Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why do economists study happiness?

Recently economists have expressed increasing interest in studying the determinants of happiness. Their main task has been to identify economic and non-economic sources of well-being to define policies aimed at maximising happiness in nations. As yet, it has not been precisely explained why ‘happiness economics’ is actually a part of economic science. In this article, we show that happiness can be an economic concept providing a critical review of the literature on (a) economic applications of happiness data and (b) economic consequences of happiness. Happiness data have been used to analyse microeconomic phenomena and to value non-market goods. Happiness may act as a determinant of economic outcomes: it increases productivity, predicts one’s future income and affects labour market performance. A growing number of happiness studies indicate a role of personality traits in understanding the link between well-being and economic outcomes.
Inhibition of apoptosis‐inducing factor translocation is involved in protective effects of hepatocyte growth factor against excitotoxic cell death in cultured hippocampal neurons

Although hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) and its receptor are expressed in various regions of the brain, their effects and mechanism of action under pathological conditions remain to be determined. Over‐activation of the N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate (NMDA) receptor, an ionotropic glutamate receptor, has been implicated in a variety of neurological and neurodegenerative disorders. We investigated the effects of HGF on the NMDA‐induced cell death in cultured hippocampal neurons and sought to explore their mechanisms. NMDA‐induced cell death and increase in the number of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase‐mediated dUTP‐biotin nick end labeling (TUNEL)‐positive cells were prevented by HGF treatment. Although neither the total amounts nor the mitochondrial localization of Bax, Bcl‐2 and Bcl‐xL were affected, caspase 3 activity was increased after NMDA exposure. Treatment with HGF partially prevented this NMDA‐induced activation of caspase 3. Although the amount of apoptosis‐inducing factor (AIF) was not altered, translocation of AIF into the nucleus was detected after NMDA exposure. This NMDA‐induced AIF translocation was reduced by treatment with HGF. In addition, increased poly(ADP‐ribose) polymer formation after NMDA exposure was attenuated by treatment with HGF. These results suggest that the protective effects of HGF against NMDA‐induced neurotoxicity are mediated via the partial prevention of caspase 3 activity and the inhibition of AIF translocation to the nucleus.
Abnormal discourse in semantic dementia: A data-driven approach

Structural and content-related deficits occur in connected discourse of patients with semantic dementia (SD). We used principal components analysis (PCA) to characterise the sources of variation in word usage during picture description by controls and SD patients. This data-driven approach allowed: comparison of the distance between individuals in the two-dimensional space; correlational analyses between principal component (PC) values and performance on other tests; identification of words whose variance contributed most to the definition of the PCs.Transcripts of Cookie Theft picture descriptions from 21 patients with SD and 21 controls were used to generate frequencies of all word types (n = 557) across participants. Frequency values of words with ≥10 occurrences (n= 81) were entered into a PCA. Values of emergent dimensions were correlated with performance on tests of single word meaning. The first PC accounted for 59% of the variance, the second for a further 10%. Patients and controls showed good separation within the resulting space. Factor loading scores indicated that control performance was characterised by function (factor 1) and content (factor 2) word usage, while patients showed a greater tendency to use pronouns, deictic and generic words. Knowledge of single word meaning correlated with factor 1 but not with factor 2. Differences in word usage can differentiate connected speech of SD patients from controls using a rapid, automated, data-driven algorithm. The distinction between groups, loadings on the two components, and their differential correlations with semantic tasks raise the possibility of independent differences in syntax and lexical content.
On the Determinants of Fiscal Non-Compliance: An Empirical Analysis of Spain's Regions

This paper proposes an empirical framework that distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary compliance with fiscal deficit targets on the basis of economic, institutional and political factors. The framework is applied to Spain’s Autonomous Communities (regions) over the period 2002-2015. Fiscal non-compliance among Spain’s regions has proven persistent. It increases with the size of growth forecasting errors and the extent to which fiscal targets are tightened, factors not fully under the control of regional governments. Non-compliance also tends to increase during election years, when vertical fiscal imbalances become accentuated, and market financing costs subside. Strong fiscal rules have not shown any significant impact on containing fiscal noncompliance. Reducing fiscal non-compliance in multi-level governance systems such as Spain’s requires a comprehensive assessment of inter-governmental fiscal arrangements that looks beyond rules-based frameworks by ensuring enforcement procedures are politically credible.
Manipulation of ruminal fermentation. IV. Effect of altering ruminal pH on volatile fatty acid production.

