensive overview on payment schemes in the banking and financial services industry for German-speaking countries, including the impact of the current economic crisis. The third chapter analyzes if newly hired employees receive a wage premium compared to incumbent employees, even if both do the same job. It can be shown that differences in human capital, i.e. the specificity of human capital (general vs. firm-specific), determine whether wage premia are paid to newly hired employees. Chapter 4 investigates the relationship between intra-firm training participation and both fixed salaries and short-term bonus payments. Applying panel data methods to eliminate unobserved heterogeneity, we do not find a long-term effect of training participation on performance measured by monetary indicators. In the second part of the thesis, the performance effects of differentiation in bonus payments on subsequent individual performance are being studied. We indeed find that, on average, a stronger differentiation in a given work unit has a substantial positive effect on individual performance in this unit in the subsequent year. This effect is the larger the higher the hierarchical level. But differentiation has no significant effect or even becomes harmful at the lowest levels.
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

A "New York Times" Notable Book for 2011 A "Globe and Mail" Best Books of the Year 2011 Title A "Kirkus Reviews" Best Nonfiction of 2011 title Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today's developing countries with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world. Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling "The End of History and the Last Man "and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, "The Origins of Political Order" begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution. Drawing on a vast body of knowledge history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents. "
Childcare, Choice and Class Practices: Middle Class Parents and their Children

1. Introduction 2. Contextualising the Study 3. Childcare Policy: International, National and Local Perspectives 4. Middle Class Families 5. Inside the 'Black Box' of the Family: Gender Relations and Childcare 6. Power, Control and Communication: The Hidden Logics of Childcare Relations? 7. 'Making Up' the Middle Class Child 8. Conclusion: A Market in Love?
International Policy Rate Changes and Dublin Interbank Offer Rates

We investigate the influence of international interest rate changes on the Dublin inter bank money market rates (Dibor). Specifically, we analyse the impact of (un)expected changes in German (Euro) area and US policy rates on various Dibor rates between 1991 to 2002 in an event type study. Our decomposition of (un)expected changes of policy rates are based on future markets and is akin to Kuttner (2000). Overall, our results suggest that Dibor rates respond positively and significantly to unanticipated Euro and US policy rate changes while expected changes have an insignificant impact
Nucleus- and cell-specific gene expression in monkey thalamus

Nuclei of the mammalian thalamus are aggregations of neurons with unique architectures and input–output connections, yet the molecular determinants of their organizational specificity remain unknown. By comparing expression profiles of thalamus and cerebral cortex in adult rhesus monkeys, we identified transcripts that are unique to dorsal thalamus or to individual nuclei within it. Real-time quantitative PCR and in situ hybridization analyses confirmed the findings. Expression profiling of individual nuclei microdissected from the dorsal thalamus revealed additional subsets of nucleus-specific genes. Functional annotation using Gene Ontology (GO) vocabulary and Ingenuity Pathways Analysis revealed overrepresentation of GO categories related to development, morphogenesis, cell–cell interactions, and extracellular matrix within the thalamus- and nucleus-specific genes, many involved in the Wnt signaling pathway. Examples included the transcription factor TCF7L2, localized exclusively to excitatory neurons; a calmodulin-binding protein PCP4; the bone extracellular matrix molecules SPP1 and SPARC; and other genes involved in axon outgrowth and cell matrix interactions. Other nucleus-specific genes such as CBLN1 are involved in synaptogenesis. The genes identified likely underlie nuclear specification, cell phenotype, and connectivity during development and their maintenance in the adult thalamus.
Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change.

Introduction Organisational Culture in the Academy Black Women as "other" in the Academy Haystacks in my Mind: How to Stay Sane, Angry and Feminist in the 1990s Lesbian Realities versus Equal Opportunities in the Academy Ascending the Tower: Living in the Mind Transgression: Feminism and Institutionalisation My Mother's Voice? : On Being "Uncivilised" in Academia Measuring the Muse: Creativity, Writing and Career Development Challenging Racism and Sexism in Academia Empowering Working Class Women at Academic Conferences Birthing an Academic Career.
Disproportionate Representation of Minorities in Special Education--How Bad?.

