Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Skeletal muscle myosin cross-bridge cycling is necessary for myofibrillogenesis.

A major stimulus affecting myofibrillogenesis in both embryonic and mature striated muscle is contractile activity. There are two major signals associated with contractile activity: a physiological signal, the transient increase in intracellular calcium, and a physical signal, the transient increase in tension production. However, dissociating these two signals to examine their relative contributions to myofibrillogenesis has proven difficult. In this study, we have used two different myosin inhibitors to determine the importance of myosin cross-bridge cycling in sarcomere assembly. We find that the small-molecule inhibitor 2,3-butanedione monoxime (BDM), which inhibits myosin ATPase, disrupts myofibrillogenesis in amphibian myocytes, consistent with results from avian studies. However, BDM is a weak myosin inhibitor and it is non-specific; concentrations that inhibit contraction and disrupt myofibrillogenesis also disrupt calcium signaling. Therefore, we also used the recently identified skeletal muscle myosin II inhibitor, N-benzyl-p-toluenesulphonamide (BTS), which has high affinity and specificity for skeletal muscle fast myosin. BTS inhibits contraction and results in myofibrillar disruption that phenocopies our results with BDM. However, BTS does not affect either spontaneous or induced calcium transients. Furthermore, BTS is reversible and does not significantly affect the expression levels of myosin or actin. Thus, our convergent results with BDM and BTS suggest that sarcomere assembly depends on active regulation of tension in the forming myofibril.
Toxins of molds from decaying tomato fruit

Among 27 mold isolates from decaying tomatoes, culture filtrates or ethyl acetate extracts of 8 isolates grown in yeast extract-sucrose medium were markedly toxic (mortality, greater than 50%) to brine shrimp larvae. The toxicity of six of these isolates could be attributed to the presence of citrinin, tenuazonic acid, or T-2 toxin. Ethyl acetate extracts of five Alternaria isolates and one Fusarium isolate were mutagenic for Salmonella typhimurium strains. In ripe tomatoes inoculated with toxin-producing isolates and incubated at 25 degrees C, one Alternaria alternata isolate produced tenuazonic acid in seven of seven tomatoes at levels of up to 106 micrograms/g and alternariol methyl ether in one of the seven tomatoes at 0.8 microgram/g. Another A. alternata isolate produced tenuazonic acid or alternariol methyl ether at much lower levels in only three of seven tomatoes. Patulin and citrinin were produced by a Penicillium expansum isolate at levels of up to 8.4 and 0.76 microgram/g, respectively. In tomatoes incubated at 15 degrees C, a Fusarium sulphureum isolate produced T-2 toxin, HT-2 toxin, and neosolaniol at levels of up to 37.5, 37.8 and 5.6 micrograms/g, respectively. If these mycotoxins are thermostable, they may occur at detectable levels in tomato products whenever partially moldy tomatoes are used as raw material.
Prevalence of Major Psychiatric Illness in Young Adults Who Were Burned as Children

Objective: To determine the prevalence of major psychiatric illness in a group of young adults who suffered significant burn injury as children. Method: A total of 101 persons (58 males, 43 females), aged 21 ± 2.6 years, 14.0 ± 5.4 years postburn of 54% ± 20% total body surface area, were assessed for serious past and present mental illness by using a Structured Clinical Interview (SCID) for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (DSM-IV) Axis I diagnoses. Results: The SCID findings demonstrated that the prevalence of any Axis I major mental illness was 45.5% for the past month (current) and 59.4% for lifetime. These rates of overall disorder and the rates for most specific disorders were significantly higher than those found in the US population of comparable age. Logistic regression was used to examine demographic and burn characteristics as predictors of current and lifetime psychiatric disorder within the burn survivor sample. The female gender was significantly associated with higher rates of any current disorder. Other demographic and burn characteristics were not significantly related to the overall prevalence of current or lifetime disorder. Only a small number of those with disorders reported any current mental health treatment. Conclusions: Significant burn injury as a child leads to an increased risk of developing a major mental illness. Young adults who suffered major burn injury as children should be screened for these illnesses to initiate appropriate treatment. TBSA = total body surface area; SCID = Structured Clinical Interview; NCS = National Comorbidity Survey; DIS = Diagnostic Interview Schedule; CIDI = Composite International Diagnostic Interview; PTSD = posttraumatic stress disorder.
Actual and ideal services in acute care and rehabilitation for relatives post-stroke from three perspectives: Relatives, stroke clients and health professionals.

