Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
10-19-2018 p21 Activated Kinase as a Molecular Target for Chemoprevention in Diabetes

Hypothesis: Anti-diabetic drugs modulate p-21 activated kinase (PAK) signaling. Introduction: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic inflammatory disease associated with increased cancer risk. PAK signaling is implicated in cellular homeostasis when regulated, and cancer when unrestrained. Recent reports provided a role for PAK signaling in glucose homeostasis, but the role of PAKs in the pathogenesis of T2DM is unknown. Here, we performed a mini-meta-analysis to explore if anti-diabetic drugs modify PAK signaling pathways, and provide insight regarding modulation of these pathways, to potentially reduce diabetes-associated cancer risk. Methods: PAK interacting partners in T2DM were identified using the online STRING database. Correlation studies were performed via systematic literature review to understand the effect of anti-diabetic drugs on PAK signaling. A mini-meta-analysis correlated multiple clinical studies and revealed the overall clinical response rate and percentage of adverse events in piogliazone (n = 53) and metformin (n = 91) treated patients with PAK-associated diseases. Results: A total of 30 PAK interacting partners were identified (10: reduced beta-cell mass; 10: beta-cell dysfunction; 10: obesity-insulin resistance), which were highly associated with Wnt, and G-protein signaling. The anti-diabetic drug metformin activated signaling pathways upstream; whereas pioglitazone inhibited pathways downstream of PAK. Overall, clinical response upon pioglitazone treatment was 53%. Seventy-nine percent of pioglitazone and 75% of metformin treated patients had adverse events. Pioglitazone reduced molecular-PAK biomarkers of proliferation (Ki67 and CyclinD1), and metformin had the opposite effect. Conclusions: PAK signaling in T2DM likely involves Wnt and G-protein signaling, which may be altered by the anti-diabetic drugs metformin and pioglitazone. Apart from the therapeutic limitations of adverse events, pioglitazone may be promising in chemoprevention. However long-term multi-centered studies, which initiate pioglitazone treatment early will be required to fully assess the full potential of these drugs.
GOSPODARKA SUROWCAMI MINERALNYMI – MINERAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

** Dr inż. , *** Mgr inż. , Katedra Ceramiki i Materiałów Ogniotrwałych, Wydział Inżynierii Materiałowej i Ceramiki, Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza, Kraków; e-mail: mgajek@agh.edu. pl ** Dr inż. , Katedra Zrównoważonego Rozwoju Energetycznego, Wydział Energetyki i Paliw, Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza, Kraków MARCIN GAJEK*, JANUSZ PARTYKA*, ALICJA RAPACZ-KMITA*, ŁUKASZ WÓJCIK* MAGDALENA DUDEK**, KATARZYNA GASEK***
Connectivity properties of the adjacency graph of SLE κ bubbles for κ ∈ ( 4 , 8 )

We study the adjacency graph of bubbles—i.e., complementary connected components—of an SLEκ curve for κ ∈ (4, 8), with two such bubbles considered to be adjacent if their boundaries intersect. We show that this adjacency graph is a.s. connected for κ ∈ (4, κ0], where κ0 ≈ 5.6158 is defined explicitly. This gives a partial answer to a problem posed by Duplantier, Miller and Sheffield (2014). Our proof in fact yields a stronger connectivity result for κ ∈ (4, κ0], which says that there is a Markovian way of finding a path from any fixed bubble to ∞. We also show that there is a (non-explicit) κ1 ∈ (κ0, 8) such that this stronger condition does not hold for κ ∈ [κ1, 8). Our proofs are based on an encoding of SLEκ in terms of a pair of independent κ/4-stable processes, which allows us to reduce our problem to a problem about stable processes. In fact, due to this encoding, our results can be re-phrased as statements about the connectivity of the adjacency graph of loops when one glues together an independent pair of so-called κ/4-stable looptrees, as studied, e.g., by Curien and Kortchemski (2014). The above encoding comes from the theory of Liouville quantum gravity (LQG), but the paper can be read without any knowledge of LQG if one takes the encoding as a black box.
Suitability of conventional management accounting practices to small and medium enterprises operating in the hotel sector of the Cape Metropole

