Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiple Isoforms of CDC25 Oppose ATM Activity to Maintain Cell Proliferation during Vertebrate Development

The early development of vertebrate embryos is characterized by rapid cell proliferation necessary to support the embryo's growth. During this period, the embryo must maintain a balance between ongoing cell proliferation and mechanisms that arrest or delay the cell cycle to repair oxidative damage and other genotoxic stresses. The ataxia-telangiectasia mutated (ATM) kinase is a critical regulator of the response to DNA damage, acting through downstream effectors, such as p53 and checkpoint kinases (CHK) to mediate cell-cycle checkpoints in the presence of DNA damage. Mice and humans with inactivating mutations in ATM are viable but have increased susceptibility to cancers. The possible role of ATM in limiting cell proliferation in early embryos has not been fully defined. One target of ATM and CHKs is the Cdc25 phosphatase, which facilitates cell-cycle progression by removing inhibitory phosphates from cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK). We have identified a zebrafish mutant, standstill, with an inactivating mutation in cdc25a. Loss of cdc25a in the zebrafish leads to accumulation of cells in late G2 phase. We find that the novel family member cdc25d is essential for early development in the absence of cdc25a, establishing for the first time that cdc25d is active in vivo in zebrafish. Surprisingly, we find that cell-cycle progression in cdc25a mutants can be rescued by chemical or genetic inhibition of ATM. Checkpoint activation in cdc25a mutants occurs despite the absence of increased DNA damage, highlighting the role of Cdc25 proteins to balance constitutive ATM activity during early embryonic development. Mol Cancer Res; 10(11); 1451–61. ©2012 AACR.
Local Managerial Strategies for External Versus Own Source Fiscal Resources

Although empirical evidence abounds on the determinants of intergovernmental transfers in the decentralized context, not many studies focus on the career and educational characteristics of local elected administrators. As local governments around the world are assuming increasingly more revenue authorities and expenditure responsibilities where local administrators play the role of managers as well as politicians, examining how local fiscal strategies are formulated is of critical importance for designing and managing intergovernmental fiscal relations. Utilizing fiscal data on Korean local governments from 2007 through 2010, this article provides some evidence that local governments with elected administrators who have previous business careers are less effective in securing external subsidies, but better at raising revenues from their own sources, relative to those with political experience. We also report that local administrators who graduated from the nation’s top universities are substantially more capable of attracting subsidies. Our findings suggest that local managers’ individual characteristics are an integral component of the game between the central and subnational governments in the distribution of intergovernmental transfers.
A mucus‐secreting human colonic epithelial cell line responsive to cholinergic stimulation

The human colonic epithelial cell line Cl.16E grows in culture as a polarized monolayer which differentiates at confluency into typical goblet cells secreting their mucin content into the culture medium. Polyclonal antibodies raised against these mucins were used in an ELISA to measure the amount of mucins secreted by the Cl.16E cells. Carbachol caused a transient and significant increase in mucus secretion with a maximal stimulation occurring at 30 min. A dose‐dependent effect was found with a maximal stimulation with 10‐3M carbachol. This effect was inhibited by atropine. These results indicate that the effects of carbachol are mediated by muscarinic receptors present on mucus‐secreting epithelial cells.
The second-language vocabulary trajectories of Turkish immigrant children in Norway from ages five to ten: the role of preschool talk exposure, maternal education, and co-ethnic concentration in the neighborhood*

ABSTRACT Little research has explored how preschools can support children's second-language (L2) vocabulary development. This study keenly followed the progress of twemty-six Turkish immigrant children growing up in Norway from preschool (age five) to fifth grade (age ten). Four different measures of preschool talk exposure (amount and diversity of teacher-led group talk and amount and diversity of peer talk), as well as the demographic variables of maternal education and co-ethnic concentration in the neighborhood, were employed to predict the children's L2 vocabulary trajectories. The results of growth analyses revealed that maternal education was the only variable predicting children's vocabulary growth during the elementary years. However, teacher-led talk, peer talk, and neighborhood predicted children's L2 vocabulary skills at age five, and these differences were maintained up to age ten. This study underscores the importance of both preschool talk exposure (teacher-led talk and peer talk) and demographic factors on L2 learners' vocabulary development.
Tenancy Databases, Professional Practices and Housing Access among Low-Income Tenants in the Private Rental Sector in Australia

