Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transcriptome Sequencing Revealed Significant Alteration of Cortical Promoter Usage and Splicing in Schizophrenia

Background While hybridization based analysis of the cortical transcriptome has provided important insight into the neuropathology of schizophrenia, it represents a restricted view of disease-associated gene activity based on predetermined probes. By contrast, sequencing technology can provide un-biased analysis of transcription at nucleotide resolution. Here we use this approach to investigate schizophrenia-associated cortical gene expression. Methodology/Principal Findings The data was generated from 76 bp reads of RNA-Seq, aligned to the reference genome and assembled into transcripts for quantification of exons, splice variants and alternative promoters in postmortem superior temporal gyrus (STG/BA22) from 9 male subjects with schizophrenia and 9 matched non-psychiatric controls. Differentially expressed genes were then subjected to further sequence and functional group analysis. The output, amounting to more than 38 Gb of sequence, revealed significant alteration of gene expression including many previously shown to be associated with schizophrenia. Gene ontology enrichment analysis followed by functional map construction identified three functional clusters highly relevant to schizophrenia including neurotransmission related functions, synaptic vesicle trafficking, and neural development. Significantly, more than 2000 genes displayed schizophrenia-associated alternative promoter usage and more than 1000 genes showed differential splicing (FDR<0.05). Both types of transcriptional isoforms were exemplified by reads aligned to the neurodevelopmentally significant doublecortin-like kinase 1 (DCLK1) gene. Conclusions This study provided the first deep and un-biased analysis of schizophrenia-associated transcriptional diversity within the STG, and revealed variants with important implications for the complex pathophysiology of schizophrenia.
Virtual reality treatment of flying phobia

Flying phobia (FP) might become a very incapacitating and disturbing problem in a person's social, working, and private areas. Psychological interventions based on exposure therapy have proved to be effective, but given the particular nature of this disorder they bear important limitations. Exposure therapy for FP might be excessively costly in terms of time, money, and efforts. Virtual reality (VR) overcomes these difficulties as different significant environments might be created, where the patient can interact with what he or she fears while in a totally safe and protected environment, the therapist's consulting room. This paper intends, on one hand, to show the different scenarios designed by our team for the VR treatment of FP, and on the other, to present the first results supporting the effectiveness of this new tool for the treatment of FP in a multiple baseline study.
Expression Analysis of Taste Signal Transduction Molecules in the Fungiform and Circumvallate Papillae of the Rhesus Macaque, Macaca mulatta

The molecular mechanisms of the mammalian gustatory system have been examined in many studies using rodents as model organisms. In this study, we examined the mRNA expression of molecules involved in taste signal transduction in the fungiform papillae (FuP) and circumvallate papillae (CvP) of the rhesus macaque, Macaca mulatta, using in situ hybridization. TAS1R1, TAS1R2, TAS2Rs, and PKD1L3 were exclusively expressed in different subsets of taste receptor cells (TRCs) in the FuP and CvP. This finding suggests that TRCs sensing different basic taste modalities are mutually segregated in macaque taste buds. Individual TAS2Rs exhibited a variety of expression patterns in terms of the apparent level of expression and the number of TRCs expressing these genes, as in the case of human TAS2Rs. GNAT3, but not GNA14, was expressed in TRCs of FuP, whereas GNA14 was expressed in a small population of TRCs of CvP, which were distinct from GNAT3- or TAS1R2-positive TRCs. These results demonstrate similarities and differences between primates and rodents in the expression profiles of genes involved in taste signal transduction.
Determinants of innovation adoption: a literature review and future avenues of research

Purpose of the study . To develop a systematic literature review on innovation adoption at the individual and organizational levels of analysis in order to identify adoption determinants, as well as possible gaps and areas of future research. Methodology . Systematic review of literature based on keywords, conducted on databases of articles from different disciplines. Categorization of papers and cross-validation based on the findings of previous reviews . Findings . Identification of the determinants of innovation adoption at the individual and organizational levels. Focus on opportunities for future research concerning individual adoption and use of threshold models, but also organizational adoption and integration with real option theory. Emphasis on the need for a multi-level analysis of organizational innovation adoption. Research limits . We have not come to develop detailed propositions linking the issues, which would be a logical next step. Furthermore, we cannot exclude that using databases other than the ones employed will lead to discover omitted relevant research. Practical implications . By improving understanding of the determinants of innovation adoption and how they are interrelated, new models may be of use to practitioners in gaining acceptance of innovation within an organization, and ensure it contributes to sustained competitive advantage. Originality of the study . We believe that the material presented in our paper and the issues raised will form a useful and incremental contribution to the existing knowledge on innovation adoption. We systematically profiled a larger, and more timely set of existing publications in terms of author, publication year, level of analysis, theoretical perspective employed, nature of adoption variables. individual/organizational level
Protein Folding in the Cell: Challenges and Progress This Review Comes from a Themed Issue on Folding and Binding Edited Macromolecular Crowding Hindered Mobility and Sticky Neighbors Vectorial Synthesis and Roles of Mrna and Ribosomes in Folding Concluding Thoughts

