Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hypoxia regulates IL-17A secretion from nasal polyp epithelial cells

Hypoxia creates a microenvironment conducive to polypogenesis by regulating immune responses of the nasal polyp (NP) epithelium. We explored the immunocompetence of NP and control epithelial cells in response to hypoxia, to investigate potential relationships with polypogenesis. Three groups of tissue samples were collected: inferior turbinate (IT)and NP from individuals with chronic rhinosinusitis with NPs (CRSwNP), and control IT. A positive relationship was detected between HIF1α, HIF2α protein expression in epithelial cells and endoscope score in NP samples, while there was a negative correlation between HIF1α expression and degree of eosinophil infiltration. Epithelial IL-17A expression was lower in NPs than in IT samples from either controls or patients with CRSwNP. Primary human nasal epithelial cells were cultured under hypoxic or normoxic conditions. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays demonstrated decreased IL-17A expression upon prolonged exposure to hypoxia in both IT and NP samples from patients with CRSwNP, while IL-17A increased in control IT epithelial cells; correlation and time-dependency were observed between HIF1α and IL-17A expression in both IT and NP samples from patients with CRSwNP. These observations suggest that hypoxia is involved in the pathogenesis of NPs through regulation of IL-17A secretion and HIF1α and HIF2α expression in the NP epithelium.
Interpretation of DW‐NMR data: Dependence on experimental conditions

This review examines the effect of experimental conditions on the data obtainable from diffusion weighted NMR experiments. The origin and forms of the Stejskal‐Tanner experiment are presented, and the relative merits of bipolar to monopolar diffusion weighting gradient pulses are discussed, as are those of spin‐echo and stimulated‐echo weighting schemes. The short pulse Stejskal‐Tanner experiment as required for q‐space imaging is described. Criteria for successful diffusion weighted imaging are given, and current strategies for diffusion weighted imaging are evaluated against these. The range of biological objects accessible to diffusion weighted NMR is summarized, together with the associated experimental limitations. In the final section the dependence of diffuson weighted NMR data on diffusion time and b‐value range is examined, and the relationship between apparent restricted diffusion and the size of the extracellular space is demonstrated.
Competence for genetic transformation in encapsulated strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae: two allelic variants of the peptide pheromone

The nucleotide sequence of comC, the gene encoding the 17-residue competence-stimulating peptide (CSP) of Streptococcus pneumoniae (L. S. Havarstein, G. Coomaraswamy, and D. A. Morrison, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 92:11140-11144, 1995) was determined with 42 encapsulated strains of different serotypes. A new allele, comC2, was found in 13 strains, including the type 3 Avery strain, A66, while all others carried a gene (now termed comC1) identical to that originally described for strain Rx1. The predicted mature product of comC2 is also a heptadecapeptide but differs from that of comC1 at eight residues. Both CSP-1 and CSP-2 synthetic peptides were used to induce competence in the 42 strains; 48% of the strains became competent after the addition of the synthetic peptide, whereas none were transformable without the added peptides.
A Random-Coefficients Logit Brand-Choice Model Applied to Panel Data

A random-coefficients logit model that allows for unobserved heterogeneity in brand preferences and in the responses to marketing variables is empirically investigated using household-level panel data. The unknown underlying distribution of unobserved heterogeneity is approximated by a discrete distribution. The results reveal that there is significant unobserved heterogeneity across households and that ignoring its effects results in a downward bias in the parameter estimates of the marketing variables. It is therefore important to account for heterogeneity in both preferences and responses in the absence of any a priori knowledge about the nature of heterogeneity across households.
Forecast Errors and Efficiency in the US Electricity Futures Market

In March 1996 the US introduced electricity futures contracts which provided for delivery at the California/Oregon border (COB) and Palo Verde switchyard. These were followed in July 1998 by contracts which provided for delivery of electrical energy into the Cinergy and Entergy systems, and in March 1999 by a contract for the Pennsylvania/New Jersey/Maryland (PJM) area. This paper employs the forecast error approach to study the informational efficiency of these markets (the model prediction and event studies approaches are not feasible). COB and Palo Verde spot and futures prices are stationary, while Cinergy spot and futures prices are I(1) and cointegrated (Entergy and PJM data were not utilised due to insufficient observations). All forecast errors, therefore, are stationary. Estimation is by instrumental variables in the presence of a lagged dependent variable and overlapping observations. For the period 1996 (04) to 1999 (12), with COB and Palo Verde data, the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) is rejected. This outcome is confirmed by cointegration of the COB and Palo Verde futures prices. A significant M-GARCH term in the forecast error relationship for both contracts supports the view that a time-varying risk premium was present. A significant negative relationship between forecast errors and volume for the COB contract suggests that agents were still learning the true model driving this market, and that Stein’s ‘Bayesian error’ was non-zero. For the period 1998 (07) to 1999 (12), with COB, Palo Verde and Cinergy data, the EMH cannot be rejected. Finally, an attempt is made to relate this study to the recent electricity crisis in California.
Unemployment as a Social Norm: Psychological Evidence from Panel Data

