Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Structural Integrity of Anion Binding Exosite I of Thrombin Is Required and Sufficient for Timely Cleavage and Activation of Factor V and Factor VIII*

α-Thrombin has two separate electropositive binding exosites (anion binding exosite I, ABE-I and anion binding exosite II, ABE-II) that are involved in substrate tethering necessary for efficient catalysis. α-Thrombin catalyzes the activation of factor V and factor VIII following discrete proteolytic cleavages. Requirement for both anion binding exosites of the enzyme has been suggested for the activation of both procofactors by α-thrombin. We have used plasma-derived α-thrombin, β-thrombin (a thrombin molecule that has only ABE-II available), and a recombinant prothrombin molecule rMZ-II (R155A/R284A/R271A) that can only be cleaved at Arg320 (resulting in an enzymatically active molecule that has only ABE-I exposed, rMZ-IIa) to ascertain the role of each exosite for procofactor activation. We have also employed a synthetic sulfated pentapeptide (\batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(\mathrm{DY}(\mathrm{SO}_{3}^{-})\mathrm{DY}(\mathrm{SO}_{3}^{-})\mathrm{Q}\) \end{document}, designated D5Q1,2) as an exosite-directed inhibitor of thrombin. The clotting time obtained with β-thrombin was increased by ∼8-fold, whereas rMZ-IIa was 4-fold less efficient in promoting clotting than α-thrombin under similar experimental conditions. α-Thrombin readily activated factor V following cleavages at Arg709, Arg1018, and Arg1545 and factor VIII following proteolysis at Arg372, Arg740, and Arg1689. Cleavage of both procofactors byα-thrombin was significantly inhibited by D5Q1,2. In contrast, β-thrombin was unable to cleave factor V at Arg1545 and factor VIII at both Arg372 and Arg1689. The former is required for light chain formation and expression of optimum factor Va cofactor activity, whereas the latter two cleavages are a prerequisite for expression of factor VIIIa cofactor activity. β-Thrombin was found to cleave factor V at Arg709 and factor VIII at Arg740, albeit less efficiently than α-thrombin. The sulfated pentapeptide inhibited moderately both cleavages by β-thrombin. Under similar experimental conditions, membrane-bound rMZ-IIa cleaved and activated both procofactor molecules. Activation of the two procofactors by membrane-bound rMZ-IIa was severely impaired by D5Q1,2. Overall the data demonstrate that ABE-I alone of α-thrombin can account for the interaction of both procofactors with α-thrombin resulting in their timely and efficient activation. Because formation of meizothrombin precedes that of α-thrombin, our findings also imply that meizothrombin may be the physiological activator of both procofactors in vivo in the presence of a procoagulant membrane surface during the early stages of coagulation.
Effect of pelvic inclination and torsional deformity on canine acetabular morphology with computed tomography

Summary Objectives: To evaluate how the inclination and torsional deformity of the hemipelvis using extra-rotation as a model affect acetabular angle (AA) and dorsal acetabular rim angle (DARA) assessment with computed tomography (CT). Methods: A normal canine hemipelvis positioned in dorsal recumbency was scanned with a 16-slice multidetector CT scanner, with different degrees of torsional deformity, using extra-rotation around the long axis (0–5–10–15°) of the hemipelvis. Each degree of extra-rotation was acquired at 0°, +20° and –20° of gantry tilt, to mimic different pelvic inclinations on its transverse axis. Cranial and central individual acetabular angles (IAA) and central DARA were calculated and correlated with inclination and torsional deformity. Results: A very strong negative correlation was found between cranial and central IAA, pelvic inclination, and torsional deformity. A very strong positive correlation was found between DARA, pelvic inclination, and torsional deformity. Clinical significance: Pelvic inclination and torsional deformity affect acetabular angles assessment with CT. The greater the inclination (ilia far from the tabletop in dorsal recumbency) and torsional deformity of the pelvis, the worse the acetabulum appeared. A standardized scanning protocol for acetabular morphology assessment is needed and it should consider pelvic inclination. The actual relevance of pelvic torsional deformity is not well known and it should be investigated more thoroughly.
Addressing concerns about climate policies: the possibilities and perils of responsive accommodation

