Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Head-down-tilt bed rest alters forearm vasodilator and vasoconstrictor responses.

To test the hypothesis that head-down-tilt bed rest (HDBR) for 14 days alters vascular reactivity to vasodilatory and vasoconstrictor stimuli, the reactive hyperemic forearm blood flow (RHBF, measured by venous occlusion plethysmography) and mean arterial pressure (MAP, measured by Finapres) responses after 10 min of circulatory arrest were measured in a control trial (n = 20) and when sympathetic discharge was increased by a cold pressor test (RHBF + cold pressor test; n = 10). Vascular conductance (VC) was calculated (VC = RHBF/MAP). In the control trial, peak RHBF at 5 s after circulatory arrest (34.1 +/- 2.5 vs. 48.9 +/- 4.3 ml . 100 ml-1 . min-1) and VC (0.34 +/- 0.02 vs. 0.53 +/- 0.05 ml . 100 ml-1 . min-1 . mmHg-1) were reduced in the post- compared with the pre-HDBR tests (P < 0. 05). Total excess RHBF over 3 min was diminished in the post- compared with the pre-HDBR trial (84.8 vs. 117 ml/100 ml, P < 0.002). The ability of the cold pressor test to lower forearm blood flow was less in the post- than in the pre-HDBR test (P < 0.05), despite similar increases in MAP. These data suggest that regulation of vascular dilation and the interaction between dilatory and constrictor influences were altered with bed rest.
Selection-, age-, and exercise-dependence of skeletal muscle gene expression patterns in a rat model of metabolic fitness

Aerobic exercise capacity can influence many complex traits including obesity and type 2 diabetes. We established two rat lines by divergent selection of intrinsic aerobic capacity. The high capacity runners (HCR) and low capacity runners (LCR) differed by ~9-fold in aerobic capacity after 32 generations, and diverged in body fat, blood glucose, and other health indicators. To study the interplay among genetic differentiation, age, and strenuous exercise, we performed microarray-based gene expression analyses in skeletal muscle with a 2×2×2 design to compare HCR and LCR, old and young animals, and between rest and exhaustion, for a total of eight groups (n=6 each). Transcripts for mitochondrial function are expressed higher in HCR than LCR at both rest and exhaustion, for both age groups. Extracellular matrix components decrease with age in both lines and both rest and exhaustion. Interestingly, age-effects in many pathways are more pronounced in LCR, suggesting that HCR’s higher innate aerobic capacity underlies both increased lifespan and heathspan.
Polish Towns and the Changes in Their Areas and Population Densities

Polish Towns and the Changes in Their Areas and Population Densities This article presents the spatial and population density changes in Polish towns in the years 1960-2003. The assumed time frame allowed identifying area changes for a complete set of towns in different socio-economic conditions: the period of intense industrialisation, the economic crisis of the 1980s, the period of economic transition and finally in the years of a market economy. The investigation revealed that the trend shown by changes and the size of a town as measured by the number of its population are distinctly interrelated. It also demonstrated a much stronger dynamics of changes in the first subperiod, i.e. years 1960--1985, followed by a phase of relative stabilization (compared with the previous period) after the year 1980 (mainly of the spatial changes). Moreover, change intensity and change trends observed for the urban areas and population densities vary considerably in terms of space.
Valuing Environmental Functions: Tropical Wetlands

Recent studies have suggested that tropical wetland systems may have a crucial economic role to play in development. The following paper provides an overview of these benefits, using the general framework of cost-benefit analysis as the methodological approach to assessing wetland values. An analysis of trade-offs between conserving or converting tropical wetlands demonstrates that taking into account the opportunity cost of wetland loss leads to a lower level of conversion than would otherwise be the case. Finally, the paper discusses the extensions and limitations of the production function approach as applied to valuing nonmarketed wetland benefits.
Alliance Structure and the Scope of Knowledge Transfer: Evidence from U.S.-Japan Agreements

Prior research suggests that equity joint ventures (JVs) are particularly effective vehicles for accessing complex technology. Different schools of thought have emphasized different reasons why joint ventures might support greater knowledge transfer than “bare” license agreements: incentive alignment, organizational embeddedness, and enhanced administrative controls. We probe and refine these theoretical perspectives, drawing out implications of the different theories for the extent and speed of alliance-related knowledge transfer, as well as for knowledge “leakage” in areas not directly related to alliance activities. Using a proprietary data set derived from regulatory filings with the Japanese government we test these implications in our empirical analysis of U.S.-Japan agreements. The picture that emerges from the analysis is one of particularly intense but contained knowledge transfer in equity joint ventures, relative to bare license agreements: knowledge transfers directly related to the alliance activity are enhanced in the JV, and the speed of integration into the Japanese firm's subsequent innovations also increases. In marked contrast, leakage of unrelated technology is significantly reduced. These findings suggest that administrative structures that reduce technology leakage are a key feature of the equity joint venture, a result that is inconsistent with a “pure” knowledge-based perspective on alliances.
Scaling results on the sum capacity of cellular networks with MIMO links