This article uses seven waves of panel data to test for social norms in labor market status. The unemployed's well‐being is shown to be strongly positively correlated with reference group unemployment (at the regional, partner, or household level). This result, far stronger for men, is robust to controls for unobserved individual heterogeneity. Panel data also show that those whose well‐being fell the most on entering unemployment are less likely to remain unemployed. These findings suggest a psychological explanation of both unemployment polarization and hysteresis, based on the utility effects of a changing employment norm in the reference group.
Development of a hybrid mental speller combining EEG-based brain-computer interface and webcam-based eye-tracking

The main goal of this study was to develop a hybrid mental spelling system combining a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) technology and a webcam-based eye-tracker, which utilizes information from the brain electrical activity and eye gaze direction at the same time. In the hybrid mental spelling system, a character decoded using SSVEP was not typed if the position of the selected character was not matched with the eye direction information (`left' or `right') obtained from the eye-tracker. Thus, the users did not need to correct a misspelled character using a `BACKSPACE' key. To verify the feasibility of the developed hybrid mental spelling system, we conducted online experiments with ten healthy participants. Each participant was asked to type 15 English words consisting of 68 characters. As a result, 16.6 typing errors could be prevented on average, demonstrating that the implemented hybrid mental spelling system could enhance the practicality of our mental spelling system.
QDflows

In the big data era, data integration is becoming increasingly important. It is usually handled by data flows processes that extract, transform, and clean data from several sources, and populate the data integration system (DIS). Designing data flows is facing several challenges. In this article, we deal with data quality issues such as (1) specifying a set of quality rules, (2) enforcing them on the data flow pipeline to detect violations, and (3) producing accurate repairs for the detected violations. We propose QDflows, a system for designing quality-aware data flows that considers the following as input: (1) a high-quality knowledge base (KB) as the global schema of integration, (2) a set of data sources and a set of validated users’ requirements, (3) a set of defined mappings between data sources and the KB, and (4) a set of quality rules specified by users. QDflows uses an ontology to design the DIS schema. It offers the ability to define the DIS ontology as a module of the knowledge base, based on validated users’ requirements. The DIS ontology model is then extended with multiple types of quality rules specified by users. QDflows extracts and transforms data from sources to populate the DIS. It detects violations of quality rules enforced on the data flows, constructs repair patterns, searches for horizontal and vertical matches in the knowledge base, and performs an automatic repair when possible or generates possible repairs. It interactively involves users to validate the repair process before loading the clean data into the DIS. Using real-life and synthetic datasets, the DBpedia and Yago knowledge bases, we experimentally evaluate the generality, effectiveness, and efficiency of QDflows. We also showcase an interactive tool implementing our system.
Risk and Innovation

Abstract This paper focuses upon two complex and related concepts, namely risk and innovation in public services. The last two decades have witnessed an increasing policy imperative around using innovation to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. Innovation is seen to be inextricably linked to positive risk-taking, and yet little attention has been paid to its governance in the public service innovation process. This paper argues that existing approaches to risk and innovation are not sufficiently developed and propose a framework of risk governance that aims to address these issues and suggests a research agenda for the future.
Dialogue Act Annotation for Statistically Managed Spoken Dialogue Systems

This paper uses the Kyoto tour guide dialogue corpus and its annotations to construct a dialogue management system by employing a statistical approach. We defined dialogue act (DA) tags to express a user's intention. Two kinds of tag sets can be used to annotate the corpus. One denotes a communicative function (speech act), and the other denotes the semantic content of an utterance. We have annotated the speech act tags in our corpus using several annotators. We evaluate the annotation results by measuring the agreement ratios between the annotators.
Dynamics of Unemployment Spells: A Look at the Trends Before, During, and After the Great Recession

The main objective of Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits is to counteract unemployment effects on economic activity, assist in sustaining households affected by a job loss, and finance the search for work. During the national Great Recession that lasted from December 2007 to June 2009 (NBER, 2010), Wyoming’s UI trust paid $140.7 million in benefits in real dollars annually. But what happens to an individual’s earnings when he or she returns to work after a spell of unemployment? Which groups’ earnings were most substantially impacted after receiving UI benefits?
Improving competence and compliance through self‐service and e‐learning development