ABSTRACT Responsive accommodation is a political strategy that addresses concerns about a policy proposal by incorporating amendments that address those concerns. This approach can broaden the policy’s appeal, but is strategically risky, as it can alienate the policy’s base of support. We examine this strategy and its application in the politics of climate change. Using a novel survey experiment, relative public support is evaluated for two amendments to a carbon tax proposal – revenue neutrality assurances and a carbon tariff – designed to ease concerns about taxes and global competitiveness. Analysis shows that support for a carbon tax increases when coupled with a carbon tariff, but decreases among some of the policy’s supporters when described as revenue-neutral. These results suggest that policymakers using a responsive accommodation strategy must carefully weigh its possible risks and rewards in their particular context.
An Empirical Study of Improved Kalecki Model Using China's Data

This paper uses China’s data to do an empirical study to verify the improved Kalecki model which is presented by Xiaojing Zhang. It can be found that his investment return balance will decrease by 0.384189 percent when FDI increases by one percent; and it will increase by 0.314157 percent when IR increases by one percent. Thus, the conclusion of Kalecki Model is not correct as long as the host countries’ investment returns overseas are greater than FDI’ s investment profits and the improved Kalecki model is verified in a way. Introduction China’ s foreign exchange reserves decreased about 900 billion dollars in 2016, thus some economists are afraid of FDI’ s investment profits outflow might cause the current account deficit in the future. Kalecki(1966)[1] studied the problem synthetically that FDI’ s profits outflow could influence host countries’ BOP equilibrium firstly. He argued that the deficit of BOP can not be avoided as long as the FDI’ s net yield to their profits outflow ratio maintains a fixed rate. A number of economists study the problem later and most of them have drawn similar conclusions to Kalecki [2-6]. Some other economists, however, have drawn their conclusions differrent with Kalecki[7-11]. Especially, Xiaojing Zhang(2015)[11] improved the Kalecki Model under the background of globalization and capital flow freely. The Improved Kalecki Model Model Description. Xiaojing Zhang(2015) [11] argued that it is necessary to pay more attention to the investment return overseas in BOP with the rapid development of international economic globalization and financial liberalization while analyzing FDI’ s influence on the host countries current account, and then built an improved Kalecki model below. Assuming that FDI’ s investment profits is linearly related to FDI inflow, then the following linear regression equation can be obtained: FDI IR R         (1) Where  、  、 are estimated parameters,  is the disturbance. According to the structure of BOP, the credit profits should be greater than the debit profits corresponding to equation(1) where FDI and inprofit happen to move counter and the absolute value of the latter should be greater than the former, namely the host countries should invest overseas and try to make the investment returns overseas greater than FDI’ s investment profits while introducing FDI. If the host countries decide to introducing FDI, the income account mainly depends on its investment scale and returns overseas, see Fig.1. 7th International Conference on Management, Education and Information (MEICI 2017) Copyright © 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Intelligent Systems Research, volume 156
Role of the hematocrit in a rabbit model of arterial thrombosis and bleeding.

