Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Status, stigma and energy practices in the home

Domestic energy practices are a topical policy issue, with implications for climate change, energy security and fuel poverty. Accordingly, a growing body of literature examines ways of promoting energy conservation and generation by individuals. However, there has been relatively little discussion of how status and stigma are implicated in these practices, and may act as facilitators or barriers to “behaviour change”. To help address this gap, this article draws both on existing literature and a new UK-based study of people who are attempting to live sustainable lives, to provide insights into how domestic energy practices may be status-enhancing or stigmatising, and how these risks and opportunities can be managed. While energy practices are often understood as “inconspicuous”, it is argued here that in some circumstances individuals may actively manage the visibility of their energy practices. The discussion considers these findings with regard to social power relations, and identifies issues warranting further exploration within the emerging research agenda on energy and equity.
Cryptochrome Blue Light Photoreceptors Are Activated through Interconversion of Flavin Redox States*

Cryptochromes are blue light-sensing photoreceptors found in plants, animals, and humans. They are known to play key roles in the regulation of the circadian clock and in development. However, despite striking structural similarities to photolyase DNA repair enzymes, cryptochromes do not repair double-stranded DNA, and their mechanism of action is unknown. Recently, a blue light-dependent intramolecular electron transfer to the excited state flavin was characterized and proposed as the primary mechanism of light activation. The resulting formation of a stable neutral flavin semiquinone intermediate enables the photoreceptor to absorb green/yellow light (500–630 nm) in addition to blue light in vitro. Here, we demonstrate that Arabidopsis cryptochrome activation by blue light can be inhibited by green light in vivo consistent with a change of the cofactor redox state. We further characterize light-dependent changes in the cryptochrome1 (cry1) protein in living cells, which match photoreduction of the purified cry1 in vitro. These experiments were performed using fluorescence absorption/emission and EPR on whole cells and thereby represent one of the few examples of the active state of a known photoreceptor being monitored in vivo. These results indicate that cry1 activation via blue light initiates formation of a flavosemiquinone signaling state that can be converted by green light to an inactive form. In summary, cryptochrome activation via flavin photoreduction is a reversible mechanism novel to blue light photoreceptors. This photocycle may have adaptive significance for sensing the quality of the light environment in multiple organisms.
A Simple Capacitive Charge-Division Readout for Position-Sensitive Solid-State Photomultiplier Arrays

A capacitive charge-division readout method for reading out a 2 × 2 array of 5 mm × 5 mm position-sensitive solid-state photomultipliers (PS-SSPM) was designed and evaluated. Using this analog multiplexing method, the 20 signals (16 position, 4 timing) from the PS-SSPM array are reduced to 5 signals (4 position, 1 timing), allowing the PS-SSPM array to be treated as an individual large-area PS-SSPM module. A global positioning approach can now be used, instead of individual positioning for each PS-SSPM in the array, ensuring that the entire light signal is utilized. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and flood histogram quality at different bias voltages (27.5 V to 32.0 V at 0.5 V intervals) and a fixed temperature of 0 °C were evaluated by coupling a 6 × 6 array of 1.3 mm × 1.3 mm × 20 mm polished LSO crystals to the center of the PS-SSPM array. The timing resolution was measured at a fixed bias voltage of 31.0 V and a fixed temperature of 0 °C. All the measurements were evaluated and compared using capacitors with different values and tolerances. Capacitor values ranged from 0.051 nf to 10 nf, and the capacitance tolerance ranged from 1% to 20%. The results show that better performance was achieved using capacitors with smaller values and better capacitance tolerance. Using 0.2 nf capacitors, the SNR, energy resolution and timing resolution were 24.3, 18.2% and 8.8 ns at a bias voltage 31.0 V, respectively. The flood histogram quality was also evaluated by using a 10 × 10 array of 1 mm × 1 mm × 10 mm polished LSO crystals and a 10 × 10 array of 0.7 mm × 0.7 mm × 20 mm unpolished LSO crystals to determine the smallest crystal size resolvable. These studies showed that the high spatial resolution of the PS-SSPM was preserved allowing for 0.7 mm crystals to be identified. These results show that the capacitive charge-division analog signal processing method can significantly reduce the number of electronic channels, from 20 to 5, while retaining the excellent performance of the detector.
Functional polarity of Na 1 / H 1 and Cl 2 / HCO 3 2 exchangers in a rat cholangiocyte cell line

