Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro toxicity assessment of silver nanoparticles in the presence of phenolic compounds – preventive agents against the harmful effect?

Abstract The increasing commercial use of silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) will inevitably lead to elevated silver exposure and thus to potential human health complications. In this study the acute toxicity of Ag-NPs <20 nm alone and upon co-administration with food matrix component phenolic compounds (PCs) on the cell-based models of the gastrointestinal tract was investigated. An improved co-culture model of Caco-2 and RajiB cells was applied for more precise in vitro simulation of the gastrointestinal tract. The involvement of two major factors contributing to the toxicity of Ag-NPs, i.e. the release of Ag+ and the induction of oxidative stress, was investigated. Ag-NPs were cytotoxic for Caco-2 cells with an EC50 of ca. 40 µg/ml. Ag-NPs led to oxidative stress starting from ca. 45 µg/ml. The epithelial barrier integrity disruption by Ag-NPs on Caco-2 cell mono- and co-cultures was established by decreased transepithelial electrical resistances and increased passages of Lucifer Yellow, a paracellular marker. Immunofluorescence staining demonstrated that Ag-NPs affect occludin and zonula occludens 1 distributions, suggesting the opening of tight junctions. Ag+, corresponding to the release from Ag-NPs, demonstrated a partial contribution in the toxic parameters, induced by Ag-NPs. Two PCs, quercetin and kaempferol, partially protected the Caco-2 cells from Ag-NP-induced toxicity and maintained the epithelial barrier integrity, disrupted by NPs. No protective effect was observed for resveratrol. The protective effect could be beneficial and decrease the potential toxicity of ingested Ag-NPs. However, the precise mechanisms of barrier-integrity-destabilising action of Ag-NPs/Ag+ and protective effect of PCs still require further elucidation.
Hedging House Price Risk in the Presence of Lumpy Transaction Costs

This paper presents a life-cycle model of housing demand with uncertain house prices and lumpy transaction costs. The paper extends the (S,s) methodology to a non-stationary discrete time framework with multivariate stochastic price processes. This allows the characterization of a self-hedging mechanism in an incomplete housing market: households use earlier accumulated housing wealth to hedge against future housing cost risk. As a result, the direction of the effect of price uncertainty on housing demand depends critically on households' future housing consumption plans. When price uncertainty increases, households consume (and thereby invest in) less housing if they plan to realize the housing wealth gain. However, they will instead take a larger housing position if they plan to move to a bigger home in a correlated housing market in the future.
Modelling Tourism Demand using Cointegration Analysis: A Case Study for Tourists Arriving from United Kingdom to Sri Lanka

The tourism industry in Sri Lanka is responsible for about 2% of the GDP and employs 0.7% of the total labour force. The industry has maintained the fourth position in foreign exchange earnings. Given the heavy investments and long-term planning need, demand forecasting and identifying the determinants are of paramount importance to the policy making institutions. However, a majority of the tourism studies use either ARIMA models that do not have an explicit economic context or multiple regressions that can lead to a spurious regression situation. Against this background, the aim of this paper was to model the tourism demand from United Kingdom (UK) to Sri Lanka, using error correction modelling approach. The dependent and explanatory variables were integrated of order one. A unique cointegrating relation was detected in the long-run model and indicated that income of United Kingdom (GDP) and exchange rate (EXR) were positively related with tourism demand while the relative price (RPI) was negatively related. Income of UK is the most important demand determinant in the long-run. In the short-run, above three variables were not statistically significant. Contrary to expectations, in the short-run, Tsunami effect was found to have a positive relationship and terrorism was not a significant factor that influenced UK tourism. The error correction model indicated that the deviation of dependent variable from its equilibrium will be corrected at a rate of 30.71% in the next period.
A 2-Month Linear Periodized Resistance Exercise Training Improved Musculoskeletal Fitness and Specific Conditioning of Navy Cadets

