Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficiency and purity provided by the existing methods for the isolation of luteinized granulosa cells: a comparative study.

BACKGROUND Several protocols for the isolation of luteinized granulosa cells (LGCs) contained in follicular fluid have been described but no previously published study has compared the relative efficiency of these protocols. Our objective is to obtain conclusive scientific evidence for the superiority of one method over another. METHODS Different purification methods for LGCs based on the recognition of specific cell markers, aggregates, differential adhesion and LGC size were evaluated. We compared the levels of CD45 cell contamination and the percentage of total cell viability in paired aliquots of cells (before and after purification) derived from the follicular fluid obtained from women who were donating oocytes (n = 72). Each of the six purification methods was performed six times using pooled follicular fluids from two women. RESULTS Samples processed by means of recognition of specific cell markers were characterized by their greater purity (0.1-1.33% CD45+) but low rate of LGC recovery (17.13-25.4%) when compared with the other methods (3.29-12% CD45+, P < 0.05 and 51.67-73.20% LGC, P < 0.05). It is noteworthy that the filter method, which is based on the LGC size, combined one of the highest rates of LGC recovery (∼70%) with acceptable low levels of contamination (<5%). CONCLUSIONS There is currently no gold standard method for the isolation of LGCs, and protocols should be chosen depending on the purpose in question. We conclude that fluorescence-activated cell sorting is the best protocol for isolating LGCs when purity is the principal criterion, and magnetic separation when both purity and viability are essential. However, cell straining (filter) is probably the least laborious and, overall, the most efficient method to isolate LGCs.
Clinical, Electrophysiological, and Serological Evaluation of Patients with Cramp-Fasciculation Syndrome.

INTRODUCTION Cramp-fasciculation syndrome (CFS) is a rare peripheral nerve hyperexcitability syndrome. There are only a few reports on clinical and serological profile of a CFS cohort that was followed up by a single outpatient clinic. METHODS Clinical, electrophysiological, and serological features of 6 CFS patients (5 men, 1 woman; 27-65 years old) were investigated. RESULTS All patients presented with cramps, fasciculations, muscle pain, and autonomic symptoms, and 2 also reported numbness and burning sensation in limbs, suggestive of neuropathic pain. Antibodies to uncharacterized voltage-gated potassium channel (VGKC)-complex proteins were found in 2 patients and to contactin-associated protein-like 2 (CASPR2) in 1 patient. None of the patients had a tumor. Most of the patients revealed prolonged after-discharges following tibial nerve stimulation. Nerve conduction studies and R-R interval variability tests were normal, whereas sympathetic skin responses were increased in amplitude in 3 seronegative patients. Five patients showed favorable response to carbamazepine or pregabalin treatment, whereas 1 VGKC-antibody-positive patient was resistant to carbamazepine and immunosuppressant treatment. CONCLUSION Neuropathic pain and VGKC-complex antibodies may be encountered in CFS patients. Although autonomic symptoms are commonly found in CFS, routine autonomic system tests which are done in electrophysiology laboratories might yield normal results.
Accommodation, realignment, or business as usual? Australia's response to a rising China

Abstract Since normalising diplomatic relations in 1972, successive Australian and Chinese governments have focused on deepening trade and investment links to such an extent that China now looms as one of the most critical countries on Australia's twenty-first century horizon. For their part, Chinese elites have welcomed closer ties with Australia and have been particularly keen to accelerate China's direct investment in the Australian mining and energy sectors. Since the early 2000s, a number of commentators have argued that Australia has been gradually drifting towards China's sphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific. This trend, they argue, has been reinforced following the election in 2007 of the Labor party government, which has terminated Australia's involvement in quadrilateral talks with the US, India, and Japan; stepped back from commitments to export uranium to China's long-standing rival, India; and intensified Australia's public criticism of Japanese whaling practices. Meanwhile, in 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a point of paying a high profile visit to China during his first major overseas journey, but not matching it with a visit to Japan. Is Australia drifting towards China's strategic orbit in Asia? The article examines this question through the prism of three key indicators of realignment and concludes that, while there is some evidence of Australia accommodating Chinese strategic preferences in Asia, there is no indication that it is realigning itself strategically towards China and away from its long-standing ally, the US.
Self-Employment and Wage Earning in Hungary

This paper examines the earnings determinants of the self-employed and wage earners in Hungary in the mid-1990s, taking into account two forms of selection: selection into working or non-working for every individual in its sample and selection into self-employment or wage-earning jobs for workers only. Previous studies use switching regression to examine the returns to individual characteristics, taking into account only selection into self-employment or wage-earning jobs. The authors find that the estimated returns to individual characteristics when accounting for both forms of selection, differ from estimates correcting for only selection into self-employment or wage-earning jobs. They also find that the earnings determinants of the two sectors are not significantly different from each other.
Clinical Validity and Utility of the Interview for Deterioration of Daily Living in Dementia for Spanish-Speaking Communities