Scaling results for the sum capacity of the multiple access, uplink channel are provided for a flat-fading environment, with multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) links, when there is interference from other cells. The classical MIMO scaling regime is considered in which the number of antennas per user and per base station grow large together. Utilizing the known characterizations of the limiting eigenvalue distributions of large random matrices, the asymptotic behavior of the sum capacity of the system is characterized for an architecture in which the base stations cooperate in the joint decoding process of all users (macrodiversity). This asymptotic sum capacity is compared with that of the conventional scenario in which the base stations only decode the users in their cells. For the case of base station cooperation, an interesting "resource pooling" phenomenon is observed: in some cases, the limiting performance of a macrodiversity multiuser network has the same asymptotic behavior as that of a single-user MIMO link with an equivalent amount of pooled received power. This resource pooling phenomenon allows us to derive an elegant closed-form expression for the sum capacity of a new version of Wyner's classical model of a cellular network, in which MIMO links are incorporated into the model.
Single Base-Resolution Methylome of the Dizygotic Sheep

Sheep is an important livestock in the world for meat, dairy and wool production. The third version of sheep reference genome has been recently assembled, but sheep DNA methylome has not been profiled yet. In this study, we report the comprehensive sheep methylome with 94.38% cytosine coverage at single base resolution by sequencing DNA samples from Longissimus dorsi of dizygotic Sunit sheep, which were bred in different habitats. We also compared methylomes between the twin sheep. DNA methylation status at genome-scale differentially methylated regions (DMRs), functional genomic regions and 248 DMR-containing genes were identified between the twin sheep. Gene ontology (GO) and KEGG annotations of these genes were performed to discover computationally predicted function. Lipid metabolism, sexual maturity and tumor-associated categories were observed to significantly enrich DMR-containing genes. These findings could be used to illustrate the relationship between phenotypic variations and gene methylation patterns.
Communication between neocortex and hippocampus during sleep in rodents

Both neocortical and hippocampal networks organize the firing patterns of their neurons by prominent oscillations during sleep, but the functional role of these rhythms is not well understood. Here, we show a robust correlation of neuronal discharges between the somatosensory cortex and hippocampus on both slow and fine time scales in the mouse and rat. Neuronal bursts in deep cortical layers, associated with sleep spindles and delta waves/slow rhythm, effectively triggered hippocampal discharges related to fast (ripple) oscillations. We hypothesize that oscillation-mediated temporal links coordinate specific information transfer between neocortical and hippocampal cell assemblies. Such a neocortical–hippocampal interplay may be important for memory consolidation.
International Good Market Segmentation and Financial Innovation

While financial markets have recently become more complete and international capital flows well liberalized, markets for goods remain segmented. To investigate how financial innovation and more complete security markets may relieve the effects of this segmentation, we examine a series of two-country economies with internationally segmented good markets, distinguished by the available financial securities. We show that risk-sharing may be limited even with complete financial markets, and that additional securities may be needed to reach an efficient equilibrium allocation; the location of these securities also profoundly affects the equilibrium. Key to this result is our assumption that there may be heterogeneity and imperfect risk-sharing within countries as well as across countries, a novelty of this work. Sufficient conditions for efficiency include complete international financial markets together with liberalized international financial flows. Under these conditions, heterogeneous agents from the same country may use securities as a substitute for the international shipment of goods. This allows them to partially circumvent the segmentation, allowing for efficient risk sharing.
A Study of Temporal Features and FrequencyCharacteristics in American English Foreign

In this paper, a detailed acoustic feature study of foreign accent using temporal features, intonation patterns, and frequency characteristics in American English is performed. Using a database which consists of words uttered in isolation, temporal features such as voice onset time, word-nal stop closure duration, and characteristics of duration are investigated. Accent diierences for native-produced versus Mandarin, German, and Turkish accented English utterances are analyzed. Of the dimensions considered the most important is found to be word-nal stop closure duration. Mandarin accented English utterances show signiicant diierences in terms of this feature when compared to native speaker utterances. In addition, the intonation characteristics across a set of foreign accents in American English is investigated. It is shown that Mandarin speaker utterances possess a larger negative continuative intonation slope than native speaker utterances, and German speaker utterances had a more positive intonation slope when compared to native speaker utterances. Finally, a detailed frequency analysis of foreign accented speech is conducted. It is shown that the mid-frequency range (1500-2500 Hz) is the most sensitive frequency band to non-native speaker pronunciation variations. Based on this knowledge a new frequency scale for the calculation of cepstrum coeecients is formulated which is shown to outperform the Mel-scale in terms of its ability to classify accent automatically among four accent classes. PACS Code 43.72Lw Language Acquisition z Permission is hereby granted to publish this abstract separately.
Risk Factors and Immunity in a Nationally Representative Population following the 2009 Influenza A(H1N1) Pandemic

