Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drosophila melanogaster has only one myosin alkali light-chain gene which encodes a protein with considerable amino acid sequence homology to chicken myosin alkali light chains

A chimeric lambda DNA molecule containing the myosin alkali light-chain gene of Drosophila melanogaster was isolated. The encoded amino acid sequence was determined from the nucleic acid sequence of a cDNA homologous to the genomic clone. The identity of the encoded protein was established by two criteria: (i) sequence homology with the chicken alkali light-chain proteins and (ii) comparison of the two-dimensional gel electrophoretic pattern of the peptides synthesized by in vitro translation of hybrid-selected RNA to that of myosin alkali light-chain peptides extracted from Drosophila myofibrils. There is only one myosin alkali light-chain in D. melanogaster; its chromosomal location is region 98B . This gene is abundantly expressed during the development of larval as well as adult muscles. The Drosophila protein appears to contain one putative divalent cation-binding domain (an EF hand) as compared with the three EF hands present in chicken alkali light chains.
Entrepreneurial Decisions and Liquidity Constraints

This paper analyzes the role of liquidity constraints in the formation of new entrepreneurial enterprises. The basic empirical strategy is to determine whether an individual's wealth affects the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, and the conditional amounts of depreciable assets, ceteris paribus. If so, liquidity constraints are likely to be present. To be successful, such a research strategy requires a measure of asset variation that is both precisely measured and exogenous to the entrepreneurial decision. Our data are uniquely well-suited for this purpose. The sample consists of the 1981 and 1985 federal income tax returns of a group of people who received inheritances in 1982 and 1983, along with information on the size of those inheritances from a matched set of estate tax returns. Hence, we can examine how the exogenous receipt of capital affects the decision to become an entrepreneur and important financial characteristics of new enterprises. Our results suggest that the size of the inheritance has a substantial effect on the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, and that conditional on becoming an entrepreneur, the size of the inheritance has a statistically significant and quantitatively important effect on the amount of capital employed. These findings are consistent with the presence of liquidity constraints.
Drivers of household participation in land rent-out market: Evidence from Amigna District, Arsi Zone, Ethiopia

This research is attempted to understand drivers of household decision to participate in landrent-out market. Using data from 88 farm households surveyed in 2009 the paper tested for factors that affect the degree and extent of households’ participation in the rural land rentalmarket. Result of the Tobit model revealed that landholding size, and age of the household heads are important variables which had positive and significant influence on participation and intensity of participation in land renting-out market. The result further explained that less oxen ownership and older households are more likely in renting-out their land. This implying that rental market helps to facilitates adjustments in farm size in order to meet emerging current needs of young households and enabling smooth replacement of older generations. The analyses figured-out that the liquidity of land renting-out market is hampered by insecurity of tenure in arranged rental land market. The twin effects of land tenure insecurity and poor infrastructure development cause farms to operate below optimal level. Therefore, it would thus be desirablefor the government to improve the regulatory framework for the land rental market to operate efficiently; and development interventions should give emphasis to strengthening infrastructural development so as to enhance well functioning dynamic land rental markets in the district. Key words: Land rent-out, tenure security, drivers to land markets
Short on Shots: Can Calls on Self-Restraint be Effective in Managing the Scarcity of a Vital Good?

During the unexpected shortage of flu vaccines in the Fall 2004, we observed the responses of the members of a U.S. campus population to two distinct randomized treatments in a designed field experiment. Corresponding to the management strategy followed by the Center for Disease Control, one treatment provided information about a sharply reduced number of vaccination clinics (scarcity) and their schedule (deadlines); and the other provided the same information plus an appeal to self-restraint to favor priority groups. We find that information about scarcity and deadlines induced a sharp 110% increase in demand, while calls on self-restraint only helped reduce this demand by 37.5%, resulting in a 32% increase in demand. An analysis of confidential survey responses from candidates as to being members of a priority group before they confronted soft-screening by the health center staff suggests that, perversely, the net increase in demand originated entirely in the non-priority population. The priority population demonstrated altruism in exercising self-restraint, thereby canceling among them the increase in demand due to scarcity and deadlines. Survey answers to recall questions suggest that the demand from non-priority individuals who used vaccination services the previous year increased sharply in response to scarcity and deadlines, their self-restraint was modest, and they contributed most to cheating. These findings suggest that the allocation strategy chosen, and enforced by only soft screening, of defining priority groups and calling on self-restraint among non-members of these groups was not effective. Indeed there was a net increase in vaccines distributed of 17% compared to no strategy, and this was entirely due to non-priority individuals.
The co‐ordinated regulation of iron homeostasis in murine macrophages limits the availability of iron for intracellular Salmonella typhimurium

