Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Resource Allocation in Offspring Provisioning: An Evaluation of the Conditions Favoring the Evolution of Matrotrophy

We used analytic and simulation models to determine the ecological conditions favoring evolution of a matrotrophic fish from a lecithotrophic ancestor given a complex set of trade‐offs. Matrotrophy is the nourishment of viviparous embryos by resources provided between fertilization and parturition, while lecithotrophy describes embryo nourishment provided before fertilization. In fishes and reptiles, embryo nourishment encompasses a continuum from solely lecithotrophic to primarily matrotrophic. Matrotrophy has evolved independently from lecithotrophic ancestors many times in many groups. We assumed matrotrophy increased the number of offspring a viviparous female could gestate and evaluated conditions of food availability favoring lecithotrophy or matrotrophy. The matrotrophic strategy was superior when food resources exceeded demand during gestation but at a risk of overproduction and reproductive failure if food intake was limited. Matrotrophic females were leaner during gestation than lecithotrophic females, yielding shorter life spans. Our models suggest that matrotrophic embryo nourishment evolved in environments with high food availability, consistently exceeding energy requirements for maintaining relatively large broods. Embryo abortion with some resorption of invested energy is a necessary preadaptation to the evolution of matrotrophy. Future work should explore trade‐offs of age‐specific mortality and reproductive output for females maintaining different levels of fat storage during gestation.
Measuring Children's Activity Levels: The Association Between Step-Counts and Activity Time.

BACKGROUND The primary purpose of this study was to describe the association between activity time and step counts in children. METHODS Subjects were 590 students (334 girls, 256 boys) with each gender having a mean age of 9.2 ± 1.8 y. All subjects wore the Walk4Life 2505 pedometer for four consecutive weekdays. This pedometer simultaneously measures both step counts and activity time. RESULTS Boys accumulated significantly more minutes of activity time/day (140.9 ± 39.6 vs. 126.3 ± 38.1), steps/day (13,348 ± 4131 vs. 11,702 ± 3923), and steps per min (93.99 ± 5.8 vs. 91.85 ± 5.8) than girls (P < 0.001) Steps/day was a significant predictor of activity time/day (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Boys accumulate more steps per day and more activity time per day than girls. There is a strong association between steps per day and activity time in children. Daily steps per minute as a measure of free living physical activity in children is explored.
Leadership as a Way of Being: A Way Forward for a News Industry in Chaotic Transition.

Hesselbein developed the concept: “leadership is a matter of how to be and not how to do. ” Joseph later provided instructional content based on the concept and helped operationalize it for consumption by practicing leaders. This paper leverages their work in illustrating how leadership-as-a-way-of-being (LWB) can be a teaching model for emerging millennial leaders in a dynamic news media undergoing a chaotic transition. It provides a way to rethink newsroom organizational structures that no longer accommodate the needs of this generation. We focus on the “being” element of leadership as it speaks directly to a new introspective view of leadership that values transparency and is necessary for innovation over mere efficiency.
Appropriated authority: a theory of transnational sport governance

ABSTRACT The organisations regulating international sport comprise a distinct mode of transnational governance. Although domestic and international sport governing bodies are typically constituted as private entities, international sport’s (hyper-) nationalistic character and the degree to which these organisations are able to influence public policy suggest that their authority extends well beyond the private sector. This study advances a theoretical explanation of legitimacy and authority in transnational sport governance. To accomplish this task, the author builds on a theory of private authority, developed by Jessica Green, which posits two types of private authority (delegated and entrepreneurial) in international affairs. While transnational sport governing bodies first emerged as a form of entrepreneurial private authority, the author contends that these organisations today possess ‘appropriated authority’. These organisations operate as a de facto governing institution around which state preferences have converged and retain the legitimacy typically associated with delegated private authority, but they exercise this authority outside the constraints of the principal–agent relationship, which Green suggests is a necessary condition for state delegation of authority. In this article, the author argues that appropriated authority in transnational sport governance is a function of two distinct processes. First, through a process of legitimacy adoption, states come to acknowledge and share in perceptions of private sport organisations’ legitimacy to govern. Second, private authority in transnational sport is perpetuated by states’ ability to free ride (to capture low- or no-cost benefits of transnational sport), an arrangement that varies depending upon domestic regime type.
From Forward to Spot Prices: Producers, Retailers and Loss Averse Consumers in Electricity Markets