Background Understanding immunity, incidence and risk factors of the 2009 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic (2009 H1N1) through a national seroprevalence study is necessary for informing public health interventions and disease modelling. Methods and Findings We collected 1687 serum samples and individual risk factor data between November-2009 to March-2010, three months after the end of the 2009 H1N1 wave in New Zealand. Participants were randomly sampled from selected general practices countrywide and hospitals in the Auckland region. Baseline immunity was measured from 521 sera collected during 2004 to April-2009. Haemagglutination inhibition (HI) antibody titres of ≥1∶40 against 2009 H1N1 were considered seroprotective as well as seropositive. The overall community seroprevalence was 26.7% (CI:22.6–29.4). The seroprevalence varied across age and ethnicity. Children aged 5–19 years had the highest seroprevalence (46.7%;CI:38.3–55.0), a significant increase from the baseline (14%;CI:7.2–20.8). Older adults aged ≥60 had no significant difference in seroprevalence between the serosurvey (24.8%;CI:18.7–30.9) and baseline (22.6%;CI:15.3–30.0). Pacific peoples had the highest seroprevalence (49.5%;CI:35.1–64.0). There was no significant difference in seroprevalence between both primary (29.6%;CI:22.6–36.5) and secondary healthcare workers (25.3%;CI:20.8–29.8) and community participants. No significant regional variation was observed. Multivariate analysis indicated age as the most important risk factor followed by ethnicity. Previous seasonal influenza vaccination was associated with higher HI titres. Approximately 45.2% of seropositive individuals reported no symptoms. Conclusions Based on age and ethnicity standardisation to the New Zealand Population, about 29.5% of New Zealanders had antibody titers at a level consistent with immunity to 2009 H1N1. Around 18.3% of New Zealanders were infected with the virus during the first wave including about one child in every three. Older people were protected due to pre-existing immunity. Age was the most important factor associated with infection followed by ethnicity. Healthcare workers did not appear to have an increased risk of infection compared with the general population.
New Resources and Perspectives for Biomedical Event Extraction

Event extraction is a major focus of recent work in biomedical information extraction. Despite substantial advances, many challenges still remain for reliable automatic extraction of events from text. We introduce a new biomedical event extraction resource consisting of analyses automatically created by systems participating in the recent BioNLP Shared Task (ST) 2011. In providing for the first time the outputs of a broad set of state-of-the-art event extraction systems, this resource opens many new opportunities for studying aspects of event extraction, from the identification of common errors to the study of effective approaches to combining the strengths of systems. We demonstrate these opportunities through a multi-system analysis on three BioNLP ST 2011 main tasks, focusing on events that none of the systems can successfully extract. We further argue for new perspectives to the performance evaluation of domain event extraction systems, considering a document-level, "off-the-page" representation and evaluation to complement the mention-level evaluations pursued in most recent work.
Smyd2 is a Myc-regulated gene critical for MLL-AF9 induced leukemogenesis

The Smyd2 protein (Set- and Mynd domain containing protein 2) is a methyl-transferase that can modify both histones and cytoplasmic proteins. Smyd2 is over-expressed in several cancer types and was shown to be limiting for tumor development in the pancreas. However, genetic evidence for a role of Smyd2 in other cancers or in mouse development was missing to date. Using germ line-deleted mouse strains, we now show that Smyd2 and the related protein Smyd3 are dispensable for normal development. Ablation of Smyd2 did not affect hematopoiesis, but retarded the development of leukemia promoted by MLL-AF9, a fusion oncogene associated with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in humans. Smyd2-deleted leukemic cells showed a competitive disadvantage relative to wild-type cells, either in vitro or in vivo. The Smyd2 gene was directly activated by the oncogenic transcription factor Myc in either MLL9-AF9-induced leukemias, Myc-induced lymphomas, or fibroblasts. However, unlike leukemias, the development of lymphomas was not dependent upon Smyd2. Our data indicate that Smyd2 has a critical role downstream of Myc in AML.
South-Asian American and Asian-Indian Americans (SAA/AIA) Parents: Children's Education and Parental Participation

