Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How to build a regional university: a case study that addresses policy settings, academic excellence, innovation system impact and regional relevance

ABSTRACT A public university was established in 2014 as a cornerstone of Ecuador’s sweeping higher education reforms. Four years later, Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam had developed internationally benchmarked teaching, research and community service missions within the Ecuadorian Amazon. The creation of Ikiam occurred during a period of broad international discourse on the importance to universities of academic excellence, innovation system impact, and regional relevance. This case study tests whether a top-down state-driven development model can establish a university on principles of excellence, impact and relevance. The creation of Ikiam is analysed qualitatively and the results are discussed in context with national and international policy settings for higher education and innovation. This study provides insights for low and middle-income countries to strengthen higher education and innovation systems through university creation. Internationally it provides practical insights for university master planning taskforces to build organisational strength and distinctiveness through excellence, impact and relevance.
Effects of short‐term administration of growth hormone in healthy young men, women, and women taking oral contraceptives

Abstract. Edén Engström B, Burman P, Johansson AG, Wide L, Karlsson FA (University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden). Effects of short‐term administration of growth hormone in healthy young men, women, and women taking oral contraceptives. J Intern Med 2000; 247: 570–578.
What motivates international homebuyers? Investor to lifestyle ‘migrants’ in a tourist city

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the economic crisis, Lisbon has ascended on to the urban tourism and international property market with a velocity that is transforming the city. Investor immigration programmes and fiscal policy have met their objective of attracting wealthy third country and intra-EU migrants to invest in housing in the city. To date, there is a dearth of empirical and theoretical analyses that explicate the motivations and aspirations of international overseas residential investors. Situated at the intersection of the literature on investment and lifestyle migration, and based on 20 in-depth interviews with experts in the intermediary elite economy, our objective is to understand buyer motivations and the current attraction of the city. We present our results in the form of a typology of new transnational urban homeowners revealing complex forms of mobility that intersect in the city. Our results reveal the continued importance, both directly and indirectly, of lifestyle motivations related with quality of life, culture, amenities and climate. Yet, economic motivations are the most significant, even if diverse, among the residential investor typologies with some seeking a safe haven and others geoarbritage or income optimization. Moreover, our results suggest that the success of government incentives (immigrant investor programmes or tax exemptions) to attract foreign second home buyers are dependent on prospects of city economic growth, rent legislation and the perceived attractiveness of the city/region for tourists making them difficult to replicate across contexts.
A Study of Outrage of Modesty Offenders in a Singapore Prison

Outrage of modesty (OOM) offenders cause considerable annoyance and distress to their victims. The offending behaviours include touching, grabbing or fondling of erogenous or non-erogenous parts of the victim's body. The purpose of this study is to examine a prison cohort of OOM offenders and to compare them with a group of OOM offenders who had been remanded in a state mental hospital. All prisoners serving sentence over a two-year study period were interviewed. They were of similar mean age to the hospital cohort but were better educated, more likely to be married and most were working. Victims tended to be young females with an average age of 19 years. Psychotic disorders were rarely present, although 15% had a dissocial personality disorder. Those with previous OOM convictions were likely to have had past psychiatric consultations and were more likely to be unmarried. However, there were no statistically significant differences between convicted first-time offenders and repeat offenders with respect to age, educational level, nature of offences and alcohol consumption. The prisoners were less inclined to commit their offences in the mornings. Breasts and genitalia were the favoured targets for molest action, irrespective of time or place or whether the offence was committed by a first or repeat offender. The offences were often committed along staircases, corridors and in crowded public places. CONCLUSION: Interesting differences emerged when a cohort of prisoners was compared with another cohort of molesters remanded in a psychiatric hospital. The prison cohort contained fewer individuals with psychiatric illness, whereas the converse was true for the hospital cohort. Although it is thought that sexual offences are typically committed by those with no psychiatric disorders, much depends on the type of study population being evaluated. If the study population is from a prison setting, fewer mentally ill individuals would be expected. In these situations the Dissocial Personality Disorders are expected to be more prevalent. The surprising finding that the prison group comprised those who were fairly well educated with high employment contrasted with an age-old concept of the criminal population as a whole. While mental illnesses tended to be found in a minority of the prisoners, there seemed to be an indication that those who had committed repeat offences were in some way more psychologically impaired than those who had molested for the first time. Such impairments were probably responsible for problems in forming intimate relationships leading up to marriage.
The Impacts of Markets and Tax on a Multinational Firm's Procurement Strategy in China

