Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
When Evidence is not Taken for Granted: The Use and Perception of “Evidence” in the Czech Republic Ministries

Abstract The role of evidence in policy-making is one of the most researched topics in public policy and public administration. However, surprisingly little research has been done on how public officials actually use evidence in everyday life practice. Moreover, these studies have been limited to countries that have been influenced by the evidence-based policy movement (EBP). Little is known about how the evidence is conceptualized and utilized in other countries which have not been so strongly influenced by EBP movement. This paper addresses this gap. Using a large-N survey on the Czech ministerial officials and in-depth interviews with them, we explore what is understood under the term of “evidence”, what kind of evidence is used and preferred by public officials and why. In doing so, we use four theoretical perspectives on the use of evidence. We show that despite the long-established tradition of using research in policy-making the importance of research evidence in the Czech Republic is far from being taken for granted. On the contrary, the immediate and personal experience is often preferred over the research findings. The exception to that are census-like statistical data and comparative data published by international organizations. We find some support for the two-communities metaphor, though these communities are not defined by their socio-demographic characteristics, but rather by their internal discourse and understanding of evidence.
An empirical phase diagram approach to investigate conformational stability of “second‐generation” functional mutants of acidic fibroblast growth factor‐1

Acidic fibroblast growth factor‐1 (FGF‐1) is an angiogenic protein which requires binding to a polyanion such as heparin for its mitogenic activity and physicochemical stability. To evaluate the extent to which this heparin dependence on solution stability could be reduced or eliminated, the structural integrity and conformational stability of 10 selected FGF‐1 mutants were examined as a function of solution pH and temperature by a series of spectroscopic methods including circular dichroism, intrinsic and extrinsic fluorescence spectroscopy and static light scattering. The biophysical data were summarized in the form of colored empirical phase diagrams (EPDs). FGF‐1 mutants were identified with stability profiles in the absence of heparin comparable to that of wild‐type FGF‐1 in the presence of heparin while still retaining their biological activity. In addition, a revised version of the EPD methodology was found to provide an information rich, high throughput approach to compare the effects of mutations on the overall conformational stability of proteins in terms of their response to environmental stresses such as pH and temperature.
Role of the Host Cell's Unfolded Protein Response in Arenavirus Infection

ABSTRACT Arenaviruses are enveloped RNA viruses with a nonlytic life cycle that cause acute and persistent infections. Here, we investigated the role of the host cell's unfolded protein response (UPR) in infection of the prototypic arenavirus lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV). In mammalian cells, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) chaperone protein GRP78/BiP functions as the principal sensor for the induction of the UPR and interacts with three mediators: kinase/endonuclease inositol-requiring protein 1 (IRE1), PKR-like ER kinase (PERK), and activating transcription factor 6 (ATF6). Acute infection with LCMV resulted in a selective induction of the ATF6-regulated branch of the UPR, whereas pathways controlled by PERK and IRE1 were neither activated nor blocked. Expression of individual LCMV proteins revealed that the viral glycoprotein precursor (GPC), but not that of other viral proteins, was responsible for the induction of ATF6. Rapid downregulation of the viral GPC during transition from acute to persistent LCMV infection restored basal levels of UPR signaling. To address a possible role of ATF6 signaling in LCMV infection, we used cells deficient in site 2 protease (S2P), a metalloprotease required for the activation of ATF6. Cells deficient in S2P showed significantly lower levels of production of infectious virus during acute but not persistent infection, indicating a requirement for ATF6-mediated signaling for optimal virus multiplication. In summary, acute LCMV infection seems to selectively induce the ATF6-regulated branch of the UPR that is likely beneficial for virus replication and cell viability, but it avoids induction of PERK and IRE1, whose activation may be detrimental for virus and the host cell.
Weight resilience and fruit and vegetable intake among African-American women in an obesogenic environment

Abstract Objective To investigate relationships between weight resilience (maintaining a normal weight in a food desert environment) and fruit and vegetable (F&V) intake, attitudes and barriers. Design Cross-sectional, in-person surveys collected May–December 2011, including self-reported data on F&V-related psychosocial factors, attitudes and barriers. Two 24 h dietary recalls were completed; weight and height were measured. Multivariable regression models estimated prevalence ratios (95 % CI). Setting Two low-income, predominantly African-American food deserts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Subjects Women aged 18–49 years (n 279) who were the primary food shopper in a household randomly selected for a parent study. Results Fifteen per cent were weight resilient, 30 % were overweight and 55 % were obese. Overall, 25 % reported eating ≥5 F&V servings/d. After adjustment for age, education, parity, employment, living alone, physical activity, per capita income and mean daily energy intake, women eating ≥5 F&V servings/d were 94 % more likely to be weight resilient compared with those eating <5 servings/d (1·94; 1·10, 3·43). Across BMI groups, self-efficacy regarding F&V consumption was high and few F&V barriers were reported. The most frequently reported barrier was concern about the cost of F&V (36 %). Of the attitudinal F&V-related factors, only concern about wasting food when serving F&V was associated with weight resilience in adjusted models (0·29; 0·09, 0·94). In a model predicting consuming ≥5 F&V servings/d, driving one’s own car to the store was the only attitudinal F&V-related factor associated with consumption (1·50; 1·00, 2·24). Conclusions In this population, weight resilience may be encouraged by improving access to affordable and convenient F&V options and providing education on ways to make them palatable to the entire household, rather than by shifting women’s F&V perceptions, which are already positive.
Abnormal responses to mid-ultraviolet light of cultured fibroblasts from patients with disorders featuring sunlight sensitivity.