Abstract Vantarakis, A, Chatzinikolaou, A, Avloniti, A, Vezos, N, Douroudos, II, Draganidis, D, Jamurtas, A&Zgr;, Kambas, A, Kalligeros, S, and Fatouros, IG. A 2-month linear periodized resistance exercise training improved musculoskeletal fitness and specific conditioning of navy cadets. J Strength Cond Res 31(5): 1362–1370, 2017—Major objectives of army and navy training are the development of readiness, performance, and injury prevention. Numerous studies have examined the effect of specific strength training (ST) programs on performance of Special Forces and military personnel. Although navy personnel have to address on-board conditions that require the development of strength, agility, speed, and task-specific endurance, there is no information regarding the effects of ST on navy-specific performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an 8-week ST on performance of navy cadets. Thirty-one cadets of the Hellenic Naval Academy volunteered to participate and were randomly assigned in 2 groups. Cadets in the Experimental Group participated in a linear periodized ST program in addition to their daily training schedule. Cadets in the control group participated only in pre- and post-measurements. Anthropometrics, maximal oxygen consumption, oxygen consumption during a Navy Obstacle Course (NOC), maximum strength in bench press and squat exercises, hand grip strength, repetitions in push-ups and abdominal test, time to complete a 30-m sprint, and time to complete NOC were measured before and after the intervention. A 2-way repeated-measures analysis of variance showed that ST induced favorable changes in bench press and squat 1 repetition maximum, push-ups, abdominal crunches, time to complete 30-m distance, and time to complete the NOC. These results indicate that an additional ST may induce positive alterations on readiness and performance of navy cadets. The study has the approval of university's institutional review board and ethical committee.
Not Only the Tragedy of the Commons: Misperceptions of Bioeconomics

An exploratory search for explanations of mismanagement of renewable resources, other than the theory of the commons, was performed by an experiment. Eighty three subjects, mostly recruited from the fisheries sector in Norway, were asked to manage the same simulated virgin fish stock, one subject at a time. Exclusive property rights were granted to rule out the commons problem. Despite perfect property rights, subjects consistently overinvested, leading to an average overcapacity of 60%. The resource was reduced by an average of 15% below its optimal level. Overcapacity and tough "quotas" resemble the situation in Norwegian and other fisheries during the past few decades. The likely explanation of the observed behaviour is misperception of feedback, a phenomenon that occurs in many experimental studies of dynamically complex systems. Such misperceptions add a new and important dimension to the problem of renewable resource management, beyond the commons problem.
Macroautophagy-dependent, intralysosomal cleavage of a betaine homocysteine methyltransferase fusion protein requires stable multimerization

Cargo-based assays have proven invaluable in the study of macroautophagy in yeast and mammalian cells. Proteomic analysis of autolysosomes identified the metabolic enzyme, betaine homocysteine methyltransferase (BHMT), as a potential cargo-based, end-point marker for mammalian macroautophagy. To test whether degradation of BHMT can be used to measure macroautophagic flux in mammalian cells, we created a BHMT fusion protein (GST-BHMT) that demonstrates starvation-induced, site-specific fragmentation in a variety of cell lines. Subcellular fractionation studies show that the GST-BHMT fragment co-fractionates with vesicles containing lysosomal and autolysosomal markers. Furthermore, both pharmacological inhibitors of macroautophagy and depletion of macroautophagy-specific proteins reduce accumulation of the fragment. In the course of these studies, we observed that fragmentation of GST-BHMT did not occur in forms of the reporter with truncation or point mutations that destabilize oligomerization. Since stable oligomerization of BHMT is essential for its catalytic activity, a point mutation known to ablate BHMT activity was tested. We show that accumulation of the GST-BHMT fragment is not impaired in a catalytically inactive mutant, indicating that selective proteolysis of GST-BHMT requires stable quaternary structure independent of effects on activity. Also, the loss of fragmentation observed in the oligomerization deficient mutants does not seem to be due to a defect of sequestration and lysosomal loading, suggesting that disruption of stable quaternary structure affects the ability of a lysosomal protease to cleave the newly-delivered cargo. Finally, we propose that the cargo-based GST-BHMT assay will be a valuable addition to existing macroautophagy assays in mammalian cells.
Online Media, Market Orientation, and Financial Performance in Nonprofits