Abstract The effect of altering ruminal pH on volatile fatty acid production in vitro or volatile acid concentration in vivo was investigated. In Experiment 1 three lactating Holstein cows fitted with ruminal cannulae were fed a high-concentrate, restricted roughage ration. Continuous infusion of 9 to 12 moles of sodium bicarbonate into the rumen raised ruminal pH from 5.5 to 6.2 and increased the acetate:propionate ratio from 1.1 to 2.8. A series of in vitro incubations with pH controlled at 5.6, 6.2, or 6.8 showed that volatile acid production was largely unaffected between pH 6.2 and 6.8, but between pH 5.6 and 6.2 acetate production was inhibited. Propionate and butyrate production were increased at pH 5.6. In Experiment 2, two nonlactating Jersey cows fitted with ruminal cannulae and fed only alfalfa hay were infused with phosphoric acid to reduce ruminal pH from 6.8 to 6.2. There were no changes in the molar proportions of ruminal acids although total volatile acid concentration was significantly lower during acid infusion. Incubation of ruminal ingesta from these cows at pH 5.6, 6.2, and 6.8 indicated much the same pH effect as in Experiment 1. These experiments suggest that changes in volatile fatty acid production can take place in response to low pH conditions without necessarily changing the rumen microbial population. This would be important in the meal-eating ruminant whose rumen pH may temporarily drop from an otherwise higher prevailing pH. Sodium bentonite was fed with a high-concentrate ration to three ruminally fistulated cows in Experiment 3. In a switchback design with short periods, no difference could be detected between control and bentonite groups in ruminal pH or volatile fatty acid concentration. Dietary bentonite reduced rumination time and had no effect on the distribution of dry matter within the rumen. Incubation of ruminal ingesta with bentonite did not alter pH or production of volatile acid by the ingesta. It appears that the reported effect of bentonite on ruminal acid concentration is not mediated through the influence of pH but through means not readily detected in switchback experiments with cows fed almost continuously.
Association of the ADH2*3 allele with a negative family history of alcoholism in African American young adults.

BACKGROUND Two of the class I alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) genes (ADH2 and ADH3) encode for multiple isozymes that differ in their kinetic properties. Polymorphisms at both of these gene loci have been linked to alcoholism and/or alcohol-induced disabilities in some populations. At the ADH2 locus, three polymorphisms are present (ADH2*1, ADH2*2, ADH2*3). ADH2*3 allele codes for a high Km and Vmax variant that has been reported to occur exclusively in African Americans and some tribes of Native Americans. In African Americans, the presence of the ADH2*3 allele is associated with protection from alcohol-related birth defects. However, its relationship to risk for alcoholism in African Americans remains relatively unexplored. METHODS The participants were 97 African American young adults (18-25 years old). A structured interview was used to gather information on demographics, psychiatric diagnoses, personal drinking and drug use history, and familial history of alcohol use disorders. A blood sample was obtained from each participant and leukocyte DNA extracted and genotyped for the presence of ADH2*3 alleles. The specific aim of the study was to investigate the associations between the presence of the ADH2* 3 allele and personal and family history of alcohol use/abuse. RESULTS Thirty participants (31%) had at least one ADH2*3 allele and two were homozygous for the allele. A significant association between the presence of an ADH2*3 allele and a negative family history of alcoholism was uncovered (p < 0.04). No significant associations of an ADH2*3 allele with personal history of alcohol use disorders or with current drinking were found; however, power to detect associations was limited in this population because half the population did not drink regularly. CONCLUSIONS Because family history of alcoholism is one of the best predictors of the development of alcohol use disorders, this pilot study suggests that, in this sample of African American young adults, the ADH2*3 allele may be associated with a lowered risk for the development of alcoholism.
Cascading failures in smart grid: Joint effect of load propagation and interdependence

The smart grid mainly suffers from two types of cascading failures: 1) interdependence cascading failure and 2) load propagation cascading failure. The former one happens due to the interdependence between power grid and communication networks. The latter one is caused by the load propagation in the single power grid. A tiny failure leads to the simultaneous occurrence of these two cascading failures. In this paper, we study the system robustness by considering the interdependence and load propagation. First, we develop a mathematical tool to analyze the load propagation in single network. Then, a percolation-based method is proposed to calculate the remaining fractions of survivals after the cascading failures stop. We estimate the node tolerance parameter T (the ratio of capacity to initial workload) threshold T'c, below which the entire system may suffer from the cascading failure. The effect of interdependence on Tc' is also studied, where lower Tc' is required for the less compact interdependence. We prove that the system performance approaches to the upper bound once the tolerance parameter T → ∞. Our analysis indicates that the fraction of survivals in the power grid is always greater than that in communication network, although the initial failure occurs in the power grid. The extensive simulations validate our mathematical analysis, and demonstrate that the relation between the number of initial failures and tolerance parameter threshold is super-linear.
Impact of hydrogen contamination on the total dose response of linear bipolar microcircuits