Spirlı̀, Carlo, Anna Granato, Àkos Zsembery, Franca Anglani, Lajos Okolicsànyi, Nicholas F. LaRusso, Gaetano Crepaldi, and Mario Strazzabosco. Functional polarity of Na1/H1 and Cl/HCO3 2 exchangers in a rat cholangiocyte cell line. Am. J. Physiol. 275 (Gastrointest. Liver Physiol. 38): G1236–G1245, 1998. —Intrahepatic bile duct cells (cholangiocytes) play an important role in the secretion and alkalinization of bile. Both Na1/H1 exchange (NHE) and Cl/HCO3 2 exchange (AE) contribute to these functions, but their functional distribution between the apical and basolateral membrane domains remains speculative. We have addressed this issue in a normal rat cholangiocyte cell line (NRC-1), which maintains a polarized distribution of membrane markers. Gene expression of AE and NHE isoforms was studied by RT-PCR. For functional studies, cells were placed in a chamber that allowed separate perfusion of the apical and basolateral aspect of the epithelial sheet; intracellular pH (pHi) was measured by 28,78-bis(2-carboxyethyl)-5(6)carboxyfluorescein microfluorometry. In HCO3 -CO2free medium and in the presence of apical amiloride, pHi recovery from an acid load was Na1 dependent and was inhibited by basolateral amiloride and by HOE-642 (10 μM), consistent with basolateral localization of the NHE1 isoform, which had clearly expressed mRNA. Apical Na1 readmission induced a slow pHi recovery that was inhibited by apical administration of 1 mM HOE-642 or amiloride. Among the apical NHE isoforms, NHE2 but not NHE3 gene expression was detected. The AE1 gene was not expressed, but two different variants of AE2 mRNAs (AE2a and AE2b) were detected; pHi experiments disclosed AE activities at both sides of the membrane, but only apical AE was activated by cAMP. In conclusion, these studies provide the first functional description of acidbase transporters in a polarized cholangiocyte cell line. NHE1, NHE2, AE2a, and AE2b isoforms are expressed and show different membrane polarity, functional properties, and sensitivity to inhibitors. These observations add a considerable level of complexity to current models of electrolyte transport in cholangiocytes.
Supporting and Understanding Students' Epistemological Discourse About Climate Change

ABSTRACT The climate change community has begun to look carefully at how the public understands, or fails to understand, climate change and the scientific claims made based on data. This study focuses on how teachers provide scaffolding that supports students' understanding of, not only how climate systems work or the causes and effects of climate change, but also how we know what we know. Stanford's Global Climate Change: Professional Development for K–12 Teachers project provided teacher professional development on the science of global climate change, curricular materials, and pedagogical strategies. We conducted an in-depth study of the classrooms of the participating teachers. Our results show statistically significant gains from pre- to postassessment in students' content knowledge and a shift in their opinions about climate change. These gains are positively related to the percentage of students who are engaged and interacting, and negatively related to the percentage of students who are disengaged. Through classroom observations and video recordings, we identify how teachers and students talk about how we know about climate change, and we discuss how that talk can be enhanced.
Market size, structure, and access: Trade with capacity constraints

This paper develops a model of international trade where firms are heterogeneous across capacity and productivity. A binding capacity constraint induces firms to raise prices in order to take advantage of access to new markets. This generates markets with a flexible competitive structure giving rise to instances where trade and trade liberalization negatively impact welfare. Its key predictions can be identified by observing the presence of small yet highly productive firms and substitution by firms across markets as accessibility evolves. Using Thai firm-level data I establish the prevalence of these anomalous firms and demonstrate they face capacity constraints.
Marketing Locally Produced Organic Foods in Three Metropolitan Arkansas Farmers’ Markets: Consumer Opinions and Food Safety Concerns

Consumers embrace local food systems as an alternative to the global corporate model, and nearly 75% of consumers in the United States purchase organic foods occasionally. To assess consumers’ knowledge of locally grown organic foods, surveys were administered at three metropolitan farmers’ markets in Little Rock, Hot Springs, and Texarkana, Arkansas. Consumers with Bachelor's, Associate's, or technical degrees accounted for almost half of the people surveyed. Seventy-one percent believed organic foods were safer than conventional foods. Three times as many consumers were concerned about harmful bacteria in conventional foods than in organic. The number one reason for purchasing was to support local farmers.
Institutions and financial market development in the MENA region

There is reasonable agreement that effective and well-developed institutions have a significant role to play in economic development. Accordingly a number of studies have attempted to relate institutions to the rate of economic growth and the level of efficiency of markets. This paper assesses the relationship between a number of economic development and institutional variables and the level of financial market development in the Middle East and north Africa (MENA) region. Correlation matrices support the view that the institutional environment in which financial markets function is important, as this reinforces the efficient allocation of economic rights that are essential for markets to function optimally. The correlation analysis also establishes a link between the development of financial markets and governance in the MENA region. However, regression estimates indicate that infrastructure development and the degree of openness of an economy are the most robust indicators for the development and effective functioning of financial markets in the MENA region.
Vascular calcification in end‐stage renal disease