This essay addresses the impacts of electronic tenancy databases upon social relations in the field of private rental tenancy in Australia. Insights arise from research carried out, in 2002–3, in the eastern, mainland states of Australia that included interviews with tenants and property managers in the private rental sector. Property managers viewed tenancy databases as a tool for efficient, effective and professional risk management, and ‘professional’ practice was held to render misconduct or improper listings extremely unlikely. In this context, tenants were individualized and expected to actively work to construct, maintain and document their reputation as a ‘good tenant’. For tenants, tenancy databases could have a particular, definitive effect. ‘Not being listed’ (along with getting a full rental bond refund, references from previous landlords, and so on) is an indicator that helps build a satisfactory, personal rental history. On the other hand, being ‘listed’ is read as a prime indicator of risk and effectively overriding other aspects of a tenant’s application for tenancy. ‘Listed’ tenants find themselves being forced to shift further and further away from the formal rental market and ultimately into insecure and inappropriate housing arrangements at the periphery.
Willingness and ability of Bulgarian consumers to pay for improved public health care services

An application of the contingent valuation method to the willingness and ability of Bulgarian consumers to pay for public health care services is presented. The study uses data from a household survey conducted in May–June 2000. The willingness and ability to pay for outpatient, inpatient and dental services is investigated. A combination of interval checklist and open-ended questions are used to elicit the willingness-to-pay amounts. The impact of the sociodemographic characteristics on the responses is examined by a generalized Tobit regression. Based on the regression equation, the welfare effects of various fee levels are simulated.
An Early Warning Indicator for Liquidity Shortages in the Interbank Market

This study investigates an early warning indicator for liquidity shortages in the short‐term interbank market. To identify structural breaks and their persistence, an autoregressive two‐state regime switching model is presented. The variability in the LIBOR–OIS spread along with thresholds, which delimit four intensities, reveals regime changes consistent with liquidity crashes. The transition between the states is state dependent, and the posterior estimates for the crisis and noncrisis states are estimated using the Gibbs sampler. We forecast our early warning indicator up to December 2011 and show that the estimates are superior to a random walk with drift. Therefore, the model is an effective early warning indicator of an imminent liquidity shortage impacting the interbank market.
Blurring Firm Boundaries: The Role of Venture Capital in Strategic Alliances

This study documents a new value-added role of venture capitalists and addresses important questions about how resources are combined to create firms. As part of the nexus of contracts surrounding a firm, strategic alliances can be viewed as relational contracts that blur firm boundaries. This paper provides evidence that alliances are more frequent among companies sharing a common venture capitalist. The effect is concentrated in alliances in which contracting problems are more pronounced, consistent with venture capitalists utilizing informational and other advantages in providing resources to firms. Further, these alliances improve the probability of exit for venture-backed firms. Copyright (c) 2008 by The American Finance Association.
Men and women during the economic crisis employment trends in eight european countries

The current economic crisis has deeply affected European labour markets. Employment has dropped more or less in all countries. Female employment was less affected by the recession phase of the crisis than male employment. The second stage, characterised by the implementation of stimulus packages, should have been more favorable to male employment. The third stage, during which austerity plans have been introduced, might be particularly harsh for female employment. These gendered effects of the crisis are basically explained by sectoral segregation based on gender. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the trend in employment for women and men during the different stages of current crisis in eight European countries. We break down the evolution of employment by sectors for men and women by using a shift-share analysis. In some countries, specifically in Spain, the impact of the crisis has led to a narrowing of the gender gap; this is mainly explained by gender sectoral segregation. In the UK and Denmark, women have been less protected by sectoral segregation, because they have experienced more job losses than they should have if their distribution across the different economic sectors had remained the same during the crisis.
No Price Like Home: Global House Prices, 1870-2012

How have house prices evolved in the long-run? This paper presents annual house price indices for 14 advanced economies since 1870. Based on extensive data collection, we are able to show for the first time that house prices in most industrial economies stayed constant in real terms from the 19th to the mid-20th century, but rose sharply in recent decades. Land prices, not construction costs, hold the key to understanding the trajectory of house prices in the long-run. Residential land prices have surged in the second half of the 20th century, but did not increase meaningfully before. We argue that before World War II dramatic reductions in transport costs expanded the supply of land and suppressed land prices. Since the mid-20th century, comparably large land-augmenting reductions in transport costs no longer occurred. Increased regulations on land use further inhibited the utilization of additional land, while rising expenditure shares for housing services increased demand.
E pluribus unum? A critical survey of job quality indicators

In recent years, there has been growing concern in Europe about the lack of an established comparable measure of job quality to complement the widely accepted quantitative indicators in the formulation and evaluation of European employment policies. The aim of this paper is to offer a guided tour around the different views and existing proposals of job quality indicators, mainly from a European perspective. First, we discuss the methodological decisions that have to be made in the process of designing an indicator of job quality, from both a theoretical and methodological/technical perspective. Second, these arguments are used to discuss critically the different empirical approaches to the measurement of job quality proposed in the literature. We finish by presenting some recommendations for the construction of a job quality index for policy purposes.
Star CEOs or Political Connections? Evidence from China's Publicly Traded Firms

