Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Peripheral plasmablasts in anti-MuSK myasthenia gravis

For reprints contact: service@oaepublish.com As Hong and Sung previously did, we read with great interest the study published by Guptill et al. They reported that anti-muscle-specific kinase (MuSK) myasthenia gravis patients and healthy controls had similar percentages of peripheral plasmablasts. This result is derived from a comparison between 13 female patients (out of the 18 originally included in the study) and 6 controls. Taking into account the effect of rituximab on peripheral plasmablasts, those patients treated with it (n = 3) were not included in the previous comparison. Excluding these patients, 6 (40%) were on chronic prednisone treatment, whose dose was between 2.5 mg every other day and 20 mg daily. However, it is already known that prednisone therapy effectively decreases peripheral plasmablasts, so this could contribute to the lack of difference between patients and controls. They also reported that immunosuppressed (n = 7) and non-immunosuppressed (n = 6) patients had similar percentages of peripheral plasmablasts. A comparison between non-immunosuppressed patients and controls would have also been quite informative, since it would eliminate the prednisone factor and facilitate the demonstration of a difference between a seemingly normal population of peripheral plasmablasts (controls) and an abnormal one (patients). Finally, vaccination history in controls is also an important point to consider, since it has been documented that peripheral plasmablasts increase after vaccination.
Factors influencing pre-service science teacher’s GPA on bilingual science teacher education program

The needs for English speaking teachers in major cities continue to rise along with the increasing number of multicultural students due to population growth. The challenge to fulfil the need has an implication with how the teachers for the future are selected and prepared. This study seeks to explore the possible effects of gender, origin, school type, entry qualifications (Test of English as a Foreign Language/TOEFL) score on student performance (Grade Point Average/GPA) in a bilingual science teacher education program in Indonesia. This study was a cross sectional survey study in first year students who enrolled science teacher education program. The study employed of a sample of (N=62) of a first-year student enrolling science teacher education program. The results from Path Analysis via regression to predict factors influencing student’s GPA scores posited that there is no direct effect of student’s origin on GPA and TOEFL has a direct effect on GPA. From this study, the recommendation is to conduct a follow up program on bilingual science teacher program to improve students TOEFL scores because TOEFL score has a direct effect on student’s GPA.
Use of Surface Motion Characteristics Determined by InSAR to Assess Peatland Condition

Peatland surface motion is a key property of peatland that relates to condition. However, field‐based techniques to measure surface motion are not cost‐effective over large areas and long time periods. An alternative method that can quantify peatland surface motion over large areas is interferometric synthetic aperture radar. Although field validation of the accuracy of this method is difficult, the value of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) as a means of quantifying peat condition can be tested. To achieve this, the characteristics of InSAR time series measured over an18‐month period at 22 peatland sites in the Flow Country northern Scotland were compared to site condition assessment based on plant functional type and site management history. Sites in good condition dominated by Sphagnum display long‐term stability or growth and a seasonal cycle with maximum uplift and subsidence in August–November and April–June, respectively. Drier and partially drained sites dominated by shrubs display long‐term subsidence with maximum uplift and subsidence in July–October and February–June, respectively. Heavily degraded sites with large bare peat extent display subsidence with no distinct seasonal oscillations. Seasonal oscillation in surface motion at sites with a dominant nonvascular plant community is interpreted as resulting from changes in seasonal evaporative demand. On sites with extensive vascular plants cover and falling water table, surface oscillations are interpreted as representing sustained drawdown during the growing season and subsequent recharge in late winter. This study highlights the potential to use InSAR to characterize peatland condition and provide a new view of the surface dynamics of peatland landscapes.
On the Fourier Contribution of Strong Current Sheets to the High‐Frequency Magnetic Power SpectralDensity of the Solar Wind

The hypothesis is explored that the high‐frequency magnetic spectral power of the solar wind is associated with the spatial profiles of strong current sheets (directional discontinuities) in the solar wind plasma. This hypothesis is based on previous findings about current sheets and the solar wind's magnetic power spectra (1) that the amplitude distribution and waiting time distribution of strong current sheets determines the amplituic composition and the electron strade and spectral slope of the “inertial range” of frequencies and (2) that the thicknesses of strong current sheets in the solar wind determine the breakpoint frequency that ends the inertial range. Solar wind current sheets are collected from the WIND 0.09375‐s and MMS 7.8 × 10−3‐s magnetic data sets, and the current sheets are individually Fourier transformed. At frequencies above the solar wind breakpoint (1) the shape of the magnetic power spectra of the current sheets resembles the shape of the magnetic power spectra of the solar wind and (2) the current sheets occur frequently enough to account for the magnetic power of the solar wind above the breakpoint. This has implications for the physics underlying the high‐frequency magnetic power spectral density of the solar wind, supplementing the energy‐cascade description of the high‐frequency spectrum.
Impact of education on the knowledge and skills of parents of children with sickle cell disease