Several linear bipolar microcircuits commonly used in space have been selected to investigate whether hydrogen contamination has an impact on their total dose response. Results obtained from irradiations performed on the HSYE117 linear voltage regulator from Intersil and the AD590 temperature transducer from Analog Devices show a causal relationship between in-package hydrogen content and total dose response. Silicon nitride passivation has been found to play a key role in this study. A recommended approach to hardening bipolar linear circuits with poor total dose response is to characterize them as processed through metallization.
Development of large intestinal attaching and effacing lesions in pigs in association with the feeding of a particular diet

Hysterotomy-derived piglets were kept in gnotobiotic isolators and artificially colonized at 7 days of age with an adult bovine enteric microflora. At 3 weeks of age, the pigs were transferred to conventional experimental accommodation and weaned, either onto a solid diet that had been associated with field cases of typhlocolitis in pigs or onto a solid control diet. At necropsy at 5 weeks of age, groups of pigs fed the diet associated with field cases of typhlocolitis were found to have developed typhlocolitis. This was absent from the groups fed the control diet. The typhlocolitis was characterized by attaching and effacing lesions typical of those described following experimental inoculation of various species with enteropathogenic Escherichia coli. A nonverocytotoxic, eae probe-positive E. coli serotype O116 was isolated from pigs on the colitis-associated diet but not from any of the pigs on the control diet. Coliform bacteria attached to the colonic lesions reacted with polyclonal antiserum to E. coli O116 in an immunoperoxidase assay of histological sections of affected tissue. No reaction with this antiserum was observed in corresponding tissue sections taken from pigs on the control diet. No colon lesions were observed in germfree pigs fed either of the diets. It is postulated that proliferation and possibly expression of pathogenicity of the attaching and effacing E. coli responsible for the lesions are strongly influenced by diet.
Manic psychosis induced by long term alpha-interferon treatment for hepatitis C

There is increasing evidence of psychiatric side-effects following long-term alpha-interferon treatment, but no previous reports of psychosis as a side-effect. There is little evidence to suggest the best treatment of interferonrelated psychiatric illness. A case of manic psychosis developing after longterm alpha-interferon treatment is reported in a woman with no previous psychiatric history. The patient did not respond to termination of alphainterferon therapy. She responded partially to olanzapine but completely recovered after sodium valproate was added, with no deleterious effects. Psychiatric side-effects, including psychosis, are appreciable problems of alpha-interferon. This is the first case report of psychosis developing after long-term treatment. It supports suggestions that the pathological mechanisms of the early and late side-effects are different. Sodium valproate proved to be a safe and effective treatment. (Int J Psych Clin Pract 2000; 4:161-162)
A Model of Professional Development for Field-Based Teacher Educators: Addressing Historical Problems through Local Collaboration

Author(s): Tunney, Jessica | Advisor(s): van Es, Elizabeth | Abstract: This dissertation takes on a key and persistent challenge within teacher education: pre-service teacher learning in field experience. I approach this historical problem through its local manifestations, and this study examines an intervention that brought together three university supervisors and six classroom mentor teachers from one university-school partnership for seven meetings over the six months of student teaching. Framed by Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, the emergent design of the Mentoring Study Group intervention aimed to provoke expansive learning (Engestrom, 1987; 2001) to transform how practitioners understand their work and to support them in constructing new tools and concepts for practice for themselves. Qualitative methods were used to examine the key problems of practice participants identified, the new tools and concepts for practice they developed, and to interpret learning in terms of the expansive learning conceptual model to understand how features of the model design enabled the group to broaden their understanding and coordinate their work. Results demonstrate that through participation in the structured collaboration offered by the emergent professional development approach, participants were able to uncover a fundamental contradiction embedded within teacher preparation, between goals of helping pre-service teachers develop ambitious instructional practice and preparing pre-service teachers to lead “formula lessons. ” In attempting to confront and resolve this contradiction, the Mentoring Study Group devised a shared tool to coordinate their work, The Five High-Leverage Math Practices +1 Protocol and field-based pedagogical practices to guide modeling, observations, and feedback on teaching. This model of structured collaboration for teacher education practitioners holds promise for university-school partnership efforts to come together to develop shared approaches to mentoring and a common language of practice for the purpose of preparing beginning teachers for ambitious practice in the field.
Structural Properties of Uncoded Placement Optimization for Coded Delivery