The combination of social, political, and economic changes causing simultaneously decreasing funding and increasing demand for services is driving nonprofit managers to engage in proactive marketing in a for-profit model, including the use of online media. This research extends the MARKOR model of market orientation to examine the relationship between market orientation practices, as reflected in the utilization of online media, and their effects on the financial viability of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). The Wayback Machine website (http://waybackmachine.org) provided a unique ability to track site content over time, for comparison with each organization's financial indicators at corresponding points in time. The results of this study confirm the positive relationship between higher market orientation via online media presence and improved financial viability for the sampled group of NPOs. This study provides a simple, actionable, and free measure that NPOs can use to assess their current and planned online media.
Modelling preventive effectiveness to estimate the equity tipping point: at what coverage can individual preventive interventions reduce socioeconomic disparities in diabetes risk?

INTRODUCTION Most individual preventive therapies potentially narrow or widen health disparities depending on the difference in community effectiveness across socioeconomic position (SEP). The equity tipping point (defined as the point at which health disparities become larger) can be calculated by varying components of community effectiveness such as baseline risk of disease, intervention coverage and/or intervention efficacy across SEP. METHODS We used a simple modelling approach to estimate the community effectiveness of diabetes prevention across SEP in Canada under different scenarios of intervention coverage. RESULTS Five-year baseline diabetes risk differed between the lowest and highest income groups by 1.76%. Assuming complete coverage across all income groups, the difference was reduced to 0.90% (144 000 cases prevented) with lifestyle interventions and 1.24% (88 100 cases prevented) with pharmacotherapy. The equity tipping point was estimated to be a coverage difference of 30% for preventive interventions (100% and 70% coverage among the highest and lowest income earners, respectively). CONCLUSION Disparities in diabetes risk could be measurably reduced if existing interventions were equally adopted across SEP. However, disparities in coverage could lead to increased inequity in risk. Simple modelling approaches can be used to examine the community effectiveness of individual preventive interventions and their potential to reduce (or increase) disparities. The equity tipping point can be used as a critical threshold for disparities analyses.
Factors encouraging the internet banking adoption in Thailand

Although the number of internet banking users has grown rapidly in recent years, not all customers are ready to accept these banking services. It remains a challenge for the banks to figure out how to attract more customers to adopt the use of banking services via an internet channel. This study aims at examining the factors that impact the acceptance of the use of internet banking in Thailand. A total of 697 subjects participated in this study. Data were collected via both interview and survey. The findings suggest factors that banks should consider when implementing internet services, thus allowing them to design an internet service that meets the needs of their customers.
Modulation of Candida albicans virulence by bacterial biofilms on titanium surfaces

