Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Foreign Financial Inflow on Economic Growth of Pakistan. Do Remittances, Foreign Aid, and ODA Behave Similarly?

This study investigates the impact of external capital flow (Remittances, Foreign Direct Investment and Official Development Assistance) on GDP growth of Pakistan over the period 1973-2014. I apply Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique to find a long run effect and Error correction (ECM) technique for short run effect. The empirical results show that in the long run there exists a long-run relationship among the growth of gross domestic production and depend variables. The results suggest that, foreign direct investment, and Official Development Assistance have overall significant and positive impacts on GDP growth of Pakistan both in short run and in long run. Finally, Remittances have no significant role to explain the variation in the economic growth of Pakistan.
Treatment and posttreatment effects of fluoride mouthrinsing after 17 years.

OBJECTIVES This study assessed the treatment and posttreatment effects of a school-based, fluoride mouthrinse regimen. METHODS Children in a nonfluoridated community in Japan participated in a daily rinse program using a 0.05 percent NaF solution in nursery and primary schools, and a weekly rinse with 0.2 percent NaF in junior high school. Students were examined at least annually for dental caries and dental treatment was provided in a public dental clinic through the ninth grade. Incipient carious lesions with no cavitation were not restored. RESULTS The percent of children in grades one through nine (6-14 years of age) with caries-free permanent teeth increased from 13.4 percent in 1974 to 73.0 percent in 1991, while the mean DMFT decreased by 86 percent during this period. For 12-year-olds, mean DMFT scores declined to about one tooth per child after 1982. For adults 20 years of age, there was a 64 percent difference in DMFS between the treatment group who started the rinse regimen at 4 years of age and continued for 11 years, and the controls who lived in different districts and did not participate in a fluoride rinse regimen. CONCLUSIONS Children who began rinsing at 4 or 5 years of age benefited the most from the program. The program was inexpensive, simple to implement and well accepted by families and teachers. The conservative treatment policy in the public clinic likely contributed to the benefits derived by participants.
Characteristics of postural control among young adults with asthma

Abstract Objective: We investigated whether young adults with asthma have impaired balance and whether this impairment is related to altered musculoskeletal function and/or psychological characteristics. Methods: 21 participants with a self-reported asthma diagnosis but no known postural instability or history of falls, and 18 control participants were recruited from undergraduate psychology courses. Participants performed a postural control task of maintaining the center of pressure (COP) in a fixed position with visual feedback (feedback condition) and while standing as still as possible without visual feedback (no-feedback condition). COP variability, regularity and task performance were used to characterize the quality of balance. To document group differences in musculoskeletal function, we measured neck and lower back angles as well as range of motion (ROM) of the neck in the frontal and sagittal planes. To document group differences in psychological state, we administered self-report questionnaires to assess symptoms of anxiety and depression, anxiety sensitivity and negative effect. Results: COP variability and task performance were similar between the groups, but participants with asthma exhibited more regular anterior–posterior COP dynamics. Participants with asthma had smaller ROM of neck extension, a more forwardly bent neck, greater thoracic spine angle, and they reported greater levels of the physical concerns facet of anxiety sensitivity. These musculoskeletal and affective variables moderated COP differences between the groups. Conclusions: Young adults with asthma showed a different postural control strategy in the absence of any obvious balance impairment. This change in strategy is related to musculoskeletal and affective characteristics of individuals with asthma.
Sources of information used to support quality use of medicines: Findings from a national survey of nurse practitioners in Australia

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the sources, both print and electronic formats, which Australian nurse practitioners (NPs) currently use to obtain information regarding quality use of medicines (QUM). An additional aim was to document NPs' preferences for continuing education in relation to QUM. Data sources: A national electronic survey of Australian NPs was conducted in 2007 and again in 2010. Conclusions: Eighty percent of respondents accessed information on QUM from professional literature, which may include scholarly journal articles, reports, and independent publications. There was a decrease in the percentage of respondents who obtained information from drug industry representatives. NPs prefer to receive medicines information in an electronic form, rather than a paper‐based version, and over the time period more NPs are utilizing electronic sources rather than paper. Implications for practice: These findings provide important insights into medical information products for the developers who may be able to use these results to ensure that their products meet the needs of NP clinicians. Additionally, the finding that NPs prefer to receive their continuing information related to medicines in electronic format, but also highly value conference proceedings, may help to inform future planning of NP education needs in relation to QUM.
Antidumping as a Form of Protectionism

