Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is there equity in use of healthcare services among immigrants, their descendents, and ethnic Danes?

Background: Legislation in Denmark explicitly states the right to equal access to healthcare. Nevertheless, inequities may exist; accordingly evidence is needed. Our objective was to investigate whether differences in healthcare utilisation in immigrants, their descendents, and ethnic Danes could be explained by health status, socioeconomic factors, and integration. Methods: We conducted a nationwide survey in 2007 with 4952 individuals aged 18–66 comprising ethnic Danes; immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, Turkey; and Turkish and Pakistani descendents. Data were linked to registries on healthcare utilisation. Using Poisson regression models, contacts to hospital, emergency room (ER), general practitioner (GP), specialist in private practice, and dentist were estimated. Analyses were adjusted for health symptoms, sociodemographic factors, and proxies of integration. Results: In adjusted analyses, immigrants and their descendents had increased use of ER (multiplicative effect 1.19–5.02 dependent on immigrant and descendent group) and less frequent contact to dentist (multiplicative effect 0.04–0.80 dependent on the group). For hospitalisation, GP, and specialist doctor, physical health symptoms had positive but different explanatory effects within groups; however, most immigrant and descendent groups had increased use of services compared with that of ethnic Danes. Socioeconomic factors and integration had no systematic effect on the use in the different groups. Conclusions: The Danish healthcare system seems responsive to health across different population groups. We found no systematic pattern of inequity in use of free-of-charge healthcare services, but for dentists, who require co-payment, we found inequity among immigrants and descendents compared with ethnic Danes.
Valuing Security of Supply: Does Experience Matter?

In this paper, we analyse if experiencing a supply interruption affects the valuation of security of supply of electricity. To do so, we utilised a blackout in Munich, Germany, in November 2012 as a natural experiment by conducting a Contingent Valuation survey around two months after the event. The characteristics of the supply interruption allow to distinguish between households that were affected by the blackout and those who were not. This provides the opportunity to compare the willingness to pay (WTP) for avoiding and the willingness to accept (WTA) for enduring a supply interruption between affected and non-affected Munich households. Using the WTP measure, we find that experiencing the outage event increased the valuation of supply security by over 60 percent. Furthermore, our results show that power outage experience can increase the perceived relevance of the policy objective "security" at the expense of the objective "environmental sustainability". This implies that maintaining the level of supply security should be a priority energy policy objective to support the acceptance of the transition to a renewable based electricity system.
On the equivalence of set-theoretic and maxent MAP estimation

We establish an equivalence between two conceptually different methods of signal estimation under modeling uncertainty, viz., set-theoretic (ST) estimation and maximum entropy (maxent) MAP estimation. The first method assumes constraints on the signal to be estimated, and the second assumes constraints on a probability distribution for the signal. We provide broad conditions under which these two estimation paradigms produce the same signal estimate. We also show how the maxent formalism can be used to provide solutions to three important problems: how to select sizes of constraint sets in ST estimation (the analysis highlights the role of shrinkage); how to choose the values of parameters in regularized restoration when using multiple regularization functionals; how to trade off model complexity and goodness of fit in a model selection problem.
Human sound‐localization behaviour after multiple changes in eye position

Orienting the eyes towards a peripheral sound source calls for a transformation of the head‐centred sound coordinates into an oculocentric motor command, which requires an estimate of current eye position. Current models of saccadic control explain spatial accuracy by oculocentric transformations that rely on efference copies of relative eye‐displacement signals, rather than on absolute eye position in the orbit. In principle, the gaze‐control system could keep track of instantaneous eye position by vector addition of intervening eye‐displacement commands. However, given that each motor update is endowed with some noise, the neural estimate of eye orientation is then expected to become noisier with increasing number of intervening saccades. As a consequence, the localization response will also be noisier. According to the alternative, in which target updates rely on feedback of the current eye position, such an increase in errors would be absent. In an attempt to dissociate these hypotheses, we studied the influence of the accumulation of oculomotor commands prior to a sound‐localization response. Head‐restrained subjects generated voluntary eye movements in darkness in random directions for a period between 0.2 and 15 s, after which they rapidly reoriented the eyes towards a brief sound burst. The results demonstrate that the audiomotor system programmes the orienting response on the basis of actual eye position, rather than on an accumulated estimate from intervening eye displacements.
3H‐thymidine is a defective tool with which to measure rates of DNA synthesis