It is hard to imagine a more extreme contrast than that between the dilute solutions used for in vitro studies of protein folding and the crowded, compartmentalized, sticky, spatially inhomogeneous interior of a cell. This review highlights recent research exploring protein folding in the cell with a focus on issues that are generally not relevant to in vitro studies of protein folding, such as macromolecular crowding, hindered diffusion, cotranslational folding, molecular chaperones, and evolutionary pressures. The technical obstacles that must be overcome to characterize protein folding in the cell are driving methodological advances, and we draw attention to several examples, such as fluorescence imaging of folding in cells and genetic screens for in-cell stability. Introduction Chris Anfinsen launched the field of protein folding by showing that ribonuclease (specifically, bovine pancreatic ribonuclease A) could refold to an active enzyme after reductive denaturation. Naturally, ribonuclease became emblematic of the fundamental tenet of protein folding — that the primary sequence of a protein specifies an energy landscape and a successful route to the native state at the global energy minimum. Yet ribonuclease folds in vivo during a complex journey through the secretory pathway of the cell. Notably, in its biological folding process, ribonuclease confronts milieux that are densely crowded with macromolecules; it samples the microen-vironments of the ribosome tunnel, the translocon, and the ER lumen; it has the opportunity to fold from its N-terminus to C-terminus; and it is not left on its own, but instead is accompanied by lumenal chaperones that facilitate its folding and post-translational modification. As this journey abundantly illustrates, protein folding in the cell confronts many issues that are nonexistent in high dilution refolding experiments. It is thus not surprising that an increasing research effort is being applied to issues and processes involved in cellular protein folding. This review presents research in the expanding area of protein folding in the cell. We mainly confine our discussion to publications on cellular protein folding that have appeared in the last two years and to areas that have not been recently reviewed. We first describe a number of issues, such as macromolecular crowding and cotransla-tional folding, that arise when considering folding in the cell but are absent in vitro (Figure 1). Next, we describe innovative methods to address these issues, particularly in intact cells where the risks of reductionism are minimized. Lastly, we describe some new papers that highlight the complex biological …
Regulation Fair Disclosure's Effect on the Information Content of Bond Rating Changes

The SEC implemented Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) in 2000. Reg FD requires firms to release material information to everyone simultaneously, thereby reducing information asymmetry between favoured stock analysts and others. Bond rating agencies were exempt from Reg FD in order to continue receiving the private firm information necessary for accurate credit default assessments. The exemption, if valuable to the bond market, should have resulted in an increase in the relative importance of bond rating changes on bond yield premia when Reg FD was implemented. In the first empirical study on the impact of Reg FD on the bond markets, we explore this hypothesis by measuring bond yield premia reactions to bond rating changes around the implementation of Reg FD. For downgrades, we find the impact of Reg FD is related to firm size. The smallest firms experienced a significantly weaker bond yield premia response. The evidence for the relevance of Reg FD for upgrades is weak. Contrary to concerns from the Bond Market Association, it appears Reg FD lessened the impact of downgrades on the smallest firms, and did not affect speculative‐grade bonds or bonds with higher debt levels.
Race-specific differences in antioxidant enzyme activity in patients with type 2 diabetes: a potential association with the risk of developing nephropathy.

OBJECTIVE Lipid hydroperoxide, a marker of oxidative stress, is linked to the development of nephropathy and is reportedly higher in patients of African origin compared with Caucasians. This may be relevant to race-specific differences in susceptibility to nephropathy. We investigated whether alterations in antioxidant enzyme activity could account for this biochemical phenotype and examined the relationship with conventional markers of renal disease. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Two hundred seventeen individuals were studied. Patients with type 2 diabetes (n = 75) of African and Caucasian origin were matched by sex and racial origin with healthy control subjects (n = 142). Plasma total superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity were spectrophotometrically measured, and total cholesterol and triglycerides were measured by enzymatic methods. RESULTS SOD activity was higher and GPx activity lower in patients with diabetes than in healthy control subjects (573 +/- 515 vs. 267 +/- 70 units/l, P < 0.001 and 150 +/- 93 vs. 178 +/- 90 units/l, P = 0.019, respectively). Patients of African origin with diabetes had lower GPx and higher SOD activity compared with Caucasian patients (126 +/- 82 vs. 172 +/- 97 units/l, P = 0.03 and 722 +/- 590 vs. 445 +/- 408 units/l, P = 0.002, respectively). Patients of African origin with normal urinary albumin excretion had significantly higher plasma creatinine concentrations (100.7 +/- 14.2 vs. 88.1 +/- 14.9 micromol/l, P = 0.007) and lower GPx activity (99.0 +/- 72.4 vs. 173.7 +/- 107.4 units/l, P = 0.02) compared with those of Caucasian origin. African origin was an independent predictor of elevated SOD (P = 0.007) and reduced GPx activity (P = 0.02) in regression analysis. CONCLUSIONS SOD and GPx enzyme activities vary according to race and could account for differences in lipid hydroperoxide. In patients of African origin, susceptibility to renal disease may be associated with lowered GPx activity.
Asynchronous clustering of multihop Wireless Sensor Networks

