Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Career Paths of Agricultural Workers: What is the Impact of Temporary Contracts?

Agriculture, more than any other sector, is a provider of temporary jobs. Th e main aim of the paper is to analyze the impact of the temporary contract in agriculture on the probability of remaining employed in this sector. Th ere is used a discrete-time competing risks duration model with two sub-samples, consisting of seasonal contracts and fi xed-term con- tracts. Th e results show that while the probability of a worker fi nding a job increases with the number of temporary jobs al- ready amassed in his or her career, this probability decreases with the number of interruptions in employment. Th ere is also shown the eff ect of time dependence on the transition probabilities. Whether the temporary contract is seasonal or not, the risks of exiting towards non-employment are greatest for the shortest contracts, but the prospects for fi nding a job do im- prove thereafter. In the specifi c case of the fi xed-term contract, the chances of converting this to a permanent contract are greater at the legal limit. Finally, the most highly qualifi ed workers are those who leave the agricultural sector. Nevertheless, the risks of exiting are relatively low: agricultural jobs require a specifi c capital which is diffi cult to transfer to other sectors.
Burnout in intensive care unit.

AIM The aim of this paper was to study in intensive care unit (ICU) the impact of variable ''professional role'' and ''gender'' on the defence mechanisms, on the troubles of mood and on the markers of the burnout syndrome, and to study the correlation between specific defence mechanisms or specific troubles of mood and the onset of burnout syndrome. METHODS An observational study by administration of psychometric tests was carried out. Twenty-five nurses and 25 doctors working in two differents ICU of the Azienda Ospedaliera-Universitaria Pisana were enrolled. Three psychometric tests concerning the defence mechanisms (Defense Mechanism Inventory), the troubles of mood (Profile of Moods States) and the burnout syndrome (Maslach Burnout Inventory) were administered and the three tests were analysed to study the features of each person enrolled. RESULTS The study shows the presence within doctors of two dimensions of burnout syndrome (emotional exhaustion in women and depersonalization in men) much greater than nurses. The doctors show the presence of defence mechanism as overturning, aggressiveness and rationalization, and troubles of mood as depression-despondency and aggressiveness-anger. Compared to men, women show turning to one self as defence mechanisms, whereas the men show aggressiveness-anger as trouble of mood. The women doctors show depression-disheartement as trouble of mood, the men doctors show tension-anxiety. We showed a correlation between tiredness-indolence, depression-disheartement and onset of emotional exhaustion, as a correlation between aggressiveness, aggressiveness-anger in man and oncet of depersonalization. Finally we correlated the absence of tension-anxiety as trouble of mood and overturning as defence mechanism with a good personal accomplishment at work. CONCLUSION The burnout syndrome is present in health-care workers in ICU and it is significantly affected by operating role and gender. We must be aware of this phenomenon in order to study it and to reduce it.
Laughter and filler detection in naturalistic audio

Laughter and fillers are common phenomenon in speech, and play an important role in communication. In this study, we present Deep Neural Network (DNN) and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based systems to classify non-verbal cues (laughter and fillers) from verbal speech in naturalistic audio. We propose improvements over a deep learning system proposed in [1]. Particularly, we propose a simple method to combine spectral features with pitch information to capture prosodic and spectral cues for filler/laughter. Additionally, we propose using a wider time context for feature extraction so that the time evolution of the spectral and prosodic structure can also be exploited for classification. Furthermore, we propose to use CNN for classification. The new method is evaluated on conversational telephony speech (CTS, drawn from Switchboard and Fisher) data and UT-Opinion corpus. Our results shows that the new system improves the AUC (area under the curve) metric by 8.15% and 11.9% absolute for laughters, and 4.85% and 6.01% absolute for fillers, over the baseline system, for CTS and UT-Opinion data, respectively. Finally, we analyze the results to explain the difference in performance between traditional CTS data and naturalistic audio (UT-Opinion), and identify challenges that need to be addressed to make systems perform better for practical data.
Can Group Incentives Alleviate Moral Hazard? The Role of Pro-Social Preferences