Motivated by observations in the greater China region, this paper studies a multinational firm (MNF)'s preferences between two procurement strategies in a global business environment. The MNF relies on a contract manufacturer (CM) to produce its products, which serve both markets within (domestic market) and outside (overseas market) China. The MNF is assumed to be monopolistic in the overseas market but faces competition from a local original equipment manufacturer (OEM) who outsources both manufacturing and component procurement to the CM. The MNF will decide whether to control its component procurement (consignment strategy) or delegate that function to the CM (turnkey strategy). Our study indicates that a number of factors unique to the global supply chain environment, such as a multiâ€ market structure with different sizes and natures of competition, and a set of tax rules that gives differential treatment to products serving different markets, have the potential of impacting the MNF's choice of consignment vs. turnkey strategies, sometimes in interesting ways. In particular, we find that when attempting to balance the pros and cons of cooperating with the local OEM under turnkey while competing against it in the domestic market, the MNF's preference could switch twice from turnkey to consignment and back to turnkey, and its global profits could first decrease and then increase, as the domestic market grows. Our study also highlights the importance of making a company's global supply chain management decisions while considering international tax rules.
The Role of Public Relations in College Athletics: Identifying Roles, Tasks, and Importance of Public Relations

Public relations (PR) is becoming increasingly important in college athletics as the frequency and severity of controversy, legal issues, and crises heighten. With many stakeholders concerned about college athletic programs, coupled with an increased media presence and skyrocketing budgets, it is imperative that athletic programs communicate effectively and efficiently in times where clarity is needed. With that, the purpose of this research is to continue learning about the roles and perceptions of PR within an athletic department, as seen through the lens of ath-letic directors. Building on the work of (Ruihley & Fall, 2009), this research seeks to discover more about the following PR areas: tasks, stakeholder reach, benefits, and roles of PR staff. With mixed-method findings from NCAA Divisions I-A and I-AA athletic directors ( n = 49), results indicate top responsibilities of the pri-mary PR staff member as maintaining media contacts and working with coaches and athletes. The top stakeholders indicated were student athletes, media, and the university. The top perceived role was problem-solving process facilitator. Lastly, the top indicated benefits of PR were identified in themes of communication and message, relationships, and strategic planning. The results of this research assist in understanding more about the fit of PR in college athletics.
Chronic Colonization with Pandoraea apista in Cystic Fibrosis Patients Determined by Repetitive-Element-Sequence PCR

ABSTRACT Pandoraea apista is recovered with increasing frequency from the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) and may represent an emerging pathogen (I. M. Jorgensen et al., Pediatr. Pulmonol. 36:439-446, 2003). We identified two CF patients from our hospital whose sputum specimens were culture positive for P. apista over the course of several years. Repetitive-element-sequence PCR was employed to determine whether sequential isolates that were recovered from these patients represented a single clone and whether each patient had been chronically colonized with the same strain. Banding patterns generated with ERIC primers, REP primers, and BOX primers showed that individual patient isolates had a high degree of similarity (>97%) and were considered identical. However, only the banding patterns from the ERIC primers and BOX primers were able to show that the strains from patients I and II were unique (similarity indices of 79.8% and 70.0%, respectively). We concluded that all strains of P. apista from patient I were identical, as were all strains from patient II, establishing chronic colonization. Only two of the three methods employed indicate that the strains from the two patients are distinct. This implied that the organism was not transferred from one patient to the other, suggesting that the choice of methodology could generate misleading results when examining person-to-person transmission regarding this organism.
Human leucocyte antigen‐A2 restricted and Mycobacterium tuberculosis 19‐kDa antigen‐specific CD8+ T‐cell responses are oligoclonal and exhibit a T‐cell cytotoxic type 2 response cytokine‐secretion pattern