In being both, a modifier of cellular immune effector pathways and an essential nutrient for microbes, iron is a critical determinant in host–pathogen interaction. Here, we investigated the metabolic changes of macrophage iron homeostasis and immune function following the infection of RAW264.7 murine macrophages with Salmonella typhimurium. We observed an enhanced expression of the principal iron export protein, ferroportin 1, and a subsequent increase of iron efflux in Salmonella‐infected phagocytes. In parallel, the expression of haem oxygenase 1 and of the siderophore‐binding peptide lipocalin 2 was markedly enhanced following pathogen entry. Collectively, these modulations reduced both the cytoplasmatic labile iron and the ferritin storage iron pool within macrophages, thus restricting the acquisition of iron by intramacrophage Salmonella. Correspondingly, limitation of macrophage iron decreased microbial survival, whereas iron supplementation impaired immune response pathways in Salmonella‐infected macrophages (nitric oxide formation and tumour necrosis factor‐α production) and promoted intracellular bacterial proliferation. Our findings suggest that the enhancement of ferroportin 1‐mediated iron efflux, the upregulation of the haem‐degrading enzyme haem oxygenase 1 and the induction of lipocalin 2 following infection concordantly aim at withholding iron from intracellular S. typhimurium and to increase antimicrobial immune effector pathways thus limiting pathogen proliferation.
Situational strategies: A management tool for turbulent times

To win in turbulence, senior executives must continually review three dimensions of their business context: their industry’s source and level of turbulence, their own strategic position within their sector, and their financial strength. The author reports on a study that suggests that there is a significant opportunity to win in turbulence. The companies that were prepared for bad times captured a disproportionate share of industry growth and profits. These companies had developed situational strategies that could be called upon immediately when the market changed. The article describes the key steps in developing and implementing these alternative strategic moves.
Economic Risks of Aflatoxin Contamination in Marketing of Peanut in Benin

Aflatoxin (AF) is a human health, nutrition, and financial risk to many people in the developing world. AF contamination in peanut is caused by the fungi: Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. AF is a potent carcinogenic toxin that also causes millions of dollars of financial losses to people in Africa. The fungus producing the AF can be reduced to an acceptable level by proper drying, sorting, storage, and cleaning of peanut. Government intervention and regulation can also encourage market participants to reduce AF contamination. In this paper, we examine the financial risk associated with sorting, and storing of peanut and peanut products along the marketing chain. Study results show that the prices paid for peanut, prices received, the costs of sorting and storage are dominant factors in reducing AF levels in peanut. Practices such as drying, sorting, and storing, however, pose financial risks to market traders of peanut. Unless government intervenes by requesting an AF-reduced peanut and provides assistance for market liberalization where market participants consider quality in trading decisions, suppliers of peanut will be reluctant to adopt AF-reducing techniques.
Mechanisms of imprinting of the Prader–Willi/Angelman region

Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) and Angelman syndrome (AS) are two distinct neurodevelopmental disorders, each caused by several genetic and epigenetic mechanisms involving the proximal long arm of chromosome 15. Lack of a functional paternal copy of 15q11–q13 causes PWS; lack of a functional maternal copy of UBE3A, a gene within 15q11–q13, causes AS. This region of chromosome 15 contains a number of imprinted genes that are coordinately regulated by an imprinting center (PWS/AS‐IC) that contains two functional elements, the PWS‐SRO and the AS‐SRO. A chromosome lacking the PWS‐SRO has the maternal state of gene activity and epigenetic modification after either maternal or paternal transmission; a chromosome lacking the AS‐SRO but containing the PWS‐SRO has the paternal state of gene activity and epigenetic modification after either maternal or paternal transmission. The maternal state of chromosome 15q11–q13 is associated with methylation of the PWS‐SRO, while the paternal state is associated with lack of methylation of the PWS‐SRO. Although most models of PWS/AS region imprinting assume that the PWS‐SRO is methylated during oogenesis and that this methylation of the maternal PWS‐SRO is maintained after fertilization, several lines of evidence suggest that the maternal PWS‐SRO is in fact not methylated until after fertilization. Imprinting defects affecting the PWS/AS region can arise from failure to demethylate the PWS‐SRO in the male germ line, from failure to methylate the maternal PWS‐SRO, or from failure to maintain PWS‐SRO methylation after fertilization. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Effects of Regulatory Reform on Competition in the Banking Industry