Abstract Whilst Candida albicans occurs in peri-implant biofilms, its role in peri-implantitis remains unclear. This study therefore examined the virulence of C. albicans in mixed-species biofilms on titanium surfaces. Biofilms of C. albicans (Ca), C. albicans with streptococci (Streptococcus sanguinis, S. mutans) (Ca-Ss-Sm) and those incorporating Porphyromonas gingivalis (Ca-Pg and Ca-Ss-Sm-Pg) were developed. Expression of C. albicans genes associated with adhesion (ALS1, ALS3, HWP1) and hydrolytic enzymes (SAP2, SAP4, SAP6, PLD1) was measured and hyphal production by C. albicans quantified. Compared with Ca biofilms, significant (p<0.05) up-regulation of ALS3, HWP1, SAP2 and SAP6, and hyphal production occurred in biofilms containing streptococci (Ca-Ss-Sm). In Ca-Pg biofilms, down-regulation of HWP1 and SAP4 expression, with reduced hyphal production occurred. Ca-Ss-Sm-Pg biofilms had increased hyphal proportions and up-regulation of ALS3, SAP2 and SAP6. In conclusion, C. albicans expressed virulence factors in biofilms that could contribute to peri-implantitis, but this was dependent on associated bacterial species.
Sequence of the nucleoprotein gene from a virulent British field isolate of transmissible gastroenteritis virus and its expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Subgenomic mRNA from a virulent isolate of porcine transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) was used to produce cDNA which was sequenced. Two non‐overlapping open reading frames (ORFs) were identified. The largest, encoding a polypeptide of 382 amino acids (relative molecular mass (Mr) 43 483), was shown to be the viral nucleoprotein gene. The second ORF, found 3’to the larger ORF, encodes a polypeptide of 78 amino acids (Mr 9068) which has yet to be assigned to a viral product. The nucleoprotein gene was expressed in yeast cells under the control of two types of yeast promoters: the constitutive PGK promoter, and the inducible GAL1 promoter. Yeast cells containing recombinant plasmids, with the nucleoprotein gene in the correct orientation, produced a polypeptide of M, 47000, identical to the viral product, that reacted with a specific monoclonal antibody.
EARNINGS MANAGEMENT AND STOCK MARKET RETURNS

This paper investigates the variability of real business activities in the form of discretionary expenditures (accounts receivable, selling, general and administrative expenses, and net change in accruals), and the firms stock price performance in relation to the frequency of meeting or beating analysts earnings forecast. In addition, the study investigated the relationship between the firms stock price performance, and the variability of these financial statement accounts. The objective was to examine if these selected financial statement of accounts could be used by management to manipulate earnings in order to meet and/or beat analysts earnings forecasts so as to enhance the firms stock performance. The study found that there is a significant difference between the variance of SG&A, NCA and stock returns of the firms that meet and/or beat the analysts forecast and those that do not. It was also found that there is a significant difference in stock returns based on meeting and/or beating the analysts estimate.
Correlating the amount of urea, creatinine, and glucose in urine from patients with diabetes mellitus and hypertension with the risk of developing renal lesions by means of Raman spectroscopy and principal component analysis

Abstract. Patients with diabetes mellitus and hypertension (HT) diseases are predisposed to kidney diseases. The objective of this study was to identify potential biomarkers in the urine of diabetic and hypertensive patients through Raman spectroscopy in order to predict the evolution to complications and kidney failure. Urine samples were collected from control subjects (CTR) and patients with diabetes and HT with no complications (lower risk, LR), high degree of complications (higher risk, HR), and doing blood dialysis (DI). Urine samples were stored frozen (−20°C) before spectral analysis. Raman spectra were obtained using a dispersive spectrometer (830-nm, 300-mW power, and 20-s accumulation). Spectra were then submitted to principal component analysis (PCA) followed by discriminant analysis. The first PCA loading vectors revealed spectral features of urea, creatinine, and glucose. It has been found that the amounts of urea and creatinine decreased as disease evoluted from CTR to LR/HR and DI (PC1, p<0.05), and the amount of glucose increased in the urine of LR/HR compared to CTR (PC3, p<0.05). The discriminating model showed better overall classification rate of 70%. These results could lead to diagnostic information of possible complications and a better disease prognosis.
Flightless I over‐expression impairs skin barrier development, function and recovery following skin blistering

