Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship of the Presence and Copy Number of Plasmids to Exopolysaccharide Production and Symbiotic Effectiveness in Rhizobium fredii USDA 206

Rhizobium fredii USDA 206 harbors four large plasmids, one of which carries nodulation and nitrogen fixation genes. Previously isolated groups of plasmid-cured derivatives of strain USDA 206 were compared with each other to determine possible plasmid functions. Mutant strain 206CANS was isolated as a nonmucoid (Muc−) derivative of strain 206CA, a mutant that was cured of two plasmids. The Muc− phenotype of 206CANS was only expressed when the strain was grown on certain media, particularly those with polyols as carbon sources. Plasmid pRj206b of strain 206CANS was previously shown to have a higher copy number than the same plasmid in strains USDA 206 and 206CA. When this plasmid was transferred to Muc+ strains, it conferred a nonmucoid phenotype on recipient strains. The symbiotic effectiveness of the wild-type and cured strains was compared. Overall, few differences were shown, but strains 206CA and 206CANS were found to have higher nitrogenase activities than the other strains. Thus, there appeared to be a possible relationship among exopolysaccharide synthesis, plasmid copy number, and symbiotic effectiveness.
ICP monitoring: complications and associated factors.

1. Patients with complications when compared with those not developing a complication: a. Were older, 44.4 vs. 34.5 years; b. Were monitored longer, 14.0 vs. 6.5 days; c. Were treated with steroids longer, 18.3 vs. 10.3 days; d. Were hospitalized longer, 35.7 vs. 27.7 days; e. Are twice as likely to die; f. Average age of those dying is older, 46 vs. 30 years; g. Have no clear relationship to antibiotics; h. Do not have a preponderance of single diagnostic category to account for these differences; i. Complications were always controlled with standard therapy; j. An ICP complication was almost never responsible, per se, for death. 2. Over all complication rate was 18%; due to monitoring was 4.5 to 11.5%. 3. Monitoring was responsible for, or contributed to, 25 to 60% of the complications. 4. No complications occurred when monitoring was discontinued within 3 days. 5. Long periods of treatment with steroids increased the risk of a complication developing. 6. Long periods of monitoring were associated with an increased risk of complication. 7. "Individual" factors are partly responsible for the development of a complication, and death. 8. There are two groups of complications: "early" and "late. " A. Those most likely to be monitor related occur "late" and account for 35% of the complications. B. Those developing "early" infection account for 65% of the complications and are most likely caused by factors other than monitoring. While there are complications directly attributable to monitoring, the rate is low and they are readily controlled by standard neurosurgical management. While monitoring may increase the morbidity, it does not increase the mortality. We feel that the over-all risk is small and that the returns are great--both in terms of knowledge and patient benefit.
Subcortical and Cortical Gray Matter Atrophy in a Large Sample of Patients with Clinically Isolated Syndrome and Early Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis

Brain atrophy is commonly seen in patients with chronic MS. Here, the authors assessed 212 patients with clinically isolated syndrome and early RRMS for atrophy of gray matter. In both groups the cortex displayed no significant atrophy but the deep gray matter nuclei (caudate, thalamus, globus pallidus, putamen, and hippocampus) showed significant atrophy during the first 4 years of the disease. Deep gray matter atrophy may play a relevant role in patient symptoms and seems to appear and progress from the earliest stages of the disease. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Recent studies have shown that selective regional, but not global, GM atrophy occurs from clinical onset to conversion to clinically definite MS. Our aim was to investigate the difference in the extent of SDGM and cortical atrophy in a large sample of patients with CIS and early RRMS and to explore the relationship between SDGM and cortical atrophy and other MR imaging and clinical outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two hundred twelve patients with CIS recruited at the first clinical event (mean age, 29.3 years; median EDSS, 1.5; median disease duration, 3 months) and 177 patients with early RRMS (mean age, 30.7 years; median EDSS, 2.0; median disease duration, 47 months) were imaged on a 1.5T scanner by using a high-resolution 3D T1 spoiled gradient-recalled sequence. Volumetric data for SDGM structures were obtained by using FSL FIRST, while whole-brain, GM, white matter, cortical, and lateral ventricle volumes were estimated by using SIENAX software. Comparisons between the groups were adjusted for age and sex. RESULTS: Patients with early RRMS showed significantly lower SDGM but not cortical volumes compared with patients with CIS. The most apparent SDGM differences were evident in the caudate and thalamus (P < .0001), total SDGM (P = .0001), and globus pallidus (P = .01). Patients with CIS with a median T2 lesion volume >4.49 mL showed lower total SDGM, caudate, thalamus (P < .001), globus pallidus (P = .007), hippocampus (P = .004), and putamen (P = .01) volumes and higher lateral ventricle volume (P = .001) than those with a median T2 lesion volume <4.49 mL. Decreased thalamic volume showed the most consistent relationship with MR imaging outcomes (P < .0001) in patients with CIS. CONCLUSIONS: Significant SDGM, but not cortical, atrophy develops during the first 4 years of the RRMS. GM atrophy is relevant for disease progression from the earliest clinical stages.
Maternal nutrient restriction between early and midgestation and its impact upon appetite regulation after juvenile obesity.

The impact of maternal nutrient restriction during early-to-midgestation, a period coinciding with early fetal brain development, on appetite regulation and energy balance in the offspring after juvenile obesity was examined. Pregnant sheep were either fed to meet fully their nutritional requirements throughout gestation or 50% of this amount between 30 and 80 d gestation. After weaning, offspring were either made obese through exposure to a sedentary obesogenic environment or remained lean. Maternal nutrient restriction had no effect on birth weight or subsequent growth. At 1 wk of age, only, gene expression for neuropeptide Y in the hypothalamus was reduced in nutrient-restricted offspring. By 1 yr of age, all O animals had increased plasma leptin, nonesterified fatty acids, and insulin, with the latter effect amplified in NR offspring. Fasting plasma glucose, triglycerides, and cortisol were unaffected by obesity. The entrained reduction in physical activity that led to obesity persisted when all animals were maintained within individual pens. However, NRO offspring exhibited reduced daily food intake and were, therefore, no longer in positive "energy balance. " This adaptation was accompanied by elevated hypothalamic gene expression for the melanocortin-4 and insulin receptors, AMP-activated kinase, and acetyl coenzyme A carboxylase alpha. In conclusion, nutrient restriction specifically targeted over the period of early fetal brain development contributes to a profoundly different adaptation in energy balance after juvenile obesity. The extent to which this adaptive response may benefit the offspring or result in an exacerbated risk of type 2 diabetes remains to be established.
GROWTH AND DETERMINANTS OF FERTILIZER USE IN INDIA- AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

Fertilizer is one of the strategic inputs for enhancing productivity which enables to meet the growing demand for food in the country. The present study was conducted to know the growth and determinants of fertilizers in India. The secondary data on production of major chemical fertilizer, consumption of fertilizer (NPK), prices, import, export and subsidies of fertilizers, state wise consumption, consumption per gross cropped area etc. from 1980-81 to 2012-13 were collected. There was a substantial growth in production and consumption of chemical fertilizers in India and across the states over the years. The production of chemical fertilizer showed an increasing trend. The country witnessed an increase in the consumption of NPK. The consumption of fertilizer during kharif and rabi showed a positive and significant growth. Among the states, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest increase in the consumption of NPK. The average consumption of nitrogenous fertilizers per unit of gross cropped area was more compared to phosphorous and potash. The import, export, prices and subsidy of fertilizers also showing increasing trend over the years and the fertilizer consumption projection indicated that there will be increase in total consumption of fertilizer in India in the future. The non-price factors were more important determinants of fertilizer consumption compared to price factors. Among the non-price factors, area under HYV crops was the most important factor influencing fertilizer consumption followed by area under irrigation and agriculture credit disbursed. It is necessary to encourage domestic fertilizer production to meet out our future fertilizer consumption requirement. Government has to maintain stability in the fertilizer prices, which encourages the farmers to use more fertilizers. Nonprice factors are plays very important role in the fertilizer consumption so government has to concentrate on these factors to increasing the consumption of fertilizers.
The Risk‐Taking Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission in the Euro Area