BACKGROUND A decrease in hematocrit lengthens bleeding time. The authors studied the role of hematocrit variations in an experimental model of arterial thrombosis and bleeding. METHODS The Folts model was used in 24 rabbits. After anesthesia was induced and common monitors were positioned, the right common carotid artery was exposed and a 60% stenosis was induced. A compression injury of the artery was then produced, which triggered a series of cyclic episodes of thrombosis and clot lysis (cyclic flow reductions [CFRs]). After counting the number of CFRs that occurred in 20 min (CFR1), the animals were assigned randomly to one of three groups (n = 8 in each group): control, hemodilution with rabbit homologous platelet-rich plasma, and hemodilution with gelatin solution and then reinfusion of the shed blood. The effect of hemodilution with replacement by platelet-rich plasma or by colloid was observed by recording the number of CFRs during another 20-min period (CFR2). A third period of observation (CFR3) followed shed blood reinfusion in the gelatin solution group. Ear immersion bleeding time was recorded after each CFR period. RESULTS In the two experimental groups, the decrease in hematocrit (from 36 +/- 3% to 23 +/- 2% and from 38 +/- 3% to 23 +/- 2%, respectively; mean +/- SD) abolished CFRs (from a median of 4 to 0 and 7 to 0, respectively) and significantly lengthened bleeding time (from 76 +/- 24 s to 114 +/- 36 s and from 84 +/- 37 s to 127 +/- 29 s, respectively). Blood reinfusion in the group that received the gelatin solution caused CFR to reappear (CFR3 = 4). CONCLUSIONS Decreases in hematocrit reduced the cyclic arterial thrombosis rate and increased the bleeding time in the rabbits in this study. Hematocrit normalization caused thrombosis to reappear.
Equity Chasm in Megacities: Five Leading Causes of Death in Tehran.

BACKGROUND Inequity in megacities is a real concern in public health perspective. Tehran is a megacity with more than 8 million population that is divided into 22 regions (counties) with considerable diversity in socioeconomic status. On the other hand, spatial cluster detection is an important tool in disease surveillance to identify areas of elevated risk and to generate hypotheses about disease or mortality etiology. The present research aims to identify high or low-risk clusters for five non-communicable leading causes of death in 22 regions of Tehran province. METHODS Cause-specific mortality rates were extracted from Behesht-e-Zahra registry system for Tehran province in 2011. Spatial scan statistic as a most common method in spatial cluster detection was chosen to detect clusters with elevated risk of death. Given the observed and expected number death in each region, a log likelihood ratio (LLR) criterion was used to test whether a cluster is significant. RESULT Two high-risk and two low-risk clusters were detected for each cause of death. All these clusters were statistically significant with P value less than 0.05. Mapping these clusters shows substantial differences between regions in Tehran. For mortality due to ischemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, hypertensive diseases, respiratory diseases, and stomach cancer, the high-risk clusters concentrated in southern half of Tehran and low-risk clusters were in northern half of Tehran. In the most situations, regions 2, 3 and 5 seemed to have lower rate of death comparing with other regions. On the other hand, regions, 16, 19 and 20 were in the high rate clusters. CONCLUSION There was substantial disparity between regions of Tehran for five non-communicable causes of death studied in this article. Identifying factors affecting the observed differences is useful to set effective preventive interventions and can be investigated in future researches.
Organizing professionals and their impact on performance: the case of public health doctors in the Italian SSN

ABSTRACT Hybrid professional managers have been associated with improvements in the performance of public sector organizations. However, less attention has been given to differences within this category. Drawing on board human capital theory, we focus on an emerging group of ‘organizing professionals’ with earlier and deeper exposure to management training and education: generalist clinical hybrids drawn from public health in the Italian healthcare system. Specifically, we investigate the impact that these hybrid hospital CEOs have on organizational performance in comparison with other backgrounds. The results indicate that this form of generalist hybrid professionalism has distinct, if not dramatic, consequences for performance.
Decision Sciences, Economics, Finance, Business, Computing, and Big Data: Connections

This paper provides a review of some connecting literature in Decision Sciences, Economics, Finance, Business, Computing, and Big Data. We then discuss some research that is related to the six cognate disciplines. Academics could develop theoretical models and subsequent econometric and statistical models to estimate the parameters in the associated models. Moreover, they could then conduct simulations to examine whether the estimators or statistics in the new theories on estimation and hypothesis have small size and high power. Thereafter, academics and practitioners could then apply their theories to analyze interesting problems and issues in the six disciplines and other cognate areas.
Platelet-Rich Plasma in the Management of Articular Cartilage Pathology: A Systematic Review