Abstract We have examined the postultraviolet light (UV) colony-forming ability and DNA repair properties of human skin fibroblasts derived from two groups of donors at high risk of cancer: ( a ) persons exhibiting sensitivity to sunlight; and ( b ) persons with conditions possibly associated with an underlying defect in the repair of radiogenic DNA damage. A comparison has been made between the effects of far UV (254 nm) and mid UV (313 nm). The former is a well-studied but environmentally irrelevant carcinogen whereas the latter is a sparsely studied but environmentally relevant carcinogen. Relative to control strains from clinically normal donors, one strain in the first group, from a photosensitive dermatomyositic patient with basal cell carcinoma, displayed increased sensitivity to 313-nm light alone. The other strains surveyed in the first group (the two xeroderma pigmentosum strains and the one Bloom9s syndrome strain) were hypersensitive to both UV wavelengths. In the second group of disorders, the strains showed three types of responses: ( a ) hypersensitivity to 313-nm UV but not 254-nm UV (two of four ataxia telangiectasia strains); ( b ) hypersensitivity to both 313-nm UV and 254-nm UV (one of five Fanconi9s anemia strains); and ( c ) normal sensitivity at both wavelengths (both Rothmund-Thomson syndrome strains, the remaining four Fanconi9s anemia strains, the remaining two ataxia telangiectasia strains, the one hereditary retinoblastoma, and the one ataxia telangiectasia heterozygote strain). Biochemical studies performed on strains sensitive to 313-nm UV alone suggest that their unusual photoresponse is not attributable to defective repair of cyclobutyl pyrimidine dimers. Furthermore, our data imply that thymine glycols are unlikely candidates for the critical lethal lesions in 313-nm UV-sensitive strains. Evidence is presented in support of the contention that mid UV may be partially radiomimetic, thus extending our understanding of the deleterious biological effects of this ubiquitous environmental carcinogen.
Dualismo no Campo e Desigualdades Internas na Agricultura Familiar Brasileira

The purpose of this article is to identify the characteristic elements of Brazilian agricultural structure and demonstrate the marked inequality present in family farming in the country. For this, research on the bibliography was held on the subject in recent years, as well as a survey of official statistics related to the productive sector profile and the provision of rural credit. Overall, the study shows that there is a remarkable economic and political dualism between family farmers and commercial farmers/agribusiness in constant 1. Data de submissão: 28 de agosto de 2017. Data de aceite: 22 de dezembro de 2017. 2. Universidade do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte (UERN). Assú, Rio Grande do Norte, Brasil. E-mail: joaciraquino@yahoo.com. br 3. Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR-PPGDR). Pato Branco, Paraná, Brasil. E-mail: marciogazolla1@gmail.com 4. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. E-mail: schneide@ufrgs.br
The Revolution of Information Economics: The Past and the Future

The economics of information has constituted a revolution in economics, providing explanations of phenomena that previously had been unexplained and upsetting longstanding presumptions, including that of market efficiency, with profound implications for economic policy. Information failures are associated with numerous other market failures, including incomplete risk markets, imperfect capital markets, and imperfections in competition, enhancing opportunities for rent seeking and exploitation. This paper puts into perspective nearly a half century of research, including recent advances in understanding the implications of imperfect information for financial market regulation, macro-stability, inequality, and public and corporate governance; and in recognizing the endogeneity of information imperfections. It explores the consequences of recent advances in technology and the policy challenges and opportunities they present for competition policy and policies regarding privacy and transparency. The paper notes the role that information economics played in stimulating other advances in economics, including contract theory and behavioral economics. It reinvigorated institutional economics, showing how institutions mattered, in some cases explaining institutional features that could not be well-understood in the conventional paradigm, and in others showing how institutional responses to market failures might or might not be welfare enhancing. The paper argues that the new paradigm provides a markedly different, and better, lens for looking at the economy than the older perfect markets competitive paradigm.
Excitatory actions of GABA in developing chick vestibular afferents: Effects on resting electrical activity