Incentivizing unobservable effort in risky environments, such as in insurance, credit, and labor markets, is vital as moral hazard may otherwise cause significant welfare losses including the outright failure of markets. Ensuring incentive-compatibility through state-contingent contracts between principal and agent, however, is undesirable for risk-averse agents. We provide a theoretical intuition on how pro-social preferences between agents in a joint liability group contract can ensure incentive-compatibility. Two independent large-scale behavioral experiments framed in an insurance context support the hypotheses derived from our theory. In particular, effort decreases when making agents' payoff less state-dependent, but this effect is mitigated with joint liability in a group scheme where agents are additionally motivated by pro-social concerns. Activating strategic motives slightly increases effort further; particularly in non-anonymous groups with high network strength. The results support existing evidence on joint liability groups and further suggest that even if peer pressure to ensure effort provision is absent, such group policies can improve efficiency when agents are pro-social.
Insulin and IGF-1 Mediated Inhibition of Apoptosis in CHO Cells Grown in Suspension in a Protein-free Medium

When Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells were grown in suspension and deprived of serum, 40% of them became apoptotic after 72 hours, as determined by flow cytometry analysis of TUNEL-labelled cells. Cell viability, assessed by erythrocin B staining, decreased correspondingly. An increase in the total fraction of cells expressing interleukin converting enzyme (ICE; caspase 1), B-cell lymphoma 2 protein (Bcl-2,) and Bcl-2 associated x protein (Bax) was shown by antibody probing and subsequent flow cytometry. The p53 tumour suppressor gene product level remained low within the cell population. Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) inhibited cell death in a concentration-dependent manner, and at 20ng/ml, cell viability was maintained close to 100% and no apoptotic cells were detected. Also, insulin was shown to inhibit cell death — at 1. 0μg/ml, cell viability was 95%, whereas 10% of the cells stained for apoptosis. At the highest concentrations of IGF-1 and insulin, the expression of ICE, Bcl-2 and Bax was fully suppressed, whereas the p53 product level increased, despite still being detectable in a minority of cells. Under these conditions, IGF-1 may increase p53 expression to restrain abnormal cell proliferation. It is concluded that special attention should be paid to exposure and culture conditions that induce acquired susceptibility to a toxic insult, during the development and validation of cell-based assays.
mdr1a deficiency corrects sterility in Niemann–Pick C1 protein deficient female mice

Niemann–Pick type C disease is a progressive neurological disease with cholesterol storage in liver, and npc1−/− mice share these features and are sterile. We have searched for the cause of sterility and found normal folliculogenesis and progesterone levels but lack of implantation. Multiple drug resistance (MDR) P‐glycoproteins are plasma membrane proteins implicated in the movement of drugs and lipids across membranes. Their functions are inhibited by progesterone, which has been shown to alter cellular cholesterol homeostasis and has implicated P‐glycoproteins in the movement of cholesterol to the endoplasmic reticulum. We have introduced the mdr1a knockout into the npc1 mutant line. While the neurological disease continues at its usual rate, preventing the females from taking care of their litters, npc1−/−, mdr1a−/− females became fertile. Although the mdr1a P‐glycoprotein co‐localizes with caveolae, neither caveolin‐1 nor npc1 levels were significantly altered in the livers of double homozygotes. The absence of mdr1a was confirmed by immunoblotting, but npc1 deficiency was not associated with consistent changes in cerebellar mdr1a in mdr1a+/+ mice. The results show that a mdr1a mutation is an in vivo suppressor of female sterility in npc1 deficient mice. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 62: 167–173, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Selective CGRP and adrenomedullin peptide binding by tethered RAMP‐calcitonin receptor‐like receptor extracellular domain fusion proteins

Calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP) and adrenomedullin (AM) are related peptides that are potent vasodilators. The CGRP and AM receptors are heteromeric protein complexes comprised of a shared calcitonin receptor‐like receptor (CLR) subunit and a variable receptor activity modifying protein (RAMP) subunit. RAMP1 enables CGRP binding whereas RAMP2 confers AM specificity. How RAMPs determine peptide selectivity is unclear and the receptor stoichiometries are a topic of debate with evidence for 1:1, 2:2, and 2:1 CLR:RAMP stoichiometries. Here, we describe bacterial production of recombinant tethered RAMP‐CLR extracellular domain (ECD) fusion proteins and biochemical characterization of their peptide binding properties. Tethering the two ECDs ensures complex stability and enforces defined stoichiometry. The RAMP1‐CLR ECD fusion purified as a monomer, whereas the RAMP2‐CLR ECD fusion purified as a dimer. Both proteins selectively bound their respective peptides with affinities in the low micromolar range. Truncated CGRP(27‐37) and AM(37‐52) fragments were identified as the minimal ECD complex binding regions. The CGRP C‐terminal amide group contributed to, but was not required for, ECD binding, whereas the AM C‐terminal amide group was essential for ECD binding. Alanine‐scan experiments identified CGRP residues T30, V32, and F37 and AM residues P43, K46, I47, and Y52 as critical for ECD binding. Our results identify CGRP and AM determinants for receptor ECD complex binding and suggest that the CGRP receptor functions as a 1:1 heterodimer. In contrast, the AM receptor may function as a 2:2 dimer of heterodimers, although our results cannot rule out 2:1 or 1:1 stoichiometries.
Molecular investigations to improve diagnostic accuracy in patients with ARC syndrome

Arthrogryposis, Renal dysfunction and Cholestasis (ARC) syndrome is a multi‐system autosomal recessive disorder caused by germline mutations in VPS33B. The detection of germline VPS33B mutations removes the need for diagnostic organ biopsies (these carry a>50% risk of life‐threatening haemorrhage due to platelet dysfunction); however, VPS33B mutations are not detectable in∼25% of patients. In order further to define the molecular basis of ARC we performed mutation analysis and mRNA and protein studies in patients with a clinical diagnosis of ARC. Here we report novel mutations in VPS33B in patients from Eastern Europe and South East Asia. One of the mutations was present in 7 unrelated Korean patients. Reduced expression of VPS33B and cellular phenotype was detected in fibroblasts from patients clinically diagnosed with ARC with and without known VPS33B mutations. One mutation‐negative patient was found to have normal mRNA and protein levels. This patient's clinical condition improved and he is alive at the age of 2.5 years. Thus we show that all patients with a classical clinical course of ARC had decreased expression of VPS33B whereas normal VPS33B expression was associated with good prognosis despite initial diagnosis of ARC. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
High-Cost Debt and Perceived Creditworthiness: Evidence from the U.K.

When taking up high-cost debt signals poor credit risk to lenders, consumers must trade off alleviating credit constraints today with exacerbating them in the future. We document this trade-off by exploiting the random assignment of applicants to loan officers with different propensities to approve otherwise identical loans by a high cost lender in the U.K. For the average applicant, taking up a high-cost loan has a large, immediate, and permanent impact on the credit score. Take-up also leads to more default and credit rationing by standard lenders. In contrast, borrowers whose credit score is not affected by take-up — because they already have low credit scores at the time of application — are no more likely to default and experience no further credit rationing. Thus, high cost credit has a negative impact on future financial health when it affects borrower reputation, but not otherwise. The evidence suggests that high-cost borrowing may leave a self-reinforcing stigma of poor credit risk.
A Low-RCS and High-Gain Circularly Polarized Antenna With a Low Profile

A low-radar-cross-section and high-gain broadband circularly polarized (CP) antenna with a low profile was specially designed using metasurface concepts. A polarization conversion metasurface is designed and used as the radiator of the proposed CP antenna. It is shown that a good axial ratio and high gain can be obtained over a broad band. Three kinds of artificial magnetic conductors are arranged around the polarization conversion metasurface. By making the discrepancies of the reflection phases among the artificial magnetic conductors and polarization conversion metasurface to be 90° in turn, the monostatic radar cross section of the proposed antenna is reduced in a wide frequency band covering the operation frequency band of the CP antenna. Good agreement between the experimental and simulation results is obtained.
Dual Effects of Resveratrol on Cell Death and Proliferation of Colon Cancer Cells