Objective:Using systematic review methodology, we endeavored to answer the following questions concerning the treatment of osteochondral pathology: (1) what pathologies have been treated in vivo with the use of platelet-rich plasma (PRP); (2) what methods of PRP preparation and delivery have been reported; (3) what assessment tools and comparison group have been used to assess its effectiveness; and (4) what are the clinical outcomes of its use. Data Sources:A systematic literature search was performed of the OVID, EMBASE, and Evidence Based Medicine Reviews databases to identify all studies published up to October 2012 that assessed clinical outcomes of the use of PRP for the treatment of chondral and osteochondral pathology, excluding those including concomitant management of acute fractures or ligament reconstruction. Data Extraction:The included studies were reviewed and the following data were extracted and tabulated: study authors' year and journal, study design and level of evidence, pathology treated, methods of PRP preparation and delivery, and clinical outcome scores. Data Synthesis:Ten studies were included in the final analysis. The majority of studies assessed the use of PRP in the treatment of degenerative osteoarthritis of the knee or hip (representing 570 of a total of 662 joints). The majority of patients were treated with intra-articular injections, whereas 2 studies used PRP as an adjunct to surgical treatment. Significant improvements in joint-specific clinical scores (7 of 8 studies), general health scores (4 of 4 studies), and pain scores (4 of 6 studies) compared with baseline were reported up to 6-month follow-up, but few studies provided longer-term data. No studies reported worse scores compared with baseline at final follow-up. Three of 4 comparative studies reported significantly better clinical and/or pain scores when compared with hyaluronic acid injections at similar follow-up times. Conclusions:Currently, there is a paucity of data supporting the use of PRP for the management of focal traumatic osteochondral defects. There is limited evidence suggesting short-term clinical benefits with the use of PRP for symptomatic osteoarthritis of the knee, but the studies published to date are of poor quality and at high risk for bias. Further high-quality comparative studies with longer follow-up are needed to ascertain whether PRP is beneficial, either alone or as an adjunct to surgical procedures, in the management of articular cartilage pathology.
Effect of limited transportation on medication adherence in patients with epilepsy.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether limited transportation affects medication adherence in patients with epilepsy. DESIGN Descriptive, nonexperimental, cross-sectional study. SETTING United States and worldwide, February to April 2007. PATIENTS 143 patients with epilepsy. INTERVENTION A 22-item survey was developed to ask patients with epilepsy or their caregivers about the impact of limited transportation on adherence with medications. The survey was placed on Zoomerang.com. An invitation to participate in the survey was sent via e-mail to members of the Epilepsy.com website, and an invitation with a link to the survey was placed on Epilepsy.com. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Whether patients with epilepsy have difficulty picking up prescriptions on time because of transportation problems and whether they felt they would miss fewer doses if transportation was not an issue. RESULTS 143 individuals with epilepsy completed part or all of the survey. Of patients who were unable to drive, 45% reported that fewer doses would be missed if transportation was not a problem. Patients who were unable to drive had an odds ratio of 4.2 (P < 0.0001) of being unable to get medications on time. No differences were observed in the number of patients missing prescription medications associated with availability of insurance, use of mail service pharmacies, or population size of patients' area of residence. Ability to drive and distance to the pharmacy were the only factors associated with nonadherence. CONCLUSION Limited transportation may be a factor in poor medication adherence in patients with epilepsy.
Internet Access, Use and Gratification among University Students: A Case Study of the Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan

This study aims to investigate the attitudes of students at the Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan towards learning through the Internet. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. It was found that a vast majority of the students learnt how to use the Internet by themselves or with the assistance of their friends. The findings showed that their attitude towards the Internet was very positive and they used it mainly for study purpose. They used online databases, dictionaries, encyclopedias and online courses. Google was the most popular search engine for retrieving information on the Internet. However, the use of free database services provided by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan was not satisfactory. The respondents were also dissatisfied with the Internet service provision, slow speed of the Internet connection and inadequate number of computers in computer labs.
Women's Rights, Domestic Violence, and Recourse Seeking in Rural Bangladesh