The benefits of smoothing demand peaks in the electricity market has been widely recognised. European countries such as Spain and some of the Scandinavian countries have recently given to the consumers the possibility to face the spot prices instead of having a fixed tariffs determined by retailers. This paper develops a theoretical model to study the relations between risk averse consumers, retailers and producers, both in the spot and in the forward markets when consumers are able to choose between fixed tariffs and the wholesale prices. The model is calibrated on a real market case - Spain - where since 2014 spot tariffs were introduced beside the flat tariffs for household consumers. Finally, simulations of agents behavior and markets performance, depending on consumers risk aversion and the number of producers, are used to analyse the implications from the model. Our results show that the quantities the retailers and the producers trade in the forward market are positively related with the loss aversion of consumers. The quantities bought by the retailers in the forward market are negatively related with the skewness of the spot prices. On the contrary, quantity sold forward by producers are positively related with the skewness of the spot prices (high probability of getting high prices increase the forward sale) and with the total market demand. In the spot market, the degree of loss aversion of consumers determine the quantity the retailers buy in the spot market but does not have a direct effect on the spot prices.
Human medial temporal lobe neurons respond preferentially to personally relevant images

People with whom one is personally acquainted tend to elicit richer and more vivid memories than people with whom one does not have a personal connection. Recent findings from neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) have shown that individual cells respond selectively and invariantly to representations of famous people [Quian Quiroga R, Reddy L, Kreiman G, Koch C, Fried I (2005) Nature 435(7045):1102–1107]. Observing these cells, we wondered whether photographs of personally relevant individuals, such as family members, might be more likely to generate such responses. To address this issue, we recorded the activity of 2,330 neurons in the human MTL while patients viewed photographs of varying personal relevance: previously unknown faces and landscapes, familiar but not necessarily personally relevant faces and landscapes, and finally, photographs of the patients themselves, their families, and the experimenters. Our findings indicate that personally relevant photographs are indeed more likely to elicit selective responses in MTL neurons than photographs of individuals with whom the patients have had no personal contact. These findings further suggest that relevant stimuli are encoded by a larger proportion of neurons than less relevant stimuli, given that familiar or personally relevant items are linked to a larger variety of experiences and memories of these experiences.
The European Union & Suthern African Development Community Economic Partnershiop Agreements Impact on the Namibian Exports

The amount of research that has been done on the effects of free trade is extensive to say the least. Even though free trade creates winners and losers, there has almost been a unanimity among economists that free trade leads to a large net gain for the society which is in the best interest of all countries in the world. This thesis investigates the effects of free trade agreements on exports by a case study on Namibia’s exports to the EU market. We use the duty-free and quota-free access that Namibia obtained to the EU market in 2008 to study if the absence of trade barriers leads to increased trade. This is done by examining the quantity exported from Namibia to the EU during 1999-2015 with an OLS fixed-effects model and a Difference in Differences approach. The results obtained from our two different models indicates that the dutyand quota-free access led to increased exports. However, our empirical methods did not produce enough significant estimates to make a reliable or convincing assessment of the dutyfree and quota-free market access.
The Biological Basis of and Strategies for Clinical Xenotransplantation

Recent discoveries have suggested that the exchange of multiple leukocyte lineages between grafts and host and subsequent long-term chimerism in both is the seminal mechanism of the acceptance of organs transplanted from the same (allografts) or different species (xenografts). This insight suggests new strategies which may allow xenotransplantation, the principal obstacle to which has been humoral rejection. We have defined humoral rejection as a family of complement activation syndromes afflicting allografts and xenografts in which there is a strong (but not invariable) association with performed antigraft antibodies, invariable evidence of complement activation, histopathologic stigmas of vascular endothelial damage, and a concomitant local or systemic coagulopathy. The generic descriptive term hyperacute rejection is a misnomer because a slow-motion version of the same "humoral" process can occur with some allografts and is the rule with the so-called concordant species xenotransplantations. The pathway of experience and discovery leading to this conclusion shows clearly that the distinction frequently made between allograft versus xenograft humoral rejection does not actually exist in principle, but only in details and intensity. Breaking down this barrier to xenotransplantation, whether or not it is associated with antibodies, is unrealistic. However, the possibility of avoiding the barrier has been exposed by showing that animal organs can be humanized, with a mixed donor and recipient cell population similar to the chimerism seen in long surviving allografts or even with complete leukocyte replacement. Pilot experiments in rodents suggest that organs from fully xenogeneic chimeras can be made into xenogeneic targets that are no more provocative of complement activation than allografts when they are transplanted into the donor bone marrow species. Although the validity of this concept of organ xenograft preparation is only at the pilot stage of verification, there is reason to suspect that the complement trigger of humoral rejection can be thereby disarmed. If this can be accomplished, independent evidence suggests that cellular rejection can be controlled with conventional T-cell directed immunosuppression, perhaps even with surprising ease. The potential subtle liability of synthetic products of xenogeneic parenchymal cells is not yet known.
Comparing the influence of socioeconomic factors on participation in national elections and referendums