ABSTRACT Colorectal cancer remains a main cause of deaths worldwide, and novel agents are being searched to treat this disease. Polyphenols have emerged as promising therapeutic tools in cancer. Resveratrol (3,5,4′-trihydoxy-trans-stilbene) induces cell death in different tumor cell lines, and it also stimulates the proliferation of specific breast and prostate cancer cell lines. Here, we studied the impact of resveratrol over a 100-fold concentration range on cell death and proliferation of HT-29 colorectal adenocarcinoma cells. After 96 h of treatment, a biphasic pattern was observed. At lower concentrations (1 and 10 μmol/l), resveratrol increased the cell number, as did the polyphenol quercetin. At 50 or 100 μmol/l, resveratrol reduced the cell number and increased the percentage of apoptotic or necrotic cells, thus indicating cytotoxicity. On HCT116 colon cancer cells, however, no proliferative properties of resveratrol were observed. Resveratrol-induced cytotoxicity on HT-29 cells was associated with NADPH oxidase activation and increased levels of histone γH2AX, a marker of DNA damage, paralleled by enhanced sirtuin 6 levels, likely as a repair mechanism. Overall, resveratrol may be an effective tool in anti-tumor chemotherapy. However, since under some conditions it may favor tumor cell growth, appropriate local concentrations must be achieved to minimize unwanted effects of resveratrol.
Infectious Agent Detection With SERS-Active Silver Nanorod Arrays Prepared by Oblique Angle Deposition

The aligned silver nanorod array substrates prepared by the oblique angle deposition method are capable of providing extremely high enhancement factors (~5times108) at near-infrared wavelengths (785 nm) for a standard reporter molecule 1,2 trans-(bis)pyridyl-ethene (BPE). The enhancement factor depends strongly on the length of the Ag nanorods, the substrate coating, the polarization of the excitation light, as well as the incident angle. With the current optimum structure, we demonstrate that the detection limit for BPE can be lower than 0.1 fM. We also show that this surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-active substrate can serve as a sensor to detect and differentiate the molecular fingerprints of several important human pathogens, particularly, respiratory syncytial virus, human immunodeficiency virus, rotavirus, and the bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Utilizing chemometric methods, SERS nanorod array data can be used to sensitively detect and to classify viruses at the strain level. These results suggest that the SERS Ag nanorod array is a powerful technique for direct, rapid, and sensitive detection of infectious agents.
Human osteosarcoma expresses specific ephrin profiles

The molecular mechanisms underlying malignancy of osteosarcoma are unknown. It has been reported that eph receptor protein tyrosine kinases and their ligands, ephrins, are associated with increased tumorigenicity in patients with breast carcinoma and melanoma. The expression and role of eph/ephrins in human osteosarcoma has not yet been characterized.
Online Learning with Bayesian Classification Trees Supplementary Material

This document provides the following, additional contributions to our CVPR 2016 submission: • in Section A we provide details about how to derive some formulæ that appear in the main paper; • in Section B we provide a complexity analysis of our algorithm; • in Section C we provide additional experimental analyses. Specifically, in Section C.1 we provide Matlab timings of our non-optimized implementation. In Section C.2, we demonstrate and discuss the positive effects of an increasing ensemble size for both, depth 7 and depth 8 BOF-S ensembles. Moreover, we provide a guide on how to perform model selection based on the online development of the ensemble training loss in Section C.3.
Cloud Extraction from Chinese High Resolution Satellite Imagery by Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis and Object-Based Machine Learning