CD8+ T cells can be grouped into two different types of secretory T lymphocytes, based on the cytokine‐secretion pattern upon antigen exposure: those with a T‐cell cytotoxic type 1 response (Tc1), which secrete interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ), or those with a T‐cell cytotoxic type 2 response, which secrete interleukin (IL)‐4 and IL‐10. We examined the CD8+ T‐cell response directed against an immunodominant human leucocyte antigen (HLA)‐A2‐presented peptide derived from a 19‐kDa Mycobacterium tuberculosis‐associated antigen. T cells were examined by functional analysis and by T‐cell receptor (TCR) complementarity‐determining region 3 (CDR3)‐spectratyping, which defines the complexity of a T‐cell response. T‐cell stimulation with the immunodominant VLTDGNPPEV epitope yielded a Tc2 (IL‐4) cytokine‐secretion pattern and resulted in oligoclonal expansion of TCR‐variable beta chain (VB) families, which differed from patient to patient. Generation of T‐cell clones corroborated the notion that the CD8+ T‐cell response directed against the HLA‐A2‐presented VLTDGNPPEV epitope leads to a Tc2 cytokine‐secretion pattern in CD8+ T cells, as defined by IL‐4 and granulocyte–macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (GM‐CSF) release. Characterization of the cytokine‐secretion profile in HLA‐A2/VLTDGNPPEV‐tetramer sorted T cells from patients with active tuberculosis supported this observation: peptide‐specific T cells from three of three patients secreted IL‐4 and only one of three patients produced IFN‐γ in response to the nominal target epitope. Permutation of this T‐cell epitope may aid to elicit a qualitatively different CD8+ T‐cell response in patients with M. tuberculosis infection.
Serum amyloid P component binds to late apoptotic cells and mediates their uptake by monocyte-derived macrophages.

OBJECTIVE Some pentraxins, such as C-reactive protein, bind to apoptotic cells and are involved in the clearance of these cells. We undertook this study to determine whether serum amyloid P component (SAP; a pentraxin that, when deficient in mice, results in lupus-like disease) binds to apoptotic cells and to assess the functional consequences of SAP binding for their phagocytosis by macrophages. METHODS Human peripheral blood monocytes were isolated and cultured for 7 days to obtain monocyte-derived macrophages. Jurkat cells were irradiated with ultraviolet B to induce apoptosis. After 4 hours, a mean +/- SEM of 54.0 +/- 5.1% of these cells stained with annexin V and were propidium iodide negative (early apoptotic [EA] cells). After 24 hours, 77.3 +/- 2.7% of cells stained positive with both annexin V and propidium iodide (late apoptotic [LA] cells or secondary necrotic cells). EA and LA cells were incubated with fluorescein isothiocyanate-labeled SAP in the presence or absence of Ca(2+), and binding was measured by flow cytometry. Phagocytosis was tested by incubation of macrophages with EA or LA cells in the presence of normal human serum (NHS) and quantified as a phagocytosis index (PI; number of Jurkat cells internalized by 100 macrophages). Experiments were repeated with SAP-depleted serum and after reconstitution with increasing concentrations of SAP. RESULTS The majority of LA cells did bind SAP in the presence of Ca(2+), whereas EA cells did not. SAP depletion of NHS resulted in a 50% decrease in the PI for LA cells, and complete restoration of the PI could be demonstrated with SAP reconstitution up to 100 microg/ml. SAP depletion had no effect on phagocytosis of EA cells. CONCLUSION SAP binds to LA cells and is involved in the phagocytosis of these cells by human monocyte-derived macrophages. This may have consequences for diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, in which phagocytosis of apoptotic cells is decreased.
Field Observations of Intraspecific Agonistic Behavior of Two Crayfish Species, Orconectes rusticus and Orconectes virilis, in Different Habitats