OBJECTIVE To document the gap between actual and desired ideal services for relatives post-stroke from three perspectives: relatives, stroke clients and health professionals. METHODS A two-phase qualitative design and consisting of in-depth interviews (Phase 1) and 3 focus groups (Phase 2). The interview sample consisted of 25 relatives (mean age 53.4 (standard deviation 12.7); women = 21/25) and 16 individuals with a first stroke (mean age = 55.7 (standard deviation 11.2); women = 7/16). The focus group sample size varied from 5 to 7 participants. An interview guide validated by experts was used. Audio content was transcribed verbatim and rigorously analyzed by two team members. RESULTS Services received by relatives are diversified, and relatives' perceptions range from receiving no services to being satisfied with services received. Even when participants were satisfied, ideal services were still desired: they would have liked to receive services earlier and without having to seek. Four main factors emerged as influencing the amount and quality of services received, including the individual's ability to seek. CONCLUSIONS A gap remains between actual and ideal services for relatives post-stroke. It is crucial to legitimized relatives' role as clients and to systematically assess the patient's social environment in order to provide services in accordance with needs.
A study on mobile phone service loyalty in Taiwan

Raising customer loyalty is one of the most important tasks for telecom companies confronting the circumstance of a gradually saturated market. This paper centres on mobile phone service loyalty and explores the relationships between service quality, perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty of mobile telecom services. Service quality has been specified as the driver that predicts and explains customer loyalty through value creation and satisfaction as intermediary constructs. Using the structural equation modelling technique to empirically examine the relationship model in Taiwan, the results reveal: (1) a relationship path of quality → value → satisfaction → loyalty is supported in general; (2) service quality has positive direct effects on perceived value, and satisfaction; (3) perceived value has positive direct effects on both satisfaction and loyalty; and (4) satisfaction has a positive effect on loyalty.
Women in the Labor Market and in the Family

T here are two themes in this paper. The first, an exercise in revisionist history, argues that the conventional wisdom of an absence of any substantial labor market progress for women is mistaken. Instead, throughout this century, women's wages have been steadily rising relative to those of men, a progress likely to accelerate in the next few decades. Our second theme contends that this labor market progress is not enough. Alongside their labor market advances, the relative economic plight of many women is worsening. The downside news is the increasing feminization of poverty, a reflection of the growing instability of the American family.
The International Monetary and Financial System: Its Achilles Heel and What to Do About it

This essay argues that the Achilles heel of the international monetary and financial system is that it amplifies the “excess financial elasticity” of domestic policy regimes, ie it exacerbates their inability to prevent the build-up of financial imbalances, or outsize financial cycles, that lead to serious financial crises and macroeconomic dislocations. This excess financial elasticity view contrasts sharply with two more popular ones, which stress the failure of the system to prevent disruptive current account imbalances and its tendency to generate a structural shortage of safe assets – the “excess saving” and “excess demand for safe assets” views, respectively. In particular, the excess financial elasticity view highlights financial rather than current account imbalances and a persistent expansionary rather than contractionary bias in the system. The failure to adjust domestic policy regimes and their international interaction raises a number of risks: entrenching instability in the global system; returning to the modern-day equivalent of the divisive competitive devaluations of the interwar years; and, ultimately, triggering an epoch-defining seismic rupture in policy regimes, back to an era of trade and financial protectionism and, possibly, stagnation combined with inflation.
Investor Protection, Income Smoothing, and Earnings Informativeness

This study investigates whether investor protection affects the efficient communication of private information about future prospects through income smoothing. While prior research suggests that the level of earnings management differs between high and low investor protection countries, we examine whether the underlying motive for earnings management differs between high and low investor protection countries. Using firm‐level data from 44 countries for 1993 to 2002 and Tucker and Zarowin's (2006) method to measure earnings informativeness, we find that earnings informativeness is more positively associated with income smoothing in countries with strong investor protection than it is in countries with weak investor protection. Our findings suggest that managers in weak investor protection countries are more likely to use income smoothing for opportunistic reasons while managers in strong investor protection countries are more likely to use income smoothing to convey their private information about future e.
The Breakdown in North-East India

