Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hsp70 Isoforms Are Essential for the Formation of Kaposi’s Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus Replication and Transcription Compartments

Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is an oncogenic herpesvirus associated with various AIDS-related malignancies. Like other herpesviruses, multiple processes required for KSHV lytic replication, including viral transcription, viral DNA synthesis and capsid assembly occur in virus-induced intranuclear structures, termed replication and transcription compartments (RTCs). Here we utilised a novel methodology, combining subcellular fractionation and quantitative proteomics, to identify cellular proteins which are recruited to KSHV-induced RTCs and thus play a key role in KSHV lytic replication. We show that several isoforms of the HSP70 chaperone family, Hsc70 and iHsp70, are redistributed from the cytoplasm into the nucleus coinciding with the initial formation of KSHV-induced RTCs. We demonstrate that nuclear chaperone foci are dynamic, initially forming adjacent to newly formed KSHV RTCs, however during later time points the chaperones move within KSHV RTCs and completely co-localise with actively replicating viral DNA. The functional significance of Hsp70 isoforms recruitment into KSHV RTCs was also examined using the specific Hsp70 isoform small molecule inhibitor, VER-155008. Intriguingly, results highlight an essential role of Hsp70 isoforms in the KSHV replication cycle independent of protein stability and maturation. Notably, inhibition of Hsp70 isoforms precluded KSHV RTC formation and RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) relocalisation to the viral genome leading to the abolishment of global KSHV transcription and subsequent viral protein synthesis and DNA replication. These new findings have revealed novel mechanisms that regulate KSHV lytic replication and highlight the potential of HSP70 inhibitors as novel antiviral agents.
Housing Price Indices Based on All Transactions Compared to Repeat Subsamples

The set of real properties sold during a given period of time may be subdivided into several subsets comprising those properties that sold only once, only twice, and three or more times. The major reason for subdividing the sample is to allow estimation of residential price indices by the repeat‐sales methodology. The purpose of this paper is to compare price indices estimated with the repeat subsample to indices based on the entire sample. Our data for five metropolitan areas indicate that cumulative price trends for the repeat subsamples can differ from the full samples over periods ranging from two to ten quarters. While short‐term price trends can differ widely, there are no systematic differences among the samples over periods of three years or more. The data indicate that arbitrage typically forces prices for the repeat sample to grow at the same rate as those for the full sample. Whether this would be the case in areas experiencing greater disequilibrium than our towns in the Hartford area is uncertain.
Turnover, Fees and Pension Plan Performance

Over the 1977-83 period, approximately 1,500 private pension plans filed complete 5500 forms with the Internal Revenue Service; the forms provide hitherto unavailable data on the performance of entire pension portfolios. A CAPM-based analysis of the data reveals that, net of investment fees and turnover expenses, private pension plans underperformed the S&P 500 by approximately 44 basis points per year but outperformed a weighted stock-bond index by approximately 38 basis points. The pension plans underperformed mutual funds by almost 300 basis points. Much of this difference, however, appears to be attributable to the CAPM's tendency to overvalue portfolios with high betas. There was no evidence to indicate that pension plan performance was related to excessive fees or total portfolio turnover. Pension plans that incurred relatively high fees and relatively high total turnover did not perform worse (after netting out all expenses) than pension plans that followed essentially passive strategies. Trading in the stock portion of pension portfolios, however, had a significant negative impact on net performance. The results suggest that, for the average plan, stock trading practices observed in 1983 lowered rates of return by 60 basis points relative to a plan that engaged in no stock trading. Pension plan stock trading would appear to be inefficient in the sense that superior performance (gross of expenses) in active portfolios is not high enough to offset the research costs incurred to achieve higher returns.
Comparative Economic and Gender, Labor Analysis of Conservation Agriculture Practices in Tribal Villages in India

The tribal villages within the district of Kendujhar, Odisha State, India struggle with farming on marginal lands with an increasing detrimental effect on agricultural productivity. Research has been focused on the implementation of conservation agriculture (CA) practices, specifically: minimum tillage and intercropping in such villages. Results provide a comparative economic and gender labor analyses of selected CA practices, future implications, and insight for agribusinesses, farmers and policymakers.
Finite element modeling of retention process in high-k interpoly dielectric nanocrystal flash memories