Metabolic incorporation of 3H‐thymidine into cellular DNA is a widely used protocol to monitor rates of DNA synthesis and cell proliferation. However, this radiochemical has also been reported to induce cell‐cycle arrest and apoptosis in addition to DNA damage. Using stable isotope‐labeled thymidine, we demonstrate that 3H‐thymidine induces dose‐dependent inhibition of the rate of DNA synthesis. This inhibition occurred within the first round of replication after addition of the radiolabeled tracer and demonstrates the cytotoxic effects of conventional doses of 3H‐thymidine (typically ≥ 1 μCi/ml). These results thus show that stable isotope methods are superior to radioisotopes for determining rates of DNA synthesis and cell replication. Because 3H‐thymidine perturbs the very process it was employed to study, experiments using 3Hthymidine to monitor DNA synthesis and cell proliferation should be interpreted with caution.
Purification and characterization of recombinant human insulin‐like growth factor II (IGF‐II) expressed as a secreted fusion protein in Escherichia coli

Human insulin‐like growth factor II (IGF‐II) was produced in an Escherichia coli ompT strain as a 22.5‐kDa fusion protein. IGF‐II was fused to the carboxy‐terminal of a synthetic 15‐kDa IgG‐binding protein, originating from staphylococcal protein A, via a unique methionine linker. During fermentation, the fusion protein was exported to the growth medium at levels exceeding 900 mg/liter and subsequently affinity purified on IgG Sepharose followed by ion exchange on S Sepharose. After chemical cleavage with CNBr, yielding an authentic IGF‐II molecule, the recombinant IGF‐II was purified to homogeneity by a two step procedure involving ion‐exchange and reverse‐phase HPLC. A substantial fraction of the secreted protein was found to be biologically active, eliminating the need for complex refolding procedures. The yield of highly purified and biologically active IGF‐II was 5–7 mg/liter of fermenter broth. The IGF‐II produced by this method displayed biochemical, immunological, receptor binding, and biological activity properties equal to those of native IGF‐II isolated from human serum.
Microvesicles releasing by oral cancer cells enhance endothelial cell angiogenesis via Shh/RhoA signaling pathway

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to investigate the significance of hedgehog signaling pathway in association with clinicopathology parameters and its effect on angiogenesis in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). The expression of Sonic Hh (Shh) and Gli1 were done on primary tumors and metastatic lymph nodes in OSCC samples from 80 patients by immunohistochemical analysis. The western blot was used to examine the expression of Shh in OSCC cell lines and OSCC-derived microvesicles (MVs). The role of Shh carried by MVs to induce endothelial cell angiogenesis was further investigated by matrigel assay. Our results indicated that the expression of Shh was positive associated with microvesseldentisty(MVD), TNM stage, tumor recurrence and lymph node metastasis. Moreover, Shh and Gli1 expression were higher in paired metastatic lymph nodes compared with expression of their primary tumors. The expression of Shh was abundant in Cal27, and present in SCC4, SCC9, and the amount of Shh protein in Cal27 targeting MVs was increased significantly than Cal27 cell group, up to ∼ fifth-fold. The Cal27 derived MVs increased significantly angiogenesis of HUVECs in vitro, and this effect was blocked with exoenzyme C3 transferase (C3) and shRNA targeting RhoA by suppressing RhoA expression and activation. The data suggested that OSCC derived Shh carried by MVs may facilitate the tumor growth and modulate the preparation of a vascular network in primary tumor and/or premetastatic niche.
Power losses of multiphase inverters

Multiphase drives are particularly attractive in medium and high-power applications such as railway and naval propulsion systems. In the most modern drives, a multiphase machine is driven by an IGBT inverter. This paper focuses the theoretical calculation of the power losses in multiphase inverters with an odd number of phases. This analysis could be useful for a preliminary assessment of the drive efficiency, and allows to compare inverters with a different number of phases.
Integral Aproach to Enterprise Culture as One of the Enterprises’Key Success Factors

Abstract Enterprise culture is judged by many acknowledged scientists and researchers now as a major determinant of any enterprise’s success. The present article shows the research cognitions on the impact of enterprise culture to the success of the enterprises observed. It investigates the impact of customer and employee oriented enterprise culture on market and financial performance of the enterprise. Results suggest that enterprises, which are more customer (externally) oriented, show better market performance as well as better financial performance. The cognitions also show that more employee (internally) oriented enterprises, show positive impact to their market as well as to their financial performance.
A developmental staging series for the lizard genus Anolis: A new system for the integration of evolution, development, and ecology

Vertebrate developmental biologists typically rely on a limited number of model organisms to understand the evolutionary bases of morphological change. Unfortunately, a typical model system for squamates (lizards and snakes) has not yet been developed leaving many fundamental questions about morphological evolution unaddressed. New model systems would ideally include clades, rather than single species, that are amenable to both laboratory studies of development and field‐based analyses of ecology and evolution. Combining an understanding of development with an understanding of ecology and evolution within and between closely related species has the potential to create a seamless understanding of how genetic variation underlies ecologically and evolutionarily relevant variation within populations and between species. Here we briefly introduce a new model system for the integration of development, evolution, and ecology, the lizard genus Anolis, a diverse group of lizards whose ecology and evolution is well understood, and whose genome has recently been sequenced. We present a developmental staging series for Anolis lizards that can act as a baseline for later comparative and experimental studies within this genus. J. Morphol. , 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Lessons from high-throughput protein crystallization screening: 10 years of practical experience

