Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Organic anion transporter 2 transcript variant 1 shows broad ligand selectivity when expressed in multiple cell lines

Organic anion transporter 2 (OAT2) is likely important for renal and hepatic drug elimination. Three variants of the OAT2 peptide sequence have been described – OAT2 transcript variant 1 (OAT2-tv1), OAT2 transcript variant 2 (OAT2-tv2), and OAT2 transcript variant 3 (OAT2-tv3). Early studies helping to define the ligand selectivity of OAT2 failed to identify the variant used, and the studies used several heterologous expression systems. In preliminary studies using OAT2-tv1, we failed to observe transport of several previously identified substrates, leading us to speculate that ligand selectivity of OAT2 differs with variant and/or heterologous expression system. The purpose was to further investigate the ligand selectivity of the OAT2 variants expressed in multiple cell types. We cloned OAT2-tv1 and OAT2-tv2, but were unsuccessful at amplifying mRNA for OAT2-tv3 from human kidney. OAT2-tv1 and OAT2-tv2 were individually expressed in human embryonic kidney (HEK), Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK), or Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. mRNA for OAT2-tv1 and OAT2-tv2 was demonstrated in each cell type transfected with the respective construct, indicating their expression. OAT2-tv1 trafficked to the plasma membrane of all three cell types, but OAT2-tv2 did not. OAT2-tv1 transported penciclovir in all three cell types, but failed to transport para-aminohippurate, succinate, glutarate, estrone-3-sulfate, paclitaxel or dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate – previously identified substrates of OAT2-tv2. Not surprising given its lack of plasma membrane expression, OAT2-tv2 failed to transport any of the organic solutes examined, including penciclovir. Penciclovir transport by OAT2-tv1 was sensitive to large (e.g., cyclosporine A) and small (e.g., allopurinol) organic compounds, as well as organic anions, cations and neutral compounds, highlighting the multiselectivity of OAT2-tv1. The potencies with which indomethacin, furosemide, cyclosporine A and cimetidine inhibited OAT2-tv1 are in good agreement with previous studies using this variant, but inconsistent with studies using OAT2 with an unidentified sequence. This study shows that organic molecules with diverse physicochemical properties interact with OAT2-tv1, making it a likely site of drug interactions. Many previously identified substrates of OAT2 are not transported by OAT2-tv1, suggesting that variant and/or expression system may contribute. Future work should establish the expression pattern and ligand selectivity of OAT2-tv3.
The Agency Problem, Financial Performance and Corruption: Country, Industry and Firm Level Perspectives

This paper studies the relationship between the agency problem, financial performance and corruption from country, industry and firm level perspectives. First, we observe that companies operating in countries with a high level of corruption tend to display relatively low returns. Second, in an industry-by-industry context, we find that the negative relationship between corruption and average stock returns is stronger in specific industries, which we define as ‘corruption sensitive’. Third, at the firm level, we show that agency problems are exacerbated in corruption-sensitive industries. Our study builds on the existing literature in three main areas. First, it proposes a novel macro-based approach aimed at identifying corruption-sensitive industries. Second, it provides evidence supporting that corruption exacerbates agency conflicts. Third, it provides evidence on the generalizability of standard corporate governance predictions to companies operating in corruption-sensitive industries.
PSF dedicated to estimation of displacement vectors for tissue elasticity imaging with ultrasound

This paper investigates a new approach devoted to displacement vector estimation in ultrasound imaging. The main idea is to adapt the image formation to a given displacement estimation method to increase the precision of the estimation. The displacement is identified as the zero crossing of the phase of the complex cross-correlation between signals extracted from the lateral direction of the ultrasound RF image. For precise displacement estimation, a linearity of the phase slope is needed as well as a high phase slope. Consequently, a particular point spread function (PSF) dedicated to this estimator is designed. This PSF, showing oscillations in the lateral direction, leads to synthesis of lateral RF signals. The estimation is included in a 2-D displacement vector estimation method. The improvement of this approach is evaluated quantitatively by simulation studies. A comparison with a speckle tracking technique is also presented. The lateral oscillations improve both the speckle tracking estimation and our 2-D estimation method. Using our dedicated images, the precision of the estimation is improved by reducing the standard deviation of the lateral displacement error by a factor of 2 for speckle tracking and more than 3 with our method compared to using conventional images. Our method performs 7 times better than speckle tracking. Experimentally, the improvement in the case of a pure lateral translation reaches a factor of 7. Finally, the experimental feasibility of the 2-D displacement vector estimation is demonstrated on data acquired from a Cryogel phantom
A Quantile-Boosting Approach to Forecasting Gold Returns