Purpose – Healthcare organizations in the UK face a particular combination of challenges in managing learning and development (L&D) activity and have traditionally lagged behind corporates in adopting relevant technologies. However, a wave of initiatives from the UK government's Department of Health has underlined its support for greater use of technology and greater deployment of e‐learning to improve knowledge and competence throughout National Health Service (NHS) organizations. These organizations also have to meet a variety of mandatory and statutory reporting requirements and in effect suffer financial penalties if they fail to meet set targets. The purpose of this case study is to review how one newly‐merged Primary Care Trust (PCT) – a body that manages local delivery of primary healthcare – progressed from having a new L&D team with no common systems, to successfully rolling out self‐service learning and e‐learning to end users.Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses the experience of the P.
A 21-kDa Polypeptide Belonging to a New Family of Proteins Is Expressed in the Golgi Apparatus of Neural and Germ Cells*

We have isolated a full-length murine clone corresponding to the rat neuronal p1A75 partial cDNA (Sutcliffe, J. G., Milner, R. J., Shinnick, T. M., and Bloom, F. E. (1983) Cell 33, 671–682). It encodes a 185-residue polypeptide that displays 56% identity with p19, a protein selectively expressed in the Golgi apparatus of neural cells (Sabéran-Djoneidi, D., Marey-Semper, I., Picart, R., Studler, J.-M., Tougard, C., Glowinski, J., and Lévi-Strauss, M. (1995)J. Biol. Chem. 270, 1888–1893). An antibody directed against the recombinant polypeptide allowed us to demonstrate the existence of the natural 21-kDa protein (p21) in brain and its prominent juxtanuclear Golgi-like localization in cultured neurons. Ultrastructural observation of cultured neurons and analysis of transfected COS cells revealed a specific labeling of the Golgi apparatus, suggesting, as for p19, the presence of a Golgi targeting signal in its primary sequence. Surprisingly, p21, which is much more strongly expressed in the olfactory epithelium than p19, is also present in the Golgi complex of spermatocytes and in the flagellar middle piece of late spermatids.
Part-time jobs: what women want?

Part-time jobs are common among partnered women in many countries. There are two opposing views on the efficiency implications of so many women working part-time. The negative view is that part-time jobs imply wastage of resources and underutilization of investments in human capital since many part-time working women are highly educated. The positive view is that, without the existence of part-time jobs, female labor force participation would be substantially lower since women confronted with the choice between a full-time job and zero working hours would opt for the latter. In the Netherlands, the majority of partnered working women have a part-time job. Our paper investigates, from a supply-side perspective, if the current situation of abundant part-time work in the Netherlands is likely to be a transitional phase that will culminate in many women working full-time. Our main results indicate that partnered women in part-time work have high levels of job satisfaction, a low desire to change their working hours, and live in partnerships in which household production is highly gendered. Taken together, our results suggest that part-time jobs are what most Dutch women want.
Acquiring Intangible Resources through Entrepreneurs’ Network Ties

Based on two phases of in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs who own China’s economy hotel chains, this research explored these entrepreneurs’ strategies for acquiring intangible resources through network ties and summarized the mix of strong and weak network ties that they used to acquire those resources at different development stages of their new firms. In the early start-up stage, the interviewed entrepreneurs used a mixture of strong and weak ties; in the establishment stage, they relied on strong ties; and in the final growth stage, they did not value network ties and only used weak business ties. Moreover, the network mixes used by these entrepreneurs to acquire different types of intangible resources are not identical. Sourcing human capital was a particularly valuable use of the network ties, both strong and weak, and many of the respondents used their ties to gain essential information and skills for running their hotels. The two-stage data collection revealed the dynamics of entrepreneurs’ network mixes as firms progressed to new development stages.
The effects of mobile applications as a marketing tool in airport infrastructure and airlines

Mobile applications are being increasingly used in smartphones and tablets to access news, games, entertainment, weather and other information. Large airports are taking advantage of the consolidation of mobile devices in the 21st century to create applications for branding and communication. These applications have led to the creation of a new marketing outlet, mobile marketing, that can be used as a business communication tool. In the last few years, this marketing model has consolidated itself into a product rather than a mere communication instrument due to its multi-functionality, which contributes added value to the content of the services offered. Mobile marketing also contributes to higher levels of satisfaction among airport clients. However, for mobile marketing infrastructure to achieve long-term success, it must provide benefits to airports and airlines through the mobile applications.
German technology policy, innovation, and national institutional frameworks

This paper examines the patterns of technological innovation in Germany, and compares them with those prevalent in the US and UK economies. The paper argues that the institutional features of the German system of innovation lend it comparative advantage in innovation. The paper discusses these issues in a framework of the economics of organisation in industry; it closes by discussing some of the limitations of the German system in regard to newly emergent technologies.
Politique budgétaire et dynamique économique en France : l'approche VAR structurel