Agonistic behavior is a fundamental aspect of ecological theories on resource acquisition and sexual selection. Crustaceans are exemplary models for agonistic behavior within the laboratory, but agonistic behavior in natural habitats is often neglected. Laboratory studies do not achieve the same ecological realism as field studies. In an attempt to connect laboratory results to field data and investigate how habitat structure affects agonistic interactions, the nocturnal behavior of two crayfish species was observed by scuba diving and snorkeling in two northern Michigan lakes. Intraspecific agonistic interactions were analyzed in three habitats: two food resources—macrophytes and detritus—and one sheltered habitat. The overall observations reinforce the concept that resources influence agonistic bouts. Fights in the presence of shelters were longer and more intense, suggesting that shelters have a higher perceived value than food resources. Fights in the presence of detritus patches had higher average intensities and ended with more tailflips away from an opponent, suggesting that detritus was a more valuable food resource than macrophytes. In addition, observations of aggressive behavior within a natural setting can add validity to laboratory studies. When fights in nature are compared with laboratory fights, those in nature are shorter, less intense, and less likely to end with a tailflip, but do show the fundamental fight dynamics associated with laboratory studies. Extrinsic and intrinsic factors affect intraspecific aggression in many ways, and both should always be recognized as having the potential to alter agonistic behavior.
Labour Market Developments in the Jokowi Years

Abstract:This study reviews the developments in Indonesia’s labour markets during the Joko “Jokowi” Widodo presidency. It is set in the context of changing employment, wages and productivity since the Asian Financial Crisis and under the previous (Yudhoyono) government. We argue that Jokowi’s approach as a former businessman—aided by his like-minded vice-president, Jusuf Kalla—together with macroeconomic developments, has been positive for employment and wages, although less so for labour productivity. Formal sector jobs have continued to grow rapidly and recover somewhat in manufacturing, while the downward trend in unemployment has been sustained. Reform of the minimum wage setting processes has not endeared the president to vocal union groups, but appears to have moderated minimum wage increases close to the main industrial centres. At the same time, a wider wage gap has emerged between permanent and casual workers, which could have contributed to the rising inequality in the country. In an attempt to boost productivity, the current administration has put considerable effort into improving skills that are in demand. However, progress is likely to be slow mainly because of the low quality of basic schooling.
Identification and Validation of Colorectal Neoplasia–Specific Methylation Markers for Accurate Classification of Disease

Aberrant DNA methylation occurs early in oncogenesis, is stable, and can be assayed in tissues and body fluids. Therefore, genes with aberrant methylation can provide clues for understanding tumor pathways and are attractive candidates for detection of early neoplastic events. Identification of sequences that optimally discriminate cancer from other diseased and healthy tissues is needed to advance both approaches. Using well-characterized specimens, genome-wide methylation techniques were used to identify candidate markers specific for colorectal neoplasia. To further validate 30 of these candidates from genome-wide analysis and 13 literature-derived genes, including genes involved in cancer and others with unknown functions, a high-throughput methylation-specific oligonucleotide microarray was used. The arrays were probed with bisulfite-converted DNA from 89 colorectal adenocarcinomas, 55 colorectal polyps, 31 inflammatory bowel disease, 115 extracolonic cancers, and 67 healthy tissues. The 20 most discriminating markers were highly methylated in colorectal neoplasia (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve > 0.8; P < 0.0001). Normal epithelium and extracolonic cancers revealed significantly lower methylation. Real-time PCR assays developed for 11 markers were tested on an independent set of 149 samples from colorectal adenocarcinomas, other diseases, and healthy tissues. Microarray results could be reproduced for 10 of 11 marker assays, including eight of the most discriminating markers (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve > 0.72; P < 0.009). The markers with high specificity for colorectal cancer have potential as blood-based screening markers whereas markers that are specific for multiple cancers could potentially be used as prognostic indicators, as biomarkers for therapeutic response monitoring or other diagnostic applications, compelling further investigation into their use in clinical testing and overall roles in tumorigenesis. (Mol Cancer Res 2007;5(2):153–63)
Role of GluR2 expression in AMPA‐induced toxicity in cultured murine cerebral cortical neurons