Data retention is one of the reliability factor for flash memory devices. In this work, retention process of nanocrystal flash memory with high-k interpoly dielectrics is modeled considering inelastic trap assisted tunneling. The electronic level in nanocrystal and defect is obtained by solving Poisson and Schrodinger equation self-consistently over entire device using finite element method. Vibrational levels corresponding to optical phonon are considered in high-k. Capture and relaxation is modeled using vibronic coupling and emission is considered as quasi bound state decay from defect electronic level. Lifetime of defect level is calculated by computing complex eigenenergy of the modified inhomogeneous schrodinger equation under open boundary condition. Retention time is obtained by cumulatively adding capture and emission time for all the electrons inside nanocrystal. Cylindrical symmetry of the device is utilized in finite element method by mapping 3D problem into 2D space for enhancing computational efficiency. The result of the model is compared with the experimental data for HfO2 high-k interpoly dielectric flash memory.
Nonfinancial Disclosure and Analyst Forecast Accuracy: International Evidence on Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure

ABSTRACT: We examine the relationship between disclosure of nonfinancial information and analyst forecast accuracy using firm-level data from 31 countries. We use the issuance of stand-alone corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports to proxy for disclosure of nonfinancial information. We find that the issuance of stand-alone CSR reports is associated with lower analyst forecast error. This relationship is stronger in countries that are more stakeholder-oriented—i.e., in countries where CSR performance is more likely to affect firm financial performance. The relationship is also stronger for firms and countries with more opaque financial disclosure, suggesting that issuance of stand-alone CSR reports plays a role complementary to financial disclosure. These results hold after we control for various factors related to firm financial transparency and other potentially confounding institutional factors. Collectively, our findings have important implications for academics and practitioners in understanding.
Measuring the Impact of Valuing Health Insurance on Levels and Trends in Inequality and How the Affordable Care Act of 2010 Could Affect Them

A substantial part of the U.S. inequality literature focuses on yearly levels and trends in pre‐tax, post‐transfer cash income and its distribution over time and finds that median income appears to be stagnating, with income growth primarily coming at higher income levels. When we use data from the Current Population Survey for 1995–2008 and add the value of employer‐ and government‐provided health insurance coverage, not only does it increase the upward trend in the level of resources controlled by Americans, but also reduces the level of inequality in these resources and its upward trend. We then provide a highly stylized example of this broader income measure's value in capturing the impact of two key provisions of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 - an expansion in Medicaid and the provision of subsidies to lower‐income families for purchasing private coverage on state‐run exchanges. Even though these incremental expansions build on existing systems of government‐provided health insurance, we find that the vast majority of the benefits would still accrue to the bottom three deciles of the income distribution when we include the value of employer‐ and government‐provided health insurance in our expanded yearly income measure.
What Skills and Attributes Does an Accounting Graduate Need? Evidence from Student Perceptions and Employer Expectations

For some years there has been much debate between various stakeholders about the need for accounting graduates to develop a broader set of skills to be able to pursue a career in the accounting profession. This study uses mixed methods to examine perceptions and expectations of two major stakeholders: students and employers. Findings indicate that students are becoming aware of employers’ expectations in terms of communication, analytical, professional and teamwork skills. Although employers are still expecting a good understanding of basic accounting skills and strong analytical skills, they are also requiring ‘business awareness’ and knowledge in terms of the ‘real world’. Both students and employers report that many of the ‘essential’ non‐technical and professional skills and attributes are not being developed sufficiently in university accounting programmes.
Farmers' markets and the “good food” value chain: a preliminary study

Abstract Food choices are replete with values about how society produces, processes, distributes, and consumes food. Consumers act upon these value-based food choices on a daily basis by choosing what food to buy, where to buy it, and how much to spend. Among these choices, the increasing visibility of shopping at farmers' markets warrants particular attention. A study of farmers' market customers in British Columbia, Canada provides preliminary insights into the relation between farmers' markets and value-based “good food” choices. Using a convenience sample, we completed 446 interviews with farmers' market customers. Results lend insight into how farmers' markets function as a medium to both frame and act upon value-based food choices. We found that farmers' market customers who shop more often at markets have concepts of “good food” different from people who shop less often at markets. The results also indicate that the importance of shopping at farmers' markets varies among customers.
Assessing the default risk by means of a discrete-time survival analysis approach

In this paper, the problem of company distress is assessed by means of a multi-period model that exploits the potentialities of the survival analysis approach when both survival times and regressors are measured at discrete points in time. The discrete-time hazards model can be used both as an empirical framework in the analysis of the causes of the deterioration process that leads to the default and as a tool for the prediction of the same event. Our results show that the prediction accuracy of the duration model is better than that provided by a single-period logistic model. It is also shown that the predictive power of the discrete-time survival analysis is enhanced when it is extended to allow for unobserved individual heterogeneity (frailty). Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bank efficiency and bank competition: empirical evidence from Ghana's banking industry