The paper analyzes the evolution of competitive conditions in the Italian banking industry using firm-level balance sheet data for the period 1984-1997. Regulatory reform, large-scale consolidation, and competitive pressure from other European countries have changed substantially the banking environment, with potentially offsetting effects on the overall degree of competitiveness. We find that competitive conditions, relatively unchanged until 1992, have improved substantially thereafter, as signaled by the decline in estimated markups. Also, we analyze for the first time the long-run impact of the consolidation process on competition and find no evidence that banks involved in mergers and acquisitions gained market power; at the same time, they exhibit lower than average marginal costs. Finally, after controlling for various factors that may have determined the time pattern of banks' estimated markups, we still detect a significant unexplained drop in our competitive conditions indicators after 1992. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the deregulation process, which culminated with the implementation of the Second Banking Directive in 1993, significantly contributed to improving bank competition and that it may also have been an important determinant of the consolidation process recorded by the Italian credit system during the 1990s.
The Costs of Being a Child Care Teacher

The demand for child care in the United States continues to grow, but child care workers’ wages remain minimal. Using examples within New Jersey, the author demonstrates how low wages impact child care quality and are directly related to the effects of the competitive marketplace. Various historical, regulatory, and cultural contexts also contribute to low wages, however. Because most child care workers are female, the author uses a feminist critical policy analysis lens to examine the gendered aspects of these contextual factors. The author argues that the gender-related issues within these contexts exacerbate the problem of low wages and also contribute to the intractability of the issue, particularly in terms of accessing policymakers’ agendas. The author concludes with a brief summary of issues that policymakers and advocates will need to keep in mind as they search for solutions to the problem of low wages.
A Note on Wealth Effect under CARA Utility

There is a simple but overlooked way of capturing the wealth effect under CARA utility via making the absolute-risk aversion parameter wealth-dependent. We implement this approach in the asymmetric information setting of Verrecchia (1982), and compare it with the alternative approach of changing the utility function (Peress, 2004). Ours is a straightforward tractable extension of Verrecchia, while Peress has to resort to approximate methods. Importantly, our closed-form solution reveals that the relation between wealth and wealth share invested in a risky asset can be negative, while Peress's main result is that this relation is uniquely positive.
Customer Expectations and Service Level in E-Banking Era: An Empirical Study

It is almost 15 years since the Indian banking sector was liberalized and paradigm shift happened in the Indian banking services. All banks have either totally implemented ‘core banking systems’ or halfway through. The results of a survey were obtained from 292 respondents about their views on electronic banking channels, indicate that the banks are exceeding the expectations in technology based services; and their perceived service level on branch network is below the expected levels of the respondents. This result is in tune with the respondents’ opinion on the perceived ‘gap’ with the bank because of the introduction of technology, and on the necessity of human contact with the clients by the banks. This throws up a challenge to banks. Technology alone cannot give a sustainable competitive advantage for the banks. When all banks introduce IT, it will lose its position as a differentiator. Beyond a point, IT along with ‘personal touch’ will be necessary for the banks to retain existing clients and to attract new ones. Banks have to incorporate this in their operational strategy.
An Evaluation of the Stabilization Properties of Equalization in Canada

The Canadian system of equalization is designed to address differences in revenue-raising capacity across provinces, basing a province's annual entitlements on its actual tax bases. However, the standard against which a given province's equalization entitlements are calculated fluctuates from year to year with all provinces' tax bases and tax rates. The consequence is that, while the redistribution function is fulfilled annually, the stability of provincial revenues suffers. The evidence we present indicates that, at least for the three revenue categories we examine, the equalization system can actually be destabilizing, thereby imposing on provinces volatility in their potential revenue streams that exceeds what would exist in the absence of equalization.
Precious Lives: Who Lives and Who Dies in America's Contemporary Capital Punishment Complex