The aim of this study was to characterize the effect of γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the resting multiunit activity of the vestibular afferents during development using the isolated inner ear of embryonic and postnatal chickens (E15‐E21 and P5). GABA (10−3 to 10−5 M; n = 133) and muscimol (10−3M) elicited an increase in the frequency of the basal discharge of the vestibular afferents. We found that GABA action was dose‐dependent and inversely related to animal age. Thus, the largest effect was observed in embryonic ages such as E15 and E17 and decreases in E21 and P5. The GABAA receptor antagonists, bicuculline (10−5M; n = 10) and picrotoxin (10−4M; n = 10), significantly decreased the excitatory action of GABA and muscimol (10−3M). Additionally, CNQX 10−6M, MCPG 10−5M and 7ClKyn 10−5M (n = 5) were co‐applied by bath substitution (n = 5). Both the basal discharge and the GABA action significantly decreased in these experimental conditions. The chloride channel blocker 9‐AC 0.5 mM produced an important reduction in the effect of GABA 10−3 (n = 5) and 10−4M (n = 5). Thus, our results suggest an excitatory role of GABA in the resting activity of the vestibular afferents that can be explained by changes in the gradient of concentration of Cl− during development. We show for the first time that the magnitude of this GABA effect decreases at later stages of embryonic and early postnatal development. Taking into account the results with glutamatergic antagonists, we conclude that GABA has a presynaptic action but is not the neurotransmitter in the vestibular afferent synapses, although it could act as a facilitator of the spontaneous activity and may regulate glutamate release. Synapse 67:374–381, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The structural sources of postcommunist regime trajectories

ABSTRACT Regime trajectories in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU) have diverged considerably since the collapse of communism. We argue that this variation is the product of two largely structural factors: the salience of anti-Soviet nationalism and the opportunity for membership in the European Union (EU) that was mostly the product of geography. In Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, anti-Soviet nationalism and the stimulus of EU democratic conditionality contributed to the rise of a non-communist elite that confronted serious internal and external pressure to democratize. By contrast, weaker anti-Soviet nationalism and dearth of pressure from the EU allowed for the persistence of communist elites who faced relatively weak external constraints on autocratic behavior. We argue that these structural factors played a more important role in accounting for variation in democratization across the postcommunist world than factors such as institutional design. At the same time, the different character of structural forces in Eastern Europe and the FSU has likely created greater room for voluntarist factors in determining regime variation within the former Soviet Union than within Eastern Europe.
Translocation and Surface Expression of Lipidated Serogroup B Capsular Polysaccharide in Neisseria meningitidis

ABSTRACT The capsule of N. meningitidis serogroup B, (α2→8)-linked polysialic acid and the capsules of other meningococcal serogroups and of other gram-negative bacterial pathogens are anchored in the outer membrane through a 1,2-diacylglycerol moiety. Previous work on the meningococcal cps complex in Escherichia coli K-12 indicated that deletion of genes designated lipA and lipB caused intracellular accumulation of hyperelongated capsule polymers lacking the phospholipid substitution. To better understand the role of lip and lipB in capsule expression in a meningococcal background, the location, sequence, and relationship to related bacterial capsule genes were defined and specific mutations in lipA and lipB were generated in the serogroup B meningococcal strain NMB. The lipA and lipB genes are located on the 3′ end of the ctr operon and are most likely transcribed independently. Inactivation of lipA, lipB, and both resulted in the same total levels of capsular polymer production as in the parental controls; however, these mutants were as sensitive as an unencapsulated mutant to killing by normal human serum. Immunogold electron microscopy and flow cytometric analyses revealed intracellular inclusions of capsular polymers in lipA, lipB, and lipA lipB mutants. Capsular polymers purified from lipA, lipB, and lipA lipB mutants were lipidated. The phospholipid anchor was shown by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy analysis to be a phosphodiester-linked 1,2-dipalmitoyl (C16:0) glycerol moiety and was identical in structure to that found on the wild-type meningococcal capsule polymers. Thus, lipA and lipB do not encode proteins responsible for diacylglycerophosphatidic acid substitution of the meningococcal capsule polymer; rather, they are required for proper translocation and surface expression of the lipidated polymer.
A fast MPPT technique based on I-V curve characteristics under partial shading

This paper has proposed a new MPPT scheme to speed up the global peak searching process under partial shading. In this scheme, characteristics of I-V curve is critically analyzed to design an intelligent mechanism. Through that, several sections of the curve can be easily avoided from scanning as there is no chance of having a local peak. Consequently, MPPT scanning under partial shading become guided and faster to detect the global peak. The MPPT algorithm is simulated in Matlab Simulink where PV array is implemented adjunct with a buck-boost converter. Several tests are carried out with multiple peaks based partial shading curves using the proposed scheme, adaptive P&O and PSO. In comparison of tracking, the proposed scheme outperforms the other two by significant margin. Depending on the cases, proposed method has speeded up the searching process by 2-3 times than adaptive P&O and PSO. Besides, in all cases the MPPT efficiency is well maintained above 99.8%.
An EKF SLAM algorithm for mobile robot with sensor bias estimation

