Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FRIGIDA Delays Flowering in Arabidopsis via a Cotranscriptional Mechanism Involving Direct Interaction with the Nuclear Cap-Binding Complex1[W]

A major determinant of flowering time in natural Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) variants is FRIGIDA (FRI). FRI up-regulates expression of the floral repressor FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC), thereby conferring a vernalization requirement and a winter annual habit. FRI encodes a novel nuclear protein with no conserved domains except for two coiled-coil regions. A mutation in the large subunit of the nuclear cap-binding complex (CBC) suppresses FRI activity, so we have explored the connection between FRI and the nuclear CBC in order to gain further insight into FRI biochemical activity. Mutations in the small subunit of the CBC (CBP20) also suppress FRI up-regulation of FLC. CBP20 interacted directly with FRI in yeast and in planta, and this association of FRI with the 5′ cap was reinforced by an RNA ligase-mediated rapid amplification of cDNA ends assay that showed FRI decreased the proportion of FLC transcripts lacking a 5′ cap. Loss of CBP20 resulted in very low FLC mRNA levels and an increased proportion of unspliced FLC transcripts. FRI compensated for CBP20 loss, partially restoring FLC levels and normalizing the unspliced-spliced transcript ratio. Our data suggest that FRI up-regulates FLC expression through a cotranscriptional mechanism involving direct physical interaction with the nuclear CBC with concomitant effects on FLC transcription and splicing.
Inflation Targeting in Latin America

Estimation of conventional Taylor rules for Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru shows that central banks increase their repo rate in response to increases in the output gap and, except in Peru, to deviations of inflation expectations from target. Using a Markov-Switching methodology, it is found that, in the presence of external shocks, Chile, Colombia and Peru temporarily abandoned their conventional reaction function. The Taylor Rule is expanded and variables are included related to exchange rate misalignments and to domestic credit developments; limited evidence is found that countries have used some form of integrated inflation targeting. There is strong evidence that intervention in F/X markets is determined by exchange rate misalignments rather than by exchange rate volatility and that most countries seem particularly concerned with a strong currency. Central banks appear to have pursued an inflation objective using a standard Taylor rule and an exchange rate objective through interventions in the F/X market.
Short-term health and economic benefits of smoking cessation: low birth weight.

OBJECTIVES To estimate excess direct medical costs of low birth weight from maternal smoking and short-term cost savings from smoking cessation programs before or during the first trimester of pregnancy. METHODS Simulations using data on neonatal costs per live birth. Outcome measures are mean US excess direct medical cost per live birth, total excess direct medical cost, reductions in low birth weight, and savings in medical costs from an annual 1 percentage point drop in smoking prevalence among pregnant women. RESULTS Mean average excess direct medical cost per live birth for each pregnant smoker (in 1995 dollars) was $511; total cost was $263 million. An annual drop of 1 percentage point in smoking prevalence would prevent 1300 low birth weight live births and save $21 million in direct medical costs in the first year of the program; it would prevent 57,200 low birth weight infants and save $572 million in direct medical costs in 7 years. CONCLUSIONS Smoking cessation before the end of the first trimester produces significant cost savings from the prevention of low birth weight.
The Impact of Trade Liberalisation on Household Welfare in a Developing Country with Imperfect Labour Markets

Abstract I develop an empirical methodology to assess the distributional impact of trade-induced price shocks when labour markets are imperfect. The proposed methodology relates exogenous variations in prices to changes in household welfare using a separable agricultural household model that flexibly allows the data to determine the degree of labour market imperfections. Applying this approach to Vietnam, I investigate the impact of agriculture trade liberalisation between 1993 and 1998 on overall household welfare, measured using per capita household expenditure. I find that accounting for labour market imperfections results in welfare gains that are nearly four times larger than those found when assuming complete labour markets.
International Stock Market Linkages and Spillovers: Evidence from Three Latin American Countries