Sickle-cell disease is characterized by red blood cells that assume an abnormal, rigid, sickle shape. Sickling decreases the cells' flexibility and results in a risk of various complications. The sickling occurs because of a mutation in the hemoglobin gene. Mutations occur in the ß chain of Hemoglobin whereby the hydrophobic amino acid Valine takes the place of hydrophilic glutamic acid at the sixth amino acid position of the polypeptide chain. This substitution creates a hydrophobic spot on the outside of the protein structure that sticks to the hydrophobic region of an adjacent haemoglobin molecule's beta chain. This clumping together (polymerization) of Hb S molecules into rigid fibers causes the sickling of red bloodcells.
Capital Market Performance as a Panacea for Economic Growth in Nigeria

The paper examined capital market performance as a panacea for economic growth in Nigeria from 1986-2016. A number of related literatures have shown that the Nigerian capital market variables studied has satisfactory market performance and has contributed to economic growth. Yet some researchers observed that the capital market has not significantly mobilized and effectively channeled substantial capital to the real sector of the economy. What could have been the reason for the divergences? The study was anchored on the demand following hypothesis. Secondary data were sourced from Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin and Nigeria Stock Exchange fact-book of various editions. The paper adopted the ex-post facto research design while ordinary least square regression techniques was used to process the data gathered using E-views 9.0 software. The null hypotheses (Ho) were tested at 5% level of significance. The findings of the paper revealed that there is negative and insignificant relationship between capital market and the variables studied. The paper conclude that liquidity of the capital market is pivotal for economic growth in Nigeria while the study recommended that all tiers of government should be encouraged to fund their realistic long term developmental program through the Nigeria capital market.
Acute Exercise Tolerance in Experimentally-Induced Hyperthyroidism in Adult Male Albino Rats = تحمل التمارين الرياضية الحادة في فرط نشاط الغدة الدرقية المحدث تجريبيا في ذكور الجرذان البيضاء البالغة

Background: Decreased muscle strength and exercise intolerance are prominent features of hyperthyroid patients. Skeletal muscle dysfunction may be severe in newly diagnosed hyperthyroid patients, compromising their abilities to perform daily activities. Thyroid hormones have shown to affect mitochondrial oxidative activity, synthesis and degradation of protein, differentiation of muscle fibers and capillary growth. Objective: Studying the effects of experimentally-induced hyperthyroidism on acute exercise tolerance in male albino rats. Material and methods: Thirty adult male albino rats of local strain were chosen to be the model of the present study. They were divided into three equal groups; control group, hyperthyroid group (subjected to induction of hyperthyroidism by daily IP injection of 10 ? g thyroxin /100 gm body weight for four weeks), and recovery group. Rats were weighed at the start and the end of the work. Blood samples were obtained for determination of serum free T3, free T4, TSH, CPK, TAC and MDA levels. Results: Induction of hyperthyroidism led to significant decrease in the body weight, swimming time, TSH level and total antioxidant capacity associated with significant increase in the FT3, FT4, CPK and MDA levels. These changes improved by allowing recovery of hyperthyroid state by thyroxin withdrawal over time. However, these improvements did not resume the basal level. Conclusion: Hyperthyroidism has a drawback effects on the body functions. These effects were improved by withdrawal of thyroxin (or treatment) without resuming the basal level of euthyroid state. Further studies are required to evaluate the effects of prolonged time of recovery or treatment of hyperthyroidism on resuming basal levels of disturbed body functions.
Public Trust and Financial Transparency of E-Government Implementation in Bandung City

Indonesia government, at the time, is now trying to implement e-government in each of the Organization. E-government is a technology and information-based system that aims to improve the function of public administration and relations with the public. With e-government, it hoped that information transparency would be created, especially financial information. A transparent system can prevent the misuse of the budget, which affects the high level of corruption. Survey results at the global level show that there are cases of fraud that cause distrust of the government. The study is intended to determine the level of trust of society towards transparency finance in e-government. The research method used is the descriptive method by distributing questionnaires to 200 people of Bandung residents. The results showed that financial transparency in e-government affected people's trust.
A Hospital Based Case Control Study on Oral Cancer: K.M.I.O (Regional Cancer Center) Experience