This article tries to unravel the drivers of the protracted ethnic and secessionist conflicts, and the resultant disorder that have marred the north-eastern region of India. These conflicts have mostly been explained using the grievance narrative. But such explanations fail to account for the large variance in violence levels within the region. A rather more fruitful line of inquiry is provided by a state-society reading of the political history of the north-east that highlights the fact that conflicts there are accompanied by a contested and weak authority of governmental agencies and the fragmentation of society. Unpacking this causal connection demands that one delve into the region's history to study the process of state-making—how state leaders in colonial and post-colonial times established bureaucratic apparatuses, and constructed and mobilised collective identities in an effort at legitimacy. By focusing on the cases of Mizoram and Manipur, and their very divergent success with mitigating conflicts, and using qualitative sources of data, the paper demonstrates that in Mizoram the process of state-making was such that it consolidated the public legitimacy and authority of reigning institutions among all sections of society, resulting in the strengthened capability of government agencies to provide services, manage group contestations and avoid breakdown. In Manipur it was localised and traditional centres of power—tribal and ethnic associations—that gained in authority, in effect compromising the legitimacy of the government and the institutional capability of its agencies.
Modeling the Conditional Mean and Variance of the Short Rate Using Diffusion, GARCH and Moving Average Models

This article introduces a two‐factor‐discrete‐time‐stochastic‐volatility model that allows for departures from linearity in the conditional mean and incorporates serially correlated unexpected news, asymmetry, and level effects into the definition of conditional volatility of the short rate. The new class of econometric specifications nests many popular existing symmetric and asymmetric GARCH as well as diffusion models of the short‐term interest rate. This study attempts to determine the correct specification of conditional mean and variance of the short rate by developing a more general econometric framework that allows for nonlinear effects in the drift of the short rate, and that defines the conditional volatility as a nonlinear function of unexpected information shocks and interest rate levels. The existing and alternative models are compared in terms of their ability to capture the stochastic behavior of the short‐term riskless rate. The empirical results indicate that the relative performance of the two‐factor models in predicting the future level and variance of interest‐rate changes is superior to the nested models. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 20:717–751, 2000
Promoting the Development of Citizenship in Diverse Youth

Youth in this country have been described as showing a lack of civic engagement (Putnam, 1996, 2000). Youth who feel marginalized from the mainstream, in particular, poor and minority youth, are particularly disaffected (Jankowski 1992, 2002). However, we have found in focus groups with such youth that they do have opinions, loyalty, and commitment about political issues related to family, race, and religion, for example, but not directly related to the country (Sherrod, Flanagan, and Youniss 2002). Our research examines youth’s political attitudes and socialization experiences in regard to family, race, and religion . in order to discover a potential “hook” or “handle” which could be used to redirect youth attention and interest to citizenship. Political attitudes are a form of civic engagement found even in youth who do not participate politically. Thus, the study of political attitudes provides a means of examining civic engagement in all youth. We hope eventually to develop an intervention to promote the civic engagement of youth. Our current work, focusing on the examination of youth’s political attitudes and their socialization experiences, particularly in poor and minority youth, is the first step toward the longer term goal of developing such an intervention.
Comparing Intellectual Capital Disclosure Among the Greek Listed Companies: Does Sector and Capitalization Matter?

The purpose of this study is to examine the intellectual capital disclosure (hereafter: ICD) among the Greek listed companies and compare this level of disclosure among companies of different sector and capitalisation. For this reason, a content analysis of 49 companies' annual reports was firstly conducted, in order to examine the ICDs frequency per element (by sector and capitalisation). Then, a hypothesis analysis was used to compare the level of ICD among companies of different sector and capitalisation. The findings showed that the most reported accounting category was external (or relational) capital and the second most reported was internal (or structural) capital. Furthermore, this study revealed that the most knowledge-based or the biggest companies have the most ICDs frequency. However, a great effort has been put in, in order to increase transparency, in the way that content analysis is conducted, so that a 'real' benefit on future studies can exist.
Supplementary pension coverage in Britain

The 1986 Social Security Act introduced far-reaching changes to the supplementary pension environment in Britain, encouraging the growth of defined contribution pension plans and especially personal pensions. This paper examines the pattern of supplementary pension coverage of employees in Britain five years after the implementation of the Act, using cross-sectional data from the Family Resources Survey 1993-94. Two-thirds of employees in Britain are covered by private contracted-out pension schemes. Employer-provided defined benefit pension schemes remain the dominant type of supplementary pension scheme. The growth of personal pension plans is more marked among manual, less-skilled, workers in smaller establishments. The paper concludes that, in the absence of further pension reform, adverse labour market conditions will exert downward pressure on private pension coverage.
Editorial: Environmental Governance in an Uncertain World