Vascular calcification is highly prevalent in end‐stage renal disease and independently predictive of future cardiovascular events and mortality. Calcification can occur in both the intimal and medial layers of vasculature, but medial calcification is the major form in end‐stage renal disease. Medial calcification increases large elastic artery stiffness and pulse‐pressure, promotes left ventricular hypertrophy, reduces perfusion of the coronary arteries, and ultimately promotes increased cardiovascular mortality via increased risk of myocardial infarction and heart failure. It results not from a passive deposition of calcium and phosphate due to increased circulating levels, but rather is an active cell‐mediated process involving vascular smooth muscle cell apoptosis and vesicle release, a shift in the balance of inhibitors and promoters of vascular calcification, and vascular smooth muscle cell differentiation from a contractile to osteochondrogenic phenotype. This phenotypic shift requires phosphate, as well as the uptake of phosphate by the sodium‐dependent phosphate cotransporter PiT‐1, which is upregulated by proinflammatory cytokines and the uremic milieu. Further research is needed to determine if targeting these processes can ultimately reduce vascular calcification in this high cardiovascular risk population.
The limits of organizational democracy

Executive Overview Despite decades of encouragement from theorists and consultants, managers have generally not embraced democratic process as a system of management and decision-making in organizations. While it is tempting to explain this state of affairs in terms of managers' reluctance to share power, this article considers the possibility that democracy's limited success is due to its own limitations as a system of organizational governance. The article questions two common assumptions: (a) that political democracy provides a useful model for organizational democracy, and (b) that democratic process is applicable in all organizations. Close analysis suggests that political democracy provides little guidance for organizational democracy because its essential characteristics—accountability to the governed, right of participation, free exchange of information, and right of representation—are rarely, if ever, supported in organizations. Furthermore, the basic function of political democracy—legitimizatio.
Student nurses' perception and understanding of elder abuse.

AIM The aim of this study is to investigate student nurses' perception, knowledge and awareness of elder abuse. BACKGROUND It is evidential that elder abuse tends to be unrecognized and is often hidden from public awareness. Nurses who work with older people are expected to be knowledgeable of the causes and detection of elder abuse. DESIGN A quantitative approach using a questionnaire was used to collect data from 245 student nurses from year 1 and 3 of a 4-year bachelor's degree programme. METHOD Convenience sampling was used to recruit participants from the two cohorts of the nursing programme. A 25-item questionnaire was used to investigate participants' perception and awareness of elder abuse. RESULTS Some 47.8% (n=86) year 1 students and 76.9% (n=50) year 3 students perceived that they were not well trained in identifying or handling elder abuse. Year 1 and 3 students ranked the top three most common abuses differently. In addition, 38% of year 3 students thought that it was largely the responsibility of social workers rather than nurses, to deal with cases of elder abuse. CONCLUSIONS The study reveals that nurses-to-be, who are generally expected to be part of the joint force to protect older people against abuse, did not find themselves adequately prepared to fulfil this responsibility. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE The findings provide useful information from which more comprehensive content about elder abuse can be developed in the gerontological nursing curriculum, to better prepare future nurses by increasing their basic understanding of elder abuse.
The Growth and Failure of U. S. Manufacturing Plants

This paper examines the patterns of postentry employment growth and failure for over 200,000 plants that entered the U. S. manufacturing sector in the 1967–1977 period. The postentry patterns of growth and failure vary significantly with observable employer characteristics. Plant failure rates decline with size and age as do the growth rates of nonfailing plants. The expected growth rate of a plant, which depends on the net effect of these two forces, declines with size for plants owned by single-plant firms but increases with size for plants owned by multiplant firms.
Human Muscle Protein Synthesis is Modulated by Extracellular, Not Intramuscular Amino Acid Availability: A Dose‐Response Study

To test the hypothesis that muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is regulated by the concentration of extracellular amino acids, we investigated the dose‐response relationship between the rate of human MPS and the concentrations of blood and intramuscular amino acids. We increased blood mixed amino acid concentrations by up to 240 % above basal levels by infusion of mixed amino acids (Aminosyn 15, 44‐261 mg kg−1 h−1) in 21 healthy subjects, (11 men 10 women, aged 29 ± 2 years) and measured the rate of incorporation of D5‐phenylalanine or D3‐leucine into muscle protein and blood and intramuscular amino acid concentrations. The relationship between the fold increase in MPS and blood essential amino acid concentration ([EAA], mM) was hyperbolic and fitted the equation MPS = (2.68 ×[EAA])/(1.51 +[EAA]) (P < 0.01). The pattern of stimulation of myofibrillar, sarcoplasmic and mitochondrial protein was similar. There was no clear relationship between the rate of MPS and the concentration of intramuscular EAAs; indeed, when MPS was increasing most rapidly, the concentration of intramuscular EAAs was below basal levels. We conclude that the rates of synthesis of all classes of muscle proteins are acutely regulated by the blood [EAA] over their normal diurnal range, but become saturated at high concentrations. We propose that the stimulation of protein synthesis depends on the sensing of the concentration of extracellular, rather than intramuscular EAAs.
What is the cause of retraction spaces associated with basal cell carcinoma?