The assessment of activities of daily living is a central procedure in the diagnosis of dementia. Few instruments in the field allow for early detection of functional decline because the items they use refer mainly to basic activities of daily living (BADL), which do not become compromised until later in the disease process. The Interview for Deterioration of Daily Living in Dementia (IDDD) may be a valuable tool for early detection of functional decline because it includes, apart from a BADL subscale, another subscale containing a variety of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), which are the first to be affected in dementing processes. We present an adaptation and validation of the IDDD for Spanish-speaking communities (S-IDDD). A total of 254 control subjects (CONT), 86 patients with mild memory/cognitive impairment with no dementia (CIND), and 111 patients diagnosed with probable dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) participated in this project. IDDD total scores (mean and SD) were as follow: CONT: 33.1 (0.4); CIND: 35.2 (3.4); DAT: 54.3 (18.6). The present validation showed no sociodemographic effects on the IDDD total scores. The IDDD demonstrated great internal consistency (α = .985) and reproducibility (intraclass correlation coefficient = .94). Correlations were high (r = .81; p < .1) when they took into account the whole sample, but decreased significantly when the groups were separated by pathologic condition. The scale showed significant differences between DAT versus CIND and CONT. The IADL subscale differentiated all three groups, which makes it extremely valuable for early detection of functional decline. The present study shows that the S-IDDD is a reliable adaptation of the of the original IDDD scale and may be used successfully in Spanish populations for staging and follow-up of subjects with dementia.
STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF STOCK PRICE RATIOS IMPLIED IN OPTION PRICES

THE OPTION PRICING MODEL derived by Black and Scholes (B-S) is a path breaking work in the area of contingent claim pricing. Of the five variables which are necessary to specify the model, all are directly observable except the standard deviation of returns from the underlying stock. ' Due to its rigorous theoretical underpinnings and minimum reliance on subjectively determined inputs, the model has gained a great deal of popularity in both the academic and investment communities. In an empirical test, B-S demonstrated that the model can be used effectively to determine whether call options are properly priced if one uses an estimate of the standard deviation which is based upon an ex post series of returns from the underlying stock. However, they showed that the actual standard deviation which would result over the life of an option would be a better input into the model if it were known in advance. Accordingly, they suggested that the usefulness of the model depends to a great extent upon investors' abilities to make good forecasts of this parameter.2 In this paper we derive standard deviations of continuous price relative returns which are implied in actual call option prices on the assumption that investors behave as if they price options according to the Black and Scholes model. A weighted average of these implied standard deviations (ISDs) is employed as a measure of market forecasts of return variability. These weighted implied standard
Elevated Amounts of Protein in C6 Glial Cells During the Growth‐Inhibitory Response Elicited by Dexamethasone

Abstract: Dexamethasone suppresses C6 glial cell proliferation in vitro. This growth‐inhibitory response is accompanied by elevated amounts of acid‐insoluble protein in the steroid‐treated cells relative to controls. These results provide additional evidence that the glucocorticoid acts to arrest C6 cell proliferation in G2.
Governance as a Global Development Goal? Setting, Measuring and Monitoring the Post-2015 Development Agenda

The increasing realisation that governance quality is a fundamental element of long-run development has led to its consideration as a desirable development goal in its own right. To contribute to such a process, this paper provides a framework to set, measure and monitor governance goals in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. First, we assess whether existing cross-national measures on governance quality can be exploited to routinely capture aspects of legal, bureaucratic and administrative quality. Such a "quick fix" approach to measuring governance quality is fraught with challenges. The current practice of measurement is still subject to the short country coverage of most available measures, issues of comparability and legitimacy, as well as methodological shortcomings. Then, we argue that, in the long run, measuring and monitoring governance quality may require reconceptualising "good governance" and designing internationally shared measures that are routinely provided by national statistical offices. Finally, we consider the different approaches to setting governance goals, arguing in favour of a combination of national target setting and minimum standard with continuous improvement.
Localization of the N-terminal Domain in Light-harvesting Chlorophyll a/b Protein by EPR Measurements*