Introduction: X-ray crystallography provides the majority of our structural biological knowledge at a molecular level and, in terms of pharmaceutical design, is a valuable tool to accelerate discovery. It is the premier technique in the field, but its usefulness is significantly limited by the need to grow well-diffracting crystals. It is for this reason that high-throughput crystallization has become a key technology that has matured over the past 10 years through the field of structural genomics. Areas covered : The authors describe their experiences in high-throughput crystallization screening in the context of structural genomics and the general biomedical community. They focus on the lessons learnt from the operation of a high-throughput crystallization-screening laboratory, which to date has screened over 12,500 biological macromolecules. They also describe the approaches taken to maximize the success while minimizing the effort. Through this, the authors hope that the reader will gain an insight into the efficient design of a laboratory and protocols to accomplish high-throughput crystallization on a single-, multiuser laboratory or industrial scale. Expert opinion : High-throughput crystallization screening is readily available but, despite the power of the crystallographic technique, getting crystals is still not a solved problem. High-throughput approaches can help when used skillfully; however, they still require human input in the detailed analysis and interpretation of results to be more successful.
Use of a Single-Chain Antibody Library for Ovarian Cancer Biomarker Discovery*

The discovery of novel early detection biomarkers of disease could offer one of the best approaches to decrease the morbidity and mortality of ovarian and other cancers. We report on the use of a single-chain variable fragment antibody library for screening ovarian serum to find novel biomarkers for the detection of cancer. We alternately panned the library with ovarian cancer and disease-free control sera to make a sublibrary of antibodies that bind proteins differentially expressed in cancer. This sublibrary was printed on antibody microarrays that were incubated with labeled serum from multiple sets of cancer patients and controls. The antibodies that performed best at discriminating disease status were selected, and their cognate antigens were identified using a functional protein microarray. Overexpression of some of these antigens was observed in cancer serum, tumor proximal fluid, and cancer tissue via dot blot and immunohistochemical staining. Thus, our use of recombinant antibody microarrays for unbiased discovery found targets for ovarian cancer detection in multiple sample sets, supporting their further study for disease diagnosis.
Non‐Equilibrium Assembly of Light‐Activated Colloidal Mixtures

The collective phenomena exhibited by artificial active matter systems present novel routes to fabricating out‐of‐equilibrium microscale assemblies. Here, the crystallization of passive silica colloids into well‐controlled 2D assemblies is shown, which is directed by a small number of self‐propelled active colloids. The active colloids are titania–silica Janus particles that are propelled when illuminated by UV light. The strength of the attractive interaction and thus the extent of the assembled clusters can be regulated by the light intensity. A remarkably small number of the active colloids is sufficient to induce the assembly of the dynamic crystals. The approach produces rationally designed colloidal clusters and crystals with controllable sizes, shapes, and symmetries. This multicomponent active matter system offers the possibility of obtaining structures and assemblies that cannot be found in equilibrium systems.
Energy expenditure during a single-handed transatlantic yacht race

Background: The popularity of sports that expose people to consecutive days of high-intensity physical activity continues to increase. The ability to adequately nourish the human body to sustain the required level of competitive performance may be a key contributor to success in such events. Methods: The energy expenditure of a male competitor in a single-handed, transatlantic race (Transat 2004) was assessed using the doubly-labelled water technique. Results: Mean total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) during the race (13 days) was 14.5 MJ/day with a peak expenditure of 18.6 MJ during the most physically demanding 24-hour period. Discussion: This mean TDEE was approximately 25% lower than that reported in a previous study (14.5 vs. 19.3 MJ/day) for a 13-day leg of a fully crewed offshore race. The difference in results was probably due to the fact that in the previous study, the crew operated in “watches” (work shifts), affording each crew member greater opportunity to eat, rest and sleep. Effective planning and efficient management of resources is essential to the success of the solo sailor. However, the extent to which maintenance of energy balance underpins competitive success remains to be established. To maintain energy balance during the race, a mean daily energy intake of 14.5 MJ/day was necessary for the subject in this study. However, this mean value for energy intake would have been inadequate to match the peak energy expended during the most physically demanding 24 hours of the race.
Statistical Parametric Speech Synthesis for Online Dictionaries - Problems and Solutions