Automatic cloud extraction from satellite imagery is a vital process for many applications in optical remote sensing since clouds can locally obscure the surface features and alter the reflectance. Clouds can be easily distinguished by the human eyes in satellite imagery via remarkable regional characteristics, but finding a way to automatically detect various kinds of clouds by computer programs to speed up the processing efficiency remains a challenge. This paper introduces a new cloud detection method based on probabilistic latent semantic analysis (PLSA) and object-based machine learning. The method begins by segmenting satellite images into superpixels by Simple Linear Iterative Clustering (SLIC) algorithm while also extracting the spectral, texture, frequency and line segment features. Then, the implicit information in each superpixel is extracted from the feature histogram through the PLSA model by which the descriptor of each superpixel can be computed to form a feature vector for classification. Thereafter, the cloud mask is extracted by optimal thresholding and applying the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm at the superpixel level. The GrabCut algorithm is then applied to extract more accurate cloud regions at the pixel level by assuming the cloud mask as the prior knowledge. When compared to different cloud detection methods in the literature, the overall accuracy of the proposed cloud detection method was up to 90 percent for ZY-3 and GF-1 images, which is about a 6.8 percent improvement over the traditional spectral-based methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method can automatically and accurately detect clouds using the multispectral information of the available four bands.
The Impact Of Trade Openness On Environmental Quality: An Empirical Analysis Of Emerging And Developing Economies

This study examines the impact of trade openness on environmental quality using a dynamic panel data model for 60 emerging and developing economies. We attempt to examine the trade-environment relationship for the period 2002 to 2012, employing Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and CO2 emissions as the two indicators of environmental quality. The paper tries to fill in the lack of dynamic panel data models investigating trade-environment relationship in emerging economies. The fixed effects model elicits that trade openness improves EPI, albeit it increases CO2 emissions. When corrected for endogeneity, trade openness was found to have no significant impact on EPI, though it escalates CO2 emissions. GMM findings with EPI highlight that political factors improve environmental quality, whereas income and population have detrimental effects . In the GMM estimations with CO2 emissions, trade openness, income, energy consumption and population were found to have deleterious effects on environmental quality. The empirical findings impart support to the contentions over the impact of trade on environmental quality. Efficacious economic, energy, infrastructural and institutional policies hold the key to environmental sustainability in emerging economies.
Treatment of social phobia by endoscopic thoracic sympathicotomy.

OBJECTIVE To analyse the severity of various symptoms and the developmental life history in social phobia. To estimate the value of ETS in the treatment of chronic social phobia. DESIGN Prospective study. SETTING Clinic for Psychoneurology and Surgery in Tampere, Finland. SUBJECTS Consecutive series of patients (n = 51). INTERVENTIONS Endoscopic thoracic sympathicotomy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Qualitative ideographic inquiry. Questionnaire of the symptom severity using visual analogue scale. RESULTS The life history included mental and physical abuse in 61%, paternal alcoholism in 26%. Four family subtypes were named: quarrelsome, cruel, alcoholic, and perfectionist. The pathognomonic symptoms of social phobia: hyperhidrosis, palpitation, blushing, tremor, and anxiety, were all highly significantly (p < 0.001) alleviated by ETS. 88% of the patients were satisfied with the result. There were no complications. CONCLUSION ETS seems a promising alternative to conservative therapy for social phobia.
Haemophilusducreyi Requires an Intact flp Gene Cluster for VirulenceinHumans

ABSTRACT An intact Haemophilus ducreyi flp operon is essential for microcolony formation in vitro. tadA is the 9th of 15 genes in the operon and has homology to NTPases of type IV secretion systems. Fifteen human volunteers were experimentally infected with both H. ducreyi 35000HP and the tadA mutant, 35000HP.400. Papules developed at similar rates at sites inoculated with the mutant and parent, while pustules formed at 36.4% of parent sites and at 0% of mutant sites (P = 0.001). Compared to 35000HP, 35000HP.400 had only a modest but significant reduction in lesion scores in the temperature-dependent rabbit model of chancroid. These data suggest that proteins secreted by the flp locus are required for full expression of virulence by H. ducreyi in humans but have less of a role in virulence in an animal model of infection.
Long-Run Returns to Education

While there is no doubt that health is strongly correlated with education, whether schooling exerts a causal impact on health is not firmly established. We exploit a Dutch compulsory schooling law to estimate the causal effect of education on mortality. The reform provides a powerful instrument, significantly raising years of schooling, which, in turn, has a significant and robust negative effect on mortality. For men surviving to age 81, an extra year of schooling is estimated to reduce the probability of dying before the age of 89 by almost three percentage points relative to a baseline of 50 percent.