Background of the Study: Oral cancer is estimated to be 16 th most common cancer for both sexes and the third most common cancer in developing nations. In India, Oral cancer is found to be 2 nd leading site in males (10.1/100,000 persons) and 4 th leading site in females (4.3/100,000persons, hence there is an urgent and intense need to study its health consequences in general population and particularly, the risk of development of oral cancer necessitates taking up epidemiological case-control study to identify risk factors for Oral cancer. Methodology: All cases reporting to Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology (KMIO), clinically diagnosed and microscopically confirmed cases were only included. Those diagnosed through X-ray and others imaging techniques are excluded from the study. Smokers often start with bidi, shift to cigarette or vice versa. Similarly, with tobacco chewing and alcohol usage in the above study, the patients who used for long duration (> 1year) are retained. Separate groups were made to analyze the data to find out association of different habits. The direct personal interview of the Cases and Controls was carried out from January 2015 to June 2018. A total of 370 microscopically confirmed Oral cancer cases and 370 healthy individuals were interviewed during a four-year period, on an average 2 to 3 per working day. Results: TheIncome status and education status were strongest association with Oral cancer among demographic factors, even after adjusting for the effect of smoking, chewing and alcohol consumption. Ever smokers showed 2.5-fold (95% CI 1.6342, 4.026) oral cancer risk without adjusting any other probable risk factors. After adjusting for chewing tobacco and alcohol, the risk increased to 3.4-fold (95% CI 1.371, 8.475) the analysis was not carried out for female group due to very less ever smokers in women. The risk in ever beedi smoker after adjusting (chewing and alcohol), the OR was 3.1. (CI 95% 1.239, 7.970). Ever smokers of both (Cigarette and Beedi) 4.0-fold (95% CI 1.6271, 10.2810) compared to never smokers of both habits. Ever chewing group showed 7.4 folds higher risk of Oral cancer compared to never chewer group (95% CI http://jmscr.igmpublication.org/home/ ISSN (e)-2347-176x ISSN (p) 2455-0450 DOI: https://dx.doi. org/10.18535/jmscr/v8i1.171
Investigating the role of intrinsic conformational disorder in mumps virus proteins

Mumps is a highly contagious disease caused by the mumps virus. The prevention treatment (vaccine) against it is already in the routine use. However, recent outbreaks still remain uncontrollable. Therefore, it is important to understand the molecular mechanism of the mumps virus life cycle. This virus belongs to the family of Paramyxoviridae. Its genome, negative strand non-segmented RNA is protected by the nucleoprotein (N) by forming filamentous structures called nucleocapsids. N plays an important role in viral genome synthesis. Together with the polymerase and its cofactor phosphoprotein (P) they constitute the transcription-replication machinery. Both N and P contain folded and unfolded regions. Despite mumps virus common morphology with other paramyxovirus, there are some differences. It has been proposed that P is an antiparallel oligomer with two extremities on the one side being in interaction with the structural part of N (Ncore). The function of the disordered domain (Ntail) remains unclear, as it does not seem to bind to the C-terminal part of P, as is the case for other paramyxoviruses. The role of the disordered domains of P is also not known. In this project we revealed mechanisms of interaction between different regions of N and P and we explain how disordered regions of N and P are implicated in the regulation of the complex machinery of viral replication. We used the nuclear magnetic resonance which is the most powerful method to determine structure, dynamics and potential interaction partners, and therefore, function of disordered viral proteins.
Error distributions assumptions in random regret choice models: towards error Frechit specifications

Recently introduced regret-based choice models in transportation research have mainly adopted the assumption of identically and independently distributed unobserved regrets. The central argument underlying this paper is that this assumption is difficult to defend considering the fundamental nature of the concept of regret, which states that regret is generated through the comparison of choice alternatives on an attribute-by-attribute basis. To support this stance, we identify and diagnose specification errors in classic regret-based choice models, and provide an alternative specification. Results show that relaxing the assumption of identically and independently distributed error terms and applying the proposed error components Frechit structure leads to a substantial improvement in model performance of the regret-based models for the data used.
Competitiveness through R&D internationalization : patent- and interview data based studies on a latecomer in the telecommunications industry