The conformational distribution of the N-terminal domain of the major light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b protein (LHCIIb) has been characterized by electron-electron double resonance yielding distances between spin labels placed in various domains of the protein. Distance distributions involving residue 3 near the N terminus turned out to be bimodal, revealing that this domain, which is involved in regulatory functions such as balancing the energy flow through photosystems (PS) I and II, exists in at least two conformational states. Models of the conformational sub-ensembles were generated on the basis of experimental distance restraints from measurements on LHCIIb monomers and then checked for consistency with the experimental distance distribution between residues 3 in trimers. Only models where residue 3 is located above the core of the protein and extends into the aqueous phase on the stromal side fit the trimer data. In the other state, which consequently is populated only in monomers, the N-terminal domain extends sideways from the protein core. The two conformational states may correspond to two functional states of LHCIIb, namely trimeric LHCIIb associated with PSII in stacked thylakoid membranes and presumably monomeric LHCIIb associated with PSI in nonstacked thylakoids. The switch between these two is known to be triggered by phosphorylation of Thr-6. A similar phosphorylation-induced conformational change of the N-terminal domain has been observed by others in bovine annexin IV which, due to the conformational switch, also loses its membrane-aggregating property.
Is corruption grease, grit or a gamble? Corruption increases variance of productivity across countries

The effect of corruption on economic growth has attracted interest in empirical development economics. The conventional view of corruption as impediment for growth has been challenged by the ‘grease-on-the-wheels’ hypothesis. We take a new perspective on the issue and suggest corruption as macro risk, referred to as a ‘gamble’ hypothesis. Using cross-country data and two alternative indicators of corruption, we find corruption to be a significant driver of heteroscedasticity in total productivity. This supports the new gamble hypothesis. We also note some misleading interpretations in the previously published frontier applications. To avoid these shortcomings, we apply a flexible semi-nonparametric estimator.
Was the Korean Slave Market Efficient

Over the decades, the traditional condemnation of slavery has been based not only on philosophical argumentation and moral values, but also on the conjecture that slavery was inefficient. This position led to one of the most passionate debates in economic history on the efficiency of the US slave market. This question of efficiency has not been analyzed on the slave market in Korea. The aim of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of the Korean slave market by examining the behavior of slave prices during the period 1689-1893. In order to do so, we collected long-run series of slave prices from nationwide surveys of more than 25 public and private historical records. We then tested whether the slave market was efficient using the arbitrage asset equation. We found slavery to have been efficient most of the time.
Enabling Predictable Wireless Data Collection in Severe Energy Harvesting Environments

Micro-powered wireless embedded devices are widely used in many application domains. Their efficiency in practice, however, is significantly constrained by the dual limitations of low harvesting rates and tiny energy buffer. Recent research presents a network stack that efficiently fragments a large packet into many smaller packets that can fit within the available energy in the energy buffer of limited size. While this fragmentation technique represents a major step forward in solving the minuscule energy budget problem, it also introduces a tremendous practical challenge where potentially many fragmented packets belonging to different devices may contend for the communication channel. Designing purely heuristic-based packet transmission protocol is undesirable because the resulting per-packet and end-to-end transmission delay are unknown, thus causing unpredictable system performance which is unacceptable for many applications with real-time constraints. In this paper, we first formulate this packet transmission scheduling problem considering physical properties of the charging and transmission processes. We then develop a novel packet prioritization and transmission protocol NERF that yields tight and predictable delay bounds for transmitting packets from multiple micropowered devices to a charger. We have implemented our protoco on top of the WISP 4.1 platform and the SPEEDWAY RFID READER, and conducted validation experiments. Our experiments validate the correctness of our implementation and show that NERF can reduce the total collection delay by 40% when compared to an existing protocol ALOHA. We have also performed extensive data trace-driven simulations. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed protocol. On average, our protocol yields an over 30%improvement in terms of runtime transmission delay compared to existing methods, while being able to guarantee tight and provable response time bounds.
Development of a multiplex PCR assay for fine‐scale population genetic analysis of the Komodo monitor Varanus komodoensis based on 18 polymorphic microsatellite loci

Multiplex PCR assays for the coamplification of microsatellite loci allow rapid and cost‐effective genetic analyses and the production of efficient screening protocols for international breeding programs. We constructed a partial genomic library enriched for di‐nucleotide repeats and characterized 14 new microsatellite loci for the Komodo monitor (or Komodo dragon, Varanus komodoensis). Using these novel microsatellites and four previously described loci, we developed multiplex PCR assays that may be loaded on a genetic analyser in three separate panels. We tested the novel set of microsatellites for polymorphism using 69 individuals from three island populations and evaluated the resolving power of the entire panel of 18 loci by conducting (i) a preliminary assignment test to determine population(s) of origin and (ii) a parentage analysis for 43 captive Komodo monitors. This panel of polymorphic loci proved useful for both purposes and thus can be exploited for fine‐scale population genetic analyses and as part of international captive breeding programs directed at maintaining genetically viable ex situ populations and reintroductions.
Can area managers connect policy and tenants? Implementation and diffusion of a new waste management system in Linköping, Sweden