In this paper, we provide evidence for a risk-taking channel of monetary policy transmission in the euro area that works through the relaxation of lending standards for borrowers. Our dataset covers the period 2003Q1-2016Q2 and includes, in addition to the standard variables for real GDP growth, inflation, and the monetary policy stance, indicators of bank lending standards and bank lending margins. Based on vector autoregressive models with (i) recursive identification and (ii) sign restrictions, we show that banks react aggressively to an expansionary monetary policy shock by lowering their lending standards. The banks’ efforts to keep their lending margin stable, however, are not successful as we detect a significant compression. We document these findings for the euro area as a whole and for its individual member states. In particular, banks in the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland lowered their lending standards after expansionary monetary policy shocks. The compression of the lending margin is most pronounced in the five crisis countries (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain).
Industry Concentration and the Cross Section of Expected Stock Returns: A Global Perspective

Under economic theory, firms operating under monopolistic or oligopolistic competition are more profitable and can be expected to deliver higher returns to their shareholders. As such, industry concentration should have a positive relationship with the cross-section of stock returns. Studies by Hou and Robinson on the U.S. market; Hashem and Su on the U.K. market; and Gallagher, Ignatieva, and McCulloch on the Australian market did not reach consensus. The U.S. and U.K. studies found the relationship to be negative, whereas the Australian study showed evidence of a positive relationship. Motivated by this lack of consensus across markets, the authors re-examined this relationship from a global perspective. We find evidence that highly concentrated industries, on average, are more profitable and achieve higher expected returns even after controlling for size, book-to-market, and momentum.
Linear space-time multiuser detection for multipath CDMA channels

We consider the problem of detecting synchronous code division multiple access (CDMA) signals in multipath channels that result in multiple access interference (MAI). It is well known that such challenging conditions may create severe near-far situations in which the standard techniques of combined power control and temporal single-user RAKE receivers provide poor performance. To address the shortcomings of the RAKE receiver, multiple antenna receivers combining space-time processing with multiuser detection have been proposed in the literature. Specifically, a space-time detector based on minimizing the mean-squared output between the data stream and the linear combiner output has shown great potential in achieving good near-far performance with much less complexity than the optimum space-time multiuser detector. Moreover, this space-time minimum mean-squared error (ST-MMSE) multiuser detector has the additional advantage of being well suited for adaptive implementation. We propose novel trained and blind adaptive algorithms based on stochastic gradient techniques, which are shown to approximate the ST-MMSE solution without requiring knowledge of the channel. We show that these linear space-time detectors can potentially provide significant capacity enhancements (up to one order of magnitude) over the conventional temporal single-user RAKE receiver.
Origins of the descending spinal projections in petromyzontid and myxinoid agnathans

The origins of the descending spinal pathways in sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus), silver lampreys (Ichthyomyzon unicuspis), and Pacific hagfish (Eptatretus stouti) were identified by the retrograde transport of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) placed in the rostral spinal cord. In lampreys, the majority of HRP‐labeled cells were located along the length of the brainstem reticular formation in the inferior, middle, and superior reticular nuclei of the medulla, mesencephalic tegmentum, and nucleus of the medial longitudinal fasciculus. Labeled reticular cells included the Mauthner and Müller cells. Horseradishperoxidase‐filled cells were also present in the descending trigeminal tract, intermediate and posterior octavomotor nuclei, and a diencephalic cell group, the nucleus of the posterior tubercle. As in lampreys, the reticular formation of the Pacific hagfish was the largest source of descending afferents to the spinal cord. Labeled cells were found in the dorsolateral and ventromedial reticular nuclei, the dorsal tegmentum at the juncture of the medulla and midbrain, and the nucleus of the medial longitudinal fasciculus. Additional medullary cells projecting to the cord were located in the perivagal nucleus, the central gray, and the anterior and posterior magnocellular octavolateralis nuclei. The existence of reticulospinal and possible vestibulo‐, trigemino‐, and solitary spinal projections in lampreys and hagfishes and the wide distribution of these pathways in jawed vertebrates suggest that they evolved in the common ancestor of gnathostomes and both groups of jawless fishes. However, descending spinal pathways from the cerebellum, red nucleus, and telencephalon appear to be gnathostome characters.
Undergraduate Economics Students’ Opinion about Research Supervisors: The Ghanaian Public University Context