ABSTRACT Using a multivariate exponential generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic (M-EGARCH) model, this study examines price and volatility spillovers and response asymmetries between the equity markets of the United States and Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Our results vary depending on the openness of the country in terms of international trade. Evidence indicates that there are price and volatility spillovers from the United States to Mexico and Chile and but not to Brazil. In addition, our results indicate response asymmetries for Mexico and Chile, suggesting that the Mexican and Chilean markets are more sensitive to negative innovations originating from other markets than to positive innovations. RESUMEN. Este estudio examina contagios de precio y volatilidad, y respuestas asimétricas entre los mercados de capital de Estados Unidos y Brasil, Chile y México, fundándose en un modelo exponencial generalizado multivariado, con un condicionante autoregresivo heteroscedástico (M-EGARCH). Los resultados obtenidos varían, dependiente del nivel de apertura de un país en lo que concierne al comercio internacional. Las pruebas indican que existen contagios de precio y volatilidades desde los Estados Unidos hacia México y Chile, pero no hacia Brasil. Además, los resultados también indican asimetrías de respuesta para México y Chile, sugiriendo que estos dos mercados son más sensibles a las innovaciones negativas que se originan en otros mercados, que a las innovaciones positivas. RESUMO. Usando um modelo condicionalmente heterocedástico, autoregressivo, generalizado, exponencial e multivariado (M-EGARCH), este estudo examina contágios de preços e volatilidade, e assimetrias de resposta entre mercados de ações dos EUA e Brasil, Chile e México. Nossos resultados variam, dependendo da abertura do país em termos de comércio internacional. Os dados indicam que existem contágiosde preço e volatilidade dos EUA para o México e Chile, mas não para o Brasil. Além disso, nossos resultados indicam assimetrias de resposta para o México e Chile, sugerindo que estes mercados são mais sensíveis a inovações negativas originárias de outros mercados do que a inovações positivas.
Family Firm Heterogeneity and Governance: A Configuration Approach

Family involvement in ownership and management of business varies significantly within family firms. Although the literature recognizes the diversity in family firms, it remains unclear what governance mechanisms are most appropriate to achieve prioritized performance goals of different types of family firms. By combining two established categorizations of family involvement in firm ownership and management, nine types of family firms are identified. Drawing on the configuration approach, we theorize the governance mechanisms likely to most efficiently address the incentive systems, authority relations, and norms of legitimization in each of these types of family firms.
Delinquency, Social Institutions, and Capital Accumulation

This paper models the link between teenage delinquency rates and underlying measures of human and social capital and tests its predictions on a large Montreal database. The model allows teenagers to choose among a number of competing time uses, and the empirical work uses binary and ordered choice models to test the theoretical predictions of the effects of participation in various social institutions.
A conceptual ontology for e-government monitoring of development projects in Sub Saharan Africa

A number of developed countries employ ontology in e-government projects. On the other hand, E-government is gaining more and more acceptance in Sub Saharan African (SSA) countries. However, little work is done in building knowledge base ontologies guaranteeing the integration, maintainability, interoperability and sustainability of applications. In this paper, we present a case study of constructing ontology in support of e-government initiatives for development projects monitoring in a SSA country. Case studies of development projects conducted in different SSA countries as well as related published works in various fields including project management, project monitoring and evaluation, and capacity building are reviewed and the features of the ontology are extracted. The resulting ontology aims at: providing developers of potential e-government applications for development projects monitoring in Sub Saharan Africa and the developing world in large with key concepts and activities of the domain, facilitating communication amongst all the role players involved in development projects implementation by providing a common and shared representation of concepts and activities of the domain, and serving as a knowledge base system to the monitoring and evaluation activities of development projects; thereby, strengthening efficiency, effective and sustainable implementation of development projects in Sub Saharan Africa. Further, the study aims at sensitizing and serving as a practical case study of building ontology in support of e-government adoption processes in Sub Saharan Africa.
Distributed Approach for Traffic-based Logical Topology Reconfiguration in WDM Networks

Abstract This article presents the first distributed alorithm to solve the logical topology reconfiguration problem for IP over WDM networks under dynamic traffic. The algorithm is developed based on the centralized approach proposed in [Tran and Killat, Dynamic reconfiguration of logical topology for WDM networks under traffic changes: 2008]. The performance of the proposed distributed algorithm, which lends itself to a protocol implementation, is investigated using European 18-node network. The results show that our algorithm fulfils all requirements of the reconfiguration process, such as no service disruption, load balancing in the new logical topology while allowing to add and to delete multiple lightpaths. Moreover, the distributed approach offers a high scalability. Not limited to small or medium-sized networks as the centralized model in [Tran and Killat, Dynamic reconfiguration of logical topology for WDM networks under traffic changes: 2008], this algorithm can be applied to large networks with the computation time increasing linearly with the network size.
Rental Housing: Lessons from International Experience and Policies for Emerging Markets

This book is an effort to bring rental housing to the forefront of the housing agenda of countries around the world and to provide general guidance for policy makers whose actions can have an effect on where and how people live. It warns of the challenges they face and provides guidelines on how to develop or redevelop a sound rental sector. Enabling key players in housing markets (government officials, private rental property owners, financiers, or nongovernmental organizations) to add rental housing is critical to have an informed discussion on how best to stimulate this sector. The housing policy of most nations focused on increasing home ownership. There had been very little discussion about rental housing, less about social housing, and virtually none about public housing. This book includes five chapters: chapter one is introduction; chapter two is the rental market and its players; chapter three is legal, tax, and financial issues; chapter four is recommendations and conclusion; chapter five is country experiences.
Corporate Social Disclosure Characteristics and the Role of Ethical Investment Trusts