Appropriate special education is unquestionably beneficial for children with “real” disabilities. It offers them an individualized education plan to help develop their potential. But special education for children without specific disabilities, as more often the case of minorities, is unjustifiable. For the latter children, special education is inappropriate and carries stigmatizing labels that negatively affect their self-esteem and achievement in school and later life. This paper addresses the long-term, unresolved, and seemingly unmanageable issue in the education of children with disabilities – disproportionate representation of minorities in special education. Attention is focused on the facts, affects, and efforts of resolve for the condition. With results to date that seem unchanged; the merit of efforts not fully explored is discussed. One initiative for further exploration would be to make special education the enviable disciple that it is capable of becoming – regular education plus special education. With this, special education for persons with disabilities would be more than good (compared to regular education), it would be bad! (regular education plus special accommodating education). Finally, implications are made from the perspective, if special education were indeed special, how bad would overrepresentation of minorities be? Introduction When provided appropriately and in proper perspective, special education is beneficial for children with disabilities. There are many success stories of persons with disabilities (Alliance for Citizens with Disabilities, n.d.). But special education may be a disservice when it is the placement for students who do not need it. The statistics on
Automatic recognition of analog and digital modulation signals using DoE filter

An algorithm for recognition of analogue and digital modulation types, utilizing the decision-theoretic approach, is developed with the novel key features. The proposed 3 novel key features, the each peak number of the phase and the amplitude component obtained by the DoE (Difference of Estimator) filter and the phase gamma max, has robust properties of sensitive with modulation types and insensitive with SNR variation. This paper describes the algorithm which automatically identifies the modulation types of received signals without prior information with these some new and some old key features. The computer simulation is performed. We investigate the performance of the proposed classifier for classifying 9 modulated signals, and compare with that of the conventional decision tree classifier. Results indicated good performance (i.e. the average probability of correct classification (Pcc) of 99.5 %) at the SNR of 10 dB. Comparing with that of the conventional decision tree classifier (i.e. the average Pcc of 95.4 %), we proved that the performance of the proposed classifier is superior to that of the conventional algorithm. Specially, at the SNR as low as 7 dB, the recognition performance of digital signals shows a noticeable improvement.
On Unique Decodability , McMillan ’ s Theorem and the Expected Length of Codes Technical Report

In this paper we propose a revisitation of the topic of unique decodability and of some of the related fundamenta l theorems. It is widely believed that, for any discrete sourc e X, every “uniquely decodable” block code satisfies E[l(X1, X2, · · · , Xn)] ≥ H(X1, X2, . . . , Xn), where X1, X2, . , Xn are the first n symbols of the source, E[l(X1, X2, · · · , Xn)] is the expected length of the code for those symbols andH(X1, X2, . . . , Xn) is their joint entropy. We show that, for certain sources with memory, the above inequalityonly holds if a limiting definition of “ uniquely decodable code”is considered. In particular, the above inequality is usuallyassumed to hold for any “practical code” due to a debatable application of McMillan’s theorem to sources with memory. We thus propose a clarification of the topic, also providing extended versions of McMillan’s theorem and of the Sardinas Patterson test to be used for Markovian sources. This work terminates also with t he following interesting remark: both McMillan’s original th eorem and ours are equivalent to Shannon’s theorem on the capacity of noiseless channels.
Playing Hard to Get: Theory and Evidence on Layoffs, Recalls and Unemployment

Given the importance of recall to previous employer in the United States, I provide both theoretical and empirical analyses of an asymmetric information model with an endogenous layoff-rehire process. I show that taking into account the possibility of recalls has important implications for the study of post-displacement earnings and unemployment duration of laid-off workers in the US. I find that high-productivity laid-off workers may choose unemployment over a low paid job, even though they may not be recalled.
The changing nature of network traffic: scaling phenomena

