Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enterococcus faecium Stimulates Human Neutrophils via the Formyl-Peptide Receptor 2

The human formyl-peptide receptor 2 (FPR2/ALX) senses phenol-soluble modulin (PSM) peptide toxins produced by pathogenic staphylococcal species and plays a crucial role in directing neutrophil influx during staphylococcal infection. However, it has remained unclear if FPR2 responds also to molecules from other bacterial pathogens. Here we analyzed a variety of Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens and found that apart from staphylococci only certain enterococcal strains have the capacity to stimulate FPR2/ALX. Most of the analyzed Enterococcus faecium but only sporadic Enterococcus faecalis strains released FPR2/ALX-stimulating molecules leading to neutrophil calcium ion fluxes, chemotaxis, and complement receptor upregulation. Among ten test strains vancomycin-resistant E. faecium had a significantly higher capacity to stimulate FPR2/ALX than vancomycin-susceptible strains, suggesting an association of strong FPR2/ALX activation with health-care associated strains. The enterococcal FPR2/ALX agonists were found to be peptides or proteins, which appear, however, to be unrelated to staphylococcal PSMs in sequence and physicochemical properties. Enterococci are among the most frequent invasive bacterial pathogens but the basis of enterococcal virulence and immune activation has remained incompletely understood. Our study indicates that previously unrecognized proteinaceous agonists contribute to Enterococcus-host interaction and underscores the importance of FPR2/ALX in host defense against major endogenous bacterial pathogens.
Child care subsidies revisted

Public spending on child care has taken a high flight in the Netherlands. One of the key policy goals of child care subsidies is to stimulate labour participation. We study the impact of child care subsidies on labour participation using a general equilibrium model.Next to the labour supply choice, we model the choice over formal and informal care. The choice between formal and informal care plays an important role in the overall impact of child care subsidies on labour participation. The model is calibrated to Dutch data. Our analysis shows that existing child care subsidies have promoted labour participation. However, at the current average subsidy rate of almost 80%, a further increase in the subsidy rate is a rather ineffective way to promote formal participation, the main effect being substitution of informal for formal care.
Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce Integrating Trust and Computer Self-efficacy with Tam: an Empirical Assessment of Customers' Acceptance of Banking Information Systems (bis) in Jamaica

He joined the school as an Assistant Professor in 2003 and was promoted to an Associate Professor in 2007. Prior to joining the school, Yair was instructor and director of online learning at the College of Business Administration at Florida International University. During the mid to late 1990s, he assisted NASA to develop e-learning platforms as well as manage Internet and Web-based infrastructure. Yair earned his undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering Abstract Financial institutions all over the world are providing banking services via information systems, such as: automated teller machines (ATMs), Internet banking, and telephone banking, in an effort to remain competitive as well as enhancing customer service. However, the acceptance of such banking information systems (BIS) in developing countries remains open. The classical Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been well validated over hundreds of studies in the past two decades. This study contributed to the extensive body of research of technology acceptance by attempting to validate the integration of trust and computer self-efficacy (CSE) constructs into the classical TAM model. Moreover, the key uniqueness of this work is in the context of BIS in a developing country, namely Jamaica. Based on structural equations modeling using data of 374 customers from three banks in Jamaica, this study results indicated that the classic TAM provided a better fit than the extended TAM with Trust and CSE. However, the results also indicated that trust is indeed a significant construct impacting both perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use. Additionally, test for gender differences indicated that across all study participants, only trust was found to be significantly different between male and female bank customers. Conclusions and recommendations for future research are also provided.
Financial Development and Output Growth in Developing Asia and Latin America: A Comparative Sectoral Analysis

We use data from the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) database to perform preliminary empirical analysis of the interplay between quality and quantity of finance in accounting for the output growth of ten sectors. We review the existing literature and some salient open questions pertaining to the relationship between financial depth and output growth. Our analysis looks at the finance-growth nexus in 41 economies, including 11 East Asian and 9 Latin American economies for a comparison between two regions which are at similar income levels. We document large differences between the two regions in terms of the impact of financial depth on sectoral growth, and validate the negative impact of financial deepening on output growth in several sectors. Our results suggest that the impact of financial development on growth may be non-linear – i.e. it may promote growth only up to a point.
The Structure of Worker Compensation in Brazil, with a Comparison to France and the United States