To attract funding from ethical investment trusts, it is expected that investee companies will need to undertake corporate social disclosure (CSD) in annual reports. This paper first explores the notion that companies included within the portfolio of ethical investment trusts (ETIs), are likely to provide a greater quantity of CSD than companies in which ethical trusts have not invested (NETIs). Second, the paper examines the characteristics of companies that undertake CSD, and their relationship to the ETI/NETI classification. Results from the examination of a sample of 300 Australian annual reports for 147 companies over a five‐year period (1990–1994), indicate that CSD is related to size, industry visibility, and company presence in both foreign countries and foreign stock exchanges. The significance of this paper, in addition to building upon empirical research into CSD, is that, in a range of circumstances, companies with an ethical investor as a shareholder, provide greater transparency about their social and environmental activities, than companies without an ethical investor. As a result, case can be made for the direct regulation and monitoring of ETI companies to be reduced, relative to NETIs, given that ethical investment may fulfil a market based regulatory function.
The Intensity of Interregional Cooperation in Information and Communication Technology Projects: An Empirical Analysis of the Framework Programme

Cecere G. and Corrocher N. The intensity of interregional cooperation in information and communication technology projects: an empirical analysis of the Framework Programme, Regional Studies. The cohesion across European member states and regions has been constantly promoted by European Union science policy, particularly through the Framework Programme. This paper investigates the intensity of bilateral collaborations between European Union regions (at the NUTS-2 level) in information and communication technology (ICT)-related projects. Results show that the geographical distance reduces the strength of cooperation, while cultural proximity, individual regions' involvement in research collaborations and the strength of the ICT sector have a positive effect. Cooperation between regions belonging to different tiers of European Union member states (EU15 and EU27) and between regions belonging to the second tier of European Union member states (EU27 and EU27) is weaker than other bilateral ties, putting into question the ability of the Framework Programme to promote cohesion.
Checking cryptographic API usage with composable annotations (short paper)

Developers of applications relying on cryptographic libraries can easily make mistakes in their use. Popular dynamic languages such as JavaScript make testing or verifying such applications particularly challenging. In this paper, we present our ongoing work toward a methodology for automatically checking security properties in JavaScript code. Our main idea is to attach security annotations to values that encode properties of interest. We illustrate our idea using examples and, as an initial step in our line of work, we present a formalization of security annotations in a statically typed lambda calculus. As next steps, we will translate our annotations to a dynamically typed formalization of JavaScript such as λJS and implement a runtime checked type extension using code instrumentation for full JavaScript.
Audio-visual synchrony for detection of monologues in video archives

We present our approach to detecting monologues in video shots. A monologue shot is defined as a shot containing a talking person in the video channel with the corresponding speech in the audio channel. Whilst motivated by the TREC 2002 Video Retrieval Track (VT02), the underlying approach of synchrony between audio and video signals is also applicable for voice and face-based biometrics, assessing lip-synchronization quality in movie editing, and for speaker localization in video. Our approach is envisioned as a two part scheme. We first detect the occurrence of speech and face in a video shot. In shots containing both speech and a face, we distinguish monologue shots as those shots where the speech and facial movements are synchronized. To measure the synchrony between speech and facial movements we use a mutual-information based measure. Experiments with the VT02 corpus indicate that using synchrony, the average precision improves by more than 50% relative compared to using face and speech information alone. Our synchrony based monologue detector submission had the best average precision performance (in VT02) amongst 18 different submissions.
The ECB's survey of professional forecasters and financial market volatility in the euro area

Since 1999, the European Central Bank (ECB) conducts a quarterly survey of the economic outlook in the euro area among professional forecasters. This article investigates the relationship between macroeconomic uncertainty, measured as the dispersion in economic forecasts across survey participants, and financial market volatility. We find a significant positive short-run relationship between stock market volatility and uncertainty about the future level of economic activity. In contrast, bond market volatility is mainly affected by inflation uncertainty. In addition, we find long-run cointegration relationships between asset market volatilities and macroeconomic uncertainties. We also investigate the sensitivity of our results to the inclusion of the extremely volatile post-Lehman period.
Understanding mobile communication and entertainment service usage: a comparison study

Mobile commerce has experienced tremendous growth in China. We explore the antecedents to mobile service usage based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and the decomposed TPB. By examining mobile communication and entertainment service adoption, we find that attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control are determinants of the behavioural intention. Trust and personal innovativeness predict attitude for both services, whereas enjoyment is closely related to attitude in Mobile Entertainment Service (MES) adoption. We also identify differences in the results across the two services examined, indicating separate operational directions for them both theoretically and practically.
"True" posterior communicating artery aneurysm--report of two cases.