Node clustering has been widely studied in recent years for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) as a technique to form a hierarchical structure and prolong network lifetime by reducing the number of packet transmissions. Cluster Heads (CH) are elected in a distributed way among sensors, but are often highly overloaded, and therefore re-clustering operations should be performed to share the resource intensive CH-role. Existing protocols involve periodic network-wide re-clustering operations that are simultaneously performed, which requires global time synchronisation. To address this issue, some recent studies have proposed asynchronous node clustering for networks with direct links from CHs to the data sink. However, for large-scale WSNs, multihop packet delivery to the sink is required since longrange transmissions are costly for sensor nodes. In this paper, we present an asynchronous node clustering protocol designed for multihop WSNs, considering dynamic conditions such as residual node energy levels and unbalanced data traffic loads caused by packet forwarding. Simulation results demonstrate that it is possible to achieve similar levels of lifetime extension by re-clustering a multihop WSN via independently made decisions at CHs, without a need for time synchronisation required by existing synchronous protocols.
Near-criticality underlies the behavior of early tumor growth

The controlling factors that underlie the growth of tumors have often been hard to identify because of the presence in this system of a large number of intracellular biochemical parameters. Here, we propose a simplifying framework to identify the key physical parameters that govern the early growth of tumors. We model growth by means of branching processes where cells of different types can divide and differentiate. First, using this process that has only one controlling parameter, we study a one cell type model and compute the probability for tumor survival and the time of tumor extinction. Second, we show that when cell death and cell division are perfectly balanced, stochastic effects dominate the growth dynamics and the system exhibits a near-critical behavior that resembles a second-order phase transition. We show, in this near-critical regime, that the time interval before tumor extinction is power-law distributed. Finally, we apply this branching formalism to infer, from experimental growth data, the number of different cell types present in the observed tumor.
Two-colour photometric selection of high-redshift galaxies

In this paper we describe a set of models to predict the colours of galaxies over a wide range of redshifts. We present examples of output from the simulations, and discuss their application to the selection of galaxies at high redshifts, particularly through identification of the Lyman break. Additionally we consider the optimal choices of filters for selection at a range of redshifts. An interface to a subset of the simulations has been made available on the World Wide Web for the benefit of the community at the location http://www-astro.physics. ox.ac. uk/~rejs/research/galcols.html/
Patent Defense Financing ∗

The protection that innovators obtain from patenting their inventions crucially depends on their incentives and ability to defend them from infringers. We study how the financing of legal costs can alter the incentives to litigate in defense of the patent and, thus, the prospects of infringement and the effective protection of the innovation. We compare the resort to a financier once the infringement has occurred (ex-post financing) with patent litigation insurance (PLI). In its basic form, PLI provides a stronger commitment to litigate, which may have a deterrence effect on the potential infringer, but has the cost of inducing excessive litigation, so its dominance over ex-post financing is not general. We show, however, that, adding an appropriate deductible, PLI can implement the innovator’s second-best outcome: patent predation by deeppocketed competitors can be prevented without the cost of excessive litigation. ∗Address for correspondence: CEMFI, Casado del Alisal 5, 28014 Madrid, Spain. Tel: +34914290551. Fax: +34-914291056. Email: llobet@cemfi.es, suarez@cemfi.es. †We thank Andres Almazan, Dima Leshchinskii, Rafael Repullo, Ibolya Schindele, the participants at the 6th Bundesbank Spring Conference on Financing Innovation, and the seminar audience at CEMFI for their comments. Financial support from European Commission grant HPSE-CT2002-00140 is gratefully acknowledged.
Estimates of Farm Output Supply and Input Demand Elasticities: The Translog Profit Function Approach