This paper describes an attempt to use Estonian statistical parametric speech synthesis for audio pronunciation of words and word forms in online dictionaries. Two new HTS-voices were created and compared for this purpose. The paper gives an overview of a design and evaluation process for these voices. Different errors were detected including quantity errors, bad sound quality, accent errors, gemination at the boundary of compound word components, etc. The level of correctness and sound quality for the two parametric speech synthesisers ranged from 69% to 76%. The paper demonstrates that voice Eva-2, which can accept text with diacritics as input, produces fewer errors. Still, the error rate of both new voices is too high to fill the criteria of orthoepy in learner’s dictionaries.
ProDomAs, protein domain assignment algorithm using center‐based clustering and independent dominating set

Decomposition of structural domains is an essential task in classifying protein structures, predicting protein function, and many other proteomics problems. As the number of known protein structures in PDB grows exponentially, the need for accurate automatic domain decomposition methods becomes more essential. In this article, we introduce a bottom‐up algorithm for assigning protein domains using a graph theoretical approach. This algorithm is based on a center‐based clustering approach. For constructing initial clusters, members of an independent dominating set for the graph representation of a protein are considered as the centers. A distance matrix is then defined for these clusters. To obtain final domains, these clusters are merged using the compactness principle of domains and a method similar to the neighbor‐joining algorithm considering some thresholds. The thresholds are computed using a training set consisting of 50 protein chains. The algorithm is implemented using C++ language and is named ProDomAs. To assess the performance of ProDomAs, its results are compared with seven automatic methods, against five publicly available benchmarks. The results show that ProDomAs outperforms other methods applied on the mentioned benchmarks. The performance of ProDomAs is also evaluated against 6342 chains obtained from ASTRAL SCOP 1.71. ProDomAs is freely available at http://www.bioinf. cs.ipm. ir/software/prodomas. Proteins 2014; 82:1937–1946. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Made in Africa: Learning to Compete in Industry

The role of industry in low income countries is important. Industry is good for growth, job creation, and poverty reduction. All of these factors depend on the size and the rate of growth of industry. Africa doesn't have enough industry to reach the Sustainable Development Goals for growth, job creation, and poverty reduction. Africa's share of global manufacturing has fallen from about three percent in 1970 to less than two percent in 2010. Why is there so little industry in Africa? Made in Africa: Learning to Compete in Industry outlines a new industrialization strategy to help Africa compete in global markets. This book draws on case study and qualitative research from Africa and emerging Asia to understand what drives firm-level productivity in low income countries. The results show that while traditional concerns such as infrastructure, skills, and the regulatory environment are important, they alone will not be sufficient for Africa to industrialize. The book also addresses how industrialization strategies will need to adapt to the region's growing resource abundance.
Electromechanical reshaping of ex vivo porcine trachea

The trachea is a composite cartilaginous structure particularly prone to various forms of convexities. Electromechanical reshaping (EMR) is an emerging technique used to reshape cartilaginous tissues by applying electric current in tandem with imposed mechanical deformation to achieve shape change. In this study, EMR was used to reshape tracheal cartilage rings to demonstrate the feasibility of this technology as a potentially minimally invasive procedure to alter tracheal structure.
Occurrence and genetic relatedness of Listeria spp. in two brands of locally processed ready-to-eat meats in Trinidad

SUMMARY Contamination of locally produced, ready-to-eat meats by Listeria spp. has been previously reported at one processing plant in Trinidad. However, the status of this pathogen in locally produced products sold at retail outlets is unknown. This study was conducted to establish whether there is a risk to consumers of locally processed meats caused by the presence of Listeria spp. , and whether a link exists between the presence of the pathogen in retail products and the manufacturing plant of one brand (B). Four hundred and eighty ready-to-eat meat products of two popular local brands (A and B) were collected from retail outlets and analysed for the presence of Listeria spp. together with food samples and surfaces from one manufacturing plant (B). Eighty-eight of the retail products (18·3%) were contaminated with Listeria spp. , of which, 52·3% were L. innocua, 44·3% were L. monocytogenes and 3·4% belonged to the L. seeligeri–L. welshimeri–L. ivanovii (Siwi) group. L. innocua was found in 15 in-process food samples and on three surfaces of equipment at plant B. Four in-process food samples were also contaminated with Siwi isolates. Repetitive extragenic palindromic PCR DNA fingerprinting showed a possible association between strains of different Listeria spp. and brand as well as with manufacturing plant B.
A tiling of phase-space through self-convolution

A novel tiling for Fourier half space is constructed using Erlang functions. This tiling is constructed by shifts in discrete-time and self-convolutions in the Fourier domain. We show that a subframe of this complex wavelet family can be used for the detection and characterization of events (step and peaks) in one-dimensional (1-D) discrete-time signals.