The purpose of this study is to test statistically the theory advanced by opponents of antidumping measures, that antidumping actions are in reality pure protectionism. Specifically, it relates the internal economic condition such as the international competitive position of countries to the number of antidumping initiations and the antidumping measures taken by them. The independent variables are generally defined as the internal economic condition and the international competitive position. That is, the internal economic condition is measured by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita and the unemployment rate. The international competitive position is expressed in the trade balance and import penetration. The dependent variables are generally defined as protectionist pressure and protectionism. The former is quantified in antidumping initiations and the latter in antidumping measures. The research is conducted separately for the two dependent variables for all 147 WTO member states. The results show that GNI and import penetration have a statistically significant relationship with antidumping actions. Christiane Haberl Antidumping as a Form of Protectionism Master Thesis Page 1 of 72 Table of
When we break bread together: perceptions of consensus amongst queer organizers

iii CHAPTER 1: BECOMING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY 1 CHAPTER 2: EXPERIENCE AND PROCESS EMBODIED 13 CHAPTER 3: AN EMERGING CONVERSATION 29 CHAPTER 4: DRAWING A RADICAL CONCLUSION 40 REFERENCES 47 APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW SCHEDULE 50 APPENDIX B: IRB APPROVAL 51 VITA 53
Aldosterone and end-organ damage.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW This review highlights recent clinical studies demonstrating the contribution of aldosterone to cardiovascular mortality, vascular dysfunction, and renal injury in the context of advances in our understanding of the molecular biology of aldosterone. RECENT FINDINGS Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonism reduces mortality in patients with congestive heart failure and following myocardial infarction. Studies in animal models and in patients with congestive heart failure or hypertension indicate that aldosterone induces oxidative stress and impairs endothelial nitric oxide synthase through a mineralocorticoid receptor-dependent mechanism. Furthermore, aldosterone can cause vasoconstriction and vasodilation through rapid nongenomic mechanisms. The contribution of the nongenomic effects of aldosterone to vascular tone may depend on underlying endothelial function. In the heart and kidney, aldosterone stimulates oxidative stress and increases expression of inflammatory markers leading to fibrosis. The induction of inflammation and fibrosis appears to be both sodium and mineralocorticoid receptor dependent. The mechanisms underlying the progression from inflammation to fibrosis remain to be elucidated. Studies measuring circulating markers of collagen turnover suggest that mineralocorticoid antagonism reduces extracellular matrix turnover and cardiac remodeling in humans as well. Similarly, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonism reduces urinary albumen excretion in clinical trials in humans. SUMMARY Aldosterone induces oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction, inflammation and fibrosis in the vasculature, heart and kidney. While most of these effects appear to be mediated via the mineralocorticoid receptor, better understanding of the mineralocorticoid receptor-independent effects of aldosterone, the role of nonaldosterone mineralocorticoid receptor agonists, and the mechanisms involved in the progression from inflammation to fibrosis and remodeling would enable the development of new strategies to slow the progression of cardiovascular and renal disease.
NMR temperature measurements using a paramagnetic lanthanide complex.

NMR thermometry has previously suffered from poor thermal resolution owing to the relatively weak dependence of chemical shift on temperature in diamagnetic molecules. In contrast, the shifts of nuclear spins near a paramagnetic center exhibit strong temperature dependencies. The chemical shifts of the thulium 1,4,7, 10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetrakis(methylene phosphonate) complex (TmDOTP5-) have been studied as a function of temperature, pH, and Ca2+ concentration over ranges which may be encountered in vivo. The results demonstrate that the 1H and 31P shifts in TmDOTP5- are highly sensitive to temperature and may be used for NMR thermometry with excellent accuracy and resolution. A new technique is also described which permits simultaneous measurements of temperature and pH changes from the shifts of multiple TmDOTP5- spectral lines.
Timing an Election: The Impact on the Party in Government

A commonly found feature in many parliamentary democracies is the power of the government to call elections before the completion of a full term of office. Based on an examination of British and Canadian general elections during the 1940 to 2000 period, we find that it is not a good decision for the governing parties to wait the full term allowable between elections. The general pattern is that the longer the government waits to call an election, the worse its chances for gaining seats. This is a parliamentary effect similar to the honeymoon period commonly associated with presidential regimes.
Characterization of ATP release from cultures enriched in cholinergic amacrine-like neurons.