Supervisor-student relationship is crucial for completion of an undergraduate programme since students, as a requirement to complete, are expected to write a project work. The purpose of this study was to find economics students’ views about their supervisors. Using a cross-sectional descriptive design, 148 economics major trainee teachers from two faculties in a public university were randomly selected. The study showed that students had opinions that supervisors are guides who must show interest in students’ research. Again, students’ opinion was that they did not have adequate guidance and mentoring from supervisors and this contributed to their negative perceptions relative to their relationship with supervisors. Also, gender was found to have an association with students’ perception about relationship with supervisors. The study advocated for measures to be put in place to mitigate the negative effects of student-supervisor rift which has detrimental effects on student completion rates among students in Ghana.
Identiﬁcation and characterization of two forms of mouse MUTYH proteins encoded by alternatively spliced transcripts

There are three types of mouse Mutyh mRNAs (type a, b and c) generated by alternative splicing, and type b mRNA is a major form among the three in most of the tissues examined. The level of type c mRNA is relatively high in brain. Type a and b mRNAs were expected to encode 57.7 kDa protein (MUTYH a ), while type c mRNA had a partly different open reading frame encoding a 50.2 kDa protein (MUTYH b ). An in vitro translation of type b and c mRNAs produced a 50 kDa MUTYH a and 47 kDa MUTYH b , respectively. MUTYH a and MUTYH b were detected in wild-type embryonic stem (ES) cells or thymocytes prepared from wild-type mice, but neither MUTYH-null ES cells nor thymocytes prepared from MUTYH-null mice. Both MUTYH a and MUTYH b were mainly localized in the nuclei and some in mitochondria in wild-type ES cells. Recombinant MUTYH a and b were expressed as fusion
BALANCING SELECTION ON A FLORAL POLYMORPHISM

Abstract The common morning glory, Ipomoea purpurea, exhibits a flower color polymorphism at the W locus throughout the southeastern North America. The W locus controls whether flowers will be darkly pigmented (WW), lightly pigmented (Ww), or white with pigmented rays (ww). In this report, we describe results of a perturbation, or convergence, experiment using five plots designed to determine whether balancing selection operates on the W locus. The pattern of gene frequency changes obtained are indicative of balancing selection operating at the W locus, providing direct evidence that both the alleles are actively maintained by selection. Corresponding Editor: D. Pi;tznero
Political connections and stock price crash risk: evidence of institutional investors’ heterogeneous monitoring

ABSTRACT This study examines the monitoring effectiveness of different types of institutional investors on the association between politically connected firms (PCFs) and stock price crash risk. Using a sample of Malaysian firms from 2002–2012, the study finds that PCFs are positively associated with stock price crash risk, consistent with the theory of crony capitalism and political patronage. However, effective monitoring by institutional investors attenuates crash risk in PCFs. Finally, the findings reveal that only monitoring by pressure-resistant institutional investors can alleviate the risk of crashes in PCF’s stock prices. This concurs with the theory of business relationship, and suggests that institutional investors should not be seen as a homogeneous group.
Validity evidence of the Lateral Step Up (LSU) test for adolescents with spastic cerebral palsy