Underperformance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operating in hotel sector has partly been attributed to their failure to adopt suitable Conventional Management Accounting Practices (CMAPs), given the lack of awareness of which of these tools are suitable to these entities. The broad aim of this research was to assess the management accounting information needs of SMEs operating in the hotel sector of the Cape Metropole and determine the CMAPs that are suitable for these entities. Data was collected from 100 SMEs using a questionnaire survey and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the study revealed that the sampled SMEs needed accounting information for various purposes. Key among these were for: analysing risks and uncertainty, optimising utilisation of scarce resources, obtaining accurate data on costs, determining the break-even point, planning for sudden unexpected changes, minimising inventory wastages, assessing profitability of each service rendered and each customer, and planning for revenues and costs, among others. The findings of the study also revealed that most CMAPs were perceived to be suitable to most of the sampled SMEs. However, budgeting was perceived to be the most suitable CMAP for the SMEs, followed by forecasting, Cost, Volume and Profit (CVP) analysis, then variance analysis, followed by industry competitor analysis, financial and non-financial performance measurement techniques, ordering of optimal inventory and capital budgeting approaches. Other CMAPs perceived to be suitable to the SMEs were: cost plus pricing techniques, cost management and control techniques, theory of constraints, real time performance indicator dash boards, just in time system, working capital management techniques and what if analysis. This study not only fills in the gap in the literature on CMAPs that are deemed to be suitable for SMEs, but also invaluable insights on the management accounting information needs of these entities, which could be used to inform future government interventions meant to improve the performance of these entities. The findings may also aid SMEs to compare their own CMAPs to the ones deemed to be most suitable to these entities with a view to adopt the best of the practices.
Financial Development , Foreign Direct Investment and Banking Sector Performance : Evidence from African Countries with Stock Exchange Market

The study examined the impact of financial development and foreign direct investment on banking sector performance in African with emphasis on countries with stock exchange markets for the period 1996 to 2016. The study adopted dynamic panel data generalized method of moment estimation model to make robust statistic inference. The study concluded that financial development and foreign direct investment have negative impact on banking sector performance in the samples used. The study recommends governments’ effectiveness in the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies to create an enabling environment for the banking sector to thrive.
Wait-time and its Relevance to L 2 classrooms

This study aims to investigate wait-time, more specifically student reaction wait-time, in high school English as a foreign language classrooms with specific regard to two classroom micro-context modes (the classroom context mode and material mode). The data was collected via audio-recordings of classroom interaction in its natural context. The audio-recordings were analyzed using the principles of Conversation Analysis. The analysis of the data demonstrated that the effectiveness of student reaction wait-time is highly related to the current pedagogical goal; if the purpose is to increase learners’ involvement in classroom discourse or if it requires analytical thinking, an extended wait-time of three to five seconds is likely to enhance the learning opportunity. However, as a social process, opportunities for learning are likely to be missed if the purpose is to monitor understanding or display answers which are explicitly given in the material that is being used. In this sense, this study has implications for studies on wait-time, foreign language classroom interaction, teachers’ interactional competence, and foreign language learning contexts in general.
Maggot Antimicrobial Peptide Effect on TGF-β 4 and TNF-α mRNA Expression in Small Intestinal Mucosa from Salmonella pullorum-Infected Chickens