We use a quantile-boosting approach to compute out-of-sample forecasts of gold returns. The approach accounts for model uncertainty and model instability, and it allows forecasts to be computed under asymmetric loss functions. Different asymmetric loss functions represent different types of investors (optimists versus pessimists). We document how the performance of a simple trading rule varies across investor types.
Mesenchymal Stem and Progenitor Cells in Regeneration: Tissue Specificity and Regenerative Potential

It has always been an ambitious goal in medicine to repair or replace morbid tissues for regaining the organ functionality. This challenge has recently gained momentum through considerable progress in understanding the biological concept of the regenerative potential of stem cells. Routine therapeutic procedures are about to shift towards the use of biological and molecular armamentarium. The potential use of embryonic stem cells and invention of induced pluripotent stem cells raised hope for clinical regenerative purposes; however, the use of these interventions for regenerative therapy showed its dark side, as many health concerns and ethical issues arose in terms of using these cells in clinical applications. In this regard, adult stem cells climbed up to the top list of regenerative tools and mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) showed promise for regenerative cell therapy with a rather limited level of risk. MSC have been successfully isolated from various human tissues and they have been shown to offer the possibility to establish novel therapeutic interventions for a variety of hard-to-noncurable diseases. There have been many elegant studies investigating the impact of MSC in regenerative medicine. This review provides compact information on the role of stem cells, in particular, MSC in regeneration.
Financial Conditions Index and Identification of Credit Supply Shocks for the Euro Area

type="main" xml:lang="en"> The international financial crisis and the euro-area sovereign debt crisis brought to the fore the importance of financial conditions to the macro-economy. The complexity of the financial sector means that a wide range of financial variables is needed to fully characterize its functioning in real time. In this paper we construct a financial conditions index (FCI) for the euro area following the studies by Hatzius et al. and Brave and Butters. Our FCI successfully tracks both worldwide and euro-area-specific financial events. We then incorporate the FCI into a VAR model comprising output, inflation, the monetary policy rate, bank loans and bank lending spreads to identify credit supply shocks with sign restrictions. These shocks are estimated to have caused around one-fifth of the decline in euro-area manufacturing production at the trough of the financial crisis and a rise in bank lending spreads of around 30 basis points.
Analyst following and the influence of disclosure components, IPOs and ownership concentration

Abstract Financial analysts serve an important role as intermediaries between firms and investors. In this paper, I investigate factors associated with variations in analyst following using an international sample. Prior research has found that analyst coverage is positively associated with overall firm disclosure. I hypothesize and find that not all forms of disclosure are equally important to analysts. Specifically, controlling for firm- and country-level factors, I document that analyst following is more strongly associated with the extent of note disclosure than the comprehensiveness of the basic financial statements. I further find that analyst following is greater in environments with active IPO markets, suggesting that analysts value the potential for future revenues. Finally, I show that analyst following is negatively related to firm ownership concentration. This is consistent with concentrated ownership changing the nature of the agency problem and reducing the value of analyst-provided services. © City University of Hong Kong.
The impact of gender on the personal financial planning process: Should financial advisors tailor their process to the gender of the client?

Purpose – To research the gender literature in order to determine whether it is advisable for a financial advisor to adjust their planning and advising processes based on the gender of their client. Design/methodology/approach – To correlate the gender literature with the personal financial planning process in order to determine whether advisors should adjust their approach based on the gender of their client. Findings – The gender literature reveals significant differences concerning how men and women invest; consequently, it is felt that it is advisable for financial advisors to tailor their approach based on the gender of their client. Research limitations/implications – The financial planning process should be modified to incorporate the gender of the client. Practical implications – Financial advisors should tailor their approach to the gender of their clients in order to ideal with them more effectively. Originality/value – As female investors grow in importance, processes should be modified or adjusted in order to accommodated their preferences.
How responsible is a region for its carbon emissions? An integrated input-output and CGE analysis

Targets for CO2 reduction tend to be set in terms of the amount of pollution generated within the borders of a given region or nation. That is, under a "production accounting principle". However, in recent years there has been increased public and policy interest in the notion of a carbon footprint, or the amount of pollution generated globally to serve final consumption demand within a region or nation. That is, switching focus to a "consumption accounting principle". However, this paper argues that a potential issue arising from the increasing focus on consumption-based "carbon footprint" type measures is that while regional CO2 generation embodied in export production is attributed outside of the region (i.e. to the carbon footprints of other regions/nations), regional consumers are likely to benefit from such production. Moreover, where there is a geographical and supply chain gap between producers and final consumers, it may be difficult to identify precisely "whose" carbon footprint emissions should be allocated to. We demonstrate our argument by using a regional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Welsh economy to simulate the impacts of an increase in export demand for the output of an industry (metal manufacturing) that is both carbon and export intensive and generally produces to meet intermediate rather than final demands. In doing so, we demonstrate how the CGE model results may be used to create „post-shock‟ input-output accounts to examine changes in the structure of economic activity and the resulting impact on CO2 generation under both production and consumption accounting measures. In this respect, to our knowledge, the current paper makes a novel contribution in using CGE techniques to model "carbon footprint" impacts of a change in economic activity.
Lightly supervised discriminative training of grapheme models for improved sentence-level alignment of speech and text data