This paper studies China's “star CEOs” defined as members of the National People's Congress (NPC) or the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and “politically connected” CEOs who have previous government or military experience. We evaluate the effect of “star CEOs” and “politically connected” CEOs on firm performance and CEO compensation. We find that announcement date returns, CEO compensation and incentives are all higher in firms that appoint “star CEOs”. However, the mechanism explaining these various premiums is largely political connectedness of these star CEOs. Our study finds only modest evidence that star-CEO status directly determines firm performance. Our analysis strongly suggests that compensation and performance premiums are mostly driven by CEO political connections, as opposed to CEO talent/star effects.
Polyphosphate Kinase Antagonizes Virulence Gene Expression in Francisella tularensis

ABSTRACT The alarmone ppGpp is a critical regulator of virulence gene expression in Francisella tularensis. In this intracellular pathogen, ppGpp is thought to work in concert with the putative DNA-binding protein PigR and the SspA protein family members MglA and SspA to control a common set of genes. MglA and SspA form a complex that interacts with RNA polymerase (RNAP), and PigR functions by interacting with the RNAP-associated MglA-SspA complex. Prior work suggested that ppGpp indirectly exerts its regulatory effects in F. tularensis by promoting the accumulation of polyphosphate in the cell, which in turn was required for formation of the MglA-SspA complex. Here we show that in Escherichia coli, neither polyphosphate nor ppGpp is required for formation of the MglA-SspA complex but that ppGpp promotes the interaction between PigR and the MglA-SspA complex. Moreover, we show that polyphosphate kinase, the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of polyphosphate, antagonizes virulence gene expression in F. tularensis, a finding that is inconsistent with the notion that polyphosphate accumulation promotes virulence gene expression in this organism. Our findings identify polyphosphate kinase as a novel negative regulator of virulence gene expression in F. tularensis and support a model in which ppGpp exerts its positive regulatory effects by promoting the interaction between PigR and the MglA-SspA complex. IMPORTANCE In Francisella tularensis, MglA and SspA form a complex that associates with RNA polymerase to positively control the expression of key virulence genes. The MglA-SspA complex works together with the putative DNA-binding protein PigR and the alarmone ppGpp. PigR functions by interacting directly with the MglA-SspA complex, but how ppGpp exerts its effects was unclear. Prior work indicated that ppGpp acts by promoting the accumulation of polyphosphate, which is required for MglA and SspA to interact. Here we show that formation of the MglA-SspA complex does not require polyphosphate. Furthermore, we find that polyphosphate antagonizes the expression of virulence genes in F. tularensis. Thus, ppGpp does not promote virulence gene expression in this organism through an effect on polyphosphate.
Employee voice on human resource management

Empirical research on human resource management (HRM) practice has mainly assessed and evaluated the activity from an employer’s perspective. Concern has been expressed about the lack of empirical analysis conducted from the employees’ perspective. This exploratory study begins to fill this gap in the literature by examining the current views that 626 New Zealand employees have about HRM in their organisations. It identified those aspects of HRM that are important to an employee in the employment relationship today, and highlighted a number of shared concerns about practices in their organisations. This study found that, from an employee’s perspective, training and development is becoming an increasingly important issue. Employer investment in this area may have the greatest potential to contribute beneficially to organisational performance.These findings suggest that not all HRM practices are equally beneficial in terms of the outcomes they produce, and practitioners may need to identify and implement th.
Turn-of-Month Evaluations of Liquid Profits and Stock Returns: A Common Explanation for the Monthly and January Effects

This paper presents and tests a hypothesis that the standardization of payments in the United States at the turn of each calendar month generally induces a surge in stock returns at the turn of each calendar month. The hypothesis also asserts that returns generally will be greater following the month of December and will vary inversely with the stringency of monetary policy. Empirical results using stock index returns for 1969-86 support the hypothesis. This analysis provides an explanation for the previously documented monthly effect in stock returns and a partial explanation for the January effect. Copyright 1990 by American Finance Association.
A New Approach to the Study of Parties Entering Government

Previous studies of the factors that influence the ability of parties to join governments have estimated binary choice models using the parties as the unit of analysis, which inappropriately treats each party in a government formation opportunity as an independent observation (a problem that clustered standard errors do not solve) and does not allow researchers to control for important coalition-level effects. This article demonstrates that a preferred methodological approach is to first estimate a standard multinomial choice model (conditional logit or mixed logit) of coalition formation, using government formation opportunities as the unit of analysis and potential governments as the choice alternatives. The probabilities of parties joining governments can then be recovered by simply summing the probabilities for the potential governments that contain each party. An empirical example shows how the substantive conclusions about a party's likelihood of entering office can change depending on the methodological approach taken.
A Mayan founder mutation is a common cause of deafness in Guatemala