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) has been proposed to play a role as a neurotransmitter in the retina, but not much attention has been given to the regulation of ATP release from retinal neurons. In this work, we investigated the release of ATP from cultures enriched in amacrine-like neurons. Depolarization of the cells with KCl, or activation of alpha-amino-3-hydroxy- 5-methyl-4-isoxazole-propionate (AMPA) receptors, evoked the release of ATP, as determined by the luciferin/luciferase luminescent method. The ATP release was found to be largely Ca(2+) dependent and sensitive to the botulinum neurotoxin A, which indicates that the ATP released by cultured retinal neurons originated from an exocytotic pool. Nitrendipine and omega-Agatoxin IVA, but not by omega-Conotoxin GVIA, partially blocked the release of ATP, indicating that in these cells, the Ca(2+) influx necessary to trigger the release of ATP occurs in part through the L- and the P/Q types of voltage-sensitive Ca(2+) channels (VSCC), but not through N-type VSCC. The release of ATP increased in the presence of adenosine deaminase, or in the presence of 1,3-dipropyl-8-cyclopentylxanthine (DPCPX), an adenosine A(1) receptor antagonist, showing that the release is tonically inhibited by the adenosine A(1) receptors. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing the release of endogenous ATP from a retinal preparation.
BAF is a cytosolic DNA sensor that leads to exogenous DNA avoiding autophagy

Significance Rapid detection of invasion of exogenous materials and subsequent responses are important for living organisms to survive hazards, such as pathogen infection. Understanding cellular responses against exogenous DNA provides clues not only for controlling pathogen infections that bring exogenous DNA into host cells, but also for designing efficient DNA delivery vectors for transgene expression. Here, by monitoring the invasion of exogenous DNA-coated polystyrene beads into living cells, we show that barrier-to-autointegration factor detects exogenous DNA immediately after its appearance at endosome breakdown and plays a role in DNA avoiding autophagy. These findings provide new insights into the mechanisms by which a cell detects and responds to exogenous double-stranded DNA. Knowledge of the mechanisms by which a cell detects exogenous DNA is important for controlling pathogen infection, because most pathogens entail the presence of exogenous DNA in the cytosol, as well as for understanding the cell’s response to artificially transfected DNA. The cellular response to pathogen invasion has been well studied. However, spatiotemporal information of the cellular response immediately after exogenous double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) appears in the cytosol is lacking, in part because of difficulties in monitoring when exogenous dsDNA enters the cytosol of the cell. We have recently developed a method to monitor endosome breakdown around exogenous materials using transfection reagent-coated polystyrene beads incorporated into living human cells as the objective for microscopic observations. In the present study, using dsDNA-coated polystyrene beads (DNA-beads) incorporated into living cells, we show that barrier-to-autointegration factor (BAF) bound to exogenous dsDNA immediately after its appearance in the cytosol at endosome breakdown. The BAF+ DNA-beads then assembled a nuclear envelope (NE)-like membrane and avoided autophagy that targeted the remnants of the endosome membranes. Knockdown of BAF caused a significant decrease in the assembly of NE-like membranes and increased the formation of autophagic membranes around the DNA-beads, suggesting that BAF-mediated assembly of NE-like membranes was required for the DNA-beads to evade autophagy. Importantly, BAF-bound beads without dsDNA also assembled NE-like membranes and avoided autophagy. We propose a new role for BAF: remodeling intracellular membranes upon detection of dsDNA in mammalian cells.
“There is No Program Without Farmers”: Interactive Radio for Forest Landscape Restoration in Mount Elgon Region, Uganda

ABSTRACT Increase in ownership and use of radios and mobile phones in Uganda may present opportunities for interactive and efficient agricultural extension services. Yet the impact of interactive radio on rural development has rarely been evaluated. In a participatory project, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature together with Farm Radio International and stakeholders from local government, radio, and community-based organizations promoted the increased use of forest landscape restoration activities though interactive rural radio programs, including innovative methods to reach populations not covered by radio. An evaluation found that 98% of people who listened to most or all of the broadcasts carried out one of the practices, whereas 84% of those who had listened to only one episode had used one of the practices. Inclusion of a wide range of community stakeholders from project inception was vital for presenting the project and embedding it within local institutional contexts.
Utility of general and specific word embeddings for classifying translational stages of research

Conventional text classification models make a bag-of-words assumption reducing text into word occurrence counts per document. Recent algorithms such as word2vec are capable of learning semantic meaning and similarity between words in an entirely unsupervised manner using a contextual window and doing so much faster than previous methods. Each word is projected into vector space such that similar meaning words such as "strong" and "powerful" are projected into the same general Euclidean space. Open questions about these embeddings include their utility across classification tasks and the optimal properties and source of documents to construct broadly functional embeddings. In this work, we demonstrate the usefulness of pre-trained embeddings for classification in our task and demonstrate that custom word embeddings, built in the domain and for the tasks, can improve performance over word embeddings learnt on more general data including news articles or Wikipedia.
Growth Options and Credit Risk