The number of referendums is growing in Europe, especially on issues relating to European integration. Therefore it needs to be tested, whether problems occurring in representative elections, as the participatory gap between members of lower and upper social classes, are also translated into direct democratic elections. The question which should be answered in this thesis is: “Does the relationship between socioeconomic status and political participation differ, comparing national elections and referendums ? ” To answer this question the level of education and income, chosen as indicators for socioeconomic status, of voters in general elections is compared to the level of education and income of voters in referendums. Therefore two cases were chosen The Netherlands, comparing Dutch national election 2006 and 2012 to the referendums in 2005 and 2016, and Ireland, comparing the Irish national elections 2002 and 2007 to the Irish referendums in 2001 and 2002. The results of the analysis show that the influence of income and education on participation differs between general election and referendums. Both factors have a stronger influence on participation in referendums than in general election. Especially education seems to be a key indicator towards participation. General elections are more reliable, representing the interest of society in its entirety.
[Association of C677T gene polymorphism of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase with insulin resistance among Kirghizes].

AIM To study an association of C677T gene polymorphism of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) and insulin resistance (IR) among ethical Kirghizes. METHODS 132 Kirghiz patients with IR according to HOMA index (n=132) and sex and age matched patients without IR, diabetes mellitus (DM) type 2 or metabolic syndrome (MS) (n=132) were included into this study. Measurements of blood pressure (BP), body mass index, waist and hip circumference, fasting blood sugar, insulin, lipid parameters and C677T gene polymorphism of MTHFR were performed in all patients. RESULTS Frequency of CT and TT genotypes was significantly higher in patients with IR than in controls (2 - 7.22, p - 0,027, OR - 1.68, 95% confidence interval 1.13-2.5, p=0.027). T677 allele was also associated with obesity, hypertriglyceridemia and low level of high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). CONCLUSION In Kirghizes carriage of T677 allele of MTHFR gene was associated with IR, abdominal obesity, hypertriglyceridemia and low HDL-C level.
The Effects of Spermine on the Accessibility of Residues in the M2 Segment of Kir2.1 Channels Expressed in Xenopus Oocytes

We examined the effects of spermine binding to aspartate at site 172 on the accessibility of internal trimethylammonioethylmethane thiosulphonate (MTSET) to substituted cysteines within the pore of a Kir2.1 channel. Spermine prevented MTSET modification in Q164C and G168C mutants, indicating that sites 164 and 168 are located externally to the spermine binding site. The rates of MTSET modification were significantly reduced by spermine in I176C mutants, indicating that site 176 is located internally to D172 and that the bound spermine hinders the reaction of MTSET with cysteine at site 176. Spermidine, putrescine and Mg2+ also decreased MTSET modification at site 176. The order of effect is putrescine > spermidine ∼ spermine ≈ Mg2+. To account for the electrostatic and physical repulsion between MTSET and polyamines, possible locations of polyamines in the pore are discussed. In D172C mutants, the spermine that bound to sites 224 and 299 completely inhibited channels at +40 mV, yet MTSET remained accessible to site 172. In addition, in the D172C mutant, spermine did not affect the exit rate of Ba2+ bound to the threonine at the site 141. These results indicate that spermine bound at the cytoplasmic pore induces channel closure at positions 141‐172. The effects of spermine on the accessibility of amino acids in the pore may shed light on the structural and functional relationships of the Kir2.1 channels during inward rectification.
Role of delayed light polymerization of a dual-cured composite base on marginal adaptation of class II posterior composite open-sandwich restoration.

OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of delayed light polymerization of a dual-cured composite base material on the marginal adaptation of class II composite restoration. MATERIALS AND METHODS 35 extracted human molar teeth were used to prepare class II mesio-occlusal or disto-occlusal slot preparations with gingival margins at the CEJ. The teeth were restored using an open-sandwich technique with a 2mm base increment of dual-cured composite, and divided into 5 groups based on the mode of the polymerization of the dual-cured composite base: Group A - self-cured after placement (5 mins), Group B - light-cured immediately after placement, Group C - light-cured 30 seconds after placement, Group D - light-cured 60 seconds after placement, Group E - light-cured 120 seconds after placement. Then a top layer of a light-cured composite resin is placed to complete the restoration. The teeth were thermocycled and immersed in 1% aqueous solution of methylene blue for 24 hours. Sectioning of the teeth and scoring under stereomicroscope was done. Data will be statistically evaluated using the kruskal wallis 1-way ANOVA. RESULTS Statistical analysis using kruskal wallis 1-way ANOVA showed that the dual-cured composite light polymerized 1 minute after placement exhibited the least microleakage. CONCLUSION Delayed light polymerization of the dual-cured composite base reduced the microleakage in class II open-sandwich restorations.
Peanut Shell for Energy: Properties and Its Potential to Respect the Environment