South-Asian American and Asian-Indian Americans Parents: Children’s Education and Parental Participation by Sahil Ashwin Shah MS, Touro College, 2007 BA, William Paterson University, 2006 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School Psychology Walden University July 2015 Abstract Parental participation supports students’ academic success and increases positive peer interactions. Prior to the 1980s, parental participation was viewed as a unidimensional construct; however, it has since been understood as a multidimensional one. Studies from Epstein have demonstrated that culture, community, and family structures are some of the many factors thatParental participation supports students’ academic success and increases positive peer interactions. Prior to the 1980s, parental participation was viewed as a unidimensional construct; however, it has since been understood as a multidimensional one. Studies from Epstein have demonstrated that culture, community, and family structures are some of the many factors that affect parental participation. In addition, Huntsinger and Jose have demonstrated that AsianAmerican parents participate in their children’s education differently than do European Americans, yet research has not examined the specificities of South-Asian Americans’ (SAAs) and Asian-Indian Americans’ (AIAs) parental involvement. There are 6 recognized methods that parents can use to participate in their child’s education. Assuming that the methods of participation used by parents can affect their children’s academic performance and social development, the purpose of this study was to examine these methods of parental participation with respect to AIAs and SAAs. Using Epstein’s questionnaire, 308 AIA/SAA parents were recruited who had a child born in the United States and who was attending a U.S. school between kindergarten and Grade 2 at the time of the study. MANOVA and ANOVA tests were used to calculate whether a significant difference existed amongst the 6 methods of parental participation, based on the gender of the parent or the gender of the child. There was no significant preference among the 6 methods of parental participation, nor was any difference found that related to the gender of the child. However, the results indicated that mothers were more involved than fathers in their child’s education, although there was no preference among the 6 methods. Given the lack of clear direction emergent in these findings, implications for future research to further the understanding of parental participation of SAA/AIA are discussed. South-Asian American and Asian-Indian Americans (SAA/AIA) Parents: Children’s Education and Parental Participation by
The impact of foreign aid on economic growth in ECOWAS countries: A simultaneous-equation model

This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in member countries of the Economic Community of West African States using panel data for 1990-2009 and a three equation simultaneous-equations model. The effect of foreign aid on economic growth among these ECOWAS countries was found to be positive and strong. Other important drivers of economic growth include interest rate, foreign direct investment, and the level of international reserves. The results from the equation on foreign aid indicated that domestic investment, exports, and international reserves have a positive relationship with foreign aid. From the equation explaining investment, domestic savings and exchange rate were found to be positively related to investment. A policy implication of the study is that member countries of the Economic Community of West African States should seek foreign aid as it would greatly accelerate their economic growth.
Performance of block codes with peak power reduction for indoor multicarrier systems

The performance of block coding scheme based on complementary sequences, which allows coding gain and the reduction of the peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of multicarrier signals, is evaluated over frequency selective Rayleigh fading channel, employing the efficient soft decision decoding method. Above all, 8-carrier QDPSK and 8DPSK systems exhibit good performance in terms of bit error rate improvement, feasibility of practically optimal decoding with a moderate coding rate, and the resultant PAPR at most 3 dB.
The Education, Labour Market and Health Consequences of Child Labour

Though there is a large literature on the determinants of child labour and many initiatives aimed at combating this phenomenon, there is limited evidence on the consequences of child labour for socioeconomic outcomes such as education, occupational choice, wages, and health. Using panel data from Vietnam and an instrumental variables strategy, we evaluate the effect of child labour participation on outcomes over a five-year horizon. We find significant negative impacts of child labour on subsequent school participation and educational attainment. On the other hand, we find that those who worked as children are likely to earn a higher wage as young adults. This effect more than fully offsets the foregone earnings due to reduced schooling, particularly for girls. We find no significant effects of child labour on several indicators of health. This evidence in part accounts for why child labour is such a pervasive phenomenon and suggests that the case against child labour requires both future increases in the returns to schooling (i.e., beyond the five year horizon encompassed by our data set) and that parents are able to borrow (or internally fund) the investment in schooling.
An Assessment of Competition in the Portuguese Banking System in the 1991-2004 Period

The purpose of the present paper is to assess the competitive behaviour of Portuguese banking groups during the period ranging from 1991 to 2004, using the non-structural test developed by Panzar and Rosse. The main findings are that the Portuguese banking system has experienced weak competition between 1991 and 1996, underwent a period of restructuring until 2000, and from then until 2004 behaved consistently with perfect competition. Both private and, more markedly, domestic banks, seem to have competed more aggressively on occasions, and no relationship between competitive behaviour and bank size was identified.
Probing Galaxy Density Profiles with Future Supernova Surveys

In this paper we discuss the possibility of measuring the Hubble parameter and the slope of galaxy density profiles using future supernova data. With future supernova surveys such as the Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP), large numbers of core-collapse supernovae will be discovered, a small fraction of which will be multiply imaged. Measurements of the image separation, flux ratio, time delay, and properties of the lens galaxy for these systems will provide tight constraints on the slope of galactic halos as well as providing complementary and independent information to other cosmological tests with respect to the Hubble parameter.