In this paper, we report on some preliminary results from an in-depth, wavelet-based analysis of a set of high-quality, packet-level traffic measurements, collected over the last 6-7 years from a number of different wide-area networks (WANs). We first validate and confirm an earlier finding, originally due to Paxson and Floyd [14], that actual WAN traffic is consistent with statistical self-similarity for sufficiently large time scales. We then relate this large-time scaling phenomenon to the empirically observed characteristics of WAN traffic at the level of individual connections or applications. In particular, we present here original results about a detailed statistical analysis of Web-session characteristics, and report on an intriguing scaling property of measured WAN traffic at the transport layer (i.e., number of TCP connection arrivals per time unit). This scaling property of WAN traffic at the TCP layer was absent in the pre-Web period but has become ubiquitous in today's WWW-dominated WANs and is a direct consequence of the ever-increasing popularity of the Web (WWW) and its emergence as the major contributor to WAN traffic. Moreover, we show that this changing nature of WAN traffic can be naturally accounted for by self-similar traffic models, primarily because of their ability to provide physical explanations for empirically observed traffic phenomena in a networking context. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that actual WAN traffic traces also exhibit scaling properties over small time scales, but that the small-time scaling phenomenon is distinctly different from the observed large-time scaling property. We relate this newly observed characteristic of WAN traffic to the effects that the dominant network protocols (e.g., TCP) and controls have on the flow of packets across the network and discuss the potential that multifractals have in this context for providing a structural modeling approach for WAN traffic and for capturing in a compact and parsimonious manner the observed scaling phenomena at large as well as small time scales.
The Europeanisation of National Foreign Policy: Dutch, Danish and Irish Foreign Policy in the European Union

Analysing European foreign and security policy conceptual frameworks Dutch foreign policy - 1945-1970 Danish foreign policy - 1945-1973 Irish foreign policy - 1945-1973 the foreign policies of the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland and foreign policy co-operation European foreign and security policy in the Middle East European and foreign security policy and South Africa European foreign and security policy in Yugoslavia/Bosnia the practitioners' assessment.
Antipsychotic Dose Mediates the Association between Polypharmacy and Corrected QT Interval

Antipsychotic (AP) drugs have the potential to cause prolongation of the QT interval corrected for heart rate (QTc). As this risk is dose-dependent, it may be associated with the number of AP drugs concurrently prescribed, which is known to be associated with increased cumulative equivalent AP dosage. This study analysed whether AP dose mediates the relationship between polypharmacy and QTc interval. We used data from a cross-sectional survey that investigated the prevalence of QTc lengthening among people with psychiatric illnesses in Italy. AP polypharmacy was tested for evidence of association with AP dose and QTc interval using the Baron and Kenny mediational model. A total of 725 patients were included in this analysis. Of these, 186 (26%) were treated with two or more AP drugs (AP polypharmacy). The mean cumulative AP dose was significantly higher in those receiving AP polypharmacy (prescribed daily dose/defined daily dose = 2.93, standard deviation 1.31) than monotherapy (prescribed daily dose/defined daily dose = 0.82, standard deviation 0.77) (z = −12.62, p < 0.001). Similarly, the mean QTc interval was significantly longer in those receiving AP polypharmacy (mean = 420.86 milliseconds, standard deviation 27.16) than monotherapy (mean = 413.42 milliseconds, standard deviation 31.54) (z = −2.70, p = 0.006). The Baron and Kenny mediational analysis showed that, after adjustment for confounding variables, AP dose mediates the association between polypharmacy and QTc interval. The present study found that AP polypharmacy is associated with QTc interval, and this effect is mediated by AP dose. Given the high prevalence of AP polypharmacy in real-world clinical practice, clinicians should consider not only the myriad risk factors for QTc prolongation in their patients, but also that adding a second AP drug may further increase risk as compared with monotherapy.
Functional Stability of Retinal Ganglion Cells after Degeneration-Induced Changes in Synaptic Input

