Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased Susceptibility to Ischemic Brain Damage in Transgenic Mice Overexpressing the Amyloid Precursor Protein

We studied the role of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) in ischemic brain damage using transgenic mice overexpressing APP. The middle cerebral artery (MCA) was occluded in FVB/N mice expressing APP695.SWE (Swedish mutation) and in nontransgenic littermates. Infarct volume (cubic millimeters) was assessed 24 hr later in thionin-stained brain sections. The infarct produced by MCA occlusion was enlarged in the transgenics (+32 ± 6%;n = 12; p < 0.05;t test). Measurement of APP by ELISA revealed that, although relatively high levels of Aβ were present in the brain of the transgenics (Aβ1–40 = 80 ± 19 pmol/g;n = 6), there were no differences between ischemic and nonischemic hemispheres (p > 0.05). The reduction in cerebral blood flow produced by MCA occlusion at the periphery of the ischemic territory was more pronounced in APP transgenics (−42 ± 8%; n = 9) than in controls (−20 ± 8%; n = 9). Furthermore, the vasodilatation produced by neocortical application of the endothelium-dependent vasodilator acetylcholine (10 μm) was reduced by 82 ± 5% (n = 8;p < 0.05) in APP transgenics. The data demonstrate that APP overexpression increases the susceptibility of the brain to ischemic injury. The effect is likely to involve the Aβ-induced disturbance in endothelium-dependent vascular reactivity that leads to more severe ischemia in regions at risk for infarction. The cerebral vascular actions of peptides deriving from APP metabolism may play a role in the pathogenic effects of APP.
Sovereign Ratings and Their Asymmetric Response to Fundamentals

Changes in sovereign ratings are strongly asymmetric, as downgrades tend to be deeper and faster than upgrades. In other words, once a country loses its initial status it takes a long time to recover it. Using S&P data, we characterise “rating cycles” in terms of their duration and amplitude. We then study whether the agency reaction to new economic and financial domestic information also differs during upgrade and downgrade phases. Our results indicate that favourable fundamentals could be helpful for smoothing and slowing down the path of downgrades, whereas favourable fundamentals do not seem to accelerate the rating recovery.
Do input subsidy programs “crowd in” or “crowd out” commercial market development? Modeling fertilizer demand in a two‐channel marketing system

Many governments in developing countries distribute fertilizer at subsidized prices in an effort to stimulate small farmers' agricultural productivity and food security. Prior fertilizer demand studies have largely failed to account for the effects of government programs on farmers' commercial purchases. Using a double hurdle model and nationally representative rural household panel data in Zambia, we distinguish between these sources and measure the contemporaneous “crowding in” and “crowding out” effects of government input programs on commercial fertilizer sales. Where the private sector is relatively active and average wealth is higher (areas seemingly more likely to be targeted by government programs), results indicate that subsidies have substantially crowded out the private sector, in some cases to the point that such programs could actually lower overall fertilizer use. On the other hand, in poorer areas where the private sector is relatively inactive, subsidies help to generate demand and crowd in private sector retailers. Empirical studies explicitly modeling farmers' fertilizer purchase behavior within a dual marketing framework can provide important insights for agricultural policy discussions in developing countries.
Modelling and forecasting central Helsinki office rents

Office market modelling has attracted a mounting amount of interest among researchers and practitioners during past decades. Growing research activity in the area is not surprising considering the importance of rent on property values. Nonetheless, very little quantitative research on Finnish rental markets has been carried out. The objective of this study is to respond to that lack of research by examining office rent determination in the Helsinki central business district (CBD) in reduced form single equation context. We discover that changes in central Helsinki office rents are subject to variations in new office completions and changes in the added value of services sector. As historical fit does not necessarily translate into a satisfactory predictive fit, the forecasting adequacy of the final model is also tested by constructing out of the sample forecast over 2007-2009. We find that the model outperforms two naA¯ve forecasting methods, but fails to perfectly trail the actual index.
Stages of financial crime by business organizations

Purpose – The inherent business focus of much organized financial crime has received increased attention in recent years. As organized crime receives increased attention, the corporate world of business enterprises is identified as an arena for organized crime. This paper aims to focus on the issues involved.Design/methodology/approach – Based on financial crime literature, business organization literature, and stage model literature, this paper conceptualizes as stage model for organized financial crime by corporate business organizations.Findings – The four stages are labeled agency, alliance, network, and mafia business, respectively.Research limitations/implications – Future research will empirically have to validate the stage hypothesis in this paper.Originality/value – The paper develops a stage model for financial crime.
Does More Mean Less? The Male/Female Wage Gap and the Proportion of Females at the Establishment Level