We calibrate a dynamic model of credit risk and analyze the relation between growth options and credit spreads. Our model features real and financing frictions, a technology with decreasing returns to scale, and endogenous investment options driven by both systematic and idiosyncratic shocks. We find a negative relation between credit spreads and growth options after controlling for determinants of credit risk. This negative relation is a result of the current decision to invest and the associated change in leverage, which, in the presence of external financing needs and financing frictions, increase credit spreads while reducing the value of future investments. We do not find evidence that growth options accrue value in response to systematic risk, thus increasing credit risk premia. This paper was accepted by Karl Diether, finance.
Stimulation of N-Linked Glycosylation and Lipid-Linked Oligosaccharide Synthesis by Stress Responses in Metazoan Cells

ABSTRACT Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress responses comprising the unfolded protein response (UPR) are activated by conditions that disrupt folding and assembly of proteins inside the ER lumenal compartment. Conditions known to be proximal triggers of the UPR include saturation of chaperones with misfolded protein, redox imbalance, disruption of Ca2+ levels, interference with N-linked glycosylation, and failure to dispose of terminally misfolded proteins. Potentially, ER stress responses can reprogram cells to correct all of these problems and thereby restore ER function to normal. This article will review literature on stimulation of N-linked glycosylation by ER stress responses, focusing on metazoan systems. The mechanisms involved will be contrasted with those mediating stimulation of N-linked glycosylation by cytoplasmic stress responses. This information will interest readers who study the biological roles of stress responses, the functions of N-linked glycans, and potential strategies for treatment of genetic disorders of N-linked glycosylation.
Phosphorylation-dependent Interaction of the Cytoplasmic Domains of the Type I and Type II Transforming Growth Factor- Receptors (*)

Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) transduces signals through its type I and type II receptors. Both receptor types have previously been shown to interact in a heteromeric complex in the presence of TGF-β. We have now characterized these interactions between both receptor types using a combination of yeast two-hybrid interaction assays and coimmunoprecipitation analyses. Our results indicate a direct association between the cytoplasmic domains of the two receptor types. Mutation analysis of these cytoplasmic domains reveals that this direct interaction requires kinase activity and, thus, depends on phosphorylation, probably via a transphosphorylation mechanism. Furthermore, the two receptor types already have an inherent affinity for each other in the absence of TGF-β, and the heteromeric complex can be detected in coimmunoprecipitations under these conditions. Taken together, our results reveal a novel mechanism of receptor complex formation, whereby two different cytoplasmic domains directly associate with each other. This interaction may play a major role in activation of serine/threonine kinase receptors.
Validity of major osteoporotic fracture diagnosis codes in the Clinical Data Analysis and Reporting System in Hong Kong

Large medical record databases facilitate epidemiology research in fracture. However, the validity of fracture in the databases is needed to ensure the reliability of data. We aimed to assess the validity of International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision (ICD‐9) code algorithms for identifying major osteoporotic fracture in the Clinical Data Analysis and Reporting System (CDARS) in Hong Kong.
Evaluation of non-tariff measures for African agricultural exports to the EU in a CGE framework

This paper evaluates the role of Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) on agro-food trade between the EU and Africa. Given that the effects of NTMs cannot be generalised across products and regions. The analysis considers several agricultural and horticultural products exported from Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Morocco, Uganda and South Africa. After a brief introduction, we present a review of trade patterns for selected African countries and their respective exports to the EU. The third section describes an evaluation of NTMs on African agricultural products conducted by interviewing African export companies. In five countries 95 exporters have been interviewed to obtain first hand information on obstacles to exports in five main topics: taxes and subsidies, customs and procedures, standards and regulations, specific limitations, and distribution chain and infrastructure. The survey focused on main agricultural and food products currently exported from the selected African countries to the European Union (EU) and included two main sections per topic, firstly, grading the impact of more detailed NTMs, and secondly, answering more specific partly quantifying questions. Then, in Section 4 several indices corresponding to following categories have been built: a) taxes and subsidies, b) customs and procedures, c) standards and regulations, d) specific limitations and e) distribution chain and infrastructure. These indices are integrated into an econometric study based on the approach presented by Fugazza (2008) to obtain estimates of the NTM effects on bilateral trade between the EU and the African countries. Furthermore in Section 5 the values obtained from the econometric analysis were transformed in ad valorem tariffs (AVEs), into a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to study the effects of their presence and removal.