In recent years, we have been observing an increase in knowledge-intensive activities from emerging market latecomer companies in established centers of state-of-the-art knowledge. This new direction of research and development (R&D) internationalization is still an under-researched strategy for latecomers to gain competitive advantage. In order to uncover these mechanisms, this dissertation uses the case of a Chinese latecomer that recently achieved a leading position in the global telecommunications market: Huawei Technologies. The focus of this dissertation is on the mechanisms that enabled the company to obtain strategic assets through R&D internationalization into leading markets. In a mixed-methods approach, quantitative patent data and qualitative interviews are combined to trace the company’s development during its emancipation from a latecomer stage to an industry leader. The results show that Huawei does its most influential R&D at its offshore locations despite the risks and challenges of having core assets abroad. By doing so, the company focuses on greenfield investments instead of acquisitions by hiring experts at offshore locations. This way, Huawei leverages the experts’ embeddedness in the networks of the global telecommunications industry, which helps the company to overcome liabilities of outsidership as well as challenges of legitimacy and become part of the global industry community. Since the company has caught up on technological and organizational knowledge, it now splits its R&Dtasks between research in centers of state-of-the-art technologies anddevelopment inChina, in order to transfer innovative ideas from abroad to its domestic locations. Thus, the company gains output capability by bridging the lack of innovative capability at its domestic R&D location by employing experienced and creative experts at its offshore locations.
A 6.84 Gbps/lane MIPI C-PHY Transceiver Bridge Chip With Level-Dependent Equalization

A 3.0 GSymbol/s/lane transceiver bridge chip, which fully supports the mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) C-PHY version 1.1 specification, is proposed for field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based pattern generators and frame grabbers. In transmit mode, it converts parallel low-voltage complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) signals into high-speed three-level signals when performing serialization. In addition, deserialization including clock recovery from the received data is performed for its receive mode operation. A pre-emphasis transmitter and an elastic receiver that perform equalization according to the signal level are proposed to improve the signal integrity of high-speed three-level signals. The proposed MIPI C-PHY transceiver bridge chip is implemented using a 65 nm CMOS process with 1.2 V supply voltage. The area of each lane is 0.103 mm2 and the power consumption in high-speed transmit and receive modes is 2.96 mW/Gbps/lane and 5.62 mW/Gbps/lane, respectively. The measured peak-to-peak time jitter of the proposed high-speed transmitter, receiver, and clock recovery are 0.27 UI, 0.35 UI, and 90 ps, respectively, at a data rate of 3 GSymbol/s/lane.
Competitive Intelligence and Competitive Advantage in Pharmaceutical Firms in Developing Economies: A Review of Lagos State, Nigeria

Competitive intelligence has remained a significant intervening variable on competitive advantage in the business world as part of survival and expansion. This reality exists in both the advanced and developing economies of the world. This study therefore examines the influence of competitive intelligence on competitive advantage of pharmaceutical firms in Lagos State, Nigeria. To achieve this objective, four hypotheses were formulated to establish whether a relationship existed between the two variables i.e. competitive intelligence and competitive advantage. The study adopted survey research design; data were obtained from structured questionnaire and analyzed using the one sample TTest statistic. The result of the analysis revealed that a significant relationship existed between competitive intelligence and competitive advantage in pharmaceutical firms. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the role of competitive Intelligence on competitive advantage is to provide strategic information that will guide pharmaceutical firms in the task of improved marketing innovations to meet the need of the customers. Among other things the study recommended that for pharmaceutical firms to gain Received 17 November 2019 Revised 18 December 2019 Accepted 31 December 2019 Corresponding author: ngbodante@gmail.com Nte N. D. , Omede K. N. , Enokie B. K. , Bienose O. Journal of Management, Economics, and Industrial Organization, Vol.4 No.1, 2020, pp.76-99. 77 competitive advantage and increase their performance, they should leverage on useful information gathered in their environment to engage not only in product development but also in constantly making relevant innovations/modifications to their existing marketing
Antidiabetic medications use and cancer risk in type 2 diabetes

Introduction. The risk of several types of cancer is increased in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Impact of antidiabetic medications on this risk is still a matter of controversies. The aim of our observational study was to evaluate the risk of cancer occurrence associated with the most frequently used antidiabetic agents. Material and methods. 213 patients (118 women) with T2DM who developed cancer while treated for diabetes and 213 subjects with T2DM without cancer, matched by age and gender in a 1:1 case-control manner were included. Date of cancer diagnosis was considered as index time, and for each comparator data from the same calendar time were used. Results. Both in the univariate and in multiple logistic regression analysis metformin use was associated with reduced cancer risk, while elevated risk associated with insulin use was significant only in univariate but not in multiple logistic regression analysis. Insulin and sulfonylurea derivatives in monotherapy were associated with significantly higher cancer risk compared to metformin monotherapy, while in combination with metformin this risk was attenuated to non-significant level. Conclusion. Our study suggests protective effect of metformin and potentially negative impact of insulin and sulfonylurea derivatives on cancer risk. These findings should be interpreted with caution, due to relatively small study group. Nevertheless, to minimize cancer risk associated with antidiabetic medications’ use, metformin should be continued as long as medically acceptable and it should be combined with insulin or SU to neutralize risk associated with using either of the latter drugs in monotherapy.