The importance of estimating valid elasticities of farm output supply and input demand can hardly be overemphasised. Reliable estimates of these elasticities are sine qua non for predicting accurately the farmer responsiveness to changes in inputoutput prices and government taxes and thereby for formulating successful agricultural incentive programmes consistent with national requirements of food, development and exports. In fact, robust estimates of the coefficients of such elasticities can serve as a solid basis in determining effective policy relevant interventions for promoting production, equity, efficiency, and finally egalitarian income distribution in the farm sector of the economy. Farmer input factor demand and output supply elasticities have earlier been derived with direct or indirect application of the Cobb-Douglas production function to farm survey data [Lau and Yotopoulos (1971); Yotopoulos (1972); Yotopoulos, Lau and Lin (1976); Junankar (1980) and Sindhu and Baanannte (1981)]. The Cobb- Douglas production function is based on highly restricted assumptions such as the unitary elasticity of substitution, constant returns to scale and "a priori" imposition of separability restrictions.
Entrepreneurial characteristics amongst university students: Some insights for entrepreneurship education and training in Turkey

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to explore the entrepreneurship profile of Turkish university students and to make an evaluation for their entrepreneurship orientation by comparing them with non‐entrepreneurially inclined students.Design/methodology/approach – In this study, six traits, namely need for achievement, locus of control, risk taking propensity, tolerance for ambiguity, innovativeness and self‐confidence, are used to define the entrepreneurial profile of students. The study is conducted on a random sample of fourth year university students (n = 400) from two Turkish universities. The question “what are you planning to do after graduation? ” was asked to students in order to discriminate between those who are entrepreneurially inclined and those who are not. Respondents who have a response saying that “I'm planning to form my own business venture” are accepted as potential entrepreneurs. Then, the entrepreneurial traits of these students are subjected to a comparative analysis with othe.
The Enable Supply Chain – Opportunities and challenges for forest business

Supply chains are composed of complex set of networks representing multiple organizations that often have conflicting objectives (Simchi-Levi et al. (2000)). Supply chain management has the goal to integrate these networks of suppliers, manufacturing centers, distribution capacity and customers into a system improving operational efficiency and customer service. The objective is simple: the best performing supply chains are ones that best match supply, manufacturing and distribution to demand. In such a context, Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) are necessary for both the development and execution of the forest supply chain. This paper proposes to describe the main components of the forest supply chain and to discuss some of the opportunities and challenges for business organizations and the research community with regard to the development and adoption of ICT to support its operations.
On Biased Technological Progress

There has been an extensive study in the literature on the estimate of technological progress using an aggregative model. A typical assumption in this context is that of Hicks-neutral technological progress. ' However, in theoretical models, the favorite assumption is that of Harrodneutral technological progress, which probably reflects the desire of researchers to characterize the steady state.2 Obviously, however, there should be no a priori reason why technological progress should be either Hicks neutral or Harrod neutral. There have recently been interesting studies by Robert Resek, Paul David and Th. van de Klundert, and Ryuzo Sato (1970), and others to determine the bias of technological progress.3 The purpose of this note is to propose simple formulas which can be and are subsequently used to determine and estimate the type of bias of technological progress. My estimates indicate that technological progress in the United States for the period of 1909-60 could be Solow labor-saving, and that it has been neither Hicks neutral nor Harrod neutral. The non-Hicks neutrality confirms the results of Resek, David and van de Klundert, Sato (1970), and others. However, unlike most studies on the topic, I do not assume that the production function is a priori of the f actoraugmenting type. Moreover, I do not, unlike David and van de Klundert, assume that the elasticity of factor substitution is a priori constant. In the last section, I investigate whether the elasticity of factor substitution has changed from period to period.
Structure-Antioxidative and Anti-Inflammatory Activity Relationships of Purpurin and Related Anthraquinones in Chemical and Cell Assays

Anthraquinone (9,10-anthraquinone) and several hydroxy derivatives, including purpurin (1,2,4-trihydroxyanthraquinone), anthrarufin (1,5-dihydroxyanthraquinone), and chrysazin (1,8-dihydroxyanthraquinone), were evaluated for antioxidative and anti-inflammatory activities in chemical assays and mammalian cells (murine macrophage RAW 264.7 cells). Several tests were used to assess their activities: 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical; ABTS radical cation; hydrogen peroxide scavenging; reduction of potassium ferricyanide; chelation of ferrous ions; inhibition of lipid peroxidation; inhibition of nitric oxide generation; scavenging of the intracellular hydroxyl radical; expression of NLRP3 polypeptide for inflammasome assembly; and quantitation of proinflammatory cytokine interleukin 1β (IL-1β) for inflammasome activation. The results show that purpurin, from the root of the madder plant (Rubia tinctorum L.), exhibited the highest antioxidative activity in both chemical and cultured cell antioxidant assays. The antioxidative activities of the other three anthraquinones were lower than that of purpurin. In addition, purpurin could down-regulate NLRP3 inflammasome assembly and activation, suggesting that it might protect foods against oxidative damage and prevent in vivo oxidative stress and inflammation. Structure-activity relationships and the significance of the results for food quality and human health are discussed.