Received: Revised: Accepted: Published online: November 1, 2016 April 15, 2017 April 19, 2017 May 18, 2017 To explore the effects of maggot antimicrobial peptide treatment of Salmonella pullorum-infected chickens on the mRNA expression levels of TGF-β4 and TNF-α in small intestinal mucosa, the duodenum, jejunum and ileum mucosa were isolated 3, 5 and 7 days after induced AMP, non-induced AMP, antibiotics or maggot treatment and the TGF-β4 and TNF-α mRNA expression was evaluated by quantitative real-time PCR. We found that mRNA of TGF-β4 was highly expressed in the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum when Salmonella pulloruminfected chickens were treated with antibiotics, non-induced AMP, and AMP, respectively (P<0.001). Similarly, TNF-α mRNA was highly expressed in the duodenum and jejunum when Salmonella pullorum-infected chickens were treated with induced AMP and maggots, respectively (P<0.001), and the expression of TNF-α mRNA was higher in response to the use of induced AMP than antibiotics on day 5 after treatment (P<0.05). Therefore, maggot AMP functional efficiency, along with evaluation of TGF-β4 and TNF-α produced by small intestinal mucosa, may be useful for the prevention and treatment of Salmonella pullorum when developing new chicken feed additives.
0 60 91 84 v 1 2 1 S ep 2 00 6 Impact of non-Poisson activity patterns on spreading processes

Halting a computer or biological virus outbreak requires a d etailed understanding of the timing of the interactions between susceptible and infected individuals. For example, the spread of email viruses and worms is driven by the email communication and computer usage patter ns of individuals. While current spreading models assume that users interact uniformly in time, following a Poisson process, a series of recent measurements indicate that the inter-contact time distribution is heavy tailed, corresponding to a temporally inhomogeneous bursty contact process. Here we show that the non-Poisson na ture of the contact dynamics results in prevalence decay times significantly larger than predicted by the stand ard Poisson process based models. Our predictions are in agreement with the detailed time resolved prevalence data of computer viruses, which, according to virus bulletins, show a decay time close to a year, in contrast with the one day decay predicted by the standard Poisson process based models.
Forthcoming in Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Is consciousness based in prefrontal circuits involved in cognitive processes like thought, reasoning, and memory or, alternatively, is it based in sensory areas in the back of the neocortex? The no-report paradigm has been crucial to this debate because it aims to separate the neural basis of the cognitive processes underlying post-perceptual decision and report from the neural basis of conscious perception itself. However, the no-report paradigm is problematic because, even in the absence of report, subjects might engage in post-perceptual cognitive processing. Therefore, to isolate the neural basis of consciousness, a no-cognition paradigm is needed. Here, I describe a no-cognition approach to binocular rivalry and outline how this approach can help resolve debates about the neural basis of consciousness. Acknowledgement: Thanks to Jan Brascamp, Susan Carey, Thomas Carlson, David Carmel, David Chalmers, Christof Koch, Hakwan Lau, Matthias Michel, Michael Pitts, Dawid Potgieter and Giulio Tononi for comments on an earlier version. What is the Neural Basis of Consciousness? In recent years the scientific study of consciousness (see Glossary) has focused on finding the neural basis of consciousness in the brain. There are many theories of the neural basis of consciousness, but in broad strokes theories tend to divide on whether consciousness is rooted in the ‘front’ or the ‘back’ of the brain. More specifically, they divide on whether perceptual consciousness is based in the neural circuits in prefrontal and parietal cortex that are devoted to cognitive processes like thinking, reasoning, evaluating, reporting, deciding, memory or, alternatively, whether perceptual consciousness is based in areas in occipital and temporal cortex that are devoted to sensory processing. Garnering firm support for cognitive theories versus sensory (or non-cognitivist) theories has proven methodologically challenging. However, it is widely held that the no-report paradigm [1] can help adjudicate between these two perspectives. The logic of the no-report paradigm is as follows: suppose we seek to isolate the neural basis of consciously seeing, say, a face. Clearly, we would want to contrast brain activations in which a subject is consciously seeing a face with brain activations in which the subject is not consciously seeing a face. However, we typically only know whether subjects are consciously seeing a face via their own self-reports. So it may seem that the neural basis of consciousness of a face will inevitably be entangled with the neural basis of the post-perceptual cognitive processes underlying judging what the stimulus is, maintaining that
The Experience of Spirituality in the Lives of Hospice Patients