Bank Efficiency and Bank Competition: Empirical Evidence from Ghana’s Banking Industry by Kofi Adjei-Frimpong The Ghanaian banking industry has undergone considerably transformation since 1988 as a result of the gradual but steady implementation of financial service reforms. The main purpose of implementing the financial reforms is to build competitive and stable banking industry to enhance banks’ efficiency and ultimately stimulate economic growth and development. Using annual data spanning from 2001 to 2010, this study investigates the level of bank efficiency and the degree of bank competition and their determinants in Ghana. In addititon, the study also examines the causal relationship between bank efficiency and competition. The results suggest that Ghana’s banks are, on average, inefficient and competitively weak, but the level of efficiency has increased significantly from 2001 to 2010. This study also reveals that well-capitalized banks in Ghana are pure technically efficient and competitve but are cost inefficient. In addition, bank size influences bank pure technical efficiency suggesting that larger banks are pure technically efficient but have no influence on cost efficiency and competition. There is no indication that fee income has an impact on bank competition. The findings also exhibit that loan loss provision ratio has no effect on bank efficiency and competition in Ghana. Furthermore, this study finds GDP growth negatively influences bank cost efficiency while the rate of inflation positively affect bank pure technical efficiency, but has no impact on bank cost efficiency and bank competition. The results also reveal that lagged cost efficiency tends to persist from year to year.
Multicenter surveillance of antimicrobial resistance of Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Moraxella catarrhalis to 14 oral antibiotics.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Data on the in vitro activities of orally administered cephalosporins, particularly third-generation cephalosporins, against recent pathogens responsible for community-respiratory tract infection are lacking. METHODS A susceptibility surveillance of 267 isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae, 205 of Streptococcus pyogenes, 204 of Haemophilus influenzae, and 147 of Moraxella catarrhalis to 14 oral antimicrobial agents using the agar dilution method was carried out from March 2002 to October 2002 in Taiwan. RESULTS High rates of non-susceptibility to penicillin (60%), cefaclor (67%), cefuroxime (62%), cefpodoxime (64%), clarithromycin (91%), and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (98%) for S. pneumoniae isolates and high rates of non-susceptibility to ampicillin (70%), clarithromycin (34%), and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (63%) for H. influenzae isolates were found. The rank order of oral cephalosporin activity based on the minimum concentrations at which 90% of the isolates were inhibited (MIC90s) for S. pneumoniae was cefpodoxime > cefuroxime > cefixime > cefaclor, cephradine > cephalexin and for H. influenzae and M. catarrhalis was cefixime > cefpodoxime > cefuroxime > cefaclor > cephalexin, cephradine. Among the 75 S. pneumoniae isolates resistant to penicillin (MICs ranged 2 to 4 mg/L), 4% were intermediate to amoxicillin and > 90% were resistant to cefaclor, cefuroxime, and cefpodoxime. For S. pyogenes isolates, all were susceptible to penicillin, 21% were not susceptible to clarithromycin and 4% were not susceptible to clindamycin. Thirty four percent of H. influenzae isolates were not susceptible to clarithromycin. The MIC90 of clarithromycin against M. catarrhalis isolates was 0.5 mg/L. CONCLUSIONS Cefpodoxime, cefixime, and cefuroxime are promising agents against these bacterial pathogens, except for penicillin-non-susceptible S. pneumoniae isolates.
Automatic Target Recognition in Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery: A State-of-the-Art Review

The purpose of this paper is to survey and assess the state-of-the-art in automatic target recognition for synthetic aperture radar imagery (SAR-ATR). The aim is not to develop an exhaustive survey of the voluminous literature, but rather to capture in one place the various approaches for implementing the SAR-ATR system. This paper is meant to be as self-contained as possible, and it approaches the SAR-ATR problem from a holistic end-to-end perspective. A brief overview for the breadth of the SAR-ATR challenges is conducted. This is couched in terms of a single-channel SAR, and it is extendable to multi-channel SAR systems. Stages pertinent to the basic SAR-ATR system structure are defined, and the motivations of the requirements and constraints on the system constituents are addressed. For each stage in the SAR-ATR processing chain, a taxonomization methodology for surveying the numerous methods published in the open literature is proposed. Carefully selected works from the literature are presented under the taxa proposed. Novel comparisons, discussions, and comments are pinpointed throughout this paper. A two-fold benchmarking scheme for evaluating existing SAR-ATR systems and motivating new system designs is proposed. The scheme is applied to the works surveyed in this paper. Finally, a discussion is presented in which various interrelated issues, such as standard operating conditions, extended operating conditions, and target-model design, are addressed. This paper is a contribution toward fulfilling an objective of end-to-end SAR-ATR system design.
Business angels in Germany: A research note