Recycling and reducing household waste are political goals internationally, nationally and locally. In Sweden, households in apartment buildings seem to sort their waste to a lesser extent than households in single-family houses. This paper analyses the challenges of the diffusion of a new waste management system in apartment buildings, and focuses on a municipal housing company and the actions of its area managers. It is argued that area managers can be regarded as street-level bureaucrats who act as ‘collectors’ of tenants’ everyday practices in the studied implementation process. The study is based on interviews, document analysis and observations.
The Impact Of Index Migrations On Share Prices: Evidence From The Johannesburg Stock Exchange

This article examines the quantum and persistence of abnormal returns (positive and negative) for shares that entered or left the JSE Top 40 Index during quarterly index rebalancing between 2002 and 2013. Using an event study methodology based on the market model, we find evidence of anticipatory trading for both deletions and additions, which is, however, significant only for the former. These abnormal returns are reversed over our window period, which supports international studies indicating downward sloping share demand curves. Our findings imply informational inefficiencies that investors could use to trade profitably in anticipation of index additions or deletions.
Coding efficiency for different switched-mode RF transmitter architectures

Conventional RF transmitters with power amplifiers in e.g. Class-AB operation provide only moderate electrical efficiencies for complex modulated signals. To increase the overall efficiency considerably, we can employ switched-mode power amplifiers (SMPA) with an appropriate baseband signal processing. Such efficient SMPAs generate a lot of spectral out-of-band components, which has to be attenuated by a bandpass filter before the signal is fed to the transmit antenna. Unfortunately, this impacts the electrical efficiency because these unwanted signal components are usually dissipated within the transmitter. A measure for the electrical efficiency degradation for complex modulated signals in a switched-mode operation is the coding efficiency. In this paper we develop different switched-mode transmitter architectures based on baseband PWM coding and analyze the coding efficiencies for different signal statistics.
Global and local features for accurate impression estimation of cloth fabric images

Consumers' psychological feeling or impression is an important factor for product design. The impression estimation becomes an important issue. In this paper, we proposed a machine learning based impression estimation method for cloth fabric images. We use a semantic differential (SD) method to measure the user's impression such as bright, warm while they viewing a cloth fabric image. We also extract both global and local features of cloth fabric images such as color and texture using computer vision techniques. Then we use support vector regression to model the mapping function between the impression and image features. The learned mapping function is used to estimate the impression of cloth fabric images.
Intrafamily Resource Allocations: A Dynamic Structural Model of Birth Weight

Using large American and British survey data, this paper provides structural estimates of the production functions for birth weight and fetal growth. In addition to maternal smoking, we estimate the impact of when a mother stops work, which has not been considered in the literature. Mothers’ work interruptions of up to 3 months before birth have a positive effect on birth outcomes, especially among British children. Parental behavior appears to respond to child idiosyncratic endowments in a way that suggests that parents have inequity aversion concerns. Evidence in favor of inequity aversion emerges also from the analysis of breast-feeding decisions.
Three-dimensional analysis of the pulp cavity on surface models of molar teeth, using X-ray micro-computed tomography

Abstract Aim. The purpose of this study was to investigate the scanning and segmentation precision of surface models of molars for the detection of small volumes, such as the reduced pulp cavity; formation of mineral deposits; detection of narrow root canals and to improve the clinical and morphological understanding of the number of root canals and their configuration. Methods. Eighteen human molars were scanned using X-ray micro-computed tomography. The reconstruction of the surface models had a precision of <1 voxel, using three-dimensional software and quantitative color mapping. In order to relate the measurements to changes over time the size of the pulp chambers was classified in two well-defined groups. Results. The mineral deposits were more evenly distributed in small pulp chambers than in large, but complete root canal calcification was never observed. No difference was observed in the material with respect to the presence of intra-radicular connections. In upper molars, a second mesiobuccal canal (mb2) frequency of 91% was found. The difference in length between the first mesiobuccal canal (mb1) and mb2 was <1 mm. The number of root canals could be related to the number of root cones. Conclusion. In summary, three-dimensional surface models were made with a high precision; an increased accumulation of mineral deposits was noted in molars with small pulp chambers and combined with the consistent pattern of intra-radicular connections, the potential endodontic treatment complexity is underlined in such cases. Finally, an improved understanding of root canal prevalence was reached, when merging well-defined definitions on root morphology and clinical classification systems.
Thirteen hybridomas secreting hapten‐specific immunoglobulin E from mice with Iga or Igb heavy chain haplotype

Thirteen hybridomas producing 2,4,6‐trinitrophenyl‐(TNP)‐specific mouse IgE of Iga or Igb haplotype are described. They are freely available. Monoclonal IgE, as well as polyclonal serum IgE, is shown to bind to concanavalin A.