To the Editor, Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) represents the most common skin cancer. Clefts (retraction spaces) or peritumoral lacunae are commonly observed at the periphery of the epithelial nests of BCC, and this morphological feature can be used as a diagnostic clue. However, the mechanism by which these peritumoral lacunae originate remains to be elucidated. Even though in certain instances retraction spaces or clefts are associated with mucinous deposits (of hyaluronic acid and dermatan sulphate), they are more commonly related to artifacts produced during the fixation and dehydration of the biopsy specimen. McCardle et al. have showed the differences between both types of retraction spaces through type IV collagen immunostaining.1 In authentic retraction spaces, the basal lamina remains attached to the tumoral stroma, whereas the basal lamina remains intact and attached to epithelial nests in mucinous clefts. More recently, Bahadoran et al.2 showed that in most examples of BCC, laminin-5 expression was absent or markedly reduced at the basement membrane zone surrounding epithelial nests. As laminin-5 is the main component of anchoring filaments that connect the hemidesmosomes of basal epithelial cells to the lamina densa, they suggested that the hemidesmosome-anchoring filament complex is not properly synthesized or assembled in BCC. Per this theory, the primary event in lacunae formation would be cleavage of the basal membrane because of a weakening in hemidesmosome-anchoring filament adhesion. Although Drewniok et al.3 confirmed these Fig. 1. Immunostaining for Ber-EP4 in basal cell carcinoma shows expression in both sides of peritumoral lacunae (×200).
Evaluation of a child safety program based on the WHO Safe Community model

Objectives: To evaluate the outcome of the World Health Organization (WHO) Safe Community model with respect to child injuries. Study design: A population based quasiexperimental design was used. Cross sectional pre-implementation and post-implementation data were collected in intervention (Motala municipality) and control (Mjölby municipality) areas, both in Östergötland county, Sweden. Results: The total relative risk of child injury in the intervention community decreased more (odds ratio 0.74; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.68 to 0.81) than in a control community exposed only to national level injury prevention programs (0.93; 95% CI 0.82 to 1.05). The relative risk of moderately (abbreviated injury scale (AIS) 2) severe injury in the study area was reduced to almost a half (odds ratio 0.49; 95% CI 0.41 to 0.57), whereas the risk of minor (AIS 1) injuries decreased only slightly (odds ratio 0.89; 95% CI 0.80 to 0.99). The risk of severe or fatal (AIS 3–6) injuries remained constant. Conclusions: After introduction of an injury prevention program based on the WHO Safe Community model, the relative risk for child injury in the intervention community decreased significantly more than in a control community exposed only to national injury prevention programs.
Onsite cytopathology evaluation and ancillary studies beneficial in EUS‐FNA of pancreatic, mediastinal, intra‐abdominal, and submucosal lesions

Endoscopic ultrasound‐guided fine needle aspiration cytology (EUS‐FNA) is considered to be a minimally invasive and safe technique, with low complication rates, for obtaining tissue samples from pancreatic lesions, and mediastinal and intra‐abdominal nodes. We retrospectively reviewed the diagnostic accuracy of this method at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan.
Board Structure and Monitoring: New Evidence from CEO Turnover

We use the 2003 NYSE and NASDAQ listing rules for board and committee independence as a quasinatural experiment to examine the causal relations between board structure and CEO monitoring. Noncompliant firms forced to raise board independence or adopt a fully independent nominating committee significantly increased their forced CEO turnover sensitivity to performance relative to compliant firms. Nominating committee independence is important even when firms had an independent board, and the effect is stronger when the CEO is on the committee. We conclude that greater board independence and full independence of nominating committees lead to more rigorous CEO monitoring and discipline.
EMPLOYMENT AND OUTPUT EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING: IS GOVERNMENT SIZE IMPORTANT?

The effects of government spending on employment and output may depend on government size and the persistence of spending. The empirical results suggest that permanent (or persistent) changes in government consumption have a greater impact on output and employment than temporary (or cyclical) changes. This implies a negative wealth effect and reduces the stabilization potency of government spending. The findings also support the hypothesis that the output elasticity of government consumption is positive but declines with increases in government size. Using the estimated equations, the author calculates the optimal government size for the representative country at around 20 percent of GDP. Copyright 1993 by Oxford University Press.