We examine the theoretical, empirical, and public policy implications of the proportion of females in the establishment. Arrow's model of heterogeneous employer discrimination provides predictions that are tested. Empirical results indicate support for the theory using establishment data, but a contradiction is obtained with the individual data. It is estimated that the proportion of females in the establishment accounts for 26 per cent of the gender log wage gap. Implications for employment equity are considered in the context of a new method of decomposing the log wage gap and indicate that such public policy can reduce this gap by 20 per cent.
Visualizing and comparing circular genomes using the CGView family of tools

Abstract Graphical genome maps are widely used to assess genome features and sequence characteristics. The CGView (Circular Genome Viewer) software family is a popular collection of tools for generating genome maps for bacteria, organelles and viruses. In this review, we describe the capabilities of the original CGView program along with those of subsequent companion applications, including the CGView Server and the CGView Comparison Tool. We also discuss GView, a graphical user interface-enabled rewrite of CGView, and the GView Server, which offers several integrated analyses for identifying shared or unique genome regions relative to a collection of comparison genomes. We conclude with some remarks about our current development efforts related to CGView aimed at adding new functionality while increasing ease of use.
Can policy improve liquidity during a financial crisis?

Abstract This paper empirically examines the development and determinants of the liquidity position in the financial sector during the recent financial crisis in the Baltic-Scandinavian region. We look at fiscal and monetary policy implications of liquidity problems arising in the crisis. The results are consistent with theoretical predictions for a small open economy with the expected sign of changes and developments in common economic indicators. Changes (and the speed of changes) in interest rates, GDP and money supply have occurred relatively rapidly, meaning that the rising area of the LM-curve has been shorter than theory would predict. Market reactions took place quickly and simultaneously – there was no time for slow restructuring, so that liquidity needs were higher than usual.
Protein Modification by Deamidation Indicates Variations in Joint Extracellular Matrix Turnover*

As extracellular proteins age, they undergo and accumulate nonenzymatic post-translational modifications that cannot be repaired. We hypothesized that these could be used to systemically monitor loss of extracellular matrix due to chronic arthritic diseases such as osteoarthritis (OA). To test this, we predicted sites of deamidation in cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) and confirmed, by mass spectroscopy, the presence of deamidated (Asp64) and native (Asn64) COMP epitopes (mean 0.95% deamidated COMP (D-COMP) relative to native COMP) in cartilage. An Asp64, D-COMP-specific ELISA was developed using a newly created monoclonal antibody 6-1A12. In a joint replacement study, serum D-COMP (p = 0.017), but not total COMP (p = 0.5), declined significantly after replacement demonstrating a joint tissue source for D-COMP. In analyses of 450 participants from the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project controlled for age, gender, and race, D-COMP was associated with radiographic hip (p < 0.0001) but not knee (p = 0.95) OA severity. In contrast, total COMP was associated with radiographic knee (p < 0.0001) but not hip (p = 0.47) OA severity. D-COMP was higher in soluble proteins extracted from hip cartilage proximal to OA lesions compared with remote from lesions (p = 0.007) or lesional and remote OA knee (p < 0.01) cartilage. Total COMP in cartilage did not vary by joint site or proximity to the lesion. This study demonstrates the presence of D-COMP in articular cartilage and the systemic circulation, and to our knowledge, it is the first biomarker to show specificity for a particular joint site. We believe that enrichment of deamidated epitope in hip OA cartilage indicates a lesser repair response of hip OA compared with knee OA cartilage.
Microfluidic Valve Employing the pH-Responsive Hydrogel Microsphere as an Actuating Element

In this paper, we propose a new fabrication method of pH-responsive microfluidic valves and suggest the feasibility as a microminiature systems without peripheral devices. Conventionally, in-situ photopolymerization method has been employed to build the micro functional structure inside microfluidic channel. Here, we suggest a new method allowing the mass production of stimuli-responsive microsystem through the use of pre-made microstructure as actuating element like assembly of commercial products in the factory. We have massively fabricated pH-responsive microspheres that act as actuating component through the use of PDMS-based microfluidic apparatus and 'on the fly' photopolymerization method. By the incorporation of this microsphere into the microvalve during the fabrication process, we have produced the pH-responsive microfluidic valve in a simple way. The operation and the function of the fabricated microvalve were evaluated through the diverse experiments. The microvalve was successfully fabricated, and functioned well according to the pH change
Extracting and modeling user interests based on social media