We employ comprehensive linked employer-employee data for Brazil to analyze wage determinants and compare results to Abowd et al. (2001) for French and U.S. manufacturing. While returns to human capital in Brazilian manufacturing exceed those of the other countries, occupation and gender differentials are similar. The worker-characteristics component accounts for much of the greater wage inequality in Brazil, but the establishment-fixed component has scant explanatory power. Thus, firm- or industry-level factors offer little scope for explaining the differences in wage inequality. Brazil's wage structure resembles that of France, a country with some similarity in labor market institutions.
Risk Analysis Probability of Default: A Stochastic Simulation Model

We present a stochastic simulation model for estimating forward-looking corporate probability of default and loss given default. We formulate the model in a discrete time frame, apply capital-budgeting techniques to define the relationships that identify the default condition and solve the model by Monte Carlo simulation. First, we present the model; then we show how to extend the model to estimate company-specific loss given default, expected loss and unexpected loss as well. Subsequently, we compare the risk analysis probability of default (RAPD) model with option/contingent models, inasmuch as both models use the same definition of the event of default. The focus of this paper is on the theoretical and modelling aspects of the new methodological approach proposed; however, we also present an application of the method, and the results of a comparative test (covering RAPD, Altman Z-score, two option-contingent models and Standard & Poor’s ratings) which, in our opinion, positively empirically support the validity of the RAPD approach.
Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning

Part 1 Introduction 1. The Parthenon and the Erechtheion - The Spatial Formation of Place, Politics and Myth 2. Invisible Surface - Reflections in Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion Part 2 3. 'The Book and the Labyrinth Were One and the Same' - Narrative and Architecture in Borges' Fictions 4. (Th) Reading the Library - Spatial and Mathematical Journeys in Borges' Library of Babel Part 3 5. Soane Through the Looking Glass - The House-Museum of Sir John Soane 6. Victorian Knowledge - The Natural History Museum, London and the Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, Glasgow 7. Contemporary Experience - The Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh and the Burrell Collection, Glasgow 8. Tracing the Modern - Space, Display and Exploration in the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) Part 4 9. A Comparative Synthesis 10. The Formation of Space and Meaning
Motivated sellers in the housing market

We present a search-and-matching model of the housing market where potential buyers' willingness to pay is private information and sellers may become desperate as they are unable to sell. A unique steady state equilibrium exists where desperate sellers offer sizeable price cuts and sell faster. If the number of distressed sales rises then even relaxed sellers are forced to lower their prices. Buyers, on the other hand, become more selective and search longer for better deals. The model yields a theoretical density function of the time-to-sale, which is positively skewed and may be hump-shaped. These results are consistent with recent empirical findings.
Non BPS noncommutative vortices

We construct exact vortex solutions to the equations of motion of the abelian Higgs model defined in non commutative space, analyzing in detail the properties of these solutions beyond the BPS point. We show that our solutions behave as smooth deformations of vortices in ordinary space time except for parity symmetry breaking effects induced by the non commutative parameter θ.
'GMO-FREE' LABELS - ENHANCING TRANSPARENCY OR DECEIVING CONSUMERS?

Abstract Consumers, particularly in industrialised countries, are concerned about the application of genetic engineering in food production. There are considerations in many nations worldwide to introduce legal regulations to label food as free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in order to enable producers to better promote such products. However, requirements for labelling food products as ‘GMO-free’ can be very different, and therefore it is questionable whether consumers’ understanding of ‘GMO-free’ is consistent with what certain labels actually can guarantee. We conducted a consumer survey in order to explore potential gaps between expectations of ‘GMO-free’ food and production requirements in the case of the revised German regulation covering the labelling of foods as ‘GMO-free’. Our results indicate significant differences between consumers’ view and standards of production. Keywords Genetic Engineering, Food Labelling, Consumer Survey 1 Introduction and Background Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food are a growing concern for consumers (B
Job strain and COPD exacerbations: an individual-participant meta-analysis

To the Editor:Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of mortality and disability worldwide (1). The clinical course of COPD is characterised by exacerbations, which can be minor and manageable at home or in primary care, or severe, leading to hospitalisation or even death. Known causes of exacerbations include tobacco smoke, air pollution, dusts and fumes, and respiratory infections (1, 2). One less well understood risk factor is stress, which could plausibly lead to COPD exacerbations as it can trigger inflammation (3, 4) and is associated with increased smoking (5), which are both implicated in COPD pathology (2). Work is an important source of stress in the age groups in which COPD is typically diagnosed (1, 6). However, we are not aware of previous investigations of work-related stress and the risk of COPD exacerbations.In this study, we examined the associations between job strain (the most widely studied conceptualisation of work-related stress) and severe COPD exacerbations using individual-level data from 10 prospective cohort studies from the Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis in Working Populations (IPD-Work) Consortium (7). Job strain is defined as a combination of high demands (excessive amounts of work) and low control (having little influence on what tasks to.
Local saliency-inspired binary patterns for automatic recognition of multi-view facial expression