This paper presents an improved EKF method applied into mobile robot SLAM problem, which has taken the sensor bias problem into consideration. Mobile robot Pioneer 3 — AT is taken as the model in this paper to study on the theoretical derivation and the experimental verification. The kinematic model of Pioneer 3 — AT mobile robot is presented at first. Then the improved EKF method considering the bias estimation and compensation problem is proposed to enhance the position estimation accuracy. In the end, simulation experiments are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the method is always effective on ensuring the estimation accuracy even though with unknown bias.
Centralized mediation of multiparty video sharing for smart work

Natural sharing of informative media contents is a key service in collaborative and smart work that flexibly conducts remote operations and communicates with remote co-workers in home offices and smart work centers. For collaborative and smart work, we need to carefully disseminate media services tailored for each participating site in order to naturally exchange shared contents between participants. In this paper, we present a centralized mediation approach to fairly improve the qualities of shared videos in multi-producer multi-consumer environment. The proposed approach carries out progressive improvement of end-user quality and efficient placement of transcoders by balancing the overall usage of computation and networking resources. Computer-simulated experiment results demonstrate that the proposed approach can find a feasible solution and improve the running time performance.
Trends in Hospital Volume and Patterns of Referral for Women With Gynecologic Cancers

OBJECTIVE: To estimate trends in hospital volume and referral patterns for women with uterine and ovarian cancer. METHODS: The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results–Medicare database was used to identify women aged 65 years or older with ovarian and uterine cancer who underwent surgery from 2000 to 2007. “Volume creep,” when a greater number of patients undergo surgery at the same hospitals, and “market concentration,” when a similar overall number of patients undergo a procedure but at a smaller number of hospitals, were analyzed. RESULTS: Among 4,522 patients with ovarian cancer, mean hospital volume increased from 3.1 cases during 2000–2001 to 3.4 cases during 2006–2007 (P=.62) suggesting minimal volume creep. Similarly, there was little evidence of market concentration. In 2000–2001, 37.8% of women were treated at the top decile by volume hospitals compared with 41.4% in 2006–2007 (P=.14). In 2006–2007, 201 (63.2%) of the hospitals had an ovarian cancer surgery volume of two or fewer cases. Among 9,908 women with uterine cancer, the mean hospital volume increased slightly from 4.5 in 2000–2001 to 5.4 in 2006–2007 (P=.10). The percentage of patients treated at the top decile by volume of hospitals increased from 40.4% in 2000–2001 to 44.7% in 2006–2007 (P<.001). In 2006–2007, 243 (49.3%) of the hospitals had a uterine cancer surgery volume of two or fewer cases. CONCLUSION: There have been only modest changes in the referral patterns of women with ovarian and uterine cancer. A large number of hospitals have a very low procedural volume. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
Piezoceramic Ultrasonic Transducer with Frequency Controlled Radiation Pattern

A theoretical approach shows, that controllable aperture angles of the radiation pattern of an ultrasonic transducer can be realized by arranging interleaved piezoceramic hollow cylinders with different resonance frequencies to an annular array, where all array elements can be driven in parallel. With a controllable radiation pattern, measurements of position-angles of reflecting objects are possible. The requirements to realize such a transducer are that the piezoelectric material, the cylinders are made of, do have an appropriate high mechanical quality factor Qm to get narrow resonance curves of the single cylinders and length dependent resonance frequencies of the cylinders (in the length extensional mode) that are different in such an extent, that allows a clearly separation of the single resonance curves. Our new method is presented by designing a cylindrical transducer consisting of four interleaved piezoceramic cylinders with resonance frequencies 55 kHz, 65 kHz, 75 kHz and 85 kHz. The reflected signals are detected by a receiver microphone installed in the center of the transducer. The transducer has an aperture angle of the radiated main lobe, that can be varied stepwise in the range of plusmn4deg to plusmn22deg by varying the driving frequency.
Stacked pentacene layer organic thin-film transistors with improved characteristics

Using two layers of pentacene deposited at different substrate temperatures as the active material, we have fabricated photolithographically defined organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) with improved field-effect mobility and subthreshold slope. These devices use photolithographically defined gold source and drain electrodes and octadecyltrichlorosilane-treated silicon dioxide gate dielectric. The devices have field-effect mobility as large as 1.5 cm/sup 2//V-s, on/off current ratio larger than 10/sup 8/, near zero threshold voltage, and subthreshold slope less than 1.6 V per decade. To our knowledge, this is the largest field-effect mobility and smallest subthreshold slope yet reported for any organic transistor, and the first time both of these important characteristics have been obtained for a single device.