[eng] To measure the effectiveness of fiscal policy in France, we estimate a structural VAR inspired by Blanchard and Perotti (2002). Consistently with most large macroeconometric models, our findings show the macroeconomic effectiveness of a structural increase in public spending in the short run (multiplier close to 1.4), which – beyond its mechanical impact on aggregate demand – stimulates private consumption and investment. Similarly, the estimated effect of a structural increase in taxes on output is negative, mainly because of a decrease in private consumption ; however, this response is small (multiplier close to only -0.1) and significant only in the very short run, although the result depends on the specific tax examined. [fre] Afin d’evaluer l’efficacite de la politique budgetaire en France, on s’inspire de l'approche VAR structurel de Blanchard et Perotti (2002). Conformement aux modeles keynesiens, le papier atteste l’efficacite macroeconomique a court terme d’une hausse structurelle de la depense publique en France (multiplicateur proche de 1,4) qui, au-dela de son impact mecanique sur la demande globale, stimule la consommation et l’investissement prives. De meme, l’effet estime sur l’activite d’une hausse structurelle des recettes publiques est negatif, en raison essentiellement de la contraction de la consommation privee ; cependant, cette reponse est faible (multiplicateur proche de -0,1 seulement) et n’est significative qu’a tres court terme, meme si ce resultat varie selon le type de recettes considere.
Yield Curve Responses to Monetary Policy in the Presence of Asymmetric Information

In response to monetary policy shocks, the market yield curve has been observed to shift or rotate. We use detailed data on the history of monetary policy changes in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand as an identification scheme in a latent factor model on daily term structure data. We demonstrate that the differing yield curve responses to unanticipated changes in monetary policy may reflect reactions to different types of monetary policy shock rather than differing reactions to the same policy shock. These different responses have recently been hypothesized to reflect information asymmetries between the monetary authority and other market participants.
Research Trends in Management Issues of Global Software Development: Evaluating the Past to Envision the Future

Abstract This paper presents research trends in management issues (project management, process management, knowledge management, requirements management, configuration management, risk management, quality management) of distributed/global information system development. The main objective is to highlight the current research and practice direction in these areas. The results are based on peer-reviewed conference papers/journal articles, published between 2000 and early 2011. The analysis revealed that most research has been done in project management, process management, knowledge management and requirements management areas while configuration, risk, and quality management issues could get only limited attention in global/distributed information system development. This indicates the need for future research (quantitative and qualitative) in these areas.
Strategic Investment Under Open Access: Theory and Evidence

type="main"> We examine the incentives of access-regulated firms to invest in infrastructure facilities they must share with competitors. We show that investment incentives can be decomposed into a non-strategic and a strategic part. The non-strategic part implies that investment depends positively on market size. The strategic incentives imply that investment also depends on market composition, namely, the market shares of the facility owner and its competitors. Using a dataset of regulated electric utilities in the United States, we find evidence that transmission investments are indeed made strategically. Ceteris paribus, utilities are less likely to invest, and investment levels are lower, when competitors occupy a larger share of the market.
Welfare State Changes and Outcomes – The Cases of Portugal and Denmark from a Comparative Perspective

It is well known that welfare states ensure a certain level of social protection affecting levels of well-being and the extent of inequalities in society. Changes within crucial domains of social policy, such as education, health, or social protection, have, therefore, a major effect upon individuals' opportunities. In this article I compare the effects of these changes in two countries from the mid-1980s to the financial crisis of 2008. Portugal that was a latecomer in welfare state development and Denmark was at the forefront of de-commodification and universalization of social rights. The conclusion of this article is that income inequality has been steadily increasing in Danish society; while in Portugal, despite improvements in many social domains (healthcare, poverty alleviation, unemployment protection), problems of inequality remain deeply embedded in the country's social and institutional structures.
Beyond legitimacy: legitimacy types and organizational success

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify and extend knowledge concerning the relationship between legitimacy and organizational success within the framework of institutional theory. Design/methodology/approach – While previous research has found links between legitimacy and organizational success, the authors test this assumption by case analysis, on a sample of thirteen Spanish Mutual Guarantee Societies. Data were collected from survey questionnaire and Annual Financial Reports. Findings – Results of the empirical examination confirm that, within this population, organizations with greater legitimacy obtain better organizational results as well as improved access to resources. The findings also show that not all dimensions of legitimacy contribute equally to organizational success. Practical implications – For managers, the authors have included a recommendation that legitimacy is an important element of an organization's success that must be strategically managed and be considered as a require.