The peanut (Arachys hypogaea) is a plant of the Fabaceae family (legumes), as are chickpeas, lentils, beans, and peas. It is originally from South America and is used mainly for culinary purposes, in confectionery products, or as a nut as well as for the production of biscuits, breads, sweets, cereals, and salads. Also, due to its high percentage of fat, peanuts are used for industrialized products such as oils, flours, inks, creams, lipsticks, etc. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) statistical yearbook in 2016, the production of peanuts was 43,982,066 t, produced in 27,660,802 hectares. Peanuts are grown mainly in Asia, with a global production rate of 65.3%, followed by Africa with 26.2%, the Americas with 8.4%, and Oceania with 0.1%. The peanut industry is one of the main generators of agroindustrial waste (shells). This residual biomass (25–30% of the total weight) has a high energy content that is worth exploring. The main objectives of this study are, firstly, to evaluate the energy parameters of peanut shells as a possible solid biofuel applied as an energy source in residential and industrial heating installations. Secondly, different models are analysed to estimate the higher heating value (HHV) for biomass proposed by different scientists and to determine which most accurately fits the determination of this value for peanut shells. Thirdly, we evaluate the reduction in global CO2 emissions that would result from the use of peanut shells as biofuel. The obtained HHV of peanut shells (18.547 MJ/kg) is higher than other biomass sources evaluated, such as olive stones (17.884 MJ/kg) or almond shells (18.200 MJ/kg), and similar to other sources of biomass used at present for home and industrial heating applications. Different prediction models of the HHV value proposed by scientists for different types of biomass have been analysed and the one that best fits the calculation for the peanut shell has been determined. The CO2 reduction that would result from the use of peanut shells as an energy source has been evaluated in all production countries, obtaining values above 0.5 ‰ of their total emissions.
Ultrasound-guided fine-needle biopsy of hepatocellular carcinoma: comparison between smear cytology and microhistology.

OBJECTIVES The aims of this study were to evaluate the typing accuracy of smear cytology and microhistology and of their association in the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma arising in liver cirrhosis, and to analyze the usefulness of smear cytology in the diagnosis of well-differentiated neoplasms. METHODS One hundred sixty patients with hepatocellular carcinoma underwent an ultrasound-guided fine-needle biopsy, providing material for cytological and histological study. In 73 patients, a double biopsy with noncutting and cutting needles was performed (double-needle group), whereas in the remaining 87, a single biopsy with cutting needle was carried out (single-needle group). RESULTS In the whole population examined, smear cytology, microhistology, and their association, provided the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma in 128 (80%), 98 (61%), and 144 (90%) cases, respectively. The double-needle and the single-needle groups did not differ significantly as to typing accuracy. Smear cytology correctly diagnosed 54 of 64 neoplasms classified histologically as well-differentiated. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that both smear cytology and microhistology should be applied immediately, when diagnosing hepatocellular carcinoma arising in liver cirrhosis, and that smear cytology is effective in the diagnosis of well-differentiated neoplasms.
Labour market outcomes in a developing country: determinants of wages and job satisfaction in Egypt

This thesis addresses two major outcomes of work in the Egyptian labour market, namely wages and job satisfaction. We examine the labour’s selection into the formal sector and the differences between wage determination in the formal and informal sectors of employment. Additionally, we assess the impact of labour productivity on wages, and we inspect the determinants of job satisfaction, focusing on the contribution of higher wages. We utilise data from the 2012 round of the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) to examine these issues in Egypt’s private sector and address two methodological issues, sample selection and endogeneity biases. In addressing the differences between the formal and informal sectors, we find that sector selection is only significant for formal sector wages. Also, we find significant differences between the impact of the wage determinants in each sector in terms of returns to education, gender differentials, and occupational differentials, among others, whether for the complete sample of labour or the male labour sample separately. Once refocusing the analysis on the contribution of productivity to wages, which we proxy for using a health measure since individual labour productivity is unobservable, we find that selection into participation in the labour force is only significant for the male labour sample. Conversely, we find that health has a significant and positive impact on wage levels of the complete and the male labour samples, which is particularly evident after correcting for the endogeneity of health. Finally, we find that higher wages contribute significantly and positively to alleviating levels of all types of job satisfaction for the complete and male labour samples. Furthermore, the impact of higher wages on satisfaction levels is of a bigger magnitude for the male labour sample compared to the complete labour sample. In summary, this research contributes to the Egyptian and developing countries’ literature on labour market outcomes. We used relatively new data that is nationally representative and enables us to study a range of topics, and we addressed the methodological issues of sample selection and endogeneity to obtain unbiased and consistent results.