α‐Amino‐3‐hydroxy‐5‐methyl‐4‐isoxazolepropionic acid receptor (AMPA‐R)‐mediated neurotoxicity was studied in relation to subunit expression and the presence of Ca2+‐permeable receptor channels. AMPA‐mediated toxicity had two components: 1) a direct AMPA‐R‐mediated component, which was not due to Ca2+ influx through voltage‐gated Ca2+ channels, reversal of the Na+/Ca2+ exchanger or release of calcium from dantrolene‐sensitive intracellular Ca2+ stores, and 2) a minor, indirect component involving activation of NMDA receptor channels, because of glutamate release and removal of the Mg2+ block of the NMDA receptor on AMPA‐R stimulation. The involvement of Ca2+ influx through AMPA‐R was also examined. The number of neurons possessing Ca2+‐permeable AMPA‐R increased during culture development, concurrently with an increasing susceptibility for AMPA‐induced toxicity during development. GluR2(R) levels also increased during development, and channel blockers of Ca2+‐permeable AMPA‐R lacking the GluR2(R) subunit (spermine and philanthotoxin) failed to prevent neurotoxicity or increases in [Ca2+]i. Thus, the direct AMPA‐R‐mediated toxicity may be explained by initiation of cell death by Ca2+ fluxing through AMPA‐R containing GluR2(R). The components of direct AMPA‐R‐mediated toxicity are proposed to be 1) toxicity mediated by GluR2(R)‐lacking AMPA‐R and 2) toxicity mediated by low‐Ca2+‐permeability AMPA‐R containing GluR2(R). J. Neurosci. Res. 65:267–277, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The CD16−/CD56bright Subset of NK Cells Is Resistant to Oxidant-Induced Cell Death1

Phagocyte-derived reactive oxygen species (“oxygen radicals”) have been ascribed a suppressive role in immunoregulation by inducing dysfunction and apoptotic cell death in lymphocytes. Earlier studies show that human NK cells are exceptionally sensitive to oxygen radical-induced apoptosis and functional inhibition. Two subsets of human CD56+ NK cells have been identified: the highly cytotoxic CD56dim cells which constitute >90% of NK cells in peripheral blood, and the less cytotoxic but efficiently cytokine-producing CD56bright cells. In this study, we demonstrate that the CD56bright subset of NK cells, in contrast to CD56dim cells, remains viable and functionally intact after exposure to phagocyte-derived or exogenously added oxygen radicals. The resistance of CD56bright cells to oxidative stress was accompanied by a high capacity of neutralizing exogenous hydrogen peroxide, and by a high cell-surface expression of antioxidative thiols. Our results imply that CD56bright NK cells are endowed with an efficient antioxidative defense system that protects them from oxygen radical-induced inactivation.
The Effect of Local Stakeholder Pressures on Responsive and Strategic CSR Activities

This study identifies the relationship between local stakeholder pressures and Korean foreign subsidiaries’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). Analyzing the survey data of 177 Korean foreign subsidiaries yielded two important findings. First, local primary stakeholders have a positive impact on responsive CSR activities, but have no influence on strategic CSR activities. Second, local secondary stakeholders in host countries have a strong influence on both responsive and strategic CSR activities. Secondary stakeholders have more influence on strategic than on responsive CSR activities. This article suggests a change in managerial philosophy toward primary and secondary stakeholders, which may have important implications for multinational enterprises (MNEs) in achieving greater success with the design of their CSR activities.