Addressing the spiritual needs of patients is a crucial dimension of holistic healthcare, but perhaps the most neglected. Interpretive phenomenology was used to explore the experience of spirituality in the lives of hospice patients. Semistructured, in-depth interviews were conducted with six hospice patients. A four-member interpretive team analyzed the data using the strategies outlined by Diekelmann, Allen, and Tanner (1989). The participants told rich stories about events that occurred throughout their lives. The nature of the stories suggested that the beliefs, values, and experiences that were important to them throughout their lives were also important to them as they were dying. The interpretive team concluded that participants’ spirituality was shown not by how they described their spiritual life, but rather by the way they organized their life narratives. An overall theme of “dying the way you lived” was identified. Two subthemes of “who is in charge” and “connecting and disconnecting” emerged from the data, suggesting that beliefs about control and the pattern of relationships with others, God, and environment give meaning and coherence to the way individuals understand the unfolding of their lives. The findings indicate that providing spiritual care for hospice patients involves forging meaningful connections, respecting the patients’ choices for managing their dying, and eliciting stories about life and death in order to understand their unique and personal spiritual needs.
Death receptor 3 : a regulator of bone turnover and new target for therapy for osteoporosis?

Death receptor 3 (DR3) is a member of the TNFRSF and has one confirmed TNFSF ligand - TNF-like protein 1A (TL1A). Recent studies have suggested a role for DR3/TL1A in osteoclast (OC) and osteoblast (OB) biology. However, the mechanism through which they acted and the consequences in diseases characterised by adverse bone pathology were not investigated. This thesis investigated the role of DR3/TL1A in OC formation and resorptive function (murine and human), diseases characterised by OC hyper-activity and homeostatic OB differentiation and function (murine) using cell culture and molecular biology techniques. DR3/TL1A were demonstrated for the first time to have a direct effect on in vitro OC formation and resorptive function in both murine and human models. DR3 was revealed to be critical for OC resorptive function (murine) while TL1A dose-dependently increased osteoclastogenesis and resorptive function in the human system. Studies into the mechanism identified that DR3/TL1A regulated expression of the chemokines CCL2 and CCL3 as well as the activation of MMP-9. In rheumatoid arthritis patient serum TL1A was significantly increased, with levels linked to the presence of rheumatoid factor and erosive disease. Intriguingly, DR3/TL1A were shown to have no direct significant role in the increased OC activity associated with post-menopausal osteoporosis; DR3 was not detected on patient-derived OC precursors and serum levels of TL1A were not elevated. Analysis of murine osteoprogenitors and OB revealed expression of DR3 and TL1A and suggested a novel autocrine role in OB differentiation. This was supported by the OB mineralisation assay results which demonstrated reduced differentiation, MMP-2 and MMP-9 activation and mineral deposition in DR3ko cultures. The results presented in this thesis identify a novel, complex and multi-factorial role for DR3/TL1A in controlling OC and OB differentiation and function; imbalances in which can lead to the pathogenesis of adverse bone pathology.
Vitamin D deficiency in childhood

Introduction The importance of vitamin D in bone development during childhood has been known since the beginning of the last century. As early as 1554, Thedosius published an observation of rickets taken from an individual, but its relationship to vitamin D was not established until 1917, when McCollum et al. isolated an anti-rickets factor in cod liver oil and suggested the term vitamin D. Since then, the disease has been extensively studied. In addition to the nutritional cause, genetic causes and resistance to vitamin D have been discovered, as well as its relation with hypophosphatemia. However, in the course of the study of adult osteoporosis, low levels of vitamin D have also been found to endanger the bone, without necessarily reaching levels that produce osteomalacia (the equivalent of rickets in adults). Although this aspect will be discussed more fully elsewhere in this paper, it has been established that vitamin D values below 30 ng/ml may be detrimental to bone metabolism in adults. However, can these limits be applied to the growing individual? In other words, is vitamin D deficiency the same in children as in adults? Throughout this paper, we will discuss various issues regarding hypovitaminosis D in children and adolescents. Since the cited studies offer values of 25hydroxy vitamin D in different units (either ng/ml, or nmol/ l), to give uniformity to the review all results are shown in ng/Ml, after converting them according to the equivalence 1 ng/ml=2.5 nmol/l.
Series 09-16 Competition and Innovation : Evidence from Financial Services