This article seeks to deepen understanding of the reasons that abused women in a resource-poor rural setting seek recourse so seldom and with so little success. Data from in-depth interviews and group discussions are used to explore the range of responses to domestic violence and to examine barriers to recourse seeking. Findings illustrate how the combination of poverty and gender inequality, inequities in the legal framework, and patriarchal attitudes and corruption in both formal and informal institutions at the local level discourage abused women from seeking recourse and decrease the likelihood of a favorable outcome when they do.
Intra-temporal Substitution between Tradable and Nontradable Goods: Evidence from the Japanese Cross-sectional Survey Data

Using survey-based Japanese household data, this study estimates the elasticity of intra-temporal substitution (EIS) between tradable and nontradable goods. Thus, this research is related to the Backus-Smith puzzle (1993), which states the nontradable sector and low substitution between these goods are the reasons for non- conformance to the purchasing power parity theory. Among other conclusions, we confirm that consumption behavior differs among households with different social backgrounds. Furthermore, we find that the EIS is overestimated when household characteristics and time dimensions are not taken into account in the consumption function. Indeed, the EIS is low and close to zero when properly estimated, thereby confirming a cause of the Backus-Smith puzzle. Based on these findings, we conclude that prices are less decisive factors in determining the consumption composition than what the standard economic theories predict. In contrast, social factors such as age, cohort, and family size are more directly associated with consumers' allocation of goods and services.
Curiously Motivated: Profiling Curiosity with Self-Reports and Behaviour Metrics in the Game "Destiny"

Identifying player motivations such as curiosity could help game designers analyze player profiles and substantially improve game design. However, research on player profiling focuses on generalized personality traits, not specific aspects of motivation. This study examines how player behaviour indicates constructs of curiosity-related motivation. It contributes a more discriminating operationalization of game-related curiosity. We derive a curiosity measure from established self-report survey methodologies relating to social capital, behavioural activation, obsessive/harmonious passion, and BrainHex player types. We present the results of a cross-sectional study with data from 1,745 players of Destiny--a popular shared-world first-person shooter (FPS) game. Behaviour metrics were paired with four curiosity factors: 'social' curiosity, 'sensory/cognitive' curiosity, 'novelty-seeking' curiosity, and 'explorative' curiosity. Our findings provide key insights into the relationships between players curiosity and their in-game behaviour. We infer curiosity-related motivational profiles from behaviour metrics, and discuss how this may impact game design and player-computer interaction.
Vaccination with a Nogo-A-derived peptide after incomplete spinal-cord injury promotes recovery via a T-cell-mediated neuroprotective response: Comparison with other myelin antigens

The myelin-associated protein Nogo-A has received more research attention than any other inhibitor of axonal regeneration in the injured central nervous system (CNS). Circumvention of its inhibitory effect, by using antibodies specific to Nogo-A, has been shown to promote axonal regrowth. Studies in our laboratory have demonstrated that active or passive immunization of CNS-injured rats or mice with myelin-associated peptides induces a T-cell-mediated protective autoimmune response, which promotes recovery by reducing posttraumatic degeneration. Here, we show that neuronal degeneration after incomplete spinal-cord contusion in rats was substantially reduced, and hence recovery was significantly promoted, by posttraumatic immunization with p472, a peptide derived from Nogo-A. The observed effect seemed to be mediated by T cells and could be reproduced by passive transfer of a T cell line directed against the Nogo-A peptide. Thus, it seems that after incomplete spinal-cord injury, immunization with a variety of myelin-associated peptides, including those derived from Nogo-A, can be used to evoke a T cell-mediated response that promotes recovery. The choice of peptide(s) for clinical treatment of spinal-cord injuries should be based on safety considerations; in particular, the likelihood that the chosen peptide will not cause an autoimmune disease or interfere with essential functions of this peptide or other proteins. From a therapeutic point of view, the fact that the active cellular agents are T cells rather than antibodies is an advantage, as T cell production commences within the time window required for a protective effect after spinal-cord injury, whereas antibody production takes longer.