Over 5% of the world's population has varying degrees of hearing loss. Mutations in GJB2 are the most common cause of autosomal recessive non‐syndromic hearing loss (ARNHL) in many populations. The frequency and type of mutations are influenced by ethnicity. Guatemala is a multi‐ethnic country with four major populations: Maya, Ladino, Xinca, and Garifuna. To determine the mutation profile of GJB2 in a ARNHL population from Guatemala, we sequenced both exons of GJB2 in 133 unrelated families. A total of six pathogenic variants were detected. The most frequent pathogenic variant is c.131G>A (p.Trp44*) detected in 21 of 266 alleles. We show that c.131G>A is associated with a conserved haplotype in Guatemala suggesting a single founder. The majority of Mayan population lives in the west region of the country from where all c.131G>A carriers originated. Further analysis of genome‐wide variation of individuals carrying the c.131G>A mutation compared with those of Native American, European, and African populations shows a close match with the Mayan population.
Where should bipolar disorder appear in the meta-structure?

Background The extant major psychiatric classifications, DSM-IV and ICD-10, are purportedly atheoretical and largely descriptive. Although this achieves good reliability, the validity of a medical diagnosis is greatly enhanced by an understanding of both risk factors and clinical history. In an effort to group mental disorders on the basis of risk factors and clinical manifestations, five clusters have been proposed. The purpose of this paper is to consider the position of bipolar disorder (BPD), which could be either with the psychoses, or with emotional disorders, or in a separate cluster. Method We reviewed the literature on BPD, unipolar depression (UPD) and schizophrenia in relation to 11 validating criteria proposed by the DSM-V Task Force Study Group, and then summarized similarities and differences between BPD and schizophrenia on the one hand, and UPD on the other. Results There are differences, often substantial and never trivial, for 10 of the 11 validators between BPD and UPD. There are also important differences between BPD and schizophrenia. Conclusion BPD has previously been classified together with UPD, but this is the least justifiable place for it. If it is to be recruited to a ‘psychotic cluster’, there are several important respects in which it differs from schizophrenia, so the cluster would have a division within it. The alternative would be to allow it to be in an intermediate position in a cluster of its own.
Instantaneous Microwave Frequency Measurement Using a Photonic Microwave Filter With an Infinite Impulse Response

A photonic technique for instantaneous microwave frequency measurement is proposed. In the proposed technique, a photonic microwave filter having a monotonic frequency response with the magnitude varying from positive infinity to negative infinity on a log scale, is constructed by cascading two photonic microwave filters with one having an infinite impulse response and the other having a finite impulse response. For a single-frequency microwave signal with a normalized magnitude, a unique relationship between the output response and the input frequency is established. Since the response extends from positive to negative infinity, for a given measurement range, a significantly increased measurement resolution is achieved. The proposed technique is verified by an experiment.
UNCOVERING BLACK/AFRICAN AMERICAN AND LATINA/O STUDENTS' MOTIVATION TO LEARN SCIENCE: AFFORDANCES TO SCIENCE IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT

This purpose of this paper is to highlight how Black/African American and Latina/o students describe their motivation to learn science and their science learning across their years of schooling from middle and high school through college. The findings show that the students have very high levels of motivation according to their scores on The Science Motivation Questionnaire II© (Glynn, 2011) and responses to open-ended questions. However, students also indicate their school science learning had both positive and negative experiences, which were attributed to learning support. These findings have implications for science teaching in K16 schools.
Alcohol, ideological schisms and a science of corporate behaviours on health

Consensus is fast building in the public health community around the need to research and address the ‘industrial epidemics’ of non-communicable disease across both Global North and South. However, while it is agreed that the effects of corporate behaviour on health are serious, there have been limited attempts to map out what a ‘science’ of these interrelationships might be. To do this requires actively engaging with the ways in which corporate actors generate and shape risk behaviours, public perceptions and influence policy. Moving forward, this ‘science’ will inevitably require critical reflection on the consequences of the deepening ‘ideological schism’ within the public health community in its attitudes towards industry. To date, of all the ‘unhealthy commodities industries’, alcohol has arguably received the least empirical attention from researchers. This gap is even more significant given the growing adversity between the public health community and the industry from the national scale to that of the WHO. This paper explores the nature of the ideological schism within alcohol research and its significance for the future development both of a ‘science’ of the effects of corporate behaviour on health and the advocacy that will be needed to change future regulatory and business environments in more health-promoting ways.