Development of an intact epidermis is critical for maintaining the integrity of the skin. Patients with epidermolysis bullosa (EB) experience multiple erosions, which breach the epidermal barrier and lead to increased microbial colocalization of wounds, infections and sepsis. The cytoskeletal protein Flightless I (Flii) is a known regulator of both development and wound healing. Using Flii+/−, WT and FliiTg/Tg mice, we investigated the effect of altering Flii levels in embryos and adult mice on the development of the epidermal barrier and, consequently, how this affects the integrity of the skin in EB. Flii over‐expression resulted in delayed formation of the epidermal barrier in embryos and decreased expression of tight junction (TJ) proteins Claudin‐1 and ZO‐2. Increased intercellular space and transepidermal water loss was observed in FliiTg/Tg adult mouse skin, while FliiTg/Tg keratinocytes showed altered TJ protein localization and reduced transepithelial resistance. Flii is increased in the blistered skin of patients with EB, and over‐expression of Flii in experimental EBA showed impaired Claudin‐1 and ‐4 TJ protein expression and delayed recovery of functional barrier post‐blistering. Immunoprecipitation confirmed Flii associated with TJ proteins and in vivo actin assays showed that the effect of Flii on actin polymerization underpinned the impaired barrier function observed in FliiTg/Tg mice. These results therefore demonstrate an important role for Flii in the development and regulation of the epidermal barrier, which may contribute to the impaired healing and skin fragility of EB patients. Copyright © 2013 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
How Robust Is the Finding That Innovations to UK Output Are Persistent

The finding that output innovations in the United Kingdom are persistent is shown to be robust to a variety of extensions and modifications to the unit root-persistence methodology. A one percent innovation to current output changes long-run forecasts of output by at least one percent and, although the possibility that output returns to a constant trend path cannot be completely ruled out, any such mean reversion would have to be extremely slow; the data are much more likely to be consistent with an output process having an important random walk component in which innovations have a strong tendency to persist. Copyright 1992 by Scottish Economic Society.
Euroscepticism in Southern Europe: A Diachronic Perspective

After laying out the rationale and framework of the issue, this introductory article offers a survey of party and popular euroscepticism in European Union member states, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus and Malta and candidate Turkey, over several decades. Leonard Ray's criteria of ideological extremity, electoral unpopularity and opposition are used to assess whether South European euroscepticism has been a marginal phenomenon. The article investigates whether Maastricht constituted a turning-point for the rise of euroscepticism and accession for its decline. Finally, it asks whether euroscepticism in Southern Europe is moving towards a new ‘constraining dissensus’.
Revealing the Deep Meaning of Culture in School Learning: Framing a New Paradigm for Teacher Preparation.

Abstract The author proposes a model that frames a new paradigm for teacher preparation that facilitates the deep meaning of culture in school learning. Preservice teachers move in cohorts through a six-part process of interrelated program components, employing strategies of introspection and reflective-interpretive-inquiry. During this process, a complex operational definition of culture is constructed that ultimately reveals aspects of the relationship among culture, cognition, and school learning. An operational definition of culture and the data collected by preservice teachers are used to formulate a theory explaining the relationship between culture and school learning. This theory guides reframing the curriculum, redesigning classroom instruction, and creating a more responsive social context for school learning for students from different cultural and experiential backgrounds.
Unmasking latent inhibition in humans

Presentations of a to-be-conditioned stimulus (CS) on its own impairs subsequent learning when that CS is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US). Evidence for this latent inhibition (LI) effect in humans is said to require a “masking task” that diverts attention from the CS during preexposure. We present three experiments that demonstrate LI in humans without masking. Subjects performed a computerised task, making speeded responses to an imperative cue (the US) presented within a continuous stream of stimuli. During preexposure, a to-be-CS was presented 20 times among other stimuli, but excluding the US. Instructions ensured subjects actively monitored all stimuli at this time. This was immediately followed by the training phase, which included the US, the preexposed CS, and a novel CS. Both CSs were reliably followed by the US, but these associations were incidental to the instructed task. Nonetheless, some subjects learned the CS-US associations, responding faster when the US followed a CS than when it was unsignalled. All three experiments also found evidence for LI, in that subjects learned the novel CS-US association sooner than the preexposed CS-US association. We conclude that humans can show LI even when actively attending to the CS during preexposure.