Two cases of true posterior communicating artery (PcomA) aneurysm are described. A 27-year-old female with subarachnoid hemorrhage demonstrated a saccular aneurysm at the branch of the anterior choroidal artery from the PcomA. The aneurysm was successfully clipped. A 23-year-old male involved in an automobile accident suffered from traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage. Computed tomography 10 weeks after head injury demonstrated a high-density mass in the right parasellar region, diagnosed as a traumatic aneurysm arising from the PcomA. The aneurysm was successfully clipped. Histological examination demonstrated findings consistent with true aneurysm.
Angiopoietin‐2 levels in the hepatic vein as a useful predictor of tumor invasiveness and prognosis in human hepatocellular carcinoma

Background and Aim: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is characteristically a hypervascular tumor and its progression is known to be closely related to angiogenesis. In this study, we investigated angiopoietin‐2 (Ang‐2) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels in the hepatic vein draining from HCC, as well as in the peripheral vein, to evaluate their relation to clinicopathological features and prognosis.
Urban and Community Food Strategies. The Case of Bristol

How can a city influence the food system? The first step is to understand how the food system operates and how the different elements are interconnected. The second is to understand the strengths and vulnerabilities in relation to food system sustainability and longer-term resilience. This article looks at how Bristol is exploring these challenges and how it is attempting to both inform and involve citizens and city decision makers by providing a holistic framework from which to develop a resilient food plan. At the heart of this challenge is finding effective mechanisms to bring together the right stakeholders to plan and implement change.
Detecting salient themes in financial marketing research from 1961 to 2010

The present paper analyses research in the social science subfield of financial marketing research (FMR). We apply a bibliometric approach, using co-word analysis combined with performance analysis and science mapping, to detect and visualise conceptual subdomains and identify the most prominent themes. The thematic networks extracted show the associations between the main concepts treated by the FMR community, thus allowing us to examine its intellectual structure over the last 50 years (1961–2010). The findings are combined with the trends identified through a review of the corpus of manuscripts analysed and a temporal analysis. This longitudinal approach provides a snapshot of the thematic evolution of financial services research and predicts where such research could lead.
The Distribution and Redistribution of Income

The 1970s and 1980s brought renewed interest, both theoretic and empirical, in matters of income distribution and redistribution. How may we evaluate trends in income distribution through time, and differences between countries? Is the income tax ‘a good thing’? What constitutes an improvement in an income tax?
Microbiota of Severe Early Childhood Caries before and after Therapy

Severe early childhood caries (ECC) is difficult to treat successfully. This study aimed to characterize the microbiota of severe ECC and evaluate whether baseline or follow-up microbiotas are associated with new lesions post-treatment. Plaque samples from 2- to 6-year-old children were analyzed by a 16S rRNA-based microarray and by PCR for selected taxa. Severe-ECC children were monitored for 12 months post-therapy. By microarray, species associated with severe-ECC (n = 53) compared with caries-free (n = 32) children included Slackia exigua (p = 0.002), Streptococcus parasanguinis (p = 0.013), and Prevotella species (p < 0.02). By PCR, severe-ECC-associated taxa included Bifidobacteriaceae (p < 0.001), Scardovia wiggsiae (p = 0.003), Streptococcus mutans with bifidobacteria (p < 0.001), and S. mutans with S. wiggsiae (p = 0.001). In follow-up, children without new lesions (n = 36) showed lower detection of taxa including S. mutans, changes not observed in children with follow-up lesions (n = 17). Partial least-squares modeling separated the children into caries-free and two severe-ECC groups with either a stronger bacterial or a stronger dietary component. We conclude that several species, including S. wiggsiae and S. exigua, are associated with the ecology of advanced caries, that successful treatment is accompanied by a change in the microbiota, and that severe ECC is diverse, with influences from selected bacteria or from diet.
Adolescent–parent disagreement on health‐related quality of life of food‐allergic adolescents: who makes the difference?

To cite this article: van der Velde JL, Flokstra‐de Blok BMJ, Hamp A, Knibb RC, Duiverman EJ, Dubois AEJ. Adolescent–parent disagreement on health‐related quality of life of food‐allergic adolescents: who makes the difference? Allergy 2011; 66: 1580–1581.
Research on E-Government System Network Security Based on Immune Agent

This paper creates a new E-Government security framework based on Immune Agent, and it describes a new deployment policy of E-Government network system based on Immune Agent. On the theoretical basis, this thesis elaborates the detailed design and implementation of a particular E-Government network system. To meet the needs of practical security and provide strong protection, the system is developed by adopting the new model and algorithm. It is already been in use.