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all existing capital punishment statutes, declaring the death penalty unconstitutional due to its excessive discretion which resulted in its arbitrary and discriminatory application against racial minorities and the poor. The suspension on executions only proved temporary. In 1976, capital punishment was reinstated under the premise that a number of conditions be met. However, despite an abundance of reformed statutes supposedly designed to stamp out racial discrimination, mounting evidence suggests that the system continues to end human lives unfairly. In particular, it has been found that an individual is, on average, three-to-five times more likely to receive a death sentence if their victim is white. Despite ample evidence of the disparities and inconsistencies which recur in the meting out of society’s ultimate punishment, the current literature which dominates academia continues to indulge in old trade-offs which see the death penalty’s efficacy as a deterrent to murder continually debated with minimal regard for social issues. The objectives of this thesis are thus twofold: (1) first, I argue that a paradigm shift is necessary in death penalty rhetoric which moves away from empirically-laden econometric studies towards a sociological approach which is more attuned to the numerous social issues, and in particular the racial disparities, which the modern death penalty in the United States consistently reproduces; secondly (2), the thesis explores the racial disparities which persist in America’s officially ‘colour-blind’ capital punishment system and attempts to provide an historically-grounded explanation which situates such discrepancies in the embodiment of African Americans as ‘inferior’ and whites as ‘superior’ across three systems of racial control, and the influence such developments have exerted on who lives and who dies for death-eligible crimes in twenty-first century America. The paper concludes with the recommendation of declaring a moratorium on all scheduled executions in order to allow social scientists the time to conduct county, state, and nationwide studies which further investigate racial disparities whilst building upon the theoretical foundations laid down in this paper.
Rapid Online Selection between Multiple Motor Plans

Recent theories of voluntary control predict that multiple motor strategies can be precomputed and expressed throughout movement. We examined online decisional processing in humans by asking them to make reaching movements with obstacles located just to the sides of a direct path between start and end targets. On random trials, the limb was perturbed with one of four mechanical loads that varied in direction and amplitude. Notably, we observed two different strategies when we applied a perturbation (left medium-sized) that deviated the participants' hand directly toward an obstacle. In some trials, subjects directed their hand between the obstacles and in other trials to the left of the obstacles. Importantly, changes in the muscle stretch response between these two strategies were observed in <60 ms after perturbation, during the R2 long-latency epoch (∼45–75 ms). As predicted, the selected strategy depended on the estimated position of the limb when it was perturbed. In our second experiment, we presented either one or three potential goal targets. Movements initially directed to the closest target could be quickly redirected to other potential targets after a perturbation. Differences in muscle stretch responses for redirected movements were observed ∼75 ms after perturbation during the R3 long-latency epoch (∼75–105 ms). The results show that decisional processes are rapidly implemented during movement execution. In addition, our data suggest a hierarchical process with corrective responses on “how” to attain a behavioral goal expressed during the R2 epoch and responses on “what” goal to attain during the R3 epoch.
The Euro and International Capital Markets

This paper provides a broad empirical examination of the major currencies' roles in international capital markets, with a special emphasis on the first year of the Euro. A contribution is made as to how to measure these roles, both for international financing as well as for international investment. The times series collected for these measures allow for the identification of changes in the role of the Euro during 1999 compared to the aggregate of Euro predecessor currencies, net of intra-Euro area assets/liabilities, before stage 3 of EMU. A number of key factors determining the currency distribution of international portfolio investments, such as relative market liquidity and relative risk characteristics of assets, are also examined empirically. It turns out that for almost all important market segments for which data are available, the Euro immediately became the second most widely used currency for international financing and investment. For the flow of international bond and note issuance it experienced significant growth in 1999 even slightly overtaking the US dollar in the second half of the year. The Euro's international investment role appears more static though, since most of the early external asset supply in Euro is actually absorbed by Euro area residents.
sex chromosome inactivation

X chromosome inactivation is most commonly studied in the context of female mammalian development, where it performs an essential role in dosage compensation. However, another form of X-inactivation takes place in the male, during spermatogenesis, as germ cells enter meiosis. This second form of X-inactivation, called meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI) has emerged as a novel paradigm for studying the epigenetic regulation of gene expression. New studies have revealed that MSCI is a special example of a more general mechanism called meiotic silencing of unsynapsed chromatin (MSUC), which silences chromosomes that fail to pair with their homologous partners and, in doing so, may protect against aneuploidy in subsequent generations.
Risk adjustments of option prices under time-changed dynamics

We derive a closed-form expansion of option prices in terms of Black–Scholes prices and higher-order Greeks. We show how the true price of an option less its Black–Scholes price is given by a series of premiums on higher order risks that are not priced under the Black–Scholes model assumptions. The expansion can be used for a broad class of option pricing models with dynamics governed by time-changed Brownian motions. Specifically, we study expansions for exponential Lévy models such as the Variance Gamma and the Normal Inverse Gaussian models as well as their stochastic volatility counterparts, e.g. the VGSV and NIGSV models. Moreover, we consider extensions of the expansion to a more general subclass of affine jump-diffusion models for which the pricing transform may not be known in closed form.