This paper introduces a method for lightly supervised discriminative training using MMI to improve the alignment of speech and text data for use in training HMM-based TTS systems for low-resource languages. In TTS applications, due to the use of long-span contexts, it is important to select training utterances which have wholly correct transcriptions. In a low-resource setting, when using poorly trained grapheme models, we show that the use of MMI discriminative training at the grapheme-level enables us to increase the amount of correctly aligned data by 40%, while maintaining a 7% sentence error rate and 0.8% word error rate. We present the procedure for lightly supervised discriminative training with regard to the objective of minimising sentence error rate. Index Terms: automatic alignment, grapheme models, light supervision, MMI, text-to-speech
Money and Inflation in China

Recent debates on monetary condition and inflation pressures on the Mainland call for an analysis on the inflation dynamics and their main determinants. A natural starting point for the econometric analysis of monetary and inflation developments is the notion of monetary equilibrium. This paper presents an estimate of the long-run demand for money in China. The estimated long-run income elasticity is rather stable over time and consistent with that estimated in earlier studies. The difference between the estimated demand for money and the actual money stock provides an estimate of monetary disequilibria. These seem to provide leading information about CPI inflation in the sample period. At the current conjuncture, the measure suggests that monetary conditions have tightened since the macroeconomic adjustment started in early 2004. Additionally, an error-correction model based on the long-run money demand function offers insights into the short-run and long-run inflation dynamics.
The Content of Physics Self-Explanations

Several earlier studies have found the amount learned while studying worked-out examples is proportional to the number of self-explanations generated while studying examples. A self-explanation is a comment about an example statement that contains domain-relevant information over and above what was stated in the example line itself. This article analyzes the specific content of self-explanations generated by students while studying physics examples. In particular, the content is analyzed into pieces of constituent knowledge that were used in the comments. These were further analyzed in order to trace the source of knowledge from which self-explanations could be generated. The results suggest that there are two general sources for self-explanations. The first is deduction from knowledge acquired earlier while reading the text part of the chapter, usually by simply instantiating a general principle, concept, or procedure with information in the current example statement. The second explanation is generaliza.
Data hiding in curves with application to fingerprinting maps

This paper presents a new data hiding method for curves. The proposed algorithm parameterizes a curve using the B-spline model and adds a spread spectrum sequence to the coordinates of the B-spline control points. In order to achieve robust fingerprint detection, an iterative alignment-minimization algorithm is proposed to perform curve registration and to deal with the nonuniqueness of B-spline control points. Through experiments, we demonstrate the robustness of the proposed data-hiding algorithm against various attacks, such as collusion, cropping, geometric transformations, vector/raster-raster/vector conversions, printing-and-scanning, and some of their combinations. We also show the feasibility of our method for fingerprinting topographic maps as well as writings and drawings.
Interferometric microscopy study of the surface roughness of Portland cement under the action of different irrigants

Objectives: Some investigations suggested common Portland cement (PC) as a substitute material for MTA for endodontic use; both MTA and PC have a similar composition. The aim of this study was to determine the surface roughness of common PC before and after the exposition to different endodontic irrigating solutions: 10% and 20% citric acid, 17% ethylenediaminetetraacetic (EDTA) and 5% sodium hypochlorite. Study Design: Fifty PC samples in the form of cubes were prepared. PC was mixed with distilled water (powder/liquid ratio 3:1 by weight). The samples were immersed for one minute in 10% and 20% citric acid, 17% EDTA and 5% sodium hypochlorite. After gold coating, PC samples were examined using the New View 100 Zygo interferometric microscope. It was used to examine and register the surface roughness and the profile of two different areas of each sample. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out, and as the requirements were not met, use was made of the Kruskal-Wallis test for analysis of the results obtained, followed by contrasts using Tukey’s contrast tests. Results: Sodium hypochlorite at a concentration of 5% significantly reduced the surface roughness of PC, while 20% citric acid significantly increased surface roughness. The other evaluated citric acid concentration (10%) slightly increased the surface roughness of PC, though statistical significance was not reached. EDTA at a concentration of 17% failed to modify PC surface roughness. Irrigation with 5% sodium hypochlorite and 20% citric acid lowered and raised the roughness values, respectively. Conclusions: The surface texture of PC is modified as the result of treatment with different irrigating solutions commonly used in endodontics, depending on their chemical composition and concentration. Key words:MTA, Portland cement, citric acid, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, sodium hypochlorite, surface roughness.
Micronutrients Involved in One-Carbon Metabolism and Risk of Breast Cancer Subtypes