A centralized coded caching scheme has been proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen to reduce the worst-case load of a network consisting of a server with access to N files and connected through a shared link to K users, each equipped with a cache of size M. However, this centralized coded caching scheme is not able to take advantage of a non-uniform, possibly very skewed, file popularity distribution. In this work, we consider the same network setting but aim to reduce the average load under an arbitrary (known) file popularity distribution. First, we consider a class of centralized coded caching schemes utilizing general uncoded placement and a specific coded delivery strategy, which are specified by a general file partition parameter. Then, we formulate the coded caching design optimization problem over the considered class of schemes with 2^K2^N variables to minimize the average load by optimizing the file partition parameter under an arbitrary file popularity. Furthermore, we show that the optimization problem is convex, and the resulting optimal solution generally improves upon known schemes. Next, we analyze structural properties of the optimization problem to obtain design insights and reduce the complexity. Specifically, we obtain an equivalent linear optimization problem with (K+1)N variables under an arbitrary file popularity and an equivalent linear optimization problem with K+1 variables under the uniform file popularity. Under the uniform file popularity, we also obtain the closed form optimal solution, which corresponds to Maddah-Ali-Niesen's centralized coded caching scheme. Finally, we present an information-theoretic converse bound on the average load under an arbitrary file popularity.
Maternal smoking increases risk of allergic sensitization and wheezing only in children with allergic predisposition: longitudinal analysis from birth to 10 years

Background: The role of passive smoking for allergies and asthma in children above the age of 3 years remains unclear and possible interactive effects with parental allergies have not been formally evaluated in long‐term studies. To examine the interaction of passive smoking and an allergic predisposition regarding allergic sensitization, allergic airway symptoms and respiratory infections during the first 10 years of life.
Demonstration of a platelet bypass mechanism in the clotting system using an acquired anticoagulant

A lupus‐type anticoagulant which causes strong inhibition of the partial thromboplastin time with kaolin (PTTK), the stypven time, and the thrombin generation tests has been investigated. All tests for platelet function were normal, as were all specific coagulation factor assays with the exception of a slightly reduced factor XI in this patient. A diethylaminoethyl‐cellulose‐immunoglobulin (DEAE‐cellulose‐IgG) fractionation of the patient's plasma produced two peaks containing inhibitory activity in the PTTK test. The first of these peaks had a cloudy appearance, suggesting the presence of immunoglobulin aggregates. Studies with IgG aggregates prepared from normal IgG and from the patient's IgG demonstrated that such aggregates were not the cause of inhibition. It was possible to neutralize the inhibitory activity of the purified IgG but not platelet‐poor plasma (PPP) with a rabbit anti‐IgG. The inhibition of the patient's PPP in the thrombin generation, the contact product, and the stypven time tests were corrected by the inclusion in the test system of platelets activated either by aggregation due to adenosine diphosphate (ADP) or formalin fixation and washing. These studies lend support to earlier findings that platelets interact at several sites in the coagulation cascade.
Obsessions and compulsions in the community: prevalence, interference, help-seeking, developmental stability, and co-occurring psychiatric conditions.

OBJECTIVE It is unclear how many people in the community have obsessions and compulsions and associated levels of interference. It is also unknown what variables predict help-seeking for these symptoms, whether they are developmentally stable, and whether they increase the risk of mental disorders. METHOD The authors analyzed data from the prospective longitudinal Dunedin study of an unselected birth cohort. The presence of obsessions and compulsions and mental disorders was assessed using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) at ages 11, 26, and 32. Data on interference and help-seeking were obtained at ages 26 and 32. RESULTS Obsessions and compulsions were frequent in individuals with mental disorders other than obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and among people without mental disorders. Even in the latter group, these symptoms caused significant interference. The presence of anxiety/depression and of obsessions (particularly aggressive and shameful thoughts), but not compulsions, was associated with help-seeking. Harm/checking was the most prevalent symptom dimension. Symptom dimensions were temporally stable and associated with increased comorbidity. Obsessive-compulsive symptoms at age 11 predicted a high risk of an adult OCD diagnosis as well as elevated adult symptom dimensions. CONCLUSIONS Obsessions and compulsions are common in the adult population, have their roots in childhood, and are associated with interference, risk for disorders, and help-seeking. Subclinical obsessions and compulsions should be taken into account in research, intervention, and DSM-V.
SNP genotyping using microsphere‐linked PNA and flow cytometric detection

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) represent the most frequent form of genetic variations. Some of the most sensitive methods for SNP genotyping employ synthetic oligonucleotides, such as the peptide nucleic acid (PNA). We introduce a new method combining allele‐specific hybridization, PNA technology, and flow cytometric detection. We tested the design by genotyping a Danish basal cell carcinoma cohort of 80 individuals for an A/C SNP in exon 6 of the XPD gene.