With the increasing demand for personalized applications, user interests' mining is gaining more and more importance. Various sources of information have been used for extracting and modeling parameters that portray users' interests. Social media has become one of the most popular and significant platform for information sharing and dissemination. These social platforms provide users not only a medium to share the content of their interest but also provide an insight of their day to day activities. Mining this content to define user interests can be used for the customization and personalization of a variety of commercial and non-commercial applications like product marketing and recommendation. In this paper, we propose a user interest's model using a popular social community called twitter. Proposed user model represents interests in the form of ontological concepts interlinked with predefined source ontology by using concepts from Wikipedia and Wordnet.
Identification of FOXM1‐induced epigenetic markers for head and neck squamous cell carcinomas

Epigenetic reprogramming of the methylome has been implicated in all stages of cancer evolution. It is now well accepted that cancer cells exploit epigenetic reprogramming, a mechanism that regulates stem/progenitor cell renewal and differentiation, to promote cancer initiation and progression. The oncogene FOXM1 has been implicated in all major forms of human cancer.
Constructing multicast routing tree for inter-cloud data transmission: an approximation algorithmic perspective

Networking plays a crucial role in cloud computing especially in an inter-cloud environment, where data communications among data centers located at different geographical sites form the foundation of inter-cloud federation. Data transmissions required for inter-cloud federation in the complex inter-cloud networking system are often point-to-multi points, which calls for a more effective and efficient multicast routing algorithm in complex networking systems. In this paper, we investigate the multicast routing problem in the inter-cloud context with K constraints where K U+2265 2. Unlike most of existing algorithms that are too complex to be applied in practical scenarios, a novel and fast algorithm for establishing multicast routing tree for interclouds is proposed. The proposed algorithm leverages an entropybased process to aggregate all weights into a comprehensive metric, and then uses it to search a multicast tree U+0028 MT U+0029 on the basis of the shortest path tree U+0028 SPT U+0029.We conduct complexity analysis and extensive simulations for the proposed algorithm from the approximation perspective. Both analytical and experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm is more efficient than a representative multi-constrained multicast routing algorithm in terms of both speed and accuracy, and thus we believe that the proposed algorithm is applicable to the inter-cloud environment.
IS projects and implementation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to participate in the discussion related to why IS projects, both in Western and in Eastern European countries, e.g. Poland, often fail. One major reason is claimed to be poor implementation, and the article asks whether the stakeholders involved overlook the challenge of and the need for knowledge in change management (CM) when implementing complex IT systems.Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on observations of what is reflected in the CM, the project management (PM) and the IS literature. A basic assumption for the approach is that what PM and IS textbooks focus on strongly influences the views and practice of practitioners. A content analysis method was applied to examine empirically 22 textbooks to evaluate whether the IT/PM literature emphasizes relevant essential recommendations developed in the CM literature for handling changes. A mini‐case was used to illustrate how implementation is done in practice.Findings – The research reveals that in .
Effects of piped water supply on the incidence of diarrheal diseases in children in southern Thailand.

Simple piped water supply (PWS) is increasingly popular in rural areas of southern Thailand where diarrheal diseases are quite common. The current study was carried out in 1990 in the southern part of Thailand to determine whether the use of PWS could significantly reduce the incidence rate of diarrheal diseases among the children under two years of age. A dynamic cohort study started in January 1990 in seven Muslim villages where PWS was installed for some time and there was a mixture of PWS users and non-users in each village. The cohorts comprised 126 and 137 children using and not using PWS, respectively. They were followed up weekly for one year. The crude incidence rates of diarrhea episodes for children using and not using PWS were 2.54 (SE = 0.21) and 3.52 (SE = 0.18) episodes per child-year, respectively (p < 0.01). The number of diarrheal attacks in each week was modeled as a Poisson variate using a generalized estimating equation, adjusting for correlation within the child. The analysis was carried out for each village separately and meta-analysis was used to combine these analyses. The rate ratio of PWS, adjusted for concurrent age and season, food supplement and common cold, was 0.74 (95% CI = 0.59-0.93), indicating a statistically significant reduction of one quarter. However, the proportion of users decreased with time due to management failure. It was concluded that diarrheal disease in the study area was mild but the incidence rate was high. The effect of PWS on the incidence rate of diarrhea varied with locality. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
The Role of Strategic Agility in Acquisitions

The aim of the present study is to examine the role of strategic agility as a component of the acquisition process by investigating its constituent elements and effects on knowledge transfer in the context of acquisitions. The study also elaborates on the relationship between knowledge transfer and performance in acquisitions. We test our theoretical model on a quantitative data set of acquisitions conducted by Finnish companies.
VCCT and integral concepts of bi-material interface fracture in low-k structures — Going to understand relation