Glutamate released from photoreceptors controls the activity and output of parallel pathways in the retina. When photoreceptors die because of degenerative diseases, surviving retinal networks are left without their major source of input, but little is known about how photoreceptor loss affects ongoing synaptic activity and retinal output. Here, we use patch-clamp recording and two-photon microscopy to investigate morphological and physiological properties of identified types of ON and OFF retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the adult (36–210 d old) retinal degeneration rd-1/rd-1 mouse. We find that strong rhythmic synaptic input drives ongoing oscillatory spike activity in both ON and OFF RGCs at a fundamental “beating” frequency of ∼10 Hz. Despite this aberrant activity, ON and OFF cells maintain their characteristic dendritic stratification, intrinsic firing properties, including rebound firing in OFF cells, balance of synaptic excitation and inhibition, and dendritic calcium signaling. Thus, RGCs are inherently stable during degeneration-induced retinal activity.
Incorporating Asymmetric Preferences into Fan Charts and Path Forecasts

Ordinary fan charts consist of symmetric marginal forecast intervals, and do not take into consideration the concrete loss function of the user of the forecast. The note shows how to build fan charts that have exact joint coverage even under asymmetric loss, and maintain at the same time the intuition conveyed by ordinary fan charts. The proposed method is computationally simple, and easily implemented with any loss function. The differences between the information conveyed by fan charts with or without asymmetries, and with or without exact joint coverage, are illustrated with a Bayesian forecast exercise of US GDP growth rates.
Misinformation in Online Social Networks: Detect Them All with a Limited Budget

Online social networks have become an effective and important social platform for communication, opinions exchange, and information sharing. However, they also make it possible for rapid and wide misinformation diffusion, which may lead to pernicious influences on individuals or society. Hence, it is extremely important and necessary to detect the misinformation propagation by placing monitors. In this article, we first define a general misinformation-detection problem for the case where the knowledge about misinformation sources is lacking, and show its equivalence to the influence-maximization problem in the reverse graph. Furthermore, considering node vulnerability, we aim to detect the misinformation reaching to a specific user. Therefore, we study a τ-Monitor Placement problem for cases where partial knowledge of misinformation sources is available and prove its #P complexity. We formulate a corresponding integer program, tackle exponential constraints, and propose a Minimum Monitor Set Construction (MMSC) algorithm, in which the cut-set2 has been exploited in the estimation of reachability of node pairs. Moreover, we generalize the problem from a single target to multiple central nodes and propose another algorithm based on a Monte Carlo sampling technique. Extensive experiments on real-world networks show the effectiveness of proposed algorithms with respect to minimizing the number of monitors.
Clustered and Triggered Star Formation in W5: Observations with Spitzer

We present images and initial results from our extensive Spitzer Space Telescope imaging survey of the W5 H II region with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS). We detect dense clusters of stars, centered on the O stars HD 18326, BD +60 586, HD 17505, and HD 17520. At 24 μm, substantial extended emission is visible, presumably from heated dust grains that survive in the strongly ionizing environment of the H II region. With photometry of more than 18,000 point sources, we analyze the clustering properties of objects classified as young stars by their IR spectral energy distributions (a total of 2064 sources) across the region using a minimal-spanning-tree algorithm. We find ~40%-70% of infrared excess sources belong to clusters with ≥10 members. We find that within the evacuated cavities of the H II regions that make up W5, the ratio of Class II to Class I sources is ~7 times higher than for objects coincident with molecular gas as traced by 12CO emission and near-IR extinction maps. We attribute this contrast to an age difference between the two locations and postulate that at least two distinct generations of star formation are visible across W5. Our preliminary analysis shows that triggering is a plausible mechanism to explain the multiple generations of star formation in W5 and merits further investigation.