In this paper we seek to contribute to the literature on competition and innovation by focusing on individual firms within the U.S. banking industry in the period 1984-2004. We measure innovation by estimating technology gaps and find evidence of an inverted-U relationship between competition and the technology gaps in banking. This finding is robust over several different specifications and is consistent with theoretical and empirical work by Aghion, Bloom, Blundell, Griffith, and Howitt (2005b). The optimal amount of innovation requires a slightly positive mark up. Also, we find that the U.S. banking industry as a whole has consolidated beyond this optimal innovation level and that state-level interstate banking deregulation has lowered innovation.
The Cost of Bad Parents : Evidence from Incarceration on Children ’ s Education

This paper provides evidence that parental incarceration increases children’s educational attainment. I collect criminal records for 100,000 convicted poor parents in Colombia and combine it with administrative data on the educational attainment of their children. To overcome endogeneity concerns in incarceration I use exogenous variation that results from the random assignment of defendants to judges who differ in their stringency to convict and send defendants to prison. I write down an econometric model that features three treatment assignments, defined along two margins of selection and provide new identification results. I find that conditional on conviction, parental incarceration increases years of education by 0.6 years for the children whose parents were on the margin of incarceration. This positive effect is larger when the incarceration is for a violent crime, for boys and when the incarcerated parent is the mother. JEL No. I24,J24,K42. ∗Preliminary draft. I am very grateful for the support, guidance, and helpful comments of Adriana Lleras-Muney, Maurizio Mazzocco, Rodrigo Pinto, Sarah Reber, and Till von Wachter. I thank Stephen Billings, Leah Boustan, Moshe Buchinsky, Denis Chetverikov, Christian Dippel, Sam Norris, Rosa Matzkin, Matt Pecenco, Ricardo Perez-Truglia and Jeff Weaver for their feedback. I thank my colleagues Richard Domurat, Sepehr Ekbatani, Stefano Fiorin, Alex Fon, Keyoung Lee, Rustin Partow, and seminar participants at UCLA, CCPR, and the Central Bank of Colombia for insightful discussions. Natalia Cardenas, Mauricio Duran, and Juan D. Restrepo provided invaluable help in answering my questions about the institutional context. I gratefully acknowledge support from the Treiman Fellowship and CCPR. Comments are greatly appreciated. Department of Economics, UCLA (caroartc@ucla.edu).
INSIGHTS IN HABITS AND ATTITUDES REGARDING PROGRAMMING SOUND SYNTHESIZERS: A QUANTITATIVE STUDY

Sound synthesis represents an indispensable tool for modern composers and performers, but achieving desired sonic results often requires a tedious manipulation of various numeric parameters. In order to facilitate this process, a number of possible approaches have been proposed, but without a systematic user research that could help researchers to articulate the problem and to make informed design decisions. The purpose of this study is to fill that gap and to investigate attitudes and habits of sound synthesizer users. The research was based on a questionnaire answered by 122 participants, which, be-side the main questions about habits and attitudes, covered questions about their demographics, profession, educational background and experience in using sound synthesizers. The results were quantitatively analyzed in order to explore relations between all those dimensions. The main results suggest that the participants more often modify or create programs than they use existing presets or programs and that such habits do not depend on the participants’ education, profession, or experience.
Gated convolutional neural network-based voice activity detection under high-level noise environments

Abstract This paper deals with voice activity detection (VAD) tasks under high-level noise environments where signalto-noise ratios (SNRs) are lower than −5 dB. With the increasing needs for hands-free applications, it is unavoidable to face critically low SNR situations where the noise can be internal self-created ego noise or external noise occurring in the environment, e.g., rescue robots in a disaster or navigation in a high-speed moving car. To achieve accurate VAD results under such situations, this paper proposes a gated convolutional neural networkbased approach that is able to capture longand short-term dependencies in time series as cues for detection. Experimental evaluations using high-level ego noise of a hose-shaped rescue robot revealed that the proposed method was able to averagely achieve about 86% VAD accuracy in environments with SNR in the range of −30 dB to −5 dB.