In this paper, we propose a novel scheme for automatic recognition of facial expressions captured from both fronto-parallel and non-fronto-parallel cameras i.e., multi-view facial expressions (MVFE). The proposed scheme introduce a Local Saliency-inspired Binary Pattern (LSiBP) feature to recognize MVFE. First view-specific approximated saliency likelihood map (ASLM) is derived during training of our model. ASLM is determined from the 2D structure tensor representation of faces. The distribution of saliency likelihoods of pixels along with pixel intensities are analyzed in extracting LSiBP features from a face. Such LSiBP features are utilized for training and testing of view-specific SVM classifiers. Extensive experiments are performed on datasets of both posed and unconstrained spontaneous expressions of MVFE. Our scheme outperforms state-of-the-arts by at least 1% to recognize MVFE.
Gait Representation and Recognition Using Haar Wavelet and Radon Transform

This paper presented a new gait identification and authentication method based on Haar wavelet and Radon transform. This method consists of two stages, gait modeling and recognition. In the first stage, images extracted from video sequences are pre-processed into binary silhouette. In terms of gait cycle, they are divided into 4 states, in each of which the distinct images are selected. The horizontal and vertical features are acquired by Haar wavelet, and then feature vectors are obtained respectively by Radon transform. In the second stage, probe sequences are fed. After feature transform of image sequence, the value of similarity can be obtained by comparing probe vectors with gallery ones and optimized to give gait recognition. Consequently, we can improve the rate of recognition by further optimization.
Efficient Label Propagation

Label propagation is a popular graph-based semi-supervised learning framework. So as to obtain the optimal labeling scores, the label propagation algorithm requires an inverse matrix which incurs the high computational cost of O(n3+cn2), where n and c are the numbers of data points and labels, respectively. This paper proposes an efficient label propagation algorithm that guarantees exactly the same labeling results as those yielded by optimal labeling scores. The key to our approach is to iteratively compute lower and upper bounds of labeling scores to prune unnecessary score computations. This idea significantly reduces the computational cost to O(cnt) where t is the average number of iterations for each label and t ≪ n in practice. Experiments demonstrate the significant superiority of our algorithm over existing label propagation methods.
Coalition Government and Committee Power

Recent research suggests that committees in parliamentary democracies may, at least partly, be endogenous to the prevalence of coalition government. In this article, I examine the conditions under which parliamentary majorities reform legislative rules to expand or reduce committee power. I expect that, ceteris paribus, the greater the conflict inside the governing coalition, the higher the probability that parties in government will adopt reforms expanding committee power and the lower the chance that they will implement changes reducing such power. These expectations are tested using original new data on the reforms of committee agenda powers undertaken in eight European states within 20 years from democratic transition. I find some evidence to support the endogeneity of committee power to the ideological heterogeneity of parliamentary government.
Rationality & Psychology 1

Since the early 1970s, psychologists have devoted a great deal of attention to human reasoning and decision making, and to the psychological processes that underlie them. While some of this attention was motivated by the intrinsic interest and importance of these processes, much of it was provoked by a series of experimental findings that, in the view of many, had " bleak implications " for human rationality (Nisbett and Borgida 1975). In this essay we'll begin, in Section 1, by presenting a brief sketch of some of these disturbing findings, most of which were reported by psychologists in what has become known as the " heuristics and biases " tradition. In Section 2, we'll set out three increasingly pessimistic interpretations of the findings that have been suggested by a number of authors. There have been many challenges to these pessimistic interpretations. One of the most interesting and influential challenges was launched, in the early 1990s, by a group of researchers working in the then newly emerging interdisciplinary field of evolutionary psychology. This challenge, and the experimental findings that support it, will be our focus in Section 3. On the basis of these new findings, evolutionary psychologists have suggested a variety of much more optimistic views about the rationality of ordinary people. In Section 4, we'll sketch three of these views. We are inclined to think that the We are grateful for the many valuable discussions, comments and criticisms occasioned by this earlier work. Special thanks are due to
Complementarities of HRM Practices - A Case for Employing Multiple Methods and Integrating Multiple Fields

We provide an overview over different literature streams that aim at explaining the origin of persistent productivity differences across organizations by variation in the use of management practices. We focus on human resource management (HRM) practices, document gaps in the literature, and show how insights from behavioral economics can inform the analysis. To this end, we develop a simple agency model illustrating how social preferences influence the design and impact of incentive schemes, investigate how auxiliary HRM practices can strengthen this interaction, and provide an overview over empirical investigations of this questions. Finally, we identify avenues for further research in this field.
Introduction to Monte Carlo methods for an Ising Model of a Ferromagnet