As a consequence of increasing functional density and miniaturization in microelectronics new low-k and ultra-low-k materials are going to be increasingly used in Back-end of line (BEoL) layers of advanced CMOS technologies. These ongoing trends cause novel challenges for reliability analysis and prediction of relevant electronics assemblies. The optimization of fracture and fatigue resistance of those BEoL structures under manufacturing/packaging (during lead-free reflow-soldering, in particular) as well as chip package interaction (CPI) aspects is a key for further enhancements - see also [1]. In particular in this context the evaluation of the risk of delamination at bi-material interfaces and damaging and cracking of materials needs to be improved. The application of advanced finite element techniques combined with experimental observations and validations, provide a way to gain more fundamental knowledge and ultimately, to understand, predict and prevent reliability issues. However, cracking and delamination risk evaluations hang behind the needs - especially for nonlinear, transient, thermal loading of bi-material interface fracture. At this point, the correct mode mixity separation at bi-material interface cracks is a precondition for proper delamination risk evaluation. However, different approaches are known to be dependent on mesh density, integration path and/or reference length. We discuss the use of VCCT and integral fracture concepts for bulk and bi-material interface fracture in multi-scale and multi-failure modeling approaches. Energy release rate (ERR), stress intensity factors (SIF) and the related phase angles as results of the different approaches will be investigated and compared. Analytic relations between them will be pointed out and verified. Therefore, the frequently investigated role of reference length, normalizing length and path dependence for the calculation of the fracture parameters is discussed. Effects on the fracture parameters are finally discussed related to the cracking risk of BEoL structures. The authors combine these numerical approaches with experimental results in order to optimize the toughness for bulk material fracture and interface delamination with regard to structural modifications.
Transfer factor, lung volumes, resistance and ventilation distribution in healthy adults

Monitoring of chronic lung disease requires reference values of lung function indices, including putative markers of small airway function, spanning a wide age range. We measured spirometry, transfer factor of the lung for carbon monoxide (TLCO), static lung volume, resistance and ventilation distribution in a healthy population, studying at least 20 subjects per sex and per decade between the ages of 20 and 80 years. With respect to the Global Lung Function Initiative reference data, our subjects had average z-scores for forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC) and FEV1/FVC of −0.12, 0.04 and −0.32, respectively. Reference equations were obtained which could account for a potential dependence of index variability on age and height. This was done for (but not limited to) indices that are pertinent to asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease studies: forced expired volume in 6 s, forced expiratory flow, TLCO, specific airway conductance, residual volume (RV)/total lung capacity (TLC), and ventilation heterogeneity in acinar and conductive lung zones. Deterioration in acinar ventilation heterogeneity and lung clearance index with age were more marked beyond 60 years, and conductive ventilation heterogeneity showed the greatest increase in variability with age. The most clinically relevant deviation from published reference values concerned RV/TLC values, which were considerably smaller than American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society-endorsed reference values. We present reference equations for median and variability of most lung function indices, in the age range 20–80 years http://ow.ly/SsZFW
Aerotaxis in Salmonella typhimurium: role of electron transport

Sensory transduction in aerotaxis required electron transport, in contrast to chemotaxis, which is independent of electron transport. Assays for aerotaxis were developed by employing spatial and temporal oxygen gradients imposed independently of respiration. By varying the step increase in oxygen concentration in the temporal assay, the dose-response relationship was obtained for aerotaxis in Salmonella typhimurium. A half-maximal response at 0.4 microM oxygen and inhibition by 5 mM KCN suggested that the "receptor" for aerotaxis is cytochrome o. The response was independent of adenosine triphosphate formation via oxidative phosphorylation but did correlate with changes in membrane potential monitored with the fluorescent cyanine dye diS-C3-(5). Nitrate and fumarate, which are alternative electron acceptors for the respiratory chain in S. typhimurium, inhibited aerotaxis when nitrate reductase and fumarate reductase were induced. These results support the hypothesis that taxis to oxygen, nitrate, and fumarate is mediated by the electron transport system and by changes in the proton motive force. Aerotaxis was normal in Escherichia coli mutants that were defective in the tsr, tar, or trg genes; in S. typhimurium, oxygen did not stimulate methylation of the products of these genes. A cheC mutant which shows an inverse response to chemoattractants also gave an inverse response to oxygen. Therefore, aerotaxis is transduced by a distinct and unidentified signally protein but is focused into the common chemosensory pathway before the step involving the cheC product. When S. typhimurium became anaerobic, the decreased proton motive force from glycolysis supported slow swimming but not tumbling, indicating that a minimum proton motive force was required for tumbling. The bacteria rapidly adapted to the anaerobic condition and resumed tumbling after about 3 min. The adaptation period was much shorter when the bacteria had been previously grown anaerobically.