Background Vitamins involved in one-carbon metabolism are hypothesized to influence breast cancer (BC) risk. However, epidemiologic studies that examined associations between B vitamin intake and BC risk have provided inconsistent results. We prospectively examined, in the Italian ORDET cohort, whether B vitamin consumption was associated with risk of BC and BC subtypes. Methods After a mean follow-up of 16.5 years, 391 BCs were diagnosed among 10,786 cohort women. B vitamin intakes were estimated from food frequency questionnaires. Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for energy intake and confounders, estimated hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for BC according to intake. Results RRs were 0.61 (95% CI 0.38–0.97 highest vs. lowest quartile; P trend 0.025) for thiamine; 0.48 (95% CI 0.32–0.71; P trend <0.001) for riboflavin; 0.59 (95% CI 0.39–0.90; P trend 0.008) for vitamin B6, and 0.65 (95% CI 0.44–0.95; P trend 0.021) for folate. As regards risk of BC subtypes, high riboflavin and folate were significantly associated with lower risk of estrogen receptor positive (ER+) and progesterone receptor positive (PR+) cancers, and high thiamine was associated with lower risk of ER-PR- cancers. High riboflavin was associated with lower risk of both HER2+ and HER2- cancers, high folate with lower risk of HER2- disease, and high thiamine with HER2+ disease. Conclusions These findings support protective effects of thiamine and one-carbon metabolism vitamins (folate, riboflavin, and vitamin B6) against BC in general; while folate may also protect against ER+PR+ and HER2- disease; and thiamine against ER-PR-, and HER2+ disease.
Multiclass Multidimensional Modified Haar DWT for Classification Function Representation and its Realization via Fast Fixed-Depth Network

The core contribution of this paper is a twofold improvement in the Haar discrete wavelet transform (DWT), by making it a truly multidimensional algorithm, and by modifying it to work with class values instead of real values. We prove here that this multidimensional, multiclass DWT actually uses dynamic programming to minimize (within its framework) the number of nontrivial wavelet coefficients needed. Even so, it is one of the simplest possible training methods, since its time complexity is basically linear (with a low constant) in the number of training samples, after a sort. We investigate the convergence properties of high-dimensional wavelets, which have been seen as difficult to implement, by testing the generalization error of this DWT on several machine learning benchmarks. Perhaps predictably, convergence of the DWT seems to degrade quickly with rising dimension. This multiclass multidimensional DWT seems to have tightly coupled applications to learning fixed-depth threshold or boolean logic networks from a pre-existing decision tree (in effect parallelizing the evaluation of the decision tree), or learning a “dyadic” decision tree directly from training data.
Positive psychology: Past, present, and (possible) future

What is positive psychology? Where has it come from? Where is it going? These are the questions we address in this article. In defining positive psychology, we distinguish between the meta-psychological level, where the aim of positive psychology is to redress the imbalance in psychology research and practice, and the pragmatic level, which is concerned with what positive psychologists do, in terms of their research, practice, and areas of interest. These distinctions in how we understand positive psychology are then used to shape conceptions of possible futures for positive psychology. In conclusion, we identify several pertinent issues for the consideration of positive psychology as it moves forward. These include the need to synthesize the positive and negative, build on its historical antecedents, integrate across levels of analysis, build constituency with powerful stakeholders, and be aware of the implications of description versus prescription.
Ikaros Represses the Transcriptional Response to Notch Signaling in T-Cell Development

ABSTRACT Notch activity is essential for early T-cell differentiation, but aberrant activity induces T-cell transformation. Thus, Notch target genes must be efficiently silenced in cells where Notch activity is no longer required. How these genes are repressed remains poorly understood. We report here that the Ikaros transcription factor plays a crucial role in repressing the transcriptional response to Notch signaling in T-cell development. Using the Notch target gene Hes-1 as a model, we show that Ikaros and RBP-Jκ, the transcriptional mediator of Notch signaling, compete for binding to two elements in the Hes-1 promoter in immature thymocytes. This antagonistic interaction likely occurs at the CD4− CD8− CD3− double-negative 4 (DN4) stage, where Ikaros levels and binding to the Hes-1 promoter increase sharply and wild-type thymocytes lose their capacity to transcribe Hes-1 upon Notch stimulation. Nonresponsiveness to Notch signaling requires Ikaros, as Ikaros-deficient DN4 and CD4+ CD8+ double-positive (DP) cells remain competent to express Hes-1 after Notch activation. Further, Hes-1 promoter sequences from Ikaros-deficient DP cells show reduced trimethylated H3K27, a modification associated with silent chromatin. These results indicate that Ikaros functions as a transcriptional checkpoint to repress Notch target gene expression in T cells.