This paper provides an introduction to the informal venture capital market in Germany. It is based on a survey of 48 business angels. The results show that business angels in Germany make investments that close the equity gap. German business angels also provide advice and support to their investee companies. Their investment behaviour is comparable to business angels in the UK and the USA. The biggest difference is that German business angels are richer and allocate a smaller portion of their wealth to informal investments. They are motivated by the desire to have fun and to help their investee companies, as well as seeking capital growth. Although the findings cannot claim to be representative for all German business angels, they are comparable with the results of other studies in Germany.
Personal Bankruptcy and Credit Supply and Demand

This paper examines how personal bankruptcy and bankruptcy exemptions affect the supply and demand for credit. While generous state-level bankruptcy exemptions are probably viewed by most policymakers as benefitting less-well-off borrowers, our results using data from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances suggest they increase the amount of credit held by high-asset households and reduce the availability and amount of credit to low-asset households, conditioning on observable characteristics. We also find evidence that interest rates on automobile loans for low-asset households are higher in high exemption states. Thus, bankruptcy exemptions redistribute credit toward borrowers with high assets.
Perspectives on Decentralization

This paper addresses a wide range of issues that arise in the literature on decentralization. It examines different contexts within which decentralization occurs and variations in the content of decentralized systems. It considers the promise and limitations of decentralization - especially democratic decentralization - on a number of different fronts. It emphasises the importance of ‘politics’ in the operations of decentralized systems -- the political dynamics that develop among a diversity of important political actors, operating at various levels. It deals with issues connected to accountability and transparency, with the complicated record of decentralization as a force for poverty reduction and much more.
Differing local and systemic inflammatory burden in polyarticular psoriatic arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis patients on anti-TNF treatment in clinical remission.

OBJECTIVES To analyse clinical, serological and sonographic differences between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and polyarticular psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients on anti-TNF therapy in clinical remission. METHODS Angiogenic and proinflammatory cytokine serum levels were determined by multiplex ELISA in patients with RA and PsA in clinical remission (DAS28-ESR<2.6), clinically-active RA patients (DAS28>3.2) and healthy controls. Ultrasound (US) scans were made of both wrists and hands. RESULTS 30 RA and 47 PsA patients in remission, 22 active RA patients and 20 healthy controls were included. PsA patients had significantly lower disease activity according to DAS28-ESR (p=0.006) but not according to DAS28-CRP (p=0.319), and lower serum levels of proinflammatory and angiogenic cytokines than RA patients in remission. PsA patients had cytokine levels similar to healthy controls, while RA patients in remission had similar levels to those of active RA patients. Globally, 31 (40.25%) patients in remission had a PD signal and 12 had SH>2 plus PD [1 PsA vs. 11 RA (p=0.0001)], meeting the criteria for ultrasound-defined active synovitis (UdAS). Patients with UdAS had significantly higher levels of IL-6, IL-20, PIGF and SDF1. More PsA patients were on tapered doses of anti-TNF (63.8%), and more frequently as monotherapy (72.3%), compared with RA patients (26.6% and 20%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Polyarticular PsA patients in remission had lower levels of local (US synovitis) and systemic inflammation than RA patients in remission, even though a significantly higher percentage of PsA patients were on tapered doses of anti-TNF, mainly in monotherapy.
A Unified Modeling Approach to Estimating HIV Prevalence in Sub-Saharan African Countries ∗

Estimates of HIV prevalence are important for policy in order to establish the health status of a country's population, to evaluate the effectiveness of population-based interventions and campaigns, to identify the most at risk members of the population, and to target those most in need of treatment. However, data in low and middle income countries are often derived from HIV testing conducted as part of household surveys, where participation rates in testing can be low. Low participation rates may be attributed to HIV positive individuals being less likely to participate because they fear disclosure, in which case, estimates obtained using conventional approaches to deal with non-participation, such as imputation-based methods, will be biased. In addition, establishing which population sub-groups are most in need of intervention requires modeling of both spatial dependence and the predictors of HIV status, which is complicated by data censoring due to this non-participation. We develop a Heckman-type selection model framework which accounts for non-ignorable selection, but allows for heterogeneous selection behavior by incorporating a flexible linear predictor structure for modeling copula dependence. The utilization of penalized regression splines and Gaussian Markov random fields allows us to account for non-linear covariate effects and for geographic clustering of HIV. A ridge penalty avoids convergence failures, even when the parameters of the selection variable are not fully identified. We provide the software for straightforward implementation of this approach, and apply our methodology to estimating national and sub-national HIV prevalence in three sub-Saharan African countries.