If a single motif could capture realities in today’s world, uncertainty – and the complexity, which underlies it - would be a likely candidate. Ecological, social, political and economic systems are undergoing change at a rapid pace. Changes occur simultaneously at multiple scales, in space and over time, and through numerous forms of geographical interdependence and historical path-dependency. Economic globalisation, shifting patterns of political governance, and new expressions of community and identity are all part of this growing complexity, as both contributors and responses to it. Interactions within and between processes and systems constantly generate unpredictable outcomes and surprises; the result is a world which is inherently less predictable and knowable. In this context, conventional models which have guided the study of environment and development interventions, based on notions of equilibrium and predictability, fail to hold up. In this
How Changes in Compensation Plans Affect Employee Performance, Recruitment and Retention - An Empirical Study of a Car Dealership

This study reports that changes in compensation from performance-sensitive (commission-based) to less performance-sensitive (base salary plus commission) schemes hurt employee performance but do not impair the company's. We analyzed performance data for 4,392 employees and 87 branches of a major Taiwanese car dealership over 56 months to test how the switch in compensation plan affects individual and firm performance. We find that individual sales productivity, especially that of high-performance salespersons, decreased once the compensation plan changed. Consistent with the predictions of selection effects, our results indicate that the less performance-sensitive plan retained fewer high-performance salespersons and recruited more low-performance sales staff. Contrary to the prediction based on incentive and selection effects, our findings show an increase, not decrease, in the branch performance during this period. This is because the company took various actions (e.g., promote more credit sales, push sales of accessories) to mitigate the loss due to lower employee productivity.
Enabling and disabling: disability in the British and Dutch construction sectors

Though the British and Dutch approaches to disability in the construction sector exhibit common features, Britain tends towards a capabilities model compared with the Netherlands which is closer to a social model. The construction sector is considerably more regulated in the Netherlands but is in both countries highly disabling and exclusive. Sector‐specific disabling and enabling factors and policy measures were investigated in the two countries with a view to identifying which policies might facilitate labour market participation. The investigation was based on interviews using similar questionnaires with key stakeholders, firms and disabled employees and a focus group. Policy in each country addresses the nature of exclusion in different ways. The conclusion drawn is that a sector‐specific approach is needed if disability policy in Britain is to be more in tune with the social model—as apparent from the comparison with the Netherlands.
Withdrawals of Anti-Dumping Complaints in the EU: A Sign of Collusion

The study looks at a possible relation between the withdrawals of anti-dumping (AD) complaints and the price increases and quantity decreases in the EU imports. Such a positive relationship is a sign of a tacit collusion. Terminated cases without withdrawals are taken as a benchmark in the second part of the analysis. The dataset covered the ordinary new investigations only to eliminate the impact of different AD protection measures and different types of investigations. The coefficients were estimated with cross-case time-series feasible GLS regressions with heteroscedastic case time series and case-specific autocorrelation AR(1). Current and lagged nominal exchange rates were used as control variables. The collusive impact both on prices (proxied by unit values) and quantities (volumes) was detected.
From training institution to workplace: Towards a training model in the industrial training institutes

The Malaysian Education Development Blueprint’s (2013-2025) emphasis on the holistic formation of students in line with quality human capital formation is based on the national philosophy of education. This blueprint is in line with the Government Transformation Program (GTP), which propels Malaysia towards becoming a developed and high-income country. Quality students are able to learn through formal, non-formal, and informal education as well as through meaningful experience. However, what are the factors that support the creation of awareness that knowledge is essential to life? We explored these factors through the use of grounded theory methods. A total of 32 respondents comprising of trainees, employers and industry supervisors were interviewed. In order to obtain a deeper understanding, we only focused on one public skills training institute which implements best practices. The results showed that there are six main factors that contribute to an environment, which is conducive to effective learning. These factors can serve as a guide to policy makers in the implementation of a comprehensive education system, which supports the holistic formation of students.
Market structure, performance and efficiency in european banking

This paper explores the issue of efficiency in European banking. It tries to distinguish among the market‐structure and efficient‐structure hypotheses by incorporating into our empirical analysis measures of X‐efficiency and scale‐efficiency. Tests of the four hypotheses (the two market power hypotheses and the two efficient structure hypotheses) were performed by regressing measures of concentration, market share, X‐efficiency and scale efficiency against profits. Our empirical findings seem to suggest that the two efficient structure variables do not help in the explanation of the variability of bank profits and, hence, these results do not provide any support for the two efficient structure hypotheses. Our findings also indicate that big banks are more X‐efficient than small banks. This result seems to suggest that there are cost advantages associated with greater bank size.