Purpose: The present study examined the concurrent and construct validity of the Lateral Step Up (LSU) test, for adolescents with CP. Method: A total of 35 adolescents, classified as GMFCS Levels I, II and III, were examined using LSU, GMFM – 88 (D & E), other functional mobility measures (TUG, STS, TUDS), body structures and functions (strength, ROM and spasticity). Results: LSU inter-correlations with: (i) GMFM – 88 (D & E) (r = 0.656), (ii) functional mobility measures (r = −0.567 to 0.721) and (iii) body structures and functions (r = 0.155 to 0.563) were at the appropriate range. The LSU differentiated adolescents with CP (F = 16.185, p = 0.000, η2 = 0.503), according to their GMFCS (I > II, II > III, I > III). Finally, 50.27% of the LSU variability was explained by GMFCS differences, with 65.7% of adolescents classified correctly across the three levels. Conclusions: The LSU may be perceived as a valid instrument for assessing the functional mobility of adolescents with CP. Implications for Rehabilitation LSU is valid for assessing functional mobility and strength in CP adolescents. LSU may be used in accordance with other functional mobility measures in the school environment. The LSU may be used from physical therapists to predict the functional mobility of CP adolescents at GMFCS Levels I–III.
Identifying Risk Indicators of Building Damage Due to Typhoons: Focusing on Cases of South Korea

This study identifies the risk indicators of building damage from typhoons and determines the correlations among this damage, typhoon information, geographic vulnerability, construction environment, and socioeconomic vulnerability. This fundamental research aids the development of a typhoon loss prediction model for building construction projects in South Korea. Extreme weather events have become increasingly prevalent around the world, with subsequent increases in related damages. Early attempts to meet the growing demands for a loss prediction model have been insufficiently comprehensive, and specifically in South Korea, research on risk indicators is needed that considers the geographic, building, and socioeconomic features. This research used the regional typhoon loss records from the annual report of the Ministry of Public Safety and Security (MPSS) to define the dependent variable of building damage. The results and findings of this study will inform the development of a typhoon loss prediction model in South Korea.
The Czech economy as an integrated periphery: The case of dependency on Germany

ABSTRACT The Czech Republic (CZ) is a small open economy that has been integrated into the European economy predominantly through its ties to Germany. Traditional analysis has focused on the positive aspects of this process and pointed out the favorable indicators of the Czech economy, strongly influenced by a modernist perspective (model of economic development) and neoliberalism (applied economic policies). The aim of this article is a more critical reflection on some important features of the Czech economic model. The application of some currently emerging analytic instruments of international economic relations allows us to point out many problematic features of the Czech economy—in particular its dependence on foreign capital combined with a weak ability to retain it and the low added value created within the CZ. There are indicators suggesting a dependent growth within a rigid pattern of an international division of labor and wealth distribution. We argue that shortcomings of the neoliberal model of development (even) in the case of a well prepared and governed economy are a good reason to bring the insights of dependency theory back into the discussion.
The structure of the Dead ringer–DNA complex reveals how AT‐rich interaction domains (ARIDs) recognize DNA

The AT‐rich interaction domain (ARID) is a DNA‐binding module found in many eukaryotic transcription factors. Using NMR spectroscopy, we have determined the first ever three‐dimensional structure of an ARID–DNA complex (mol. wt 25.7 kDa) formed by Dead ringer from Drosophila melanogaster. ARIDs recognize DNA through a novel mechanism involving major groove immobilization of a large loop that connects the helices of a non‐canonical helix–turn–helix motif, and through a concomitant structural rearrangement that produces stabilizing contacts from a β‐hairpin. Dead ringer's preference for AT‐rich DNA originates from three positions within the ARID fold that form energetically significant contacts to an adenine–thymine base step. Amino acids that dictate binding specificity are not highly conserved, suggesting that ARIDs will bind to a range of nucleotide sequences. Extended ARIDs, found in several sequence‐specific transcription factors, are distinguished by the presence of a C‐terminal helix that may increase their intrinsic affinity for DNA. The prevalence of serine amino acids at all specificity determining positions suggests that ARIDs within SWI/SNF‐related complexes will interact with DNA non‐sequence specifically.