This discussion serves as an introduction to the use of Monte Carlo simulations as a useful way to evaluate the observables of a ferromagnet. Key background is given about the relevance and effectiveness of this stochastic approach and in particular the applicability of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. Importantly the potentially devastating effects of spontaneous magnetization are highlighted and a means to avert this is examined. An Ising model is introduced and used to investigate the properties of a two dimensional ferromagnet with respect to its magnetization and energy at varying temperatures. The observables are calculated and a phase transition at a critical temperature is also illustrated and evaluated. Lastly a finite size scaling analysis is undertaken to determine the critical exponents and the Curie temperature is calculated using a ratio of cumulants with differing lattice sizes. The results obtained from the simulation are compared to exact calculations to endorse the validity of this numerical process. A copy of the code used, written in C++, is enclosed and is freely available for use and modification under the General Public License.
Bank Liquidity Creation (Previously titled 'The Measurement of Bank Liquidity Creation and the Effect of Capital')

Although the modern theory of financial intermediation portrays liquidity creation as an essential role of banks, comprehensive measures of bank liquidity creation do not exist. We construct four measures and apply them to data on virtually all U.S. banks from 1993 to 2003. We find that bank liquidity creation increased every year and exceeded $2.8 trillion in 2003. Large banks, multibank holding company members, retail banks, and recently merged banks created the most liquidity. Bank liquidity creation is positively correlated with bank value. Testing recent theories of the relationship between capital and liquidity creation, we find that the relationship is positive for large banks and negative for small banks. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. , Oxford University Press.
Small Interfering RNA Targeting M2 Gene Induces Effective and Long Term Inhibition of Influenza A Virus Replication

RNA interference (RNAi) provides a powerful new means to inhibit viral infection specifically. However, the selection of siRNA-resistant viruses is a major concern in the use of RNAi as antiviral therapeutics. In this study, we conducted a lentiviral vector with a H1-short hairpin RNA (shRNA) expression cassette to deliver small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) into mammalian cells. Using this vector that also expresses enhanced green fluorescence protein (EGFP) as surrogate marker, stable shRNA-expressing cell lines were successfully established and the inhibition efficiencies of rationally designed siRNAs targeting to conserved regions of influenza A virus genome were assessed. The results showed that a siRNA targeting influenza M2 gene (siM2) potently inhibited viral replication. The siM2 was not only effective for H1N1 virus but also for highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1. In addition to its M2 inhibition, the siM2 also inhibited NP mRNA accumulation and protein expression. A long term inhibition effect of the siM2 was demonstrated and the emergence of siRNA-resistant mutants in influenza quasispecies was not observed. Taken together, our study suggested that M2 gene might be an optimal RNAi target for antiviral therapy. These findings provide useful information for the development of RNAi-based prophylaxis and therapy for human influenza virus infection.
Best Practices of Best Performers

Organizational performance is critical to the achievement of organizational goals. Performance excellence is dependent on many internal as well as external organizational factors. What factors affect the performance of high-performance organizations? This study analyzes the efforts to achieve performance excellence of eighteen organizations that have received awards from the Florida Sterling Council. The Sterling Award envisions performance improvement in such areas as the enhancement of organizational leadership, the creation and constant upgrading of strategic planning, and the customer focus of services and activities. Thus the Sterling Awards provide a unique opportunity to empirically examine how organizational factors contribute to organizational performance in highly performing organizations. The analysis of eighteen organizations that have won Sterling Awards makes it possible to specify the building blocks of a highly performing organization. The results reveal important lessons learned from high-performing organizations.
Internet Banking in Europe: A Comparative Analysis

A key strategic issue for banks is the implementation of internet banking. The ‘click and mortar’ model that complements classical branch banking with online facilities is competing with pure internet banks. The objective of this paper is to compare the performance of these two models across countries, so as to examine the role of differences in the banking system and technological progress. A fuzzy cluster analysis on the performance of banks in Finland, Spain, Italy and the UK shows that internet banks are hard to distinguish from banks that follow a click and mortar strategy; country borders are more important. We therefore explain bank performance by a group of selected bank features, country-specific economic and IT indicators over the period 1995-2004. We find that the strategy of banking groups to incorporate internet banks reflects some competitive edge that these banks have in their business models. Extensive technological innovation boosts internet banking.